TALBOT9319

Saturday Jan^y 25^th

My dear Father,

I received your letter this morning. The one which you forwarded was from Aunt Harriot, ¹ and asked me to Markeaton on the 10^th or 11^th February for a week. I have accepted. I enclose for four admission tickets to the Friday evening lectures of the Royal Institution. ² I should. Will you sign them simply, without filling up either name or date? I forgot to bring up 5 tickets signed by you which I have locked up in a drawer at Lacock, and in that case I made the mistake of getting you to fill up the date name, in consequence of which I was not able to take any one with me. I hope by your leaving the name blank which is I believe a common practise to get Mallock ³ or some other friend to go with me. Farrar ⁴ lectures in Public School Education on the 31^st of this month and as I do not go to Merstham till Saturday, I shall probably go and hear him. – Swainson ⁵ who heard his lecture last summer described it as a great joke, and the audience as indulging in roars of laughter.

I am lodging in a house where I lived some years ago, kept by a former Servant of the late Lord Ilchester. ⁶ which I knew to be comfortable, and I should think my sitting room, which is rather small must be as warm as any in London. – I do not yet know how many days I am to stay at Merstham, but if the number of days intervening between that visit and the 10^th February be very short I may find it a better plan to go th through London and direct by Midland to Derby than to pass the interval at Lacock. If so I may catch another Friday evening at the R I, perhaps that is a lecture of Huxley’s. ⁷ Tyndall ⁸ has been lecturing on Faraday, ⁹ I see. If I had not been asleep I should have got there to hear him. –

Today is a very fine day for London. Yesterday was cold, and last night rainy, which wetted me, and exasperated me for a man stole my umbrella, the last time I dined at the Temple, and I had not yet brought a new one. –

On Thursday night there was a fire in Regent S^t, in one of the houses adjoining Vigo S^t & Sackville S^t. I went out to see but the night was cold for gazing. Three steam fire-engines were working in the middle of Regent S^t one of them was particularly restless vomiting clouds of sparks & bits of cinder and occasionally whistling. The dust got into ones eyes at some distance off. Not much fire was to be seen from Regent S^t just a cloud of sparks from Sackville S^t. I saw it first at 10 minutes to 10, and as I went round that way to my hotel at about 12 oclock, the engines were raking out their fires and departing. Their consternation and action I could not then be made out. – I have seen no notice in the papers of this fire but shall look again. – I see in the Illustrated ¹⁰ the death of Sir Charles Miller ¹¹ of Froile [sic] whom I met at Spye Park ¹² last year. I think of writing to San Remo ¹³ tomorow –

Your affect son
Charles