link to Talbot Project home page link to De Montfort University home page link to Glasgow University home page
Project Director: Professor Larry J Schaaf
 

Back to the letter search >

Result number 53 of 163:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >  

Document number: 8426
Date: 22 Jun 1861
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: TALBOT Rosamond Constance
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA61-118
Last updated: 17th February 2012

Millburn Tower <1>
June 22nd 1861.

My dear Papa,

Your communications cannot be said to be few and far between, as when they do come they come three in number! but why are they followed by so long a silence? – and why did you give us no other direction to write to before Nice, where you are not yet arrived I suppose, nor will be for some days. We expected to hear from you a terrific account of the heat, judging from what we have here, where for three days we have hardly been able to breathe. Growling thunder was heard yesterday and the day before, and Tilly <2> says that one day at Edinbro’ they were enveloped in a thick suffocating fog, without a breath of air stirring.

Though so near our weather is by no means always similar, so here we had no fog untill yesterday evening which cooled the air. Today it is raining hard, which will do much good, as water was getting very scarce, and our poor flowers were quite parched.

I wish you had been here just now, to see the place in its best. I foretold that you would not know it again, and I am sure you could not, it looks so different from when we came. By dint of good arrangement and uncommon cleaning we have made ourselves extremely comfortable, and today the door was put in place of the back window in the large ball-room, so it is all ready for you, and we are extremely impatient that you should come soon and take possession. Did Mama <3> tell you we had set up our Cow? and as a natural consequence, to employ the waste milk, two little pigs have been established in an admirable dwelling place set up under Goodwin’s <4> auspicies [sic]. They are quite pretty at present! And now the hen house is only waiting for its inhabitants to make us complete in all departments. We have been gardening almost every day, and getting things in order, but they are all so backward, and necessarily planted so much too late, that I am afraid the plants from Lacock won’t have time to make as much show as they ought. The hardest part of the matter is to make the gardener <5>understand what we want; it is really inconvenient that he should be so deaf.

Charles <6> appears very well indeed, and goes on reading very diligently some days; and if it was not that he still sometimes indulges in fancies and thinks too much about his health, I am sure no one can believe that there is anything really the matter with him now. He is enthusiastic about Crockey [sic] and we have purchased the game, and the bowling green in front of the windows is an admirable place to practise it.

The post hour has taken me by surprise, so I must end in a hurry.

Love from all. I hope your next letter will not be long coming, for we are anxious to know that you have not suffered from travelling in the heat. Goodbye, dear Papa.

Your affectionate daughter
Rosamond.


Notes:

1. Millburn Tower, Gogar, just west of Edinburgh; the Talbot family made it their northern home from June 1861 to November 1863. It is particularly important because WHFT conducted many of his photoglyphic engraving experiments there. The house had a rich history. Built for Sir Robert Liston (1742-1836), an 1805 design by Benjamin Latrobe for a round building was contemplated but in 1806 a small house was built to the design of William Atkinson (1773-1839), best known for Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford. The distinctive Gothic exterior was raised in 1815 and an additional extension built in 1821. Liston had been ambassador to the United States and maintained a warm Anglo-American relationship in the years 1796-1800. His wife, the botanist Henrietta Liston, née Marchant (1751-1828) designed a lavish American garden, sadly largely gone by the time the Talbots rented the house .

2. Matilda Caroline Gilchrist-Clark, ‘Tilly’, née Talbot (1839–1927), WHFT’s 3rd daughter.

3. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.

4. George Goodwin (d. 1875), footman at Lacock Abbey.

5. Mr Mackay. See Doc. No: 00163.

6. Charles Henry Talbot (1842–1916), antiquary & WHFT’s only son.

Result number 53 of 163:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >