[Richard Wright Procter, Manchester poet.] Long Autograph Letter Signed (‘R. W. Procter.’) to C. W. Sutton, discussing the huntsman Tom Moody and Sir Edward Lugden, and describing how he once ‘watched hounds’ and ‘quaffed brown beer with huntsmen’.

See Procter’s entry in the Oxford DNB. 4pp, 12mo. Bifolium with mourning border. In good condition on lightly-aged paper. 85 lines of closely- and neatly-written text. He begins by thanking Sutton for ‘the welcome portrait of Sir Edward Lugden’. He gives an example of Lugden’s ‘happy election repartee’(a joke about ‘Lather’ and ‘the present price of “Soap”’), for which, if no other reason, he ‘deserves a niche in my tonsorial gallery’. (Lugden (1781-1875), a noted Conservative politician, was reputed to be the son of a barber.) Stating that he will be happy to tell Sutton ‘all I know touching Tom Moody’, he gives an account, amounting to a quarter of the letter, of the only occasion on which he ‘watched hounds’ and ‘quaffed brown beer with huntsmen’, while going ‘with a friend to explore the wild beauties of The Brushes (an enlarged edition of Boggart Ho’ Clough,) approaching Saddleworth’. He stating that he ‘had several times the pleasure of seeing an oil painting of the famous whipper-in, at a shop in Long Millgate’, wondering how it could have travelled ‘so far out of its course’. The picture dealer had no doubt (‘have picture dealers ever any doubts?’) that it was genuine. ‘The price was thirty shillings, which Sum I was very nearly expending. The shop is now closed, but the picture might possibly be found in the possession of Kirby Ogden, Undertaker, and dealer in old curiosities.’ After a paragraph noting ‘the neglected condition of honest Tom’s grave in Barrow churchyard’ he concludes with reference to ‘a sketch of Moody’s grave’, which an individual ‘has promised to unveil - or unearth - some early day.’ See Image.