Laycock Abbey
Tuesday May 8th
My dear Henry
You were very wrong to go away just as Lacock was getting lovely – yesterday & today we have had the most beautiful weather possible, & all the lilacs are flowering – so delicious! Your horned tulips are coming into blow & Scilla campanulata blue & white – & Trollius – & in the kitchen garden Iris florentina & peony & quantities of narcissus everywhere. In Caroline’s <1> garden a very handsome orange flower which Fitzsimmons <2> says you had put there – he calls it gortaria rigens. I shall be quite sorry to leave this place, especially if London continues so dull. There are now 40 people going to America – Mr Paley <3> says they remind him of the 40 thieves! – but so much the better riddance. They are all to assemble this evg to receive instructions, & start next Friday to sail Saturday – Thomas Moore <4> is going to see them on board. Mama <5> has given clothes to the women, 10 of whom are going. We had not even a gleam of sunshine Saturday – I do not know whether the moon will be more favorable this evg – I attended the meeting yesterday & moved a resolution! which I wrote down in the book. I am sure you will approve of it. It is that the annual meeting be holden on the 1st Monday in Jany instead of April which will tend very much to simplify the accounts. One of your old men is dead & his niece wants to go on instead of him which I said she certainly might. Adieu write me word what happens, both in the political & fashionable world –
yours afftely
Horatia
W. Henry Fox Talbot Esqre
Notes:
1. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
2. Cornelius Fitzsimmons, Scottish gardener at Lacock Abbey.
3. Probably Rev James Paley (1790–1863), Vicar at Lacock.
4. Thomas Moore (possibly d. 1854), member of the Lacock Parish Vestry.
5. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773–1846), WHFT’s mother.
6. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father.