Bowood <1>
Jany 25th 1824
My Dear Mr Feilding,
Yesterday Mr & Mrs Moore dined here and Bowles, <2> who entertained us extremely with his naïveté – He produced a letter he had just received addressed “Revd W. L. Bowles Author of Sonnets”<3> from the committee of chimney sweeping – abolitionists who are for preventing the employment of climbing boys: they asked him to contribute towards a work to be written by some of the first poets of the age, in dispraise of chimney sweeping – He then asked Moore to contribute & produced his own contribution which Moore read to us, tho’ inclined to laugh at first, but it proved to be a little sonnet pretty enough. – Last summer was so bad that Lord Norbury <4> said “sure Winter is come to pass the summer with us” the following of his is very happy, in praise of somebody’s good port wine “This is Port for a Calm, Any Port in a storm” Did you ever hear an old epigram on a Duke of Dorset? <5> on its being said they were alternately wise & silly –
Folly & wit alternate race
I’th’house of Dorset men,
As Cary once said to his Grace
(Praising his eldest son)
But Cary sure must own for once
Exception to his rule,
for Middlesex is but a dunce
Tho’ Dorset be a fool. –
The average passage from Liverpool to New York for the last 3 years is only 22 days – The price of travelling in America is so cheap owing to the rivers that you go from Norfolk in Virginia to Quebec, 907 miles for 14£ & from Louisville down the Ohio & Mississippi to New Orleans 1260 miles for 9£. Lord Lansdowne <6> told me this. – Sir H. Davy <7> has invented an operation by heated air which he says will rival with steam. A new way of producing instantaneous light has been found out. Platina <8> is dissolved, precipitated & dried and placed before the mouth of a bladder filled with compressed hydrogen gas; on pulling a string that opens the bladder’s mouth a stream of gas falls upon the plating and immediately a void light arises (tho’ metal & gas were both cold) on letting go the string the bladder closes & the light is extinguished. – Thus the heaviest & lightest substances known are combined in the same operation. On a late trial in Ireland two witnesses of the name of “Sawyer” gave directly opposite evidence: It is not surprising, observed Judge Norbury, Sawyers always pull contrary ways. The newspapers tell a good story of the Chancellor: <9> – When Mr Bell retired from practice he waited on Ld Eldon <10> who tried to dissuade him. I am old, my Lord said Mr B. – I am your senior some years replied Ld E. I am infirm, my Lord. “I am yet more so.” I have made money enough, my Lord. The Chancellor was silent.
Believe me yours affly
Henry Talbot
Monsieur Feilding
Gentilhomme Anglais
Poste Restante
Gênes
Italy
Notes:
1. Bowood House, nr Calne, Wiltshire, 5 mi NE of Lacock: seat of the Marquess of Lansdowne.
2. Thomas Moore (1780–1852), Irish poet, Elizabeth (Bessie) Moore, née Dyke (1783–1865), wife of the poet Thomas Moore and Rev William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850), Wiltshire poet & antiquary.
3. William Lisle Bowles, Sonnets, written chiefly on picturesque spots, during a tour, 2nd edition (Bath: R. Crutwell, 1789).
4. John Toler (1745–1831), chief-justice of the common pleas in Ireland, later Earl of Norbury.
5. Referring to the line of Sackvilles, Dukes of Dorset.
6. Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780–1863), MP, WHFT’s uncle.
7. Sir Humphry Davy, Baronet (1778–1829), English chemist who discovered several chemical elements (including sodium and potassium) and compounds, invented the miner’s safety lamp, and became one of the greatest exponents of the scientific method.
8. Platinum.
9. Lord High Chancellor of England.
10. Sir John Scott Eldon (1751–1838), Lord High Chancellor of England for much of the period between 1801 and 1827. ‘Eldon’ torn away under seal.