Noblemen are sending deer from their parks, and game to be potted and preserved and sent over, and some have offered their yachts to convey the good things; and tradespeople have come forward to give liberally from the stocks in their shops and warehouses. So I shall enclose 1s. and think you cannot do better than give it as your mite in the good cause. There are as you say ‘such hosts of things to subscribe to,’ and I am very thankful for the privilege God gives me of being able to help. It is one of the greatest luxuries we can enjoy, depend upon it, my own darling.... There is no literally ‘war news,’ this week, but there have been terrible disasters among the combined fleets in the Black Sea. A most furious storm there the middle of last month has sadly damaged many of the ships, and destroyed several—one went down laden with the intended winter store (in many articles) for our whole army,—forty thousand specially warm great coats, and numerous other things in proportion, which cannot be replaced instanter, and it is feared that very great suffering by thousands for some weeks must be the consequence. The loss of that one vessel and cargo is estimated at £1,000,000. But, worse than all the money loss, many hundred people perished in that and other vessels. Your cousin Robert, whom I don’t know that you ever saw even, embarks to-morrow for the Crimea. He is a young lieutenant in the 18th foot.
I think if we keep of the same mind, we can manage a backgammon board when you come home, cups and all; only, as I am an old hand at it— having played, I should think almost half-a-century ago—you will expect, please, to be soundly beaten if we engage together. I have read ‘Patronage’—about the same period, perhaps, as when we played that game of backgammon, but I do think novels in general are very so- so things, and some so wondrous foolish that it is worse than waste of time to read them....
There was a good deal at Worthing[9] that was very pleasant, my sweet Sophy, and I can recollect it with satisfaction. If there was anything otherwise, it never even crosses my mind, I assure you; and do you get rid of all thoughts of it too. I have not the smallest doubt that, by God’s blessing, you will be a great ‘comfort’ to me. I have said so a thousand times, and you won’t prove Daddy a false prophet I know. I have nothing to ‘forgive’ my own child—_nothing whatever_, darling. You have had childish faults enough, I daresay, but they were ‘the faults of a child’ certainly, and I _could_ not remember a single one of them.