Bristol
Oct. 7th 1813.
My dear Mamma,
I & Po have arrived here quite safe, but rather tired. We played at Commerce last night at Mrs Collins’s – Po won the pool. I think Fanny Collins <1> is the prettiest of all, What do Jane & Mary <2> think? Mary Anne did not play, but laid down several hours on a bed: I lay down about half an hour. Charles Collins is grown monstrously tall: Jane would rebuke me if I was to say horridly. Robert Collins has got a surgeons commission, & hopes to join that of an ensign to it. He is going to join his regiment in Ireland I believe. Why did Richard <3> pack up my clothes in that old portmanteau, when I have got such a nice trunk? Tell Mary, that at the passage house before I crossed the Severn, I went into the arbour, which I had been in, when we all came from Melbury: <4> & after some search, I found the place where I had then cut off a branch with a new knife – At the other passage I found the letters C R M T <5> scratched on the window, as I have represented it. When we got into the coach, we found a man in it. He was very silent, he got out at Cardiff; where we breakfasted – He was succeeded by a Woman, with a nice little child in her lap, so nicely dressed. – It was the youngest of 12 children, & about 5 years old. She was the wife of an ironmonger I believe. She only went to Newport. – At the Passage Marianne <6> left us; the carriage came for her, just as we were going away – The rain kept pouring all the way over, but we had an umbrella. We went over very quick. We dined here: – by a nice warm fire: at the Bush Inn. We are not determined yet, how I am to go: It is too late to enquire about anything tonight. Po says that if I was not writing, she would write to you – Mary Anne has given me a nice little memorandum book, in blue morocco, it contains 8 calf skin pages, which <illegible deletion> can be cleaned again with a pocket handkerchief whenever written on: it has a nice pencil; & shuts into a blue morocco case: –
Yr Affte Son.
WHFTalbot
Po is going to see that my bed is aired –Lady Elisabeth Feilding
Penrice Castle
Swansea
Glamorgan
Bristol October 7. 1813.
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 00662.
2. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874), and Mary Thereza Talbot (1795–1861), WHFT’s cousin.
3. Richard, a servant.
4. Melbury, Dorset: one of the Fox Strangways family homes; WHFT was born there.
5. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
6. See Doc. No: 00554.