CHAPTER XX 

 "A FINE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN" 



Sir Joseph Banks to Sir Everard Home. 



" SPRING GROVE, September 24, 1817. 



YOUR permission to visit Lincolnshire this 

 autumn gives me spirits to undertake the 

 journey. I felt something so near the neces- 

 sity of going, that it would have been a want 

 of courage to decline it, which my countrymen would 

 have censured, had I passed the autumn without a 

 return of my last year's complaint. I have arranged 

 my journey with very short stages ; none so much as 

 forty miles a day, and on three of the four days I must 

 spend on the road I shall be received at the houses of 

 my friends. ... On Sunday I start, and stop the night 

 at Lord Salisbury's at Hatfield. The first week in 

 November brings me back, so that in truth I shall have 

 little time to grow worse. I expect every minute the 

 arrival of the Queen and Princesses from Windsor, who 

 have promised me the honour of a visit this day." 



When Banks wrote this letter, he was recovering from 

 an attack of gout. Sir Everard was himself an invalid, 

 with threats of the same tiresome complaint as his friend. 

 Banks evidently meant to go to Revesby once more. It 

 turned out to be the very last time he was able to do so. 

 He writes to Home on October 5, having just arrived : 



" Our journey was very slow, not more than thirty-five 



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