Lacock Abbey,
30th April 1840
My Dear Sir
In enclose some photographs, <1> all done with the Camera. If they get crushed in the Post Office bags, they may easily be smoothed either by ironing, or by being left some hours in a press. The present weather is the finest and most settled, since the birth of Photography. The heat has likewise been excessive for the time of year. Whenever there comes a very bright day, it is as if nature supplied an infinite designing power, of which it is only possible to use an infinitesimal part. It is really wonderful to consider that the whole solar flood of light, should be endowed with so many complicated properties, which in a vast majority of instances must remain latent, since most of the rays pass away into space, without meeting with any object.
The positive photographic paper which you sent me made by a chemist in Devonport, <2> is interesting. Have you confirmed by experiment the great sensibility which he attributes to it? The chief defect (judging from these specimens) is that it does not attain perfect whiteness, but only advances one third of the way towards it. The effect of a landscape would therefore be very gloomy. I only received the first sheet of your paper form the printer. It interested me very much & I shall be happy to receive the entire. This is splendid weather for you on arriving at your new residence. <3> Hawkhurst sounds like a very pleasant rural retirement abounding in hawks and forest glades.
I have interrupted this letter several times to listen to a nightingale who is perched on a bust just outside my window.
Believe me to remain yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Enclosures not located.
2. Robert Hunt (1807–1887), scientist & photographic historian.
3. The Herschel family had left Slough to escape the bustle of the growing town, and found a house in an idyllic setting in Kent, which they then renamed ‘Collingwood’, it had previously been ‘Moorhouse’.