Castleford <1>
Decr 16th 1815.
My Dear Mamma,
Do not be afraid of my Skaiting [sic], The Pond is only four feet deep. - Besides there is no Ice at present to skate on. Your Presents have delighted me: - how came the microscope <2> to cost half a guinea? what hard Times we live in! What would not Microscopes have cost, if the war had continued! - However it magnifies very well, & is just what I meant, altho' you must have bought it at the dearest shop in London. I forgot to ask you to send me Zotti's Italian Grammar, <3> & some Italian author or other. I do not well know what to think of the Student's Journal, <4> which you sent me - It seems too methodical. By the Bye, now I speak of method, the people here are the greatest methodists that can be; - They have built a chapel, & half the Town go to it: - They talk the most egregious nonsense. The Tailor exclaimed one Day, "I went up to you [sic] steeple house, & lo! I beheld the minister as it were a lump of the Earth, & the people as dust around him!" - In what corner did you find the old mosses you sent me? I think that the pictures in Peacocks Polite Repository <5> have degenerated. The Birds are execrable. I am beginning to like History a little: but I find chapters relative to the "laws, customs, manners, government, character, magistrates, &c" of any nation, very tedious - Action I like.
I remain, Yr Affte Son.
W. H. F. Talbot.
Lady Elisabeth Feilding
31 Sackville St
London
Notes:
1. Castleford, Yorkshire, 10 mi SE of Leeds, where WHFT went to school from 1815-1816.
2. See Doc. No: 03879.
3. An earlier edition of Romualdo Zotti, Chef de la grammaire italienne (London: Schulze & Dean, 1816).
4. The Student's Journal: arranged, printed, and ruled for receiving an account of every day's employment, for the space of one year (London: 1815).
5. Peacock's Polite Repository, almanack. [See Doc. No: 03879].
6. Napoleon I, Emperor of France (1804-1814/1815).