My dear Cousin.

You must not apologize for giving trouble, for I can only assure you that it is both a pride & a pleasure to assist your work—and if I descanted a little on what had to be done to the view of Elston, it was only to prepare you for a very different looking drawing, which you might imagine almost a different place, only that I shall do it by rule.² I have two pretty views of Elston as it is now, and they are some assistance as they show the real proportions, wh’ are not trustworthy in the old drawing—

Sir Brook Boothby lived at Ashbourne Hall, & he & his wife were “Cat & Dog”, & only kept together by their one little daughter—6 years old, and a perfect beauty. It died of brain-fever—and, after the funeral, Sir B and Lady Boothby drove off in different directions, and never met again. The sonnets he composed on the child’s death are most hopeless and melancholy—³ The epitaph on the monument says “The unfortunate Parents ventured their all on this frail bark, and the wreck was total”

He had a beautiful recumbent figure done by Banks⁴ the sculptor wh’. is in Ashbourne Church, and of wh’. this gives some little idea, I have often sketched it.

It is represented with bandages round the head. I believe there were faults on both sides, as regards the conjugal differences. Sir B B was elegantly literary and a dilettante and he was so extravagant as to spend three fortunes and to die poor after all.⁵

Believe me | yours very affect^y— | V. H. Darwin

May I ask you to observe that my address is altered. A man came yesterday and put new numbers on all the doors in the street. I am glad to have done with Park Villas, for, I assure you there was neither Park nor Villa to be seen!.