Malvern <1>
23 June 1812
My Dear Henry
I am afraid you will be woefully disappointed in Caroline's <2> attainments, unless her Governess makes very good use of the three weeks she will be here before you. I will not raise your hopes about the next Speech Day, it is possible Mr F. <3> may get to Harrow <4> but not probable, though he very much longs to see you. I am reading Dr Beddoes's Life, <5> he has not been very long dead, & was an extremely clever man & a great chemist. He was the first who brought Mr Davy <6> into notice when he was quite a young Man & it was no small merit in Dr Beddoes to have discovered such a treasure in obscurity. Amongst other books he wrote a book to warn School boys of the very great mischief they do their health in various ways before they are old enough to be conscious of it. He seems very much against Schools both for Girls & boys, & thinks Shoals of Children are rendered diseased or carried to a premature grave from the malpractices they learn at such places. It is an interesting book, & written with a most vivid pen. I saw in the newspaper that a Winchester Schoolboy who was bathing the other day in the river Itchen, got his feet entangled in some weeds & was drowned. Did you not know that Mr Selwyn <7> was going to be married to Charlotte Murray <8> your new aunt's Sister? I cannot answer your question about Mathilda unless I read the book & knew the Story. Your Cousins come Thursday after tomorrow. Lord Adare <9> is here. I am going with Lady Harcourt <10> to see Castle Ditch <11> in Herefordshire a place of Lord Somers's <12> when I have seen it I will describe it to you I have a very fine print of the Cloisters at Laycock Abbey, I believe I shall copy it as the print is only lent me. Lord Landsdowne <13> & your Aunts Charlotte <14> & Louisa <15> went to see a Steam Engine which by some mismanagement burst, & Lord L. received the boiling water in his face. His Eye had a narrow escape, & his face was very much hurt & so were they as well as frightened. - Dr Beddoes says "the great source of injury is too long protracted bathing or swimming<17> it requires a hardy frame to resist for any length of time the influence of a medium which must subduct the heat of the body so rapidly
God bless you my Dearest Ever yours Honeysuckle
[address panel:]
W. H. F. Talbot Esqr
Revd. Dr. Butler's <16>
Harrow
Middlesex
[illegible deletion]
[written in another hand on verso of address panel:]
Malvern June 23. 1812 - Jan - June 1812.
Notes:
1. Malvern, or Great Malvern, Worcestershire.
2. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808-1881); WHFT's half-sister.
3. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780-1837), Royal Navy; WHFT's step-father.
4. Harrow School: WHFT attended from 1811-1815 and his son Charles from 1855-1859.
5. Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), Bristol physician. John Edmonds Stock wrote Memoirs of the life of Thomas Beddoes, M.D., with an analytical account of his writings (London: J. Murray, 1811).
6. Humphry Davy (1778-1829), English chemist. Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), a physician who established his Pneumatic Institution for Inhalation and Gas Therapy at Clifton in 1798, appointed Davy as his first chemist.
7. Rev Townshend Selwyn (1783-1853), botanist & Canon of Gloucester.
8. Charlotte Selwyn, née Murray, married Rev. Townshend Selwyn. Her sister Caroline Leonora Murray(d. 1819) married Henry, 3rd Earl of Ilchester.
9. Valentine Richard Quin, 1st Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl (1752-1824).
10. Possibly Lady Mary Harcourt (1750-1833),wife of William, 3rd and last Earl Harcourt (1743-1830).
11. A medieval building demolished in 1815 to build Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire.
12. John Somers Cocks, 2nd Earl Somers (1788-1852), MP for Reigate.
13. Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780-1863), MP, WHFT's uncle. See the details on this horrific accident in Doc. No: 00575.
14. Lady Charlotte Anne Lemon, née Strangways (d. 1826), WHFT's aunt.
15. Louisa Emma Petty Fitzmaurice, née Fox Strangways, Marchioness of Lansdowne (1785-1851), wife of Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne; Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria, 1837-1838; WHFT's aunt.
16. Rev George Butler (1774-1853), Headmaster at Harrow.
17. She is paraphrasing Stock's biography of Beddoes, (p. 218, see note 5 above). Stock reviewed there Beddoes’s work on popular medicine Hygëia: or Essays Moral and Medical, on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of our Middling and Affluent Classes (Bristol: printed by J. Mills, for R. Phillips, London, 1802). Beddoes discusses the health risk of swimming in his fifth essay “Temperature and Hardiness; with Remarks on Diet” in the section on “General Principles for an Advanced Age,” v. 2, p. 35.