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Document number: 4834
Date: 08 Dec 1875
Harold White: 8 Dec 1875
Postmark: Torquay 8 Dec 1875
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: FRAMPTON Louisa Charlotte
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: Acc 22862 (envelope)
Last updated: 13th November 2012

My dear Henry

I have been waiting to write for ages past, until I could tell you some news of Mrs Campbell’s Memoirs, <1> but the Editors are so slow in answering that it takes one half a lifetime to know in what predicament one stands. Blackwood & Fraser<2> have declined it as being too long, & although I have had an offer to read if it from the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” into which I should like to get it, yet I have just decided on giving up the idea of sending it to any magazine. This is partly from the dismal discouragement which I have undergone very recently about a rather nice article on “Wonders of Carved Work” which was accepted by Chambers Journal;<3> & when I corrected the press it was all right, but lo! when it was published, some of the most important parts were omitted, & the rest so curtailed & so altered, that it was not my article at all, but a most miserable production, garbled & utterly spoilt, & as a literary specimen very bad altogether. Chambers must be a man of no real education, or he could not have written such awkward sentences, & have joined it so badly where he had omitted between. I am so distressed, & ashamed of it altogether, (though not my fault,) that I will not tell in what number it appeared, & am thankful that he did not put my name. Perhaps he knew that he might get into a scrape if he did, for some of it is not mine, & what was mine is completely altered, suppressed, & spoilt. I have since heard from Sir R. Christison, <4> that even he cannot get his MSS correctly published. His Editors or Publishers play tricks with them, & put him in a rage, & if he cannot get fair dealing – what chance have I with strange Editors, & no influence? On the whole therefore, I incline to letting it rest for the present, & so Harriot <5> thinks. It is long for a Magazine, & if it were played tricks with, it would be too dreadful. However it appears that Chambers is a particularly disagreeable Editor. Fraser’s refusal is particularly civil, & evidently from the length only. I have written some Lines much approved, on the P. of Wales in India, which my cousin John Harbord, (Ld Suffields brother,) has got into the “Leisure Hour” for Jany<6> & I hope he may get some more taken. He is Chaplain to Morden College, Blackhurst, the Librarian of which knows Editors &c, so through him there seems a chance for me. One he has got to look at, is curious I think, & not common, “On the Origin of Popular Nursery Lore.” But it is improbable to guess what will please, as they seem to care only for “sensationals” or novels. I do not at all know the “Leisure Hour.” It is a periodical that I have never met with, but I shall esteem it if it takes my compositions, & I have only to hope that what it takes, it will neither garble nor alter, nor omit. So much for my literary history since last I wrote. It is snowing fast, & the therm 30º even at my South window. I have not had much this year in my little strip of garden, but my Spirocas flowered well in lovely feathery spikes – it is a most graceful foreign-looking shrub. – & my Sumach was very pretty & ended when it turned crimson, with being quite glorious. Harriot, to whom I gave some young Spirocas – white – says one has flowered pink, which must be very pretty, & I should ask her to send me back one turned pink, only I suppose it would be white again here – just as in some places purple violets always turn white. Derbyshire soil seems to turn pink. What a beautiful superstition is that concerning the Finderne family in Derbyshire, which family, their house, & even their monuments are gone, & yet in the once garden of the no longer existing house, grow some “Finderne Flowers,” bought & planted by Sir Godfrey [sic] himself on his return from the Crusades, for those flowers “never fade die.”,<7> There they are now. A Narcissus was one, but I daresay you know all this. As I do not know where you are, I write to Lacock. Will you send me your Photograph? for the “Family Book” which I have been arranging for Ht

yr aff
Louisa C. Frampton

PS I have forgotten to ask whether, as Rosamond <8> is I believe great at drawing & colouring, & as you are all so fond of Cats, she would be so very kind as to make me a little sketch of a Cat who is dead, so I cannot take its Photograph – indeed of two separate Cats, if it were not too much to ask, as they did not live at the same time. One all black, very mild looking & neither large nor small – the other black with a white breast, & 4 white feet, the two hind feet rather more white, & like socks than the 2 front paws, & a small Cat of slender make. Alas! this one was given to catch Rats, & recently came to an untimely end. The all black one died of old age, & I have had no record of him, though he was my greatest favourite & constant companion. If this is too much trouble Rosamond is not to think any more of the request.

[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot Esqre
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Wilts


Notes:

1. See Louisa Charlotte Frampton,‘Princess Charlotte and Mrs Campbell’, The Gentleman’s Magazine, n.s. v. 27, September 1876, pp. 275-289. Alicia Campbell, née Kelly, ‘Tam’ (1768–1829), a close family friend of the Framptons, had been a member of Princess Charlotte’s household since 1805.

2. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and Fraser’s Magazine.

3. [unattributed}, "Wonders of Carved Work," Chambers's Journal of Popular Literaure, Science, and Art, s. 4 v. 52 no. 619, 6 November 1875, pp. 713-715.

4. Sir Robert Christison (1797–1882), M.D., Scottish physician, chemist and botanist.

5. Harriot Georgiana Mundy, née Frampton (1806-1886), WHFT’s cousin & sister-in-law.

6. The Prince of Wales, later Edward V11 (1841-1910) left for a tour of India in 1875. Rev. Hon. John Harbord (1832-1900), brother of Charles Harbord, 5th Lord Suffield (1830-1914). There are a number of references to the Prince of Wales in India in the January numbers of The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation, but none of them are attributed to Frampton.

7. This was Narcissus poeticus, the Poet's Daffodil or Findern Flower, reportedly brought by Sir Geoffrey de Fynderne from the Crusades. Sir Bernard Burke related the story that the once prominent Finderne family of Derbyshire dropped out of history in the 15th c. when Catherine Finderne consented to be the mistress of Lord Grey of Codnor. In 1850, when Burke visited the village of Findern in South Derbyshire, he could find not a stone of their buildings nor a memorial in their church. However, an old villager led him to a field with traces of terraces and foundations, sporting "garden flowers grown wild", saying "there are the Findernes' Flowers, brought by Sir Geoffrey from the Holy Land, and do what we will, they will never die!" Burke, A Second Series of Vissicitudes of Families (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860), pp. 14-15.

8. Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2nd daughter.

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