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via Canada 11 Welfield Place 21 Feby ‘62
Friday night
Dear Ann
It is very inconvenient to me generally to write to you on Saturdays, because the counting houses are closed at an earlier hour on that day; & for the sake of Cropper Hodgson & Cos. clerks, I wish to get thro’ my work at their office as early as I can; - hence I am now writing to you in my bed =room, but well wrapped up & comfortable.
I recd. today your letter of 4/7th inst & mat= =thew’s of 7/8th via City of Washington.
I cannot tell whether our nephew William will or will not, be an acceptable guest with Mr. & Mrs. Hughes. – On parting with Mr. H__ yesterday, I asked him how his Sister was; & he said she that she was still confined to her bed-room, but better. She has been suf= =fering from a cold, he said. – I have not seen her yet, not having found my way to Thornhill, tho’ I passed near it last Sun- =day, & was in two minds whether to call or not. Perhaps I ought to have done so, & might have done so, had I known (as I after =wards learnt) where Thornhill is. –
Matthew gives me some further insight into William’s motives in coming to Liverpool, or rather, he says he approves of it, & would wish me to be here when William is here.
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Indeed he goes farther than this, & says he does not much expect me to return to N. York before the autumn[underlined], as he thinks it will be more for our interest that I should remain in Lpool, where my presence is very beneficial to Maury Bros., & may be still more so.
I may remark, in reply to this suggestion, that altho’ I may be more useful to Maury Bros here than I should be in N. York, it does seem that my usefulness does, or can, extend much further than in looking after the Cotton we are now holding; & that I am now aiming at selling our the remr. of the Surates (436 bales) at 8d. per lb.-
Somehow or other there seems now to be more mistrust of Cotton here[underlined] than there is in Man =chester; & this week the spinners have been al- =lowed to help themselves very freely & at very slight improvement in price.
It is a relief to me to find that the shipt. of T is valued at prices that would yield some profit. –
I am very much obliged to you for the very long & interesting letter I have recd today.
In reading it aloud at T this evening to the 3 ladies (now in their beds) I witheld all that relates to William’s revelations to Sarah about Rutson, & your remarks about Jeff.
I would rather that William had kept those revelations to himself; and in a
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spirit of brotherly charity & affection – if he has any of those feelings towards Rutson – I think he ought to have done so. – But I appreciate his kindness, & James’, in sending respectively the $40 & $50 to Rutson’s wife. –
Mr. Hodgson consulted me to-day before wri= =ting a note to Rutson, which goes open to Maury Bros. It encloses a copy of C. H. & Cos account current with Maury & Wilder, & with himself, so that he may see these, &, if he likes, send back his comments on that with M & W__, before it is sent by C. H. & Co to Mr. Henry C. Wainewright at Boston. – I had understood from Rutson’s long letter to me from Boston, just after he had been released from the Suffolk County jail, & had been before the Court, that he considered it a triumph for him, that Mr. H. C. Wainewright had been selected & appointed as Receiver for Maury & Wilder’s affairs, because he seemed to think that Mr. Wainewright was friendly to himself, & the opposite to the Wilders. But Mr. Hodgson casually remarked to me today, that it seemed to him, from Mr. Wainewrights letters to C. H.& Co., that he was decidedly biassed in favour of the Wilder! I have not seen any of these letters from Mr. Wainewright, nor do I want to do so, for I am not sufficiently informed of the matters in respect between Rutson & Wilder;
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nor have I any inclination to interfere at all in the matter. –
I think, as you do, that it is very possible that the imprisonment at Ft. Lafayette may have a beneficial, moral effect upon Rutson. But it seems quite otherwise in Fontaines case, as is plainly shewn by his letter to you. –
It appears to me that these two lads have the keys of their prison within their reach, to liberate themselves whenever they like: that they have only to promise not to repeat their offence, & to abstain from returning to the South until the War is over.
I cut an article from the Liverpool Post this morng. which I send to Matthew. It is on the observations of the Compass in Iron vessels. It would have been interesting, I think, to Matthew F, had he remained at the Observatory. –
Mr. Weed is sorry to hear of his uncle’s plan of going to Savannah, & chiefly on his aunt’s account. – He looks the pecuniary reason as insufficient.
