Letters, References and Notes (1846-1847) 
Relating to Anne Marsh (Marsh Caldwell)

The following is a listing of letters, references and general notes, from 1846, relating to Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) and her family, in particular her husband Arthur Marsh and their son Martin Marsh.  For notes relating to other years please go to Letters, References and Notes (1780-1874).

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh, 2 February 1846.   This letter and most of those for the rest of 1846 are written on paper with a black edging presumably as a mark of respect to Anne' father-in-law William Marsh, who had died 1 January.  The letter reads as follows:

Monday Feb 2nd 1846
My dearest  Martin
Now begins my answer to your delightful Journal letters.  It certainly is the most beautiful of inventions though I miss your darling voice and merry jokes.  I seem to know full as much of your mind and to give you as much or more of mine at Oxford as at Eastbury.  Now first about this £10 note.  Your father cannot help thinking that you must have dropped it or lost it.  His accounts tally with the supposition that he gave you £50, so pray endeavour to recollect where you first took out your money and the adventures of your money afterwards.  I do not know whether you have even a purse to keep it in or whether you huddle it into your pocket anyhow, prepare for a little scold.  No one can be more careful or acconomical [economical] than you are in spending your money, but I suspect you are careless in the keeping of it.  This is not very wise, and perhaps not quite right as it exposes those about you to temptation.  I believe you once lost a £5 note out of our drawer here, a thing that gives me considerable uneasiness.  I should like to know who was housemaid at that time.  Let this be amended dear son mine in future, as I am quite sure it will.  In the mean time we will send you another £10 note as soon as you wish for it.  Now for your letter.  You have decided quite rightly about the coach and I am not sorry to have to be coach a little longer.  It is a great pleasure to me, and I think we understand one another so well that for the present we shall get on very well together. I am likewise very glad you have taken to your Mathematics and are going to master decimals, and all other necessary things in their turn.  It would provoke me to have your mind halting on one leg and your life.  I would advise you to arrange your hours as to take all the hardest and least pleasing work first.  You are like me in one respect I perceive.  When you are exhausted, you cannot get through what is really hard, and you are rather sooner exhausted than you ought to be.  You will probably by habit become every year capable of much more work without this disagreeable testing of fatigue.  It seemed to be very ungracious to send you your books without a line.  I was excessively busy that day, so busy that I could scarcely give orders about the . . . even.  We are so poorly furnished in divinity, except those two huge tokins of Baxter and Bonow[?], that I really had no choice left, Paliys[?] Natural Theology is a very favourite book of mine.  Not so much for the argument sake, though I think that managed in a masterly manner but for the cheerful views it gives one of the divine government in this natural world of ours.  It fills my own heart with love to the divine author of so much beauty and happiness, and a sort of childlike confidence if I may use the expression with reverence arises when I consider the minute love and provision made for all his feeble creatures.  Creatures which to us appear as sincerely worth regard are none of them forgotten to his infinite benevolence.  I am glad of all you say with regard to Kirtlington[?].  We must make it a rule to do on our own side all that is right to cultivate and preserve advantages acquaintance leaving all the rest to them.  Now what have we been doing.  On Monday Albert Pell came and spent two days the mornings of which were entirely occupied in laying out the . . . for your father in Barroughs[?] Hill, and in the evenings in agonizing over the coin loss with us.  He was very pleasant.  We had a great commotion with Clarke, who went and sold all the hay, without even consulting with your father who was at home all the time.  I don't think the bargain was a very bad one though concluded in this hasty and unjustifiable manner and I hope the check he received upon the occasion has taught him who is master upon this farm.  I do not think Albert Pell thinks much of his farming, however it is certain that the farm is in a very different condition as to produce and cultivation to what we have ever had it before.  On Thursday Col Eden came down and stayed all night the talk was more of  drawing than any thing else a matter that has a good deal ceased to interest me.  Marty[?] went home with him.  George went on Saturday.  Your father and Louisa took him for I was not capable of so fatiguing a journey.  They were greatly disappointed in the aspect of Messers Shoten[?] and Mager[?], themselves any thing but gentlemen.  Rather orse and ouse sort of men, but the school seemed well managed as far as the material went, and we hear such a high character of it, that there is I hope no reason to be anxious, though anxious I am.  We have not heard from him yet.  He will find it after all more comfortable than the Blue Coat, and I fancy to rough it a little will teach him to know himself and others better than I quite suspect he does. Farewell my dearest and dearest again, light of my eyes and joy of my heart, and all sorts of foolish expressions come to the end of my pen.  Your tender Mother.  Sparke is very well and we love him and pat him as his master or himself could wish.

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh, Monday 23 February, presumably 1846 (but possibly 1845?).  The letter reads as follows:

Monday February 23rd
My dearest Martin
It really is fortunate as it will be so long before you get a better room  that you have had so mild a winter.  7 weeks seems a very long time before we shall meet, but as I am very busy finishing my story for Mr Chapman  which story is very abhorrent to my soul, and will I fear not be what I wished to make it.  It becomes in such a case a very nervous painful and exhausting task to write, but it is a duty, and duty consoles.  The money will enable us to make head against the expenses of this year and it may please God to bless our endeavours and enable us when this year is over to draw sufficient from the farm to maintain our place in this dear spot.  I am answering your letter as you will perceive.  I come next to your temperance in which I heartily rejoice.  I believe there is no way save those odious cigars, in which health and power are so much thrown away as in the induced and careless use of wine.  A little I believe to be a good thing for almost every constitution and the fine way is to do as you do, give yourself an allowance such as you think fit of wine and adhere to it.  Your health God be thanked seems excellent.  I never hoped to see my delicate nervous little boy, so healthy and high spirited a young man.  I believe under his blessing it has been greatly the reward of your own prudence and good sense.  Your constitution now evidently strengthens every year and you will I hope by the time the battle with the Law begins find yourself quite equal to it.  I like your being of the Freemasons, yet what an odd sort of feeling it gives me to hear that you belong to a secret society.  There have been times when such secret societies were very awful and imposing things but such times are over.  It will show you a new side of that human nature which you never can study or practice too much.  Posy is no better at present and I am uneasy about her.  I could fancy however that there is some little amendment today, though it does rain and is a sort of day upon which all the . . . feels . . .  Skip has been sitting tete a tete with me all morning.  I have taken the little middle room for my sitting room and the poor fellow rejoices himself in my fire and sofa.  Yes I think Mr Shaw's[?] speech was a very clever and interesting one, and Mr Disraeli's  on Sunday (I think it was) excellent.  We have heard of it was praised much in town.  He has given it well to Sir Robert Peel , and pulled his fine speech to pieces.  Mr Hudson[?] too the railway king, spoke very well it is said.  I thought his speech read very well in the Newspapers but one cannot very well tell by that whether it was really an effective one.  The cause of Protection[?] seems to be gaining ground by everybody's account.  I cannot answer your agreeable account of where you have been and what you have seen, by a relation of any adventures of my own.  I have been no where and seen only Mrs Clutterbuck who has just been here, and whom I always like to see though our talk is only of our husbands, farming and our children's health.  Clarke goes next Monday his behavior has been of an insolence perfectly astonishing.  He refused to go away, and said he should go when it suited his convenience upon which your father's blood was up and he told him, he thought Clarke had been as much mistaken in his character as he had been in Clarke's, and that he was only a weekly servant he would have him to know and could be discharged that very day and should be.  Upon which the gentleman made his excuses, and it ended by your father allowing him a week instead of a fortnight in which to remove his family.  Your father has engaged a young man recommended by Mr Herxmon[?] as a regular working foreman, and old Shelling[?] is to come and superintend from time to time.  It was the best plan we could hit upon.  I am sorry Clarke has turned out such an ill conditioned fellow for upon the whole I think we were doing pretty well, and your father will have more . . . and anxiety under the new system.  I fear things are looking well but we shall not get so much for our hay as we had hoped by I fear 50 or 60 pounds.  Food however is very cheap after this open winter.  Farewell dearest Martin.  I have got a bad headache, and will end my tiresome stupid letter which really is not worth sending. 
Ever my dearest boys tenderly affectionate Mother.

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated Wednesday, with Feb 23 1846 added in pencil.  This was filed after another letter which was dated Monday Feb 23.  The letter reads as follows:

Wednesday February 23 1846
My beloved Martin,
This morning your long delayed letter arrived, it had been missent to Welford, so you must take care in future to make Watford very legible.  They had tried Hertford.  Surely never was . . . so little drawn to fame as our self esteeming Watford, the tradesmen at least of which consider themselves as among the most important people on the face of the earth.  It would have been a pity indeed if I had lost your letter, which was most interesting and agreeable.  You begin to write extremely well indeed and your description of Dr Posey[?] might do for a place in a prize essay.  You seem to see this matter in exactly its just point of view, and to estimate to its full extent the mischief of that sort of . . . satirical interference with men's consciences, which carries such a specious plausible appearance, and which having been so long met in the Roman C. Church has been found productive of such immense evils.  Most of the horrible causes into which the members of that Church have at different periods of history been betrayed, may be . . . I believe to this surrender of conscience to the keeping of other men and thus casting responsibility from a mans own self upon others, and those others misguided prejudiced ambitions short sighted, as other of our imperfect use, and often from their peculiar circumstances particularly exposed to the temptation of all those crimes which were from heaven views and a desire of spiritual domination.  The great triumph of the Reformation was not so much the enlightening mens minds upon this or that doctrine, as the general emancipation from priestly sway which was then affected, and which as long as priests are men, there will be always an effort to restore, your young neophytes with anxious looks drinking in every word of their reverend preacher as if it were a revelation from heaven was quite a picture.  It is curious how men love to be deceived, or whether perhaps I should say love to make unto themselves idols.  We marvel when we send the old testament at the obstinate propensity on the part of the Israelites to make unto themselves Idols of wood and stone, but if  we would look . . . as we should see the same propensity inside another form in the tendency of mankind to erect to themselves idols of flesh and blood.  Scriptural simple rely in and Christ for the divine head and only head of the Church, is a . . . lly that the human mind of this day seems to find as unpalatable as that of the Unity of God was to the ancients.  We are living in strange days and I believe in the midst of a vast social revolution if we did but know it.  Old things are fast passing away and a leaf is being turned over in human history.  What you will all have to read on the other side no one on earth seems to pretend even to guess.  To us and those who think like us these Anti-protection measures appear the most rash unstatesmanlike and . . . lled for that can be . . . , and the rapidly advancing prosperity of this country arrested and all affairs thrown into the utmost confusion , for no one good reason at all.  We read the speeches on each side and find not one single reason advanced for this change of opinion.  By a letter from Dr. Holland this morning this opinion seems to gain ground he says proselytes to protection are being made every day and the majority will be less it is thought than was at first expected, he speaks of the confusion in which men's minds are thrown and the utter . . . as to the issues of this most unexampled piece of rash legislation.  We heard an anecdote of the Queen and Lord Melbourne  not . . . , se non e'veso, e'ben trovato. The Queen - Oh my Lord I am become an Antiprotectionist.  Lord M - Are you indeed?  Then I'll be d__d if you don't bring the monarchy about your ears.  I see your warden has been drawing his pen upon the right side.  If all would only exert themselves to the uttermost these fatal measures might yet be arrested.  I was in London on Monday and saw Mrs.Eden and Miss Morrison and Lady Pell, but heard no news except that Albert Pell is very staunch in defense of protection.  I really cannot express to you my dearest boy, how I feel your affection in writing to me when you are tired and weary at night and I know how hard it is to persuade oneself to take up a pen.  Your affection and piety are indeed sweet ingredients in our life's cup.  I will send you the £10 note tomorrow.  I have not got one till your father returns from town.  We sell hay and get a pleasant sum in every week.  I only wish we had 12 hay stacks to sell instead of two and then we should be very easy, as far as money went, which is a good way.  One cannot . . . though far from all the . . . way.  They are now busy carrying out manure into the great meadow so I hope we shall have a large crop next year.  Farewell my dearest boy.  Ever your most tenderly affectionate Mother.  Good letters from George who seems very happy and is able to tell us that he has not been reported for laughing or telling in school nor . . . down for on . . . yet.  So I hope he means to be a good fellow.  He writes proud letters in imitation of yours as nearly as he can.

Letter from William Gifford Cookesley to Martin Marsh.  The letter reads as follows:

Eton College
May 2 1846
My dear Marsh,
Many many thanks for your kind promise of Linwood's Sophocles and Ellendt's Lexicon Sophocleum.  They will be most valuable additions to the library.  Pray tell your friends not to send a Paley, which is already in the library.  But would they send Demosthenes opera and Schafer[?]  9 vols (London. Black & Young 1836) and Wunder's[?]  Sophocles?  The Wunder's unbound is £3.10.0.  14 Wunder about 23 Shillings or 24 Shillings.  But they of course ought to be bound.  I send you a list of desiderated books.  It was drawn up by Hawtrey  and is not a very good one.  Will you speak to Baston[?]  of Baliol, if you know him?  To Borlean[?], of University and Ialfourd[?]  of Christ Church, and when I have also written: will you use your interest with them?  Pray settle a day to visit me.  I am delighted to hear of your probable expedition to Greece.
Ever yours truly,
W Cookersley 
I want to have a talk with you de omuilas relus et gruluxden alis[?].

Letter dated 3 May 1846, from the poet William Wordsworth  to Ann Marsh, thanking her for writing a dedication to him in her novel "Emilia Wyndham".  The original of this letter is now in the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA.  The letter reads as follows:

Dear Madam
Pray accept my acknowledgements for your Emilia Wyndham and for the honour you have done me by the Dedication, and by the manner in which your sentiments in respect to my writing is expressed .  The book just received by me will I have no doubt be read both by myself, and the members of my family, with much interest.  Wishing that these volumes may in all respects answer the purpose for which you have written and published them.
I have the honour to be 
dear Madam
respectfully
your obliged 
William Wordsworth
Rydal Mount
3 May 1846 

Emilia Wyndham was Anne's most well known novel.  Originally published in 1846 in London by Colburn, in Paris by Galignani and in New York by Harper & Brothers, all in the same year.  It went on to at least 9 separate issues including one in Leipzig by Bernh Tauchnitz Jun in 1852.  The last issue may have been the 1875 issue in the Select Library series by Chapman & Hall, London.
The dedication to William Wordsworth printed in the front of Emilia Wyndam reads: "To William Wordsworth, ESQ., one from among the countless numbers of those deeply indebted for the advancement of their moral life to the fine influences of his poetry, offers this imperfect tribute of admiration and gratitude".

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated Monday 4 May and in pencil 1846.  The letter reads:

Monday May 4th 1846
My dearest Martin,
In the first place I have the pleasure to send you your book on Latin Prose which Adelaide found in the Schoolroom at last.  She did not know what sort of book to look for and took it for granted it was a bound one.  In the next by this post I shall send you a Post Office order for £5.  We have been disappointed of some money, and therefore I cannot conveniently send you any more this week, but I hope to be able to send you some more next. We hope it will do if we send you the money to pay for your rooms about the middle of the month when our tythes  come in but if that is too late pray send me word immediately and I will endeavour to get the money.  If my Chapman and Hall  come in sooner you shall have some of that immediately but I think they are inclined to wait till the noise about Emilia Wyndham is over before they bring out the Romance in which case I shall be delayed in getting my money.  I do not like if I can help it to sell any of your Railroad shares as they are so low now but they are evidently rising and will be I hope at a good price before it is long.  Now for this Greece.  Both your dear father and I most passionately desire to give our excellent son this pleasure and advantage.  The first thing to learn is what the probable expense would be.  Do you think £100 would do it?  Suppose you are absent 60 days and at a pound a day travelling  . . . and £40.  For gap stopping I cannot help hoping it would be hardly so much. We will immediately set about considering ways and means for it.  It would be such a pleasure to give you this little reward for the happiness you have ever been to us both.  The going with Mr Lucas is such a . . . advantage, and you would see so much. Well let us have your estimate dearest Boy.  I think Posy is better but she mends very slowly, however I shall not think of moving her till the weather is more settled and I want to get my present work off my hands and make sure of those funds before I leave home.  I am very much pleased with the success of Emilia Wyndham.  If they can but sell this edition there is the £100 ready for the Greece of my beloved boy.  If they sell 700 copies there is half of it.  I cannot help hoping that at least this £50 will fall to my share.  Then a man wants to buy some of the couples and if he will offer a good price he shall have some of them which will make the farm swim of itself for some time.  I think I have now gone through your dear letter and will recite our adventures.  They have been few enough since you went.  On Friday last Fanny and I went up to town to dine at Mr. Frederick Holland's in Chester Street.  We met Mrs Grace[?] and Lousia Holland his sisters.  A Mr Baillie[?] a very agreeable charming looking person, the son of the late Dr.Baillie[?] Mr Lake[?] a nephew of these here Lakes, a clever agreeable man, a Mr Rawlinson[?] son of the Police Magistrate a somewhat clever lawyer and Lady Bell[?].  Emily came in in the evening looking lovely as usual.  I am afraid poor Harry is sadly disappointed about his scholarships.  He went to one of the Examiners and asked about it.  The Examiner told him that by his papers he observed that his hand must have ached.  They seem to think this a consolatory sentence.  It does not strike me as such.  The rest was better that his improvement had been so great and his general conduct was so good that they hesitated whether to give it him, but could not in justice refuse it to the superior excellence of the other papers.  Frederick Holland spoke of Harry in the very highest terms, I do believe he is an excellent fellow.  Have you heard from him I wonder.  Mr Lake[?] talked so aristocratically that till I found him out I imagined he must be a Feroope[?] or a Jermingham[?] at least.  It really is a disadvantage to have such cousins bearing ones name after the Tales of Pinner.  Still I cannot fancy him a gentleman though he has quite the manners of pretty nearly one, and is certainly very intelligent and agreeable.  On Saturday Emilia and Blanche Lyon came but Mr.Lyon did not appear, he was on guard which prevented him.  He talks of coming down today but time passes and he doth not appear.  The Queen Dowager does come to Castenbury[?].  She has taken little Castenbury[?] in addition and so we lose the Blandon[?] Capels[?] which is a great loss to us and she wants Nascot[?] in which case we shall lose the Clutterbucks[?] which will be a still greater, and so royalty will not do much for us.  Lord Epesthis[?] is short about £6,000 that is all and people think he might as well have stayed where he was and saved it.  He goes to Paris they say where Lady Epesthis[?] will soon spend more money than they will save . . .  . . . walking into her husbands room the other day with £4,000 dress bills to be paid.  We are busy carrying in the Bark today which they say is capital as is some of the timber.  Now the leaves are coming out the adored Eastbury does not look very much the worse.  Now Farewell beloved boy ever your tenderest of Mothers.

Letter from William Gifford Cookesley  to Martin Marsh.  The letter is dated 10 May 1846 and reads as follows:

Eton College
May .10. 1846
My dear Marsh,
I herewith send you a catalogue of the Boys Library, premising, however, that since it was made out, some 4, or 5, . . . volumes have been added.  They have got Hammond's Paraphrase.  But only Brundes[?] Aristophanes . . . Bekker's Mitchell's, Kusten's[?] (especially) or Birgler's[?] Aristophanes would be a useful book.  I thank you very much for the interest you take in the library.  When may I expect to see you?
Yours very truly,
W.G.Cookersley.

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated in pencil 12 May 1846.  The letter reads:

May 12th 1846
My dearest Martin,
Greece seems to take a form and a shape.  I see your dear kind generous father cannot bear the idea of not giving you this pleasure.  He feels it is an opportunity of showing you how dearly he prizes your good conduct by indulging what we see is a wish so near your heart.  Ride it as you will dear boy.  It will be a great pleasure because your mind is filled with images which will people the lovely present with the still more beautiful and glowing past and teach you what is a most important truth to know that a cultivated intellect is the highest of worldly possessions.  That without it the scenes of this life are but an idle meaningless picture of forms and colours such as a Raphael would be to the eye of a child, which with it are instinct with meaning and the deepest interest.  You must take sketch books and journal books with you.  Sketch books while you are with us at Whitsuntide.  I can give you a few short hand notions of how to take short hand sketches.  Not such as are of any merit as artist but infinitely valuable as an aid to memory and observation.  Could I envy my son, who is myself, my life.  How should I envy you sailing upon the Ionian sea among those exquisite isles and under that blue heaven, or walking over the fields of Linetha[?] and Marathon, and above all Troy.  If your funds go out in Herrs[?] Yacht you will to be sure have a great addition of possibilities, added to your plans.  I am in great hopes that Emilia Wyndham really will be clever enough to furnish the means for this expedition, and then will she not be a proud woman?  I like your acquaintance with Bosworth, a man whose line of prejudice, for all minds of the age of yours are better led by imagination and prejudice than by reason and . . .   How should they help it, runs counter to your own.  It is good for you both.  It is that communication with the world forms the understanding and mere solitary thinking deforms it.  I admire at your energy and hope in soaring for the highest height, even if you attain it not, which please God you may and will of lofty aspirations, advancement always comes, one shall be higher at all events for sharing at the highest. I should think Doctor North might probably be able to give you some good letters if you go to Greece, and perhaps your Kirthington[?] friends, and others you must I should think go furnished with all advantages of this sort and use every face of sanity your home and opportunities will admit.  You startled me with another tale.  I should say another accident.  I hope whenever you have a blow upon the head you will be very careful to consult a medical man.  Evil after consequences are often prevented by proper applications at the time.  It is rather late now but if you have any weight or headache in consequence pray get the best advice you can immediately.  I wish you would not knock your head against the ground.  Prey send the word if the least inconvenience has followed this accident.  Posy has been very ill this week, and I was half in despair about her but she is now better again and I really hope getting well though slowly. We have had the Lyons all this week and they are here still.  Mr L came on Monday and stayed till Wednesday.  He made himself very pleasant, and is a gentlemanlike nice fellow.  On Wednesday we went up and dined with Miss Morrison Mr and Mrs Morrison the radical cousin, Col Shee, Lady Drummond  and Aunt G. the party.  The radical cousin in high ferther[?] at what he thinks the triumph of his party, and thanking openly the Church and the House of Lords.  Rather startled Col Shee who is a slow going regular Free Trader of the old Whig school, and in the simplicity of his heart behind that free trade was literally the ultimate object of the disciples of Cobden and Co.  Do you see your father in his brief pithy way opening the Cols eyes and making him stare about him.  We dined on Thursday at the Milmans  and met the Partridges  from near . . . bridge.  She was a Dashe[?] of Amersham[?].  He is of a family before the . . . I believe. People of the world he very intelligent will informed agreeable old man.  She . . .  One does not quite know whether . . . or rough but I incline to think the last which in a fine lady one does not so dislike.  Such praise of Emila  from William and Mrs [Matilda] Milman, it really was gratifying.  Farewell my dearest.  Such weather, such pasture!  Such thriving lambs and such healthy looking cows and stock, such an air of plenty and peace at this sweet dear place.  It looks as if the blessings of God if one may say so in humble gratitude and not presumption was upon it
Ever your loving Mother. 

