Mount Edgcumbe ^<1>
Nov^r 3^rd 1854.

My dear Henry

After your total silence for so long, I was much pleased to get your letter yesterday. I suppose you are all both glad & sorry to get back – but I can quite imagine the feeling occasioned by the loss of bracing air & mountain views. It is what the Queen ^<2> complains of, when she returns to Osborne ^<3> from Scotland – & what I have always felt on coming from abroad. I hope the change will not have any bad influence on the general health of the family. Lord M^t E. ^<4> has had a very severe attack of rheumatism lately – He is recovering from it now – but his hands are much disabled from the little they could do before. We are going to remove immediately into a house we have taken at Stonehouse ^<5> for the winter months. Our new house is not nearly ready yet – & this one, en attendant, ^<6> will not be very comfortable; but L^d M^t E. is very anxious to escape the fall of the leaf. The children are flourishing. I am sorry to say that Val ^<7> is not going up for a class in Modern History – He has long given up all thoughts of the possibility of getting a 1^st, & the others are no honour – but he has read a great deal – in the first instance with the intention of going in, & in the second, to please me & not to give up till the last moment – So he has not wasted his time – He knows Hume & Gibbon ^<8> well – but he says he w^d still have to read over again all Hallam ^<9> – & for the first time 3 vols. of Guizot, & Justinian ^<10> – which hitherto he has not found time for – He always however reads regularly the whole morning –

The weather is charmingly mild still – & quantities of flowers enliven the garden. – The Plumbago ornaments the outside of the Orangerie with it’s [sic] lovely blue clusters – & the Petosporum [sic] is in flower – Did you ever get the fern I sent Rosamond ^<11> to shew you? It is a very rare one – There are only one or two specimens here; but at Cotehele ^<12> it grows 5 or 6 f^t high, & is exceedingly handsome. –

Y^r aff^te Sister
Caroline

Love to all –
How long e the siege ^<13> lasts, & how seldom L^d Raglan ^<14> sends despatches!

[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot Esq^re
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham

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Notes:

1. Mt Edgecumbe, near Plymouth: seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe.

2. Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom (1837–1901), Empress of India (1876–1901).

3. Osborne House, Isle of Wight. Purchased in 1845 by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a retreat from court life.

4. Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797–1861), WHFT’s brother-in-law.

5. On the outskirts of Plymouth.

6. Meanwhile.

7. William Henry Edgcumbe, ‘Val’, 4^th Earl Mt Edgcumbe (1832–1917), JP & Ld Steward of the Royal Household; WHFT’s nephew ‘Bimbo’.

8. David Hume (1711–1776), philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist and Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), rationalist historian and scholar.

9. Henry Hallam (1777–1859), historian.

10. François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787–1874), historian, orator and statesman.

11. Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2^nd daughter.

12. Cotehele, Cornwall: ancient house, seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe, now a National Trust Property

13. Siege of Sebastapol.

14. Lord Fitzroy James Henry Somerset (1788–1855), 1^st Baron of Raglan; commanded British troops in the Crimean War.