My dear Sir,
I am sorry that it is impracticable for me to come up to Town to see your curious process for fixing the image formed by a Camera obscura – the interest of wh at this moment is particularly great after what has recently been announced in Paris <1> – but I am tied here by many engagements to say nothing of a rheumatic affliction which confines me a large portion of each day to my bed and forces me to avoid all exposure to cold which is not indispensable
On Thursday we have a few friends to dine with us and perhaps you would join our party and by putting yourself into a 2 o’clock train there will be abundant time to talk over your process before dinner.– I wish we had a spare bed, but so confined is our present residce that I can only hold out the prospect of a very comfortable one at the “Crown” about 200 yards off.
But on rereading your note I see your paper <2> is to be read on Thursday – and you may possibly intend to be present at the reading – In that case whatever morning or afternoon† you like to drop in I shall be truly happy to see you
& remn dear Sir Yours very truly
JFW Herschel
Slough
Jan 27/39.
†Except Tuesday 29th inst and Saty 2d Feb in the afternoons, on which days I have afternoon engagements –
H. F. Talbot Esqr
44 Queen Ann Street
Cavendish Square
London
Notes:
1. On 7th January, Dominique François Jean Arago (1786–1853), French physicist, astronomer & man of science, announced the invention of the daguerreotype.
2. WHFT, Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s pencil. Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839 (London: R & J E Taylor, 1839).