TALBOT7300

Penllergare
Friday evening

My dear Henry

I have written to M^rs Talbot ¹ to tell her how very much I wish You would all come and spend a month among our colony in Glamorganshire – a fortnight with us ² and the rest between Margam & Penrice ³ could be very happily spent I am bold to say! and You would find November pass like a sunny month! I hear you are busy experimenting ⁴ so I offer you a laboratory to yourself! where you might mix your bromides and iodides & nitrates & all the rest of those horrid compounds at your leisure, and when sick of them you should join M^rs Talbot & your girls, ⁵ who would meanwhile have been sketching with my Emma; ⁶ or gardening or rambling about among our nice bogs! or you should drive down with us to Caswell Bay, & see my snug “little Abbotsbury ⁷” – or poke about the experiments of heating grape houses, and melon frames with waste steam, with M^r Llewelyn, ⁸ who is always trying to turn the waste steam to account – or you should amuse y^rself at night with our great telescope with which we have been admiring the marvels of this Grand Comet! ⁹ then when tired of us, you should go off to see dear Penrice! and show its manifold charms to your wife & daughters! –

We are just now, going to London – that is, we go, this day week, for a fortnight, to dear Thereza ¹⁰ – should you be running up, during our stay, I do hope you would look in, at, N^o 112 Gloucester Terrace Hyde Park ¹¹ or else ask at the G^t Western hotel for us – We shall not stay more than a fortnight – but and should be quite ready for you by the beginning of November – or if it should suit you better to come at Christmas time we should be very happy to receive you then, especially if you also would bring Charles ¹² to make acquaintance with his cousins, who will be at Oxford, during the month of November – and you will equally find Christopher ¹³ in the county I believe. – Jane ¹⁴ has not yet been able to shake off the lawyers business ¹⁵ & is still in London – I fear she will have to return to Italy without coming down here.

Believe me y^r ever aff^te
E. Llewelyn

[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot Esq.
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham