My dear Sir
Herschels dinner <1> is fixed for the 15th June (Friday) Tickets are to be had at the Freemason’s Tavern <2> by vouchers from any Steward. I do not send you one because I hope you will authorize me to propose you as a Steward which I will do if you will send me your assent by post. There is a subscription of £1 (limited to that much) for a vase – Perhaps if you write direct to Murchison <3> the Hon Secry (2 Eccleston St Belgravia) it will save time.
The colored lithographs are well executed but I think Baxter’s <4> processes of color-printing might put into your power the colored expression of much more complicated drawings. The Pictorial Album of 1837 is a good specimen which I can show you when you are in town.
Ever very truly yours
C Babbage
1 Dorset St Manchr Sq. <5>
28 May 1838
Notes:
1. A great public dinner was given on Herschel’s return from the Cape. For an account, see The Athenaeum (London), no. 555, 16 June 1838, pp. 423–427.
2. Probably the Great Steward’s Lodge, Freemasons Tavern, Great Queen Street, London.
3. Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet Murchison (1792–1871), geologist.
4. George Baxter (1804–1867), inventor of a method of colour separation printing, illustrated the The Pictorial Album or Cabinet of Paintings, (London: Chapman & Hall, 1837), using as many as 20 different woodblocks for one image.
5. London.