Llandaff
Friday evening Decr 9.
My dear Father.
I have received a letter from Mr Nesbitt <1> from Torquay relating to your photoglyphic process. Will you be so good as to return it when you have read it as I keep my letters. I have answered Mr Nesbitt’s letter and I mentioned that though the specifications published was a full one when the patent was taken out, yet that there were 2 improvements introduced since which not being protected by patent were kept secret and that these 2 improvements though not absolutely essential yet [illegible] considerably to the go are of great use to for securing a good result and I could not tell whether or no you would be willing to communicate them. Communicating them to one person employed would not necessarily be publishing them, and if they were published I do not see that it would damage the patent as it would not enable the invention to be worked without the process patented. I hope therefore that you will entertain the idea favourably.
It has occurred to me that photography might be made available for teaching solid Geometry, for figures in solid geometry drawn upon paper are not always easy to understand, Let the object then be first described constructed as a solid. Take a photograph of it and view it through the stereoscope where the illusion of solidity will be produced and the difficulty got rid of. So that you might have a whole set of theorems in solid geometry shut up in a small box & sold at a low price for educational purposes. Also the plan of enlarging photographs by the magic Lantern might be made available for educational purposes. I am glad to hear that you have got a new process in photography.<2> I thought you must be devising something at Lacock. Is this the result? I have not yet got the paper.
There is going to be a ball at Bridgend on the 29th and Champneys & I are going to Merthyr Mawr & from thence to the ball. I have had no answer from Bagwell <3> yet to say whether he will come to Lacock. I shall go myself any how soon. I dined at the Bishop’s last night & met the Bishop of Bangor, Archdeacon Crawley <4> & other ecclesiastics. Miss Ollivant who has a taste for curious literature has got a queer version of the story of Olive Sherrington <5> in which it is stated that in her portrait at Lacock she has a crooked finger being the one she broke in her leap. It also says that Sir W Sherrington <6> was called the Kings Tailor because he clipped his coin which seems rather far fetched. Altogether the historian was facetious but I think he has over done it.
Your affect son
Charles.
[envelope]
H Fox Talbot Esq
Athenaeum Club
London
Notes:
1. Alexander Nesbitt (1817–1886), archaeologist & collector of ancient glass.
2. Perhaps this was WHFT's "Photo-Sculpsit" process, a type of photogravure about which little is known. Examples were published in 1866. See Larry J. Schaaf, "Etchings of Light," in Sun Pictures Catalogue Twelve: Talbot & Photogravure (New York: Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc., 2003), pp. 11-12.
3. Richard Bagwell, attended Harrow 1854–1859; son of John Bagwell (b. 1811), of Marlfield, Ireland.
4. The Venerable William Crawley (1802–1896), Archdeacon of Monmouth since 1843.
5. Olive Sherington married John Talbot in 1574. [See Doc. No: 07555].
6. Sir William Sherington or Sharington, ( ca.1495–1553); in 1540 he bought the dissolved Lacock Abbey for £783 and in 1546, he became vice treasurer of the mint at Bristol. Using this position, he amassed an ill-gotten fortune allowing him to purchase several manors, chiefly in Wiltshire. These frauds soon came to the knowledge of the government, whereupon in 1549 Lacock Abbey was searched by the council’s agents resulting in him being sent to the Tower, London. After he eventually made full confessions, he threw himself on the king’s mercy and was pardoned in 1550.