Dear Sir,
I gave your request, as I think I wrote you<1> to Dr Adamson<2> for his Brother,<3> along with the Calotypes you were so good as to send him. His delay in writing you, has arisen from his having left Edinr about the time you wrote me, & from his desire to send you one or two good Negatives for your Work. Dr Adamson is so annoyed at the circumstance that he has got my Camera, for the purpose of getting one or two good Negatives for you, so that I hope the oversight will be atoned for.
I have watched all the Advertisements of the Pencil of Nature <4> with great interest, and have ordered a Copy for our University Library.<5> It is a bold experiment – I do not mean as a speculation, but as one which will entail personal labours & superintendence upon yourself, & I and many others look forward to its consummation as an event which, sanguine as I was I never could have anticipated.
I am still puzzled about the operation of the Camera. Some Cameras represent me thin, slender & not stout, whereas others raise me to the eminence of the “Stout Gentleman”! The one which you did of me at Laycock <6> is of the first kind.
I am Dear Sir Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
St Leonards College
St Andrews
April 18th 1844
Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 04898.
2. Dr John Adamson (1809–1870), physician and pioneer of photography. See A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Dr John Adamson and Robert Adamson: An Early Partnership in Scottish Photography’, The Photographic Collector, v.2, 1983, pp. 198–214.
3. Robert Adamson (1821–1848). His professional partnership with the painter David Octavius Hill (1802–1870), Scottish painter & photographer, which began in May 1843 because of Hill’s desire to record the momentous Disruption of the Church of Scotland, established – at the dawn of photography – the art of photographic portraiture at the highest level. It was Brewster who introduced the photographer to the painter [see Doc. No: 04839]. See Sara Stevenson, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1981), and The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002).
4. WHFT, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, June 1844–April 1846 [issued in six fascicles]. This the 'Work' that Brewster was referring to, in which WHFT intended to include photographs by other artists, but production problems overwhelmed this pioneering attempt. In the end, only 24 of the planned 50 plates were published. For an examination of the original, broader plan, see Larry J. Schaaf, Introductory Volume to H. Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature, Anniversary Facsimile (New York: Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc., 1989).
5. See the University of St Andrews Library ‘New Recommendations’ for 1844 [in Special Collections, St Andrews University Library]. The copy of WHFT’s work is still there; see copy 35 in Larry J Schaaf, ‘Third Census of Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature’, History of Photography, v. 36 no. 1, February 2012, pp. 99-120.
6. Brewster stayed briefly at Lacock from 15 July 1842 [see Doc. No: 04542 and Doc. No: 04551].