TALBOT3070

Nice
April 4

My dear Henry

It is an age since I have written & it may appear to you longer than it is, as I fear a letter I wrote to you has miscarried – I cannot now recollect what it contained, but I know there was something you ought to have read. it cannot be helped – We are becoming very anxious for the account of your dear Constances ¹ confinement, & feel all of us very acutely the Pain of one not being with you at a period of so great anxiety, every attention she can require she will receive from you & her Mother, ² but this will be, it will have been by the time this reaches you, some Time and more I trust, when your Mothers ³ society & support, many of us to whom you are more accustomed than you can be to her Family, and have been a great comfort to you – with the comforts of a married Life come the anxieties, I pray fervently that yours may be as easy to be born as mine have been!– Our Time here draws to a close – we shall not remain beyond the end of the month – letters are 9 days coming – & shall go to Genoa first– & later to Aix– but where between those two Places, whether to Milan or first to Florence we have not yet decided – write once or twice now to Nice & then enclose to the Suisse, who will receive my order how to direct – the Valletorts ⁴ go I believe as soon as he is able to travel to Aix, & our only doubt is whether we shall accompany them or go as I said to Genoa &ca. I do not think this Place has agreed so well with your mother as with Horatia ⁵ & myself. I have not been so well in Health for years as since I came here – & I have in the whole been well armoured – nothing is so flat as a political diagram from abroad, which arrives generally after all Interest on the subject has ceased – I will show you therefore all my luctations & only say, an opinion in which we shall not agree, that I wish Peels Government ⁶ to stand – I am against him on the appropriation & other Things – still I think it would be best for the country he should be in office & we should be out – I am quite sure however if I was in England at this moment, excited by passing events, & catching the infection &c &c – I should think differently – here I take a calmer view – Your letter to you mother arrived yesterday. We shall be in England by the end of July – but it is as well, for reason, to say we are expected earlier – I believe your mother told you we have lent Sackville S^{t 7} to the Valletorts for her confinement but that will not I hope interfere with your scheme as I understood you are to leave London long before that Time, our French Family has departed, le commencement de la Fin, ⁸ it is a disagreeable moment that of separating from People whom we have been in the daily habit of seeing & who in all possibility one shall never see again– You have heard I conclude how Lady M. Talbots ⁹ match with her German Prince is broken off. it is a very ridiculous conclusion of a silly business – the only one who gains is the Girl who is a very nice Person & was to have married a most disagreeable man–

V.Afft.
C. F.

I quite agree with you about l’Orfino, ¹⁰ pray get him sent away before he is too old, after 14 they wont [sic] take him.
C.F.

W.H.Fox. Talbot Esq
31 Sackville Street
London