Ilfracombe ^<1>
August 10^th 1819.

I forgot to postpay the last letter I wrote you, so I am afraid you will not have received it. However it will perhaps be returned to me, and then I can forward it as it contained an account of various particulars. I read the other day one of the new Tales of my Landlord, ^<2> The Bride of Lammermoor, and like it very much. The “Legend of Montrose” I have not yet read. I saw Lord Byron’s Don Juan ^<3> in all the shops in Town, and read a few stanzas of it, one of which I subjoin.

[illegible deletion] What are the hopes of Man? Old Egypt’s King
Cheops erected the first pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole & mummy hid.
But somebody or other rummaging
Burglariously broke ope his coffin’s lid.
Let not a monument give you or me hopes
since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.

I gave you an account in my last letter of my telescopic observations on the opposite coast of Gower. Saturday evening being very clear, I walked upon the hills to look at it. I saw the houses in Swansea which are not visible down here in the town owing to the convexity of the earth. They appeared backed by a huge column of smoke – On the right a smoky recess indicated the position of Neath – Further to the right I saw that conspicuous row of houses they call Constantinople and beyond that Margam Wood which seemed as if edged at the bottom with low sandbanks shining like gold with the setting sun: I could see the half moon which crowns the hill, tho’ not so as to see what it was like. Still further a considerable town of scattered white houses I supposed to be Cowbridge –

My love to M^r F. & my sisters ^<4> –

Y^r Aff^te Son
W. H. F. Talbot

On the 15^th I mean to begin making a register of the weather; – I wish you would do the same, as we talked of, as it would be curious to compare.

A Miladi
Miladi Elisabeth Feilding

Poste Restante
Rouen
France

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Notes:

1. Ilfracombe, Devon.

2. Walter Scott, Tales of My Landlord, s.3 (Edinburgh and London: 1819).

3. George Gordon Byron, Don Juan, Cantos I and II (1819).

4. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father, and his daughters Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister, and Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.