Item 34 - Letter from Henrietta Eliza Milnes to her father Robert Pemberton Milnes

1 folded sheet.

Postmarked Harrogate, addressed to Robert Milnes at Fryston. - Addresses her father as 'Stimatissimo Signor Padre'. Must write in case he thinks she and Caroline have 'both thrown ourselves in the sulfur-well in despair at your long absense & our solitude'; quite the opposite is true, 'what with abusing the weather and reading the life of a sentimental old german eye doctor and now & then a little squalling' time is passing quickly. The only person they have seen 'beside the old Doctor who sat gossipping with us for some time yesterday' is Sir Edward Vavasour. Comic story of Caroline smuggling in a bottle of sherry and hiding it under the bed; it got broken, she preserved a thimbleful which all evaporated, it 'must have been originally a mixture of cowslip wine & bad brandy'.

Has bathed every day and thinks it has done her good. Catherine Wyvill should have been at Bawtry but she stayed in London at Sir John's request 'to mediate between Sir Piers [?] & the widow'.