Written from Higham Bury, Ampthill [Bedfordshire]. Manuscript
He would like the puppy in autumn or spring, preferably spring as there is a better chance of recovery from distemper and its complications; regarding farming in Bedfordshire there are some good examples on the Duke of Bedford’s Woburn Estate, and the Duke has a scientific experimental fruit farm there; he knows little of this as his interest is in county work – he is deputy chairman of Quarter sessions, chairman of the County Licensing Authority and of the Ampthill Bench; it has not been a good year for gardening, half of the ample potato crop was destroyed by disease and there were no apples; weeds are rampant and if Robinson were to see his garden he would be so shocked that he might not fulfil his intention of celebrating his 100th birthday; his head gardener is a German niece of his late wife, trained in the Palmengarten at Frankfurt; her beds of double begonias, raised from a packet of Carter’s seeds, have been much admired; they were sown in February, and pricked out repeatedly, with the sixth shift being into the flowering beds; the result amply justified the trouble