Castleford <1>
March 22d 1816.
My Dear Mamma,
Your Letter <2> seems to say that Ministers exerted themselves to the utmost – Mr Barnes <3> thinks they did not, because else Mr Wortley <4> would have voted with them, & many other members – Mr Robt Milnes, <5> the member for Pontefract, would have voted with them, if he had been in Town. You did not send me Tuesday’s Chronicle, <6> the most interesting of all, with the debate in it – Pray send it – I liked your last dévise extremely. – Have you got the common one of the Helianthus in your collection I must make one remark on your dévises <7> – All your hearts are drawn thus <illustration> – Is that right? Ought not they to be so <illustration>? I know they are as you draw them on Court Cards – but in Botany a lilac leaf is said to be cordate <illustration> and this shape <illustration> is called obcordate or inversely cordate – Pray ask Mr Forbes’s opinion – Who told you about my tumbling into Coalpits? <8> I take better care – I have just finished Barthelemi’s Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, <9> which is I believe, the longest work I ever read – He might have made the story vastly more interesting, if he had liked – How many incidents might he not have introduced in twenty-seven years! The only affecting ones which he has, are the death of his two most intimate friends, one of whom was killed at the battle of Mantinea, <10> & the other, twenty-four years after at the battle of Chæronea <11>– upon which he renounces the world, & retires to the Borysthenes <12> –
So no more at present from
Yr Affte Son
W. H. F. Talbot
Lady Eliz. Feilding
Notes:
1. Castleford, Yorkshire, 10 mi SE of Leeds, where WHFT went to school from 1815-1816.
2. See Doc. No: 00684.
3. Rev Theophilus Barnes (1774 –1855), of Castleford.
4. John Stuart-Wortley, 2nd Baron Wharncliffe (1801–1855), politician & photographer.
5. Robert Pemberton Milnes (1784–1858), MP for Pontefract.
6. Morning Chronicle.
7. Misspelling of ‘devise’, ‘currency’ or ‘motto’.
8. See Doc. No: 00684.
9. Jean-Jacques Barthelemy, Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, dans le milieu du quatrième siècle (Paris: De Bure l’aîné, 1791). It was translated into English by William Beaumont (1794, 2nd edition). [See Doc. No: 03879].
10. First battle at 418 BC and second battle at 362 BC. They resulted from conflicts between Thebans, Athenians, and Spartans.
11. In 338 BC the Thebans allied with the Athenians were defeated by Philip the Macedon at Chæronea, Boeotia, northwest of Thebes.
12. Ancient Greek name for River Dnieper.