Mt Edgcumbe <1>
from the Pavillon in the
English Garden
Thursday 2nd August
My dear Henry
I received your letter yesterday & the key & telescope some time ago – I franked three letters for you to Cowes <2> – I hope you got them all safe –
I have not heard from Uncle Harry <3> any thing positive about coming here, but Sir Charles <4> who is at Saltram for the Races, is to pay us a visit tomorrow – We were likewise priés to the Race party but declined on account of the Cholera. <5> I should be delighted if Mama <6> could come here, but on that account it is no use pressing her at present, though I say nothing about it to her, for fear of making her nervous. Of course if it was to increase we should go away ourselves. Saturday we go to Port Eliot where I am to stay a day or two, while Ld V. <7> goes on to the Assizes at Bodmin – he is very well indeed now & can write with that hand. – Explain to me in your next what the Sophospermum is, as I have forgot what it is like – I am laying out my new garden near the arbour above the house. – Is the enclosed rare? I found it on the turf –
Addio caro fratellino, <8> write to me soon –
Yr affte Sister
Caroline
We have got a tame fawn, caught when only a fortnight old – the prettiest little creature you can imagine.
[envelope:]
W. Henry Fox Talbot Esqre
Post Office
Cowes
Isle of Wight
Notes:
1. Mt Edgecumbe, near Plymouth: seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe.
2. See Doc. No: 02395.
3. Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787–1858).
4. Sir Charles Lemon (1784–1868), politician & scientist; WHFT’s uncle.
5. Between June and September of 1832, a wave of Cholera killed some eight hundred of Plymouth’s inhabitants.
6. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773–1846), WHFT’s mother.
7. Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797–1861), WHFT’s brother-in-law.
8. Good bye dear brother.
9. Lady Harriet Frampton, née Fox Strangways (d. 1844) , and her children.