“I am going to keep pigeons, would they were carrier pigeons! then would I trouble them under their wings with missives of congratulation to arrive more swiftly than the railroad.”

Playfully imagining carrier pigeons speeding his congratulations · Letter on Alfred Tennyson’s marriage, 1850

• Friendship
• Joy
• Love

“Again, at the Carnival in Rome, a man was stilettoed in his arms, drawing first suspicion and then violence on his person: the excess of which he prevented by exclaiming that he was an Englishman and had not done the deed.”

Relating another dramatic danger survived by his travelling father · Letter to John Frere, 27 July 1830

• Death
• Memory

“However, there is an ellipsis in one line which puzzled me till the second reading.”

Showing his careful attention to clarity even while encouraging a younger poet · Letter to Hardwicke Rawnsley, 1872

• Art
• Poetry