Harrow <1>
June 17. 1812 -
My dear Mamma,
Is your question, how sheep can place themselves most advantageously so as to protect themselves from a shower of snow? - You have not answered my letter of the 12th. I should like to see myself growing in mignionette [sic] best - I have seen something like the daisy, in a flower called variegated spurge - Pray preserve me a specimen of the flower - How high are the hops now? - No wonder my hand is half spoiled, I have so much to write here, I shall not recover it till the holidays, which bye the bye, I believe, begin on the 28th of July It only wants 5 weeks six days to them - It is more than 9 weeks since I saw you - I am translating Micyllus and Alectryon <2> for you, that you may see the stile in which Lucian <3> wrote, it is very long - Can you devise some manner now by which I may amuse myself in the holidays with my chemistry, in some place out of doors, or in some garret room, like my laboratory at London - I say now that we may not lose half the holidays in planning - Where is Mr F. <4> now? It is a very rainy cold day. - You have not told me whether Jane <5> is at Malvern <6> or Cheltenham - Make them stay at Malvern till my holidays are over - Has Kit <7> come home for his holidays yet? - Today my lessons are Horace's Odes - Theocritus - and Cornelius Nepos <8> - of which the second is by far the hardest, as he writes in his plaguy Doric Dialect -. I wish there never had been such people as Dorians - It takes some consideration to find out that potilexath is put Dorice for proselexato (he answered) but so it is - and Krana for Krene (a fountain) Phrasdo for Phrazo (I speak) - ammi for hemin (to us) &c - As this verse
Enth' Ermas pratistos ap' Ü reos × eipe de Daphni
for
Elth'. Ermes protistos ap Ú reos × eipe de Daphni
(Mercury came first from the mountain; and said O Daphnis -)
If you like this sort of classical entertainment I can give you plenty of it - Send me some Latin to correct for you - I am tired of so long a schooltime, and I want the holidays more than I usually do - I know a boy of the name of Martin (a very nice boy indeed) and in the same part of the school with me, who lives 4 miles from Malvern <9> I am trying to make some arrangements to go with him - He says that most likely his father is coming for him, and will take me with him, but I don't much like that somehow - I want to go home 2 or 3 days before the holidays under some pretext or other; which will be an augmentation of them. You see I can not write a bit,
So good bye
Yr Affte Son
W. H. F. Talbot
Lady E. Feilding
Malvern
Worcester
Notes:
1. Harrow School: WHFT attended from 1811-1815 and his son Charles from 1855-1859.
2. Figures from the Greek mythology.
3. Lucian (120-180), Greek rhetorician, pamphleteer, and satirist. [See Doc. No: 00569].
4. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780-1837), Royal Navy; WHFT's step-father.
5. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796-1874).
6. Malvern, or Great Malvern, 9 mi SW of Worcestershire.
7. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803-1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT's Welsh cousin.
8. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) (65-8 BC), Roman poet; Theocritus (d. 260 BC), Greek poet; Cornelius Nepos (100-25 BC), Roman historian.
9. This would have been tHam Court, near Upton on Severn, the residence of Rev. Joseph Martin (d. 1828); the pupil was probably his son, Joseph John Martin (d. 1873).