Probably Not Worthy of Insertion

George Wombwell junior signed off this account of Peto the elephant as follows:

Should you esteem this worthy of insertion I will occasionally forward you incidents of wild animals which have occurred in my experience.

Yours obediently;
George Wombwell,
Nephew of the late George Wombwell

It was the peculiar fate of this letter to be passed down the generations until it came to rest in the family box-file kept by Harold Eldridge along with other family-related documents of his mother, Hetty Jane Owen. 

If the letter ever reached the desks of potential publishers, which seems doubtful, they may not have been too impressed by the blundering sequence of events recounted. By the time, George dictated his memories to his relatives, Queen Victoria had become, in 1876, Empress of India, and the Raj was in full glorious, imperial flow. Times had changed. By the 1890s, the death of one understandably bad-tempered elephant somewhere near Cremorne Gardens was probably neither here nor there to the great Victorian public.