London <1>
April 22. 1858
Dear Mlle Amélina
I expect Charles <2> this evening and we are to travel down to Lacock together tomorrow. Geography teaches that Edinburgh is nearer to Lacock than it is to London, but Charles prefers the latter route because there are fewer changes of train. I thank you for the extract from the Courant about Brewster & Wheatstone. <3> I am glad Ivan Szabo has made the portraits <4> If unsuccessful they should not be preserved, as it is easy to try again with some other photographer. Szabo should let us have the negative as well as the positive copies as we do not wish other copies to be made except for ourselves – The great Shrewsbury case has reopened on Tuesday when Sir N. Bethell made a speech in the course of which he thanked me for allowing the Lacock deeds to be Examined, and after declaring that they greatly assisted his view of the case (the Opposition) which they don’t – he said they wd be produced to the H. of Lords on Thursday (today). <5>
The acquittal of Bernard tends to widen the breach with France – But it was not very surprising, it was the reply of the Londoners to the menaces of the French Colonels – The magnificent fine weather continues today. Ask Constance to buy me 6 or 8 photographic portraits of people (no matter who) with pleasing expression of countenance, or at any rate artistically good and expressive – and with dress well expressed and developed. They should not be larger than half a sheet of note paper, but may be smaller to any extent. They should not be mounted, but on common paper, and semitransparent. They are for specimens on which to try my Engraving process, <6> but this should not be mentioned to the person who sells them as he might object –
Yours ever Truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Written on paper with the embossed stamp of the Athenaeum Club.
2. Charles Henry Talbot (1842–1916), antiquary & WHFT’s only son.
3. About the competing claims for the priority of Sir David Brewster (1781–1868), Scottish scientist & journalist, and Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875), scientist, of the invention of the stereoscope. See Doc. No: 07607.
4. Iván Szabó (1822–1858), a Hungarian photographer, learned his craft in St Andrews before setting up his studio in Edinburgh in 1857. He was considered one of the premier portrait photographers in Scotland, and made photographs of all the Talbot family [see Doc. No: 07585]. See Julie Lawson, ‘Iván Szabó: A Hungarian Photographer in Scotland’, Shadow and Substance (The Amorphous Institute Press, 1990) pp.17–21.
5. Henry John Chetwynd Talbot, 18th Earl Shrewsbury, 5th Baron Talbot (1803–1868), succeeded Bertram Arthur, the 17th Earl, after the latter’s death 10 August 1856. The succession was contested by James Robert Hope Scott and Lord Edmund Bernard Fitzalan Howard (by his guardian Hon. Albert Henry Petre) in the Court of Chancery in January and February of 1858, and Lord Talbot’s Petition of Appeal was brought before the Committee of Privileges in the House of Lords 12 March 1858, and resolved in the summer of that year. [See Journals of the House of Lords, v. 90].
6. On 21 April 1858, WHFT filed a patent (No.875) for ‘Improvements in the Art of Engraving’, in which he described his improved photoglyphic engraving process. The patent was finalized 14 October of the same year.