Mount Edgcumbe <1>
Monday May 22nd 1854
My dear Henry
I was very glad to see your handwriting again, & wish I could see your face too – I wish I could persuade you to come & see us when you are so near (comparatively) as London, only that it seems hardly worth while just now, as I must leave home on the 3rd for my Waiting – & there are only 12 days till then – However as you are sometimes very locomotive perhaps you may feel inclined to run down – if so pray do. I suppose I shall assist at the opening of the Crystal Palace <2> –
We are in mourning just now for George Edgcumbe’s <3> eldest daughter who died the week before last. She had been ill all the winter.
I shall write shortly, as you give no address – & once before you did not receive a letter addressed to the Athenæum. <4>
We have had a letter from Captn Key <5> all well – dated May 2nd off Gottland – He had had a most hair–breadth [sic] escape from shipwreck – but totally unconnected with that report – as it must have been subsequent to it.
Ilted Nicholl <6> is here – fitting out the Calcutta–84 –
Let me hear again soon –
Yr very affte
Caroline
[envelope:]
to be forwarded
Henry Fox Talbot Esqre
Athenaeum Club
Pall Mall
London
Notes:
1. Mt Edgecumbe, near Plymouth: seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe.
2. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton (1801 – 1865) and erected in Hyde Park, London, 1850 – 1851, to accommodate the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was later moved to Sydenham Hill, South London, where a larger Crystal Palace was reopened in 1854. It was destroyed by fire in 1936.
3. George Edgcumbe (1800–1882), son of the 2nd Earl of Mount Edgcumbe.
4. The Athenæum and (London) Literary Chronicle, London.
5. Sir Astley Cooper Key (1821–1888), admiral.
6. Iltyd Thomas Mansel Nicholl (1828–1885), son of Jane Harriet Nicholl.
7. Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797–1861), WHFT’s brother-in-law.
8. William Henry Edgcumbe, ‘Val’, 4th Earl Mt Edgcumbe (1832–1917), JP & Ld Steward of the Royal Household; WHFT’s nephew ‘Bimbo’.