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Document number: 9387
Date: 10 Jul 1868
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: NICHOLL Edward Powell
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 1st September 2003

Lacock,

Chippenham.

July 10th 1868

My dear Mr Talbot,

We are still in difficulties about the school, the farmers are so very much opposed to the education of the labouring classes that they will do very little to help: So that we cannot get together sufficient funds, we are now short of about £200. In you letter to me from Edinburgh in which you promised “to contribute a hundred pounds, and also the present building and the site,” you added “I should be glad to do more but this year I have had some heavy payment to make.

Nevertheless I would increase my subscription rather than that the scheme would fail, only I mean to say that it would be rather inconvenient to me this year.”

You afterwards sold us the site of the old house adjoining which was valued by your valuer at £82, so that it would have a balance due from you to the school fund of £18, I write now to ask you to forego the value of the site, and give us the £100 intact. I have done all I could to get the money together other ways (but have been unsuccessful), as I thought you had certainly done your share already, but in vain and so I have to come again to you.

Another request I have to make to you, I to allow Wilkyns to go down to Merthyrmawr & see his daughter & go on from there to see Margam, he tells me he should like to go very much, but as you have been so kind as to let him go to London this year, he does not like to ask & so I thought I would write and ask for him, he knows nothing of my intention.

I suppose we shall soon have Charles back again, which I shall be very glad of. I go next week to Markeaton to meet the Duchess Sforza & her son. My mother is at Eastborne, she has gone there for the sake of her grandson little Lewis who has got a very bad throat, and, as my mother says, is fearfully delicate. Christina is getting much better, but slowly. We are dreadfully burnt up, having had hardly any rain; we have only had 3.71 inches of rain since April 10th the thermometer registered yesterday 88 degrees, that is the highest we have had this year, two days in May it was 82, last night it was 56: but I daresay you at Venice are warmer, but his heat is tremendous for England – the gardens are suffering very much, there are hardly any vegetables; & I have not been able to plant out my Geraniums as I have no water to water them with. I hope Mrs Talbot is better, and the others flourishing.

Yours truly

Edward P. Nicholl

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