32 St James’s Place
Thursday evening. September. 14.
My dear Father.
Please to thank Ela <1> for a letter & key received this morning, together with yours. I forgot to go and see about the British Museum today when I left Cary’s, which is in Bloomsbury St, but I will endeavour to do so tomorrow. I took a longish walk today and saw the ruins of the exhibition of 1862 <2> which are really quite imposing – two immense circular brick arches are standing alone which were the great windows or ends of the building near each dome &c – and some of the building near the principal entrance where 2 solitary workmen were to be seen picking away at the bricks. A great many houses & streets seem to have been built all round since the exhibition –. All unfortunately are stucco. Some way further on I came to a remarkeable [sic] attempt to improve street architecture, viz two brick houses with Gothic in character, but pretty freely treated, with very good stone carving & polished pillars of what in I am inclined to think is serpentine, at any rate a dark & reddish & very handsome stone. Kensington seems certainly to be a place one would prefer to live in if one was obliged to live in town; it must be much pleasanter than these parts & one might come here by bus, & perhaps soon by train; in fact you can come to Victoria Station now by train I believe. At a place called Lancaster Gate, I found a very handsome new Church spire just added to a church; the architect is a Mr Francis; & the idea seems to me to have been taken from Newark church in Nottinghamshire. I think I shall buy a map of the environs of London as my map does not th take in further than Kensington.
Your affect son
Charles.
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Wilts.
Notes:
1. Ela Theresa Talbot (1835–1893), WHFT’s 1st daughter.
2. The International Exhibition of 1862, London.