Margam Oct 5 1853
My dear Henry
I did not know you were not at home, or would not have troubled you about the Labourers. Things are greatly altered from the old times when I used to be at Lacock! You would find Margam <1> an excellent subject for photography, but I think Calvert Jones & Dillwyn Llewellyn <2> have exhausted the subject
I shall be going shortly to Penrice, <3> but if you have any thought of coming this way, let me know and I will come over here. We are only 5 ½ hours from London and I constantly go up & down by the express. There are alas! a great many points in railways quite as dangerous as a bridge over Caernarthen river. Did you but know how your life depends on the steadiness of the signalmen at the parts where other railways meet & cross! I said one day to Brunel while we were coming up "I am always glad when we have passed the Reading points, they are so complicated."I wanted his assurance there was no danger, but his reply was "And so am I."<4>
Our Indian Steam ship is much larger than you suppose.<5> She is 780 feet long 85 wide, and will admeasure 23500 tones. But it is quite an error to suppose people will not be sick on board. My notion is, the Larger the vessel, The more the sickness. Monster steamers could not run between England & France. The water is too shallow to float them.
Yours ever Most truly
CRM Talbot
[blind stamp]
Notes:
1. Margam Park, Glamorgan: home of CRMT.
2. Rev Calvert Richard Jones (1802-1877), Welsh painter & photographer; John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810-1882), Welsh photographer, JP & High Sheriff.
3. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of CRMT.
4. Isambard Kingdom Brunel (9 Apr 1806 - 15 Sep 1859), mechanical and civil engineer; entrepreneur. The extensive rail connections were one reason why Nicolaas Henneman (1813-1898), Dutch, WHFT's former valet and assistant opened his calotype printing studio in Reading in 1843.
5. Whatever the plans were for this enormous ship, they were never realized. Brunel's Great Eastern, finally launched in 1858 after an injection of funding from CRMT, at 692 feet held the record as the largest steam vessel built until 1899.