Monday 8th May
My Dear Henry
I entreat you will keep us au courant <1> of your mouvements, and say whether you like to be written to during your absence, as it is not very probable that anything very worthy of transmission to foreign shores will occur before you come back. Pray say whether you try the Dover rail road & all particulars by land & water. You will have everything to tell us, but we there can be no reciprocity. We all miss you dreadfully, I may say surprisingly considering how little you come amongst us when you are here. but then that little is so égayant, <2> & Caroline <3> says she always hears something from your lips she did not know before. She is very comfortable here & means to stay till the 20th – I consider myself very remarkably unlucky in your being obliged to go to Paris just at this moment, because it is so very seldom I can have all my three children at the same time, the force of circumstances is against it happening often. Dark & rainy weather still continues, it is very dispiriting. Remember if you don’t write often I shall be nervous, j’aurai des inquiétudes <4> as you had at Berlin –
Charlie <5> had a bad bruize [sic] & a great escape to day we thought at first he had broke [sic] his arm, mais il n’en était rien <6> & he is now playing with his cousins as if nothing had happened. Caroline was the most frightened of the two, but now all’s well again
Aff Yrs
E F
[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot Er.
31. Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. Up to date.
2. Cheering, amusing.
3. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
4. I shall have anxieties.
5. Charles Earnest Edgcumbe (1838–1915), JP, WHFT’s nephew.
6. But it was nothing.