ENPages That Mention Cunliffe, Mrs.
Letter from Gerard Manley Hopkins to Alexander William Mowbray Baillie, discussing his meeting with Baillie's cousin, Mrs. Cunliffe; his impending trip to Wales; his visit to the Junior Water Colours and the British Institution; etc.
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[side note at top of page:] Bond sends his love.
[at head of page]: I TRUST YOUR HONOUR NOT TO READ the lines scratch ed out below
July 20, 1864 August 14.
Dear Baillie Gerard M. Hopkins Aug. /64
I wrote solely, under stand me, solely, because I know that you are feeling in your bones that I shall not write. I have no time to write, I shall now lose my second, but let that pass; I will prove there is no truth in osteomancy if I die for it.
I have met your cousin Mrs. Cunliffe. I was introduced to her by our friends the Marshalls with whom - I was going to say she is staying, but she is living near them here. I am to meet her at dinner at the Mar shalls. She asked me to call on her: I went once and she was out, and on account of this invitation shall to meet her at dinner shall not
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things do not pass them by. The colour ing is no warmer than Canaletto's, but the difference is vasty. There were also Carlo Dolces, a Sasso Ferrato, Correggios, Rembrandt's Mill, Vandycks, Wouvermans, Teni erses, Hobbimans, a charming Cuyp, Holbeins, and a fine early lands cape painter we have, Crome of Nor wich. There was a landscape by Sir Joshua Reynolds, curiously. Also Sir Thomas Lawrences, Sir Peter Lelys, and Sir A.W. Calcotts.
Nothing that I could see at the Junior Water Colours worth seeing, excepting Jopling's "Huffy" and a view in the East by Lelbin which is the most intense effect of colour I ever saw in water colours. But I must not bore you with pictures.
I went to call on Mrs. Cunliffe; she was not in but sent me
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a note asking me to lunch with them next day. I went, and was introduced to Miss Lyall and her future husband, Bradley Al ford, brother of the Dean of Can terbury. She is said to have every accomplishment, except sing ing and drawing that, civilization has yet divised for several and separate ladies. To be brief, she is a fair monster. She can repeat a whole canto of Dante which she has read the once through the day before.
Her eyes and stockings are of hea venly blue.
Her t
Brown are her tresses and her studies too.
She is to her brother as Hyperion to a satyr, I mean as Manade de Staël to besenius' Hebrew Lexicon. Seriously she is attractive and un Lyallistic. Mrs. Cunliffe is a