Ship Inn Dover.
Friday
My dear Henry –
I have not much to say today beyond thanking you & your dear Constance <1> for your Letters – Horatia <2> is going on gradually I think & we should have sailed this afternoon, but for a change of weather to Rain which has made us delay our departure till tomorrow morning – It has been tremendously hot & with the westerly wind bringing our own dust after us travelling was disagreable <sic> enough – compensated for however, by the Beauty of the Road – which, from Basingstoke to Dover I may say, is worth travelling for its own sake – Your Routes having have given us subjects for consideration we think of going by Cambrai & Laon to Rheims & so on leaving Compiegne for another Time it being more accessible than Rheims – we shall go by Salins & St Cergue, & with the help of your Letter & advice shall leave nothing unseen – Lady Sandwich <3> landed just as we arrived, which was pleasant & the more that she told us of her Intention of passing the winter at Nice, where I hope others will also come – Vivian & his wife <4> are just arrived – she so ill with the Passage as to be invisible – he came to see us very well & gay – really it would be a good place to sea bathe at, for one should see all ones Friends going or coming – I calculate on remaining one whole day at Calais & then setting forth – for we have no Time to lose if we are to see Caroline <5> at all, before her confinement – I will write you a Line from Calais to say we are safe over – write to Rheims, & Besançon
God bless you.
my next shall be to Constance tell her with my loveW. H. Fox Talbot Esqr M.P.
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
2. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.
3. Lady Louisa Montagu, née Lowry-Corry (1781–1862), Countess of Sandwich.
4. Possibly Sir Richard Hussey Vivian (1775–1842), politician.
5. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.