1841-42 
MISS ANNA GURNEY 
301 
paid two visits which he thus describes in a letter 
to his sister Eliza written on his return : — 
‘ . I spent one pleasant day at a farm-house 
at Stan way, a pretty Essex village, with John 
Brown, a widower, retired on a decent compe- 
tency, known the country round by the name of 
“ Mr. Pickwick,” and the closest approximation to 
Boz’s famed type that I have yet had the pleasure 
of being acquainted with. Like the founder of 
the Pickwick Club, he solaceth himself with vir- 
tuosoizing in antiquities ; but, as the immortal 
Cuvier hath it, “ of a higher order ” than those 
which amuse the F. A. S.’s. A good day’s work I 
had amongst honest John Brown’s fossils,'^ whose 
housekeeper at last grew a little testy at the 
reiterated inquiries “ if everything was proper and 
comfortable for the Professor.” My next centre- 
point from which excursions radiated was the pre- 
bendal dwelling of Professor Sedgwick, in Cathedral 
Close, Norwich, where he is now, with his niece, 
in residence. Heard him preach last Sunday — 
the Cathedral crowded, as it always is, when his 
natural and impressive addresses are poured forth. 
••.... I made a day’s delightful excursion to 
Cromer, to visit an old maiden lady [Anna Gurney], 
^ho has been deprived of the power of using her 
^cgs from early life, and wheels herself about in a 
His collections of pleistocene History Museum, South Ken- 
bnd and freshwater shells and sington. 
t>ones are now in the Natural 
