Lacock Abbey
Oct. 18/39
Dear Sir
I have requested Messrs Hammersley <1> to pay you £5·18·8 for the silver plates, which I am much obliged to you for ordering so speedily – The weather at present is quite adverse to photographic experiments – I do not quite understand that part of your letter <2> where you say that you have made some good drawings but as yet have not been able to succeed in preserving them properly. If you are speaking of the Daguerotype, I thought they needed no preserving, beyond a glass covering. I purchased from Mr Cooper <3> a D.type view of the church in Langham Place. <4> It is very odd that by candlelight the picture is scarcely visible; do you find that? Another thing I cannot account for is a kind of irradiation as if the Moon was behind the church; As the picture is perfect in other respects, I don’t know why it should differ from nature in this particular.
Since M. Donné <5> has succeeded in engraving the silver plates, the next thing to know is whether his engravings approach the perfection of the originals or fall far short of them. Has anything more transpired on the subject?
Believe me Yours very Truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Hammersley & Company, bankers, London.
2. See Doc. No: 03957.
3. John Thomas Cooper (1790–1854), chemist.
4. This whole plate view of All Souls Church (where WHFT was married), Langham Place, London, was likely taken by Monsieur Ste. Croix in the month of September and sold through Cooper. [Fox Talbot Collection, the British Library, no. 865].
6. Alfred Donné (1801–1878), microscopist.