Abb <1> –
30 Oct 39
Dear Henry
As you seem to be got safe home (by a Cover <2> today) I hope you saw Cheddar & that the weather was not too bad for Devonshire. Did you find your way?
Your Camera <3> is at Dover I have written to beg it may be sent to Sackville St <4> – I will let you know if I hear more of it.
Mary <5> is supposed to be with you as she is expected at Melbury <6> Monday. If the weather continues as raw as it is she will find little to see but indoors. How comes it not to freeze in such refrigerating weather? The country is dry again & we have Even dust – but a strong wind.
Can you send by Mary a sucker of Rhus elegans which is different from what we have by that name some of which I can give you. I am fond of the genus as my tastes are Rhuzal.
We have Tropeolum tuberosum in the greatest luxuriance & a Brugmansia rubra with 82 flowers several quite blown Clematis Nepalensis which I never took an interest in before is covered with flowers, small but sweet. The foliage is handsome & so tangled it would make the best arbours.
The Lacryma Xti <7> bore a few grapes this year, an earnest of more in a better season. I never had such a profusion of Mathiola odorata tristis in flower before, or other tristes or night smelling plants – violets, white, blue, & purple.
Coronillas, mesembs [illegible] Salvia leucantha better than ever I saw it, it makes a very pretty late flower only one does not get half its blow out. The usual Crocuses, & bulbs coming up too soon all over the garden. The Arbutus andrachne is going to flower from every shoot – so some things do like wet it seems.
Yr Aff
W F Strangeways
Notes:
1. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
2. The wrapper of a letter, with postmark.
3. See Doc. No: 03962.
4. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
5. Mary Thereza Talbot (1795–1861), WHFT’s cousin.
6. Melbury, Dorset: one of the Fox Strangways family homes; WHFT was born there.
7. Lachryma Christi (tears of Christ), a kind of grape.