Chapter 50

"October 18. 1814.

"My dear Drury,

"Many thanks for your hitherto unacknowledged 'Anecdotes.' Now for one of mine--I am going to be married, and have been engaged this month. It is a long story, and, therefore, I won't tell it,--an old and (though I did not know it till lately) a _mutual_ attachment. The very sad life I have led since I was your pupil must partly account for the offs and _ons_ in this now to be arranged business. We are only waiting for the lawyers and settlements, &c.; and next week, or the week after, I shall go down to Seaham in the new character of a regular suitor for a wife of mine own.

"I hope Hodgson is in a fair way on the same voyage--I saw him and his idol at Hastings. I wish he would be married at the same time,--I should like to make a party,--like people electrified in a row, by (or rather through) the same chain, holding one another's hands, and all feeling the shock at once. I have not yet apprised him of this. He makes such a serious matter of all these things, and is so 'melancholy and gentlemanlike,' that it is quite overcoming to us choice spirits.

"They say one shouldn't be married in a black coat. I won't have a blue one,--that's flat. I hate it.

"Yours," &c.

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