Sunday
My Dear Henry
I am afraid you have not received some prints which I sent several days ago as you take no notice of it. I picked out what I imagined would do best for the sort of thing. Kit <1> was so excessively charmed with the one representing the Tower at Laycock that I gave it him, & beg you will send me another. It is much clearer <2> than the one which represents the South window of the Gallery. <3> Pray do some more landscapes or other things from Nature. I perceive the ribands I sent you last had not pattern enough. <4> Pray do some from the Prints I sent you if you have received them. You cannot imagine the excitement in this town since last Tuesday, <5> I wonder at your apathy. I am going to have a splendid Party next Saturday & exquisite Music. I went to Mr Babbage’s <6> party for your sake. I think the enclosed patterns would have effect in Photography. Wm <7> came back to town from Abby expecting to find himself out & all lost, but to his Surprize he found the tables were turned. <8> However I do not feel that is it safe till after the communications in both houses to night. They say Ly Flora Hastings <9> is to be discussed there –
Pray do the enclosed
Notes:
1. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
2. Only two known views of Sharington’s Tower can be proven to be early enough. One is dated April 1839 and is in the Russian Academy of Science, St Petersburg, Schaaf 3690. The more likely one is “Lacock Abbey self-represented in the Camera Obscura” and is dated May 1839. The print of this that WHFT or Lady Elisabeth Feildling gave to Charles Babbage is now in the Jean Paul Getty Museum. Another print, Schaaf 3783, intensified by Harold Whitle in the 1950s and probably close in tonality to that Lady Elisabeth saw, is reproduced in Larry J. Schaaf, Sun Pictures Three: The Harold White Collection of Works by William Henry Fox Talbot (New York: Hans P. Kraus, Jr, 1987), p. 27.
3. Most likely “Middle Window, South Gallery, Lacock”, April 1839, Schaaf 3694, reproduced in Larry J. Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 50.
4. Possibly those sent on 4th May. [See Doc. No: 03874].
5. Tuesday 7 May.
6. Prof Charles Babbage (1792–1871), mathematician & inventor.
7. William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways, 4th Earl of Ilchester (1795–1865), botanist, art collector & diplomat.
8. On 7 May, William Lamb, Lord Melbourne resigned as prime minister, but was restored on 10 May to power when Peel failed to form a government.
9. Lady Flora Hastings (1806–1839), Lady of the Bedchamber to the Duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria. The unmarried Lady Hastings was suspected of pregnancy but was exonerated in February 1839 when a liver tumour was diagnosed (later confirmed by a post mortem exam).