Letter from William Bodham Donne, Mattishall, to Frederick Walpole Keppel, 1845 December 19 : autograph manuscript signed.

Mentioning a recent meeting with "Mrs. Guelph" (i.e., Queen Victoria) at Ketteringham ("I have been at Ketteringham and yesterday-morning 'Mrs. Guelph' came to breakfast. My incog. was however preserved, and Sir John 'marred my verses by reading them infavourably,' so that Mrs. Guelph was rather a dull woman."); and commenting on the local Norfolk election ("I should say from what I know of the last registration that our chance in West Norfolk at this time is exceedingly small. Drake ... struck myself and about sixty others from the list. I am replaced thanks to Salter ... Mr. Hamond and my Lord Hastings are staunch monopolists; we are a house divided against itself", with further remarks on national politics; requesting the loan of (Thomas Charles) Banfield's Lectures, as he has promised to write a review of them; reporting that the author of "Vestiges" (i.e., Vestiges of the natural history of creation), has been revealed to be Robert Chambers, and noting that he has begun to read Carlyle's "Cromwell" ("It seems to me very good ... The notion of the owl population of England for two centuries doing their guano over Cromwell's good name is excellent, though unclean. Middle-ages Hallam who is in Norfolk would not so much as look at the book."