My dear Father.
I did manage to get my hat back at last but it was not at Barnard Castle <1> when I first went to the Station master to ask him. I should be much obliged to you if you could find the first book of Herodotus with Blakeslay’s <2> notes which will be somewhere in my room for I have only got a tenth in the book box and we are doing the first book, & send it me by book post. I left them all very well at Grasmere, <3> but the weather seemed to be breaking up there when I came away. However it was fair enough here to-day, till the evening when it began to rain. Woolthall & I went to Wycliffe on Thursday and further along the crag to the Hermitage a small kind of summer house on the edge of the crag looking up the Tees towards Whorlton bridge. The day was beautiful and the view considerably prettier than when you saw it. We went on some way further to where the Tees forms 3 little wooded islands, & we came back along a difficult track lower down below the cliff. At a place called the Low Parks near there the river is quite smooth and remarkably pretty. In one of the woods near Whorlton we are a lot of alpine Currant bushes of which we ate some currants. They have a peculiar taste but are bit something like the ordinary [illegible deletion] red & white currants. Mr Headlams brother Morley <4> is here just now, shooting partridges. It is rather interesting to see the garden grow and the plans concerning it. The book box has not yet arrived b yut we expect it soon.
Your affect Son
Charles Talbot
Notes:
1. A town in the district of Teesdale, Durham.
2. Joseph Williams Blakesley (1808–1885), Herodotus. Clio. Book I. with a commentary by J. W. Blakesley (London: Whittaker, 1852).
3. Grasmere, Westmoreland: popular summer venue; Wordsworth is buried there.
4. Morley Headlam (b. 1822), magistrate and land agent, older brother of Rev Arthur William Headlam (1826–1909), clergy and Charles's private tutor.