Dear Sir,
I beg to thank you for the nice little packet of Talbotypes <1> whh you sent me by Post. I have not yet, owing I daresay to some mistake received the parcel which you sent thro’ Messrs Smith Elder & Co. <2> Our University Library Parcel which they dispatch on the 31st of each month arrived yesterday and did not contain it.
I have written to them & desired it to be sent by Railway.
I expect to be at Rossie Priory <3> in Decr when Lord De Mauley <4> pays his annual visit there, and I shall then deliver your remembrances. Lady Kinnaird <5> is one of the most accomplished and interesting persons I have ever met with. She is universally worshipped; and there are few if any of our nobility who take such an interest as Lord Kinnaird <6> does in the advancement of every benevolent and useful Institution.
The Talbotype from the Oil Painting is singularly fine. The original cannot be more expressive of the Scene. <7>
I have been greatly amazed by the shameful Review of your New Work. <8>
Lockhart <9> was here the day before I received my Copy of the Review, <10> otherwise I would have remonstrated against such injustice.
Believe me to be Dear Sir Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
St Leonards College
St Andrews
Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Although WHFT modestly used the term calotype, Brewster and other close friends chose to honour the name of the inventor, in parallel with the Daguerreotype.
2. Smith, Elder & Company, printers & publishers, London.
3. Seat of the Kinnaird family, in the Carse of Gowrie, Perthshire, erected from 1807.
4. William Francis Spencer Ponsonby, Lord de Mauley (1787–1855).
5. Hon. Frances Anne Georgina Kinnaird, née Ponsonby (1817-1910).
6. George William Fox Kinnaird, 9th Baron Kinnaird, 1st Baron Kinnaird of Rossie (1807-1878); scientist and land reformer.
7. This was almost certainly WHFT's rendition of a "Neapolitan Conveyance," itself most likely a copy in oils, which is still preserved in the family collection. Schaaf 377. It is reproduced in Larry J. Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pl. 74.
8. John Wilson Croker's review of Talbot’s WHFT, English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847), The Quarterly Review, v. 81, September 1847, pp. 500–525. WHFT replied strongly - see Doc. No: 06078. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Irish-born, was a Tory MP from 1807 to 1832 and Secretary of the Admiralty from 1810 to 1830. As an author, he was noted for his virulent reviews in The Quarterly Review as much as for his 1831 edition of Boswell's Live of Johnson.
9. John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854), son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott; editor of The Quarterly Review 1825–1853.
10. Sc. The Quarterly Review, a Tory periodical published by John Murray (1808–1892), London publisher.