An emigrant's home letters/Letter Seventeen
LETTER SEVENTEEN.
London,
Sunday, March 24th.
My Dear Sister,
Once more, and for the last time in England, I thank you for your unspeakable kindness. I go with a happy heart, in hope of rendering you assistance in future. Tell my dear father I was never more surprised than when we received the £1 from him, knowing the sacrifice he must have made to send it; but this only rendered it more valuable to us, and us more grateful to him.
Tell my dear mother the will be kept by us as long as we live in remembrance of her. Thank father for the garden seeds. I have bought half a pint of the best sorts of marrow-fat peas, also half a pint of scarlet runners, and some fine carrot seed, and tell him I know how to plant them all. I do hope that he will see my garden if I have one^ but do not tell him so now on account of his and poor mother's feelings. Would that I could hope to see them and all of you again; but if things should turn out well I hope we shall be able to send for you, Maria^ and Thomas, and then if my dear father is living, and we should find the climate likely to agree with him, I hope he will come and end his days in peace and happiness with us all.
Your brother has got quite into favour here. He is quite idolized by the old ladies where we live, and he is called 'a poet' by The Charter of yesterday. He has had no end of presents from people whom he has not known many months. One old gentleman made him a present of an ivory tablet, a set of reading books, and a shoe-lift, and paper knife, worth twelve or fourteen shillings. Another made him a present of a very handsome rule and several other things. You will see what The Charter of yesterday says in Answers to Correspondents relative to his song in the week's before. Should we not like to hear his song sung by some great man at some public dinner! but we bid 'farewell' to England and he shall write songs in his bark hut in Australia. Has not my father's wife been kind, never to send me the least thing in the world, and yet she thinks she is entitled to the name of 'mother,' but I think she does not act 'mother-like!'
I have seen the fine park and the Queen's palace and the Queen's carriage, but they are not, all of them, worth a fig to see. The park, crowded with people like a fair, the palace, guarded everywhere with soldiers with their bayonets fixed; I would rather walk in a rural lane than in such places, where you can go so far and no farther, without being stopped by a soldier with a bayonet in his hand. There are fine seats under the trees for people to sit upon; but there are also great cannons stuck all about, and policemen here, there, and everywhere.
I like not the grandeur and misery of this great place, and picture to myself more beauty and happiness even on the wide, wide ocean, on which I shall soon be. The next time I write I will tell you all the wonders I see there. Till then, a long, long farewell. Give my love to mother, father, brothers, sisters and nephew.
Yours,
CLARINDA PARKES.
Note.—The relatives mentioned in this letter by my mother are all her husband's relations.
A. T. P.