Mt Edgecumbe<1>
Wednesday April 8th 1840
My dear Henry
Though I have many letters to write & heaps of things to do, I cannot let a day pass without thanking you for your splendid collection of Photographs which arrived quite safe yesterday at breakfast time – Some of them are quite beautiful, & shew great improvement in the art – Ld Mt E–<2> was charmed with the busts, & we were both particularly struck with the beautiful effect & extreme softness in round objects such as the jars & busts – There are also two views of the house, better than any I have yet seen – Mr Condy the artist was here, & was greatly delighted –<3> He had often tried the new Art, like many others, but cd not produce any satisfactory results. It is a great pity you folded them as they would have travelled perfectly well between two pieces of pasteboard. Pray tell me, before I attempt to flatten them, whether wetting them at the back with a sponge, cd anywise injure them?– Answer this question –We have been very busy this week laying out 3 little gardens, fr Valletors, Flora & Annie,<4> who have each a set of small tools – It is very near the house in a beautiful spot – I wish you cdcome & see it – We have very few things in blow yet – only daffodils, violets, every sort of primrose, periwinkles, nareipus, jonquils & anemones – I was so enchanted at discovering, what I had never found out before, a carouba tree in the open air! It grows on the Gardener’s house in the Kitchen garden, & is about 10 or 12 ft high – He did not know what it was, – but procured the seed from a cargo of carouba pods which was tak[en]<5> in a prize at the end of the war – the tree cannot be less than 25 yrs old – Val. has just finished Sandford & Merton,<6> in wh he took immense interest – he has read with me “ Le petit Chaperon Rouge<7>” & is beginning “Cendrillon” – He learns spelling, Sums & small bits of poetry with Miss Gace, who says he does it all without the slightest trouble – He is very quick of apprehension but is apt to be very careless & heedless of what is said to him – Addio – write again soon as you promised – I am going to thin a plantation
Yrs Affly
Caroline
W. Henry Fox Talbot Esqre
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Mt Edgecumbe, near Plymouth: seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe.
2. Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797–1861), WHFT’s brother-in-law.
3. Nicholas Condy (1793–1857), artist.
4. William Henry Edgcumbe, ‘Val’, 4th Earl Mt Edgcumbe (1832–1917), JP & Ld Steward of the Royal Household, WHFT’s nephew ‘Bimbo’. Caroline's husband's nieces through his sister, Lady Caroline Sophia Edgcumbe (d. 10 April 1824), who was the first wife of Reginald George Macdonald (d. 1873): The Honorable Flora Isabella Clementina (1822-1899) was Maid of Honor and later Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria. In 1848, Annie Sarah (sometimes Sarah Anne) married Alfredo Salvatori Ruggioro Andrea, Baron Porceilli di Sant Andrea, a Sicilian nobleman and revolutionary commander.
5. Text torn away under seal.
6. Originally written by Thomas Day (1748–1789); abridged and modernised by Rosina M. Zornlin, Sandford and Merton (London: J.W. Parker, 1837).
7. Words by M. Thèaulon (1787–1841), music by François Adrien Boieldieu (1775–1834) Le petit chaperon rouge: opèra fèerie en trois actes (Paris: Janet Frères, ca.1839).
8. WHFT was the High Sherif of Wiltshire in 1840.