I received your card[1] and thank you for it. I am happy to know you are all well. A happy Christmas to you and Mrs Weale your daughters & son;[2] I will remember you all in holy Mass daily, please God, and pray more especially for Bernard!
The fragment of Martin van Thorhouts's. Werner[3] was loosened from the brown leather binding of a book belonging to the archives at Audenaerde, and which has been bound about the middle of the XVI century by an Augustinian lay brother, a celebrated bookbinder, residing, with an Augustinian monk, a Priest, in the Augustinian convent of Syon at Audenaerde.[4] The binding has been preserved and is to be seen at the Museum of Audenaerde. It is of dark brown leather stamped all over, as far as I can remember, and having inp2the centre an ornament containing the figure, if I am not mistaken, of a long legged bird. I will try and get a rubbing of it and send it you. Ought not I to have it photographed and printed of with the lines? If I remember right the fragment at Oxford must also have been loosened from a brown leather binding, as it is quite brown, has a tanned, a leather colour.[5] I wish I could get the date of the death of Mr Douce,[6] what he was, where he lived, died etc.[7] I will certainly mention that you discovered the Oxford fragment and passed it on to me for the Academy. Martin van Thorhout was a contemporary of Jacop v. Maerlant and as great a poet as he. Our fragments were formerly part of an immense codex full of Poems by Mart. v. Th. a monk (Priest?) at Eename near Audenaerde.[8]