My dear Henry
I have many thanks (long due) to give you for your Photogenics. <1> They show the art in progress & are much more minute than any which I have yet seen taken from Nature. The interior, with the bust on the table <2> is quite a picture –
Your Hermes <3> I shall get as soon as I get to London – thanks for telling me that it is ready – My sisters death, has obliged me to see less company than usual, – & I have had a little leisure to fumble amongst my Books – & I think I shall print what I have written. It is chiefly of local interest, but not entirely so: & if I am not ashamed of my work I will send you a copy –
I have had several lots of Orchidaceæ lately, & am almost at the end of my accommodation for them – I must build a House or take lodgings for them – My Love to Lily & Horatia, & Mrs Henry. <4> I hope her Health is not affected by the loss of her sister.
Yrs vy truly
C Lemon
Carclew. <5>
Decr 13.
Notes:
1. That is, photogenic drawings.
2. Probably ‘The Oriel Window at Lacock Abbey, with the bust of Patroclus’, Larry J Schaaf, Out of the Shadows; Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography (London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 90, Schaaf 2319.
3. WHFT, Hermes: or Classical and Antiquarian Researches, No. 2. (London: Longman, Orme, Green, Brown & Longman, 1839).
4. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773–1846), WHFT’s mother; Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister; Constance Talbot, née Mundy (1811–1880), WHFT’s wife.
5. Carclew, Cornwall, 3 mi N of Penryn: seat of Sir Charles Lemon.