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Document number: 986
Date: 27 Jun 1822
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: THORP Thomas
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA22-30
Last updated: 18th January 2011

Dear Talbot.

Tho’ you run away so unceremoniously, you see I am resolved to persecute you with service, which I would not do were it [illegible deletion] not of such a nature as you may avail yourself of, or let it alone at pleasure. You will find the Canonico Jorio<1> every day almost before xii or i o’clock somewhere in the Royal Museum, or the Studj as it is more generally called.–<2>

If you can conveniently for bring or send home by a friend for me a little book called “Memoria di un antico Sepolcreto Greco Romano, da Lorenzo Giustiniani,” <3> to be had at Naples, and I shall be much obliged to you: tho’ I do not care so much about it as that you should put yourself to inconvenience abt it. If you do however, you may as well mention it to any one to whom you shall be writing about that time, but I should ask another person to do it for me. – If you fall in during your travels with a young Greek of Cefallonia, Metaxà by name,<4> embrace him for me, & for yourself. – I wish you most sincerely a pleasant journey & a safe return, which none will be more glad to see than, dear Talbot,

Yours faithfully
Thomas Thorp.

Trin. Coll. <5>
27 June. 1822.

I send you & the Canon only half a sheet each, as both have to go under cover to a friend in London, whom I shall ask to direct this by help of the Red book,<6> having forgotten your street, & I must not exceed the M.P. weight.<7> – If you see Digby,<8> tell him I had written to persuade him to come & be made M.A. next Saturday and Tuesday, but the letter was not worth sending.

I believe you can tell me of a Society in London composed of persons who have travelled abroad.<9> I should be much obliged to you to tell me the nature & object of it, as I have long desired to be a Candidate, tho’ not fully aware of its character. I understand it is very difficult to be admitted; which as it diminishes the disgrace of a repulse, increases my ambition to undergo the ordeal. If you can and will aid me in this ambitious design, besides giving me the information I requested above, you will oblige me very considerably indeed. I put myself in your hands, even to make a member of me, if you have the power & no disinclination. –


Notes:

1. Andrea de Jorio (1769-1851), Canon of Naples Cathedral, archaeologist, ethnographer, curator and writer. Famed for his writing about the antiquities of the Naples region and about gesture and mime. This is the identity of the Canon later in the letter.

2. The Palazzo dei Regi Studj was the Royal Museum of Antiquities at Naples. The immense 16th c. structure was originally a cavalry barracks, then converted to a Jesuit academy, and in the 17th gradually emerged as the repository for the antiquities of the region.

3. Lorenzo Giustiniani (1761–1824) Memoria sullo scovrimento di un antico sepolcreto greco-romano (Napoli: Nella Stamperia reale, 1815).

4. Presumably a son of Count Spiridione Metaxa Anzolato (1766 - 12 November 1843) of Cefalonia or Kefalonia, one of the originators of the Greek War of Independence. Byron also referred to a Count Metaxa in his observations on the movement.

5. Trinity College, Cambridge.

6. Webster's Royal Red Book: or Court and Fashionable Register, (under various titles) a directory that started publication in 1789, long before the Post Office Directory.

7. The main propre charge, i.e., to deliver the letter without additional cost to the recipient.

8. Kenelm Digby (1796-1880), of Trinity College, writer.

9. The Traveller's Club was established in London in 1819 and moved to its present Pall Mall quarters in 1832. Its members (appropriately) had all travelled abroad, and brought in foreign visitors and diplomats.

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