Read it through once

It was to the culture of geraniums, however, that she principally devoted herself, “and,” said she, “it is lucky that I do, since they are comparatively easy to rear and manage, and do not lay one under any tremendous obligation to receive, for I never buy any.” She was writing to her friend, Miss Emily Jephson, in Ireland, with whom she was in fairly regular correspondence, although Miss Jephson had to share with Sir William Elford the long periods of silence which betokened their mutual friend’s slavery with the pen at the little cottage. Referring to these beloved geraniums, Miss Mitford wrote:—“All my varieties (amounting to at least three hundred different sorts) have been either presents, or exchanges, or my own seedlings—chiefly exchanges; for when once one has a good collection, that becomes an easy mode of enlarging it; and it is one pleasant to all parties, for it is a very great pleasure to have a flower in a friend’s garden. You, my own Emily, gave me my first plants of the potentilla, and very often as I look at them, I think of you.” One especially fine seedling geranium she named the “Ion,” a floral tribute to Serjeant Talfourd’s play, upon which he was then working.