TALBOT1352

Worthing

9^th January 1826

My Dear Henry

How difficult it is to drag through eight months at these kind of places, from the last of July when one leaves town to the first of April when one returns to it – counting weeks & notching off days is sad work. Spending money in places that have neither interest, excitement nor improvement of any kind – not a prospect, not a picture, not an acquaintance, nothing to look at, nothing to do. Now if instead the same eight months were spent in travelling we should be lamenting over every waning Moon that told us of expiring weeks & departing times for fear of being obliged to return to London before we had done seeing & enjoying ourselves. How much better it is to find time too short for what we have to do, than to pant to have it over. I have always thought it a grievous situation to be so bored as to wish to “lash the lingering moments into speed” & at the same time to be fully sensible of the shortness of life, in other words to wish to quicken it in detail & lengthen it en gros. ¹ This is a situation in which I have been placed more than once in my life. I intended to beguile the tedium vitae with Moore’s Life of Sheridan ² & therefore would not need it at Melbury, ³ & have been lucky enough to find it at the Library here, it amuses me but I am not yet come to the part which offended the Whigs. I shall never believe England is so benevolent a country as she gives herself credit for, while these poor exiled Spaniards ⁴ are starving in our streets. While we subscribe to every fire & every flood in any petty state of Germany or in the most distant part of America & neglect these poor Spaniards merely because they have suffered in a revolutionary Cause & that therefore the tide of Cant sets against them.

If you do not come pray write to us I am not selfish enough to ask you to commit yourself to these inhospitable shores. terra saxosa, sterilis & infæcunda, nec sylvis, vestata, nee fluminibus distincta, nec pratis ornata, Ventis solum & procellis semper exposita. ⁵

W.H. Fox Talbot Esq^r
31 Sackville Street
London