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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1827
Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, 6 November 1827
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Author's Preface
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Index
Editor’s Preface
Letters 1801
Letters 1802
Letters 1803
Letters 1804
Letters 1805
Letters 1806
Letters 1807
Letters 1808
Letters 1809
Letters 1810
Letters 1811
Letters 1812
Letters 1813
Letters 1814
Letters 1815
Letters 1816
Letters 1817
Letters 1818
Letters 1819
Letters 1820
Letters 1821
Letters 1822
Letters 1823
Letters 1824
Letters 1825
Letters 1826
Letters 1827
Letters 1828
Letters 1829
Letters 1830
Letters 1831
Letters 1832
Letters 1833
Letters 1834
Letters 1835
Letters 1836
Letters 1837
Letters 1838
Letters 1839
Letters 1840
Letters 1841
Letters 1842
Letters 1843
Letters 1844
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November 6th, 1827.
Dear Lady Holland,

I was very sorry to hear from Mrs. Robert Smith that you were indisposed at Cheam. These three—November, December, and January—are the unhappy months. I do not expect a moment’s happiness before the 1st of February. Cheam was built (as it is now ascertained) by Chemosh, the abomination of the Moabites. I think it is one of the worst and most incurable places I ever saw, but if it amuses poor Bobus, it was not created in vain.

You know these matters better than I: but my conjecture is that Lord Grey will go into regular opposition, or at least very soon slide into it. Whatever his intentions may be at the beginning, nobody heats so soon upon the road.

Jeffrey has been here with his adjectives, who always travel with him. His throat is giving way; so much wine goes down it, so many million words leap over it, how can it rest? Pray make him a judge; he is a truly great man, and is very heedless of his own interests. I lectured him on his romantic folly of wishing his friends to be preferred before himself, and succeeded, I think, in making him a little more selfish.

I have never ceased talking of the beauty of Ampt-
280MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
hill, and in those unmeasured terms of which Mary accuses me. I am afraid I do deal a little sometimes in superlatives, but it is only when I am provoked by the coldness of my fellow-creatures. You see my younger brother, Courtenay, is turned out of office in India, for refusing the surety of the East India Company! Truly the Smiths are a stiff-necked generation, and yet they have all got rich but I. Courtenay, they say, has £150,000, and he keeps only a cat! In the last letter I had from him, which was in 1802, he confessed that his money was gathering very fast.

S. S.