He wrote to me from 24
George Street, Hanover Square, and told me he delighted in London, and
wished he could spend a year there. He enjoyed floating about, in a sort
of unknown way, among the rotund and rubicund figures made jolly with
ale and port-wine. He was greatly amused at being told (his informants
meaning to be complimentary) "that he would never be taken for anything
but an Englishman." He called Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade,"
just printed at that time, "a broken-kneed gallop of a poem." He
writes:--
"John Bull is in high spirits just now at the taking of Sebastopol.
What an absurd personage John is! I find that my liking for him
grows stronger the more I see of him, but that my admiration and
respect have constantly decreased."
One of his most intimate friends (a man unlike that individual of whom
it was said that he was the friend of everybody that did not need a
friend) was Francis Bennoch, a merchant of Wood Street, Cheapside,
London, the gentleman to whom Mrs. Hawthorne dedicated the English
Note-Books. Hawthorne's letters abounded in warm expressions of
affection for the man whose noble hospitality and deep interest made his
residence in England full of happiness. Bennoch was indeed like a
brother to him, sympathizing warmly in all his literary projects, and
giving him the benefit of his excellent judgment while he was sojourning
among strangers.
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