26 February
Dear Henry
I hear that somebody has according to your printed directions, photographed the coffin of Napoleon <1> at the moment it was opened at St Helena, <2> when he was discovered exactly as he was left 19 years before.
I have seen Mr Babbage <3> several times, he is always everywhere. He tells me he did receive your photographs which you doubted, & conveyed them to Tuscany, but not with his own hand, having been taken very ill at Turin for several weeks. He looks very ill now. He says it was a fever with a nervous affection brought on by talking Italian for hours together, as he is not familiar enough with the language to speak it without effort and the Savans there do not understand English. He was very much fêté & flatté <4> by the King of Sardinia <5> who made a great fuss with him. He liked it so much he means to go again next Summer. Kit <6> came to town for the great fight in the H. of Commons, but went away the moment it was over & without my seeing him He told John <7> that a beautiful photograph had been made of Margam <8> by I don’t know who – very lately. I wish you would let me order for you a stove like Lord Ilchester’s <9> I find they only cost £5 – and would certainly make your library very comfortable. Mr Bingham Baring <10> has asked me very particularly about your motive Power, <11> having he says himself a turn for Mechanics, of course I could give him no information
affly yrs
E F
Notes:
1. Napoleon I (1769–1821), Emperor of France (1804–1814/1815).
2. Napoleon I had been exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. His body was exhumed on 15 October 1840 in preparation for its return to France.
3. Prof Charles Babbage (1792–1871), mathematician & inventor, was given photographs [see Doc. No: 04117] to convey to Prof Giovanni Battista Amici (1786–1868), Italian optician & man of science, and Leopold II, Duke of Tuscany (1797–1870). Those he passed on to Amici, at the second Congress of Italian Scientists, are now in the Biblioteca Estanse, Modena. The images sent to the Grand Duke have not been located, and may not have reached him, see Doc. No: 04394.
4. Happy and flattered.
5. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia-Piedmont (1831–1849).
6. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
7. John George Charles Fox Strangways (1803–1859), MP.
8. Margam Park, Glamorgan: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot. This might be related to the best known surviving photograph of Margam, a daguerreotype taken by the Rev. Calvert R. Jones dated 9 March 1841 and now in the collection of the National Library of Wales. Jones later took calotypes of Margam.
9. Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787–1858).
10. William Bingham Baring, 2nd Baron Ashburton (1799–1864).
11. See Doc. No: 04160, and Doc. No: 04686.