Lacock Abbey
Monday
My dear Father,
The place is looking excessively pretty and green. I opened the Bleak House today and there I found the carcases of several starlings all on their way to becoming skeletons which was rather nasty, so I told Pullen <1> to sweep them away. The said unfortunate starlings had no doubt come down the chimney and had been unable to get out again. I think Bleak House will make a pretty good dark room. You cut a hole in the front shutter, but the piece of wood which came out of it is there and can be [illegible deletion] put in & taken out at pleasure, so I think the room may be made tolerably non-actinic. I shall probably go to Bath tomorrow, and get some photographing things in order that I may set to work. Our weather has changed Sunday was dull, & rained in the afternoon. Today also was dull. I have been dining at Sir John Awdry’s <2> today, a rather early dinner, 5 oclock. Mr & Mrs Blomfield <3> were there, the incumbent of St Annes (I think his name is Parker.) a another [sic] clergyman who had I believe come to lecture, seeing that they were going to have a Missionary meeting for the Society for the propagation of the Gospel, to which meeting, I did not go, not having had time to make up my mind about it, though perhaps as I am solo it might have been as amusing as staying here, as our dinner partly broke up about seven in consequence. The mud that has been produced by the little rain which we have had is something astonishing and I was lucky in having my India rubber galoshes & gaters to keep me clean in my walk to Notton. Mr Parker tells me that there are trout in the Avon & that there is a very fine one near our bridge but that they are difficult to catch. I am afraid I shall fail if I try. If I thought I had a reasonable chance of success I would try. With regard to the restoration of the Church, all parties seem to be agreed that the external appearance was better before, but there was certainly a difficulty, an architectural problem to be sotred, [sic] and they did not see their way to solving it in any other manner. I am pretty convinced now that the transepts were never built as intended by the perpendicular builder and that probably they intended them to have had flat roofs or nearly flat, which would have solved the problem. The difficulty being that the pitch of the roof being high, the end of the gable rises considerably above the battlements of the nave, whereas before it was below it. The [Stockzia?] has no more spikes. The Natal Lily is coming on fast and expected to flower soon. There is a very pretty white broom in flower in the greenhouse garden, and a good magnolia near the Botanic garden. The wisteria is in very good flower on one side. The other side was touched by the frost. The lilacs, the Judas tree, a rhododendron very flourishing near the caldron pond, for which a pit was made, on the Dunkeld principle, and in the Carpe conservatory the Cantua, Achebia Quinata. 2 or three Taxonias are all in flower. I have begun the Mr Scropes History of Castle Combe, <4> & Macaulays <5> history and find them both very interesting. I hope you will come soon.
Your affect son
Charles.
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
8 Rutland square
Edinburgh
Notes:
1. William Pullen, Lacock Abbey coachman.
2. Sir John Wither Awdry (1795–1878), JP & Chief Justice, Bombay Supreme Court.
3. Arthur W Blomfield (1827-1896), curate of Lacock, and his wife, Sophia St Mart, née Willson (d. 1895).
4. George Julius Duncombe Poulett Scrope (1797–1876), MP & scientist, The History of the manor and ancient barony of Castle Combe, in the county of Wilts; (London, J. B. Nichols and son, printers, 1852).
5. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), MP & historian.
6. Possibly Rev Edward Powell Nicholl (1831–1902), Vicar of Lacock from 1864 until his resignation in 1870; photographer.