London
Tuesday May 25. /69
My dear Father
I duly received your letter from Rome, and the previous ones that you wrote from Florence. I am glad you have enjoyed [illegible deletion] your visit to Rome. Aunt Caroline <1> says that she does not know the lake 3 miles above the fall of Terni. I did not suppose that it had been so long since you had been to Rome. I suppose that by the time you get my letter you will have been to Naples.
I have bought Tyndall on Sound, <2> and shall probably in due course get his other works. In that book he treats largely about vibrations and I expect that I shall find it elucidatory of light.
I think there are only two more “light” lectures to come after which if I have no particular engagement I may go to Lacock. –
I was there in Whitsunweek when we had weather rather too rainy for the Club <3> meetings. On Wednesday when we dined in a tent, there was too much wind and it was too cold to be particularly pleasant.
The Wisteria has been in glorious flower but was beginning to pass off when I saw it. – Some of the laburnums are very good. The lilacs, many of them, seemed to be passing off…
Miss Fuller & Mr Benjamin Speke <4> were duly married on Whit wednesday. I suppose that the rest of the Neston family will now arrive in Town. – Rumour says that Mr Spicer intends to give a ball , at his house in Belgrave Square.
I am going to dine tonight with your old friend & competitor the bishop of Llandaff. <5>
Yesterday I went with the Dillwyns <6> and others to see Japanese jugglers. and fireworks at the Crystal palace <7> The juggling seemed to be very good but unfortunately there was no getting a good place near the performers and as we had no opera glasses we did not see very well. –
The fireworks were remarkably good in themselves, but there was a great deal of smoke which interfered deplorably with the effect of the devices – – I believe this was owing to the evening being damp. –
Those rockets that burst into stars on the whole succeded [sic] very well. – . Some throw out clusters of blue stars going having very little effects in lighting up the place, but very pretty. The clusters of white stars light up the garden considerably. – . They had also little balloons which tugged up a bright flame which I believe to be burning magnesium
I have been so far once only to the Royal Academy, & so cannot give much account of it. –
I hope to hear soon from you or from Monnie <8>
Your affect son
Charles
[envelope:]
Italy
Monr H F Talbot
Hotel de la Grande Bretagne
Florence
Notes:
1. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
2. John Tyndall (1820–1893), natural philosopher; Sound; a course of eight lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London: Longmans, Green, 1869).
3. New University Club, St James’s Street, London SW.
4. Rev Benjamin Speke. [See Doc. No: 09320].
5. Alfred Ollivant (1798–1882), Bishop of Llandaff (1849–1882).
6. Harry Dillwyn.
7. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton (1801–1865) and erected in Hyde Park, London, 1850–1851, to accommodate the the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was later moved to Sydenham Hill, South London, where a larger Crystal Palace was reopened in 1854. It was destroyed by fire in 1936.
8. Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2nd daughter.