Marle Hill House
Cheltenham.
Friday
My dear Papa
I send you a little box containing the scarlet berries of a species of Thorn (American?) which I gathered in the Pitville [sic] gardens – it has a good effect this time of the year and as I do not think you have the tree perhaps you will like to sow some seeds. They appear to be of 2 kinds and the smaller berries hang longer on the tree than do the others.
Today is a beautiful winter day but yesterday was both frosty and foggy, very gloomy and very cold – Mama <1> thanks you very much for your letter of this morning and we were glad to hear of Goodwin <2> &c being ready to start Friday. I was also very glad to hear that the Casks were right Have you ever seen the Photographs of the Phœnician ruins in Malta supposed to be temples or circles of stones resembling Stonehenge. Haggiar Chem<3> I think was the name but I cannot refer to the book which was only lent to Aunt Newton <4> for an hour by one of her friends – These photographs had been collected and stuck in an album by this lady and were accompanied by a short description apparently cut out of some newspaper.
Please to tell Charles <5> I was going to write to him today but as Mama was is doing so I have postponed my letter. Where is he going on Monday? He must give us his address if he wants to be written to –
Yesterday we saw a lady who had returned from Germany under some difficulties after the war <6> broke out. She was staying for her health in a solitary pension among the Hartz mountains, – and afterwards with some friends at Hamburgh who had lost a son, a young Mr Annerley fighting in the Prussian service and from several circumstances that she mentioned I fancy it was the same young Englishman aged 21 of whose gallant conduct you read in the Times – who led on his men to the attack after some 20 of his Senior Officers had fallen – and who was himself killed in the battle of the 18th before Gravelotte <7> –
good bye dear Papa yr most affecte daughter
Ela
I hope we shall not be entangled in the war through the conduct of Russia – may it not be a peace after all? –
Notes:
1. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
2. George Goodwin (d. 1875), footman at Lacock Abbey.
3. She meant Hagar Qim, a stone circle coincidentally discovered in 1839, the same year that photography was announced to the public.
4. Her great-aunt, Eleanor Newton, née Stephenson (1788-1880), widow of Sarah Leaper Newton's brother, Robert Newton Leaper-Newton (1775-1846); she continued to live at Marle-Hill House, Cheltenham.
5. Charles Henry Talbot (1842–1916), antiquary & WHFT’s only son.
6. The Franco-Prussian War.
7. The battle of Gravelotte in Lorraine, on 18 August 1870, proved to be the largest battle of the war. Despite devastating losses, the Prussians succeeded largely through their new Krupp artillery, which was to prove decisive in future warfare.