11 Randolph Crescent. <1>
Tuesday.
My dear Papa,
We are so glad to hear that you really are coming back again, for we were beginning to despair, and to fear that you would have not courage again to traverse the distance that separates us.
You will find Edinburgh looking so much prettier and more cheerful now that the days are grown longer, and though the weather has often been stormy and unsettled, we have now but few fogs, and the view is generally clear and beautiful. The early flowers are coming out everywhere in the gardens and there was is a feeling of approaching spring. – Only think how dismayed we were yesterday at a rumour, which Tilly brought back from a large dinner party, at the Miss Walkers of Drumseugh. Mr Coventry told her that telegraphic news had just arrived that Lord Cowley <2> was recalled from Paris – We waited most anxiously for this morning [sic] paper, but were reassured by finding nothing of the Kind in it – However the society here is in a ferment, and even the young ladies begin to talk politics and discuss the probabilities of peace and war. <3>
There is an extraordinary lull just now in the dissipations of the place: – there was but the small party all last week – It seems as if they had begun too early, and had expended all their energies. However next Friday will be the Masonic ball, always one of the prettiest and best, which will, I have no doubt, rouse them from their present Apathy. Dinner parties, in the meantime, flourish exceedingly, you don’t hear of a day without them, and we have many more invitations in that way than last year. I am still unfortunate in not having been able to go out at all in the evening, and with not much prospect of doing so for some little time to come, but the mornings have become so very enjoyable, that I can get out often, and so cannot complain of being shut up. Last week we were quite a doleful company, for Mama <4> one day fell down on the stairs, by catching her foot in the carpet, and Knocked her head violently against the wall It swelled up very much and she was obliged to keep quiet for two days. Now all ill effects are passed away, but it has left still a mark on her forehead, all black and blue.
At the same time Mamie <5> had a very bad cold and sore throat which came on quite suddenly, and I am glad to say is going off almost as fast, for she even talks of going this evening to a little music party at the Cockburns. <6> She told me to send you all sorts of amitiés <7> from her. – I suppose Mama told you how much Dr Moir <8> wished to possess a specimen or two of your engravings: he was enchanted with those he saw in the book, for before that he had seen none but leaves and lace. I am sure it would be giving him the greatest possible pleasure, if you could spare him a few. I am very anxious and curious to Know what you have been doing all this time, and whether you have accomplished any more large ones, for you have never said anything about it in your letters.
There is one event which made us all very sad, and that is the death of poor Prescott. <9> What a misfortune that he should be snatched away before being able to conclude his interesting, so interesting, work of Philip II. We had almost concluded this 3d Volume, and had enjoyed it more than all the others, when the melancholy tidings arrived.
Tilly <10> is teasing me to leave off, as she wants me for something or the other –
So goodbye, dear Papa, hoping to see you now in the course of a week, I remain Your affectionate daughter
Rosamond Talbot.
[envelope:]
H. F. Talbot Esqre
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Wiltshire
Notes:
1. Edinburgh.
2. Henry Richard Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley (1804–1884). He was British ambassador to France 1852–1867.
3. A Franco-Piedmontese alliance against Austria had been sealed in January 1859, despite an attempt on Napoleon III's life by the anarchist Felice Orsini in Paris on 14 January 1859.
4. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
5. Amélina Petit De Billier, ‘Mamie’, ‘Amandier’ (1798–1876), governess and later close friend of the Talbot family [See Amélina's journal].
6. Possibly family of Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn (1802–1880), Attorney-General 1852–1856.
7. Affections.
8. Dr John Moir (b 1809), French-born to British parents, MD, 52 Castle St, Edinburgh.
9. William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859), History of the reign of Philip, the Second, king of Spain (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1855–1888).
10. Matilda Caroline Gilchrist-Clark, ‘Tilly’, née Talbot (1839–1927), WHFT’s 3rd daughter.