TALBOT189

Speenhill
Sunday one o’clock

I write to you while we eat, not entirely to tell you how prosperously we have flown here before the wind, but to put you in mind to speed Dick on his way with those books to M^rs Methuen, ¹ & to beg you to walk up & down the South Gallery ² in contemplation of the Gothic borders placed there in the Window & judge if the lower half being in two will not cut the view of the Cloisters in half. I am quite grieved to have left you without a Newspaper to day, M^cphail ³ I know takes the Sunday Times & two or three times I saw it, it seemed a good paper & I advise you to fall back upon it – a day in the country sans newspaper is a dies non.⁴ I forgot to speak to him about the little gate near the Nun’s Cauldron ⁵ which I perceived was again unchained – The wind is immensely high & rocked the sociable like a ship ⁶

aff^ly y^rs
Elisabeth

W. H. Fox Talbot Esq^r
Laycock abbey
Chippenham
Wilts