My Dear Sir,
I beg to thank you for the copy of the Literary Gazette which you have been so kind as to send me, containing your account of the beautiful Inventions you have been so fortunate as to have made.<1>
The account of Daguerre’s results <2> had excited great interest here, and I was therefore delighted beyond measure, both from personal and national feelings that you had anticipated the French Artist in his beautiful process. <3> I had a letter a few days ago from Lord Gray of Kinfauns <4> begging me to let him know any thing I might learn of the French process, but I little thought I shd be able to tell him that the first Inventor of it was a Friend of my own.
I hope you mean to pursue the subject & endeavour to perfect the process. You ought to keep it perfectly secret till you find you cannot advance farther in the matter, and then it would be advisable to secure your right by a Patent. Altho’ you do not require to deal with the matter commercially, yet a Patent would give a more fixed character to your priority as an Inventor, and I do not see why a Gentleman with an Independent fortune should scruple to accept of any benefit that he has derived from his own Genius. A Patent too would have the effect of stimulating yourself, and any active chemist whom you might associate as a fellow labourer to bring the Art to perfection. – If you have any spare fragment of your Sibylline sketches <5> that you could spare I wish much that you could give me a sight of this wonder: I shd return it safely.
I am My Dear Sir Ever most faithfully yrs
D Brewster
St Leonards
St Andrews
Feby 4th 1839
H. Fox Talbot Esqr
44 Queen Anne Street
London
Notes:
1. The Literary Gazette and Journal of belles lettres, science and art. No. 1150, 2 February 1839, contained WHFT’s letter to the Editor, of 30 January 1839, announcing his process of photogenic drawing. See Doc. No: 03782.
2. Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French artist, showman & inventor. The announcement of his process was made in the Gazette de France of 6 January 1839.
3. The Daguerreotype.
4. Francis Gray, 14th Lord Gray of Kinfauns (1765–1842), near Perth.
5. Prophetic sketches, that is, foreshowing what might be achieved once WHFT had ‘[brought] the Art to perfection’.