Letters, with letters from Ruskin, Thackeray and others / Edited by his son (John Brown) and D. W. Forrest. With biographical introductions by Elizabeth T. M'Laren.

  • Brown, John, 1810-1882.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Letters, with letters from Ruskin, Thackeray and others / Edited by his son (John Brown) and D. W. Forrest. With biographical introductions by Elizabeth T. M'Laren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    towards our good old grandmother. I believe you mean little ill, but that is of no consequence if she feels it as she does. I am sure it is very little for you to bear with her who has so often borne with the faults and ill-natured behaviour of us all.—Yours truly, John Brown. VI. To the Same Chatham, 27th Feby. 1832. My dear William—I have been peculiarly pleased with my fathers and Isabella’s letters as giving me so much information of my grandfather’s death. ... I have read both letters over and over, and when I come to “ where he was heard to sing in a gentle manner,” etc., I cannot help it but I cry like a child. There is a completeness, a consistency in the whole event that is to me most beautiful, everything so peaceful, so full of kindness, so heavenly, so like himself. I cannot tell you how I could have wished to have seen him, even to bury him. The funeral must have been most inter- esting. I daresay you will never forget it. It was a fitting and worthy ending to his honoured life. . . . I got your letter and read it, but why so short, so general; you have not time to get warm before you are done. Surely you might say a great deal more, and let your mind come a little closer, and be more hearty and confiding. In the four months that have passed there was enough to fill the letter. However I am very well pleased as it is. Tell Isabella that as to her I am content though far from satisfied; she has not yet attained to the pouring forth. Surely when we do get together again there will be no end of talking. I at least am prepared for a most resolute chatter. I dreamt the night before last that I had at length got home and had made my way into the dining-room at night, with the lamp on the table, when I was astonished at the coolness with which grandmother looked up, aye merely looked up, and said nothing. Then in comes my father, and after surveying the room as is his way, turning over and scrutinising everything, in his own quiet and silent manner, he turns round and says, “ John, I wish you would come upstairs and put the books in some sort of order ”! This I hope is no type of what is to take place in 2 months,—no cast-before shadow of the coming event. I have of late been more troubled with home thoughts than ever; they become quite inveterate, and are