Lincoln’s Inn <1>
16th Jany 1862
My dear Sir
I have now the satisfaction to send You the accounts of all cash transactions to the 31st Decr last, to make which intelligible it is necessary to go back to 1855.
As the accots stand You will see there is a balance due to You of £174. 2. 10.
I have not ventured to enquire of You what progress you have made in the grand invention for perpetuating photographs by means of engraving by sun-light, <2> fearing from Your silence that You may have thrown it aside – but if otherwise and You have brot it to perfection it will come in good time for the May Exhibition <3> – I have seen no more of Mr Pretsch <4> since I last reported to You –
To return to the accots – the bill of Price & Bolton £29. 3. 7 existent as a payment in the Cash Account which is enclosed – contains the first particulars (since that of £205. 8. 83) not hitherto furnished you and it was separated from Bill No 2 because the latter commences from the 15 Septr 1856 when Mr Filder joined this firm.
Believe me to remain My dear Sir Ever Your faithful servt
J. H. Bolton
[envelope:]
Wm H. Fox Talbot Esqr
Millburn Tower
Edinburgh
NB
[wax seal on flap embossed 'B']
Notes:
1. One of the four Inns of Court, the ‘colleges’ of barristers at the English Bar. Bolton had his chambers [lawyer’s offices and, at the time, living-quarters also] there.
2. Photoglyphic engraving.
3. The second great International Exhibition, which opened in London in May 1862.
4. The Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company (commonly, The Photogalvanographic Company) was based on the work of Paul Pretsch (1808-1873), Austrian photographer & inventor and former Manager of the Imperial Printing Establishment in Vienna. Located in Holloway Road, Islington, London, from 1856-1857, Pretsch took over as manager and Roger Fenton (1819-1869), photographer & lawyer, was a partner and their chief photographer. Starting in late 1856, they published a serial portfolio, Photographic Art Treasures, or Nature and Art Illustrated by Art and Nature, illustratated with photogalvanographs derived from several photographer's works. Photogalvanography was uncomfortably closely based on elements of WHFT's patented 1852 Photographic Engraving but, unlike Talbot, the plates were heavily retouched by hand. Compounding the legal objections of Talbot, their former manager, Duncan Campbell Dallas, set up a competing company to produce the Dallastype. The company collapsed and near the end of 1860 Pretsch, out of money, allowed his patent to lapse. A public appeal was launched in 1861 to assist him but he returned to Vienna in 1863 in ill health, going back to the Imperial Printing Establishment, but finally succumbing to cholera.