Dear Sir,
Since my Daughter <1> wrote this morning to Mrs Talbot, <2> we had a sail upon Derwent Water, and saw at a distance Barrow House <3> about which we made enquiry. The situation is singularly beautiful as the above Engraving will shew. Were you to take it for 6 weeks after the expiry of your present lease you would be able to get from it to the British Association <4> and would be able to return to it before ye six weeks were expired.
You have done so many fine things [in] Science, and have so many in an embryo state that I cannot help urging you to keep yourself in the active current of enquiry, by courting & yielding to all those impulses which are given by scientific associations, and by mixing largely with the cultivators of Science.
I see that you are gliding into that state of comfortable indolence into which I have almost sunk, tho' you have not the same excuse of age to offer as I have; and I am sure that I should pass into a state of absolute torpidity if I were not now and then raised by considerable intercourse with younger enquirers, and the occasional fact that some results to which I attach importance may be lost.
I am, Dear Sir Yours Most Truly
D Brewster
Keswick
June 7th 1850
Henry Fox Talbot Esqr
Windermere Lodge
Ambleside
Notes:
1. Margaret Maria (b. 1823), who became Mrs Gordon and published a memoir of her father: The Home Life of Sir David Brewster (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1869).
2. Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
3. The Talbots did indeed take Barrow House, on the east shore of Derwentwater about 2 miles south of Keswick, for July and August [and possibly September] 1850. See Doc. No: 06336.
4. The British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting was held in Edinburgh in 1850. See Doc. No: 06335.