Pièce 1 - Letter from Studholme John Hodgson to Richard Monckton Milnes

4ff.

Arlington Court, Barnstaple. - Called away from London by illness of stepson; hopes to visit Paris in April; anxious to see George Coleman's [Rodiad?]; shared stories of 'birch practice' with him in latter years; an acquaintance of Coleman's ascribed his own madness to childhood flogging. Longs to see Milnes's 'maître and maîtress' [an erotic porcelain group]; describes a china clock incorporating a flogging scene offered for sale at Brighton a few years ago; summoned courage to buy it after two days but found it had been sold to Lord Petre. In 1828 the Marquis d'Aligre showed him a Sèvres figure of Madame Dubarry supervising a birching, with other identifiable possessions, which was not in his possession when he died; recounts court anecdote alleged to have inspired the model; 'my friend the General', a cousin of the Marquis, did not know what had become of the group but thought it might have passed to Louis Philippe. Will get the work Milnes recommends. Exchanges erotic French books with 'a young [female] friend in Bryanston Square'; his 'clerical friend' is limited to English works but she has not yet read Fanny Hill.