[Draft - written on the verso of the sheet of the draft for Doc. No: 04916.]
Awdry abt Collen
9 Jany /44
Having conceded so much, I cannot make any further Concessions & therefore I have struck out the last clause in the Memorandum – being one which I have always declined from the beginning –
When first Mr C. applied to me for a License I stated that I would not consent to any such condition, and he (with that refusal in his hand) nevertheless decided upon taking the license. It is not as if the thing had been casually or carelessly overlooked; it was discussed at the time and declined.
I must also remark that when Mr C. says that he has taken nothing but portraits, I think this must be a mistake, since I recollect a statement appeared in the Newspapers that Mr C. had been employed by Government to execute a facsimile of the Chinese Treaty <3> – I think a circumstance so interesting to me as The inventor of the art, might have been communicated to me at the time it occurred, but it never was.
I remain Dr Sir
Yours truly
H. F. Talbot
Please send copy of this to Mr Haslam. Supposing ye con[illegible]no one, I shd still have wished
Notes:
1. Henry Collen (1800–1879), miniature painter, calotypist & spiritualist, London.
2. William Haslam, Collen’s solicitor, of Haslam & Bischoff, solicitors, London.
3. The Treaty of Nanking (29 August 1842), which ended the Opium War (1839–1842) between Britain and China and opened certain Chinese ports to foreign trade. [See Schaaf, ‘Henry Collen and the Treaty of Nanking’, History of Photography, v. 6 no. 4, April–June 1983, pp.163–165; see also Doc. No: 04713].