WW is pleased JCH 'will come to our commemoration'. He hopes Mrs Hare will also attend: 'Come on the 21st and stay as long as your Christmas calls will let you'. WW hopes by this date he will have made some progress in the Hexameters [see WW to JCH, 13 Nov. 1836]: 'I am glad you are inclined to assent to my rules for hexameters'.
Ilfracombe - EH has received so many requests for a memorial for her deceased husband that she needs advice from his closest friends. She thinks a good starting point would be an examination of his letters to her and his friends - 'and in the course of time, they may be worked up into some form illustrative of him and his work. If you have any which you think suitable for such a purpose, will you entrust them to me for a time'.
News concerning the removal of the late Julius Hare's library to Trinity College - the first detachment is some 4022 books.
Herstmonceux, Hailsham - EH is glad WW wrote since she has been meaning to find out how Cordelia Whewell's sister is. WW's work gives both EH and Julius Hare much pleasure.
Herstmonceux - WW's letter was such a comfort to JCH at a time when he thought he was alone - 'It made me feel sure I was right' [presumably over the Renn D. Hampden affair. See JCH to WW, 20 Dec. 1847]. JCH has subsequently 'had the satisfaction of finding that almost all the competent judges agreed with us' [see also JCH's A Letter to the Dean of Chichester, on the Agitation Excited by the Appointment of Dr. Hampden to the See of Hereford, 1848]. JCH has heard that WW has been in numerous places this winter. Ma-man has been very ill since she returned to Exeter. Esther Hare thanks WW for his volume of sermons [Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, 1848]: 'I am glad you have publisht them, & very glad the young men have such solid substantial intellectual food along with their spiritual food'. What impression did the memoir of Sterling [John Sterling] make on Cambridge?
Herstmonceux - JCH expresses, at great length, his joy on marrying Esther Maurice: 'You will know, from my love for Maurice [John F. D. Maurice], what a delight it is to me to gain him for a brother. My beloved friend Sterling [John Sterling] planned this marriage for me in the year 1837, as I have since learnt, shewing his love for me in seeking out the brightest part of womanhood to be my wife'.
If Ma-Man is still with JCH on the 6th, WW will try to come to them for a day. He gave Mrs Augustus Hare a copy of his short critique of Hegel's vagaries to pass to JCH [On Hegel's Criticism of Newton's Principia, 1849]: 'There is nothing which so entirely deprives men of all respect for German heads in the matter of reasoning as the way in which they have allowed Hegel to dominate over them. It appears to me that on every subject he is equally fanciful and shallow though he may not be so demonstratively wrong as in the matter of Newton. Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] is mightily delighted and entertained with my paper'.