Cotehele House ^<1>
Calstock
Tavistock
March 20^th 1869

My dear Henry

If you sleep at Plymouth, go to the Royal Hotel – & if fine next morning, & if you have time, you ought to go over to Mount E. ^<2> on Tuesday morning – By sending up, you could have a carriage to drive round among the evergreens on the Terrace over the sea – but I do not think you would care about that – tho’ there is a red Camellia covered with flowers in the zigzags! But you might turn in at once to the gardens, & see what there is in the propagating house, & stove, &c by asking for William Couth, the foreman, who lives now at the Gardener’s lodge where old Pauley ^<3> used to live; or for Brighton, the Gardener. But Will Couth is always in those particular gardens on the left, as you land – where the Orangerie is. Should you however not be inclined to cross the water, do go & see the Conservatory at the Winter Villa ^<4> – nobody is living there but the Gardeners family, at the Lodge, as you go in – It is a very little out of your way from the R. Hotel to Saltash

[illustration]

The Saltash Bridge crosses at the hours & half hours on the Plymouth side (the ¼ & ¾ on this side) – If you go to the W. Villa, please bring me 2 or 3 cuttings of the lovely large flowering Jessamine (I call it Catalonian – but that may not be right –) on one of the pillars – & please bring me more than one flower of Bignonia picta, in [illegible deletion] case of failure.

Y^r aff^te
Caroline

The drive here, straight from Plym^th with good horses, will take you ab^t two hours.

[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot Esq^re
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham

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Notes:

1. Cotehele, Cornwall: ancient house, seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe, now a National Trust Property.

2. Mt Edgecumbe, near Plymouth: seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe.

3. Mr Pauley (d. 1864), gardener at Mt Edgcumbe.

4. Winter Villa, near Plymouth: estate of the Earls of Mt Edgcumbe.