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TO LORD HATHERTON. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 [1861]

Edition used:

Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the translator of Napoleon’s Correspondence with King Joseph. With large Additions. In Two Volumes (London: Macamillan, 1861). 2 vols.

Part of: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols.

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TO LORD HATHERTON.

I tried in vain to see you, my lord, the day that I left London. Luckily I found Lady Hatherton at home; I could thank her for all the kindness which you both showed to me during my most instructive and most agreeable residence in London. No portion of it pleased me more than our little excursion to Teddesley. Your kindness made me feel as if we had been friends for twenty years.

You may easily believe that Madame de Tocqueville and I are much tempted to accept your pressing invitation to visit you this year or the next. But great as the temptation is, I doubt the possibility of our yielding to it. We are at work on our pleasure-grounds, and no one knows better than your lordship the attraction of such an employment, and the difficulty of escaping from it. Our visit must, I fear, be delayed, but we hope not to be deprived of the pleasure of seeing you in the meantime. My wife begs to repeat to Lady Hatherton the delight which we should feel in receiving you under our roof. She would find here the rusticity of ancient France, but, at the same time, hosts so happy in receiving her, that she would, I think, tolerate its inconveniences. I hope, too, my lord, that though you live in a large domain, you are not incapable of being interested by a very small one, and that in our walks you would give me good advice for my garden and for my farm.

Let me flatter myself that these hopes will be fulfilled next summer. I wish that I might rely on you. A yacht would bring you to us in eight or ten hours. It would be rather a party of pleasure than a voyage.