TALBOT2942

Laycock abbey
11^th July

My Dear Henry

I am disappointed to have heard no political news from you this Morning – you could not have told us more than rumours ¹ I am aware, but even they are amusing in the Country. Horatia ² is not so well to day, having fatigued herself yesterday with talking to all her old women, and settling their distrait ³ accounts, and listening to all the lamentations at her departure, & speaking words of comfort à chacune. ⁴ To day she made a grand distribution of Bacon to them all (only old Women I mean) but I would not let her officiate in person, & made myself her deputy & c’est us métier onereux, ⁵ I am tired to death. I have undertaken my Orfano ⁶ entirely & have clothed him & put him entirely into Fitzsimmons’s ⁷ charge during my absence, but as I lend you his services in the garden I intend you should allow him a shilling a week as you did last year, when he kept the birds off for you, when he was a less useful character than he is now become. Besides he will be there ready to [go of?] your messages, and if he does not turn out well I shall send him next year to the Cape of Good Hope, in which Fitzsimmons thinks nobody could be pitied as he says “such beautiful plants come from there.” But I th[ink?] he is a well disposed & intelligent boy & worth taking some little trouble about.

Gwynne ⁸ says she wrote to Lydia ⁹ about Household matters & directed it to you by mistake instead of enclosing, which you must think a great liberty, but it was in the midst of all the bother & confusion of packing

Ev^r Y^rs
EF

M^r F. ¹⁰ having Sir Andrew Agnew ¹¹ before his eyes & unwilling to cause a scandale in the village will not travel of a Sunday, at least will not set out on a Sunday and therefore we positively go Monday, finding tomorrow utterly impossible. The horses are ordered at Everley &c for Monday, being cross country road, so go we must

There is likewise something to be altered in the Fourgon. ¹² Send the enclosed to the T. P. sans faute. ¹³

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