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated 19 May 1846.  The letter reads:

May 19th 1846
My dearest Martin
Adelaide would tell you that I was quite knocked up at last by my sweet Posy's sever attack on Friday, and was obliged to put off writing my letters.  I have been able to keep her from any return since and she really seems gaining a little strength, and consequently my mind is relieved from great anxiety, and I am beginning to feel a little better myself and can at last sit down and answer the delightful letter of last Sunday.  It was delightful of course to me, for nothing can give me greater pleasure and pride than to be of use to my beloved and valued son.  I do flatter myself we did that mile well, and I hope we shall finish the second volume equally to our satisfaction.  As soon as I can get these tiresome manuscripts off my hands I shall set to and study it to be prepared for coaching perfectly.  I am not a little pleased that I was thought to be right in some of my criticisms, particularly as I think the principles of which I embattled would lead by a covert way.  Much the most dangerous of ways to Atheison[?].  I forget (for my memory begins to fool me), the exact nature of the prepositions that I then object to, but I recollect well that their tendency as I thought it, was what made me in earnest upon the subject.  He is wrong too (if I recollect right) I thought in denying existence of entities.  I think he says there are only two existences things and the ideas of things and I think we agreed that we worked an expression for what was neither a palpable object not the idea of it, as justice hath mankind and c and c.  I see Carlyle  in his life of Oliver Cromwell uses the word entity with much effort in this sense.  I have nearly finished this strange but interesting book.  He appears to me quite to prove his main point, that Oliver was no . . . but a thoroughly devout Puritan.  Some of his actions he cannot quite clear from the suspicions of . . . ambition and calculation, but in the main he certainly seems to come out, a man devoted to great objects and purposes of which Religious liberty seems to have been the main , and certainly a nobler object than that of securing the rights of conscience.  It would be difficult for a man to propose to himself.  There are very few of his letters in existence.  I want to get at those that were your grandfathers and are now your fathers and see whether they cannot be intercalated .  The plan of the book is one I must admire, to intercalate Cromwell's letters and genuine speeches with a sort of running commentary to put one in possession of the current history of the time.  One is sorry to find so little genuine . . . as there is, but one has the satisfaction of feeling that it is genuine.  I quite agree with Mr Rice as you well know with respect to coaching.  The best men by all means, and by all manner of means a man to yourself.  Your account of Mr Wall is exactly a description of the man you want, so I hope you will get him.  The farm is going on in my opinion very prosperously that is it pays its way and looks busy and thriving.  It is the opinion of Farnes (to whose opinion I attach a good deal of weight) that it never was going on so quietly and well.  I think he must know much better than any of us, as whether we really are well rented or not.  I suppose your sisters have told you of all the engagements which have been all in their line and not in mine.  They are going to the C. . . ball tomorrow night but I shall not choose to leave Posy.  So your father has consented to take them, with heavy groanings of the spirit you may be sure.  I like William Lyon.  He is as free from finery affectation or nonsense, as anyone can be, and was as busy making cakes with your sisters as ever you could be with Mad. Dohl.  Farewell my dearest boy.  It will be a terrible blow if Mr Lucas does not after all got to Greece, but I think such a misfortune cannot befall us.  You are in the middle ages where you are, with your old carved . . . large fire places etc etc but who is Christie that the good . . . at B & C reminded you of.  Ever my loved boy's affectionate Mother.
Spark[?] is sitting in a state of supreme felicity by Posy on her sofa.

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated in pencil 26 May 1846.  The letter reads:

Monday
My dearest Martin
I shall send down £5 to be sent you by a P.O. tonight.  You ought to get it tomorrow, Tuesday that is.  If you do not receive it give me a line but it if comes safe to hand you need not give yourself that trouble.  Dr Holland was here on Thursday and he decided that Posy's . . . had better be put off till the middle or latter end of next week.  So I shall not have the mortification of being away when you are at home, and we still have time to discuss all the plan.  At all events I intended you to come down to me at Southampton for not to see you before you went to Greece was not to be thought of.  I have quite set my heart upon your going if Mr Lucas goes.  If he does not go, I think it will be wiser to reserve ourselves for what is sure to arrive some opportunity of travelling in company with him or some other clever men.  If it were not for seizing this advantage I should say this was not the year of all years as we would employ our long vacation together as I flatter myself greatly to your advantage.  I have cleared off all my business for the present in order to be at your disposal in case the scheme of Greece fall to the ground, but I heartily hope it will not and that you will be indulged in this rational desire.  I should hope that though an only son it may not stand in your way as it must be well known that your father is not rich.  The Warden must be aware of this, and his offering you the Jackson  showed it I think.  There are however plenty of Fellowships to be had I suppose and if you succeed in the grand object of taking a good degree I should hope this most important object may be secured it is, indeed, of vital importance to us all, and I do not allow myself to think that in some way or other you will not be able to accomplish it, but sufficient for the day are these anxieties, and the day demands of us all to labour cheerfully in our several ways and trust under the blessing of God to keep our heads just above water.  There was a notice of Emilia Wyndam in the John Bull which pleased me comparing the Author's view humour to that of Addison  and Molière  .  This was pleasant, as the humour of Addison is always reckoned particularly refined.  I hope I shall get my next £100 which will very nearly do your journey though I fear not quite for the time is longer than I calculated upon.  It cannot possibly be done in two months, however that does not weaken my resolution that if Mr Lucas goes you go.  All things on the farm are going on in a flourishing manner and one thing or another goes on which enables it to pay its way.  We shall have between 30 and 40 pounds more for hay as there is a saving made upon the rick, that was not for our own use.  Our lambs and sheep will pay well this year, and the young cattle are coming on in a way that it is beautiful to behold.  I think L . . . will suit as well.  I told you he had Farnes's good word, and I think he seems an honest well behaved man.  Posy is gradually mending.  She has now been 8 days without any attack except the one brought on by Dr Holland's visit, which of course . . . her a little.  Our not going will . . . up the grand schemes for the Pic nic.  It will resolve itself into a quite affair, but I leave the whole management to your sisters.  They will write to you about asking John or Foster, for I want him to come again very much.  This place is really inenviably lovely this spring.  I never saw it I think so charming in spite of the fallen trees, which except in one or two points are . . .  . . .   Farewell my dear boy.  Your ever affectionate Mother.
I rejoice you have seemed well.  With a great coach you will find study quite a different thing and life as interesting as ever it was again. 

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated in pencil 9 June 1846.  The letter reads as follows:

June 9th 1846
My dearest Martin,
A short letter must do for today as I am immersed in business which I believe is the classical term for over head and ears.  I am glad indeed my dear boy that what you think of with such great pleasure as your tour in Greece seems really about to be realized, but I must have all dates and particulars immediately the day you are to start and the money you will want as no time must be lost in procuring it for you.  You had better direct your next letter here and it will be forwarded to me as I do not know exactly when we shall be at the Isle of Wight.  Posy goes on charmingly. We dinned at the Milnes[?] Goschells[?] yesterday, and I had a good dose of incense, but offered in so polite and almost affectionate a manner that it was impossible not to be gratified.  I hope we have made a valuable acquaintance, and it is a house I shall very much like to introduce you to.  There was a very nice party, a Mr.West, Lord Delaware's[?] son a very gentlemanlike young man, a clergy man, a . . . hat but whose name we did not learn, very clever and pleasant a young man of the nobles whose name I have forgotten, very pleasant too.  Young Dr.Phillimore[?] and Lord Morpeth[?], who came there I believe to get acquainted with the author of Mount Sorel  and with whom I had a regular good talk in the evening.  Mr and Mrs Goschell themselves are very nice people indeed.  He is a great Protectionist so your father was quite in the element he loves.  Dr.O'Sullivan breakfasted with us yesterday.  He took up all my time so that I could not possibly get a letter written. I like the Giffords exceedingly . Scott has imbibed very gentlemenlike manners at the Foreign Office and got leave last night to come down again.  They are all gone fishing.  We have a right of fishing from Dr.Whites farm to Watford which is Sonetts[?] but we have got leave for them at Harper Mill which is a better place.  We want you sadly and I would be ten times as happy if you were here.  Finally my dearest Martin don't forget  particulars of time and money in your next.  I am so busy I can't write a word more. Most tenderly yours.

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her son Martin Marsh.  Dated Sunday 15th and in pencil1846, filed as the last letter (after 9 June 1846).  The letter reads as follows:

Sea View [Isle of Wight]
Sunday 15th 1846
My dearest Martin,
I do not like to write on Sunday but I am anxious not to lose a post, because I am not sure what day it is that you come home.  Whether Tuesday 17th or Tuesday 24th.  In the first place we shall be quite delighted to see Mr.Garth.  That is, those who are at home for for me Alas! I shall not be able to get back to meet you without shortening Posy's stay here more than I ought, so I hope you will come down and see us here for one night.  On your way to London, if you come from Eastborough in the Coach to Kingston which is only three miles beyond Richmond and stay all night the train will take you to London the next day.  I must see you before you go.  I should be perfectly miserable if you went away and I had not seen you.  But in this way I hope you will be able to accomplish the meeting.  The sum you require is less than I had set you down for.  £140 will be yours and I hope you will have all the enjoyment we wish for you, your dearest father and I.  I cannot doubt but you will find all the improvement and enjoyment you anticipate for you go out with the proper dispositions and preparations, eyes and not no eyes.  Your father writes me in high spirits about his bark and timber which Shilling seems in a way to dispose of far more than we dared to hope.  This will I know be a pleasure to you as well as to learn that your Grecian journey is provided for without inconvenience to any one.  And now for the last and sweetest portion of your letter my beloved and treasured son.  Few mothers meet with hearts like yours to work upon.  I fear, were there more such sons the task of parents would be blest indeed.  Your affection and your grateful heart do more for me than make me happy.  They . . . my faith and hope in God, and my confidence that sooner or later through his infinite mercy and love, a happiness is reserved for his poor failing imperfect creatures too for whose comprehension or words, the return I have received from you, from your goodness, your piety your energy and your young mans purity and virtue.  The loveliest moral sight under heaven, has been already beyond all hope, and your affection and friendship crowns the cap of my happiness.  As far as my son is concerned it has pleased the all mighty to fill it to overflowing.  We are likely to be very happy though very quiet here.  Posy is gaining strength every day and I hope to bring the little darling home quite restored.  Never were 17 weeks of tedious trying illness borne as that little angel has borne them.  We have a fine sea and about 100 yards from the house.  There is lovely bay called Priory Bay with the woods dropping into the water.  The air is soft and mild as I never felt it anywhere else and fait que voadeas is the motto of the place.  Our friendship my dearest Martin to return to that part of your letter to me so dear, will I hope last my life and that confidential interchange of thought which has made me feel as if I know your heart and mind better than that of any living creature.  Such effusions are for myself, except when I share them with your beloved father whose genuine affection for me makes him sympathic in my joy. Your direction is quite right and . . . as. Ever your tenderest Mother. Write as soon as you can and tell us whether you can come down to us here, because as Posy says otherwise we must come and meet you.  I find Louisa directing your letters on. The direction is at Mrs Grenhams Sea View near Hyde, Isle of Wight.

