sitting down at a table in the act of writing to a dear sister, with a dear husband sitting with his book before him, like a good boy close to your side, one, I should specify, who makes you love him more and more every day, by his kindness and affection."
A letter of my aunt, Juliana Bond, dated Bratton, May 23, 1836, describes the life there:
'Edward is very kind and attentive. He certainly improves most wonderfully on acquaintance. To appreciate his good qualities, he should be known well, and it is not one of the least pleasing traits of his character to see how fond he is of Sophy, and of his domestic life.
"Many gentlemen find a retired life like this very wearisome, and particularly those of small fortune. But he seems to go on very comfortably without 'Society,' or that great resource of amusement to others in the same situation—shooting and hunting. Lately he has been employing himself in surveying some of Mr. Baring-Gould's property; otherwise he amuses himself with reading and gardening. No, I cannot say amuses himself with reading, for the books he is at present studying are of rather too deep or, as it is called, dry, a nature to afford entertainment. I wish you could see him in the agonies of mastering a passage of De la Bèche, or Whewell's Treatise on Nature, or solving a problem of Euclid—or, rubbing his head with his fingers and pressing a hand against his temples. See him engaged and absorbed in an abstruse calculation in Hutton's Mathematics and it is quite curious to watch the contortions his face undergoes when peculiarly puzzled and perplexed. Every evening after tea we sit down at the table, Sophy with her work, trying to understand and acquire a taste of Whewell's Treatise; but I content myself with a book adapted to more moderate capacities. The dear little babe has just been walking on the table where I write. He improves every day, visibly; and though he had the thrush a day or two ago, is now quite well, and better for his two spoonfuls of castor-oil which Sophy administered to him with a little brown sugar. You would have been greatly amused had you seen him licking his lips after the delightful potion, quite like an epicure."
