¹It seems to have been a common practice when sending a very private letter to a correspondent who was a member of a close-knit family to include a second note which could be read aloud and so avoid questioning. It is hard to see, however, what was so private about this one.
²British travellers who ventured to France after the Peace of Amiens (1802) were interned in Verdun when war broke out again in the following year.
³Possibly Henry Tracy Coxwell (1819-1900), a dentist, who in 1848 became a professional balloonist. He belonged to a Gloucestershire family with whom Mrs Keble had connections. It may be, however, that another member of the same family is referred to here.
⁴Raphael Semmes (1809-1877) was captain of the Alabama, a confederate warship built anonymously in the British shipyards at Birkenhead. When the Unionist government discovered this they demanded that it be detained in the yard, but in 1862, on the pretext of a trial run, Semmes and his crew escaped with it to the Azores where it was armed and proceeded to do immense damage to Unionist shipping, to the commercial benefit of the British. In 1864 the Alabama was sunk off Cherbourg but Semmes was picked up by an English yacht and brought to England. CMY referred to the Alabama affair disapprovingly in the Barnacle.