25 June 1846.  Letter from Arthur Cuthbert Marsh to his wife  Anne Marsh.  Addressed to: Mrs Arthur Marsh, at Mr Greenhams, Seaview, near Ryde, Isle of Wight.  The letter bears a letter seal in black wax of the Marsh family crest of the horse head.  The letter reads as follows:

Eastbury, 25 June 1846
My dearest Anne
Martin will leave us this afternoon & I hope he will reach you by nightfall & deliver this.  I enclose the draft for . . . [Harkins?] (one of the Liverpool mortgages) £17.9.6 which I hope will be sufficient.  I am sorry to say that I am hard up & if I don't receive . . . [farfas?] tomorrow (as I hope to do) I shall be obliged to apply to my friend again to enable me to pay wages: last week I paid more than I have done in any week since I have been here £31 odd.  We have completed 2 Ricks, but we have made & carried nothing since Monday night & there is more grass down than I quite like.  I am sending off to the Railroad, the first invoice of Bark about 6 Tons I think; the carriage . . . [W Bermondsley?] will cost 10/6 per Ton which is not unreasonable, but when I come to deduct this charge, & those for . . . [Hatching?], Bagging & Discount, . . . [Compression?] from the £11 per load I find that I shall not do so well as if I had sold it for £3 per Ton, as Rough Bark!  This is encouragement for exertion & trouble it is not?  I rejoice at what you have heard from . . . [Mr Shohert?] & for your sake am still more gratified at Frank Wedgwood's notice from Shrewsbury; Still I am uneasy at our prospects & sadly want you home again.  You must remember to write your name at the back of the Draft (. . .  . . . [eades mior?]) when you pay it away: it will be due on Saturday so I trust you will heed no difficulty in getting it cashed at Ryde:  Should you want a £ or so more perhaps Martin can supply it & I will repay him when we meet at York Gate on Saturday.  You will of course let me know for certain when I may expect you;  I think you had better Rail it to Pinner on account of your baggage.  The day has cleared up & we shall I hope . . . [easy?] some Hay this afternoon as well as drill the Swede Turnips.  I have been looking at the mangles & carrots.  They are partially weeded & when quite . . . [clear?] I think these will be a tolerable plant, far more than I expected, but . . . [make haste home work?] at all these interesting matters yourself.  My love to my dear girls . . .   The weather now is lovely & I . . . [feel?] that my Posy will make more progress in the last week of her stay than she has done before.  It was to hot to go to Church last Sunday, hot as it was.  Ever my dearest Anne your own affectionate A.

6 August 1846.  Agreement on Copyright between Anne Marsh and Richard Bentley regarding "History of the Reformation in France" and "Norman's Bridge".  The document is not written by Anne but is signed by her.  It is stamped with a crown monogram, dated 16.4.46 London.  British Library 46614f326.  The agreement reads as follows:

Mrs Marsh 2 Works History of Reformation and a Novel.  Copy of "Hugenots" for 10 years from day of publication.  Norman's Bridge.
An agreement made this sixth day of August 1846 between Mrs Marsh of Eastborough Lodge, Herts, of the one part, and Richard Bentley of 8 New Burlington Street, London, publisher of the other part.  The said Mrs Marsh agrees to write an original work on the History of the Reformation in France to form two volumes being 8vo of about four hundred and fifty pages in each volume, and to place the MS of the same in the hands of the said Richard Bentley for publication in the course of November next ensuing.  And the said Mrs Marsh hereby agrees to dispose of, and the said Richard Bentley agrees to purchase the copyright of and in the said work for the period of ten years from the day of publication for the consideration hereafter stated viz: 1st The sum of One Hundred and Fifty pounds , from which shall be deducted by way of discount the sum of Two pounds and Ten shillings for prompt payment which shall be made in the said Richard Bentley's promissory note for the net sum of £147.10.-  at two months date from the day of delivery of the manuscript of the said work.  2nd The further sum of Fifty Pounds subject to a deduction of two and a half percent, as discount for prompt payment, in the said Richard Bentley's draft for the Net sum of £48.15, when the sale of the aforesaid work shall have reached five hundred copies.  It is also agreed by and between the aforesaid parties that the said Mrs Marsh shall write a work of fiction, to form three volumes post 8vo of not less than three hundred pages in each volume; the subject to be left to the author's choice and the MS of such work to be delivered into the hands of the said Richard Bentley for publication in the course of the Spring of 1847.  And the said Mrs Marsh hereby agrees to dispose of and the said Richard Bentley agrees to purchase the copyright of and in the said work of fiction for the period of four years from the day of publication for the consideration of Three Hundred Pounds, subject to a deduction for discount of Five Pounds for prompt payment which shall be made in the said Richard Bentley's promissory note for the net sum of £295 at two months date from the day of delivery of the manuscript of the said work of fiction. 
In witness whereof the aforesaid parties have pursuant set their hands.
Anne Marsh.

It is recorded that Martin Marsh, the only son of Anne and Cuthbert Marsh, did travel to Greece but died tragically 10th August 1846 in Athens.  Both his parents and his six sisters must have all been utterly devastated.

22 September 1846.  Letter from Hannah Roscoe to her sister Anne Marsh just after the death of Anne's son Martin.  The letter is addressed to; Mrs Marsh, Eastbury, Watford, Herts, England, via Ostend.  It is sealed with a black R for Roscoe.  Postmarks include HOMBURGH 22 Sep 1846, ALLEMAGAN PWR HERVE 24 Sept 1846, FRANCO, CL 26 Sep 1846, WATFORD 26 Sep 1846.  The letter reads:

Bad Homburg
Frankfurt sur Heie
Sept 22 [1846]
Mr Mullers
Strausse Dorothea
My dearest Anne
It was an unexpressible comfort  to receive yesterday a few lines from your own dear hand to see the Christian fortitude & submission with which you have received this most trying depravation.  Heart I well know in you could not fail but also there your strength has been equal to your day that you have found the support which I believe all will who cast themselves on god thriving to have one of the most blessed parts of a . . . [house?] mission it was to teach us how to suffer, but the flesh is weak & such a sorrow is such subduing anguish that I almost feared to hear your breath had failed under it.  We are very grateful to our dear Fanny for having sent us so many interesting  particulars which affected as all very deeply.  I well know that all these testimonies to the value of the measure which has been taken from us though they in some degree add to the sense of the inextricable loss and yet soothing & gratifying, most particularly where the highest value is of a kind not merely suited to the passing world, but of a nature  to find its highest development where it is transplanted.  Blessed mothers are we both in that we can have no doubt that our beloved ones are safe in the fold of Christ , only do I daily greave that I am not mere mortal to join them there.  I feel as if I had borne my trial with so much less composure & submission than you have done.  My only excuse is that my mind was much weakened by previous suffering & anxiety [her daughter Elizabeth Jane Roscoe 1820-1846 had also just recently died].  Alas my poor Anne how you comforted & strengthened me as we lay on the bed the day before I left you, even though the blow had fallen on you which made you the one to require comfort, if comfort in such a case could be given at first.  You must have had the account very soon after.  Had it been before certainly I should not have gone & much disappointment & anxiety might have been spared, yet perhaps as regards that, it has its advantages.  William [her son William Caldwell Roscoe 1823-1859] is surprisingly better during the week that he has been able to bathe & drink the waters, & I hope another fortnight may quite set him up for the winter.  He is very grateful & so am I, for the few lines you were so good as to write to him, he has often said blessed are those who die giving & it sometimes distresses me to see him sit so light to life, yet he has a due sense of its value for good ends, & I trust may have health granted him to make good use of it, wherein I am sure he will if he has.  He desires me to give his most affectionate thanks to you, & to dear Fanny for her most interesting letter.  It is a great comfort that your dear girls, with the piety which you have instilled into them, are enabled to bear with so much resignation the loss of so beloved & precious a brother.  I have thought much of Posy in her nervous state & of Adelaide so devotedly attached.  My tender love to them all.  Mary has I believe written to Georgy.  I feel quite uncertain about my future plans.  It seems almost a pity now we have come so far & seen so little to return home, yet I feel a voice of dread if remaining the winter here.  If I return to England I would take a lodging somewhere near London for the winter.  It would be no use Mary going to Liverpool.  It would not do on many accounts & she would particularly dislike it, & there would be . . . [bone?] of the . . . [boys?] therefore I  . . .[hewae?]  who will . . .[give out?] lodgings if the house is let.  Sometimes I have thought of . . . [Brufreds?] or some town in Flanders for the winter, which would bring as nearer home, & we could go to Paris if we liked in the spring.  Do you know anything of any of the Belgium towns as a winterie residence?  In respect to cheapness & distance?  This is a pretty nice place for a watering place.  Miles upon miles of gardens & walks through grounds & shrubberies, to lay out these seems to have been the great taste of the Landgrave & his family & to enjoy them the first pleasure of the Germans & duty of the water drinkers.  It puts me very much in mind of the amusements  de Spa, to see the gay groups sitting under the trees or walking about listening to the music.  An excellent band begins to play at six in summer now half past served to amuse the water drinkers, again in the middle of the day in the gardens of the . . . [Cursave?] & in the promenade or dancing rooms in the evening.  This . . . [Cursave?] is a fine building containing a splendid ball or promenade room, reading rooms, refreshment rooms, & most important gaming rooms, all is often entirely free to everybody, so that in the gardens the gayest ladies are seen here next to a bare headed German . . . [doudling?] her child, & in the room ( . . . [apica?] I have only pressed into one morning) they tell me a Grand Duchess danced in the same set with her tradesmen all there & the springs are a speculation of two Frenchmen who remunerate themselves for the immense expense they have been & are at, giving it is said 500 a year to the band alone by their gaming to all & leaving something handsome besides, & yet they say it is the most honourable conducted of any of the German Spars.  They offered 200 a year to the English or rather Irish clergyman the revd James Batter, which he, much to his credit, knowing how the money was obtained refused, though I am afraid he is very poorly so with a large family, & the subscriptions on which he depends, do not secure so liberal as they ought to be from the English.  The service is performed in the chapel belonging to the Landgrave's chateaux , as soon as the Lutheran service is over.  The pews are not to be compared to . . . [Jack?] church, but a part at the arch is glazed off for the family,  none of them are here.  We have been through the vows, by no means equal to a nobleman's house.  The Princess Elizabeth seems to have been very industrious, painting on velvet a set of chairs & . . . [sopha?] for one of the state rooms.  The . . . [doain?] are just as she left them, full of all sorts of objects as the French say cabinets glass, china etc etc some very trumpery, others very handsome numbers of portraiture, so the royal family of [Cuylovd?] , & the Loved grower, a German princess, some interesting, mostly ugly. . . new place.  An excellent library both in her apartments, & in the state ones & in the last the most curious specimen of inlaying I ever saw: the entire walls of a small room covered with it.  Most curious emblems & inscriptions which I could not understand & all kinds of patterns, all formed of differently shaded woods & seems to be very old.  In her bedroom is a most painful picture of . . . [George?] when bleed, & a pretty stool forming a bed, worked by Victoria as a present to her Aunt.  The old Swiss who went round with us spoke very affectionately of her Georgey will I hope write to Mary before long for I shall feel very anxious for a further account of you all.  The air here is delightful.  Mr Baxter told me he used to suffer very much from asthma, but has never had a fit since he came to reside here two years ago.  They call on all the English, it must be very fatiguing.  I do not think there would not be a pleasanter place to spend a few weeks in the summer for those who have plenty of money & many acquaintances & have spirits to cater into the quietness of the place.  It is not so dear as a fashionable English watering place but by no means cheap, we find everything almost at London prices: of course we will not be so anywhere in the winter.  At Frankfurt we remonstrated with the washerwoman & said it was more than we should pay in London on which she only said "Frankfurt is a very fine place too".  I hope I have not tired you with all this gossip, you will of course have laid down my letter whenever you have had enough of it.  I hope G will write as soon as you get this, as we shall very probably be here just long enough to receive it.  I suspect the letter to Bonn has been lying in London from the inland postage not having been paid as I have had notice from the . . . [Geneva?] Post Office that there is one there for me.  I have begged William order to get it & forward it.  Farewell dearest Anne.  May God support & comfort you, he will no doubt & has.  My kindest regards & most affectionate sympathy to your husband. 
Yours most tenderly HE Roscoe.

19 October 1846.  Letter from Hannah Roscoe to her sister Anne Marsh.  The outer addressed to Mrs Marsh, Eastbury, Watford, Herts.  Postmarked Heidelberg 19 Oct 1846, another postmark 22 Oct and another 24 Oct.  The letter reads as follows:

Heidelberg
Poste Restovei
Oct 19th [1846]
My dearest Anne
My dear boys are just off, & I feel more inclined to write to you, than to do anything else.  I have not written by them, partly because I had not time having three letters to write which I had promised to send by them, & wished to lose as little as I could of their last few days, & partly because I wished you to receive my letter before seeing William.  If William has no return of illness to detain him on the road, they hoped to be in London on Saturday, & if so, he means to go down to Eastbury on Sunday, if you would like to see him & can give him a bed, which I have ventured to be sure you will, but should it not be convenient, I hope you . . . [can venture?] some way of sending him a line on Saturday if you should not get this till that day, but I hope you will have it on Friday.  I have been anxiously looking for a letter from you, but if you were not able to write in time to catch us at Hamburg, you would perhaps not know, for I do not recollect whether I said, where we should be afterwards.  It will be a fortnight on Wednesday that we have been here.  Most unfortunately William got a little cold before we left Hamburg increased it on the way here & by being imprudent in going about when first we came here, which brought on a return of his troublesome complaint much . . . [slighted?] than before, but I would not let him set out whilst the least tendency remained, as travelling seems to bring it on; though it is very inconvenient both to him & Arthur to be so long from their work, however I could not have been at all happy if Arthur had not remained to accompany him home.  When he is settled in London he says he shall be well & I hope he will, but I fear he has great delicacy . . . [often?] situation & will be very unequal to his arduous profession.  I endeavour to impress upon him the extreme importance of his life & health, & that he must not look upon himself as a single man,  but as one who has many of the duties of a husband & father to fulfil.  A short time before we left Hamburg, I received the sad letter which you wrote to me on the 3rd of September.  I cannot express to you how deeply I feel your kindness & affection, in writing to me so fully at such a time.  I cannot read it over even now, without tears of sympathy, & admiration at the spirit of resignation it manifests.  These feelings are excited in everyone who knows you, they are no real comfort, yet to be loved & appreciated excites a soft & tender feeling in the midst of the heaviest afflictions, which seems to take something from their bitterness.  When the treasures of our love are taken from us, there seems some little gratification in feeling how much is excited in those who we like, & even in those not immediately connected with us.  Mrs Henry Roscoe said in one of her last letters, that she has not ventured to write, to write to you.  How I honour her for her self command & noble faith.  It is one of the deepest pleasures of life to see calamity borne with such a spirit.  I wonder who that old gentleman was who came into our . . . [treuie?] (I do not know where she was going) the day the news reached London & told me of the event, he seemed so deeply deeply affected?  H [Harriet] Martineau was praising Mrs Marshes heroic  & exacted character, & said she had heard from a gentleman who knew her well, that anyone who witnessed her conduct during the Fauntleroy affairs, & the leaving Whitehall to practice the most rigid economy, & the giving up all those advantages, she knew so well how to prize & . . . [adore?] can tell what Mrs Marsh is, & the nobleness of her devotion".  I do not know whether you will like me to send all these details, but one likes to be appreciated.  Perhaps you can guess at both these gentlemen, which I cannot.  This is certainly take it altogether the most beautiful place I ever saw. The ruins of the castle magnificent perched on a rock which rises at the top of the steep hill clothed with wood, now dressed in the . . . [lovely?] & most brilliant autumn . . . [tints?].    Wooded & rocky hills rise far above & extend along the banks of the . . .  . . . [hechar to a far?] some miles; on the opposite side beautiful high hills, gardens vineyards half way up, then low woods, the clear & rocky river running through this enchanting valley, & then to the west issues a fertile plain studded with towns & villages to join the Rhine which when the sun shines glitters like silver thread about 7 miles off.  The beautiful walks & rides seem as if they could never be exhausted, & almost every step affords new views, each one a picture worthy of an artist, but requiring the greatest . . . [tative?] to do it justice.  Last evening the sun broke out just before setting, & flooded the castle & woods which we see from our windows with the most exquisite light, a rainbow arching overhead.  We have decided on remaining here for the winter if nothing unforeseen occurs to call us home.  Two of William Hutton's sons, friends of William who are here, have kindly undertaken the instruction of Frank in classics & mathematics, which William thinks will be very advantageous to him as they are very clever, & agreeable society for us.  Mrs Erskine gave us an introduction to a Mr & Mrs Browne, who are very pleasing indeed, & extremely kind in giving us advice & assistance, & much disposed to be sociable.  Mrs B tells me he was at college with Robert Mackintosh . . . [&?] on his card is . . . [16 Chester Square?] . . . [in her,?] Millington.  Do you know anything of them or their connections.  Mr Boyd is the English chaplain, (an Irishman) & his wife & daughter are also very civil to us, & we have become acquainted at the table d l hote with a young clergyman of the name of Robertson from Cheltenham who preached yesterday, & gave us one of the most beautiful & excellent sermons I ever heard in my life, & one which might with the exception of a few words, have been preached in any Unitarian chapel, the human example afforded by the death of Christ.  Next Sunday we are to have a sermon from him for the benefit of the famishing Irish.  I see no newspapers, but I hear the accounts from that unhappy country are dreadful.  We have had a good deal of difficulty in procuring lodgings, but at last have engaged them at the house of one of the Professors, whose wife is a pleasing young woman, & speaks English.  She cannot however allow us a kitchen, so we must have our dinner sent in, which is rather more expensive than providing for ourselves, but it saves a great deal of . . . [trenoce?] in many ways, & the wages & keep of a servant.  Our lodgings are to be 45fl. Not quite £4 a month with the allowance of a servant to arrange our rooms & serve breakfast & tea.  Dinners sent in for 3/4d a day for four.  . . . [Tuet?] candle & breakfast & tea we provide.  So I expect our board & lodging will not be expensive.  We must economize now, for travelling & living at hotels, for so large a party so long a time has . . . [neu?] away with a great deal of money.  I believe this thin paper is a humbug. I pay the . . . [some whole oir?] kind my letters are written on: but as this is so thin I venture to send half a sheet more.  I am reading Father Darcey [by Anne Marsh, 1846] which I desired Arthur to bring from England.  I think it extremely clever and powerfully written & like it more than I expected.  Mary desires me to say to Georgy with her kind love to her & all her cousins that she had meant to write to her by William but she found I meant to write to you today, thought it would be more acceptable a little time hence.  I desired JW to order a little book to be sent to you, which I found very soothing in my first great sorrow.  I wish you may do the same: not that it will say much that your own mind & feelings would suggest, but sometimes it is easier to read than to think.  I have not had a single line from JSC [their brother James Stamford Caldwell] since I left England.  Pray mention him when you write, & pray write as soon as possible to your tender affectionate
HE Roscoe.
Kindest love to your dear girls.

Letter from Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell) to her daughter Posy (Rosamond Jane Marsh).  This letter is complete with envelope, both with a wide black border.  The envelope is addressed to Miss R J Marsh, Mr C Barnardistone[?] Esq, The Ryes, Sudbury, Suffolk.  It is postmarked Watford 23 Oct 1846 and Sudbury 25 Oct 1846.  The letter reads as follows:

Oct 23rd 1846
My dearest Posy,
I send you a P.O. for three pounds if that is not enough, let me know in time.  I think you had much better wait to come with Mr.Barnardistone[?] as Mrs.Barnardistone[?] is so kind as to ask you.  I think my dear child you seem really getting on again under the love of this kindest of friends.  My dear love to her.  Her books are in London.  I shall go there next Wednesday and will write the names in them and send them off.  You must return, my love, for the visit to Mrs Morrison must be paid, and as soon as possible.  I hope after this bad October you may have a mild . . .  At all events I hope the visit will not undo what the . . . has done, but it must be paid, there is no remedy.  Thank dear Adelaide for her letters, we all find them very entertaining.  I will write to her soon.  I am very busy with my history  now and find the occupation interesting, though when it is over the tide of regrets seems to set in with more force than ever.  Fanny and Mary set out today for Ramsgate and I have only that dearest Robinetta to stay with me and play the part of a daughter, is not that strange.  Louisa I expect tomorrow.  I do not feel afraid of being alone.  I am as I have heard someone say, my tears and thoughts are food enough for me but I am well and wonderfully cheerful.  I am glad to hear a good account of both you dear girls and glad you enjoy the thoughts of coming home but take care your admirable friends do not mistake such feelings, and misconceive what you feel for them.  I have sent you a paper which you will sign and return to me, by next post.  The P.O. will arrive with this letter.  I have been writing to Miss Page[?] Turner[?] to enquire did you see in the papers or has any one told you that Sir Edward is dead at Tunbridge.  Mr Noth[?] and Emily come for two nights on Monday.  I have bespoken Emily for a longer visit when you return.  Dr.H has been in Poland and Gotheim! Farewell my Posy, dear, love to Adelaide, to Mrs Barnardistone and Louisa. Your dear Mother.  I have written so many letters today this must be brief.

26 December 1846.  Letter from Hannah Roscoe to her sister Anne Marsh.  The letter is addressed to; Mrs Marsh, Eastbury, Watford, Herts, England, via France.  Postmarks include STRASBURGH 26 DEC 1846, HIDELBURGH 27 DEC 1846, BO 1 JAN 1847.  It has a black letter seal with the impressed monogram HER  The letter reads:

