Faithfully yours always.
Miss Hogarth.
Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,
Wednesday, Oct. 7th, 1863.
My dearest Georgy,
You will see by to-day's Times that it was an earthquake that shook me, and that my watch showed exactly the same time as the man's who writes from Blackheath so near us—twenty minutes past three.
It is a great satisfaction to me to make it out so precisely; I wish you would enquire whether the servants felt it. I thought it was the voice of the cook that answered me, but that was nearly half an hour later. I am strongly inclined to think that there is a peculiar susceptibility in iron—at all events in our part of the country—to the shock, as though there were something magnetic in it. For, whereas my long iron bedstead was so violently shaken, I certainly heard nothing rattle in the room.
I will write about my return as soon as I get on with the still unbegun "Uncommercial."
Ever affectionately.
Mr. W. H. Wills.
Gad's Hill, Sunday, Dec. 20th, 1863.