Shady Hill, October 18,1864.
. . . When I got
home last Wednesday night I found a telegram from Goldwin Smith to say that he
had been detained by a calm, and would be with us the next day, — but it was
not till Friday that he reached us, — and here he is still with us — at this
instant writing at the table in the Library while I am in the little study. He
is a most pleasant inmate, — and his appreciation of America and of our cause
is so just, so clear, and so complete, that there are few Americans who at a
time like this would be more sympathetic, or more truly genial.
He suffers in
domestic life from an English education, which has enforced reserve and want of
quick reciprocation of expression on a character naturally open and sensitively
sympathetic. He has had no home life to bring out and develope the power of
quick responsiveness. At six years old he was sent to school, and he has never
lived at home since. But it would be doing him great injustice were I to imply
that there is any marked defect in his manner as a mere manner of society, — it
is only as an intimate domestic manner that it sometimes fails, and then, (as I
have said,) rather from want of practice in the expression of feeling than from
absence of the feeling itself.
We are doing a good
deal during his visit, and talking as men talk when they really have something
to say and something to learn from each other. He will be with us till the end
of next week.
The “Review” has
just passed into the hands of Ticknor & Fields. This is still a secret. I
am glad of it, for I retain as absolute control as ever, and T. & F. are
much better able to give the “Review” a wide circulation than Crosby was. . . .
SOURCE: Sara Norton
and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton,
Volume 1, p. 280-1
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