GB, USA, 1855 DEC 21, London to Cambridge, MA. Transatlantic folded letter from John M. Janson to Prof. Cornelius Conway Felton at Harvard University. Red tombstone "PAID / 1 S / 22 DE 22 / 1855", red circular "AMERICA / PAID" exchange mark, black octagonal "L / DE 23 / A" postmark, red manuscript rate marking. Scholarly letter discussing Grote's History of Greece, Robertson's photos of Athens, Cicero, the Crimean War, and American travel.
Summary to Print
Date Letter Sent: December 21, 1855
Country of Origin: Great Britain (England)
Country of Destination: United States
Town Sent From: Tottenham, London, England
Town Sent To: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Distance Between Points: Approximately 3,270 miles
Significant Philatelic Details: Transatlantic 1848 US-UK Postal Convention treaty rate letter; red tombstone datestamp "PAID / 1 S / 22 DE 22 / 1855"; red circular "AMERICA / PAID" exchange postmark; black octagonal London transit mark "L / DE 23 / A"; manuscript rate credit/charge markings.
Names of Sender and Receiver:
Sender: John M. Janson (Tottenham, London)
Receiver: Professor C. C. Felton, D.D. (Cornelius Conway Felton), Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sociological, Historical, Genealogical & Very Interesting Facts: Addressed to C. C. Felton, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature (and later President) at Harvard University. Janson writes an extraordinarily rich 4-page intellectual letter referencing:
James Robertson’s historic 1853/1854 photographs of Athens.
George Grote’s monumental 11th volume of History of Greece and Alexander the Great.
Travel notes on Greece, the Erechtheion, and Poseidon’s trident.
Commentary on Lord Carlisle (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) and classical literature (Cicero’s De Senectute).
Reflections on political freedom, American travel habits ("How you Americans do run about the globe!"), and the ongoing Crimean War ("This dreadful war will I fear be the indirect means of throwing her back...").
Transcription & Translation
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Tottenham London
21 Decr 1855
My very dear Mr Felton,
I am much surprised in looking at your last most kind & interesting letter to find that it is dated as far back as Septr the 24th. Time flies so quickly. However it would have been answered sooner had it not made a very long sojourn in Lincolnshire "apud" Mr. Boyd, who also kindly lent me your letter to him to read. I was truly glad to hear such an excellent account of Mr & Mrs Arnold & Mr & Miss Hill. Their kindness to us at Athens will not soon pass away from my memory. If you should happen to see Mr or Mrs A. please remember me most kindly to them. I shall be delighted to see your little volume of travels, and some time ago told my bookseller to be on the look-out. I can sympathize in your enjoyment of Robertson's photographs of Athens. I had the good fortune to meet with them in London and of course at once snapped them up. They are beautifully correct & clear,—recalling every spot most delightfully.
Your enthusiastic invitation to join you in your next expedition to the East of Europe set me all on fire, and if you really were to call in your way out, I don't know how I should be able to resist the temptation, but I am so situated with respect to business that I fear it must be many a long year, say eight or ten—if my life is spared so long—before I could take another long holiday. I often sigh after a literary life, but as Providence has not ordered my path through life I must be thankful that I am only obliged to give about five hours a day to earning a livelihood. It is a
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great comfort to be able to give four or five hours a day to better things. I have just finished the "De Senectute", having read a little bit every morning before going to town.—What a charming little treatise it is!! It almost makes one long to be seventy,—and to have the yearnings of the heathen world after a something better beyond the grave, & something to soak their weary souls,—weary in—from wandering up & down all the labyrinths of their philosophy—might rest, is most interesting & instructive. How one longs that the light of Revelation had dawned upon the intellects of Cicero & Plato!!
I should much like to see your notes in Lord Carlisle's little book. You must come & dine with him at Dublin, now that he is Lord Lieutenant of our sister kingdom, and then report to me how he finds himself. It seems so strange to look back upon having met him on such social terms at Mr Wyse's.
