21 April. 1857.
2 Albert Terrace Albert Road.
Dr Sir
I much regret that you are not likely to be in town for the next 3 weeks or I think it wd have been better that the matter in question shd have been discussed between ourselves before putting it into the lawyers hands
The Compy <1> wd I know be glad to have the dispute settled & would (if they continue to carry on the working of Mr Pretsch’s process) be willing to take out a licence to work under your patent, though their past success & future prospects are not such as to warrant them in paying at present more than a nominal sum for its use.
I have asked Mr Loxley <2> to call upon your solicitors & to tell them this, so that no needless expenses may be incurred before your return to town enables us to bring the question to a decisive issue
I am yours very truly
Roger Fenton
Notes:
1. The Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company (commonly, The Photogalvanographic Company) was based on the work of Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor and former Manager of the Imperial Printing Establishment in Vienna. Located in Holloway Road, Islington, London, from 1856-1857, Pretsch took over as manager and Roger Fenton (1819–1869), photographer & lawyer, was a partner and their chief photographer. Starting in late 1856, they published a serial portfolio, Photographic Art Treasures, or Nature and Art Illustrated by Art and Nature, illustratated with photogalvanographs derived from several photographer's works. Photogalvanography was uncomfortably closely based on elements of WHFT’s patented 1852 Photographic Engraving but, unlike Talbot, the plates were heavily retouched by hand. Compounding the legal objections of Talbot, their former manager, Duncan Campbell Dallas, set up a competing company to produce the Dallastype. The company collapsed and near the end of 1860 Pretsch, out of money, allowed his patent to lapse. A public appeal was launched in 1861 to assist him but he returned to Vienna in 1863 in ill health, going back to the Imperial Printing Establishment, but finally succumbing to cholera.
2. Of the firm Fry & Loxley, the lawyers who had acted for the defendant in Talbot v. Laroche in 1854.