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I yesterday found in my writing desk a copy I had made of the letter Lord Carrington wrote to me in answer to mine announcing your former Futteghar appointment; my heart failed me about sending it at the time, because I feared it would cost you so much, but now that it can go free I enclose it. […; [87]
Sophy despatched a letter for you last week, in which I am sure she told you all domestic occurrences. Barry has bought Annaghmore in the King’s County: an excellent house; and Sophy and Barry and all the children are to stay with us till Sophy’s health - very delicate - is strengthened, and till they have furnished what rooms they mean to inhabit at Annamore; this looks better than with the gh, but Sophy stickles for the old Irish spelling.
Molly and Hetty, and Crofton and child, are all flourishing; poor old George is declining as gently and comfortably as can be. When we go to see him, his eyes light up and his mouth crinkles into smiles, and he, as well as Molly, never fails to ask for Master Pakenham. Though Helen cannot reach you for a year, Fanny has desired Bentley to send you a copy before it is published. I should tell you beforehand that there is no humour in it, and no Irish character. It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in a book of fiction - realities are too strong, party passions too violent to bear to see, or care to look at their faces in the looking-glass. The people would only break the glass, and curse the fool who held the mirror up to nature - distorted nature, in a fever. We are in too perilous a case to laugh, humour would be out of season, worse than bad taste. Whenever the danger is past, as the man in the sonnet says,
“We may look back on the hardest part and laugh.”
Then I shall be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter [88] Scott once said to me, “Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets forward so well in other countries, is so miserable in his own.” A very difficult question: I fear above my power. But I shall think of it continually, and listen, and look, and read.
Thank you, my dear brother, for your excellent and to me particularly interesting last letter, in which you copied for me the good observations on the state of your part of India, and the collection of the revenue, rents, &c. Many of the observations on India apply to Ireland; similarity of certain general causes operating on human nature even in countries most different and with many other circumstances dissimilar, produce a remarkable resemblance in human character and conduct. I admire your generous indignation against oppression and wringing by “any indirection from the poor peasant his vile trash.” Some of the disputes you have to settle at Cucherry, and some of the viewings that you record of boundaries, &c., about which there are quarrels, so put me in mind of what I am called upon to do here continually in a little way.
I hope Honora and Sophy have given you satisfaction about the exact place of the new walks; as I cannot draw I can do nothing in that way, but I can tell you that I have been planting rhododendrons and arbutus in front of the euonymous tree. I hope you will have a good garden in your new residence, and that you will not be too hot in it. How you could fine that your having more to do, made you more able to endure th horrid hear you describe, passes my comprehension. Heat always makes me so indolent, imbecile and irritable. I remember all this in the only heat to call heat, that I was ever exposed to in Paris and [89] Switzerland; I could not even speak, much less write. If I had been under your 107 degrees I should have melted away to the very bone, and never, never, never, could have penned that dropping letter as you did to Honora, and with that puddle [underlined] ink too. Well! we are very, very, very much obliged to you, dear Pakenham, for all the labour you go through for us, and we hope that under the shade of the Himalaya mountains you will be able to write at your ease and without all manner of stodge [underlined] in your ink.’
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