Dear Sir,

I regret much that I am obliged to leave London on the 24^th in order to write a Review, which I can only do at home, and which will occupy every moment of my time till the 2^nd week of July. Under other circumstances I sh^d have remained in London till the 1^st of July; but your case ^<1> cannot depend upon oral evidence, because your Counsel can read the affidavits as parts of his speech.

I am Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster

Athenæum ^<2>
June 15^th 1854

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Notes:

1. In 1852 Talbot had thrown open his photographic patents as far as amateur photography was concerned, though he retained them regarding professional portraiture. He won several injunctions against professional portrait-photographers who infringed them, and in 1854 he sought to obtain another against James Henderson, a professional photographer who took portraits using the collodion process. Brewster and Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), astronomer & scientist made affidavits for Talbot. Later in the same year, and before the Henderson case was concluded, he failed to obtain an injunction against another portrait-photographer, Martin Laroche, who, he claimed, had infringed two important elements of his patents. [For an account of these significant cases, and the opposition to Talbot’s patents, see H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), pp. 198–209.]

2. The Athenæum and (London) Literary Chronicle, London.