Why not send your papers to the publisher of some
Saturday paper to distribute with his? The difficulty
is that if people are irregular in getting it, it
will lose its character of steadiness, which is fatal
to such a paper. Ripley agrees in this.
By mail the majority of people who haven’t boxes
at the P.O. get nothing at all, or only spasmodically.
You will have to send it to some agent here, I am
confident.
Cranch is about breaking up house-keeping preparatory
to his summer rustication. He is in a tight place
again, as he is too apt to be, poor fellow! The
fact is art is poor pay unless you are a great artist.
He fights very cheerfully, though, which is a comfort.
His children are very interesting, and at his house
there is a set of us who have the best of times, the
most truly genial and poetic.
I enclose you the funds which I so amusingly forgot,
and, if I can serve you by seeing any agent or other
“fallow deer,” I shall be most happy to
do it; and don’t fail always to call upon me.
Yours most truly and ever,
G.W.C.
Is this sum right?
NEWPORT, July 29th, 1852.
My dear John,—I have been running round
for two or three weeks, and have forgotten to ask
you to change the address of the papers which come
to me....
I am charmingly situated here with Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow
and Tom Appleton, and with some other pleasant people.
It is very lovely and lazy; but I am quite busy.
Give my love to your wife and believe me, always,
Your aff.
G.W.C.
NEWPORT, Oct. 11th, 1852.
My dear John,—I leave Newport this evening,
and since “friend after friend departs,”
you will hardly be surprised to hear that I have fallen
from the ranks of bachelors; and that when I said I
should die such, I had no idea I should live to be
married. Prosaically, then, I am engaged to....
Her father is cousin of ... and is of the elder branch
of the family, so that I already begin to feel sentimental
about Lady Arabella Johnson. On the other side
I come plump against plump old Gov. Stuyvesant
of the New Netherlands. What with Dutch and Puritan
blood, therefore, I shall be sufficiently sobered,
you will fancy. Wrong, astutest of Johns, for
my girl plays like a sunbeam over the dulness of that
old pedigree, and is no whit more Dutch or Puritan
than I am. She is, in brief, 22 years old, a
very, very pronounced blonde, not handsome (to common
eyes), graceful and winning, not accomplished nor
talented nor fond of books, gay as a bird, bright
as sunshine, and has that immortal youth, that perennial
freshness and sweetness which is the secret of permanent
happiness.
I am as happy as the day, and have no especial intention
of marrying directly. Her father has a large
property, but she is not, properly, a rich girl.
I shall be settled at home in ten days. To-night
I am going to Baltimore, and shall return to New York
next week.
