George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[366]

To W. H. Prescott.

London, July 13, 1857.

dear William,—I must write to you in this hurry-skurry of a London season, if it be only to thank you and dear Susan for your great kindness to our darling Lizzie. It is mentioned in all our letters from home, and sinks into all our hearts. . . . .

I am very busy. I have nearly got through with everything I wish to discuss with Mr. Bates, who continues to entertain most generous purposes towards the Library; and I have done a good deal of work in the British Museum and elsewhere. But I have plenty more to do, and I want to make considerable purchases of books, or at least make arrangements for them. Still, everything will depend on what I may hear.

I am living with the Twisletons, in a most agreeable manner, petted enough to spoil me outright. They live almost next door to Sir George Lewis and Lord Morley,—not forgetting Lady Theresa,— close by Reeve of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ and within easy distance of Senior, Macaulay, Lord Holland. . . . . But their social position is better than all their surroundings on Hyde Park. . . . . It almost amuses me sometimes to hear such people as old Lord Glenelg, old Lord Monteagle, Lord Ashburton, and your friends Lord and Lady Wensleydale, talk of our own little Ellen, who is really as attractive a lady, and as agreeable, as any I meet in society. As for Lord Lansdowne,—now seventy-seven,—who breakfasted here the other morning, his manners to her showed a mixture of affection and gallantry that it was delightful to witness. Indeed, the sort of admiration I everywhere hear expressed for her is truly remarkable, when you remember that five years ago she was a stranger here, and that this society which now claims her as an ornament is the most exclusive society of London, and the one most reluctant to receive anybody into its intimacy or association.

And speaking of people who are admired, reminds me of Tocqueville, who has been here some time, and, as Senior and Lord Stanhope said the other day,—looking from quite different positions,—he has been decidedly the lion of the season. I have met him quite often, and though he has an English wife, and talks English well enough, he has generally been humored by keeping the conversation in French. Indeed, it was well worth while; for nobody talks as well as he does, not even Villemain or Mignet, who have the more brilliant epigrammatic style of recent fashion, while he talks with the