Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London:  September 20, 1832

My dear Sister,—­I am at home again from Leeds, where everything is going on as well as possible.  I, and most of my friends, feel sanguine as to the result.  About half my day was spent in speaking, and hearing other people speak; in squeezing and being squeezed; in shaking hands with people whom I never saw before, and whose faces and names I forget within a minute after being introduced to them.  The rest was passed in conversation with my leading friends, who are very honest substantial manufacturers.  They feed me on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; at night they put me into capital bedrooms; and the only plague which they give me is that they are always begging me to mention some food or wine for which I have a fancy, or some article of comfort and convenience which I may wish them to procure.

I travelled to town with a family of children who ate without intermission from Market Harborough, where they got into the coach, to the Peacock at Islington, where they got out of it.  They breakfasted as if they had fasted all the preceding day.  They dined as if they had never breakfasted.  They ate on the road one large basket of sandwiches, another of fruit, and a boiled fowl; besides which there was not an orange-girl, an old man with cakes, or a boy with filberts, who came to the coach-side when we stopped to change horses, of whom they did not buy something.

I am living here by myself with no society, or scarcely any, except my books.  I read a play of Calderon before I breakfast; then look over the newspaper; frank letters; scrawl a line or two to a foolish girl in Leicestershire; and walk to my Office.  There I stay till near five, examining claims of money-lenders on the native sovereigns of India, and reading Parliamentary papers.  I am beginning to understand something about the Bank, and hope, when next I go to Rothley Temple, to be a match for the whole firm of Mansfield and Babington on questions relating to their own business.  When I leave the Board, I walk for two hours; then I dine; and I end the day quietly over a basin of tea and a novel.

On Saturday I go to Holland House, and stay there till Monday.  Her Ladyship wants me to take up my quarters almost entirely there; but I love my own chambers and independence, and am neither qualified nor inclined to succeed Allen in his post.  On Friday week, that is to-morrow week, I shall go for three days to Sir George Philips’s, at Weston, in Warwickshire.  He has written again in terms half complaining; and, though I can ill spare time for the visit, yet, as he was very kind to me when his kindness was of some consequence to me, I cannot, and will not, refuse.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay

London:  September 25, 1832.