link to Talbot Project home page link to De Montfort University home page link to Glasgow University home page
Project Director: Professor Larry J Schaaf
 

Back to the letter search >

Result number 203 of 216:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >  

Document number: 3070
Date: 04 Apr 1835
Postmark: 13 Apr 1835
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: FEILDING Charles
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA35(MW)-17
Last updated: 12th February 2012

Nice
April 4

My dear Henry

It is an age since I have written & it may appear to you longer than it is, as I fear a letter I wrote to you has miscarried – I cannot now recollect what it contained, but I know there was something you ought to have read. it cannot be helped – We are becoming very anxious for the account of your dear Constances <1> confinement, & feel all of us very acutely the Pain of one not being with you at a period of so great anxiety, every attention she can require she will receive from you & her Mother, <2> but this will be, it will have been by the time this reaches you, some Time and more I trust, when your Mothers <3> society & support, many of us to whom you are more accustomed than you can be to her Family, and have been a great comfort to you – with the comforts of a married Life come the anxieties, I pray fervently that yours may be as easy to be born as mine have been!– Our Time here draws to a close – we shall not remain beyond the end of the month – letters are 9 days coming – & shall go to Genoa first– & later to Aix– but where between those two Places, whether to Milan or first to Florence we have not yet decided – write once or twice now to Nice & then enclose to the Suisse, who will receive my order how to direct – the Valletorts <4> go I believe as soon as he is able to travel to Aix, & our only doubt is whether we shall accompany them or go as I said to Genoa &ca. I do not think this Place has agreed so well with your mother as with Horatia <5> & myself. I have not been so well in Health for years as since I came here – & I have in the whole been well armoured – nothing is so flat as a political diagram from abroad, which arrives generally after all Interest on the subject has ceased – I will show you therefore all my luctations & only say, an opinion in which we shall not agree, that I wish Peels Government <6> to stand – I am against him on the appropriation & other Things – still I think it would be best for the country he should be in office & we should be out – I am quite sure however if I was in England at this moment, excited by passing events, & catching the infection &c &c – I should think differently – here I take a calmer view – Your letter to you mother arrived yesterday. We shall be in England by the end of July – but it is as well, for reason, to say we are expected earlier – I believe your mother told you we have lent Sackville St <7> to the Valletorts for her confinement but that will not I hope interfere with your scheme as I understood you are to leave London long before that Time, our French Family has departed, le commencement de la Fin, <8> it is a disagreeable moment that of separating from People whom we have been in the daily habit of seeing & who in all possibility one shall never see again– You have heard I conclude how Lady M. Talbots <9> match with her German Prince is broken off. it is a very ridiculous conclusion of a silly business – the only one who gains is the Girl who is a very nice Person & was to have married a most disagreeable man–

V.Afft.
C. F.

I quite agree with you about l’Orfino, <10> pray get him sent away before he is too old, after 14 they wont [sic] take him.
C.F.

W.H.Fox. Talbot Esq
31 Sackville Street
London


Notes:

1. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.

2. Sarah Leaper Mundy, née Newton (d. 1836), WHFT’s mother in law.

3. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773–1846), WHFT’s mother.

4. Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797–1861), WHFT’s brother-in-law and Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.

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

6. Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), Prime Minister. Prime Minister Lord Melbourne’s brief first administration (July–November 1834) ended with his dismissal by King William IV, who was offended by Whig plans for church reform. But Sir Robert Peel’s Conservatives failed to win a parliamentary majority, and Melbourne took office as prime minister once more on 18 April 1835.

7. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.

8. The beginning of the end.

9. Probably related to Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot (1777–1849).

10. George Heath, an orphan boy. [See Doc. No: 03065].

Result number 203 of 216:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >