London
15 June 1840
Dear Sir
I have read your memoir <1> with great interest, and will send you some remarks as soon as I find a leisure moment. I enclose a few photographs. There are 100 Daguerre pictures on view at the Polytechnic. <2> Some of the localities are interesting (Rome & Naples) some are very well executed, but others are not.
Believe me Yours most truly
H.F. Talbot
Notes:
1. John Frederick William Herschel, ‘On the Chemical Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Preparations of Silver and Other Substances, Both Metallic and Non-metallic, and on Some Photographic Processes,’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1840, pp. 1–59.
2. This is probably a reference to the exhibition at the Polytechic Institute, London, of daguerreotypes by Noel Paymal Lerebours (1807–1873), optician, of Lerebours & Secretan, Paris, and possibly some other artists.
3. WHFT was seemingly unconcerned about physical damage to his photographs. Constance chastised him for folding some of his negatives before posting because these creases showed up in the prints. His sister pointed out that “the less you double them up the better – you might send them between two cards” (advice he steadfastly ignored!). See letter from Caroline Mt. Edgcumbe to Lady Elisabeth Feilding, 4 November 1843, LA43-85, Fox Talbot Collection, the British Library.