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Document number: 03929
Date: Mon 09 Sep 1839
Dating: corrected to calendar
Harold White: 8 Sep 1839
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: FEILDING Elisabeth Theresa, née Fox Strangways
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA39-58
Last updated: 28th January 2012

Lacock Abbey
Monday

My Dear Henry

Thank you for recollecting I might have commissions I wish Nicole <1> would ask Sarah <2> for a water can that belongs to my room, it is painted to imitate wood & I should think she could not mistake which I mean. Likewise a stool with Elizabethan legs, in this manner [illustration] it is in one of the Drawing rooms.

And one of the Music waggons Horatia <3> wants, pray pick out the worst looking of them, I mean the low mahogany things to hold Music books. There are two or three of them & the best looking must be kept in Town. Pray look at all these yourself when Nicole has found them, because you have an accurate eye & will see at once whether they answer my description. Nicole must tell Mower <4> 208 oxford St to pack them up & send them down by Lawes’s Van which goes from Gerrards Hall in the city. Mower is grown old, deaf & stupid & Nicole must put those 3 objects together that Mower may judge what packing care they require, he is not to be trusted to look for them he is grown so very addle headed.

Constance <5> wants a packet of arrow root left for her with the House Maid in Q. Ann St. <6> – Send N. to Erard Gt. Marlbro’ St. No 18 for two last octaves of strings for Harp, next to the silver strings. Write this out for N. to take with him for fear of mistakes. It is not to be paid [illegible] <7> put on my bill.

I had a letter from William <8> enquiring about you go and see him.

You had a better pay Watson for your carpets in Old Bond St while you are in town

I have a bill at Erand’s

Henry Fox Talbot Eqr
3<1>. Sackville Street
London

Notes:

1. Nicolaas Henneman (1813–1898), Dutch, active in England; WHFT’s valet, then assistant; photographer.

2. Mrs Sarah Henneman, first m Price ( ca.1811–1848), housemaid at Lacock Abbey.

3. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.

4. William Mower, upholsterer & coffin maker, London.

5. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.

6. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.

7. Text obscured by seal.

8. William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways, 4th Earl of Ilchester (1795–1865), botanist, art collector & diplomat.