F. <1>
Dec 10.
My dear Henry
You surprise me by saying you were never on the top of Abbotsbury Castle till you walked there the other day. I do not wonder you made no botanical observations – in the summer there are some good bog plants, & I imagine, a good harvest of mosses. I am afraid my plantations of Andromedas, Sedum &c are come to nothing but it is something that a Calla flowered there, & I found it by its flower after 4 years absence – & it may be creeping on there still – I imagine game laws & rights of common are extremely inimical to naturalisations & even to native botany. – In geology if I had been with you I could have shown you some thing, for in leaving Melbury <2> you ascend an Escarpment, get upon a tableland, cross various denudations cut into the substrata the same as shewn in the Escarpment, & between the denudations you just touch upon outliers of a tertiary basin supported by the tableland, (quite a new unconformable & overlying formation,) & descend another Escarpment to Abbotsbury <3>
You delayed your visit to the garden so long that I did not learn half what I expected from you – If the Yucca was really above 8 feet & a half high with 42 branches & 200 flowers, it must have given a very tolerable idea of an Agave to those who have never seen the original. I dare say my Agaves when they flower will not be much bigger – certainly the Yuccas here are not near that size – I am glad to hear that Teucrium flourishes, when I left it it was in the mud. How can you pretend not to recognise Verbascum phœnicium & Euphorbia myrsinites? – 2 principal favorites of mine. I depended upon your noticing (if it is still there) Euphorbia dendroides, & ceratocarpa of Tenore, <4> very distinct from the nearest species to it in the Garden here, E. palustris. I thought you would have been attracted by the novelty of Cassias out of doors, & many others – Were you not struck with Campanula fragilis & were there no bulbs in flower? I hope the walls were as I desired tapissés de <5> Disandra, Mesembryanth. Chinese Saxifrage Did you ever see Salvia campestris, & virgata before – But you should have gone in the summer. You will never see Pisum maritimum.
I am glad you have heard of the Sardinian – My Corsican has sent me nothing, not even a pair of Moufflons which he promised, tho I don’t know what I should do with them. I have sent Jane <6> some plants lately which you must go & see. What is a Cynomosium? I hope you will give me an account of the Moreton <7> plants soon, I am sending large lots to Ht <8> every day. I wish I could cure her of the funest habitude <9> of transplanting her plants, all & some, as the Romances say, twice a year. I have not much faith in your Experiment (until it is made) of the Muriate of lime, besides I do not know where to get Muriate of lime. I think the sea air & calcareous soil at Abbotsbury & Penrice <10> supplies the plants with Muriate of lime sufficiently I wish you could bring some dried specimens of N. Holland <11> or other new plants, for Raddi, <12> who has none, or very bad ones of some old inhabitants of our G. houses. Mexican I think would be particularly interesting. And if you would do as I believe you did in your last tour, bring some of our English publications it would be a great treat to him to see them & I could send them back by Couriers after you go on to Corfu.
I suppose you will frequent Mr Lamberts <13> in London – Look well over Sibthorp’s Flora Græca, <14> & read his journals &c in Walpoles Turkish Collection <15> which you may have seen at Abbotsbury – There is a Prodromus Fl. Græcæ <16> in 8vo. –
John <17> being gone to Egypt has sent Saverio <18> here, & when he returns will I suppose only go straight home to England, probably with some companion & without Saverio. If you have no Servant, Saverio would make a very good one for those parts, if you could come out with a temporary one.
Yrs Affte
W T H F S
Henry Talbot Esqr
31 Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. Probably Florence.
2. Melbury, Dorset: one of the Fox Strangways family homes; WHFT was born there.
3. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
4. Michel Tenore (1780–1861), Italian botanist & traveller.
5. Clad with.
6. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874).
7. Moreton, Dorset: home of the Frampton family.
8. Harriot Georgiana Mundy, née Frampton (1806-1886), WHFT’s cousin & sister-in-law.
9. Grievous habit.
10. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
11. New Holland.
12. Joseph (Giuseppe) Raddi (1770–1829), Italian botanist.
13. Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761–1842), botanist.
14. John Sibthorp (1758–1796), Flora Græca: sive Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Græciæ legit …, (London: Richard Taylor & Co., 1806–1828).
15. Robert Walpole (1781–1856), Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1817), and Travels in various Countries of the East (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1820).
16. John Sibthorp, Floræ Græcæ Prodromus ( London: 1806–1813).
17. John George Charles Fox Strangways (1803–1859), MP.
18. Saverio Levota, a manservant/courier employed during the 1820s by various members of the Strangways and Talbot families while travelling on the Continent.