I returned the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Leslie, the painter, this week, and saw the picture he is now painting for the Vice-Chancellor. It is a sketch of children, a boy driving his two little sisters as horses. One of the little girls is very like Susie, { 37} her size, hair, and complexion. How I longed to be rich enough to order a copy, but his pictures cost a fortune. I paid also a visit this week to the Duchess of Inverness, whom I found in the prettiest, cosiest morning boudoir looking onto the gardens of the Palace. In short, I do, or see, every hour, something that if I were a traveller only, I could make quite a story of.
MY DEAR SONS: . . . I wrote my last sheet on the 19th and your father went on that day to Cambridge to be present at the tri-centennial celebration of Trinity College . . . He went also the day after the anniversary, which was on our 22nd December, to Ely, with Peacock, the great mathematician, who is Dean of Ely, to see the great cathedral there . . . While he was at Cambridge I passed the evening of the 22nd at Lady Morgan’s, who happened to have a most agreeable set . . . Lady Morgan’s reunions are entertaining to me because they are collections of lions, but they are not strictly and exclusively fashionable. They remind me in their composition from various circles of Mrs. Otis’s parties in Boston. We have in this respect an advantage over the English themselves, as in our position we see a great variety of cliques.
For instance, last evening, the 31st, I took Louisa, at half-past seven, to the house of Mr. Hawes, an under Secretary of State, to see a beautiful children’s masque. It was an impersonation of the “Old Year” dressed a little like _Lear_ with snowy hair and draperies. _Old Year_ played his part inimitably, at times with great pathos, and then introducing witty hits at all the doings of his reign, such as exploding cotton, the new planet, a subject which he put at rest as “_far beyond our reach_,” etc., etc. He then introduced one by one the children of all ages as “Days” of the coming year. There was _Twelfth Day_, crowned as Queen with her cake in her hands; there was _Christmas_, covered with holly and mistletoe; there was _April Fool’s Day_, dressed as Harlequin; there was, above all, _Shrove Tuesday_, with her frying-pan of pancakes, dressed as a little cook; there was a charming boy of fourteen or fifteen, as _St. Valentine’s Day_ with his packet of valentines addressed to the young ladies present; there was the _5th of November_, full of wit and fun, etc.; the longest day, an elder brother, of William’s height, with a cap of three or four feet high; and his little sister of five, as the shortest day. This was all arranged to music and each made little speeches, introducing themselves. The _Old Year_, after introducing his successors, and after much pathos, is “going, going—gone,” and falls covered with his drapery, upon removing which, instead of the lifeless body of the _Old Year_, is discovered a sweet little flower-crowned girl of five or six, as the _New Year_. It was charming, and I was so pleased that, instead of taking Louisa away at nine o’clock as I intended, I left her to see “Sir Roger de Coverly,” in the dress of his time.