Laycock abbey
4th September
My Dear Henry
How very odd you are! to take no notice of a Letter I wrote to you from Bowood, franked by Lord Lansdowne on Thursday 30th August<1> - & which there has been ample time to answer. I asked you particularly in it to let me know exactly what day you intend coming because of the arrangement of the rooms, as Lord Carnarvon & the Stapletons <2> & Niemchevitz the Pole, a friend of Kosciusko's <3> & consequently of Lord Carnarvon's come on Monday the 10th September & the Gallweys <4> will still be here - so that we shall be un peu à l'étroit <5> but it can be contrived with some ingenuity. Nothing can be more chearful than those Girls are, which is lucky for Horatia, the first summer passed without Caroline. <6>
We have had a visit from Mr Vivian who left us to go to Tottenham Park <7> & returns here from thence tomorrow Mr Edwardes<8> remained a week & was of great use in acting Charad[es]<9> &c &c &c this with occasional coruscations from Mr Moore <10> and Lord Lansdowne who always seems to like dining here, has enlivened the abbey, which never looked better than it has done these two last days when we have been lit up again by a brilliant summer sun. In hot weather the Cloisters are so beautiful!
You never mention who is at Cowes, & I marvel what can make the balls & Archery meetings<11> so pleasant, as by all accounts there is very little good company there this year, & without it no gaieties are worth anything.
With this I send two letters that have come for you. I have always misgivings tho Kit<12> gets your letters directed to Cowes, which would at least delay them.
Aff Yrs
E F
If you take no notice of this I shall conclude you mean to cut my correspondence
Mr Bowles is writing the History of Ela,<13> and searching in Matthew Paris <14> for aids.
Mr Moore seems to have taken quite an affection for this place which he has rendered classic ground, not only by the honorable mention of it in the verses addressed to Caroline (which will go down to posterity)<15> but by some clever political lines he wrote here the other day in a wet morning
Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Post Office
Cowes
Isle of Wight
Notes:
1. Bowood House, nr Calne, Wiltshire, 5 mi NE of Lacock: seat of the Marquess of Lansdowne. See Doc. No: 02405, franked by Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780-1863), MP, WHFT's uncle.
2. Henry George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon (1772-1833). Thomas Stapleton (1778-1839), with his 2ndwife, Henrietta Lavinia, née Anster (d. 1858).
3. Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817), leader of the 1794 patriotic uprising against the Russian occupation of Poland and a Colonel in the American Revolutionary Army; Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (1757-1841), Polish scholar, poet and statesman and Adjutant to Kosciusko in the fighting against the Russians.
4. Sir William Payne Gallwey (1807-1881), 2nd Bart, son of Lt Gen Sir William Payne Gallwey (1759-1831), 1st Bart, and Lady Harriet Payne Gallwey (1784-1845), née Quin.
5. A bit cramped.
6. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810- 9 Aug 1851), WHFT's half-sister. Her sister, Lady Caroline Augusta (1808- 2 Nov 1881), had married Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797- 3 Sep 1861) on 6 December 1831
7. Probably Sir Richard Hussey Vivian (1775-1842), politician. Totteham Park, Wilts, the home of Charles Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury (1773-1856).
8. Hon. Richard Edwardes (d. 1852), Secretary of the Legation at Frankfurt.
9. Written off the edge of the page.
10. Thomas Moore (1780-1852), Irish poet. Lady Elisabeth may be harking back to the “poetic coruscations” of Thomas Moore referred to in the London Literary Gazette of 28 December 1822, cited by various writers. In 1820 she called the poet “Anacreon Moore”, a reference remembered from Byron’s verse - see Doc. No: 00861.
11. Cowes, Isle of Wight, where archery was a favourite sport; the Carisbrook Archers were formed there.
12. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803-1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT's Welsh cousin.
13. The reference is to Ela (d. 1261), Countess of Salisbury, who founded the abbey of Lacock in 1232. The Wiltshire poet & antiquary, Rev William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), published this as Annals and Antiquities of Lacock Abbey, in the County of Wilts, with Memorials of the Foundress Ela Countess of Salisbury, and of the Earls of Salisbury of the Houses of Salisbury and Longespe; including Notices of the Monasteries of Bradenstoke, Hinton, and Farley (London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1835).
14. Matthew Paris ( ca.1250- 1259), Benedictine monk, chronicler and manuscript illuminator. Of his many works re-published over the centuries, possibly Bowles was consulting Paris, translated from the original by C.D. Yonge, The flowers of history: especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain from the beginning of the world to the year 1307 (London: Bohn, 1808).
15. In Moore’s Journal for January 1832, he recorded on the 9th "to Feilding’s to meet the Valletorts" and on the 10th "In walking home composed some verse on Lady Valletort but did not write them down... All this idling ruinous to me".
To Caroline, Countess Valletort
When I would sing thy beauty's light,
Such various forms, and all so bright,
<
I've seen thee, from thy childhood, wear,
I know not which to call most fair,
Nor 'mong the countless charms that spring
For ever round thee, which to sing.