Liverpool is full of people I have been accus =tomed to see at N. Orleans & N. York. – Eliza =beth Bold hears much of your Mrs. [Tra.....?]
with
who is staying at[crossed out], her husband, at his uncle’s house – Mr. W. Stuart. – There is Mr. Prioleau of Charleston here, of whom I have heard many speak, as a general favorite. He is of the firm of [Frazer Trenkolen?] & Co., who in the past 12
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5 mos. have made a great deal of money & not a little of it by running the Blockade.
He was married a while ago here to a most beautiful young lady of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, a Miss Smith, who was stay =ing at Mrs. Blodgett’s. – Mr. & Mrs. Prioleau are now the occupants of Allerton Hall, which is rented to them for 2 years by its ow- =ner, Mr. Johnston, Mr. [Moke’s?] brother in law.
Mr. & Mrs. Gilmour (of N.O.) have been living for some time will[crossed out] in Bedford St.
Mr. R. Hutchison, the present Mayor, gives a grand Ball at the Town Hall, on the 26th.; & this morning a card of invitation came to
thro’ her brother Tom
Elizabeth Bold ^ to which I carried her affir- =mative reply & left it at the Town Hall this morng. – Of course she is pleased & busy in preparations.
Elizabeth & Mary called, by request, to-day upon Mrs. Tom Irlam at her lodgings in Parliament St., to give their opinion as to some arrangements in her parlour, such as hanging up a picture of her late husband etc.
They found Miss Irlam there, the only one now left of that large family; & they had not seen her before for a long time – not since Tom Irlam’s death, or for some time before it.
She is kindly disposed, as Mary tells me, to Dora, & has ample means of helping her, without inconvenience to herself. But
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Dora has a strong spirit of independence, & wishes to lean upon her sister in law as little as possible; and with this feeling, she wishes to ply her needle in fancy work for sale, & would like it to be known that such is her wish – i.e. to those who might be disposed to give her work. When Mary told me of this, after dinner today, I ob- =served that I thought that Dora would find knitting worsted-work more profitable than fancy needle-work; – and I said I would ask you to give me the title, & publisher’s name & address, of your learned or scientific book on knitting. Will you, therefore, be so good as send those particu =lars to me. – Mary said that Dora has already some book of the kind: but it may not be a elaborate & complete as yours.
a
I made a purchase today of ^ compound
cork-screw, in the same principle as the one you use, & presented it to this house= =hold, where they have nothing of the kind, & my strength of arm is now hardly adequate to the extraction of the cork from a bottle of wine, resting in a horizontal position, by means of the old-fashioned simple screw, without shaking the bottle & disturbing its contents.
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I asked Mr. J. W. Cropper today whether there were any later tidings from Sedgwick, & he said nothing later than Mr. Knightley had given me. –
When I asked Mr. K__ about John Wakefield, he said, I might infer how well he was; for recently rode on one day 50 miles [’50 miles’ underlined] (on
as I understood him)
horseback [‘horseback’ underlined]^ , & dined out after it! – He says Gunpowder is just as low in price as when I was at Preston Fell; whilst Saltpetre is decidedly dearer. –
Miss Maggie Addison was to return from London at 5 p.m. this afternoon, when her father was to meet her at Birkenhead.
Mr. Fredk. Rodewald tells me, in a letter this week, that he is to move into his new house, “Feldheim” (he has called it) at Wimbledon Common, London (SW.) – about the 1st. April, & says that if I stay on for the Exhibition, he bespeaks me for a room therein – (i.e. at “Feldheim” –
in English)
alias Fieldhome ^ which is all very kind: – but, as I have replied, I should not think, in case of remaining & visiting London to this end, of spending more that a night or so under his roof.
With love to all in both households, & to the two letter-carriers, whether now in bond =age or at large. Yours Affectionately
R Maury
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22nd. February (Office)
This is Genl Washington’s birth-day; & as
it will be equally observed & respected at both ends of the Country, what a fine opportunity for real patriots both, North & South to seize such an occasion for stirring appeals to their fellow countrymen on behalf of Peace & Good will.
Mr. John Wakefield Cropper tells me he has recd. this morning a letter from his aunt Mary, in which she says she is much better, but very weak & still suffering from much pain. – It seems to me that the mere fact of a letter from her is clear proof of much
improvement.
I send you 3 more copies of the “Times” by this steamer. –
