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Sunday Morning, Half-past Seven o’Clock. My Dear Sir, I write in the most perfect good humour to express a hope, for Somers’s sake, that he will be satisfied with the offer I have made of being on the same terms with him as before. I have no vindictiveness in my nature, and desire in my heart only the welfare of all, be they who they may. Should he seek to annoy me he may rest assured that the punishment of every effort will be upon his head, and his alone. He does me an injustice if he supposes that from the first moment we became acquainted at the table of the old rogue, Ward, in the Shakespeare Tavern, where john Walton (now in India, and who went thither with my money, having spent all his mother’s) brought me. I did see that he was a wild young Irishman, devoted to pleasure, and for that I took him up as companion, as I was in want of company, from the singular and wonderful circumstances that I slightly sketched yesterday, and which were sufficiently before the public at the time. J. Walton, Sackville Taylor, and Barker, were all our associates I believe at the time; and many scandalous and disgraceful orgies I do remember at the large square table at the end of the saloon, while I beated the wine with which I was inundating my constitution. My friends knew me not, though I knew them; but they may, if they choose, now know me as I then was in heart. Circumstances have changed. I can have no selfish view in writing thus towards any one. Write of me frankly to the Martins; they know me well, and I respect them greatly – sincerely yours T. W. Beaumont R.D. Browne, Esq., & c.
The letter as given here was appended to Robert Dillon Browne’s letter of 15th December 1838 to the Morning Advertiser, submitted in evidence of TWB’s character in the wake of TWB’s case against John Somers in Paris. Date not given, but assuming the chronology given by Dillon Browne is correct it must have been Sunday 4th November. Sunday 11th is likely to have been too late for all parties to have subsequently left London for Paris in time for the assault in the Tuilleries on Tuesday 13th.
