Affichage de 17 résultats

To Revd. Dr Buckland
Christ Church
Oxford

For[warde]d by Mr Audubon

My dear [Prof?]

The bearer of this note, Mr Audubon, is a very extraordinary person who has spent almost one half of his life in the forests of America - he is I dare say already known to you by reputation and if you can in any way recommend him to your Librarians so as to promote the publication of his great work on ornithology you will render a service to the scientific world as well as to an excellent individual. He came here from Edinburgh and had excellent introductions and I should rejoice to hear he was well [started?] at Oxford. He has lived so much out of the society of intellectual [?] that he does not say much in company, but his account of the Forest Life is highly interesting - when am I to have the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs Buckland here? Mr. and Mrs Murchison proposed to come but they have given me the slip and are off to Paris. I have not been in Town since our anniversary dinner. Have you any news from [?] by the way you will be happy to hear that Babbage is elevated to Newton's chair.

Yours most truly
A Segdwick

Trin. Coll
March 14

Tri Coll
May 4 1839

My dear Mrs Buckland

I am truly sorry that I can not promise myself the delight of a visit to Oxford at the time you mention. Peacock tells me it will be impossible for him to come but he sends his best thanks. When we went out yesterday after lectures and I suspect will not return before Sunday night or Monday morning so he must answer for himself. [Daubny?] has offered him a bed at Magdalen Coll. If I cannot come in season, perhaps I may come out of season Dr Buckland is to be in London next Wednesday and so am I. Now I think it would be a nice round about for me to return to Cambridge by the way of Oxford halting there one or two days. And why not a water party? Oh! but I beg your pardon you are not now in travelling condition. But could we not ship [your sofa] in a long boat and then float you down the stream of Old Father Thames? Cheerful faces and cheerful talk would do your heart good, and the shifting scene would fill your soul with thoughts that might influence the future fortunes of your next boy and make him a navigator as great as Cook or Columbus. But I will not anticipate pleasures that may not come. Give my kindest remembrances to Mrs [?] and Mary and my love to all your children. In my present condition and temper I ought not to talk of a visit, but a visitation. Since my return from Norwich I have been tormented by schimatic gout, A name that implies a legion of [?]. I am dyspeptic and hypochondriac, crusty and crabbed, mopish and mulish. My stomach is a manufactory of vinegar and I have no bowels of compassion. My nights are without sleep, my days a kind of sustained torpor that leaves me alive to nothing but what is evil and as for my hair, I verily believe it has and [?] fermentation, so some are its impressions from without and its notions from within. Should I come down next week you ought to slam your door in the face of such a miserable mountain of maladies. But perhaps you will let me in and find some charm to drive away the blue [legion?] that has taken such forcible possession of my [quarters] [?] so that I may be my self again. And after all there have been worse men that the old Adam and it is a shame to make a [?] [?] as you have done seeing that his [?] fault was a compliance with one who was naughtier than himself.
Believe me dear Mrs Buckland

Very truly yours

A Sedgewick

P.S. In spite of the gout I rode twenty miles yesterday and to-day I walked five miles before breakfast and had you seen the rate at which I rode yesterday and strode today you wd have said that I was leading the blue gentleman a dance. But I cannot part company, they follow me like dogs after a trail.

Revd. Dr. Buckland
Christchurch
Oxford

My dear Buckland

I yesterday sent a little present to my God Son I hope it has come safe. I intended that you would have been the Carrier but it was not procured in time. I saw Hudson Gurney. he gives an excellent acct. of the lad [?] he ordered. Lonsdale is willing to take him on trial for the long vacation (three months) and then to give up the [Museum?] [?]. If all turns out well, he may then become a permanent officer I think this plan excellent. Lonsdale will work him well and I will soon phophesy again if the lad do not fully answer to their [?] and turn out an admirable workman. I have just written to Hudson Gurney for his preliminary consent. The boy is at his disposal and so is now in a great manner supported by him if I am not much mistaken, should no difficulties therefore arise we can at the next council discuss the matter. You can if you see good prefer an employment of the boy doing the [?] under Lonsdale will [?] it his permanent appointment as C [etc. etc.?]

My remembrances to Mrs B. and my love to your children

Yours always

A. Sedgewick

My Dear Buckland

I am very much out of sorts; and I have a large party of strangers on my hands who after seeing the lions are to dine with me. But I have just time to say that I shall be happy to subscribe to the work you mention and that I will show your elegant Epistle among my friends. I hope you had my note of yesterday about [Ansted?]
My best regards to Mrs Buckland and my love to all the young ones

Yours ever

A Sedgewick
Cambridge
March 3rd 1840

London
Thursday Morng

My dear Buckland

I am passing thro Town on my way to Cambridge and have just stumbled on a park. If my Servant passed thro' Oxford and remembered to call for my Hat good - But if not pray send the said Hat to the office of the Cambridge [?] in order that it may be conveyed with the least delay to my head quarters in Trin. Coll. An old white Beaver is the present covering of my unacademical nob. and it will cut a sorry figure with a gown My coat is out of elbows and my [?] (made by the way by the fair hands of Mrs. B) is without any lining so I have need to call in all my reserves. My love to Eva and the rest of your squadron, my best regards to Madame

