159. Regent street <1>
Septbr 23
1845
My dear Sir,
I send you the first fruits of my essays, which I hope you will consider satisfactory we have been at Hampton Court for a couple of days where they were done, and which affords many beautiful and interesting subjects, also the banks of the Thames up the river a great variety.<2> I have made no failures except with one very bad sheet of paper, which yielded a rank crop of arboraceous looking stains: and I have no doubt of perfect success provided I can be furnished with good paper.
The weather has been dreadfully against photography most of the enclosed having been done in very dark weather.
I trust you will be pleased with the very satisfactory specimens of varnish which I enclose from Mr Winsor, <3> I think them infinitely superior to Mr Mansion’s; <4> Mr Winsor has been very obliging and offers to shew me his method of doing it, also to give every information as to obtaining the varnishes at the cheapest rate, which he says really amounts to hardly an appreciable price. The two marked with crosses are the best; that marked with one cross he thinks best of all: he adds that these varnishes can be still farther improved by increased purity, which can be easily managed.
I have the pleasure to tell you that Messrs Bowen and Sandford <5> have recieved [sic] the paper and sent a couple of reams to Henneman. <6>
The Talbotypes <7> have a very good effect in Mr Brookes window,<8> but they ought to be mounted on larger paper.
We dined yesterday at your cousins in Belgrave Square, <9> and were glad to see Lady Charlotte <10> looking better than we had hoped.
I think we shall be in London till Monday week so may perhaps see you here before that.
yours very truly
Calvert R. Jones.
Notes:
1. London.
2. When Nicolaas Henneman printed up sheets of labels to afix to the mounts of prints for sale, nos. 94-99 were "Hampton Court Palace C.R.J." The negatives for these eventually wound up in the Lacock Abbey Collection.
3. William Winsor (1804–1865), artists’s colour manufacturer & Sacred Harmonic Society member.
4. Leon Mansion, a London miniature painter and artist, who had just invented a varnish. See L. Mansion, Letters upon the art of miniature painting (London: R. Ackermann, 1822). Mansion’s colouring of daguerreotypes was advertised in the Art Union, 1 July 1845, and the Athenaeum, 4 July 1846, p. 601. See Larry J. Schaaf, Sun Pictures Catalogue Five: The Reverend Calvert R. Jones (New York: Hans P. Kraus, Jr, 1987), p. 13. [Also see Doc. No: 05381; Doc. No: 05398; Doc. No: 05428 and Doc. No: 05444].
5. Probably paper suppliers. [See Doc. No: 05488].
6. Nicolaas Henneman (1813–1898), Dutch, active in England; WHFT’s valet, then assistant; photographer.
7. Although WHFT modestly used the term calotype, Jones and other loyal supporters honoured him by calling these Talbotypes, in parallel with the term Daguerreotype.
8. Henry Brooks, publisher, stationer and printseller at 87, New Bond St, London. [See Doc. No: 05950].
9. 40 Belgrave Square, London home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
10. Lady Charlotte Butler (1809–1846), wife of ‘ Kit’ Talbot..