Llandaff
Sunday evening Novr 6.
My dear Father.
I am very much obliged to you for having paid my allowance into the Melksham <1> Bank, whence I shall probably soon draw some of it & put in a Bank at Cardiff. No one from Margam was at the Festival (not concert) at Cardiff. I find Dr Ures dictionary of Arts Manufactures & Mines <2> to be a decidedly useful acquisition and I have been reading the process of making aluminium. There is a very full account of the manufacture of Iron which would interest you. I also read an arct article on Lithography – & some others.
Monday.
I should be very much obliged if Ela <3> would try & find me Todhunters Analytical Conic sections, <4> and Todhunters Differential Calculus <5> also Frost’s Newton (which was in the Library or somewhere) which are I believe somewhere at Lacock & would send them to me by Book Post. I am on the scent of some theorems in Geometry and if I was a good hand at analysis I could find out at once whether they are true or false, which it is not easy to do geometrically. I have had a letter from Mrs Nicholl asking me to Merthyr Mawr next Friday and I mean to accept it. We had a sharp frost here this morning –
Your affect son
Charles.
Mr Prichard <6> is now going over to Cardiff to see Mr Waldron <7> his lawyer about drawing Champneys & my indentures. Champneys has accepted the terms
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Melksham, Wiltshire: market town near Lacock, 2 miles S.
2. Andrew Ure (1778–1857); chemist and scientific writer, Ures dictionary of arts, manufactures, and mines (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 5th edition, 1860), co-edited by Robert Hunt (1807–1887).
3. Ela Theresa Talbot (1835–1893), WHFT’s 1st daughter.
4. Isaac Todhunter (1820–1884), mathematician. A Treatise on Plane Co-Ordinate Geometry as applied to the straight line and the conic sections (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1855).
5. Possibly Isaac Todhunter, Treatise on the Differential Calculus and the Elements of the Integral Calculus (1852).
6. John Prichard, Welsh architect; Charles Henry Talbot apprenticed to.
7. Clement Waldron, attorney, Cardiff.