[fragment]
Lacock Abbey
Sunday May 22
My dear Father,
I have to thank you for two letters, and a five pound note, & a pamphlet on Photography received as also a book on Geology, which I will read. Is it a present? I hope Mamma <1> has received 2 letters I sent her. The 2nd I sent last night. Yesterday I played cricket at Corsham v. Bowood. & it was cooler luckily than it had been some days before. My Fannin [sic] plates are yet waiting an opportunity of being taken. I am probably going to drive over to Bradenstoke on Tuesday with Mr Palmer who has those two useful things a carriage & a horse that will go. I don’t think the reverent gentleman can be over burdened with work for he seems to have a good deal of leisure. He and his wife are living in Lacock village till their parsonage is completed near the top of the hill, the which parsonage has risen a few feet above the ground [illegible deletion] and is expected to be pretty being f built apparently of much the same stone as Mr Merewethers <2> house, which is bound thereabouts. Mr Nicholl <3> is said to be a cricketer but I don’t know if the statement rests on good authority. I am going to see how much damage the white horse has done to the old fencing. I think that with regard to the building of the hall & dining room, the dining room must be put set down as later than 1732 on the authority of Bucks <4> view, but it is not impossible that the hall was built first, Perhaps John Ivory Talbot <5> did not build the dining room. I have just glanced at the pamphlets pamphlet on photography , which you sent. The prints especially are in a are [sic] good prints which is sufficient to shew that the negative when intensified was fit for printing, but you would have preferred a comparative experiment. I should think that probably the process was only applicable to wet collodion & would not help me in the Fannin process but it could be tried. It has the merit of simplicity, except the Covering process, for I don’t know if it is easy to apply the fumes of iodine. Photography seems rather active at present, & more inclined than usual to throw out a few new branches. I am glad to hear that the carriage has been sold, & that Aleck <6> has got a place for the summer. Pul Pullen <7> tells me that shortly before the horses came South, the grey horse ran
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
13 Gt Stuart St
Edinburgh
Notes:
1. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
2. Henry Alworth Merewether, jnr (1813–1877), JP, author & Recorder for Devizes.
3. Rev Edward Powell Nicholl (1831–1902), Vicar of Lacock from 1864 until his resignation in 1870; photographer.
4. Samuel Buck (1696–1779), engraver and topographical draughtsman, drew and engraved 428 views of the ruins of all the noted abbeys, castles, &c. in England and Wales, covering Wiltshire in 1732. [See Doc. No: 04954 and Doc. No: 08831].
5. John Ivory Talbot (d. 1772), created a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford University 1736; was MP for Ludgershall 1715–1722 and Wiltshire 1727–1741. [See Alumni Oxonienses (Oxford and London: Parker & Co., 1888), p. 1385; also Doc. No: 02134, Doc. No: 04164 and Doc. No: 08831].
6. See Doc. No: 08591.
7. William Pullen, Lacock Abbey coachman.