Pièce 7 - Letter from Adam Sedgewick to Mary Buckland

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