TALBOT1537

Brighton

11^th February

My Dearest Henry

I cannot omit to write to you on this dear day, though it does not appear by the tenor of any of yours that you have received one of ours, ¹ not even my first to Leipsic, which is very discouraging. I received a very amusing one from you yesterday only nine days from Berlin! There were great divisions of opinion at Paris whether you had chosen your moment well or ill, for travelling towards the North, on the whole it was most approved by those best acquainted with the place, which speaks well for you sagacity.

William ² is at Abbotsbury, ³ he says you will be snowed up coming back in the vallies of Thuringin & that you will miss the botanizing time in green weather. He fancies he has been lying perdu in the wilds of Poland, but I happened to find a polish lady at Paris whose name only has put him in a fright as he thinks she knows all about him & has told me. I suppose she is a friend of la Rosalie ⁴.– I wish myself continually back at Paris, it was so very pleasant after the Carnival begun <sic> & so unlike anything here.

There is no want of people one knows but they do not congregate & the K ⁵– being here, dullifies the place. – I hear by a letter from Pisa that the first husband ⁶ of the Lady Dudley Stuart ⁷ is resuscité what a glorious confusion.

Horatia ⁸ wrote to you from Boulogne & from Brighton, being partial to aliteration.

You will have been very good about writing but you might be better “appetite doth grow by what it feedeth”. & no sooner have I read one of your letters than I wish for another

Mons^r W. H. F. Talbot
Poste restante
Berlin
<illegible deletion>
Bruxelles
en Prusse