TALBOT2800

Laycock Abbey
11^th February

My Dearest

I must write to you on this dear day though I shall not have time to finish it. I took Constance ¹ to Church in Bowood ² on Sunday, wishing to shew her the King’s ³ present to Lord Lansdowne ⁴ & thinking it better for her mind & soul than listening to M^r Mathews The Gardener is busy planting fruit trees & I am going to Trowbridge to chuse Evergreens, ⁵ and am to have an additional Garden Man of my own to plant them that the weeds may not be laid upon me. Did you see what he calls “the Great Talking Nuisance” the H. of Commons. “The Talking Nuisance has set in for six Months. What a pest is the Parliament! the Minister attends it, the Speaker sinks under it, the Fashionable World vote [sic] it a bore, & Readers cast their eyes over its close columns of verbiage in despair” &c &c –

M^r F. ⁶ is very unwell indeed seldom dines with us, is much out of spirits & to day is in bed all day He has scarcely been out of his room since you went. Your account ⁷ of Monday’s debate amused him very much. How glad you must have been to be there, how I should have liked it –

aff^ly y^rs

Kit ⁸ comes tomorrow. Have you heard that George Edgcumbe ⁹ is to marry Fanny Shelly ¹⁰ at Rome? I can hardly believe it –