How could you believe - dearest Anne that I would dislike or misconceive what you call your polemical outbursts, or receive it as any thing  but an additional proof of that tender interest in my happiness, which is one of the most precious treasures, I have left on earth.  Our interesting clergyman from whom you hope so much, left us very soon after I received your letter.  I hope and trust that his excellent & beautiful discourses & the advantage of his society will have had a permanent effect in elevating our religious views & feelings.  He has a peculiar talent of conversing with ease on religious subjects, of leading others to be the same, by opening the heart to religious sympathy & of making one feel as if one could confide all ones feelings, on such subjects to him, combined with the taste & manners of a well bread man of the world, which I never met with in anyone before, but he made no effort to convert us to his own private views: it was far more agreeable, I think beneficial to us all, to converse on those points which we believed & felt alike, than on the few in which we differed, & he has very much the same opinion as I have on conversing that such opinions as have been adopted on sincere earnest conviction, with prayer for assistance are probably those most suited to the individual mind in short that the great point is that each one "should be fully persuaded in her own mind".  This does not include the idea that opinions are of importance, & preclude the wish that those which we believe to be true, & therefore most calculated to produce the greatest degree of virtue, & happiness should prevail, but only the fear in any individual case of controverting those in which have been adopted unless manifestly prejudiced to religion & morality, lest I should be unable to give anything instead that would be equally advantageous to individual progress.  Thus were I to endeavour to acquire your views, of what I believe you mean by the Divinity of Christ (for in his Divine mission I am as firm a believer as you could be) but by which I fancy you mean a superior nature, it would cast me a sea of metaphysical contradictions & inconsistencies which would in my mind have any effect at other than that of increasing my faith, it would take from Christ the beauty, the simplicity, the humility, the human affections, the human sufferings which make him so . . .[pecutivey?] our brother the perfection of human, the object of human love.  I do not deny but that I believe that is in many of those who believe his divine nature a stronger more intense love & dependence, than in those who regard him as by nature mealy a man, but then I think there is a danger of this love being given as to a God, & that it is taken away from their undecided love which ought to be given to the Father alone.  You say that without your views Scripture would be unintelligible, to meet would be so with them.  In no part of Scripture so much as in St John's gospel does Christ speak so decidedly of all knowledge & power being given him, not inherent, see  particularly . . . [Le.g.v19. Le.ol.v.26 & o L.12. o 44 & 49. C.14 u.10?] the whole strength of all his arguments for believing in him I receive the promises of Christ as the promises of God sent by him but I do not attach my faith to words, but the whole character of the Christ, "God manifest in the flesh" mind manifest showing as in one of like nature of ourselves, the feelings of God to his creatures, & the dealings of his providence towards "the word made flesh".  The whole will of God exemplified in a perfect human being.  Then as to the advantages & disadvantages of the orthodox views, & . . . [huitasiouesne?] , I am quite willing to allow that you have much more faith & more elevated religious feelings than I have, but then I think this arises much from your possessing so much more feeling & imagination than I do, & from my sinfulness interfering with my convictions more than from any difference in our opinions.  When I think of my dear Mrs Edward Roscoe, lying for seven months on that bed of exquisite pain, with the head of Christ . . . [covered?] with thorns hung at its foot, I cannot but think her faith which was the most undoubting, I ever knew, sufficient for her, though she never even . . . [faultered?] than I am in rejecting any thing divine in the nature of Christ.  Most deeply as I feel the extraordinary excellence, beauty of that character of your beloved son, formed upon the principles you advocate, I will not allow that the one I have lost, & was at last of those whose remain yield even to him in aspirations after heavenly men . . . [express?], in earnest desires to do the work & will of God on earth.  In the general effect of the two systems I think as far as I have observed, that if Unitarianism has a tendency to verge towards rationality which however most of them, utterly reject; yet the contrary has a tendency to vest in form without spirit, or to place a true faith too much before the discharge of duty, & if the orthodox faith may, as I think it does, produce a more decorative spirit, towards Christ particularly, our views produce in general more truthfulness & contentiousness of charm, but indeed I believe in sincere & earnest hearts, there is enough of real Christianity in both systems all I might say to produce the fruits of the spirits in not quenched by our own faults.  Certainly my dear Anne I never can become what you call a Church person.  Beautiful as I allow many parts of the Church service, to be the oftener I hear it, even when read by such a man as Mr Robertson, who gave it, its fine beauty, the more cold & unspiritual does it appear in comparison with the prayers I join in at home, but there we are particularly fortunate in that particular.  Certainly the . . . [levitacian?] view of our young days, was cold enough but then we must recollect that it was a period of general indifferent . . . in religion.  How there is rising among us, a set of earnest, devoted, self sacrificing young men, who are quite changing its spirit.  And now I must beg you to forgive this long homely, when one enters on such a subject, very interesting to me, it is difficult to restrain one's pen.  Next I must thank you for your kindness to my sons, but I must not only beg but insist that you will not let them intrude on your kindness, only ask them rarely as I know it must be a great tax, to have two coming upon you & by no means consider it necessary to ask Arthur so often as William, as he cannot poor fellow, pay for his entertainment by agreeableness.  How thankful I am to receive on the above so good an account of you, & that you have had the courage to go on with your writing.  There is nothing like work in these sad cases, as I well know by experience.  It is I believe true, that there was a bitterness in my affliction which made it for a time more difficult to bear, but yours is an incomparably greater loss.  I am however surprised to find how improved I am in health & spirits since I came here.  I have not been so well in either since my first sad loss.  Partly it is owing to change of scene & new impressions, to the lovely scenery which I have been able to enjoy to the utmost, & to taking so much exercise, partly to our happy communication with Mr Robertson with whom our friendship, I hope will not be only a transient meeting in a foreign country, he inquired when we should return to England & how he should hear of us when we got home.  He gave us a most beautiful and affecting address the last Sunday he preached to us, which touched every member of his little congregation, all of whom had become warmly attached to him, & regret at his going away is universal.  At one time he talked of fetching his wife & child, & staying here some months but various circumstances seemed to make it better to return to England.  We shall never read the 20th Chaps of Acts without thinking of him, & indeed our parting on the last evening when he come in to bid us farewell was a counterpart to St Paul's with his converts, only we hope the parallel will not stand, that we shall see his face no more, though I fear his health is for him strong.  It is also a happiness to think that we can contribute to that of our excellent two young friends the Huttons.  Richard is a most extraordinary & interesting young man, so clever & agreeable, so enthusiastic in all that is high & good & beautiful, with his health & spirits, I fear irreparably injured by overwork & self devotion acting on a naturally delicate constitution.  His brother told me the other day that he considered it a merciful dispensation of Providence that had brought us to Heidelberg, for he know not how he would have got his brother through the winter without us.  I do indeed look upon our having been brought here in the same light.  Last night, they came to spend the Christmas Evening with us.  Frank had dressed our room with evergreens most elegantly & made some excellent punch & was quite the life of the evening.  He is so sociable & agreeable, & so anxious to give pleasure to his friends, & promises to be so handsome, that I expect he will be a charming fellow.  This letter has been longer in hand than I expected, for Wednesday brought me letters which obliged me to write three immediately, & now I must get ready to walk with the Huttons, who have a few days at liberty, which we wish to take advantage of, as well as all the nice mild frost, after the heavy rain, which feel some days & succeeded the frost & snow, of which however I think we have not had so great a share, as you in England.  I have not been able to finish this till night for before I had written further the Huttons came to walk, & we had a charming walk through the hills high up seeing the town at our feet just like a toy town set up on a table: only of course so much larger & . . .  . . . [real vained?]  I think I am as young & active up & down the rises as any of the party after two hours walk we found our dinner waiting, & were out again as soon as we had finished it, to see the prizes given at the infant school, & the Christmas trees lighted up with all the prizes, which are much larger in amount, than what are given at the schools in England, & all the children have a present of cakes, togs & . . . [cloathes?] besides.  The children are in general pretty & intelligent . . . [luo ping?] but we did not see the . . . [right for?] advantages, as from the ridiculous custom of the German ladies going everywhere two or three hours too . . . [some?], the room was quite full when we went in.  Now I am so tired I can write no more, but I will end this night, as tomorrow is Sunday, on which day I have never as much time for reading as I wish, so good night dearest Anne.  Mary & Frank join me in love to their uncle & in every good wish for the coming year.  Alas what words are these?  How little do we know what a day much more a year will bring forth.  May we be enacted with faith & cheerfulness to leave it in the lands of God & be prepared to do & to suffer his will.
Yours most tenderly
H E Roscoe
Heidelberg, December 26th.
JW sends me word that Jos & Caroline would have liked a boy.  Maer.  Certainly none of his family suspected this.  I know they fancied & he thought it unhealthy.  How unfortunate people cannot be more open.  I think they could have made some arrangements to console  him to do so.  Tell me what you pay for this letter. I want to know if the half sheet adds anything.

21 Feb 1847.  Letter from Anne Marsh Caldwell to Mrs Thompson.  The edge of the sheet has a very thin band of black around it indicating that the writer is in mourning.  Anne Marsh Caldwell’s son Martin died in Athens 10th August 1846 and so we can assume that the date of the letter is 5 months later.
 
My dear Mrs Thompson
I thank you very much for your kind invitation ever since I had the pleasure of being introduced to Sir Edward Lytton [Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1803-1873] at your home I have felt a great wish to see him again but I want courage as yet to go into general society.  I am better quiet at present.  Though much better, time has its influence & there are better influences for than that.  I hope soon to be able to come among my friends without the pain it still is to me, but I am sure you will excuse me now.  Mr Marsh best compliments, and requests to return his best thanks to you for your obliging invitation, but it is not in his power to dine in town this week.
I am my dear Mrs Thompson very truly yours
Anne Marsh
Eastbury, Feb 21st [1847?].

26 March 1847.  Letter from Hannah Roscoe to her sister Anne Marsh.  The letter is addressed to; Mrs Marsh, Eastbury, Watford, Herts, England, via France.  Postmarks include HEIDELBERG 27 Mar 1847, WATFORD 31 March1847.  The letter reads:

