Florence
June 21
My dear Henry
I think Kit <1> is illadvised about sailing direct to Egypt, he had much better stop & take informations at Malta it is a very different thing from sailing from Oxwich to Barnstaple. They say Mahomet Ali <2> is dead – he had better touch somewhere to find out the truth of this, as it will make a woundy <3> difference to Tourists in the land of Misr <4> if instead of the old cotton merchant they find his bigotted son <5> fresh from the slaughter of the Morea <6> & who thinks Christians no better than Wahabees. <7> Unless the quarantine is taken off which we hope for, I recommend him to go to Gibraltar, Tunis, Tripoli, Cyrene & Egypt – taking Malta in wherever he likes – or touching at Candia <8> or any isles. If the Quarantine is taken off before he comes out, he had better see the European parts first – Mr Baring <9> has built a very nice yacht at Leghorn with which he is going to sail about. He has promised to take me to Elba why does not Kit go to Charleston or Savannah if he wants a long stretch? He should go to the English Isles <10> first where there is no quarantine against England, & then step over to the nearest heathen shore he wants to see –
Yrs
W T H F S
Henry Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
2. Mahomet or Mehemet Ali (1769–1849), pasha, and later viceroy, of Egypt under the Ottoman Empire.
3. Very great.
4. Biblical name for Egypt.
5. Ibrahim Pasha (1798–1848). He took Missolonghi, Peloponnese on 22 April 1826. This event, and Kit Talbot’s intended trip to Egypt date this document to 1826.
6. The Peloponnese. Greece was struggling for independence against the Ottoman Empire.
7. ‘Wahhabis’, that is, members of a fundamentalist Muslim sect in Arabia, suppressed by Ibrahim Pasha.
8. Herakleion, in Crete.
9. Possibly Francis Baring, 3rd Baron Ashburton (1800–1868), MP.
10. The British West Indies.