Harcourt Letter to Renwick

Content

Physical description: Heavy cream paper, folded and sealed with the Earl of Wrexham’s personal seal (not the Order seal). The handwriting is confident, slightly rushed, the hand of a man who writes fifty letters a day and has stopped caring about calligraphy. No letterhead. No title beyond the signature. If intercepted, it reads as a peer writing to the son of an old friend about a private matter.

Vienna, the 12th day of August, 1814

My dear Renwick,

I trust this finds you well and that your embankment proceeds with the tenacity your father would have expected of you.

The bearers of this letter are colleagues of mine whom I commend to your confidence without reservation. They travel on a matter of some urgency which I expect you will recognise when they describe it. I ask that you extend to them whatever assistance your position permits, and that you do so with the discretion your father taught you to value.

You may have noticed, in the course of your work along the river, certain phenomena which resist the explanations of ordinary engineering. I suspect you have filed observations without knowing quite where to file them. These are the people who know where they belong.

I would not trouble you with vague counsel. You are an engineer and you will want particulars. The bearers will provide them. I ask only that you hear them out before you apply the scepticism I know you inherited along with your father’s constitution. What they describe will test that constitution. It tested mine.

Give them what they need. Trust them as you would trust me. If your father were alive, he would tell you the same, and he would add something about duty that would sound like scripture and mean every syllable.

I remain, with affection and confidence,

Harcourt

Campaign Log

• Session 12 - The Governor’s Ball — Freddy presented this letter to Major Renwick at the Governor’s Ball, referring to Lord Harcourt with casual familiarity as “Uncle Percy.” Renwick’s manner shifted from polite endurance to serious attention on reading it, and he pulled rank to dismiss Captain Drury so the party could speak with him privately.