LONDON,November 17,1846
My dear Uncle:I cannot help refreshing the remembrance of me with you and dear Aunty by addressing a separate letter to you....
Yesterday we hailed with delight our letters from home....One feels in a foreign land the absence of common sympathies and interests,which always surround us in any part of our own country.
And yet nothing can exceed the kindness with which we have been received here.
Last evening I went to my first great English dinner and it was a most agreeable one....It seems a little odd to a republican woman to find herself in right of her country taking precedence of marchionesses,but one soon gets used to all things.We sat down to dinner at eight and got through about ten.When the ladies rose,Ifound I was expected to go first.After dinner other guests were invited and to the first person who came in,about half-past ten,Lady Palmerston said:"Oh,thank you for coming so early."This was Lady Tankerville of the old French family of de Grammont and niece to Prince Polignac.The next was Lady Emily de Burgh,the daughter of the Marchioness of Clanricarde,a beautiful girl of seventeen.She is very lovely,wears a Grecian braid round her head like a coronet,and always sits by her mother,which would not suit our young girls.Then came Lord and Lady Ashley,Lord Ebrington,and so many titled personages that I cannot remember half.
The dinner is much the same as ours in all its modes of serving,but they have soles and turbot,instead of our fishes,and their pheasants are not our pheasants,or their partridges our partridges.
Neither have we so many footmen with liveries of all colours,or so much gold and silver plate....The next morning Mr.Bancroft breakfasted with Dr.Holland to meet the Marquis of Lansdowne alone.
[Thursday]he went down to Windsor to dine with the Queen.He took out to dinner the Queen's mother,the Duchess of Kent,the Queen going with the Prince of Saxe-Weimar,who was paying a visit at the Castle.He talked German to the Duchess during dinner,which Isuspect she liked,for the Queen spoke of it to him afterwards,and Lord Palmerston told me the Duchess said he spoke very pure German.
While he was dining at Windsor I went to a party all alone at the Countess Grey's,which I thought required some courage.
Of all the persons I see here the Marquis of Lansdowne excites the most lively regard.His countenance and manners are full of benevolence and I think he understands America better than anyone else of the high aristocracy.I told him I was born at Plymouth and was as proud of my pure Anglo-Saxon Pilgrim descent as if it were traced from a line of Norman Conquerors.Nearly all the ministers and their wives came to see us immediately,without waiting for us to make the first visit,which is the rule,and almost every person whom we have met in society,which certainly indicates an amiable feeling toward our country.We could not well have received more courtesy than we have done,and it has been extended freely and immediately,without waiting for the forms of etiquette.Pray say to Mr.Everett how often we hear persons speak of him,and with highest regard.I feel as if we were reaping some of the fruits of his sowing.
Mr.Bancroft sends you a pack of cards,one of the identical two packs with which the Queen played Patience the evening he was at Windsor.They were the perquisite of a page who brought them to him.He was much pleased with the Queen and thought her much prettier than any representation of her which we have seen,and with a very sweet expression.Lady Holland had been staying two or three days at Windsor,and was to leave the next morning.When the Queen took leave of her at night,she kissed her quite in my Virginia fashion.
Dear Uncle:How much more your niece would have written if to-day were not packet day,I cannot say.I shall send you some newspapers and a pack of cards which I saw in the Queen's hands.The American Minister and Mrs.Bancroft have since played a game of piquet with them.The Queen's hands were as clean as her smile was gracious.
Best regards to the Judge and Aunt Isaac.
Yours most truly,George Bancroft.
