Holmhurst
Hastings
Oct 24. 1879.

My dear Prince

I enclose at last (as I think you must have reached home) the different photographs which have been sent to my care for you. That of Miss Erica Robertson is, I think, quite horrible; the others very good. Lady Waterford desires me to send the small one as well, since it is the one she prefers, but I like the other best: she also sends the one which you thought H. M. the King would deign to wish for.

I have heard from time to time faint echoes of all that my Prince has been doing, from the newspapers or from friends in Germany. The stay at Strasburg must have been very interesting, but you must be delighted to get home again, and how much you will have to tell the Queen of all that has happened in the year of your separation. I wrote to M. de Printzsköld on receiving the charming framed photograph you were so good as to send me, and directed, as I was told, to "Stat Badhuis, Scheveringen, Holland", but my letter was returned weeks afterwards after having made the tour of eleven other bathing places!

I was hurried back from Scotland by the sudden deaths of two very near relations, Miss L. Shaw-Lefevre and Lord Bloomfield, who, for a long time was Minister in Stockholm, and sometime was sadly occupied with funeral thoughts &c. Later I went to my cousin Lady C. Biddulph, and to the Dean of Llandaff (another of my immediate first-cousins) and then to meet the Prince of Baden at ?Hanover. I saw a good deal of him while there and think him quite charming - so clever, unaffected, and kind. Old Lady Hanover, with whom we were staying (Aunt of the Bunsens) lived in the time of George IIIs court, and I think the Prince must have been amused by her endless curtsies and ceremonials, such as would have driven my own Prince distracted! - two little footmen skipping about at the station ? with a long strip of red cloth, ready to pop it down wherever the royal feet were likely to tread, though most places were covered with red cloth already! I travelled with the Prince to Oxford and was much reminded of going there with you.

With profound and grateful respect to their Majesties & much to my dear Prince himself.

I am his very devoted & affectionate

Augustus J C Hare