WSG to The Era, May 20, 1877 (Issue 2017), p. 13

[The following appeared in our TOWN EDITION of Last Week.]

HENRIETTA HODSON AND W.S. GILBERT.

To the Editor of The Era

Sir, - Miss Hodson’s letter in to-day’s issue of The Era compels me, most reluctantly, to address you again on the subject of her recent pamphlet.

Miss Hodson assumes that I have abandoned my cause against her as hopeless.  In this Miss Hodson is mistaken.  Bearing in mind that many months must elapse before an action could be tried, and acting on the direct advice of the eminent counsel to whom I referred the case, I am about to publish a full reply to Miss Hodson’s attack upon me.  This reply will contain a significant correspondence between Miss Hodson, Mr. Buckstone, and myself, which Miss Hodson has thought it unnecessary to allude to in her pamphlet, but which will have the effect, unless I am very much mistaken, of placing the dispute between us in an entirely new light.  Five hundred copies of this pamphlet will be distributed in the course of the week.  In the meantime I must ask your readers to be so good as to suspend their judgment until they have heard my side of the question.

I desire to assure you, in the most direct and unqualified terms, that Miss Hodson’s statement in to-day’s Era, that I have on two occasions apologised to her, is absolutely untrue.  I withdrew certain angry expressions, used under the influence of strong excitement three years and a half ago.  This is the only document signed by me which can, under any latitude of construction, be regarded as an "apology."  If Miss Hodson will publish the second "apology" in the columns of nest week's Era I will pay a hundred guineas to any charity she may think proper to name.

Page modified 15 August 2011