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 46 of 216:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >  

Document number: 892
Date: 20 Aug 1820
Recipient: FEILDING Charles
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA20-17
Last updated: 27th October 2013

Cambridge <1>
August 20th 1820

My Dear Mr Feilding,

My chief reason for coming so soon was because I thought we might as well so time our excursion in Holland as to observe the great eclipse of the Sun on the 7th September. I am sorry to find from your letter that this time will be inconvenient to you, which I regret extremely, as our tour would probably be through that tract of country in which the eclipse will be annular. <2> This phenomenon is not often witnessed, the last instance (in this part of the world) was in 1764, the next will be in 1849. So that I wished to take advantage of the opportunity our tour presented of seeing it. Tho’ I don’t think it would repay any extraordinary trouble, yet it’s a thing to have seen once in one’s life. However if your presence in London is indispensable on the 1st Septr pray let me know, & I will arrange so as to meet you there on the 4th or 5th, as you say, but my visit must not be very long, I have so little time left. We have been honoured here lately with a visit from no less a personage that Belzoni. <3> He has arrived in England loaded with discoveries – He [illegible deletion] is an enormous man with whiskers still more enormous. He spent they say 16 months in the tomb of Sesostris which he discovered – It had been once opened, & only once before, (he conjectures by Cambyses) <4> the openers had stolen the alabaster lid of the sarcophagus, <5> & broken it, he found a bit of it in the corner, & another bit at the entrance of the passage. But the most curious thing was the painting, in the tomb, representing the victories of Sesostris, in colours so bright that they cannot be imitated by modern paint – There were groups of captives delineated, to represent the various nations he conquered, among others the Jews, whose national features are as strongly marked as at the present day. He has discovered by himself more than all who preceded him since Herodotus, <6> have done to get [her]<7>

Yours ever afftly
W.H.F. Talbot

[address panel:]
A Monsieur
M. le Capitaine Feilding
Château de Clocheville
Boulogne sur Mer
Pas de Calais


Notes:

1. Trinity College, Cambridge.

2. When the dark body of the moon is seen projected upon the sun’s disk, so as to leave a ring of light visible all round; which happens when the moon is at such a distance from the earth, at the time of the eclipse, that its diameter appears smaller than the sun’s.

3. Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823), Italian explorer of Egyptian antiquities. ‘Belzoni’s tomb’ was actually that of Seti I (Sesostris was a legendary king).

4. Cambyses II (529–522 BC).

5. A stone coffin, especially one embellished with sculptures or bearing inscriptions.

6. Herodotus (484 BC?–430–420?), traveler and Greek author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world, the History of the Greco-Persian Wars.

7. Text torn away under seal.

Result number 46 of 216:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >