London, March 23, 1847

MY DEAR MRS. STORY: I should have thanked you by the last steamer for your note and the charming volume which accompanied it, but my thoughts and feelings were so much occupied by the sad tidings I heard from my own family that I wrote to no one out of it. The poems, which would at all times have given me great pleasure, gave me still more here than they would if I were with you on the other side of the Atlantic. I am not cosmopolitan enough to love any nature so well as our American nature, and in addition to the charm of its poetry, every piece brought up to me the scenes amidst which it had been written… How dear these associations are your husband will soon know when he too is separated from his native shores and from those he loves… I shall look forward with great pleasure to seeing him here, and only wish you were to accompany him, for your own sake, for his, and for ours. His various culture will enable him to enjoy most fully all that Europe can yield him in every department. My own regret ever since I have been here has been that the seed has not “fallen upon better ground,” for though I thought myself not ignorant wholly, I certainly lose much that I might enjoy more keenly if I were better prepared for it. I envy the pleasure which Mr. Story will receive from music, painting, and sculpture in Europe, even if he were destitute of the creative inspiration which he will take with him. For ourselves, we have everything to make us happy here, and I should be quite so, if I could forget that I had a country and children with very dear friends 3,000 miles away… There are certain sympathies of country which one cannot overcome. On the other hand I certainly enjoy pleasures of the highest kind, and am every day floated like one in a dream into the midst of persons and scenes that make my life seem more like a drama than a reality. Nothing is more unreal than the actual presence of persons of whom one has heard much, and long wished to see. One day I find myself at dinner by the side of Sir Robert Peel, another by Lord John Russell, or at Lord Lansdowne’s table, with Mrs. Norton, or at a charming breakfast with Mr. Rogers, surrounded by pictures and marbles, or with tall feathers and a long train, making curtsies to a queen.

To W. D. B. and A. B.

LONDON, April 2 1847.

Here it is the day before the despatches leave and I have not written a single line to you… On Friday we dined at Lady Charlotte Lindsay’s, where were Lord Brougham and Lady Mallet, Mr. Rogers and the Bishop of Norwich and his wife. In the evening Miss Agnes Berry, who never goes out now, came on purpose to appoint an evening to go and see her sister, who is the one that Horace Walpole wished to marry, and to whom so many of his later letters are addressed. She is eighty-four, her sister a few years younger, and Lady Charlotte not much their junior.

These remnants of the belles-esprits of the last age are charming to me. They have a vast and long experience of the best social circles, with native wit, and constant practice in the conversation of society… On Wednesday, we dined at Sir Robert Peel’s, with whom I was more charmed than with anybody I have seen yet. I sat between him and the Speaker of the House of Commons. I was told that he was stiff and stately in his manners, but did not think him so, and am inclined to imagine that free from the burden of the Premiership, he unbends more. He talked constantly with me, and in speaking of a certain picture said, “When you come to Drayton Manor I shall show it to you.” I should like to go there, but to see himself even more than his pictures. Lady Peel is still a very handsome woman.

The next morning we breakfasted with Mr. Rogers. He lives, as you probably know, in a beautiful house, though small, whose rooms look upon the Green Park, and filled with pictures and marbles. We stayed an hour or more after the other guests, listening to his stores of literary anecdote and pleasant talk. In the evening we went to the Miss Berrys’, where we found Lord Morpeth, who is much attached to them. Miss Berry put her hand on his head, which is getting a little gray, and said: “Ah, George, and I remember the day you were born, your grandmother brought you and put you in my arms.” Now this grandmother of Lord Morpeth’s was the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, who electioneered for Fox, and he led her to tell me all about her. “Eothen” was also there, Lady Lewis and many of my friends… Aunty wishes to know who is “Eothen.” She has probably read his book, “Eothen, or Traces of Travel,” which was very popular two or three years since. He is a young lawyer, Mr. Kinglake, the most modest, unassuming person in his manners, very shy and altogether very unlike the dashing, spirited young Englishman I figured to myself, whom nothing could daunt from the Arab even to the plague, which he defied.

