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Document number: 9804
Date: 12 Sep 1871
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: TREVELYAN Walter Calverley
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 17th February 2012

Wallington
Newcastle on Tyne
12th Septr 1871

My Dear Talbot

Many thanks for your letter & offer of specimens of your photographic engravings: which I should be glad to have, as I suppose you have made great advances since you, a few years ago, gave me some which promised well – I was much interested, a few years ago, in seeing the valuable applications of Photography in the ordnance Survey works at Southampton.<1>

You ask me about Botany. I still keep up my interest in it, tho’ I have given my British Collection of dried plants to the Museum at Newcastle; where, united with Winchs, it forms a tolerable very complete collection, & is of more use than in private hands – I have given collections, at various times, to Kew herbarium; amongst others a tolerably complete one of the Faroe Islands, & many collected in Greece & Italy, Portugal &c. I have often thought of our working together in botany at Harrow, where now natural history may be pursued with less difficulty & risk, than when we were there, & where they now have a flourishing “Scientific Society,” to which I am going to send an interesting record of our work there, half a century ago; a catalogue of the plants you & I made, of the plants we collected<2> – among which I find one which is not in the Flora published there in 1864 – Triglochin maritimum, which I well remember gathering in an old Brick field, now probably covered with buildings.

I wish you would come and renew your acquaintance with this place, which I think you would find improved. – Draining had not commenced to any extent, when you were here, & there were few parts of England where it was more needed. –

The enclosed etching by W. B. Scott, for a book plate, is a correct view, excepting the ruined arch, which is ideal.<3>

You speak of my philanthropic labors: The two vices which I attack, if not banished from our land, will I believe eventually accomplish its ruin, physically, morally & socially, & so insidious are they in their advance, that in many cases the ruin of the individual, & deterioration & ultimate extinction, of his descendants, may be accomplished, before the true cause is suspected = & unfortunately, a short sighted Goverment [sic] has too long, for the sake of an immediate influx of gold to the Exchequer, directly or indirectly, encouraged the use both of alchoholic [sic] & tobacco poisons –

With all kind remembrances, I remain, Yours most truly
W. C. Trevelyan

[enclosed bookplate:
[distant view of house through arch; SIR WALTER CALVERLEY TREVELYAN BART around opening; arms with bearers and motto above: TIME TRYETH TROTH]


Notes:

1. The earlier examples might have been WHFT's 1852 Photographic Engravings or 1858 Photoglyphic Engravings. He had continued to improve his photogravure processes and the current ones might have been examples of the little understood Photo-Sculpsit. Under Sir Henry James, The Ordnance Survey Office had taken great interest in photomechanical methods for the reproduction of maps.

2. Unpublished manuscript: Plants indigenous to Harrow: Flora Haroviensis, compiled by Fox Talbot and Walter Calverly Trevelyan, 1814-1815, preserved in the Harrow School Archives.

3. William Bell Scott (1811-1890), who was almost certainly engaged for this task by Sir Walter's wife Lady Pauline Trevelyan. She was a correspondent of Ruskin and worked extensively with artists. See John Batchelor, Lady Tevelyan and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (London: Chatto & Windus, 2006).

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