New Library , Botanic Garden. <1>
Decr 15th 1842
Dear Sir/
I hasten to acknowledge your great kindness in sending me two such interesting Calotype Drawings of the Botanic Garden <2> – I shall prize them both as accurate representations of the Buildings and as illustrations of the Art, of which the principles at least will naturally form a part of my Chemical Lectures The Drawings arrived quite safely and certainly evince a considerable progress in the Art itself
I remain dear Sir Yrs truly
Chars Daubeny
Mr Talbot Esq.
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
31 Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. Headed notepaper with an illustration of the Botanic Garden, Oxford by William Alfred Delamotte (1775–1863), landscape painter, engraver and lithographer.
2. Several images of the Botanic Gardens in Oxford survive. One of these, of the Botanic Garden with Magdalen Tower in the background was praised in Paris by Amélina Petit De Billier, ‘Mamie’, ‘Amandier’ (1798–1876), governess and later close friend of the Talbot family [See Amélina's journal ], and Charles Chevalier (1804–1859), optician, Paris, in Doc. No: 04600. It is possible that WHFT sent the same image to Daubeny. See Schaaf, Sun Pictures III The Harold White Collection of Works by William Henry Fox Talbot (New York: Hans P. Kraus) p.44, Schaaf 2676