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Document number: 8669
Date: 12 Mar 1863
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: WORSLEY Thomas
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: Acc 21736 (envelope)
Last updated: 20th November 2012

Downing Lodge
March 12 / 63

My dear Talbot/

I feel confident you will excuse &, if you can help me too though I am going to make a troublesome request. The case is this – My Wife’s<1> only brother<2> with a large family of sons & daughters & slender means has sent two of his sons to Australia. The third, Edmund Rawson by name, has the best – indeed very good abilities, has been 9 years at the Durham School attached to that University, & has won many prizes & high opinions from his Teachers. His Father has been for some time & is still in a most precarious state from repeated severe attacks of pleurisy & bronchitis, & his great anxiety about this youth now 17 is I fear aggravating the bad symptoms.

Not possessing any interest of his own he writes to ask what I can do to help him. The object of his own & of his son’s ambition is to have the name of the latter placed on the Colonial Office’s List of persons entitled to undergo its Competitive Examinations for Clerksh clerkships &c. As I thought the young man had character ability & zeal for work – which is one of his strong points – that wd do credit to such an office, and as I was once upon a time as you may remember poor Ld Kerry’s<3> Tutor at Bowood by his own and his Fathers special request, it occurred to me to ask Lord Lansdowne if he would have the goodness to mention the young man’s name with that object to the Duke of Newcastle.<4> I was sorry afterwards I had sent the letter; for tho’ there had been then no intimation of his illness, the sad news of Ld L’s death appeared in the Papers within a week of after my writing. My letter contained some enclosures which I shd be very sorry to lose – namely, Testimonials to the young man’s character & acquirements which had been entrusted by his Father to me, & – what I had a special value for as a pleasing & indeed the only memorial of my tutorial office at Bowood – the fly-leaf of a small french [sic] edition of the Pensées de Pascal which poor Kerry had given me with a feeling inscription in his own hand-writing. This I had cut out and enclosed, thinking that after a lapse of 30 years such a memento of his son’s kindly nature would not be painful to him & wd recal [sic] me rather agreeably than mournfully to his memory

This letter with its enclosures I have not since heard of; and it is quite conceivable that in the anxiety & grief of those last days it has been put by unopened, though I can hardly conceive that it has been destroyed – I am afraid your Uncle’s sudden – though –, considering the prosperous & happy activity of his long life – hardly premature death will have frustrated my main purpose: but in the secondary object of recovering these – to me – valuable enclosures – which I had requested might be sent back – you I think may very likely be able to aid me effectually – I would have mentioned this through your son who is a great favourite with us & often reminds me of you – & our happy Trinity days, but Time is an important element in the chance of recovering these papers –

I cannot help believing that poor Lord Lansdowne would gladly have done me this favour – If you think your cousin who has now succeeded him might be so disposed & if you will request him to open and read the letter & its enclosures, should they be recovered, I shall be farther and much obliged to you –

I enclose – that you may be au courant – the present prosperous state of the cause Marble v. Bronze,<5> together with my latest (printed) productions in prose & verse

Possibly you may receive in due time certain “Lectures on our studies”

Ever my dear Talbot with best regards from Mrs Worsley very truly yours
T. Worsley

[envelope:]
To
W. H. Fox Talbot Esr-
11 Great Stuart Street
Edinburgh
Paid


Notes:

1. Katherine, née Rawson, eldest daughter of Stansfield Rawson, of Wasdale Hall, Cumberland.

2. Charles Stansfield Rawson (1812-1863), 2nd (but only surviving) son of Stansfield Rawson. His1st wife was Octavia, née Colinson, and his 2nd was Eleanor Charlotte, née Berkeley. His known children are Charles Colinson Rawson (b. 1840), Lancelot Bernard Rawson (1844-1899), Octavia (d. 1850) and apparently at least three others.

3. William Thomas Petty-FitzMaurice, Earl of Kerry (1811-1836). son of Lord Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780- 31 Jan 1863), MP & noted statesman; WHFT's uncle.

4. Henry Pelham-Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle (1811-1864).

5. Worsley, A Few Remarks on the most fitting Material and Site for the Memorial Statue to our Late Chancellor [Albert, Prince Consort]. By a member of the Cambridge Committee (Cambridge, Printed by C.J. Clay, 1862). The statue made was 1866 by H. C. Foley of white marble statue, one and a half times life size and standing on a grey marble plinth. Originally placed as the centrepiece of the entrance hallway of the Fitzwilliam Museum, it fell victim to pressures of space and was moved outdoors in 1956.

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