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

Chapter 18:

• London.
-- letters to Mrs. Ticknor. -- Harrow. -- British Museum reading-room. -- anecdote of Scott. -- W. R. Greg. -- Tocqueille. -- MacAULAYulay. -- Wilson. -- Spanish studies. -- letter to Mr. Prescott. Due d'aumale.

To Mrs. Ticknor.

London, July 3, 1857.

Dearest wife,—I am here safe in gentle Ellen's¹ kind care. I wish I could add that I am easy in my thoughts. . . . . I want to know every hour how you are. I want to seem to do something for you . . . . I wish heartily, half the time, that I had never left the Arago, and sometimes think that the storm in which I escaped over the side of that vessel was a sort of warning to me not to leave it. But there is no use in all this; rather harm. . . . . We² did not reach Southampton till the five-o'clock train had been gone ten minutes. So we made ourselves comfortable, with a mutton-chop and a cup of tea, at an excellent inn there, and at fifteen minutes past seven took the next train, reached London at ten, and Rutland Gate at half past.

Ellen and the Lyells had waited for me till half past 9, and then giving up all hope of me, they went to their respective parties. . . . . At midnight, giving them up in my turn, I went to bed. The first thing yesterday morning I had a note from Ellen, saying that if I intended to accept an invitation—which with others was on the table waiting for me—to go to ‘the Speeches,’ or annual exhibition at Harrow, I must be at breakfast before ten. So I was down in season, and she came immediately after, and received me most sweetly and affectionately; Twisleton followed, with hearty kindness. We breakfasted, and set off for Harrow at once . . . . . After the exercises came lunch, of course, partly in the house of the Principal, Dr. Vaughan,—soon to be a bishop, they say,—and partly under a tent,