Melbury <1>
Sunday
My Dear Henry
We are dying to know L’Empereur & le Bouffon <2> we give it up; so pray expound. It has been snowing here all day, the welkin is obscured. I hate the Month of January, it is the only one of the year I positively dislike. I think I shall be with you the week after next, & help with my additional numerical force to guard the Abbey, tho’ after such an attentat as that at Wraxall the robbers <3> will be more cautious for some time. The Papers are all full of it. I enclose a letter from Amandier, <4> shew it to Constance <5> & don’t trouble yourself to return it as I shall see you so soon. The two Mary’s <6> [sic] stay here for Twelfth Day & then go to Kilmington. I asked them to come & see us after that, but they are in a hurry back to Glamorgan on account of Emma’s <7> confinement Have any of those robbers been traced, or taken? It appears Miss Awdry <8> was so many hours in their company she can have no difficulty in Swearing to their identity. £25 was too little a reward to offer.
Notes:
1. Melbury, Dorset: one of the Fox Strangways family homes; WHFT was born there.
2. The Emperor and the clown.
3. See Doc. No: 04403.
4. Amélina Petit De Billier, ‘Mamie’, ‘Amandier’ (1798–1876), governess and later close friend of the Talbot family [See Amélina's journal].
5. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
6. One must choose here between three plausible candidates: Lady Mary Lucy Cole, née Strangways, first m. Talbot (1776–1855), WHFT’s aunt; Mary Thereza Talbot (1795–1861), WHFT’s cousin; and Mary Frampton (1773–1846), botanist & author.
7. Emma Thomasina Llewelyn, née Talbot (1806–1881), photographer; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
8. A relation of John Awdry (1766–1844), solicitor, Reybridge.