Cairo, September, 1898. One sheet folded in half creating 4 pp.. Folded 8vo sheet, with original hand-addressed postal envelope. To G.W. Hobson of the 12th Lancers in Aldershot [England]: "I have felt inclined to write for some days and tell you how much I sympathise with your regiment in losing Robert Grenfell. Although I had not known him long, I got to know him very well during our march up country we always lived together and ate our meals together. I had a very long talk with him the night before the action...He was an extraordinarily keen soldier, and was always bustling about collecting details of boats and stores & guns, which he duly recorded in his note book. Two days before the action he had a bad attack of dysentery and only his pluck enabled him to keep in the saddle...I myself saw him cantering easily along within two hundred yards of the Dervishes under a hot and dangerous fire-the beau-ideal of a cavalry subaltern. As to his death-I was of course no witness for we passed on and were busy reforming afterwards. But his body lay on the attack side of the Khor and I therefore conclude he must have been shot before ever reaching the enemy and cut up as he lay on the ground...I think the news took the pleasure & excitement out of most of us. For my part his figure...will always be associated in my mind with a feeling of pain and sorrow. I write this to you because you are the only officer I know in your regiment. But if there is anyone who was a great friend of Grenfell's it might interest him to read this before you destroy it." Light horizontal creases along old folds, with two separations, but with no loss to contents; some light wrinkling and minor spotting.