Note 46 — LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY (continued 2)

Probably Hurrell’s old friend, Robert Isaac Wilberforce, then, like himself, a newly-made Fellow of Oriel. (‘Old’ was Hurrell’s most endearing adjective: he applies it unexpectedly in one letter: ‘old Becket.’) Robert Wilberforce’s temperament was far more studious and calm than that of his genial younger brothers, but apparently he could be ‘funny’ and ‘good-natured’ too. ‘R. Wilberforce was as merry as he generally is,’ writes his hostess, Mrs. Rickards, from Ulcombe, to Miss Jemima Newman, in the autumn of 1827.