Tuesday 9th May
My Dear Henry
Encore une fois <1> I must beg you to write as often as you possibly can spare a minute, otherwise I shall be low & melancholy. Make your billets <2> as short as you like, as long as you send them I am satisfied. I have always forgot to tell you that Lady Jersey <3> desired Caroline <4> to tell me the Dresden Bell was never away from her side & indeed Caroline saw it on a little table close by where she always sits to write her letters & notes. I tell you this because I remember at the time you seemed to think it quite unaccountable & unsatisfactory that it should have been left to her. She was a very old friend even before She married, tho’ politics or rather her change of politics had divided them in latter years – She is a woman of warm Affections naturally, though spoilt by the world.
Charlie <5> has taken such a fancy to the baby, he likes him better than the little girls because he can’t bear dolls which they are always playing with. He says the baby is to be his friend & he kisses his hand with admiration!
Aff Yrs
E F
Continual rain & gloom, luckily our interior is more chearful than our exterior at present
[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot Esr
31. Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. Once more.
2. Notes.
3. Sarah Sophia Villiers, née Fane, Lady Jersey (1785–1867).
4. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
5. Charles Earnest Edgcumbe (1838–1915), JP, WHFT’s nephew.