Sir William
Hamilton has read you with admiration, and says your 'House of the
Seven Gables' is more powerful in description than 'The Scarlet
Letter.'" Did I tell you once of an English lady who went to the
Consulate to see Mr. Hawthorne, and introduced herself as a literary
sister, and who had never been in Liverpool before, and desired Mr.
Hawthorne to show her the lions, and he actually escorted her about?
An American lady, who knows this Englishwoman, sent the other day a
bit of a note, torn off, to Mr. Hawthorne, and on this scrap the
English lady says, "I admire Mr. Hawthorne, as a man and as an
author, more than any other human being."
I have diligently taken cold these four months, and now have a hard
cough. It is very noisy and wearying. Mr. Hawthorne does not mind fog,
chill, or rain. He has no colds, feels perfectly well, and is the only
Phoebus that shines in England.
I told you in my last of Lord Dufferin's urgent invitation to Mr.
Hawthorne to go to his seat of Clandeboye, in Ireland, four or five
hours from Liverpool. Mr. Hawthorne declined, and then came another
note. The first was quite formal, but this begins:--
"MY DEAR MR. HAWTHORNE,--. . . Mrs. Norton [his aunt, the Honorable
Mrs. Norton] hopes . . . that you will allow her to have the pleasure
of receiving you at her house in Chesterfield Street; and I trust you
will always remember that I shall esteem it an honor to be allowed to
receive you here whenever you may be disposed to pay this country a
visit.
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