Lacock Abbey, Chippenham
22 March/43
Dear Sir
Your account of the Comet, in yesterday’s globe, <1> is very interesting; here unfortunately we were not on the look out, & therefore saw nothing of it.
The puts me in mind that about this time of year in 1817, I saw one evening after sunset a magnificent cometary appearance in the West, which I explained to my own satisfaction as being the “Zodiacal light” described by astronomers. But I have never seen the zodiacal light since; & if there be such a thing, I cannot understand why it did not appear in all its lustre during the total eclipse of the sun last summer. No comet was observed by astronomers at the time I have mentioned, nor [illegible deletion] for some time before & after. Do you think it was an anomalous meteor or the z. light? If I recollect, it was a narrow beam of light, & its direction produced passed thro’ the sun, as well as could be judged.
Mr Hunt is engaged in writing the History of Photography which Messrs Longman are going to publish. <2> He has laid it down as a rule, I understand, to verify all the facts himself; but that must be impossible. I have succeeded in giving absolute fixation to the pictures obtained by the single or direct positive process which was a desideratum – It now remains to obtain greater sensitiveness in the positive papers – They are at least 10 times slower than the negative ones; but that is not all, the process is more delicate & as you have several more variable quantities to deal with, it is more difficult to discover how the maximum effect is to be obtained. M. Bayard <3> at Paris whose efforts are directly solely to this point, does not seem to have succeeded. I think I shall shortly visit France & see how they are getting on there in matters of science. <4>
I have to thank you, some time ago, for an interesting translation from the German, <5> & in a very difficult metre – I see you sometimes desert Urania, <6> to become the votary of her sister Muses.
Believe me to remain Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Sir J. Herschel Bart
Collingwood
Hawkhurst Kent
Notes:
1. John Frederick William Herschel, ‘The Comet’, The Globe (London), no. 12,830, 21 March 1843, p. 2. This letter was originally sent to The Times (London), dated 19 March, where it was published 21 March, p. 5, and also the Morning Herald.
2. Robert Hunt (1807–1887), scientist & photographic historian. His first publication on the subject was his Popular Treatise on the Art of Photography, including Daguerréotype, and All the New Methods of Producing Pictures by the Agency of Light, (Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co, 1841). His next publication, the one WHFT refers to here, was Researches on Light, an Examination of All the Phenomena Connected with the Chemical and Molecular Changes Produced by the Influence of the Solar Rays; Embracing all the Known Photographic Processes, and New Discoveries in the Art (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844). A second edition of his Treatise appeared in 1852.
3. Hippolyte Bayard (1801–1887), French civil servant and photographic inventor.
4. WHFT was to make this trip during the summer, assisted by Nicolaas Henneman. Many of his finest photographs resulted from the journey and two were included in WHFT's The Pencil of Nature.
5. John Frederick William Herschel, The Walk; Translated in the Original Metre from the German of F. Schiller (Collingwood: for private circulation, 1842).
6. The Greek muse Urania is the muse of Astronomy. It was Herschel's father, William Herschel, who discovered the first new planet after the Copernicum system and named it Uranus.