Malta
4th April
My dear Sir/
I have been round Sicily & 15 days in Pompeii where I expended all my paper that was available such a very large proportion of the last sent being full of spots like that in the negative sent of Cathedral in Palermo I obtained however some very good at Pompeii but you see how I fail in copying them they become so red & indistinct in the first warm water then so faint in the hyp. sulph. bath -<1> tho always looking perfect in copying press till the fixing process commences. With all your very kind advice, & liberality in presents of paper &c I find the art too expensive for me & must try to succeed only in the copying those I have. When at Grigenti,<2> Etna &c I had not a single sheet of iodised paper <3> available tho I had my camera nor could I after many trials prepare a sheet there tho at Pompeii I succeeded with some 10 in a row of my own preparing, a very small proportion of those I attempted to form. but Cowderoys <4> old paper, as far as it went, was excellent: nothing could be better
I long since wrote to Cowderoy (when I sent to him the amt of his bill) for a bottle of the prepared mixture with which he takes his copies but I have not heard from him since: nor received any of Mt Etna, or other copies sent to him last Ocbr Your sun however is not so bright as ours. He could always forward any thing, twice a month, thro my brother <5> as I directed him.
I collected a few seeds <6> for you of which I hastily enclose a sample as the sooner they are in the ground the better more shall follow I am but just returned &
[illegible] my dear Sir, [illegible]
Geo W Bridges
H. Fox Talbot Esqre
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Wiltshire
England
via Southampton
Notes:
1. Hypo sulphite or hypo.
2. Agrigento, Sicily.
3. Paper prepared for making calotypes.
4. Benjamin Cowderoy (18121904), land agent in Reading; business manager for WHFT; later a politician in Australia.
5. John W. Bridges.
6. See Doc. No: 05946.