Thursday
7th august
My Dear Henry
The 1st No of the Pencil of Nature <1> is vehemently called for, but by the time a new edition is ready London will be over, it must be concocted for the early part of the next Season. [illegible deletion] The 3 you told me of I had some trouble in getting done in time & have disposed of one to the Duke of Somerset, <2> & one to Lord Montagu <3> & one to Lady Davy <4> who lives very much with scientific people. They had none of them heard of the work. Now there is a cry for that Paper upon Calotype which is a precis of what you read to the Royal Society <5> – I had almost come to consider it waste paper, but happened to have four which I have given away. If you have any bring them up when you come, tho’ everybody will go as soon as Parlt is prorogued. Two Breakfasts have literally been drowned & another on Saturday is likely to share the same fate. It is now thundering & raining very loud.
People prophecy [sic] a disastrous harvest
affly yrs
E F
If you can send one of those Calotype papers by the Post I will give it to Lady Beauchamp who is still & will be in town till next week. I have met with a person who told me he had seen in Scotland much better than your Talbotypes, <6> that they were called Calotypes & were very superior & invented by a Scotchman, a friend of Sir D. Brewster. <7> This all comes of not having called them Talbotypes at first
Notes:
1. WHFT, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, June 1844–April 1846 [issued in six fascicles])
2. Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset (1775–1855), mathematician and scientist.
3. Henry James Montagu-Scott, 2nd Lord Montagu of Boughton.
4. Lady Jane Davy, née Kerr, first m. Apreece (1780–1855), socialite.
5. This was his privately printed booklet: Two Letters on Calotype Photogenic Drawing (reprinted from the Literary Gazette). His original letters were of 5 February 1841, ‘Fine arts. Calotype (Photogenic) Drawing’, published in the The Literary Gazette and Journal of belles lettres, science and art, no. 1256, 13 February 1841, p. 108; and of 19 February 1841, published in no. 1258, 27 February 1841, pp. 139–140.
6. Although WHFT modestly named his new process the calotype, and stayed with that in his own writings, his mother and some close friends felt that his name should be honoured by the process.
7. Sir David Brewster (1781–1868), Scottish scientist & journalist.