Yours ever

A Sedgewick

Postmark
16 May 1831
Cambridge

Dear Mrs Buckland

I am this moment going out on a two days excursion from Cambridge and as one term is drawing to a close I am desirous of again assuring you how much we shall be delighted to see you in Cambridge - I have written to Mrs Murchison whom I fully expect to meet you. Pray has Dr. Buckland had any communication with [Langham?] on this subject as he promised in his last? I would write to [Langham?] this eve but I don't know where to address him as I am told he is [away] from home. Excuse this scrawl. I am writing in a dreadful hurry while a friend waits at our gates in a gig. If I delay longer I shall make him break our [commitments/commandments?]

[Most truly yours]

A. Sedgewick

Saturday morn.

Postmark Cambridge
Nov 24 1833
Sunday Evening

Revd Dr Buckland
Christ Church
Oxford

Dear Buckland

I have just time before the Post shuts to tell you that a Professorship of Ecology at Dublin is vacant and that Phillips of York is in the field. Can you contrive to write to any of your Dublin friends to give him a [shove?] It will be an admirable thing to get so good an English ecologist at Dublin. It is impossible to find in the British Isles another candidate who is half so good. How are you all at Oxford - Madam, Frank, my daughter Eve etc etc

Yours always

A Sedgewick

Trinity College

Feb 28th 1838

My dear Mrs Buckland
Could you see the pile of letters I have still before me I think you would pity me and had you seen the struggles I have been making to clear off my epistolary debts, I think you would have given me an encouraging laugh, and as for your drops of pity - they would have been shed for the unfortunate correspondents who were doomed to read my handwriting. Now it is not very long since I have seen you and you have sent me a kind note in such a light hand quite unlike the pretty [pothooks?] most ladies now write and which we mortal men can read as the u's, m's and n's and i's [?] are all just alike so that the characters have no character at all that I am bound to write my best. In short I wish to tell you that I shall rejoice to be a sponsor for your little by. And that the temptation of a visit to Oxford is so very great that no ordinary engagement will prevent me from accepting it. It will be a great pride to me to have a little Sedgewick among your bairns that after all is it not a sad business to do things of this kind by Deputy, and would it not be far betters for me to have some little Sedgewicks of my own and so I will by the beard of old [Time?] Nay that's a foolish oath, as old Time has nothing to do with such matters. Let me therefore rather swear by the torch of Hymen and the wings of love that I will have my [?] encircled by olive branches that you shall be Godmother to the Sedgewick that is to be and that your 'guide man' shall stand for my young master so there's a bargain and say done. During the last three months I have had [?] [service/services?] dined almost to death-frozen almost to death-Cathedral service twice a day and each [?] [?] a Cathedral sermon and another at the Country Hospital - not to mention a short course of geological lectures for the benefit of the intellectual digestion of a [?] eating generation of East Anglian Aldermen and Alderwomen. No matter I have stood it all to admiration and have turned out plump as [?] theology ought to be. By the way I thought Dr. Buckland was looking rather thin but he said he was quite well and I don't know that a man is any better for the dilatations of certain large flat muscles that cover the region where pity and compassion are said to dwell. But after all a convex superficus is better than an angular one - to that I hope the doctor will soon come. After our anniversary I went down to Greenwich and spent the day with my dear friend Mrs [Aire/Airs?]. Home I had not seen since last Spring, twelve months since that time she has added a fine boy to the family [quiver?]. And if there be any trusting to outward signs she may before long [?] another [?] domestic arithmetic. But what can a Senior Fellow know of such signs? I can say I am only blundering. Time has made a sad change to Mrs. A since I saw her. She has lost a front tooth and looks very thing and ten years older than she did. Do you remember when she made any lady [?] I think it was in Exeter College when she glided to the piano cast up her beautiful and dark eyes, pushed back her raven locks from her cheek and struck up Hebe's Hymen. She was and ever will be once of the kindest and most charming natural characters ever adorned the face of woman, their moral beauties can only fade in the life itself but her personal attractions have already in a considerable measure disappeared. By the way I remember writing you a strange rigmarole about Mrs [Aire/Airs]. In a former letter. I don't know how many years since I saw Mary Conybeare while in town and went with her to Chantrey's studio. Is she not a very charming young person? She looks stronger than she was but I fear she is only delicate.

Best Regards to my Brother and
Best love to all your little geologists
Most truly yours
A. Sedgewick

P.S. I am turning back (before I seal this sheet up) to dot and i's and cross the t's. I could not help thinking that I had made a foolish [swagger?] about my bad writing considering the abominable [?] I have been sending you. Since I broke my arm my forefinger is quite stiff and my right ulnan nerve is often partially paralysed so that my hand gets worse and worse and still I often write with considerable pain