1 Jany 1858
My dear Henry
I wish you a happy new year altho’ I cannot greet you with anything like good news – Your Uncle Harry <1> has been ill since Monday with a very serious bilious attack which makes us all very anxious. Dr Jones <2> is here from London & we hope will do good.
He says by the way that Gaisford <3> is not well tho’ he is thinking of going to Rome. I heard from Jane <4> lately at Nice, she was thinking of changing her residence to Mentone, very delightful if a good house for so many is to be found there.
I direct this to the Athenæum – it will lose no time & probably will be forwarded.
I hope you are all well in your northern climate <5> Abbotsbury <6> was delightful a week ago – narcissus, hyacinth, lithosp. rosmari – Oxalis cernua, Convol. Cneorum a beautiful Iris alata or scorpioides, primroses, tree heath ( Mary’s <7>) Camellias & a rhodod. – or two – Azara very pretty – Edwardsia – standard Chimonanthus – chamæmoly Coronilla, salvias, geranium, Fuchsia, & such a crop of myrtle berries – were all out – & the Aponogeton in quantity. I am trying Anacharis [Alimastum?] What do you think of Drs Barth <8> & Livingston? <9>
Yrs
W F S
Notes:
1. Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787–1858).
2. Henry Bence Jones, MD, FRS (1814–1873), physician and chemist.
3. Capt Thomas Gaisford (1816–1898), JP, WHFT’s brother-in-law.
4. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874).
5. The Talbot family spent the Winter of 1857/8 at 4 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh.
6. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
7. Mary Thereza Talbot (1795–1861), WHFT’s cousin.
8. Heinrich Barth (1821–1865), German explorer of North and West Africa. His Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa … were published simultaneously in German and English. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, 1857–1858).
9. David Livingstone (1813–1873), missionary and explorer of Africa. His Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa was published by John Murray in November 1857.