Dear Sir

Downing Dec^r 1 1796

This 1^st of December I may tell you that Moses has not completed our Whiteford: all the drawings I thought worthy of a place, are sketch & shaded, I hope he will not be much longer, but like a true catches [sic] at every offered Job & neglects what he has had long in hand.

I hope you passed the late summer pleasantly. If you went the way I suspect, I might be of use on the road, Especially had I furnished you with the complete list of the portraits of my jour inedited [...]journals which I [...]extracted, a most horrid dull & painful work at the request of Sir W^m Musgrave which nothing should tempt me to again

The late summer has been to me a wretched one. The dissensions that reigned & still reign in our unhappy little country affected me with the Asthma which I have not yet got free from. It is singular that the disorder of the mind should affect the body with such a disorder: but it has arrived at such a heighn [sic] as to make the calling in of a physician requite [sic]. You may have seen in the papers that my nephew Sir Th. Mostyn has by the rascality of a fasion been elected under age. a petition will be preferred, & probably driven from his a proper lesson to a youth for listening to bad advisers & neglecting the guardians appointed by his parent. The resolution of the house will be novel. non age elections may pass in small boroughs: but the insult ought never to be suffered in counties. Pray inform me how miss Bull & you do. You have my earnest wishes for y^r welfare. my younger boy I had with me all the summe He was attacked at School with a severe cough and an uncommon growth.¹ we took him down with us after we had the pleasure of seeing you. By air & exercise he is perfectly restored. I [...] engaged an ingenious young clergyman.² His application to learning a morning & night is amazing & his amusement at midday with his gun is not less so. I have the fairest hopes of him.

with best complm^ts to miss Bull concludes D^r Sir Y^rs most affectly

Tho. Pennant

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Editorial notes

1. Thomas Pennant, junior, was presumably still at school in Hackney. See 1163.
2. This may refer to Griffith Lloyd.