Lacock
8 Jany 48
Malone
It is true that Mrs Henneman’s illness <1> unfits Mr Henneman <2> for serious Consideration of future arrangements. At the same time you must be aware that time moves on, and that it is now some months since I first proposed the matter to his and your Consideration. The London season is coming on, being the most likely time for me to meet with some capitalist or other enterprising person who would take this speculation off my hands on reasonable and fair terms. It is very inconvenient for me to have the responsibility of an establishment which my not living in London renders it difficult for me to superintend. I have tried the experiment of having a Secretary to control and examine all accounts and expenditures and I did not find it of much use.
At present Mr Telfer <3> writes me that he could have sent me an account of all money received and spent since he quitted my service but that he was unable to do so, having called in Regent St and found that the books were not “posted up”– I must therefore request you to have them posted up, and then to send me a statement of all monies actually received and actually disbursed for the month commencing 11 December (Saturday) and ending on 8 January (Saturday) –
Have you tried a positive process, positive process of the one which I described in the specification of my patent of the year 1841? <4> It answers beautifully for engravings &c but is too slow for portraits, requiring 10 times as long as ye usual process – I will show you the manipulation of it if you will promise to take pains in the execution of a series of specimens done in that manner. – I recommend to your special notice what I think would turn out to be one of the most popular and Creative branches of the art the copying on an enlarged scale of Daguerreotype to note at foot of this page" name="ooo06084-back" href="#ooo06084"><6> You have an excellent camera made on purpose by Ross <7> – Why not position yourself in this manipulation?
You have [letter incomplete]
Notes:
1. Mrs Sarah Henneman, first m Price ( ca.1811–1848), housemaid at Lacock Abbey, wife of Nicolaas Henneman (1813–1898), Dutch, active in England; WHFT’s valet, then assistant; photographer, died in March. [See Doc. No: 06117].
2. Nicolaas Henneman (1813–1898), Dutch, active in England; WHFT’s valet, then assistant; photographer.
3. Tobias S Telfer, assistant in Henneman’s Regent St, London, establishment.
4. This was WHFT’s calotype patent, no. 8842, titled simply Photographic Pictures. In a second part he described direct positive paper process, employing chemistry closely related to the calotype – its use was never widespread.
5. There are numerous examples of paper negatives and prints of daguerreotypes, many of them enlarged, in the Fox Talbot Collection in the British Library and at the NMeM, Bradford. These appear to have all been made from negatives, rather than by the direct positive process suggested here.
6. Andrew Ross (1798–1859), London optician & author.