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Document number: 1691
Date: 25 Jul 1828
Dating: postmark indistinct; pre-dates Doc nos 01638, 01694
Postmark: 25 Jul 1828
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: FEILDING Elisabeth Theresa, née Fox Strangways
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA28-43
Last updated: 15th September 2013

25th July

My Dearest

If you wish me not to leave town Tuesday of course I will not. This seems to be a bad season for Switzerland (where it always rains in the best of times) & all the accounts from France shew it to be the same there, as least all the Northern parts. And I am a Your Letter from Winchester <1> amused us very much. I wonder whether we have any thing to regret in not having gone there?

I cannot help wishing you had fixed on some model for the 3 Windows of the new room, because then the Stone work could have gone on all the fine part of the Summer & as it is to be done by contract it could make no difference your being at home or abroad.

I understand it is only to cost £100 the three (including the 4th which is the false window) and the great blank seen from the road gives the house such a ruined, forlorn, unsightly appearance. If the Stone work was done & then filled up with paper instead of glass till next year, that side of the House wd not look so melancholy – & [undecipherable] <2> done by contract you know the worst, & that it will cost the same whenever finished. I merely throw out these ideas because Harrison <3> is now with you, otherwise they would be more than useless. I am glad to see that old wretch of Forest Lane is hanged to day – all the wives of the community are interested in its not being brought in only manslaughter. I hope the warning will do good in that wicked neighbhd though I believe the provinces are shockingly demoralized all over England.

Is the ha ha in front of the House marked out, because if it is I can watch its progress during your absence

Horatia’s <4> cough is come back again as bad as ever – She must try change of air again

Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Wilts


Notes:

1. See Doc. No: 01690.

2. Text torn away under seal.

3. Henry Harrison (1785?-1865), London architect who was being consulted about proposed changes to the South Front of Lacock Abbey. He was active the parish of St James’s, London, which included Sackville Street. Around 1830, he worked on WHFT’s uncle, Sir Charles Lemon's Carclew House, Cornwall.

4. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.