Clarence Mansion
<1>Wednesday
28th Jany
My Dear Henry
If you don’t make haste & come down to us we shall be gone again. Let me know by return of post what day you will come. We are very near the Sea & a charming marine breeze blows in at the windows. Next door is a Photographic establishment, <2> with a roof of blue glass which you would do well to take hints from you had better come & inspect it
affy yrs
E F
Notes:
1. Marine Parade, Brighton.
1. This was almost certainly The Photographic Institution of Brighton, the pioneering and famous daguerreotype studio of William Constable, 56 Marine Parade. It was well-known because of the 1842 portrait of Prince Albert made there. The blue glazing was fairly common for daguerreian studios, taking advantage of the fact that photographic materials at the time were sensitive only to 'actinic rays', ie, blue light. The glazing reduced glare and heat on the sitters. WHFT had been long aware of this concept and employed it to reduce wilting of botanical specimenst he was photographing. See Larry J. Schaaf, Records of the Dawn of Photography: Talbot's Notebooks P & Q (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), P9 & passim.
H. Fox Talbot Esq