Paris
25 Xmas Day
I received your letter <1> from Dover & think you had altogether a misfortunate journey. Your second <2> only came to day as the storms in la Manche <3> prevented the Courrier d'angleterre <4> from arriving. We have had again dreadful weather here & the Winds sweep over le jardin des Thuileries <5> with as much violence & the same sort of noise they make at Abbotsbury, which I like very much & think such an advantage worth some additional rent. They have had also a [second edition?] at Petersburg & even the Church yards were so undermined by the waters that the exhumed were seen floating about mixed with the other dead bodies more recently drowned. The Emperor <6> is so annoyed he thinks seriously of removing the Seat of empire to Moscow for good. [illegible deletion]
Mr Way who preaches at the new chapel in the Jardin Marbœuf in the Champs Elyseés, thinks all this war of the elements part of the signs of the times & that the seasonal advent is to happen in 6 years. It is not wise to fix a precise time.
He preaches extempore & I am almost tempted to go & hear him. He set out in the world a great friend of Lord Carnarvon's <7> but "the tide of life has driven them different ways." Since those days he has travelled in Palestine which I suppose gave him his bias for the conversion of the Jews. His sermons must be much too abstruse for the generality of his hearers, as they turn very much on the apocalypse & the Prophecies to come which are beaucoup plus difficiles à manier <8> than those past, & as no two writers agree upon them there can only be one amongst so many learned authors right. Many serious people think they are better not discussed on account of their difficulty which certainly would not have been permitted to exist had it been necessary to understand them. This must comfort many weak heads who are totally incapable of approaching such subjects.
Your account of Mr M. <9> makes me quite melancholy, & I cannot imagine how there can be any chance of his being well enough to come back with you, but if he could I suppose a change of scene must be good for him. Did he seem clear to you or at all wandering? It is to me a most painful idea, as I think death preferable to a state in which a person would be subject to relapses. However it is often entirely recovered but he has the disadvantage of being at all times subject to the most morbid susceptibility of all kinds of vexations & to the most gloomy views of the hardships of his own peculiar fate. Giovanni <10> distinctly recollects giving your keys to your Plumbago <11> with many particulars which I think he could hardly invent. Lord Aberdeen <12> is just gone to Nice & we were in hopes he would have taken Giovanni. In default of that he has read a quantity of books we have lent him. If I directed Isabella's <13> letter wrong it is only a sign how seldom I have heard her name, it is not worth writing another, She has too much sense to mind just a trifle & will only laugh & not care about it.
We are going to the Fantasmagorie <14>
Adieu <15>
Do you think Mr M in a state in which letters would be any satisfaction or amusement to him?
Few subscriptions have interested me more than that for the Spanish & Italian refugees <16> I hope it flourishes.
W. Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Melbury
Sherborne
Dorset
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 01222.
2. See Doc. No: 01229.
3. The English channel.
4. The mail from England.
5. The garden at Thuileries.
6. Louis XVIII (1775-1824).
7. Henry George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon (1772-1833).
8. Much more difficult to handle.
9. Rev George Stephen Molyneux Montgomerie (1790-1850), close friend of Talbot family, artist, Rector of Garboldisham, near Thetford, Norfolk. [See Doc. No: 01229].
10. Giovanni Percij.
11. See Doc. No: 01223.
12. George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860).
13. Isabella Catherine Franklen, née Talbot (1804-1874).
14. The Phantasmagoria, a pre-cinematic entertainment made popular in the late 18th c. Magic lanterns, often mobile, were used to project ever-changing images of ghosts, skeletons and other frightening apparitions on 'screens' of smoke, thin gauze or other surfaces that made the images appear ghostly and floating.
15. Goodbye.
16. See Doc. No: 01421, and Doc. No: 01435.