My dear Henry
I cannot refrain from writing because I am very sure our thoughts are both fixed on the same place & people – viz the Mt E. party at Palermo <1> –.It is impossible not to feel anxious so I must beg you to give me the very earliest intelligence you may receive from any of them – as I think they will one of them write to you as soon as they can. Their prognostications have unfortunately proved but too correct as in consequence of what we heard and saw in Sicily we thought an Insurrection would be a serious affair & warned C. about it. – Do not fail to let me hear as soon as you can, & please to direct to Moreton where we are going the beginning of the week – I am impatient to be with my father as he has not been quite well having hurt his foot wch has laid him up for the last ten days – .
We are delighted at your glorious refutation of the calumnious article in the Quarterly<2> – wch is about the most ungentlemanlike & absurd tirade I ever read; & I have also sent a Literary Gazette to Moreton, tho’ for those who can read the whole book such a contradiction is the less necessary. – .
I have written twice to Caroline lately, neither of which letters will she ever receive of course but she will hear of Stavordale’s<3> improvement from others now no doubt. –
I hope you are all as well as can be expected in this awfully cold weather. We are all perished so near the North Pole but N. keeps wonderfully well for wch I am most thankful but not a little astonished.
Yr Affte Cousin & Sister
HG Mundy
Markeaton Jany 28.
We have such an exquisite Orchis in flower of which we brought the Root from Palermo – It grew wild on the very mountains from whence the Insurgents are now in the act of descending! Only think of the D. di Serradifalco<4> joining the patriots! –
Notes:
1. Lady Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding (1808-1881), WHFT's half-sister, and her husband, Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797-1861). Revolution broke out in Palermo on 12 January 1848, the Sicilians rising against the forces of Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies.
2. John Wilson Croker (d. 1857), politician and journalist, wrote an extremely negative review of WHFT's English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847), in the The Quarterly Review, v. 81, September 1847, pp. 500–525. WHFT's rebuttal, referred to here, was Doc. No: 06078, which he was encouraged to write by William Jerdan, the Editor - see Doc. No: 02258. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Irish-born, was a Tory MP from1807 to 1832 and Secretary of the Admiralty from 1810 to 1830. As an author, he was noted for his virulent reviews in The Quarterly Review as much as for his 1831 edition of Boswell's Live of Johnson.
3. Henry Thomas Leopold Fox Strangways, Lord Stavordale (1816–1837), elder son of Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787–1858).
4. Duke Domenico Lo Faso Pietrasanta di Serradifalco (1773-1863), historian, archaeologist, key figure in the 1848 revolution in Sicily.