TALBOT676

[The presumed wrapper for this letter, postmarked 6 Dec 1815 from London, is in a private collection:]
H^y Fox Talbot Esq^r
Rev^d M^r Barnes
Castleford
Ferrybridge

____________

Sackville Street ¹
5^th Dec^r 1815 ²

My dearest Henry

I have such a mind to make you a present, that I should have sallied forth to buy your Lenses &c &c the moment I read your Letter, only that it poured & I must have gone on footback as I have not got a Carriage now. Kit ³ arrived from Harrow ⁴ this Evening & is to depart at six in the morning to Penrice ⁵ with little William Payne Galway, ⁶ who can’t bear the thoughts of spending his holidays at Penrice, he is so shy. His Father & Mother ⁷ you know are in the West Indies. What are M^r Barnes’s ⁸ Politics? Have the others any? Caroline ⁹ was delighted with your Letter, which will be preserved amongst her archives.

You don’t tell me if you are happy, which I want to know above all things. Do you get fonder of History at your age I was just beginning to take real Pleasure in it. I repent I did not teach you more chronology when you were little, I think it would have been of use to you ever after.

I must tell you a very good derivation of Horatia’s ¹⁰ She told me she thought hyver must come from Shiver. M^r F. ¹¹ is at Bowood. ¹²

Ever aff^ly yrs
E F