London
Thursday 9th March
My Dear Mother
We have taken the house 65 Harley St. <1> It is very near Queen Ann St <2> but that is of no use as Constance’s <3> sisters will not be in Town this year. Mr Mundy <4> wants to let his house for the season, he however very kindly offered us it for 10 weeks or what time we pleased at the same rent as we should pay for another house if we could get one to suit us, as for instance 12 or 14 guineas a week – We accepted this offer immediately, but afterwards C. had such scruples about it that we wrote to decline it, and have taken a house at 10 guineas a week that requires a good washing – As soon as it is in a status habitabilis <5> we are anxious to get into it, in the mean time the painter has received orders to commence his work here.
There are 2 Acacias, one large & one small, growing together near the walnut in C’s garden. These trees are valuable because I gathered the seed myself off the Acacias at Varese. I therefore wish to move them & put them in a good situation somewhere. Suppose in the lawn before Fitzsimmons’s <6> house, near the Pond, or near the group of trees I planted there last year: Thus they will in time help to conceal the barn. – Also several young American Walnuts which the gardener to my displeasure took up early in the winter, & laid them by the heels, in which position they have been ever since – These I raised from seed myself – I think one of them shd be placed to hide the barn, and the rest somewhere else. In Inwood perhaps, since it is thin of trees. I do not think it wd be worth while to preserve the strip of plantation in Fussell’s <7> field (for which I now pay an allowance to him Yearly) for the sake of those horsechesnuts, 3 or 4 in number, which are doing well: but let them be moved to Inwood, where there are none I believe, so they wd make a variety. Would you like to thin Caroline Copse, Horatia <8> copse and the plantation opposite the house along the wall by the roadside? I hope the fence by the cascade is mended ere now –
[although his mother frequently left her letters to him unsigned, it was unusual for WHFT not to sign a letter - the absence here possibly indicates a missing outer sheet]
Notes:
1. Harley Street, London.
2. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.
3. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
4. Francis Mundy (29 Aug 1771 – 6 May 1837), politician and father of Constance Talbot.
5. Habitable state.
6. Cornelius Fitzsimmons, Scottish gardener at Lacock Abbey.
7. Stephen Fussell. [See Doc. No: 02983].
8. Named for his two half-sisters, Lady Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding (1808-1881) and Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851).