Penllergare <1>
Augst 28
My dear Henry
Your little Cistus with white flowers is now loaded with ripe seeds – They are quite ornamental. We were very sorry to part with Ela <2> and hope she (and Rosamond <3>) may come again next summer.
Elinor <4> quite enjoyed taking her about in various directions –
I wish our Gardener could see the way in which you treat the Bomarea and the hardy Clerodendron We have increased the Hedychium which you gave us two years ago but he has kept it in pots – it flowered last year – but not this Season –
I have the Mentha Requieni from Kew & it runs about over the ground & is quite at home – I did not know before that it comes from Corsica – it is a great addition to the pleasure of cultivating flowers, to know where they come from –
Mr Llewelyn <5> looked out some of his best negatives to shew Ela but she could not appreciate them I am sure, so well, as if she had been your printer in by gone days – I exhorted her to get you to look over your old stores – We shewed her quite a collection of photographs from the earliest date – and if your negatives are still in existence some prints from them would be valuable invaluable I mean <6> –
Do pray look them out – We should so very much like to look them over – I am sure that we should appreciate them more than any body else can do. We possess those photographs you sent to Lanelay <7> – little things – Sir Charles Lemon & Ly Dunstanville <8> at Carclew <9> – bits of Laycock – &ca besides & before the “Pencil of Nature” <10> –
yours affetly
Emma Llewelyn
Notes:
1. Penllergaer, Glamorgan, 5 mi E of Loughor: home of the Llewelyn family.
2. Ela Theresa Talbot (1835–1893), WHFT’s 1st daughter.
3. Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2nd daughter.
4. Elinor Amy Llewelyn (1844–1887), daughter of WHFT’s cousin Emma Llewelyn, née Talbot.
5. John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810–1882), Welsh photographer, JP & High Sheriff.
6. This passage has been reproduced in H J P Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot; Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, Ltd, 1977), p. 322.
7. Llanely, or Lanely, Glamorganshire: home of Lady Mary Cole and Mary Thereza Talbot.
8. Sir Charles Lemon (1784–1868), politician & scientist; WHFT’s uncle, and his sister Harriet, née Lemon (1777–1864). In 1824 she became the 2nd wife of Francis Basset, 1st Baron de Dunstanville and Basset (1757–1835), MP, FRS, and political writer. For the image see ‘The Porch of Carclew, the Home of Sir Charles Lemon’, Schaaf 227, reproduced in Larry J. Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 122.
9. Carclew, Cornwall, 3 mi N of Penryn: seat of Sir Charles Lemon.
10. WHFT, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, June 1844–April 1846 [issued in six fascicles]).