now ready and you are welcome to them whenever you please.
She begs you will ask Mrs. Parkyns if she would wish the poney to go round by Nottingham or to go home the nearest way as it is now quite well but too small to carry me.
I have sent a young Rabbit which I beg Miss Frances will accept off and which I promised to send before. My Mamma desires her best compliments to you all in which I join.
I am, Dear Aunt, yours sincerely,
I hope you will excuse all blunders as it is the first letter I ever wrote.
2.—To his Mother.
Dear Mama,—I am very glad to hear you are well. I am so myself, thank God; upon my word I did not expect so long a Letter from you; however I will answer it as well as I can. Mrs. Parkyns and the rest are well and are much obliged to you for the present. Mr. Rogers[1]
- ↑ Dummer Rogers, "Teacher of French, English, Latin, and "Mathematicks," was, according to Notes and Queries (4th series, vol. iii. p. 561), an American loyalist, pensioned by the English Government. He lived at Hen Cross, Nottingham, when Byron was staying in that city, partly with Mrs. Parkyns, partly at Mr. Gill's, in St. James's Lane, to be attended by a man named Lavender, "trussmaker to the general hospital," who had some local reputation for the treatment of misshapen limbs. Lavender, in 1814 (Nottingham Directory for 1814), appears as a "surgeon." Rogers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with Byron, represents him as, for his age, a fair scholar. He was often, during his lessons, in violent pain,
1814.) Her daughter Margaret, one of Byron's early loves, inspired, as he says, his "first dash into poetry" (see Poems, vol. i. p. 5, note 1).
