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DOWN,

BECKENHAM, KENT

RAILWAY STATION

ORPINGTON. S.E.R.

Jan 31 1881

My dear George,

The frost took its departure on Wed. last & very delightful it has been & the snow has disappeared miraculously quickly. The cows came galloping out w. their tails up floundering about. We may hope to hear from you in less than a week's time.

F. met w. the account of a dreadful storm at Lisbon, but I hope it did not reach you ─

Leo. got back to Chatham on

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Friday quite well, as he hopes I think Eras must miss him ─ I hope the Horaces' will soon be back at their own home ─ The visit has been utterly painful & dismal. Effie civil & doing the proper thing, but Ida feeling all the time on a piece of thin ice ─ They mean if possible not to go there again, & Mr F. has taken no pains to  shew that he cares about having Ida ─ Hope & Godfrey are there & she is q. cordial & affectionate to Ida ─ Alfred wrote home to say that he was v. uncomf. & the food bad ─ so U. Hensleigh telegraphed [illeg] to

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even telling At F. for him to come straight away ─ w. was v. insulting to his host. ─ & Alfred has joined his wife & had a reconciliation. The Litches are here, and we are all so [illeg] at once on politics that it is no longer a tabooed subject.

Hen. & Bessy are to go to the H. of Commons on Thursday night & see if Sir John can get them in ­─ I wish they might hear Gladstone. We are reading Livingstone's life (a very tiresome book) but giving such an odious account of the Boers that I quite hope we shall not give them self-government ─ Sir John's speech also made us quite of the opinion & they are only 40,000 ─

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Mr Fegan is doing great good in the village, if it will but hold. He has converted wicked old Reeves & Brookes said he did not think he wd even look at a public house

He has a meeting of men at his house on a Sunday p.m. & John Lewis is also a convert & a great many more, & temperance seems to be a regular [acomp.] of conversion. F's eczema keeps him still below par & he has a great deal of trouble w. signing papers about the removal of cattle (there is foot & mouth disease about) the papers are so abstruse & troublesome that it takes a long time. I remember v. hating madcap Violet as it is dismal.

[from p. 1:] I keep on spending a long time over the papers & admiring Gladstones speeches ─ they are so full of energy ─ Bessy is going to London & on to Basset for a week or so ─

yours my dear G.

E.D

Fr. called in at High Elms for 5 o'cl. tea yesterday!!!