Dear Sir,
I have received safely your interesting letter, <1> and will take special care that your process <2> continues a secret <3> till you wish it made known. I shall have great pleasure in trying it when you have leisure to communicate to me the other half. <4>
The sensitiveness of the Calotype Paper to Moonlight is a most extraordinary fact, and cannot fail to excite great interest as a scientific fact. That the chemical rays shd shew themselves by such marked effects, & with out condensation, while the heating rays cannot be rendered effective by the most powerful Lens & Specula is truly wonderful.<5>
I should like to know if the two Portraits <6> you were so kind as to send me were made by the Positive or the Negative process.
I am Dear Sir Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
St Leonards
St Andrews
May 5th 1841
H.F. Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Letter not located.
2. That is, the calotype process.
3. See Doc. No: 04147. The delay in publication was essential because WHFT intended to take out a Patent on his process.
4. As was common practice as a security measure, the information had been sent half at a time.
5. There was considerable interest at this time - and little understanding - of the nature of the light reflected from the moon.
6. Five early photographic portraits by WHFT can be found in Brewster’s album. For these images see: ‘A Man Standing in a Doorway’, taken 1840 or 1841, reproduced in Graham Smith, Disciples of Light: Photographs in the Brewster Album (Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990), p. 140; ‘Lady Elisabeth Feilding’, taken August 1841, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 32; ‘Lady Elisabeth Feilding as Paolina Borghese’, Schaaf 3693, taken 20 April 1842, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 136; ‘Workman at Lacock’, taken 9 April 1842, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 137; and ‘Nicolaas Henneman’, taken 1842 or 1843, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 37. [See also Doc. No: 04247].