80 Coleshill Street
Eaton Square – London
23rd March 1843 –
Sir,
Being about to travel and desirous of making use of your patent Invention <1> (as applied to the Daguerrotype Process <2> and described in the London Repertory <3> of October 1841) for my own private purpose and without any views of gaining pecuniary advantage therefrom, I have applied for information on the subject, but finding you have no recognized Agent in London I venture, under the circumstances stated to take this mode of asking your permission to make use of the Apparatus &c with such restrictions only as you may think it right to impose for your own protection, and should you kindly grant the indulgence I request, would feel obliged by your furnishing me with such further instructions as may conduce to my more perfect success in the use of your patent –
I am, Sir, your obedient Servant
Sampson Freeth
Lieutenant R. Engineers
P.S. Please address to me as above in
care of Colonel Freeth K.H.
A: I: M: General
Horse Guards
William Henry Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Wilts
Notes:
1. WHFT took a patent for the Calotype titled ‘Photographic Pictures’, U.K. number 8,842, 8 February 1841.
2. It was not uncommon, but certainly unsettling, for WHFT's process to be called a variation of the rival daguerreotype.
3. No such notice has been found in the October 1841 issue of The London Journal of Arts, Sciences, and Manufacture, and Repertory of Patent Inventions. However, in September 1841 issue WHFT’s new Calotype process was outlined in the “Specification of the Patent granted to William Henry Fox Talbot, of Lacock Abbey in the County of Wilts, Esquire, for Improvements in Obtaining Pictures as Representations of Objects, sealed 8 February 1841, enrolled 8 August 1841”; n.s. 93 v.16, pp. 165–173.