TALBOT882

Château de Clocheville
19 June

My Dearest – I congratulate you & Myself on your Success, ¹ which is more particularly pleasing to me after the last time. Je thésaurise tes feuilles de Laurier, ² & Shall have enough at last I hope to make a wreath for my Maternal brow. I am sorry Cambridge is becoming doleful, it is not more so I guess than this Mansion of Peace, situated in a winding Valley, something resembling a coalition of the highest parts of Dorset & Wiltshire. “Here elements have lost their uses,

Air ripens not, nor earth produces” –

We have the satisfaction of hearing from all parts that the Season is unnatural, otherwise I should have thought we had planted ourselves in a spot cursed with an aride [sic] soil & ungenial climate, & consecrated to Storm & Tempest. They must have been the demi semi Gods worshipped here formerly I am sure, for there is on the tip top of a very high hill close to the Garden, L’eglise de S^t Etienne. ³ It is built quite on the apex & overlooks the sea on three sides. Autrefois ⁴ it must have been a Temple to the Winds for it is exposed to every breath that blows from every point of the compass. Did I tell you I had met Lady Morgan ⁵ in society before I left Paris, she is very disagreeable I think & affected. I have heard nothing of Penrice ⁶ lately except that Sir C. ⁷ was in London & the rest at Cheltenham for Isabella’s ⁸ health. All your excogitations about the Corn bill are now absorbed in the Queen ⁹ – what do they think of her chez Vous? ¹⁰

Direct Poste restante Boulogne sur Mer Pas de Calais – there they are only two days en route ¹¹ from London. Yours went round by Paris from that omission. Your Sister ¹² is anxious to know if you read a precious epistle she indited to you since she has been here. Miss Sharpe is going evoe! ¹³

W^m Henry Fox Talbot Esq^r
Trinity Coll.
Cambridge
Angleterre