To I. P. D.

DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT: On Thursday [the 25th] we were invited to Sir John Pakington’s, whose wife is the Bishop of Rochester’s daughter, but were engaged to Mr. Senior, who had asked us to meet the Archbishop of Dublin, the celebrated Dr. Whately. He had come over from Ireland to make a speech in the House of Lords upon the Irish Poor Law. He is full of learning [and] simplicity, and with most genial hearty manners. Rogers was also there and said more fine things than I have heard him say before at dinner, as he is now so deaf that he does not hear general conversation, and cannot tell where to send his shaft, which is always pointed. He retains all his sarcasm and epigrammatic point, but he shines now especially at breakfast, where he has his audience to himself.

We went from Mr. Senior’s to Mr. Milman’s, but nearly all the guests there were departed or departing, though one or two returned with us to the drawing-room to stay the few minutes we did. Among the lingerers we found Sir William and Lady Duff Gordon, the two Warburtons, “Hochelaga” and “Crescent and Cross,” and “Eothen.” Mrs. Milman I really love, and we see much of them.

On Saturday was the dreaded Drawing-Room, on which occasion I was to be presented to the Queen… Mr. Bancroft and I left home at a quarter past one. On our arrival we passed through one or two corridors, lined by attendants with battle-axes and picturesque costumes, looking very much like the supernumeraries on the stage, and were ushered into the ante-room, a large and splendid room, where only the Ministers and Privy Councillors, with their families, are allowed to go with the Diplomatic Corps. Here we found Lady Palmerston, who showed me a list she had got Sir Edward Cust, the master of ceremonies, to make out of the order of precedence of the Diplomatic Corps, and when the turn would come for us who were to be newly presented. The room soon filled up and it was like a pleasant party, only more amusing, as the costumes of both gentlemen and ladies were so splendid. I got a seat in the window with Madam Van de Weyer and saw the Queen’s train drive up. At the end of this room are two doors: at the left hand everybody enters the next apartment where the Queen and her suite stand, and after going round the circle, come out at the right-hand door. After those who are privileged to go first into the ante-room leave it, the general circle pass in, and they also go in and out the same doors. But to go back. The left-hand door opens and Sir Edward Cust leads in the Countess Dietrichstein, who is the eldest Ambassadress, as the Countess St. Aulair is in Paris. As she enters she drops her train and the gentlemen ushers open it out like a peacock’s tail. Then Madam Van de Weyer, who comes next, follows close upon the train of the former, then Baroness Brunnow, the Madam Bunsen, then Madam Lisboa, then Lady Palmerston, who, as the wife of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, is to introduce the Princess Callimachi, Baroness de Beust, and myself. She stations herself by the side of the Queen and names us as we pass. The Queen spoke to none of us, but gave me a very gracious smile, and when Mr. Bancroft came by, she said: “I am very glad to have had the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Bancroft to-day.” I was not [at] all frightened and gathered up my train with as much self-possession as if I were alone. I found it very entertaining afterward to watch the reception of the others. The Diplomatic Corps remain through the whole, the ladies standing on the left of the Queen and the gentlemen in the centre, but all others pass out immediately… On Sunday evening Mr. Bancroft set off for Paris to pass the Easter recess of Parliament… I got a very interesting letter yesterday from Mr. Bancroft. It seems that the Countess Circourt, whose husband has reviewed his book and Prescott’s, is a most charming person, and makes her house one of the most brilliant and attractive in Paris. Since he left, a note came from Mr. Hallam, the contents of which pleased me as they will you. It announced that Mr. Bancroft was chosen an Honorary Member of the Society of Antiquaries, of which Lord Mahon is president, Hallam, vice-president. Hallam says the society is very old and that he is the first citizen of the United States upon whom it has been conferred, but that he will not long possess it exclusively, as his “highly distinguished countryman, Mr. Prescott, has also been proposed.”

To W. D. B. and A. B.