Florence
March 21 – <1>
Dear Henry
I have just got your letter & am sorry you are not to come this way you will probably go over to Corfu in the steamboat with Mr Craufurd <2> who is gone to take possession of Ld Ponsonby’s <3> place to which he succeeds – He did not consider the steam boat’s arrival as by any means certain & is gone to Foligno meaning to go that way to Ancona. if you are too late you had better take the mountains au rebours <4> & come here for a time – Raddi <5> says the Apennines contain nothing at this time of year – & it would be all trouble for nothing. I wanted to have shewn you the Environs of Florence now embellished with Tulipa Raddii & male olens [sic] (varieties of O. Solis) & Tenores <6> O. <7> exscapum – very distinct from the umbellatum – & O. minimum – which I deny to be an O– at all. Raddi & I have been planning walks to take with you – to the Impruneta, Carreggi, &c the hill coverd with Cactus humilis, the Anemones of Villa Lanzoni equal to Nice – I almost expect to hear from you on Thursday that you cannot fetch Ancona in time & will divert from your course hither I wished you to have met Buckland <8> here & had some thought of rendezvous<->ing with you both on the Genoese frontier near [Cassaia?], or at Pisa & making an excursion of 4 or 5 days to the Maremma beyond Leghorn in company & returning here to shew him Florence – I would have shewn you Monsr Antoris fuci, Monsr Rebouls Tulips & Crocuses – Giard. de Semplici – Museum the Villa Baring, La Tana, Columbaia, & every other where there is a garden – when you come back which I understand is to be in Autumn to meet the family there will be nothing – & I dare say I shall be gone I wanted to shew you Mr Brownes <9> journal of the Carpathians which he left me – hoping to meet you on the Nicæan or Genoese Corniche as I told him if you had time to chuse, you would certainly come that way – I sent his drawing book to England to be shewn to the Lemons <10>, Jane, <11> &c &c which you will have missed – Buckland was also to have told you what to look out for in Geology Pray note everything Volcanic – & pick up every petrified shell or other organic remains – The places you are principally to go to are Benizze – Gastouri – Summit of S. Salvador – & a hill of Saints of which the name is I think πεντε και δεκα. <12>
Bring specimens & seeds which you may find now of the bushy thyme which grows under the myrtles everywhere – you will be too early for Cistus, Vitex, & that dark red long–tubed Scabiosa I never could make out & may have been a Knautia.
I send you letters to Sir F. Adam <13> & Capt Hamilton if you had come I should have made up a small packet of seeds for Sir F. who is fond of his garden & tries to introduce new trees & shrubs &c – I dare say you will find his Geranium bank most luxuriant by this time – send me over in a letter some seed of the Dolichos that covers the church instead of ivy close to his house – it is not known here. I rather depended on you for bringing me out from England some seeds &c for Savi <14> Raddi Tenore &c who are so much more liberal to me than I can be to them & some new books – which would have been instantly ordered for the G. Duke’s <15> Library – which I dare say you never saw. I do not expect to see you back soon I recommend you even to go to any part of Turkey or the Mediterranean you can get at from the islands & from Zante – Corfu or Malta there are often opportunities of going for a few days only to Albania, Morea, or Tunis, which nobody knows of at a distance & if you take to the sea, you cannot have a better introduction than to the Commodore of the Archea In that case you will pick up Kit <16> & John <17> at sea somewhere or other in the course of the summer & return to the family at Rome for the Winter I almost wish you may have to go down to Otranto by Teramo Pescara & see the wonderful Mte Gargano –
I have just recd from Tenore specimens of Crocus pusillus the same as what they sent me from Ab– & which I take to be a var. of that of the Cascine – also one of that fine Crocus we found at Castelamare which is either a large var of pusillus – or an embellished one of Striatus – it may be distinct. was C. speciosus of Georgia like it? collect all crocus bulbs – You shd have seen [John’s?] herbarium –
Write when you have any time.
Yr affte
W T H F S
W. H. F. Talbot Esqr
to the care of H. M. Consul
Ancona
W Fox Strangways
Notes:
1. 1826, when WHFT went to the Ionian islands.
2. Ionian Senate. [See Doc. No: 01412].
3. John Ponsonby, Viscount Ponsonby.
4. On the way back.
5. Joseph (Giuseppe) Raddi (1770–1829), Italian botanist.
6. Michel Tenore (1780–1861), Italian botanist & traveller.
7. Ornithogalum.
8. William Buckland (1784–1856), Dean of Westminster & scientist.
9. Wade Browne. [See Doc. No: 01328].
10. Sir Charles Lemon (1784-1868), politician & scientist; WHFT's uncle; and his wife, Lady Charlotte Anne, née Fox Strangways (d. 1826).
11. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874).
12. He probably means a hill of (sacred to) 15 saints, that is, with chapel on top with paintings of 15 saints.
13. Sir Frederick Adam (1781–1853), Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles.
14. Probably Gaetano Savi (1769–1844), author of Trattato degli alberi della Toscana (Florence: G. Piatti, 1811).
15. Ferdinand III of Habsburg-Lorraine.
16. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
17. John George Charles Fox Strangways (1803–1859), MP.