TALBOT3117

San Bartolomeo
19^th August

My Dearest Henry

I am very much touchée ¹ at your kind & affectionate proposal, & only hope & trust that Ela ² may be as good & tender to you all the days of her life as you have always been to me. So excellent a son deserves to be a happy Father. I would accept it if it were necessary, but it is not – Our three carriages must go home somehow, & my taking one of them now, instead of its travelling to England six Months hence, can make no difference in point of expence. Neither do I wish you to come for me, my departure depending on so many things must be uncertain, & besides one is tolerably safe on all the great roads of Europe. I shall be delighted to find myself at Laycock with you & Constance ³ & Ela – but I am still a long way from any such prospects, as we cannot stir in the face of all these Quarantines, each of them de quinze jours ⁴ to be performed in some wretched Inn, under the surveillance of Gendarmes. ⁵ Lord V. ⁶ is so anxious to get to England before the Winter that I believe He will risk going through Provence & run the gauntlet through all the towns where the Cholera rages, as soon as Caroline ⁷ is strong enough to travel, but she recovers slowly. Her gentle grief ⁸ is the most touching thing I ever saw, this last misfortune has renewed all she felt last year at Geneva. We are still under the influence of the [illegible], & though we sit almost without deaths, yet the heat incapacitates one from giving attention to anything. Yesterday we had a tremendous Thunder storm, the echoes in the Mountains were magnificent A very large old Olive tree close to this house was struck by lightening, burnt all black & split in half, & its ancient honours laid in the dust. This is a charming place for the dolce far niente ⁹, the garden is full of treillages, ¹⁰ Grottoes, Fountains, Seats, Statues, Pergolas – all out of repair, which is the more picturesque, particularly moonlight. M^r F. ¹¹ has established himself in a summer house, from whence he has a beautiful view of the Sea, seen under a pergola of Vines of which the large bunches of Grapes hang down & make a cadre. ¹² He has got a writing table, a fauteuil ¹³ & a sofa there, and passes all the hot hours reading, writing or sleeping in that green nest. Nice is become a desert, among the few who did not fly, is a Russian family who we have seen a great deal of all the Winter & [they?] have taken a villa about a mile & half [from?] us, but as there are no roads in these Mountains we can only get at them by vary circuitous Mule paths. The Spanish Ambassador has taken the château de S^t André & fitted it up for his family, you know it had nothing but bare walls – There is also a French family in another Campagne lower down on this Mountain but except these there is nobody left & les chemins roboteux ¹⁴ or rather sentiers ¹⁵ narrow & steep, prevent our being comeatable. I wish you would cultivate the Nefliers du Japon there are many in this Garden & they produce most delicious fruit. We drink our Coffee under a Pepper tree, which likewise Shades a Cast of the Venus Anadyomene. The foliage of the Pepper tree is very graceful. There is a very nice legume ¹⁶ growing everywhere hereabouts, called Aubergine I should like to add it to the jardin potager ¹⁷ at Laycock & will get some seeds

H. F. Talbot Esq^re
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Wiltshire
Angleterre