Pièce 8 - Letter from Adam Sedgewick to Mary Buckland

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.