Margam <1>
March 30 1839
My dear Henry
Many thanks for you photogenic specimens. That representing an etching has faded away since it came, but at first, it was beautiful. Every body here is mad for photogeny, <2> but I have not yet burnt my fingers with it, intending first to see it performed by a professor.
I have lately discovered in a new harbour we are excavating here, the singular phenomenon of a sea wall 15 feet below the level of the sea a little below the same level of 15 ft we discovered the foundations lintels & doorposts of two cottages or sheds, and the still standing trunks of trees and hedge-rows, a roman coin, and an old shoe of leather, were also found with considerable quantity of human bones, & a Druidical circle of stones. Further out, we found Stag’s horns, & innumerable foot-marks of Deer and oxen all 20 feet below the present levels. I mean to write an account of it to Buckland <3> –
Yours very truly
C Rice Talbot
W H F. Talbot Esqr
44 Queen Ann St
London
Taibach March thirty one
C R M Talbot
Notes:
1. Margam Park, Glamorgan: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
2. A rare attempt to expand WHFT's root term of photogenic drawing - the word 'photography' and its variants were soon to take over.
3. William Buckland (1784–1856), Dean of Westminster & scientist.