F. <1>
Jan 12. 1826
Dear Henry
Tho I wrote last post I must answer your letter & recommend your coming out to Corfu & Greece this spring – I do not mean to be here next <2> – besides, with the new change of Affairs in Russia <3> we may have war in the Levant next year. I shall follow your advice about bulbs Wholesale – it is too late now as they are in full vegetation, our pale scentless cyclamens are not worth sending in lots, I sent a few by Courier – but if I was at Naples I would send loads of the spring sort. Iris tuberosa is coming up abundantly both in the turf of Boboli & walks of G. Semplici <4>. I hope what I sent to Abbotsbury <5> will take. Multitudes of unknown alliums &c – of the smaller sorts which were over when I came last year – do you know Convallaria Japonica with its beautiful blue berries? & grasslike leaves?
I did not know that you had inhabited Albania <6> – is it on the Alban Mount or in Alba longa? The climate ought to be favorable to vegetation, tho I imagine that in the neighboring Arcadia you find nothing but artificial flowers <7> Speculums perhaps & Morios – I told you I had preserved two speculums & a [Ser.?] rubra in water they are now growing in pots. I had no idea they would spring so soon in England. Tell me what Orchideæ are best worth importing if I send any. I think they would go well like acorns in a solid box of earth. How are Jane’s <8> going on? You do not seem to have seen what I sent her by the Courier – I am intent on the Spring bulbs & mean to know them all & send some home after flowering – Tenore’s <9> unicolor (q. secotinus?) & præcox, two sorts I like very much & prefer to Tazetta are very fine here – yesterday I saw what may be a perfect yellow Tazzetta, or N. orientalis – it has the long green spatha of præcox – the roundish petals of Tazetta, but all yellow – stalk hardly anceps – which in præcox is strongly so – leaves glaucous as in Tazetta (in præcox dark green) & as long as the flower stalk – in unicolor the flower stalk shoots up first leaving the glaucous leaves behind. I shall make a Category of them before the end of the season. Whatever you do with the orchideæ, have a good drawing made of them when in flower. John <10> has sent a Chironia which may be your Morocco one from its size. I dare say Carolines <11> Campanula is my fragilis or if different from what you saw at Abbotsbury it may be the downy pale variety which I had but it went off in a decline before flowering. I sent this summer bulbs of Allium fragrans which I would recommend for soups &c John found a beautiful little one flowered Campanula in Sicily looking like a mountain Gentian. I hope he will send me as good a Hortus <12> from Egypt & Syria – I cant imagine why he did not send some from Greece & Asia Minor the mountains round Smyrna look very botanical. There is a Mimosa in Georgia which I suppose quite as cold in winter as Dalmatia – & the Iulibrissin you know is very hardy so is mimosa glandulosa & acanthocarpa [here?] & Farnesiana almost so tho a native of the Mts of S. Domingo I do not know the Nepal Rhod. it must be a compagne <13> to the Azalia [sic] Indica which they ought to have here the others do not succeed at all. I cannot understand your refusing Martius. <14> I expect to hear again soon –
Yr aff
W T H F S
Henry Talbot Esqre
31 Sackville Street
London
Worthing <17>
Notes:
1. Florence.
2. Probably next Spring.
3. From 1826-1828 Russia was in war with Persia.
4. The Giardino de'’Semplici, in Florence, as are the Boboli Gardens.
5. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
6. A pun on the name: Alba Longa was a pre-Roman city near the Alban Mount (Mons Albanus, not far from Rome).
7. Cultivated (that is, non-native) flowers.
8. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874).
9. Michel Tenore (1780–1861), Italian botanist & traveller.
10. John George Charles Fox Strangways (1803–1859), MP.
11. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
12. A Hortus siccus (collection of dried plant specimens).
13. Companion.
14. Dr Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), German botanist.
15. Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough (1758-1844).
16. Text torn away under seal.
17. Readdressed in another hand.