Florence
March 25
Dear Henry
Cyclamen seed (autumnal) is just ripe & I shall set about collecting some. They have at last got the spring one in the Giar. Semplice & I am able to compare the two – besides the difference between the flowers which are here the leaves are more difft than I thought – the spring one is more truly & constantly ivy leaved than the other, (which is always running into heartshaped, arrow or halberd shaped &c) & has jagged edges – & they come up before the flowers – not so the autumnal – I mean to make my own systema vegetabilium <1> & erect 5 only species of Cycl. C. vernum. æstivum. autumnale. Persicum & Coum – & I defy anyone to mistake them I do the same with Tulips which Raddi <2> Reboul <3> & I are recasting, & mean to make also 5 species of this neighborhood on. T. O. Solis <4>. Sylvestris. Gesneriana Clusiana & suaveolens – the first & last comprising 4 or 5 varieties each. I recommend you to do the same – for they are turning botany upsidedown with new names. Have you Gays <5> tract on Crocus think of his giving minimus to one of the largest & shewyest species that of Castellamare – they say C maesiacus is found in the Sabine hills.
I made a great & grand discovery at Rome, a little to the confusion of Mauri <6> who had lived there all his life without finding it out – Going one day to see Roma Vecchia about half way to Cecilia Metella just opposite or a little before coming to a dilapidated castellated villa which looks like a Castle for Don Quixote – I saw an immense mass of ruin more like a rock than a tomb, quite covered with hedera chrysocarpa whose golden berries hung pendant in the sun. There was but one plant & that a very old one & must have been seen by everyone who went to visit Cecilia Metella since the days of Pliny. I think you ought to have found it out too. Bertoloni <7> who knew of it from you or me has held it out as a desideratum for young Italian botanists to look for but calls it Hedera poetarum as if it was half a fiction. As far as I could see, none of the leaves were hederiform, all heartshaped, slightly undulated.
On Tuesday I am going with Raddi à la recherche d Ornith. exscapum <8> at Caraggi I have already found again the tulip of the Villa Baring of which I once found 2 on a stalk. I did not go to Albano – but S. bifolia & anemone Apennina are to be had cheap in England & by patience & a good gardener are easily encreased. Most gardeners cut flowers & save no seed which is a great cause of the poverty of gardens. Anem. hortensis is poor here – at Rome very fine. I found a quantity of apennina all white at Montesori & much I. bulbocodium & crocus biflorus pusillus albus. What think you of a new Cherleria on the summit of Etna! & the Pæstum rose turning out the Rosa Borreri an English rose! I found Parietaria lusita <9> at Rome – Romulea purpurea & intermedia – N. pseudonarcissus – pale petals shorter than the cup. Have you heard of Camellias & Cape heaths at Abbotsbury <10> in flower in the open air in Feby? I recd also an A. pavonina from thence the other day – single-flowered.
I am afraid I can hardly send a bushel of cyclamen seed but I suppose a mixture will do of roots, &c – Try all sorts of tender plants against the quantity of walls you have such as myrtle, oleander, Cratægus glabra, Glycine Dolichos – Bignonia capreolata – Pandora – Rosa banksiæ Melaleuca lanceolata &c Acacia Iulibrissin – what kind of Gardener has Mackay sent you I wish it had been May when I passed the woods of Narni there is such a nice wall under the Hermitage where I am sure there are orchideæ in abundance. I came by Todi to Perugia thro a rich & riant <11> country – more than can be said for most part of the kingdom of Rome. Todi is a curious old place a little like Volterra – with a fine old lombard cathedral – the road odiously hilly because you see it need not be so – you pass a fine old roman bridge of 5 arches – the country beautifully wooded & near the Tiber great part of the way I saw Perugia Cortona & Aresso. <12> the new road will be open next winter by the Val di Chiana Chiusi & Orvieto – to Rome. My picture gallery encreases – where on earth I shall put them all I don’t know. I think a few antiques would suit Lacock very well don’t you think Cimabue or Giotto might really have painted in the gallery? I advise the English artists to introduce fresco painting into England – may hold out the hope of employment on the lunette of your cloisters? I am more & more enraged at the supineness of the Govt in not buying pictures, pray try to inspire Ld Dudley <13> with some taste. I saw at Rome the dealer who bought that magnificent Capponi Perugino that was offered to us – he tells me it is safe in the Berlin Gallery. Last week the Tempi Raphael was bought by or for the King of Bavaria (who employs a cunning old German to be always on the look out) it goes to Munich in a few days. There is now a lovely picture of M. Albertinelli to be sold framed & cleaned for 50 louis – after the Salutation in the Gallery the finest I ever saw. I would rather have it than all C. Dolcis <14>. The dealers that collect for Germany buy old & modern perfect & imperfect, sketches &c from 1000 Luigi to 20 scudi – so as to make a school – which is what we shall never have & do not deserve to have. I should like to have 5000£ to lay out in pictures then when I had made a complete historical collection the Govt would perhaps condescend to buy it, if the times were not economical.
Have you Pteris Cretica alive? My genoese plants are coming on slow – Ornithogalum angustifolium will flower but I fear Scilla undulatum & Iris juncea will not – I know nothing of Kit <15> – Pray come over the Alps at least as far as [illegible] the grassy slopes of the Bernardino & Val [illegible] will certainly afford you some sport. I dare say as much as [illegible] <16>
I want somebody to find the Cactus said to grow in Switzerland also the Colchicum montanum more likely alpinum – You will of course lade <17> yourself with a stock of Alpine plants Cyclamen europæum, Rhodod. chamæcistus – Gentiana utriculosa Polygula chamæbuxus purpurea & other guinea plants at Chelsea
[address panel:]
Henry F. Talbot Esqr
31. Sackville Street <18>
Notes:
1. System of vegetables, that is, classification-system for plants.
2. Joseph (Giuseppe) Raddi (1770–1829), Italian botanist.
3. Eugenio de Reboul, botanist.
4. Tulipa Oculus Solis.
5. Jacques Étienne Gay (1768–1864), French botanist.
6. Ernesto Mauri (1791–1836), Italian botanist.
7. Prof Antoine Bertoloni (1793–1868), Italian botanist.
8. On a search for Ornithogalum exscapum.
9. Parietaria lusitanica.
10. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
11. Smiling.
12. Probably a phonetic spelling of ‘Arezzo’.
13. John William Ward, 1st Earl Dudley (d. 1833).
14. Carlo Dolci (1616–1686), Florentine painter.
15. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
16. Text obscured by seal.
17. An archaic form of ‘load’.
18. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.