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122 TRELAWNY'S LETTERS
There are two big gaps in the correspondence
one from 1838 to 1857, tne other
with Claire :
from 1857 to 1869. At the age of seventyseven
we find still :
Trelawny unchanged
"
All my early convictions and feelings harden
with my bones age has not tamed or altered
me." He had lived through the wildest
adventures : in a cave on Mount Parnassus
he had been shot through the body and had
pardoned one of his assailants he had swum
;
the rapids below Niagara ; he had played the
pirate in the South Seas and flirted with Mrs.
Norton in Downing Street and ; now, a
veteran and something of a lion, he astonished
London parties with his gasconade and the
Sussex fisher-folk with his bathing exploits.
We can believe that his conversation was
"
brilliant," but " most censorious " his
;
letters to Claire give some idea of it :
" Women
have taken to gin men have always done so,
now it's women's turn " ;
is as gross
and fat as and from the same cause
gluttony and sotting it's all the fashion."
And here we would interpose a query
Was it really necessary to suppress the names ?
This elaborate and unscholarly tenderness for
the feelings of the friends and relations of the
dead, and for those of their descendants even,
is becoming, in our judgment, a nuisance.
Had people been so fussy and timid always
"