Lacock Abbey,
Chippenham.
Lacock
Friday Nov. 23
My Dear Charles
I want to know how you are getting on, and whether you have got new lodgings nearer your Club, <1> and what day you entered at the Temple. There was a sharp frost for 2 or 3 days, during that time it was very cold in the Abbey. The weather is quite calm, but on this day in the year 1824 occurred the great storm <2> which is remembered in Dorsetshire by the name of “the outrage” when the sea at Abbotsbury broke inland nearly a mile and washed away great part of the Chesil bank and I think the village that stood on it. I was at Paris at the time & it was almost as bad there. We have had the Stove fresh painted – The Strelitzia Reginæ is in flower and 2 or 3 more flowers coming. It is a superb thing. Your mamma and sisters <3> are at Edinburgh, Mlle Amélina <4> still at Dabton.
I enclose one of Mr Gilling’s <5> views which I think you have not seen
Your affte
Father
Did you see the great Meteoric Showers <6> on the night between the 13th & 14th. The Astronomers had predicted it would be greater than anything of the kind since the year 1833 and so it was. Here I saw it very well it began at ½ past 12 oclock and culminated at a few minutes past one in the morning when the discharge of celestial rockets and roman candles was incessant. They passed very quick, leaving long trains of sparks behind them Every one without exception came from the East. The constellation Leo which was rising behind Bowden Hill appeared to be their source, as their paths all pointed from thence. The best of them were much brighter than Venus.
Envelope:
C. H. Talbot83 Ebury St
Pimlico
London S.W.
Notes:
1. New University Club, St James’s St, London SW.
2. Weymouth promenade was destroyed during “the outrage” of 1824 with the village of Abbotsbury also being severely flooded.
3. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife, Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2nd daughter, Matilda Caroline Gilchrist-Clark, ‘Tilly’, née Talbot (1839–1927), WHFT’s 3rd daughter and Ela Theresa Talbot (1835–1893), WHFT’s 1st daughter.
4. Amélina Petit De Billier, ‘Mamie’, ‘Amandier’ (1798–1876), governess and later close friend of the Talbot family [See Amélina's journal ].
5. See Doc. No: 05297.
6. The annual Leonid meteor shower.