TALBOT3284

London
18 May

My dear Henry

I found your letter on our arrival yesterday evening, after an absence from this town of three long years. As you are at M^t Edgcumbe I conclude you know the cause of our delay at Paris, which Amandier ¹ wrote to Caroline – Horatia ² has gained strength during the journey, but is still very weak – the loss of such a quantity of blood in the course of four hours, could not be immediately made up. The Doctors at Paris said she ought not to encounter hot rooms & late hours, if so there is little use in staying here & I think our season will be short. M^r F. ³ is very unwell & much out of spirits at finding that all his old pains are coming back, all his Northern devils which he had almost forgot. I should be very sorry to lay it upon M^t Cenis as you say, because he came that way entirely to please me as I so hate the road through Provence. If his lameness does not go off, he will go down to Bath, which certainly did him good before, but not so much as Aix. We are in a very unsettled state & as Horatia cannot enter into much of what is called gaiety our chief object in coming for the Season is at an end, & I really don’t know what we shall do. We saw the Eclipse at Boulogne, which is odd enough as the last solar eclipse we were at Pont de Brigne. They are only in the rudiments of astronomy & furnished us with nothing more scientific than smoked glass. Do you mean that at Edinburgh it would have been total? Explain.

We had the pleasantest passage from Boulogne to Dover I ever remember in all my experience. There was no wind, no motion – it was like gliding through a glassy sea. We left the Peach trees in blossom at Nice two Months ago, & found the Apple trees in blow in the North of France & in England. Many whole woods in Picardy have not yet a leaf – ditto in Kent. Towards London the Spring is forwarder. I was never without a fire till I got here, & now the rooms seem so small & so low & so curtained & carpeted as if one could not breathe for heat & closeness. Gwynne ⁴ is arrived very ill likewise, we were obliged to stop for her at Genoa, again at Lyon & at Abbeville, and again at Sittingbourne.

H. Fox Talbot Esq^r
Mount Edgcumbe
Devonport