Secretary of State and Home Department
Wednesday
August 6 [187-]
Your Royal Highness
I shall have the greatest pleasure in meeting you at my Museum tomorrow Thursday at a time appointed
Yours obliged
Frank Buckland
Sin títuloSecretary of State and Home Department
Wednesday
August 6 [187-]
Your Royal Highness
I shall have the greatest pleasure in meeting you at my Museum tomorrow Thursday at a time appointed
Yours obliged
Frank Buckland
Sin títuloMr Serle will present
himself tomorrow
about 12-0
37 Albany St
Regents Park
London
n.d. [187-]
Your Royal Highness
Tomorrow Tuesday I propose to send down for your inspection a most beautiful screen representing Spring and Summer flowers painted from nature by my good sister Mrs Gordon. If you would be so very kind as to submit the screen to H.R.H. The Princess I should feel it is a great compliment to the family still more so should any opportunity occur to show it to Her Majesty The Queen. Mr Serle (my Secretary) will also submit to Your Royal Highness a cast of your Monster Pike. Another cast painted by Mr Rolfe will be shortly send for your acceptance.
Yours
most obedient
Frank Buckland
Sin títuloLondon
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
Can you make a party to suggest a motion?
Trinity Coll.
Sunday
May 2
Postmarked J June 1835
My dear Buckland
Next Thursday will suit me very well, and I shall be happy to meet you and Lyell at the ordnance office at any hour that may be finally fixed on. On Wednesday I hope to have a paper on the Whitehaven Coalfield with some general remarks on the relations of the [Parton-Linston?] belt wh. runs to Egremont [?] foot of Staverson. The paper cannot be finished in the [?] but we can give the general ]?] and can have a page of details for the meeting of the October [?]. I shall rejoice to see Mrs Buckland and your children. I think it is about two years since I have shaken her by the hand. The Yorkshire [election?], a law suit and a bad cold has plagued me almost to death. The cold is [?] now that the wind blows from a quarter within two points of South. I heard from Langham a day or two since. William is doing very well [?] as and if God spare his health will work his way [?] to a Fellowship at Trin. Coll. Prey excuse this scrap of paper. It is the best I have.
Yours ever
A. Sedgewick
My dear Mrs Buckland
I am very desirous of knowing that our Cambridge philosophy has done you no more harm than my [potion] of the same kind which your Oxford [people?] prepared so well last year and which you took with such infinite grace and alacrity. After your good [?] in coming to see us to see how we succeeded in or [?] I should be very sorry indeed to think that the fumes of our scientific cookery had left any disagreeable impression upon you, either in this effect upon your health or your good opinion of the various cooks who were [concerned?] in the broth that was set before you. If you are quite well I do now know that we have anything to report for people in general seem very well pleased. Sedgwick had intended to go to Leamington as soon as the [?] was over but he is detained from correcting the proofs of his own speech which I have tried to impress upon him in a very reasonable manner for having talked so much as he did. In a few weeks I think it likely that he and I may go and air ourselves upon the [?] patch of Charnwood [?] [?] in our hands. Perhaps Aire may accompany us on his way to Mrs. A's family in Derbyshire in which case I think it is very [?] if we do now strike awe and admiration into the minds of the Leicestershire [?]. We shall not be quite satisfied till we know that you are quite well, so I hope that you will let us have that satisfaction soon. I suppose my [?] Bridgewater has begun to make his calls upon you again. I shall be very glad when he has called so that you and Dr. Buckland come in view
Ever Very Truly Yours
W. Roberts?
Trin Coll
[July 11?] 1850
Mrs Buckland
Oxford
The Athenaeum
Nov ? [18]72
My dear Mrs Buckland
I am off by coach in a few minutes, but before I start I will try to [leave] this at the Sloppian Coffee House where your [gude man?] is disporting himself. Be it known to you by those present that my dog's wife - [Zelept?] Mustard, was safely delivered of a son about three months since - that said son was christened Pepper and is growing fast in all canine accomplishments. Bu the beast and his mother are both at Norwich, and as there is no coach from Cambridge to Norwich direct, I have not ventured to send either the mother or son, or to trust them to tender mercies of guard and coach driver. This is the cause of the delay. But if my friend Frank is become heartsick for want of Pepper I will do my best to have him sent to Oxford. The best way will be to send him to London sometime when Dr. Buckland is there. I shall be in Norwich [?] at my sister's residence on Dec 1st. Ant time after that day I can do the [?]. So much for canine matters - Last night we had a long discussion on canine teeth in which I was a listener. Indeed I was partly compelled to hold my jaw by a bad cold which has so damaged the vox humana and top of my organs, that at present they emit no sounds but such as are utterly beastly and inarticulate. The Doctor fought [lustily] but had I spoken I would have had a tilt at him for one sentence. He said there was evidence enough without more, and that he would not bring up his reserves to fight on the side which was already victorious. Those were not his words but they express his meaning. Now this will not do while there is doubt will as one [?], had you seen Dr. Grant opining doubts and difficulties you would have smiled and perhaps have thought that all the candles must be [lighted] before the mists clear. Be this as it may I do hope Dr Buckland will bring every chief block and payment which can give light to these dark [jaws?]. The anatomical evidence seems to preponderate greatly on one side, and yet I wish that side to lose for I have no idea that a warm blooded animal should dispose himself by restling away the [?] monsters of Horsfield.
My kindest love to all your little ones
Ever Vy ty yours
A Sedgewick
Two photographs of giraffes and impalas at Belle Vue from 1970 & 1971
Sin título