TALBOT1272

Sackville Street ¹
Saturday 21^st May

Carissimo, ²

we miss you very much, more so than we ought considering how little we saw of you, but still we were tolerably sure of seeing you once in the course of the day. Caroline ³ is still asleep after her ball at Devonshire House, at which she danced later than she has ever done. It was given in honour of Lady Emma Bennet, ⁴ Lord Tankerville’s ⁵ daughter, who is just come out, & Emma was in large letters in the coloured lamps in the garden, opposite the windows. M^r F ⁶ went to M^r Hope’s at the Deepden, early the Morning after you went away, he had the day before given me a letter to give you, which in the multiplicity of things I had to think about I forgot, but as I cannot find it, perhaps he may have given it to you himself, which I wished he would as there cannot be too much openness between you, & a thousand things he can set you right upon, from longer experience in the ways of the world & Knowledge of Men & things. I should be sorry if the said letter is lost because it was from M^r King ⁷ & contained his own justification. I recollect when M^r F. came back to Paris in the Winter he told me of a conversation he had had with M^r King about his bill, which M^r King had begun by saying you had not yet paid him. I know nothing of course about the rights & the wrongs of it, but it must always be satisfactory to you if you can discover that a person you had confidence in is not unworthy of it. M^r F. is still at the Deep den & does not return till Monday, so that I know not if he said anything to you or not about it, but I always advise him to talk as freely to you as he does to me about anything that concerns you or your affairs, & I never could understand the sort of shyness he sometimes seems to feel about talking to you on any subject of business, convinced it is for both your good to have the utmost frankness & that you can never think him needlessly interfering who was so long the protector of your infancy & youth. He always says you are reserved, but [that?]⁸ part is you have that native distaste to business per se which characterises all my family & I am sure it is that & the dislike to beginning subjects of such dry interest that influences you much more than reserve. I had a very civil note from M^r Hay saying he had great pleasure in voting for your friend, but not saying whether it has succeeded. Car & Hor ⁹ & Amandier ¹⁰ have been making impressions intaglios & cameos in Gypsum, they made many experiments which failed, but after a world of trouble they succeeded tolerably, but how to mix their sulphur caused them much thought & trouble & waste of time which you would have saved them had you been here to tell them beforehand the chemical effects & affinities – Horatia went last Night to the French Play with Jane ¹¹ & Caroline would have preferred it to Devonshire House, such is at present her infantine taste

Y^rs Af^ly
W. H. Fox Talbot Esq
Penrice Castle
Swansea
Glamorgan