I must thank you very much for your kind & full replies as to my questions about the Dircean & Pirene fountains and the Delphian ridge. They are just what I wanted to complete my journal. By the way we can really hardly believe that it is now just over two years since we started. And yet the brilliant recollections of Athens' crown city seem as fresh & vivid as ever. May they always be so! What a living interest such a journey gives to all one's classical studies. They seemed reclothed as it were. Delightful as they were before, they are indescribably more so now. Every night one can almost believe like a devout old Greek: e.g. the three holes made by old Neptune's,—I beg his pardon—Poseidon's trident,—who can doubt the story who has seen the Erechtheum. And it is just the same with the scenes of Biblical narrative in Palestine: indeed you must some day visit the Holy Land,—in exploring & investigating which your countryman Dr Robinson has done so much. Dear me! how I should like to run over to Boston, and as you say—"talk cozily over Athens
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with you, and then run up to N.Yk to see the learned Doctor." And this reminds me, my dear Mr Felton, that your or Mrs Arnold's supposition that I am about to enter into the bonds of holy matrimony is not founded on fact. No! I am still a bachelor,—not that I think that the best or happiest condition for us,—far from it, but I don't intend to be in a hurry about the matter; meanwhile I have four or five kind sisters & three little nephews to keep me merry, and merry indeed we all are one way or another. My Father this summer has moved into a larger house & from me turned about it, which I hope we shall may one day have the pleasure of welcoming you & Mrs F. Though still in the parish of Tottenham we are quite in the country, and high up with a glorious view all round. Also with two or three fields, a fine avenue, and a bit of a plantation which in summer is charming.
We have had a very fine autumn as to weather, and we are now enjoying a fine bright, though intensely cold, frost.
What a pity it is that our two countries somehow cannot get along without some little "rumpus" every now & then, though I trust and believe it never will come to anything beyond a few unamiable words. However one would like that there should be throughout the two communities that thoroughly firm understanding which should prevent even such as those. And I suppose we must expect that wherever there is anything like constitutional freedom there will be Cleons, and we know it is the shallow streams that make the most noise.
I am looking forward with great pleasure to the XIth volume of Grote's History of Greece which we are to have out in a week or two. It will I fancy pour a flood of light upon Alexander, whose greatness I often think is not quite sufficiently understood. The way in which his mighty intellect fused & melted & stamped the whole East with Grecian letters, arts & civilization was truly marvellous, and betokens a far higher order of mind than the military genius which won for him the victories of the Granicus, Issus, & Arbela. Grote all along deals him rather
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hard measure with his "aestuat infelix angusto limite mundi" &c &c. Is Grote's history your standard one as it is with us, or have you another? I can hardly fancy one that would eclipse it, and if he is now & then a little guilty of special pleading, it is all in the right direction so that one cannot find it in one's heart to censure him.
I shall direct this as usual to Cambridge, but who knows but what you may be lecturing away to delighted audiences far away
beyond the Mississippi.— How you Americans do run about the globe! Please take care not to get smashed on some railway, or blown up to the seventh heaven from some steamer, if it is only for my sake. But I am coming to the end of my sheet, and have said nothing about our dear modern Greece. Perhaps the less said the better. This dreadful war will I fear be the indirect means of throwing her back fearfully in her progress in civilisation & material prosperity. May it soon come to an end.
Yours most affectly
John M Janson.
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C. C. Felton Esq D.D.
Harvard University
Cambridge
United States.
Sender Notation: J. M. Janson
Postmarks:
Red tombstone stamp: PAID / 1 S / 22DE22 / 1855
Red circular exchange stamp: AMERICA / PAID
Black octagonal transit postmark: L / DE23 / A
Red manuscript rate marking: 24 / 19
Historical, Genealogical & Philatelic Notes
Cornelius Conway Felton (1807–1862): Renowned American classical scholar, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University, and later President of Harvard (1860–1862). Felton traveled extensively in Europe and Greece in 1853–1854, meeting classical scholars, diplomats, and artists across the Mediterranean.
James Robertson’s Athens Photographs: The letter explicitly mentions acquiring James Robertson's famous 1853–1854 photographic views of the Acropolis and Athens, among the earliest surviving photographic documentations of ancient Greek architecture.
George Grote’s History of Greece: Grote’s 12-volume History of Greece (published 1846–1856) was a landmark work of 19th-century historiography. Volume 11, released around late 1855 / early 1856, focused heavily on Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great.
Crimean War Reference: "This dreadful war" refers to the Crimean War (1853–1856), in which Anglo-French forces fought the Russian Empire, creating widespread economic and political turmoil throughout Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean.