Château de Pont de Brigne
3d June
My Dear Henry
Here I am installed in my mansion in Picardie, I would rather it had been some more neat province de cette belle France, <1> but what can't be cured must be endured. It looks particularly ill after Chantilly where I staid some days Chemin faisant, <2> the Forest there is superbe & the drives in it countless & endless, we saw many chevreuils <3> running about & pheasants they were very tame from being never disturbed, as it is strictly preserved by the Duc de Bourbon, <4> who only comes in the Autumn pour la Chasse. <5> We have lately been a tour to Fontainebleau & Melun which is agreeably situated on the Seine & all that does not Let off the Department of the Pas de Calais in which there is neither wood nor water. I was very sorry indeed to leave Tivoli, the garden was become so beautiful, such a luxuriance of shade & such a profusion of bloom. I want to know what your plans are & when you think of leaving Cambridge. What is the first day you can & what the last, tell me this & then I can judge.
That first effort of the Australasian Muse <6> I had not seen in any paper – the wish that his Mistress could read his feelings inscribed on the Moon is not original, the rest is & is pretty I think. I forget what Dr Halloran <7> was transported for, was it not forgery? I received your first letter <8> full of adventures with an account of indigenous cabbages on the coast of Kent Silicons strata &c &c what made you think I had not? What Digby <9> do you mean? I cannot imagine which ramification of the family can be a friend of yours or where you can have met with him. Heidelberg I know is beautiful, I have seen many views of it, & should have liked it I am sure.
Caroline <10> has made a little hortus out of the woods of Chantilly in hope of your approbation. Pray write very soon to enliven my solitude, I have been here but two days & am already bored to death, Madame de Staël <11> told me she never passed but one day alone & was so ennuyée <12> before the end of it that she sent for the Curé <13> of the Village to come & keep her company.
I should have chosen Baden certainly beyond all the other places – it must be delightful, but sine pennis volare haud facile est <14> the journey was long & dispendious
&c & many other wise & weighty reasons I long excessively to hear from you again I wrote you a letter just before I left Paris I wonder whether you received it.
God Bless you Dearest
Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Trinity College
Cambridge
Angleterre
Notes:
1. Of this beautiful country, France.
2. On the way.
3. Roe-deers.
4. Louis-Antoine de Bourbon, Duc d’Angoulême (1775–1844), last dauphin of France and a prominent figure in the restoration of the Bourbon line after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.
5. The shooting.
6. This refers to Rev Dr O’Halloran’s ode written in 1819. [See Doc. No: 00875].
7. He forged a frank.
8. See Doc. No: 00873.
9. Probably Rev William Digby (1777-1848), later Dean of Durham.
10. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
11. Anne Louise Germaine Necker de Staël-Holstein (better known as Madame de Staël), (1766–1817), critic and writer.
12. Bored.
13. Parish priest.
14. Flying without wings, meaning nothing can be done without the proper means. Plautus.