Sunday evening. Jany 15th<1>
My dear Father,
I have not stopped the Photographic paper but it has stopped itself owing to my subscription having expired. The wind has been getting up again a little today. I went to Church at Westminster Abbey and heard a Sermon on St Patrick and his Celtic Saints which was to prove that Ireland would have turned out very well if it had in old times has dioceses and parishes and that it owes its Roman Catholicity to the English. I think the object of the sermon was to shew that we ought not to abolish the Irish Church as the preacher makes out that it is much the same thing as the primitive Church of Ireland. They are building a pretty satisfactory Gothic fountain in what appears to be a private garden close to St Margarets Church Westminster. It was too dark when I returned to see much of the foreign office <2> which seems to be getting on pretty fast. It is much too hot now for the time of year. A young Lady Miss Philpotts [sic] a grandaughter of the Bishop of Exeter <3> who had been at the hall which I went to at Torquay died in a most melancholy manner the other day after she had been singing at a party at Torquay as you may perhaps have seen in the paper. I have not heard what was the matter with her. Mallock<4> knows them very well. Our streets have now become passable.
Your affect son
Charles.
Notes:
1. Late on a Sunday, Charles must have been thinking ahead a day, for 15 January was Monday.
2. The Foreign Office building Whitehall, designed by George Gilbert Scott, was completed in 1875.
3. Sometime immediately before 6 January 1866, Miss Phillpotts, the 2nd daughter of Capt. H. Phillpotts and granddaughter of Henry Phillpotts (1778–1869), politician & bishop of Exeter, suddenly fell ill whilst singing at a party for the gentry, hosted by Rev Julian Young at his home of Fairlight, Devon. Although assisted by her distraught friends, she died almost immediately.
4. Charles could have been friends with either of two sons of Charles Herbert Mallock (1802-1873) of Cockington Court, Torquay, whilst at Harrow. Charles Herbert Mallock (1840-1875), later a barrister, entered in 1854. Richard Mallock (1843-1900), later an MP, entered in 1858. Both left Harrow in 1859, the year of Charles Henry's departure.