Harrow <1>
Febry 20th 1812.
My dear Mamma,
I providently got Richard <2> to change the Bath bank note as I knew it would not pass elsewhere: at present my left foot is very bad, so that I do not go up to School; this is called staying out, I rather think it should be staying in. You say that giving what we do not want is not generosity: what is it then? Suppose I give a beggar six pence, though I may not want it myself, is it just the same as if I gave nothing?– I am going to send Betty <3> the money I owe her, whenever Richard chooses to tell me what it is for, in a parcel; do not you think that I had better send her some more with it; & that besides would defray the expence of the parcel, & the letters that I write to her; for I know nobody here who can frank them – At present rackets are the game in vogue among the big boys, & [pistols?] among the little ones. Our general dinner is roast mutton, & rice pudding: but sometimes veal, for Sunday) roast or boiled beef, pork or beef pie or soup, with perhaps plum pudding, apple pie, dumplings, &c, so that we fare well here. I shall very soon write again, you cannot complain of my writing seldom my engagement was to write three times a month, & I have written seven times in 5 weeks but now I take a pleasure in writing to you, somehow more than before the holidays, write often to Betty she will like it so,
Yr Affte Son
W. H. F. Talbot.
Lady Elisabeth Feilding
Penrice Castle
Swansea
Glamorgan
Notes:
1. Harrow School: WHFT attended from 1811–1815 and his son Charles from 1855-1859.
2. Richard, a servant.
3. Elizabeth Vickery ‘Betty’, WHFT’s governess. When she died in autumn 1835, WHFT paid to have a gravestone placed at Cutcombe, Somerset, inscribed: 'Erected to the Memory of Elizbth Vickery his kind & faithful nurse by Henry Fox Talbot of Lacock Abbey in the country of Wilts Esqre'; the stone's inscription is still readable - See Doc. No: 03205.