Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/469

 2ET.43.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 443

showing him forth as a fair-haired and fat man. I suppose you are not got fat yet ? Yours ever truly,

CHOLMONDELEY. 1

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, May 3, 1861.

MR. BLAKE, I am still as much an invalid as when you and Brown were here, if not more of one, and at this rate there is danger that the cold weather may come again, before I get

1 A word may be said of the after life of this magnanimous Englishman, who did not long survive his Concord correspond ent. In March, 1863, being then in command of a battalion of Shropshire Volunteers, which he had raised, he inherited Condover Hall and the large estate adjacent, and took the name of Owen as a condition of the inheritance. A year later he married Miss Victoria Cotes, daughter of John and Lady Louisa Cotes (Co. Salop), a godchild of the Queen, and went to Italy for his wedding-tour. In Florence he was seized with a malignant fever, April 10, 1864, and died there April 20, not quite two years after Thoreau s death. His brother Regi nald, who had met him in Florence, carried back his remains to England, and he is buried in Condover churchyard. Writ ing to an American friend, Mr. R. Cholmondeley said : &quot; The whole county mourned for one who had made himself greatly beloved. During his illness his thoughts went back very much to America and her great sufferings. His large heart felt for your country as if it were his own.&quot; It seems that he did not go to New Zealand with the &quot;Canterbury Pilgrims,&quot; as sug gested in the Atlantic Monthly (December, 1893), but in the first of Lord Lyttelton s ships (the Charlotte Jane), having joined in Lord L. s scheme for colonizing the island, where he remained only six months, near Christchurch.