Château de Clocheville
19 June
My Dearest – I congratulate you & Myself on your Success, <1> which is more particularly pleasing to me after the last time. Je thésaurise tes feuilles de Laurier, <2> & Shall have enough at last I hope to make a wreath for my Maternal brow. I am sorry Cambridge is becoming doleful, it is not more so I guess than this Mansion of Peace, situated in a winding Valley, something resembling a coalition of the highest parts of Dorset & Wiltshire. “Here elements have lost their uses,
Air ripens not, nor earth produces” –
We have the satisfaction of hearing from all parts that the Season is unnatural, otherwise I should have thought we had planted ourselves in a spot cursed with an aride [sic] soil & ungenial climate, & consecrated to Storm & Tempest. They must have been the demi semi Gods worshipped here formerly I am sure, for there is on the tip top of a very high hill close to the Garden, L’eglise de St Etienne. <3> It is built quite on the apex & overlooks the sea on three sides. Autrefois <4> it must have been a Temple to the Winds for it is exposed to every breath that blows from every point of the compass. Did I tell you I had met Lady Morgan <5> in society before I left Paris, she is very disagreeable I think & affected. I have heard nothing of Penrice <6> lately except that Sir C. <7> was in London & the rest at Cheltenham for Isabella’s <8> health. All your excogitations about the Corn bill are now absorbed in the Queen <9> – what do they think of her chez Vous? <10>
Direct Poste restante Boulogne sur Mer Pas de Calais – there they are only two days en route <11> from London. Yours went round by Paris from that omission. Your Sister <12> is anxious to know if you read a precious epistle she indited to you since she has been here. Miss Sharpe is going evoe! <13>
Wm Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Trinity Coll.
Cambridge
Angleterre
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 00881.
2. I am hoarding your laurel leaves.
3. St Stephen’s Church.
4. Formerly.
5. Sydney Owenson, better known as Lady Morgan (1776–1859), novelist.
6. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
7. Sir Christopher Cole (1770–1836), Captain, MP & naval officer.
8. Isabella Catherine Franklen, née Talbot (1804–1874).
9. Caroline of Brunswick, consort of George IV of England (1768–1821). She had recently returned to England to claim her rights as queen after the accession of her estranged husband as George IV.
10. Where you are.
11. On the way.
12. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister, or Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.
13. Also Eve, euoe, shout of the Bacchantes.