. . . [Bin Nouie?]
Heidelburg
finished March 26th [1847]
My dearest Anne
I do not mean to return your long silence in kind, knowing well how much more fully occupied your time is than mine, & I should not have delayed writing so long had I not been at last after all my boasting seized with influenza which has been very prevalent here, which laid me up for some time, & left me very weak & incapable of doing anything.  It was partly brought on as my bad colds usually are by imprudence, fancying I was so strong & might do anything , so one Sunday morning I went to church though I was forewarned by a lady who had come out again from finding the floor of the room which is our substitute for a church, wet with a fresh mopping.  After dinner I added to this imprudence by going out in an intense cold east wind & at night was attacked by a severe sore throat.  I however cured the most distressing symptoms in two days with my . . . [homoepathices?], but then imprudence the second, fancied myself quite well, & set about my usual occupations sewing & writing one or two letters instead of keeping perfectly quiet as I ought, & so brought on fever which I could not get rid of & so Richard Hutton [her son in law] would not let me rest till he sent Dr Pickford to me, whom I found a remarkably pleasing young man, & who did me a great deal of good but I have not been out two or three times & still feel very weak & . . . [can de liate?], though it is nearly a month since.  It is mortifying not to get out "more", now we have beautiful weather, & the feeling of spring, though there is still a coldness in the air which brings on cough if I expose myself to it, however I have almost entirely escaped the old enemy in my throat which is a great proof that my general health is much improved.  I cannot be surprised though I am grieved to hear that all your poor dear girls are failing, & that you have yourself been not at all well.  Even the efforts for patience & resignation will tell on the physical frame.  I often think of what Mrs Tollet said at the time of my mother's death, your father will feel it more & more till the first year is over.  I begin to feel better now the year is over, now that sad week is past in which that sad sad face was scarcely ever from before my eyes.  Oh my dearest Anne your loss as a loss is unspeakably greater than mine & certainly required more faith & submission to resign such a treasure, but you are blessed that you did not for so long a time witness such fearful suffering which at this time agonize my heart to think of, that your beloved one was taken from life & joy & happiness here, to blessedness there, what she is gone to blessedness there.  I do not for a moment doubt, & that she was taken when she was, is a source now of unutterable thankfulness, but the dark comes between me & the sight of her in bliss.  You can only think of yours as having been, & being happy, grievous as is that left to you & your dear girls & perhaps as William [Hannah's husband Willam Stanley Roscoe] says to me blessed are those who die giving.  I am very glad that those two dear young men were such a sweet comfort to you.  There is something in the affectionate attentions all very young men, very soothing & touching & they have that great charm of being demonstrative.  I often feel the wave of this in my children, with most tender & affectionate hearts.  They have all a shyness & reserve which checks the free play of feeling except when very strongly brought forth.  I have however here some of the consolation which arises from a new spring of affection being opened.  My young men are rather remarkably definitive in the advantages of person & manner, which add & charm to the real excellences of our two delightful nephews, but it is impossible for two young men to be more affectionate more attentive more admiring (something to an old woman) than mine are.  It is also a very strong interest that I almost think I have been the means of saving Richard's life [Hannah's son in law Richard Hutton].  He looked so dreadfully ill, worn down to over work at too early an age with a naturally delicate frame & . . . [excitable?] temperament that I thought he would not live & he has told me he thought he should have been left in the cemetery if we had not come.  He is still far from strong, but I am thankful to see that my motherly care & advice which he is very . . . [duiele?] in taking, pleasant & cheerful society, & greater inducements to taking exercise have already done much for him: he is indeed worth saving, so fine & advanced on intellect (he carried off almost all the prizes at University College) combined with such a high moral sense, & such deep religious feeling I have seriously ever met with in so giving a man only twenty.  His brother too, though less interesting, is so very excellent that it is impossible to see much of him, & not feel an affection for him, & has also a good deal of taste in the arts.  So they have made our stay here much more agreeable than it would have been, particularly since we lost Mr Robertson.  I have also the satisfaction of seeing my poor dear Mary [Hannah's daughter Anna Mary Hutton] improved both in health and spirits.  I was scarcely aware till we came here how very deeply she has suffered, she is one of those who naturally conceal their feelings & she also feared to aggravate mine by showing hers.  Since we came here our hearts have been more opened to one another, to our mutual happiness.  We owe this in part to Mr Robertson who seemed quite anxious to impress on me, & when he went away . . . [with a role?] to her in the subject the danger of fancying there was any virtue in . . . [successive?], concealing the feelings & not being willing to give or receive the sympathy, & it made me think that I had been . . .  . . . [weary auihert eving?] her my sympathy & encouraging her to show it to me & now to my delight she has really quite a different expression of countenance to what she has had since her sister's illness began.  So coming abroad has . . . [answered?] in this, & Mary . . . [wogs?] & I hope we shall come home renovated & strengthened for whatever duties lie before us.  I cannot keep so formed for society.  I have desired William to give you a sovereign from me & 5 shillings from Mary for the Irish it is no doubt by far the best mode of administering relief & if all the money had been given in this way by persons on the spot who knew how to give it in the best way, much more good would have been done.  As it is, I fear much has been wasted & much given to those who were undeserving or were not in extreme need.  I have had to give to the collections both at our chapel in Liverpool & the church here: all the world seems very liberal in this most distressing occasion.  I think nearly a thousand pounds, was a great deal to collect in our two congregations in Liverpool & the little chapel at the Park for though there are a few . . . [nill?] person among us, the numbers altogether are comparatively so small.  Mr Mortimer will I believe take care that what he collected, will be well disposed of.  I have also sent to desire . . . [&3?] to be given to the poor in Liverpool where the Irish all flock over in such numbers & where fever has already begun its ravages.  I hear the most dismal accounts of the state of the poor both there and in Manchester. I only mention what I have given that you may not think me parsimonious in what I have sent you: or that being at this distance makes me forget the sufferers at home.  There are also claims on ones charity here, for there really seems a . . . [generality?] of distress throughout Europe.  What is to be the end of it God knows but no doubt it will eventually result in good.  I have always the greatest faith in that.  On Sunday we were at a Lutheran christening.  Our German Master Dr Deppe had a little girl born about a month ago & asked Mary & Emma to be god mothers, & as I found it involved no confession of faith & no responsibilities, I did not make any objection.  The Ceremony took place at Dr Deppe's house, as they do not take very young children into their very cold churches, at this season.  The clergyman was a very rotund, well to do looking person.  First, there was a long exportation of which I of course did not understand a word.  As far as the girls did, they said it was generally on the importance of religious education.  The child was brought in, in a sort of little mattress in a case & washed  . . .  . . .  . . . [mosticl matter?] which the girls had . . . [geued?] they held it in turns.  The clergyman did not take the child in his arms, but desired the cap might be taken off, & that one of the godmothers would support the child's head while he washed it all over with water, baptising in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Ghost.  She was called Anna Maria Emma.  I like the idea of our having a little object of interest to connect us with a place we are got so extremely attached to.  Then we have chocolate wine & cake.  Dr D came out with us to walk, took tea with us, & joined our Sunday evening service which Joseph Hutton always gives us.  Dr Deppe called on me the day before, & the rest being out, we had a good deal of religious conversation.  He is what is called a Rationalist rather Antisupernationalist.  He told me he was brought up in the strictures & orthodox opinions, & gave me a description of the agonies of mind he suffered when he found he could not retain that belief, numbers he said cast off all religious belief entirely.  In consequence, he was thankful he had stopped short.  There may be a great deal of religious feeling & faith & even a good deal of Christianity retained which the belief in a particular revelation is abandoned.  The first I can well understand, but how the existence of Christianity is accounted for, & how it retains sufficient hold on the mind to produce faith, & obedience without us being considered as at least a divine revelation sanctioned that is proved by . . . [nuiades?], I do not understand, in fact I do not believe it ever can have the same hold on the mind: but I fancy you would say & feel the same as me, that I do of the Nationalists yet I think there must be a difference in all those who considered Christ as divinely appointed, the image of God, & the . . . [word manifest?] in the . . .[flerk?] from all those who consider him only like any other very good man sent by God for the benefit & instruction of mankind which is the idea of the Antisupernationalists: but these are excellent men among men.  What a letter I have sent you.  When I get to chattering to you my dearest Anne, I know not where to leave off.  I send you a . . . [pessae?] I cut out of a newspaper lent to me, thinking it might be interesting in your farming affairs.  Mary begs me to say that she was on the point of writing to Georgy when I said I was in the middle of a letter to you so she will defer it a little time.  She joins in kindest love to . . . [your family?] & Emma begs you to accept her kind regards.  Yours most affectionately
H E Roscoe.
Hoping that you and yours will by the same experiment in a year or so I wish you and some of your girls could come and meet us somewhere this summer.  Do think if it would not be practicable?  I see Robert Mackintosh is made governor of St Kitts.  I suppose he will like it though it seems a kind of banishment to me.

28 April [1847].  Letter from Anne Marsh to her brother James Stamford Caldwell.  Black margin around the page. No envelope. The letter reads as follows:

Eastbury April 28th
My dear Stamford
I desired Mr Bentley to forward you a copy of my History, addressed to you at Linley Wood near Newcastle Staffordshire.  I think you would not have received this little tribute of an honest affection without one little line to assure me you had received it and as I am afraid Mr Bentley has been rather negligent in this respect, or that I may have given him the wrong address, perhaps you will have it enquired for at Newcastle, and let me know in order to regulate my accounts with him.  I do not hope you will have the patience to read my book, it looks so formidably long but I have endeavoured to make it as entertaining as I can.  The subject interests, it is such a romantic time, of the Roman story.  We have been in London for two days staying with Sir Hyde [Sir Hyde Parker 1785-1856].  He has let Melford [near Sudbury] as I think you know, and got a very pretty home in South Audley Street.  He offered it to me for a month, but I was too busy with a dreadful novel [Norman's Bridge was published by Richard Bentley, 1847] which I promised Mr Bentley & which the terrible blow of last year [death of her son Martin, 10/8/12] made me for some time unable to undertake that I really have worked till I am half dead, & been obliged to before all plans until my task was done.  I went however for the change & refreshment of a few days.  We had a very pleasant stay.  He is the kindest of hosts.  We had the use of his Brougham [an enclosed horse drawn carriage on 4 wheels], & got about and amused ourselves very well.  One night we went to the Hay Market & saw Money the . . . Planet, & the light troops of the 1st Jones's.  It is so long since I have been at a play that I was amused very well by Money, which is a much better comedy than I should have expected our day could produce, & with Buckstone [playwright and actor John Baldwin Buckstone 1802-1879] in the two little pieces, he is capital.  We did not get to the new Opera House which they say is very brilliant & the new female counter tenor Alboni [Marietta Alboni 1826-1894 was a renowned Italian contralto opera singer] one of the finest voices that has appeared among us for some time.  Many jokes are made upon Miss Jenny Lind [the Swedish opera singer Johanna Maria Lind, 1820-1887] & her clemele with Bann.  I leave them to your ingenuity & will not do them the honour to repeat about "hot cross Banns" & so on.  They say her voice is too delicate to fill our vast theatres.  Who should come down to see us the other day but Francis . . . [Nares?].  I have not seen him since happy Anne Caldwell days.  It was like a revenant.  It is as a revenant of that past which now is beginning to look so distant.  He enquired much after you and Linley Wood which it appears he once visited, but I had forgotten the occurrence altogether as I dare say you have.  Louisa is staying at Ryde with Lindy Pele.  She says she has met a Miss Vernon there "dressed in pink gange & a profusion of curls & is a fine looking woman about 40 I should think, who played really most beautifully, & was very good natured about it.  She came to me and asked whether I was not a niece of Mr Caldwell's.  She did not know any of the rest of the family".  Louisa says she spoke as if she had been well acquainted with you.  Is she a revenant.  I never heard you mention her, but as you have . . . [hosts?] of acquaintance de par le monde, with whom I am not acquainted, that is no proof that you are not the Mr Caldwell in question.  I am in hopes to see the end of my novel today.  I have found it a very tiresome task this time & feel very much exhausted by the labour & expect that it will prove my Anne of Geierstein [a very successful novel by Sir Walter Scott, 1829].  I had a letter from Eliza a few days ago.  She has not been quite well, but is now talking of her movements southward altogether this wintering almost seems to have answered perfectly.  William not with us two weeks ago, looking better than I have seen him for a long time.  London suits him well which is fortunate in deed.  This is the longest letter I have written for a very long time.  I have been obliged to give up letter writing almost entirely till I have done this horrid task of the novel to which I must now return.  I am ever my dearest Stamford's affectionate sister
Anne M.

Letter from Hannah Eliza Roscoe to her sister Anne Marsh.  Addressed to Mrs Marsh, Eastbury, Watford, Herts, Via France.  Postmarked München 13 Aug 1847, Watford 19 Aug.  Black wax seal HER.

