Broadlands
Monday 12 Jany
My Dear Henry
All the Talbotypes I brought in my portfolio, ont fait fortune, ils en raffolent ici,<1> but when I gave Ly P <2> – your 5th Number<3> this morning, she immediately exclaimed that the book binder or Publisher had stuck in the Plates crooked! & then the Lace she said was blonde & not so pretty as some she had seen of yours tho’ well executed for what it was. In short she prefers No 3 & No 4 very much to No 5. She was pleased with the letter press, & read it out to us all, but angry you should seem to doubt about Olive<4> & the broken finger which she said she should always believe was Olive & not a frail nun, & you ought not to take away the character of the Sisterhood by such insinuations. To my surprize in looking over an old Portfolio full of miscellaneous prints I discovered two early Talbotypes extremely faded, which I wanted to burn but she would not let me. She could not remember who had given them to her, nor can I guess, but I recognised the Subjects. In the same collection was the Print of Palmella from Mr Collen’s<5> calotype. Her second son William Cowper (M.P. for Hertford)<6> is so charmed with the art he wants to learn it & what I said I will tell you when we meet, it is too long to write. Owing to me it is certainly becoming much more known dans le beau Monde.<7> I hear that Brighton is unusually empty, which gives us a better chance of Houses. I have found here Whewell’s<8> new book which I particularly wanted to see, called Indications of the Creator.
Affy yrs
E F
H. Fox Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Have been a success, they are mad about them here.
2. Probably Lady Emily Lamb Palmerston (1787–1869).
3. WHFT, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, June 1844–April 1846 [issued in six fascicles])
4. Olive Sherington (d. 1646).
5. Henry Collen (1800–1879), miniature painter, calotypist & spiritualist, London.
6. William Francis Cowper-Temple (1811–1888), politician.
7. In high society.
8. William Whewell (1794–1866), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1841. WHFT attended his mathematics lectures in 1818. [See Doc. No: 00836]. In 1846, he published his Indications of the Creator. Extracts, bearing upon theology, from the history and philosophy of the inductive sciences.