Melbury <1>Dorchester
9 June
My dear Henry
Caroline <2> tells me you are all at Lacock – Are you going to stay – Are you coming up to town? We go to 31 O B. St. <3> on Monday – call if you go up –
The country is lovely just now. I never saw the foliage so fine.
I have got in flower Arum orientale & triphyllum out of doors here.
A very pretty white Saxifrage here is I think S. cotyledon do you know it? & a rose I take to be Rosa myriacantha from the Crimea – white, single.
I hope Edward Nicholl <4> is settling himself. I do not know the Parsonage <5> at Lacock.
What an unsatisfactory state the Continent is in. an awful crisis <6> seems to be preparing – when to explode, is a mystery!
Hope your party are all well
Yr affe
Wm
Notes:
1. Melbury, Dorset: one of the Fox Strangways family homes; WHFT was born there.
2. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
3. 31 Burlington Street, London home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
4. Rev Edward Powell Nicholl (1831–1902), Vicar of Lacock from 1864 until his resignation in 1870; photographer.
5. An attractive 18th century house, but only one room deep so rather lacking in accommodation.
6. The Schleswig–Holstein Question again: in 1863 Denmark had repudiated the treaty of 1852, giving Prussia and Austria the opportunity to invade Schleswig in February 1864 [Bismarck’s long-term aim was to annex the duchies]. The conference convened in London in April to settle the matter broke up inconclusively on 25 June. [By August, the king of Denmark was forced to renounce all rights in the duchies and a treaty was signed in October.] British public opinion since the Crimean War had been opposed to intervention on the Continent. See Doc. No: 08761.