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BL Add. MS 28268, ff. 17–18
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
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I have constantly seen your letters to Nat, and have always been anxious
to hear of your wellfare, whenever you have appeared full of hopes and domestic
peace I have read your letters with pleasure, when you have been under the
pressure of ill health or bad prospects, the natural though painful conclusion
is, I cant help you; you I believe often think over those things, you know the
difficulty of keeping afloat in the dirty stream of the world, and I think you
know too the hearts of us all, that the power, and not the will, is wanted. — It
is sixteen years last June since I washed my old hat in the Horse-pond and sold
my smock for a shilling to Sam Shelver’s boy, and set off to London to turn
shoemaker, and I always remark that though I am aquainted with the principle
alterations and deaths and changes, children grown to Men and Women since
&c, the first thought that is, I mean whenever not thinking of other
things my mind returns to the country, for the first moment, it always presents
the old picture. I see my
uncle master of the farm instead of my cousin, and can see in
imagination my old neighbours and things just as they were; fixing the memory
thus, brings in a strong point of view the quick successions and changes amongst
us; for if I had 16 years ago fixt my attention on a flourishing oak, or a whole
grove of oaks, the alteration might be disernable, but not striking. Ridlesworth hallNat tells me is not far beyond
Fakenham wood, I sometimes allmost
envy Kitty her situation, being
always shut up in a garrot I am debard from the pleasures for which I have so
strong a relish, but let me not grumble neither, for I have other pleasures,
perhaps quite my share; for at this very time I have pleasure in telling you
that my wife is now fast
recovering from a short indisposition that alarmd me a good deal at first, by
the simtoms her disorder showd we could not but suppose that the [illegible
word] pain she felt must proceed from the Gravel, but on applying to a surgeon
it did not appear to be that and he was obliged to use instrumental as well as
phisical help, whereby she is now almost well, and we shall again meet the
winter cheerfully. Our chief visitor is my Wifes Father; he generally comes from Woolwich once or twice in a summer, and
again at Christmas. He is always doubly welcome, for as well as being a
chearful, smiling man he is sure to more than pay for his entertainment by some
means or other, he works at boatbuilding in the king’s yard at Woolwich, he is 64 years old, is quite
harty, and when useless to work he is sure of being put on the superannuated
list, and receive 20£ a year as long as he lives, but this will not keep him and
he don’t much like the prospect good as it is, for he is fixd upon independence,
he comes regularly the first Sunday in every month to his sisters at Rotherhithe, I believe I have spoke
of those people before, they are well able to keep him, but he would rather
trust to himself, — My Hannah
goes to school, and I think shows signs of a good memory, the mistress teach
them to repeat by heart, hymns, and moral verses, I like the method vastly; and
like to hear them spoken by such young tongues, Hannah have learnd the morning
hymn ‘Awake my soul and with the Sun’,
Give our respects and remembrance to my Father, tell Isaac I have not happened to have a musical shopmate for some years past, I have therefore made no progress that way, my love to his wife and little ones; and I remain your affectionate and dutiful Son
Nat and family are all well