31 Sackville St <1> London
20 Feb 1833
Dear Sir
I have safely received the New Orleans plants, <2> for which I perceive I am indebted to you £16,,12,,0, and I beg to know where I can pay the money to your account.
I perceived that one of the N. Orleans plants (I think No 351) possessed bulbs that shewed signs of life, I therefore planted one of them, & it is growing briskly! I hope it will prove an acquisition to the gardens – what is its name?
There is a very singular grass in the collection, with a solitary recurved spike, is it a Cynosurus?
Do you wish for any seeds from Sicily or Calabria? I could give you a few.
Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
I have no specimens of Cnicus tuberosus <3> with me in Town; I have raised it in my greenhouse at Lacock from the seed I collected.
Lady Smith has published in Sir J. Smith’s Correspondence 2 letters of mine written from Corfu.<4> The account I have there given of the plants of that island from my own observations is correct, but what I have given on the authority of the professor of botany there, is not so. I afterwards found him out to be a mere Charlatan.
Lady Smith should not have published the letters without first asking leave.
Notes:
1. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
2. See Doc. No: 02567.
3. See again Doc. No: 02567.
4. Pleasance, Lady Smith (1773–1877), widow of Sir James Edward Smith, MD (1759–1828), botanist. She edited Memoir and Correspondence of the late Sir James Edward Smith … (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832). WHFT's original letters, from which she took extracts, are Doc. No: 01413 and Doc. No: 01422.