To you, as of two or three whose sympathy I am assured of in trouble, I communicate the death of my eldest son WilliamThe younger William Hone, born in 1807, was just about 20 at the time of his death. In the early 1820s, he had served an informal apprenticeship in the Childs's printing house in Bungay; he had only recently joined the Navy and was, surprisingly, found dead in his hammock. [return]. Our recent afflictions somewhat deaden the blow to us, though as yet we have not had courage to inquire into the particulars. We only know through the Navy Office that he is dead. I had wished to write to him poor fellow respecting Alfred's accidentAs if to add to the afflictions of the Hone family, the second son Alfred (born 1810) had suffered a broken skull after being kicked by a horse. There was some question about whether he would survive — he did, becoming an eminent portrait sculptor in the Victorian era. [return], and my wife went to receive his pay, & ask where the ship lay, and in that distressing way we learnt the fact. Though very feelingly communicated to her, yet the shock left her without the power of expressing a wish to know more, and she came home more dead than alive. My calamities do not unman me but they unmind me.