Letter from William Bodham Donne, London, to Frederick Walpole Keppel, 1858 September 20 : autograph manuscript signed.

Informing him that his son has arrived home from Bombay, having been injured in the recent rebellion and granted 18 months leave from the army ("He is so brown and wears a beard ... I hope it is not a sepoy impersonating him, and that we shall not be mutilated or massacred."); describing his son's passage from Bombay, which was complicated by the presence of an unaccompanied mother and child, "The former was ill all the way, and there being no ayah or English nurse, Fred had the sole charge of the brat, who shrieked across the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea, across the Isthmus and from Alexandria to Malta."; stating that he will be going to Scotland for a few days, that their parson has lost his voice "(That indeed is good news)", remarking on a recent visit to the North of Ireland, "Don't be deluded ever again to subscribing for the famishing Irish. I never saw greater symptoms of plenty. ... I went to the Belfast cattle show, & never saw finer beasts, and though shoes and stockings are often dispensed with, the peasants look hale and stout. But what I most admire is the way in which they conduct their religious quarrels. In this country ill blood is nourished by paper war : whereas in Ireland it is let out and cooled", and remarking on recent conflicts between the Papists, members of the Church of Ireland, and Presbyterians; recommending Anthony Trollope's The warden and Barchester Towers to Keppel ("They are excellent fun"), and noting that he has declined to purchase a portrait of local MP Colonel Wenman Coke, "I am content that he should represent me, and do not want a representation of him."