Dover
Thursday
My dear Henry
Pray send the enclosed & seal it as wax does not abound at Dover. I am kept by contrary winds & might just as well have staid in town to talk with you on the Majority <1> – small as it is it is as good as 100 – & I hope no dissolution – I think they ought to spin it out, whatever be its fate, to get other things through between whiles – or business of the year will be checked. I meant to have asked you to accompany Lady I, <2> & little Caroline <3> some day to see those drawings of Mr Brown’s in Soho Sq. as you have never seen them & they are quite worthy. I find by last night’s paper that the Polish peasantry have begun to rise & harass the Russians in their rear – Wielopolski <4> told me a week ago that was the plan & that the pospolite or levy en masse was kept quiet for that purpose, but I thought he was hoping too much. Diebitsch <5> cannot be very comfortable cooped up in a corner between the Vistula & Bug up to his knees in water, which may rise in a few hours so as to drown his whole army & probably freezes every night & thaws in the day – The people just come in from Calais say there is nothing new in France – so I hope this Ministry may stand – After Lafayette’s <6> documents I should not wonder if Sebastiani <7> went out – & if Soults <8> influence led to a war with Russia which I think not unlikely, he might keep the others in.
Yr Affte
W F S
London March twenty five 1831 C R M Talbot <9>
H. F. Talbot Esq
W. H. F. Talbot Esq <10>
31 Sackville Street
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. On 23 March 1831 the first parliamentary reform bill passed its second reading by one vote.
2. Juliana Maria Strangways, née Digby (d. 1842).
3. Caroline Margaret Fox Strangways, younger daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ilchester.
4. Aleksander Wielopolski, Marquis of Gonzaga-Myszkowski (1803–1877), Polish statesman. He came to London in 1831 in an unsuccessful attempt to seek British support for the Polish insurrection.
5. Hans Karl Friedrich Anton Diebitsch (1785–1831), Russian field-marshal, commander of the forces that suppressed the Polish uprising.
6. Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de la Fayette (1757–1834), French general and statesman.
7. Horace François Bastien Sébastiani (1772–1851), French army officer and politician.
8. Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult (1769–1851), marshal of France, politician, minister for war (1830–1844).
9. Readdressed in CRM Talbot’s hand.
10. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.