London Institution, Finsbury Circus: E.C.
Monday 20 Jan 62
Sir
I beg to acknowledge your kind note & to say that I do still take great interest in your photoglyphic process & I shall be glad to receive any specimens from time to time with such explanation as you may think it right for me to publish in a lecture or scientific notice &c.
You will be glad to hear that my anxieties as to the future are much diminished since I expect to conclude, soon, an arrangement with Mr C Pritchard of Clapham S. <1> – to assist him in his laboratory & occasionally lecture for him in his school. I am to have part of my time free to undertake research or private scientific business lectures &c. The remuneration will be small but I trust by diligent exertion to extend it so as to supply my habitually moderate wants.
I hope I do not deceive myself in hoping that I may yet be found useful to sound science & procure & retain securely an honourable & properly remunerative position.
I shall still be thankful for your kind remembrance if any thing likely to be of advantage to me occurs to you in the way of business or position.
I remain Truly your obliged servant
T. A. Malone.
Letters address London Institution will still find me even should I go to Clapham to reside.
TAM
[envelope:]
H F Talbot Esqq
Millburn Tower
Edinburgh
T.A.M.
[blind embossed on flap:]
London Institution Finsbury Circus
Notes:
1. Charles Pritchard (1808-1893), headmaster of Clapham Grammar School. He eschewed the standard Latin curriculum of such schools in favor of lessons in chemistory, optics, electricity, heat and mechanics. So impressive was his emphasis on science that Charles Darwin, Sir George Airy and Sir John Herschel sent their sons to learn under him. Later Savilian professor of astronomy at the University of Oxford, where he utilized photography to determine stellar parallax; elected FRS late in life.