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Document number: 4955
Date: 01 Mar 1844
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: STRANGWAYS William Thomas Horner Fox
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA44-13
Last updated: 5th May 2010

My dear Henry

I am much obliged to you for a most liberal supply of Calotypes, a name which I can not get people to adopt, it is hard work to stop their calling them Daguerreotypes, <1> & having once adopted the term Photographes, they will not unsettle their minds any further. Orleans & Chambord are particularly good, but I grudge the fine delicate effects of the shutters on the Parisian houses. I wish it was all Gothic tracery. The facsimiles are just the thing – Could you not make some of Magna Charta <2> & publish it, with a vignette of Lacock, or at least of the Tower where it is kept? –

Your book of specimens<3> is just what I suggested to you three years ago – you know perhaps the book that was published at the time of the introduction of Lithography by Senefelder & Ackermann, called a complete Course of Lithography<4> with specimens – something in that style – quarto – but less voluminous, & a greater variety of tint & colour – would do.

Is the light in Kings College Chapel strong enough to allow of taking a Calotype of it? Turkish fountains & kiosks would make beautiful subjects for the art. Has Lepsius <5> sent you any Calotypic views from Egypt? Why do you not go on purpose some day & take Stonehenge. Could you not apply the principle of the art to testing diamonds & other gems by the power of their light transmitted or reflected?

The Oxford Monument <6> seems never to come out as well as it ought tho’ that must be sharp & fresh – They tell me Horatia’s <7> music has many misprints. Do you know the German verb weihen to consecrate weihnacht – Christmas eve – &c Can you not come over here <8> for a week at Easter if it is fine & take a few views?

Yrs affly

W F S

I had a long letter from Martius <9> who says all sorts of things about you. Among your garden scenes you ought to take the Nun’s cauldron & Ela <10> & the rest of the groupe on their donkey.

Henry F. Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
WFS


Notes:

1. Calling WHFT's productions 'Daguerreotypes on paper' was a common problem. Uncle William and others encouraged WHFT to call his calotypes Talbotypes, partially to make the distinction and partially to honour the inventor, but this is a term that WHFT never used himself.

2. The Lacock copy of Magna Carta is now in the British Library.

3. This refers to WHFT's The Pencil of Nature, which he would publish in parts starting in June 1844.

4. Alois Senefelder (1771–1834), inventor of lithography. A complete course of lithography: containing clear and explicit instructions in all the different branches and manners of that art: accompanied by illustrative specimens of drawings. To which is prefixed a history of lithography, from its origin to the present time (London: Rudolf Ackermann, 1819).

5. Dr Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884), German Egyptologist. He spent the years 1842–1845 on an archaeological expedition to Egypt and the Sudan.

6. The Martyrs’ Memorial – the monument to the Protestant martyrs. It was erected 1841–1843 which is why it was still ‹sharp and fresh’. WHFT and Henneman photographed the Martyrs’ Memorial in September 1843. [See Larry J. Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 178].

7. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.

8. At Frankfurt.

9. Dr Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), German botanist.

10. Ela Theresa Talbot (1835–1893), WHFT’s 1st daughter.