My dear Grosvenor
I have a commission to trouble you with. at Number 374 Oxford
Street are to be sold certain parsnips, called sugar parsnips, from which, the
advertisement states that sugar may be procured by an easy process, & in
considerable quantities. the price of the quantity to be sold is
half-a-guinea. [1] Now some
friends of mine wish to try the experiment. Will you call there & purchase
them, & leave the direction to Mrs Jardine to be left at Mr Cottles –
Wine Street – Bristol. [2] I will pay you when we meet in May, & if you
are disposed to try them at Brixton, you may take part & try the experiment
at a cheap rate. the mans name is Pritchett. I shall be obliged to you, to do
this the first time you go to Soho Square, as this is the season to plant
them.
My brother Tom is
H.M.S. Mars. Spithead or elsewhere. I thank you for your last.
I shall see you on the 10 of May – & will pass the following
Sunday with you at Brixton early in the week after I am bound for Yarmouth. Oh – de Musæo. [3] Of the two copies reserved for me in your
hands – I resign one for John May, &
you may carry it to Carlisles
for him. our garden scheme [4] is I hope in a fair
way.
yrs for ever & ever.
RS.
Friday 30 March. 1798 [5]
I am quite ashamed to have forgotten to send this letter to you on
Saturday [6]
Notes
* Address: To /
G. C. Bedford Esqr / Exchequer / London
Seal:
[partial, illegible]
Endorsement: 30 March 1798
MS: Bodleian
Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Pritchett’s Fruit
Warehouse, 374 Oxford Street, London, specialised in new, imported species
of fruit and vegetables, including the Transylvanian Cattle Cabbage, the
German Turnip, and the Great Flemish Carrot. They advertised regularly in
the metropolitan press. Adverts for the sugar parsnips – an alternative to
slave-produced sugar cane – seem not to have survived. BACK
[2] The Jardines
owned a small estate at Pickwick, near Bath, and Mrs Jardine was presumably
considering planting sugar parsnips there. In 1798, Cottle issued the
two-volume Sermons, By the Late Rev. David Jardine, of Bath.
Published from the Original Manuscripts, by the Rev. John Prior
Estlin. BACK
[3] Grosvenor Charles Bedford’s translation of
Musaeus (fl. c. early 6th century), The Loves of Hero and
Leander (1797). BACK
[4] John May and
Southey’s plan for a convalescent hospital. BACK
[5] 1798: Inserted
in another hand. BACK
[6] I am quite … Saturday:
Written on the address leaf. BACK
