ENPages That Mention Bond
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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They, I mean the shepherd and fam ily, gorged me with eggs and bacon and oaten cake and curds and whey. Thus I did what old gentlemen tell you with a sort of selfish satis faction that you must learn to do,
ROUGHED IT;
I believe it means irritating the skin on sharp-textured blankets. These old gentlemen have always had to do it when they were your age.
Your P.F. has a hard time of it to resist contamination from the bawdy jokes and allusions of Bond and Hardy.
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being of a very Catholic character. Also The Lover's Stars (a trifle in something like Coventry Patmore's style), and a thing which I hope you will like, a soliloquy of one of the spies left in the wilderness, and the beginning of a story to be called Richard, and some other fragments. So, though I finish nothing, I am not idle. I am thinking, on account of the nobility of the subject, of writing for the Latin Verse after Mods, but not of course with a view to success. It came to pass very happily for me that I shewed several things to Bond; used though I am to conceal what I write except from you, for what he said, though he gave me no especial praise, was of such a kind that I have had great confidence since, such as I never felt at all before. I hope, dear Baillie, you will not