9 June.
My dear Henry.
I was delighted to find by yr letter to your Mother <1> yesterday, that you had succeeded so well in your Trial, time slips away so fast that I was not aware it had begun before I heard it was so happily terminated & was thus saved all the anxiety I should otherwise have felt We are not established exactly where you wished us to be, but it had become quite impossible owing to the length of time your Mother chose to stay at Paris, to do anything but the most economical scheme. we are comfortably lodged, out of the way of all the vulgar people who infest Boulogne, & with the great agr้ment <2> of being near England, which as we must[?] you know be there in the winter is a great comfort. indeed from the specimen I had of travelling with a Family in France coming only thus far I am inclined to be glad we did not fix at any distance from the Coast which would have entailed a journey at a time of year when French Inns must be quite intolerable We seem to have left Paris in good time for the ministers have contrived with the help of the Ultras Royalists <3> [sic] to create a ferment they will not find it very easy to calm I am curious to know what will be the consequence of the Queens <4> going to England she was at Abbeville while we were but I did not see her. One of the advantages of our present situation is that it will enable you to come to us whenever you find it too dull to stay at Camb: <5> even for a short time you may leave Camb. by the early coach one morning & dine with us the next day easily By your naming the Quarterly Review <6> on Parga I conclude there is new No come out which I have not seen but in the last there was a few pages on the Nile, with as you say very strong evidence as to its being the same as the niger [sic]. I have no material at hand but how much longer would it be than the Amazon,? all the difference of latitude & some longitude The A. is all in one parallel of Latitude. If there is any publication on Mr Barlows <7> discovery let me know that I may get it as it is very interesting I saw Humboldt <8> before I left Paris he desired to be remembered to you & hoped you would see him when you went there again. he recommends your staying there 6 months & following the lectures of & living with the learned men & it does not seem to me a bad scheme.
Yrs ever my dear Heny most affly
C.F.
Henry Talbot Esqre
Trin. Coll.
Cambridge
Angleterre
Notes:
1. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, n้e Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (17731846), WHFTs mother.
2. Attraction.
3. Extreme Royalist Party in France who supported Louis XVIII.
4. Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth (17681821), of Brunswick. She had recently returned to England to claim her rights as queen after the accession of her estranged husband as George IV. A Bill to deprive her of her title and to dissolve her marriage had been postponed on 10 November, and effectively dropped.
5. Trinity College, Cambridge.
6. The Quarterly Review was established by John Murray in 1809 as a Tory rival to the Whig supporting Edinburgh Review. [See Doc. No: 00878].
7. Peter Barlow (17761862), English mathematician and engineer who investigated areas of mathematics, physical sciences and engineering. He greatly improved the safety and accuracy of nautical navigation with An Essay on Magnetic Attractions, Particularly as Respects the Deviation of the Compass on Shipboard, Occaisione by the Local Influence of the Guns, &c, with an Easy, Practical Method of Observing the Same in All Parts of the World (London: Printed for J. Taylor, 1820).
8. Alexander von Humboldt (17691859), German scientist.