Letter from Arthur Hallam, Rose Hill, Tunbridge Wells, to William Henry Brookfield, 1832 February 6 : autograph manuscript signed.

Expressing his doubts about the future and marriage; beginning the letter with a humorous 30-line poem of rhyming couplets complaining of Tunbridge Wells; starting with "I'm sure you will compassionate / The sad condition I've been in of late, / Damned to a series of most awful dinners / with coteries of ancient Tunbridge sinners" and ending "Woe to my skull! for Essay nor Oration / are worth a straw for Tunbridge reputation. / It really is a most unpleasant station!;" continuing "In plain prose, Brooks, I am affected towards the place pretty much in Touchstone's fashion. In respect that it is secluded, I like it; in regard that it is dull, I am bored by it. That there are few people here is well; that those who are nuisances is by no means well. I have plenty of leisure and inclination for reading, which is a comfort, but then I have a terrible aptitude to indigestion, which is much otherwise. Altogether, I shall be well pleased to go away; the more so as I am getting very nervous about Somersby, and shall not be easy till I find myself there. I am oppressed with the weight of the future - sometimes I feel as it would be gain to lie down & die. 'Don't be a fool,' you will say : 'much better get up and be married.' Why so I think too, on the whole. Not a syllable have I spoken yet about my intentions to Pa or Ma; but in a day or two that debate must come on. May it produce no division!;" asking for his help in Cambridge to have copies sent of his Oration and two copies of Essay to two people whose addresses he provides; adding "Secondly, will you desire Merivale to be so good as to write in my behalf to his brother, asking him for his vote & influence at the O & C Club, where I am about to be proposed, & am afraid of rejection, which fate I understood, has happened to [illegible], owing to remissness of friends. Write soon; I trust your spirits are in good order yet it may hardly be. Purl to me a little however, whether blithe or mournful to be the sound. I can't help feeling that Frederic has bagged one of my razors. Do you know anything of it? Commend me to all knights of my square table; much to Garden and Monteith, if they are returned. Fare thee well."