Lacock
Sunday March 1
My Dear Constance
Your letter was the first intimation I received of the Verdict. I expected there would have been a sentence of 20 years penal servitude. The public had grown so accustomed to find five or six columns of the Trial more or less amusing in the newspapers every day, that they will now feel the want of it! I suppose Mr Whalley <1> will not desert his friend, his opinion is probably unchangeable. He has now no opportunity of succouring the Claimants wife and family, and indeed of sustaining them altogether.
What Pickering <2> says is not true. The book is not second hand but new. None of the pages were cut open. He never gave me the slightest intimation that the price was to be without discount. I wish you to look again at his memorandum, which I returned to you, and you will find it stated with regard to both books, that if paid within 5 days discount will be allowed.
I enclose you the only note I received from Pickering on the subject, premising that the numbers are those of Williams & Norgate’s Catalogue (in London) only published the other day. I ordered
No 120 priced 12/
No 121 … 12/
Pickering replied that these books had risen to 1ּּ2ּּ6 and –14 –
I declined the first, but accepted the second.
Thank Rosamond <3> for sending me the Bath Express – You see it concurs in the Verdict. I wonder whether any of the newspapers dissent from it. Perhaps Mr Whalleys paper the Peterborough Herald does so.
Chabas’s <4> book is very important and interesting – It is an account and translation of a fine Egyptian manuscript recently purchased by the British Museum, called the Harris Papyrus, written soon after the time of the Exodus of the Israelites and containing, according to Monsr Chabas several allusions to it – As he is one of the principal living Egyptian scholars, and takes immense pains with all he writes, the book will doubtless be studied with attention
Yours afftly
Henry
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 02991.
2. William Pickering (1796–1854), publisher and bookseller.
3. Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2nd daughter.
4. François Joseph Chabas (1817–1882), French Egyptologist who wrote Le papyrus magique Harris.