Glasgow.
June 21. 1839.
My dear Sir
I am extremely obliged to you for your kindness in sending me the specimens of Photogenic drawings. They are very curious & ingenious. But I what I was most pleased with was the imitation of an etching. Can that be made available for Botanical drawing?<1> Plants should be represented on paper, either by outline or with the shadows of the flowers (which of course express shape) distinctly expressed. marked. Your beautiful Campanula hederacea was very pretty as to general effect:– <2> but it did not express the swelling of the flower, nor the calyx, nor the veins of the leaves distinctly. When this can be accomplished as no doubt it will, it will surely become available for the publication of good figures of plants. The subject is exciting a very general interest: – few take more pleasure in it than the Duke of Bedford <3> (to whom I transmitted your specimens) & his personal Physician & my very ingenious friend, Dr Cumming. This latter has put some questions to me which I am not Chemist enough to solve – & I have taken the liberty of referring him, as the source & fountainhead, to you.
Pray do me the favor to reply to his queries & believe me Most faithfully Yours,
W. J. Hooker.
H. F. Talbot Esqre
44. Queen Anne St <4>
London
Notes:
1. Although it seems commonplace today, WHFT's contemporaries marvelled at photography's ability to copy prints and engravings. Hooker very quickly realised something that other botanists soon became aware of. The veracity of photography meant that it depicted the specifics of a specific plant, without the valuable generalising so readily accomplished in hand-drawn depictions. Etching or engraving botanical plates was extremely expensive, so photography's greatest promise to botany was in the reproductive arts.
2.Doc. No: 03845, WHFT said that this image was produced in a November sun. This means that it was done before the public announcement of photography and must have been contemporaneous with a 13 November 1838 photograph of Astrantia major, formerly in the collection of the Royal Photographic Society (now in the NMeM, Bradford), illustrated and described in Larry J. Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), plate 6.
3. John Russell (1766– 20 October 1839), 6th Duke of Bedford.
4. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.