Castleford <1>
4th April 1816.
My Dear Mamma,
I send you an epigram on an ingenious author, of whom it is to be wished that his productions were as luminous as they are vo-luminous –
How fast we sink from bad to worse!
Who now in dull pathetic verse,
Proses about his “doe of Rylstone” <2>
And like a flat and heavy mill-stone,
Our patience wears, & wears away
With one unvarying, simple lay.
In writing quarto’s where’s the merit?
What are words worth without spirit?<3>
Tell me how you like it.
What do you think of this circumstance? A came to visit B, & bought a horse of him for 30 guineas, which (I believe) he continued to owe him: and after riding it during his visit, all which time it was kept at B’s expense, resold it to B for 80 guineas – The same gentleman A some time before persuaded the same B that a fine horse of his was unsound, & was worth only 50£ which he gave him for it; – & the next year, pretending it was quite cured, resold it to B for 150£ – A has been staying all the winter in B’s house, with five horses, & (for part of the time) with all his family. B has now at length, with the utmost difficulty, succeeded in dislodging him, & as soon as he was fairly gone, pulled down his stable! – A is, you see, worse even than Lady Cork. <4>
I remain, Yr Affte Son
W. H. F. Talbot.
Cranbourne Lodge <6>
What County?
Lady Elis. Feilding
31 Sackville St
London
| 3 | 9 | 10 |
| 18 | 6 | |
| 4 | 8 | 4 |
Notes:
1. Castleford, Yorkshire, 10 mi SE of Leeds, where WHFT went to school from 1815-1816.
2. William Wordsworth, The White Doe of Rylstone; or The fate of the Nortons. A Poem (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1815).
3. A pun or wordplay in the epigramme,where Wordsworth is concealed as word’s worth.
4. Isabella Henrietta Boyle, née Poyntz (d. 1843), wife of Gen Edmund Boyle, 8th Earl of Cork (1767-1856).
5. Alicia Campbell, née Kelly, ‘Tam’ (1768–1829).
6. In Windsor Park. A household had been set up here for Princess Charlotte in July 1814.