link to Talbot Project home page link to De Montfort University home page link to Glasgow University home page
Project Director: Professor Larry J Schaaf
 

Back to the letter search >

Result number 7 of 46:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >  

Document number: 6820
Date: 04 Jun 1853
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: BOLTON John Henry
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 7th March 2011

Lincoln’s Inn <1>
4h June 1853

My dear Sir

I have forwarded the Drt to Mr Ottaway. <2>

Enclosed You have 3 specimens of Mr Logan’s performance which considering that they are produced from an apparatus that cost him only 35s/ – seem to me, to be full of promise and as regards arrangement grouping and pose to be of unusual merit –

This Gentleman has been wh me for some time to day – he is a perambulating Lecturer of on Natural Philosophy and has no fixed domicile, next week he lectures upon Light at Colchester the following one at Bath and so on: he describes himself to be a passionate follower of science for its own sake and particularly of Photography – but his ambition is to settle in London and to try his hand at likenesses, charging only a moderate sum for them but giving a good article for the money, being convinced there is much to be done at a low price to supersede the 3s/d6 rubbish which, he says, is now degrading the art.

The difficulty consists in his being poor and his having no means of paying any thing in advance for a license: but he is willing to pay 25 perCent upon all that he makes & sells – If he had not produced specimens from which I selected the 3, I now send, I do not think I should have troubled You with this epistle, but to my eye they are so pleasing that I wish to give him the benefit of Your judgment whether he is fit to be a recruit –

If Mr Ottaway is prompt I hope to send you the Panopticon License <3> before you leave home for Keswick <4>

Yesterdays excursion will long remained [sic] stamped upon my memory as one of the most agreeable wh which my life of labour can be relieved – with many thanks to You for it<5>

I remain My dear Sir Ever Yours faithfully
J. H. Bolton


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. Gillett Jonathon Ottaway, 39, Essex Street, London. Solicitor to the Royal Panopticon of Science and Art, which included a commercial photographic portrait studio [see Doc. No: 06756]. The Panopticon was a fantastic Moorish-style building on Leicester Square in London. Its 97 foot (30 metre) tall central rotunda had an artesian well fed fountain that sprayed to the roof. It was designed to showcase scientific, technical and artistic feats. Financially unsuccessful, it closed in 1856. Its splendid organ, the largest in England, was purchased by St. Paul's Cathedral and the building was re-named the Alexandra Palace, becoming the base for Howe's & Cushing's American Circus. It then became a series of theatres until burning down in December 1882. The replacement building, much less exhuberant in style, became the Alexandra Theatre Hall. In 1937, the Odeon Theatre replaced it. Nicolaas Henneman was asked to give tutorials there, but whether this actually happened or not is unconfirmed; see Doc. No: 06766.

3. See Doc. No: 06742 for the initial approach to WHFT.

4. The Talbot family spent about 18 months at Greta Bank, Cumberland, near Keswick; WHFT himself spent several months from late August 1853 there with them.

5. The nature of this excursion has not been indentified.

Result number 7 of 46:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >