Lacock Abbey,
Chippenham.
Friday 27th March
Dear Mlle Amélina
Charles<1> has heard from Ela<2> this morning that you do not leave Genoa till next Monday it appears to me therefore that this letter will be in time. I hope you have received your nephews letter from New York,<3> which I forwarded to you at Pisa, and Charles wrote to me of you there. I don’t think there are any other letters gone to Pisa. I am surprised to hear of snow on the mountains near Genoa. Here the spring is very forward and the lilacs will soon open.
Today was one of the most splendid days I ever saw – Perhaps you will make 2 visits to Florence, one before and one after Prince Humberts marriage<4> – At this distance I cannot tell what is best for you to do – Politics in England are getting troubled. Mr Gladstone’s move to abolish the Irish Church has excited a commotion.<5> Only think of the former representative of the University of Oxford making such a motion! He has been sailing under false colours all his life.<6> You see in America they are trying the President for high Crimes and Misdemeanours – chiefly for differing in opinion from Congress and dismissing a minister who opposed him in his Cabinet.<7> And also for saying that Congress was no congress because the members for all the Southern States were excluded. I visited Penrice<8> lately – there was only a small party there & it was very pleasant. Bertha<9> had left her little baby there while she went on a hunting visit to Leicestershire. The little Violet is a nice little child of 6 months old full of observation and very good tempered like Willy<10> was at that age. nothing puts her out except meeting a Welsh woman in a scarlet cloak, and a hat.
Charles is going to be sworn in as a Magistrate at Salisbury the 1st April.
I was glad to hear that Disraeli had given a pension of £200 a Year to Lady Brewster.<11> They are going to raise a statue to Sir D. Brewster at Edinburgh if they can raise £1,000 by subscription.<12> It appears it will stand in Princes Street Gardens – Only think of Lacock parish having produced the Greatest Lady in all Australia – Miss Gladstone now Lady Belmore and Governess General of New South Wales<13> – His personal appearance, as I read “produced a most favourable impression” and doubtless hers also. Mr William Awdry<14> has become Second Master of Winchester School and I suppose ere long he will succeed to the Head Mastership, which is worth some thousands a year. Mr Blomfield<15> has got an addition to his family last week, at Barton in the Clay. I am so glad you enjoyed Genoa and stayed longer than at first intended
Ever yours
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Charles Henry Talbot, 'Charlie' or 'Tally' (2 Feb 1842 - 26 Dec 1916), antiquary & WHFT's only son.
2. Ela Theresa Talbot (25 Apr 1835 - 25 Apr 1893), WHFT's 1st daughter.
3. Francis Noel Mundy (1833-1903), WHFT's nephew) - the purpose of the trip is not known.
4. Umberto I (1844-1900) - in 21 April 1868 he married his first cousin, Margherita Teresa Giovanna, Princess of Savoy.
5. His effort was towards The Irish Church Act (1869), which broke the link between the church and the state and repealed the law requiring tithes to be paid. It also terminated the church's representation in the House of Lords. Such acrinomy was created between the House of Commons and the House of Lords by this that Queen Victoria intervened personally as mediator. When it took effect in 1871, the Church of Ireland was formed..
6. Gladstone was MP for Oxford University in the 1850s.
7. The 1868 election was the first one to be held after Reconstruction. In this volatile period, the incumbant, Andrew Johnson, who had taken over after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was highly unpopular and became the first president to be impeached by the House of Representives - he escaped conviction by just one vote in the Senate. He was not nominated by the Democrats and in the end, the Republican candidate, former Union General Ulysses S Grant, took the election.
8. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
9. Bertha Isabella Fletcher, née Talbot (1841-1911), 2nd daughter of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot, who married John Fletcher (1827-1903), of Saltoun, JP.
10. 'Bab' (Baby), William ‘Willie’ Gilchrist-Clark, later Rev William Clark-Maxwell (1865-1935).
11. Sir David's second wife, Jane Kirk Purnell (b. 1827), who he had married in Nice in 1857.
12. Sir David Brewster (1781-10 February 1868), Scottish scientist & journalist. A meeting was convened in Edinburgh by Sir David Baxter (1793-1872), a wealthy Fife linen manufacturer and benefactor, to plan the raising of a monument, a subscription soon successful. William Brodie's (1815-1881) Sicilian marble statue was unveiled, not on Princes Street, but rather in the old quadrangle of Edinburgh University in August 1870 to great praise for the deceased philosopher. This monument ultimately engaged the attention of Sherlock Holmes: when a Liberal raised his placard at a demonstration, 'his triumph was short-lived. A stick descended upon his head, his heels were tripped up, and he and his placard rolled upon the ground together. The victors succeeded, however, in forcing their way to the extreme end of the quadrangle, where, as every Edinburgh man knows, the full-length statue of Sir David Brewster looks down upon the classic ground which he loved so well. An audacious Radical swarmed up upon the pedestal and balanced the obnoxious notice on the marble arms of the professor. Thus converted into a political partisan, the revered inventor of the kaleidoscope became the centre of a furious struggle, the vanquished politicians making the most desperate efforts to destroy the symbol of their opponents' victory, while the others offered an equally vigorous resistance to their attacks' (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Firm of Girdleston, 1893). Perhaps this incident is what prompted the University to remove the statue to the remote location of West Mains Road?
13. Anne Elizabeth Honoria, née Gladstone (1841-1919), was born in Brighton, but grew up in the home of her father, Capt John Neilson Gladstone, R.N., at Bowden Park, near Lacock. The niece of William Ewart Gladstone, in 1861 she married Somerset Richard Lowry-Corry (1835-1914), 4th Earl Belmore.
14. The Awdrys had been the Feilding and Talbot family lawyers for many years.
15. Arthur Blomfield (b. 1827), curate of Lacock.