Millburn<1>
June 8
My Dear Charles
I wish you would get me from Deighton’s shop
Salmon’s Conic Sections, last Edition <1>
Gregory’s examples, last Edition
and ask Deighton to send me the bill and I will send him a Post Office order.
Yesterday Sunday about noon there was a tremendous fire in Edinburgh in an Indian Rubber Manufactory – Notwithstanding the daylight the flames were very conspicuous from Millburn and rose 150 feet high being just behind a remarkably tall chimney which enabled me to measure or estimate their height.
Adieu Your affte.
father
Envelope:
C. H. Talbot EsqTrin. Coll.
Cambridge
Notes:
1. Millburn Tower, Gogar, just west of Edinburgh; the Talbot family made it their northern home from June 1861 to November 1863. It is particularly important because WHFT conducted many of his photoglyphic engraving experiments there. The house had a rich history. Built for Sir Robert Liston (1742-1836), an 1805 design by Benjamin Latrobe for a round building was contemplated but in 1806 a small house was built to the design of William Atkinson (1773-1839), best known for Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford. The distinctive Gothic exterior was raised in 1815 and an additional extension built in 1821. Liston had been ambassador to the United States and maintained a warm Anglo-American relationship in the years 1796-1800. His wife, the botanist Henrietta Liston, née Marchant (1751-1828) designed a lavish American garden, sadly largely gone by the time the Talbots rented the house .
2. George Salmon (1819–1904), mathematician; A treatise on conic sections: containing an account of some of the most important modern algebraic and geometric methods (London: Longmans, Brown, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1863), 4th edition.