WCP381

[1]

Hurstpierpoint.¹

Jan[uary] 3. 1866.

My dear Wallace

I am glad to hear you have got a stereoscope² you think will suit me, and hope there may soon be a safe opportunity of sending it.

When Dr. Latham³ asked Bentham⁴ many years ago for my vocabularies,⁵ and offered to edit them, he added "I shall of course be glad to repay any expense incurred in their transmission". (This I have in one of Bentham's letters, quoted from Latham's to him). I therefore put them together — wrote a short introductory & explanatory essay — and sent the Mss. [manuscript] by the ordinary route to Latham, care of Bentham. I heard nothing more of them ^it for a long time, when Bentham told me "I had to dun⁶ Latham several times for the carriage of your Mss. (I believe it was exactly £1.0.0) and at the end of a year he called one day & paid it. The next day he was bankrupt!"

When Latham heard I had returned to England,⁷ he sought me out & offered to return the Mss. which unfortunate circumstances had prevented him from publishing.

[2] After two or three futile journeys about it, I at length succeeded in getting it back, when I went to see him with you.

Now had he not asked for this Mss. long before I knew Markham⁸, it would have been sent to the latter [1 word crossed out, illeg.], and w[oul]d have been published, and might have done me some credit.

When Dr. Latham gave up the Mss. to me I asked if he w[oul]d be likely to wish to see it again. [speech mark crossed out] He said "No — that he had already extracted the cream of it".

Now, should I pay him for having bottled up my cream for his own use — or for having prevented the publication of my vocabularies? — I wish indeed I were rich enough to make him a present of £1.14.0, but I am as poor as he is, and am unable to work.

I do not however see any objection to his having the Vocabularies, when I have done with them, which I hope will be very soon; and you can tell him this if you see him.

Pray keep this letter, to serve as a pièce justificatif [French: supporting document] of your friend's memory. [3] I never see the Reader⁹ now — is it any better than it used to be? I have the two Leaders¹⁰ still & had perhaps better return them to you by post.

What a severe fit of frost & snow! The therm.[ometer] must have been down to 20° last night.

When I was in France,¹¹ my shoeblack¹² knocked at my door early on the morning of the 1st of January, and when I opened it he saluted me with "Moss you, juvvoo sweet la bun, Annie!["] I did not understand him, but when he added "quelque chose pour boire" [French: something to drink], I saw what he wanted, & sent him on his way rejoicing. — Moi aussi — je vous souhaite la bonne année, à vous et à votre charmante épouse [French: Me too — I wish a happy New Year to you and your lovely wife].

Votre tout dévoué [French: Your very devoted] | Rich[ar]^d. Spruce. [signature]