TALBOT4044

Lacock
Jan^y 22

My dear Constance

Today was very fine but cold. The thermometer is ten degrees lower than last week, when it was so fine that the spring flowers resolved to come up. We have now some yellow Crocusses in flower, which perhaps you have not at Bath. Wilkins ¹ is sending you a bouquet per carrier – including your favorite Chimonanthus which is flowering abundantly this year – I desired him to add a Primula denticulata to the bouquet. I have been out in the garden admiring several things especially the Luculia gratissima, and the Chorozema which is quite a large bush all covered with flowers – There is an extraordinary plant in the stove, called Aspidistra its flowers are brown stars level with the ground, quite stemless – unlike anything else & worth cultivating for their singularity. The nurserymen sell it for its variegated leaves which are uninteresting; its flowers are hardly known to them.

The high wind on Tuesday night tore off a great branch of the old willow tree – between Wilkins’s cottage and the conservatory. One examination the remaining part was judged unsafe and has therefore been cut down. The tree was probably 100 years old – On this day week Parliament reassembles and then all this flood of Theology in the Times² will come to an end, which has at any rate fill’d its columns if it has not much enlightened the public mind. Please thank Ela³ for Connie’s⁴ portrait.

Your aff^te
Henry

Did you read the scene in a Church ⁵ with the Duchess of Northumberland fainting?