Florence <1>
March 28
My dear Henry
I arrived here last night & as I have a day to write before the post goes I must give you an account of my travels – You have I suppose got my letter from Nice – I staid there two days & was delighted with the beauty of the Country, one of the charms on which I do not think you insisted half enough – The Lemons <2> stay there till the beginning of April & then go to Genoa where they will look for Chariessas <3> instead of me who had not time to go there. I went one day to Vintimiglia & back which everybody says is finer than anything between that & Noli – & then proceeded over the Col de Tende skipd Turin & came by Bologna – &c –
You will wonder at this sudden change – hear my reasons – M. La Croix <4> & others told me you must have made a false calculation & that nobody could go the distance in the time you laid down – which of course did not include botanising – Time being a great object with me I went the road I could travel by night in preference to one which I could not – & saved 36 or 40 hours by it – have seen the best part of the Coast – the Col de Tende, & Parma – Bologna I leave for another time as I must go that way whether I leave this by Simplon<,> Splugen or Venice – besides I saw at Nice that the season was so arriérée <5> I should find very few plants – On the road to Ventimiglia I found but two plants new to me & those very sparing Cistus Albidus & Hesperis Africana – In the Gorge of La Ghiandola only Primula inodora mihi <6> – which I found also on the Apennines between this & Bologna with Crocus vernus. With Nice, Naples & Constan. <7> we have now 5 very distinct habitats for it – was yours at Vienne <8> odorous or not? I am very glad I have seen the Col de Tende tho in so bad a season – I shall never pass it again if I can help, but if ever I am a spring at Nice I will visit it. La Ghiandola would be a fine station for me – it combines every advantage – it has the most sublime scenery, Painting botany & Geology might go hand in hand & never be at a loss for employment. I should like to follow the river down to the Sea – where the road ought to go & you would avoid Rowse & Browse <9> which latter must have been named by the goats a non browsando, <10> for I never saw such a hungry looking mountain any where I think Rowse a degree better – & the valley of Lascarena, & the very remarkable gorge just above it, pleased me much – Altogether the Scenery is more Apennine than Alpine, & the vegetation & cultivation so méridionale, <11> so full of evergreens, that except the Chestnut groves near Tenda, I think I missed little in point of natural beauty, but flowers – numbers of orchidea were coming up in the watermeadows, leaves dark on the outside, silvery within – In mid summer I suppose even Rowse & Browse are covered with flowers that do not require a terre grasse <12> –
I found snow from the top of the Col down to Limone, 2 feet deep & here & there on the road to near Coni – the North of Italy lookd more like Flanders or Essex with a grey sky & raw east wind & rain & snow accompanied me to the top of the hills between Bologna & Florence – which is by far the poorest part of Italy I have seen, great part is just like a Welch moor – I found a hellebore new to me – & quantities of double Daffodil in a field where they were rooted out as < illegible <13>> The Anemones at Nice do not shew we<ll?> this year – The hostenas I think inferior to Naples – I saw a fine Pavonina in a garden & some Oculus Solis – they are both magnificent flowers – & plenty of Antirrhinum latifolium which I found at Ceva in the end of May – no Allium but album. Statice hirsute not out. Coris not out. Gladiolus not so forward as in our gardens, Euphorbia Nicæensis, dendroides, & spinosa. There is a portable garden made of <carob?>wood wch is to bring home everything – I have sent to Raddi <14> but am quite ashamed to bring him nothing my self nor from you or Hooker <15> – do you know Campan <16> Nicæensis – I took a plant from a rock on Browse but it is defunct or missing – does Sedum hirsutum grow there? & another like this what is it? <illustration> – It is hot enough for summer in the streets here & I expect to begin botanising very soon, but the wind is so cold & the country so dry that I am in hopes I cannot have lost much.
Yrs aff
W T H F S
I saw a large syngenesious plant (i.e. dead stalk as large as a China aster up to the top of the Col. is it a Doronicum?Henry F. Talbot Esqr
31 Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. WTHFS was appointed to the British legation in Florence in 1825 [see Doc. No: 01250], and this letter relates to his journey thither.
2. Sir Charles Lemon (1784–1868), politician & scientist; WHFT’s uncle.
3. See Doc. No: 01259.
4. Of the British Consulate, Nice. [See Doc. No: 02765].
5. Backward.
6. ‘To me’, that is, in my view/as I call it; the plant had not been definitively classified, and WTHFS had given it a name of his own.
7. Constantinople.
8. WHFT was in Vienne in 1824. [See Doc. No: 01202].
9. Browse is the Col de Braus.
10. From not browsing.
11. Southern.
12. Rich soil.
13. Text obscured by seal. The word must, however, be weeds.
14. Joseph (Giuseppe) Raddi (1770–1829), Italian botanist.
15. Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), Prof & botanist.
16. Campanula.