Melbury <1>
13 Jany 1855
My dear Henry
I send you two or three seeds from N. America sent me by Emily Murray <2> – I can send a good many more without names if you like such hardy things. She has sent me two boxes of rarities all likely to be hardy but it is hard to say what most of them are.
A fine Osago [sic] orange – Diospyrus fruits – fern plants in very good condition – & some other sorts now planted at Abbotsbury <3> – I expect more from her when she gets to the South.
We had a nice visit from your Aunt Mary <4> – she is now at Penrice <5> where the children <6> have been ill & of course want her –
Yr A
W F S
I was not satisfied with the result of your trial – gain d’argument – perte de cause. <7>
Henry F. Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Melbury, Dorset: one of the Fox Strangways family homes; WHFT was born there.
2. Amelia ‘Emily’ Matilda Murray (1795–1884), author and Maid of Honor to Queen Victoria. Although a strong advocate in the Royal Court for the education of delinquent and abandoned children, she defended the institution of slavery in the American South after her travels there between July 1854 and October 1855. The publication of her memoir on this forced her resignation as Woman of the Bedchamber. Murray, Letters from the United States, Cuba, and Canada (London: J. W. Parker & Son, 1856).
3. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
4. Lady Mary Lucy Cole, née Strangways, first m. Talbot (1776–1855), WHFT’s aunt.
5. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
6. Children of her widowed son Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
7. ‘You win the argument but lose the case’, that is, ‘gain of the argument, loss of the case’. WHFT’s patent trial took place from Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 December 1854. In 1852 he had thrown open his photographic patents as far as amateur photography was concerned, though he retained them regarding professional portraiture. He won several injunctions against professional portrait-photographers who infringed them, and in 1854 he sought to obtain another against James Henderson, a London professional photographer who took portraits using the collodion process. However, in December of 1854, before the Henderson case was concluded, WHFT failed to obtain an injunction against another portrait-photographer, Martin Laroche, who, he claimed, had infringed two important elements of his patents. In the end, the court decided that WHFT was the true inventor of the calotype but that this did not extend to other negative-positive processes. [For an account of these significant cases, and the opposition to WHFT’s patents, see H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), pp. 198–209.]