London
Monday 28th Jan.
My Dear Sir
I regret to learn that you are so much indisposed. This is our English Climate! after four years of an African sun it must prove a sad contrast indeed. I will come down by the 1 o’clock afternoon train if there is one on Friday next if not prevented by anything, & return to Town by one of the evening trains – My paper for the Royal Society <1> will be in the hands of the Secretary this afternoon.
Believe me Dear Sir Yours most truly
H.F. Talbot
P.S. Do you think you could furnish me with the proper curves for a Camera Obscura object glass, of two feet focus, not achromatic (since the violet rays only are active) but to combine if possible, the greatest diameter of object glass, with a tolerably flat field of view.
The Camera Obscura pictures which I will shew you are Lilliputian ones & require a lens to look at them – When first made they were extremely delicate but are now 3 years & a half old and I intend, as soon as the Sun acquires power in the Spring, to make a fresh lot of them, more worthy of being looked at.
Sir J. Herschel Bart
&c &c &c
Slough
Notes:
1. WHFT, Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s pencil. Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839 (London: R & J E Taylor, 1839). Read before the Royal Society 31 January.