Munich August 12th [1847]
My dearest Anne
I will begin a letter to you, though I know not when I shall finish it, but I have a little time before we begin to see light at this place & before William comes whom I am expecting in a few days.  F Wedgwood told me of your novel which in some degree accounted for your very long silence which I did not expect you to break till your history was out [The Protestant Reformation in France, by Anne Marsh, 1847], & you had returned home from London, but after that I was wondering not to have a few lines till I heard this explanation.  The worst of these long silences is, that one can never write with the same ease, or feel though one may know that those we love have so much care to hear of one.  It is as you say vain to attempt to give any history of my life & thoughts since I wrote last which was soon after I received your letter, the beginning of the year: but I think you will like to hear from myself, that we are all well, & that we have enjoyed our journey extremely.  We have been a tour embracing much beautiful & good scenery & many fine towns, but it is vain to attempt to give any account of what we have seen, or the impression on my mind, though I have often in the course of my travels felt a wish that I could impart some of my feelings to you & have the sympathy of a person more of my own age.  I certainly have some of the rapture & enthusiasm with which I should have seen these things in my early age a good deal sobered, I should rather say than diminished, & though my companions I saw had a little more of these than remain to me, I think my enjoyment was on the whole nearly as great as any of them: & I think I have a more active spirit in seeing every thing than any of them.  We have great cause for thankfulness that we have all got so far safe & well.  We have not even had a hazad that, R Hutton says was all we wanted to give a zest to our travelling, but I was not at all anxious for this excitement, & must confess to my weakness in having my pleasure rather diminished by the tremendous precipices the road goes over in the finest parts of our tour but they are generally well guarded, & really no danger.  What I have been most struck with in towns was the Cathedral of Milan, which though so little all the pictures of it, strikes one as something grander & more . . .[sooknee?], & more perfectly beautiful, than one could have imagined, & all this is much increased by going on the marble roof, & seeing all the sculptures so finely finished, all so perfect.  Then Verona such a picturesque town, full of memories of the middle ages, with its most magnificent amphitheatre taking one back to the Romans.  These two buildings fill one with wonder & admiration at the skill & power of man, how contrasted in their objects, one devoted to the glory of god, the other to feed the worst passions of men.  After that came most enchanting Venice which charmed all our party.  When I was put, on first arriving, into one of the black gondolas on the grand canal & saw some of the grand desolate palaces on the side rising as it . . .[well?], out of it, & then entered the narrow . . . [seleve water?] streets, it seemed like realizing a dream.  It is so like all the accounts one has read of it, & all the pictures one has seen, & yet there is a beauty & a charm about it which must be seen to be felt.  I think it consists in some degree in the great contrast between the decaying splendour, the remains of former magnificence, the extreme quiet occasioned by no sound of wheels, & on the grand canal no sound of feet, with the life & gaiety of the people, & the vivacity with which everything seems going . . . [only?] the continual sound of music, the lights passing in the evenings along the water, & the clear air & splendid skies.  One evening we went out in our gondola to hear a band which went down the canal in a boat.  It was a most gay scene.  The females of all classes dress very gay, & smart people have many of them their gondolas rowed by servants in gay . . . [biveuirs?] or fancy dresses, such pressing forwards, the boats darting by one another, such calling of the boatmen, particularly when a shower of rain made all press to get under shelter of the Rialto, that it was a most animated scene, & as we passed the fine deserted palaces, one could not keep thinking of the splendid scene it must have been when the nobles followed the . . . [doge?] to wed the . . . [Adriatic?].  It was very hot whilst we were there, & nothing but going about in the most easy of all conveyances & catching a little breeze on the water could have enabled us to bear the fatigue of seeing so many pictures & the magnificent churches with their fine pictures, & statues, wood carvings fine basso & alto relievo, marble pillars, & the affluence of beautiful marble inlaid in the alters & floors in the most elegant patterns, the gold & silver & decorated alters takes off from the effect.  We went into one of the few palaces still inhabited by the descendents of the former owners, & saw what must have been the former splendour, the floors all inlaid marble.  There is something very oriental in the style of the buildings in Venice.  St Mark's particularly one might fancy a mosque or pagan temple more than a Christian church.  The roof & walls covered mosaics, which are very wonderful, & some really striking pictures.  You will imagine how interesting it was to go over the Doges Palace, over the bridge of Sighs into the terrible prisons, & see the scenes of which one has read so much.  The walls of the council & senate rooms still decorated with the pictures of the . . . [anuivet?] triumphs of Venice.  The person who showed us the prisons was anxious to prove to us that they were not so bad as we had been led to believe, in fact though stone dens they had been lined with wood, the great suffering must have been from want of air & light; different sets of prisons, different passages over the bridge of sighs for common & political offenders, the former tried and executed publically, but the latter as he said significantly . . . ["seqretamene"?] & pointed out the dark passage through which the priest was introduced to confess the latter, the stone on which he was afterwards seated to be strangled with a silken cord, & the low door through which the body was taken to the water to be thrown into the sea at a place where it was death to cast a net.  We went several times out on the . . . [Layuixe?] to some of the numerous islands among others to Lord Byrons . . . [Ouheniou?] convent, where we found a most cheerful agreeable brother of the order taking four . . . [Conyuoyes?] which they are all able . . . [ea?] to learn . . . [a?] two dead ones, . . . [whe?] showed us their golden printing press, for the distribution of religious tracts, . . . [library xe?] & looked amused at R Huttons simple question whether he had known Lord Byron & gave the very satisfactory answer "Je v'etours pas alars envie".  This town is excessively uninteresting after all the old picturesque towns we have seen.  All find buildings & most of the churches are new & not in very good taste, a great tawdriness in the ornamentation, streets often unpaved & always . . .  [unglayzed?]: the air does not agree with us, & we are impatiently expecting William that we may get away.  The gallery is certainly well worth seeing, its treasures & all of the Dutch & Flemish schools, very fine Italian pictures.  The . . . [sale?] filled with Rubens is a very fine collection of them.  Many pictures by very old masters, are I suppose very valuable, but not interesting to common observers.  . . . Innsbruck is a beautiful town in the most charming situation, in the fertile valley of the Inn, with wooded & cultivated hills bounding it, & beyond but so near as to seem almost to over power it, the grand precipitous mountains, some with snow at their summits.  Our whole tour through the Tyrol was one changing scene of beauty & grandeur, the valleys are so lovely & the mountains so steep & precipitous, & the defiles so narrow, sometimes only room for a rapid river in the deep cleft of the mountains, & the road are upon a ledge on the side of the hill, sometimes going close to the river, at others far above it.  The decent from St Gothard is very striking, & the road most . . . [uneven?] descending by such a number of zigzags, looking like the coil of a serpent beneath, with a grand steep mountain before you, & the rapid  . . .  . . . . . . [Seieire, hard not seen at the foot?]; its whole valley from thence to . . . [Bellarizona?]most beautiful, the beauty of the Italian fertility gradually taking the place of the wild scenery we were leaving, but mountains all the way, & a continued succession of cascades, any one of which one should have . . . [quell nules?] to see in Scotland & Wales.  What I have seen in as much of, Switzerland as we came through part of it gave me however no idea of real mountains till we ascended the . . . [Helvid?].  The highest & grandest of all the mountain passes.  We slept at small inns at the foot & little way all, three nights before the weather would allow of our going up, but at last had a fine day, rain below was snow on the mountains, & it was intensely cold when we got to the regions of perpetual snow, & came to the dreary house at the top of the pass: the highest permanently inhabited house in Europe.  The mountains give a greater impression of height because they are more conical & more isolated, & the snow is such a pure white, lies so high on the highest parts.  The road is formed in that some zigzags rising first above the fine woods, then glaciers beneath us, then to the barren regions with only a little grass, & quantities of wild flowers of the most vivid colours as they always are in the alpine regions, then snow, long before reaching the summit the road is seen far above in this form on the mountain [small diagram here showing a zigzag going up a mountain] covered with a strong wooden shed to protect it from the snow, we were down to the first station on the other side, where we dined, & most fortunately met our two boys who had gone a pedestrian excursion through the mountains to . . . [explore?] the other way, & had got lost in a snow storm & met with no little peril, & great fatigue & discomfort.  The descent is always the grandest part of these mountain passes, & we had the . . . [October?] Spitz the 3rd mountain in Europe in full view, & one seems sometimes almost hanging over the immense depths below.  I did not think of writing so much description of our journey when I . . . [took?] rather a small sheet, so I have ventured on a second half.  It has added much to the pleasure of our journey to have such agreeable companions, & Richard Hutton is so clever that he has done everything in the world for me, made all the bargains & kept all the accounts, he is quite at home in Germany & learnt a . . . [bough?] of Italian in his last month at Heidelberg for travelling purposes.  I found the little Italian I know very useful, & could . . . [give?] really understand what the sight showing people told us.  We are much later in the season than we expected at this place, & are now waiting for William who said he should leave London on the 3rd & about we are anxiously expecting every day, being quite tired of the place, where we have not been a week, & where there is nothing interesting but the galleries, which are very often a few houses in a morning.  We went last night to the opera last night & heard some pretty good music & singing, but the latter is very much spoiled by the orchestra playing so loud.  It ended by a representation of an . . .  [autodase?] flames & a poor . . . [feusep?] dropped into it, which as RH said excited my moral indignation that such a spectacle should be brought forward in a place of amusement, & I contend that it is much worse than to represent men killing one another in battle or in fact the representation of any other form of death.  Now I will finish this long letter which I have been several days about having another to write in the mean time.  I do not expect dearest Anne, that you ever can get over the . . . [immediate?] loss you have sustained, & I can fully . . . [anticipate?] the feelings you express, it is not so much the loss, to that I can reconcile myself with the thought of how much it is . . . [her gain?], but it is all the dreadful circumstances, & my own regrets which come upon me now & then in any scene with such a sense of pain, & I very much dread the going home.  I have some way or other lost . . .  [Hilary Carterl's ?] note which I showed to you at Eastborough, which I regret very much, it spoke of my dear child in such a gratifying manner.  I fear there is no house in . . . [old have'y?] found by any of you.  I hope we shall be at . . . [fever?] about the middle of September where if you have time & inclination I should be very thankful for a few lines from you.  I expect to be in London the 2nd week in October.  JSC [their brother James Stamford Caldwell] wishes me to come to him that month in which case I shall return to London to pay my visits then.  With much kind love from Mary to your . . . [uide?].  Ever yours affectionately.
HE Roscoe.

25 December 1847.  Letter from F (Frances?, Fanny?) Allen, to Anne Marsh.  Envelope addressed to Mrs A Marsh, Eastborough, Watford Station, Herts.  Penny Red postage stamp.  Postmarked Tenby 25 Dec 1847, Watford 27 Dec.

Haywood Lodge. December 25th [1847]
My dear Anne
I am disappointed that I am returned home without having seen you.  I had determined that this should not be the case, but winter & weather over ruled me.  This day week Fanny & I returned from a breakfast at Mr Roscoes with a faint expectation of our seeing you but the rain was so incessant & violent that, my feeling was more of a wish than a hope.  Winter came on me, not unawares, but so swiftly that I found I had left much undone, that I wished & intended to do, and that it was time to get home for duties & warm clothing.  I left 3 little visits unpaid that I would have given a good deal to have paid, viz: to yourself, Joe Wedgwood & Mrs Sydney Smith.  I fear I may never see the latter again, at least the chances are against it.  She looks as if a fatal disorder had laid hold on her, the dropsy.  She interests me deeply now, "her life, of life is fled", & I should have been very glad if I could have arranged it so as to have arranged a week with her.  I dined one day there & met her daughter Emily & her husband and girls.  I liked what I saw of each of them, but I fear very much for the result of Mr Hibbert's illness.  I was very glad to catch a day of Eliza [Hannah Eliza Roscoe] her foreign journey & stay seems to have done her so much good that I am sorry she could not stay longer at Heidelberg.  I did not see Mary [Hutton nee Roscoe], and I am glad I did not, her dejection and unwellness would have painfully recalled her poor sister, and I should have been anticipating for poor Eliza fresh trials & sufferings, now when she recovers from the effects of the influenza, & the dejection attendant on her return home, I may hear of her as cheerful & making her mother happy.  I have passed a very pleasant, more than 3 month absence, and I find on my return . . . [Jessie?] looking particularly well & cheerful.  Emma is absent at Isabella's but the carriage goes for her on Monday.  If you had come on Saturday last you would have found Laura Coleridge waiting to see you.  I cannot say, she pleases me much, though I think she is a favourite of Fanny's.  She was pouring forth a lecture on poetry, & verse, and I did not feel inclined to agree to her canons of criticism.  Lord Byron was a bad writer of verse & not a good poet etc.  Shelley & Tennison much before him.  His Spencerian measure very bad owning at the same time she had read little of Childe Harold & not at all the last canto.  I wish you had been there to have stemmed her a little.  I saw Patty yesterday.  She is much better off here in health than in London.  . . . [Jessie?] complains a little of her being too much of the "Ancient Mariner" to her stopping her till she has told her tale.  I will not play the same . . . [part?]  by you though by paper & ink.  Therefore God bless you my dear Anne.  I was very glad to catch that little sight of Mr Marsh which was a pleasant one, for he looked well & . . . [weathered?].  Kind love to your girls.
Ever your's dear Anne affectionately
F Allen
When I come again into your parts it shall be summer, & I will see Eastbury.
. . . [Jessie's?]  love.

If you have any information to add to what is listed please contact me on jj@jjhc.info

(Home) (Ann Marsh-Caldwell) (Arthur Marsh) (Martin Marsh) (Letters References & Notes 1780-1874)