starvation and
Windsor banquets. I thought these and other things besides might have to
do with the people's not cheering.

E---- (who, bless her soul! has just been here, talking such gigantic
nonsense) must have misunderstood me, or you must have misunderstood
her, in supposing that I made a distinct _promise_ to answer four
crossed sheets of paper to four lines of yours. I said it was my usual
practice to do so, and one from which I was not likely to depart,
because I hate writing a short letter as much as I hate writing any
letter at all....

Have you received one letter from me since you have been in Mountjoy
Square? I have written one to you there, but, owing to the habit of my
hand, which is to write "Ardgillan Castle," the direction was so
scratched and blurred that I had some doubts whether the letter would
reach you. Let me know, dear Harriet, if it does....

E---- must have made another blunder about Lady Westmoreland and my
sister. It is not the Duke of Wellington's money, in particular, that
she objects to receiving; she does not intend to sing in private _for
money_ at all, anywhere, or on any occasion; which I am very glad of,
as, if she did, I think social embarrassments and professional
complications of every sort, and all disagreeable ones, would arise from
it.

We were all very cordially invited to Apsley House by Lady Westmoreland,
before my sister stated that she did not intend to sing there for
money.... Besides this, there came a formal bidding in the Duke of
Wellington's own hand [or Algernon Greville's, who used to forge his
illustrious chief's signature on all common occasions], with which we
were very well pleased to comply....

A---- has been trying to inoculate me with Paul de Kock, who, she
assures me, is a _moral_ writer, and with whose books our tables,
chairs, sofas, and beds are covered, as with the unclean plagues of
Egypt. I read one of the novels and began another. They are very clever,
very funny, very dirty, abominably immoral, and I do not think I _can_
read any more of them; for though I confess to having laughed till my
sides ached over some parts of what I read, I was, upon reflection and
upon the whole, disgusted and displeased....

I have _precisely_ your feeling about Mrs. F---- in every particular; I
think her the funniest and the kindest old maniac I am acquainted with,
and my intercourse with her is according to that opinion. Good-bye, my
dearest Harriet; God bles