London
Tuesday
My dear Henry
I hear from Ht Mundy <1> the Lacock party is given up - I am afraid you will be un peu tristes à la campagne <2> - meanwhile we are all gloomy here in & out - France is certainly in convulsions which will either upset the throne or if the expansive force finds vent in another direction it will overflow Belgium & send the D. de Nemours <3> & he of Leuchtenberg <4> to the right & left. They say that it will not be either King or even Army but the populace that will rush into Belgium <5> & take possession of it & then the Rhenish provinces, & next Savoy & Nice <6> - & that they profess will satisfy them. Ministers I believe are going on well, au fond, <7> but they have all the gaucherie of novices, & do & say a great many things they might as well not, & the carping opposition make the most of it. How long do you stay in the country - I went with JaneJane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796-1874) <8> to Colvills & the horticult. & saw lots of Crocuses I hope your collection is doing well, & those CarolineCaroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808-1881); WHFT's half-sister <9> & I planted under the steps. I planted my weeping cypress out at a venture so it must take its fate. There is at the Hort. garden an Araucaria imbricata which lives very well out with a sort of moveable covering for cold nights - I saw the Enkianthus in flower which is very pretty, I hope you are planting stone pines & ornamental trees, you have such space for an arboretum Are my bulbs coming up yet?
Parties have begun, but I know little of them - If the weather was finer I should be inclined to run down to you but I have had so much rheumatism or pain in my face I have been quite afraid of facing the wind. Capt. King <10> has brought an evergreen beech from Patagonia supposed to be hardy enough for this climate.
Can you persuade Mr Wilmot Horton <11> to take a few score Wiltshire labourers to Ceylon - I am glad he is going as I think he may do some good there.
Yr affte
W F S.
Henry F. Talbot Esq
Lacock
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Harriot Georgiana Mundy, née Frampton (1806-1886), WHFT’s cousin & sister-in-law.
2. Rather dreary in the country.
3. Louis Charles Philippe Raphaël (1814-1896), duc de Nemours, second son of King Louis Philippe of France. In January 1831 he was offered the throne of the newly established independent Belgium but declined it.
4. Probably the eldest son of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg.
5. No such popular invasion took place, but the French army went to the support of Belgium against Holland in August 1831.
6. Then part of the kingdom of Sardinia, not of France.
7. Basically.
8. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796-1874).
9. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808-1881); WHFT's half-sister.
10. Philip Parker King (1793-1856), naval officer who commanded the Adventure, sister ship to the Beagle in the survey of the southern coast of South America 1826-1830.
11. Robert John Wilmot-Horton (1784-1841), political pamphleteer; governor of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1831-1837; promoter of emigration.
12. Rev William Whewell (1794-1866), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor and natural philosopher.
13. Charles Lyell (1797-1875), Principles of geology: being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation (London: John Murray, 1830-1833). William Whewell reviewed the work in the British Critic.