Maison Roubion
1st November
My Dear Henry
Depend upon it you will find Keeping horses of your own, much more expensive than any number of post horses you can want for visiting in Wiltshire. Our great economy here is chiefly caused by the absence of Stable expences, which in fact is the thing which at Laycock always kept us in the res augusta – here we hire horses Whenever we want them Morning or evening, & Horatia <1> or I, & Mr F. <2> ride constantly every day but all that is nothing if one does not spend one’s substance on stable servants & all the numberless items thereunto belonging, & which it is impossible to control. Then again any house you take at a bathing place & the journey must cost more than the additional warming & lighting for the Winter Months. If you do decide on that, I suppose you will chuse Weymouth to be à portée <3> to your Dorsetshire visits, though it is an ugly place in itself, & excessively cold, its bay opening full East, as if to imbibe all that blows from that disagreeable point of the compass. How I wish that your Dalias were basking in this too bright Sun, & that I could take their place in the frosty atmosphere which has withered them & which would not I think have that effect on me, but quite the contrary. I have suffered much from head aches, a thing that never troubled me in England in any part of my life. Dr Harrington thinks them partly nervous, produced by the glare of this place & the dryness, which will not agree with some people – he is of opinion that if What he is giving me does not in another week take effect that I had better go decidedly Northwards – This climate is certainly not negative & What does so much good must be, capable of doing as much harm. I will not say a word of my journey till I am en route because I am sure you must be quite tired of these uncertainties – Which arise not from What is falsely called changing one’s mind (mine has never changed about it) but from a wish not to vex H– & make her ill, & then that counteracted by feeling the necessity to my own health of leaving this before it is too late. You have no idea of the vexation this journey has caused me and if I go it is not only parting with me but H. can have no society chez elle <4> – in England a Father is chaperon enough for any thing – Not so on the continent.
We are all very sorry about Fitz <5> – he took such an interest in the place, & knew our ways and certainly had the good of the place more at least perhaps even than the garder. I long to know what you have settled with Caroline <6> but they never know what they are going to do.
H. F. Talbot Eqr
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Wiltshire
Angleterre
Notes:
1. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.
2. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father.
3. Close to.
4. In her house.
5. Cornelius Fitzsimmons, Scottish gardener at Lacock Abbey.
6. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.