This weeks find is a re-find. I’ve been tidying through lots of stuff this week and came across a sheet on which I had scrawled a note to myself with the words “important, remember this’ on the top. Needless to say reader that in the subsequent years I had completely forgotten what it was about. The note in question was amidst a bunch of paperwork from my sixth form days, that has been sitting in a box in a cupboard- not quite a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard but not far off, anyway I digress. This sheet of paper upon which I had written had two names and a date. A quick Google reminded me that on 16th February, 1820 Rev. Sydney Smith wrote a Letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth filled with prescriptions for low spirits. The letter is wonderful, a much needed reminder this week and I’m glad all over again at reading it. I'm thus choosing to share it with you reader in the hopes the possible remedies contained help keep the grey clouds from your door. Here then, is the letter:
Dear Lady Georgiana,
Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done — so I feel for you.
1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life — not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely — they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life — a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,
Very truly yours,
Sydney Smith
