London
7th Feb. 1833
Dear Mr F.
I have taken out of the library Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 9 vols. <1> the property of Caroline. <2> Also 2 books which I think are mine (tho’ they have your name pasted in them) viz. Smith’s Introduction to Botany <3> (which I have been wanting to find for a long time) and Blunt’s Veracity of the Gospels. <4> But if you think they are yours you can let me know. I then locked up the bookcases & cupboard & put the key into my writing case.
I addressed a letter to the Clergyman of Uley <5> a week ago, requesting some account of the Workhouse system introduced there, which has elicited a long and satisfactory reply, not from him, but from a Mr Baker of Hardwicke Court <6> near Gloucester.
One of the doors of your bookcase in the library will open without a key, for the lock does not hold. The others hold fast.
Yours affly
Henry
Turn Over
I do hope they mean to divide tonight. Not that the debate is tiresome, the Irish Members have such fun in them, nor is it fatiguing, as they adjourn at 12, but it is time to come to a decision – for I am sure enough has been said of Ireland <7> for the present, & there will be plenty of occasions to discuss the subject hereafter.
Notes:
1. William Curtis, The botanical magazine (London: 1787–1800).
2. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
3. Sir James Edward Smith, Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany (London: Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orme, and White, 1807).
4. John James Blunt, The Veracity of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles (John Murray: London, 1828)
5. Parish and village in the Cotswolds, county of Gloucestershire.
6. Thomas John Lloyd Baker (1777–1841), High Sheriff.
7. See Doc. No: 02583.