Lacock Abbey,
Chippenham.
Thursday Nov. 29th
My Dear Charles
Mr Awdry put your money into the Melksham <1> bank long ago. You should write to the Manager to send your account made up to the present time and then you could see what day it was paid. I have told Anna <2> to forward your letters & given her your address.
I have sometimes repeated in Bleak House <3> the beautiful experiment with Sulphate of quinine <4>, which is the invention of Professor Stokes <5> of Cambridge: but I never saw the white liquid turned yellow by the invisible rays and I think the yellow may have been the effect of Contrast (if any blue light was visible near it) and that the light developed may really have been white. Very fine effects are produced when sulphate of quinine Solution surrounds a vacuum tube of electric light such as Profr. Tait <6> used to show us.
I am a member of the Royal Institution <7> & have been so many years. I can admit you to all the Friday evening meetings which are generally very interesting – but I have forgotten whether a simple Order signed by me suffices or whether you must procure a card at the Royal Institutn. & send it me. The lectures, I don’t know whether I can give admission to, but you can enquire – At any rate you can subscribe for a course of 6 lectures by Faraday <8> &c. wch. are not very expensive & the experiments shown are generally very good. F. is an excellent lecturer.
Grove <9> it is said will be made a judge in the spring & all patent cases will be intrusted [sic] to his court, except those that go to Vice Chancellor Wood. <10> The Times is of opinion that there is going to be a rebellion in Ireland, not only to dethrone the Queen there but more especially to divide all the lands among the Fenians, <11> who are now nearly penniless, and therefore raise the patriot cry of Ireland for the Irish.
Your affte
Father
Envelope:
C. H. Talbot Esq83 Ebury St
Pimlico
London S.W.
Notes:
1. Melksham, Wiltshire: market town near Lacock, 2 miles S.
2. Anna Hankins, housemaid. [See Doc. No: 09158].
3. Lacock Abbey. [See Doc. No: 08828 and Doc. No: 08830].
4. See Doc. No: 09535.
5. George Gabriel Stokes (1819–1903), physicist; appointed to the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1849, which he held until his death. He produced a paper on fluorescence, a name of his invention, in 1852 where he noted that solutions of quinine appeared blue under certain conditions, showing this phenomenon was produced by ultra–violet light. He was also elected President of the Royal Society of London, 1885–1890
6. Prof Peter Guthrie Tait (1831–1901), Scottish mathematician.
7. In response to a query from Charles. [See Doc. No: 09158].
8. Prof Michael Faraday (1791–1867), scientist.
9. Sir William Robert Grove (1811–1896), scientist.
10. William Page Wood, Baron Hatherley (1801–1881), Lord Chancellor.
11. The Fenian Brotherhood, founded in New York, 1858, by John O’Mahoney (1816–1877).