R Hunt Esq
Lacock
24 March/52
Dr Sir
The only proposal I have to make is, that a Committee of five gentlemen should be named by the meeting, whom on my return to Town in the course of 2 or 3 days I would meet & have no doubt we should be able to arrange everything in a satisfactory manner –
I have already stated to you that my desire would be to give a free permission to the members of the Society <1> to exercise the art for their amusement, they on their part acknowledging my rights as an inventor and patentee.
There is another [illegible deletion] novelty which might be connected with the Society, but on the other hand it might be undertaken as quite a separate concern, that is the formation of a Photographic Gallery, the exhibitors to be members of some Club or Society, and to have the right of [illegible deletion] selling the pictures they exhibited as members of the association.
Many persons are desirous of purchasing beautiful specimens for instance foreign photographs, but have not the means, except by parting with their own, & it is not always easy to effect an exchange.
Yours truly,
H.F. Talbot
Private
I assure you that I have the best wishes for the formation of a prosperous society, but it appears to me that there is not much reciprocity of feeling on the part of those who would naturally take a leading part in it. However I have done all that lay in my power.
[On verso in the hand of Robert Hunt:]
Hy Fox Talbot
In a separate column on verso:]
Mr Berger <2>
Mr Foster <3>
Mr Fenton <4>
Mr Fry <5>
Sir W Newton <6>
R Hunt
Notes:
1. The Photographic Club had been formed in 1847. In 1851 it was proposed to put the Club on to the more formal footing of a photographical society ‘for the disinterested advancement of the Photographic Science’. This raised the question of WHFT’s patent, many members feeling that his process should be given to the world. [See H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of photography and man of science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), p. 188.]. Talbot’s relations with the Society never became really happy. It subsequently became the Royal Photographic Society.
2. Frederic W. Berger.
3. Peter Le Neve Foster (1809–1879), photographer & microscopist.
4. Roger Fenton (1819–1869), photographer & lawyer.
5. Peter Wickens Fry (1772–1860), photographer and founding member of the Photographic Society of London.
6. Sir William Newton (1785–1869), miniature painter and photographer.