Laycock Abbey
24th August
My Dear Henry
This is my third letter since you went! & not one from you. This rain will bring you home to your Penates, <1> I surmise. I have just been reading “ourquoi faut – il que la vie <viéille?> ressemble si peu à la vie de l’imagination? à quelle fin nous est-elle donc donnée, cette imagination? Mysterè impénétrable!” <2> How often one has thought this –
Porter <3> has just brought me thirty seven which he did yesterday. a great many Lace which I suppose he was ordered to do.
Notes:
1. Household gods.
2. Why it is necessary that the old life resembles so little of the life of the imagination? To what purpose then have we been given this imagination? An impenetrable mystery!
3. Charles Porter (b. 1828), a servant at Lacock Abbey, was the frequent subject of photographs, and occasionally also photographic assistant.