Laycock Abbey
29 May
My Dear Henry
I am quite nervous at hearing nothing from you since Calais – I do not know exactly what there is to be uneasy about, & yet I am uncomfortable. Constance <1> thinks me absurd but I cannot help fancying you ill & bilious on the road & stopped at Bruxelles or some worse place. Mr Kendrick <2> thinks this unlikely & that the journey will counteract all those sort of malaises. But you might as well have sent me a line from Ghent or Malines or Liège or Namur or Cologne just to prevent my imagination preying upon itself.
I staid a week in London & amused myself very well between the Palace, the Dss of Sutherland <3> & the French Play. and now I am here for six days & making the most of it by being out six hours a day! The weather s’y prète, <4> it is quite delightful. I am going back to town for Music at L. House <5> on the 3d June & shall then remain awaiting your arrival. You ought to have written one description of everything that strikes you which would serve you for a Journal in future times, as you never write one, your old letters are now the best journal anybody can have. Vale Henrice! Vale delicium meum, et mihi quod potes, solatium doto <6> all’s Well
Notes:
1. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
2. Dr Kendrick, Talbot family doctor in Wiltshire. [See Doc. No: 03499].
3. Lady Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana Howard, Duchess of Sutherland (d. 1868).
4. Lends itself to it.
5. Lansdowne House, London: home of the Marquis of Lansdowne, WHFT's uncle and cousins.
6. Goodbye, Henry! Goodbye my delight, and bestow what comfort you can upon me.