Laycock Abbey
22d August
My Dear Henry
Owing to the improvement in the post office since the rail road has been opened to Exeter, Caroline <1> received your Talbotypes at Eleven o’clock the morning after you dispatched them! She was very much pleased [illegible deletion] & is quite of another opinion to you about the world in general, which she thinks is now only beginning to understand them. As you cannot have much to do in the Evening at the Beaufort Arms which is a sort of generic name for all the Inns in that district,<2> I hope you will give us the fruits of your leisure, if you are not too tired with the day’s work to write. I think you will report having gone without a single book into those remotenesses, particularly if there should be a rainy day – though probably Monmouthshire is much improved in civilization since I travelled in it more than forty years ago, & may produce a circulating library or Bookseller’s shop.
All remains here as you left it but black & rolling clouds menace for tomorrow. I shall narrowly watch Porter <3> (at least as far as his productions) for I believe he is excessively idle
Notes:
1. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
2. WHFT was most likely in Monmouth - see Lady Elisabeth's letter of 25 August addressed there - Doc. No: 05043.
3. Charles Porter (b. 1828), a servant at Lacock Abbey, was the frequent subject of photographs, and occasionally also photographic assistant.