TALBOT2874

Laycock abbey
2^d May

My Dear Henry

I am so glad you have given me something to do for you – I shall now daily visit the Green House & watch your plants. They seem all growing tant bien que mal, ¹ & certainly not dry. The Rhodedendrons [sic] are coming out beautifully, one plant has eleven blossoms blown at once upon it. You used to have a prejudice against them, but you would be quite reconciled if you saw it. You said the other day you were going to plant a wood to join Caroline ² copse to Inwood ³ but you might plant a broad strip to connect them, without taking so much from Fussell’s ⁴ farm, which is such very fine land you would be too great a loser by so doing, & it would be such a pity to cover such uncommon rich soil with timber, which grows anywhere, and which most people reserve for their poorest & worst soils that they can do nothing else with. I know not where you intend beginning it, or whether you have thought any more about it, because you are grown very incommunicative [sic] I really think you are much more reserved than you used to be, and keep yourself too much to yourself. – M^r Moore ⁵ went away to day He made himself very agreeable to our Gynocracy – and we were much flattered by his offering himself to us in our present reduced state. I was pleased to find his opinion of Spring Rice’s ⁶ speech agreed with the one I had formed from the lights of my own Understanding unaided in these rustic shades. The end of it was particularly good, & more like the gone by days of eloquence which I remember, than the dry debates of Modern times. M^r Lambert’s ⁷ was an amusing speech, I twitted M^r Moore with belonging to a Country which had the morals of Banditti with the civilization of New Zealand, which tho’ M^r Lambert applied it to past times is quite as applicable to the mass of the nation at present.

I hope you will not order a new coat till the Strike is at an end. I honor Sir H. Hardinge ⁸ for his declaration & wish everybody would rather go in their shirts than give in.

aff^ly y^rs
E F

Send me some more to do for you

Tell Constance ⁹ we have the most lovely collection of geraniums brought into the Gallery – Seven sorts in flower in one green basket, it forms a beautiful bank of blossoms, rising one above another. Fitzimons ¹⁰ is justly proud of them

Henry Fox Talbot Esq M.P.
31. Sackville Street
London