Llandaff
Wednesday evening Feb. 1st
My dear Father
Strutt who is the senior wrangler is cousin to the Strutts whom I mentioned as being at Harrow. They are the sons of Lord Belper. <1> I understand from Champneys that Strutt has been both at Eton and at Harrow but did not stay long at either school owing he thinks to ill-health. He was not looked upon I believe as a Harrow man. One senior wrangler some years back of the name of Baily had been at Harrow but only for a short time. Our very heavy fall of snow has dissappeared very rapidly owing to regular warm thaw accompanied with regular rain. All the roads have been regular rivers, and the rivers have been floods. The weather is now mild. Today was stormy with fine intervals. I was sorry to hear of the trees which were blown down at Lacock.
I am glad to hear that Craig is a wrangler. Will you cut out the list and send it me, as the paper we get only gives a summary without names.
Certainly your Monday weather was not like ours. Ours was a regular thaw. The thaw set in on Sunday about the time of morning service.
It appears that the articles that Mr Prichard <2> & you and I signed could not be stamped, as the stamp is required to be affixed first, so a copy of them with the necessary alteration in the wording had to be made & stamped which Mr Prichard & myself have signed and Mr Waldron <3> said he would send it to your address in Edinburgh for your signature, and begged me to explain that it is a copy of the former document & why.
It would have saved trouble if they had found out before hand that the stamp had to be affixed first.
You would have been interested in the iron works which I went over at Dowlais, Merthyr Tydvil if you had seen them, but I doubt whether you would have approved of the proximity of such very hot iron. I am going to dine to morrow with another gentleman who owns & mo superintends himself iron works close by here, Mr Booker of Velindra. Someday I suspect I shall go and take a look at his works. He has also I believe tinworks. I met him at Merthyr Mawr.
Some day if opportunity offers I mean to see how Ransome makes what he calls “patent stone”, an artificial substance resembling stone. I believe it will be very useful in building but must not be used as an imitation of stone which is the grand mistake generally made, but it may be used as a substitute for stone just as a brick is, and would be moulded and used in regular shapes more as a brick is than anything else.
A Book I have on painted coloured glass gives a curious account of the practice of making glass coloured & white, (the author being sup believed to have lived between the 10th & 13th centuries; he wa was Theophilus Presbyter <4> a monk. The processes seem primitive. I should like to see how they make coloured glass now a days on a large scale. It appears that the old coloured glass was very irregular in depth of colour & in thickness of the glass, owing to the imperfect state of the manufacture, but but that this very irregularity gave an artistic effect to the work which people now a days style after but cannot obtain with the good glass of the day, so they are driven to make irregular glass on purpose.
I can quite believe that this is what they say is true, but I also believe that a way may be found of treating the modern glass artistically without having recourse to the above device. The mistake seems to be to expect to produce with one kind of glass the particular sort of effects which were obtained with another.
There is a joint stock company now in London for carrying out Gothic designs for furniture and anything else I believe in a Gothic spirit, that is a developed gothic spirit. It is a curious sign of the taste of the times. They are Morris Marshall & Co. I have never seen or rather never paid any particular attention to their works but they are said to be very good. Next time I go to London I shall see what I can see of them.
Mr Prichard seems rather to want to carry on architecture as they did in the middle ages bestowing the outmost care and thought upon every stone, and not on the modern principle of treating it in a less artistic but more commercial print manner & “doing a business”.
He seems to abhor the notion of carving by machinery or anything of that kind.
If the mediæval architect was simply the head of a body of skilled builders, and allways on the spot as his own class clerk of the works it explains how he could superintend everything so minutely
The modern architect is in a very different position and I doubt whether he can afford to work in the same manner.
Your affect son
Charles.
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
13 Gt Stuart St
Edinburgh
Notes:
1. Edward Strutt, 1st Baron Belper (1801–1880).
2. John Prichard, Welsh architect; Charles Henry Talbot apprenticed to.
3. Clement Waldron, attorney, Cardiff.
4. Theophilus Presbyter, a Benedictine monk with an interest in the arts and technology, writing in Germany ca.1100 AD. Very little is known of his life though it is speculated that he may have been Roger of Helmarshausen.