Grant’s kindness through all these negotiations has been such as I really cannot describe.  He told me yesterday, with tears in his eyes, that he did not know what the Board would do without me.  I attribute his feeling partly to Robert Grant’s absence; not that Robert ever did me ill offices with him far from it; but Grant’s is a mind that cannot stand alone.  It is begging your pardon for my want of gallantry, a feminine mind.  It turns, like ivy, to some support.  When Robert is near him, he clings to Robert.  Robert being away, he clings to me.  This may be a weakness in a public man; but I love him the better for it.

I have lately met Sir James Graham at dinner.  He took me aside, and talked to me on my appointment with a warmth of kindness which, though we have been always on good terms, surprised me.  But the approach of a long separation, like the approach of death, brings out all friendly feelings with unusual strength.  The Cabinet, he said, felt the loss strongly.  It was great at the India Board, but in the House of Commons, (he used the word over and over,) “irreparable.”  They all, however, he said, agreed that a man of honour could not make politics a profession unless he had a competence of his own, without exposing himself to privation of the severest kind.  They felt that they had never had it in their power to do all they wished to do for me.  They had no means of giving me a provision in England; and they could not refuse me what I asked in India.  He said very strongly that they all thought that I judged quite wisely; and added that, if God heard his prayers, and spared my health, I should make a far greater figure in public life than if I had remained during the next five or six years in England.

I picked up in a print-shop the other day some superb views of the suburbs of Chowringhee, and the villas of the Garden Reach.  Selina professes that she is ready to die with envy of the fine houses and verandahs.  I heartily wish we were back again in a nice plain brick house, three windows in front, in Cadogan Place or Russell Square, with twelve or fifteen hundred a year, and a spare bedroom,—­(we, like Mrs. Norris, [A leading personage in Miss Austen’s “Mansfield Park.”] must always have a spare bedroom,)—­for Edward and Margaret, Love to them both.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

London:  December 5, 1833

Dear Napier,—­You are probably not unprepared for what I am about to tell you.  Yesterday evening the Directors of the East India Company elected me one of the members of the Supreme Council.  It will, therefore, be necessary that in a few weeks,—­ten weeks, at furthest,—­I should leave this country for a few years.