London
12 July–
My dear Henry
I believe I promised you a botanical letter I quite forget what I was going to put in it but now Louisa Howard <1> has brought me up from the New forest an undoubted specimen of a native Gladiolus which turns out to be Glad. communis v. minor – as far as I can see without comparison it is very like a small Bologna plant Bertoloni <2> called triphyllus but which Dr Herbert <3> pronounced only a variety.
The Mundys <4> go out of town today to Merthyr Mawr <5> – the Framptons <6> are at Paris. I know no news about anything – Our stay here I fancy will be short – I want to see a little more of the Exhibition. <7> It is not so pretty, bright – light – or brilliant as the former <8> – tho more valuable on the whole. Besides it is not new, & not so popular among the public as it might be. There seem to have been some mismanagement – & what a Summer to treat foreigners to!
We went yesterday to see Charles Murray ( Edw. M’s <9> son) at Whitton near Hounslow – of which he married the heiress <10>. It belonged to the Duke of Argyll 150 years ago – & he is said to have planted some of the very numerous fine Cedars & other trees there – the finest deciduous Cypresses in a group I ever saw. American, Turkey & other oaks – worth seeing altogether.
We have just got a box from Abby <11> – with Gladiolus cardinalis Lilium peregrinum – Magnolia glauca – Mesemb. inclaudens &c &c
Genista tinctoria makes a very pretty garden plant kept tidy. Lilium Canadense of Emily Murray’s introduction is a fine plant.<12> Camp. Vidalii, Vanneri, Mauritanica, & barbata –
I hope you are all well at the Tower <13>. Kit <14> has taken a Tower at Wimbledon to show his family the Rifles I suppose.
Yr Affte
Wm
Notes:
1. Louisa Howard, née Fitzmaurice (d. 1906), daughter of Lady Louisa Emma Fitzmaurice.
2. Prof Antoine Bertoloni (1793–1868), Italian botanist.
3. William Herbert, Dean of Manchester (1778–1847), MP; clergy; botanist; linguist.
4. William Mundy (1801-1877), politician, WHFT’s brother-in-law; and his wife, Harriot Georgiana Mundy, née Frampton (1806-1886), WHFT’s cousin & sister-in-law.
5. Merthyr Mawr, Glamorgan, on River Ogwr.
6. Henry Frampton (1804-1879) and his wife, Charlotte, née Blencowe, of Dawlish.
7. The International Exhibition of 1862.
8. The Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition of 1862 was something of an anticlimax.
9. Charles Murray (1825–1892), son of Rev Edward Murray (1798–1852), author & inventor.
10. Emily Gostling, only child of the Revd J. W. Gostling. Charles Murray assumed the additional surname of Gostling. She died in 1859.
11. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
12. Amelia ‘Emily’ Matilda Murray (1795–1884), author and Maid of Honor to Queen Victoria. Although a strong advocate in the Royal Court for the education of delinquent and abandoned children, she defended the institution of slavery in the American South after her travels there between July 1854 and October 1855. The publication of her memoir on this forced her resignation as Woman of the Bedchamber. Murray, Letters from the United States, Cuba, and Canada (London: J. W. Parker & Son, 1856).
13. 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 .
14. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.