Redlynch <1>
Monday Janry 17th 1825
My Dear Mr Feilding,
We are a very merry party here, and the weather favours us in the highest degree. Today was sunny and warm as summer. I killed a pheasant & two hares today, Lord I. <2> lends me his detonator & I mean to buy a gun on that principle, so superior to the flint guns <3> - Mr Selwyn rode over today from Kilmington,<4> I had not seen him for many many years, long before his marriage: but I immediately recollected him. I am astonished at the late letters of my mother <5> to different people, saying that your all of you coming to England this year is an illusion, what does that mean? I am afraid you or my mother must be in low spirits to write such things.
Pray tell Horatia <6> how glad I was to receive her letter, but that I have no time to write at present. Anybody might have made their fortune this year in the Mexican Mines, <7> the time is gone by now, and those who try the concern now will very likely be ruined. Kit <8> intends to sail for the Mediterranean next summer or autumn; if you like a trip to Lisbon he will be I daresay most happy to take you. His yacht is to have 16 [illegible deletion] men and 180 tons. Iron Railways <9> will soon be universal in England, & we shall travel at the rate of 15 miles an hour on them by steam or by gas, if Brown's gas engine <10> succeeds.
Of Redlynch I had very faint recollections, I think the country very rural & pretty. Alfred's tower on the hill near Stour Head <11> is a striking object. I saw Glastonbury Tor <12> in the distance which called up in my mind very early recollections.
Yours ever affly
H. Talbot
Notes:
1. Redlynch, Somerset, seat of the Earls of Ilchester (Barons of Redlynch).
2. Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787-1858).
3. See Doc. No: 01157.
4. Rev Townshend Selwyn (1783-1853), botanist & Canon of Gloucester. He was the Curate of Kilmington in Somerset from 1814.
5. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773-1846), WHFT's mother.
6. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810-1851), WHFT's half-sister.
7. Silver mines in Mexico previously exploited by the Spanish. Mexico became a Republic in 1824 with a precarious economy. Mining, a mainstay in colonial times, had declined during the many years of fighting.
8. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803-1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT's Welsh cousin.
9. On 25th September 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was completed and opened for common carrier service between docks at Stockton and the Witton Park colliery in the western part of the county of Durham. It was authorized to carry both passengers and freight.
10. In 1824, Samuel Brown had adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas.
11. Elaborate monument of Alfred the Great in Stour Head Park on edge of Wiltshire and Somerset.
12. The Glastonbury tor (peak) of 522 feet (159 metres), the largest in the group of hills that rise from the Brue Valley.