My dear Henry.
I wrote you a few lines yesterday but did not allude to your Mothers <1> idea about the room, wishing that you should hear what she had to say on the subject – but I wrote to her fully & I dare say she will have read, or will read if you ask her what occurred to me – I need not therefore repeat it to you, I had invited Mr Blore <2> to Lacock, & agree with you that it is most adviseable [sic] to have several opinions before any decision is made – as to Blore I think him a scientific man as to gothick Architecture, he has studied the style more than most of his contemporaries, & would tell you in an instant of what date any window or Door is – [illegible deletion] & he may have taste [illegible deletion] but I never saw a more complete failure, in every respect than the House he has built for Willm Ponsonby <3> – therefore though I shall be very glad to have his opinion I have no idea his will be the plan you will be likely to adopt – Harrison <4> certainly failed in judgement – he ought to have known that a projecting room of 45. or 50 feet was not in any proportion to the length of the building – when it was told him that it did not answer your purpose to build on all the distance between the Dining Room buttresses & the window of the Library, he should have said, then it won’t do, it will look stuck on – this is the knowledge which nothing but experience can give – & what we ought to have had – he ought also, before he allowed the projecting room in the courtyard to be pulled down, to have examined the state of the old wall at the back, & have told you that it would require facing. it is possible you might still have determined on doing it, & certainly now it is done it looks very pretty but it led to great expence of which you ought to have had warning – I do not think the arches signify much they will soon be covered – & though it always was my opinion that we ought to have gone up 2 feet into the room out of the gallery still I do not think that [illegible deletion] is of any great consequence – my great objection to it is that it has an appliqué appearance – but having blamed Harrison for want of judgement I must fairly say that I have never seen observed any want of taste in any elevation of his I have seen in his office. & I should not be surprized, if his 2 elevations of the South Front one with, & the other without the room which he is now making out, turned out as good as others you may get – Still I am all for having others, & especially Blores – I went to Willement when were were [sic] in Town, & was very much pleased with all I saw, so much so as to determine never to go there again for fear of being tempted. it is ruinously dear, & before any thing is ordered you should see what Ld Lansdowne <5> has given you – I hope the Terrace has made some progress since my departure, & that you will like it. I was in despair when I found the coping I had thought of would not do. relieved however by Philps discovering some in another part which will answer perfectly – Your mother took charge of clothing the South wall opposite my window, but I wish you would lend a hand. I have set my heart on covering all the court yard walls, at least then, whatever is put there can so easily be taken away if it don’t do. – Pyrocanthus or what would look cheerful in the winter I should like, & might divide the space with Fruit Trees, but all that you know much better than I do – I expect we shall have a trimming frost after all this mild weather
God bless you dear.
C.F.
Decr 17
Middleton.
Notes:
1. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773–1846), WHFT’s mother.
2. Edward Blore (1787–1879), architect & artist.
3. William Francis Spencer Ponsonby, 1st Baron de Mauley (1787–1855). He engaged Edward Blore to replace the ancient mansion of Canford with a house in the olde English style. Ponsonby subsequently sold this to Lady Charolotte Guest, who later acquired some of the newly discovered Assyrian reliefs in Ninevah, and these are now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
4. 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.
5. Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780–1863), MP, WHFT’s uncle.
6. John Gale, carpenter at Lacock.