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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1844
Sydney Smith to Henry Hollad, August 1844
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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Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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Combe Florey, August, 1844.
My dear Holland,

I ought to have answered your letter before, but I have been so strenuously employed in doing nothing, that I have not had time to do so. Whatever Mrs. Sydney may say of herself, I think she is very languid from her late attack in London, and that she needs the sea-side; and there I mean to go for some
536MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
days. Jeffrey is under the care of a committee, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Empson, his wife, the footman, and a Highland nurse, and they report to his admirers, consisting of several scores of young ladies, and others well advanced in years; it is a science by itself, the management of that little man, and I am afraid, unless you could affect all the committee simultaneously with the principal, your science would be in vain.

I hope you will have good weather for your journey. Beg of all your party, when they come in at night, fatigued, hungry, and exhausted, to sit down and write their journals, but not to show them to me. I keep clear of gout, but always imagine I am going off in an apoplexy or palsy, and that the death-warrant is come down. I saw the other day, in midday, a ball of fire, with a tail as long as the garden, rush across the heavens, and descend towards the earth; that it had some allusion to me and my affairs I did not doubt, but could not tell what, till I found the cow had slipped her calf: this made all clear.

Ever yours affectionately,
Sydney Smith.