Norwich
Sunday August 23rd/68
My dear Father,
I received your letter yesterday. I did get Rosamonds <1> letter when I was in Wales.
Grove <2> does not appear to have been in Norwich till yesterday or the day before when I found him at the Reception room and gave him your letter of instruction. He said he was sorry you had not come, also particularly that you couldn’t be president next year. – He introduced me to Professor Tyndall. <3>
Dr Hookers <4> discourse address seemed to me to be good, but it was very difficult to hear him and at times impossible as he spoke feebly and the hall was very large. – I have a printed copy of it. – On Friday evening I heard a discourse by Fergusson <5> on the circular Buddhist buildings of India, & in their connection or mixture with tre tree and serpent worship, (very interesting)
We had a soire on Thursday evening at St Andrews hall. The nave of the Old Blackfriars church, <6> (refreshments being in a bit of the cloisters. It was very crowded and rather hot) saw.
Saw spectrum of of a solution of a salt of magnesium potassium (I think). – Comp combustion of magnesium wire through a microscope. – Absorption of hydrogen by Palladium. –.
Some good examples of [illegible deletion] objects viewed by polarised light. – A good magneto electric medium and a lot of other things.
but Coats and umbrellas could not be found on departure and many must have lost them.
I doubt if – I shall go to the next soire, and if I do I shall not take coat or umbrella.
– Excuse bad writing, under difficulties. –.
I cant enumerate every thing. I think of running down to Yarmouth at two and returning in the evening if the day holds up. – I fancy that Sir George Young <7> was at Cambridge with me.
There is a very fine local museum <8> here, with good collection of fossils. – I heard a paper of Professor Willis’, <9> on the water supply of the monastery of Canterbury in the middle ages, made out from a 2 maps of or plans of the 12th century and inspection and a plan of the existing buildings. – I also heard yesterday a paper by Siemens <10> on his gas P apparatus for puddling iron. –
I shall return to Lacock probably on Friday next. If not I shall arrive on Saturday. I shall write to John Wilkins <11> to tell him to meet me…
Your affect son
Charles
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Rosamond Constance ‘Monie’ Talbot (1837–1906), artist & WHFT’s 2nd daughter.
2. Sir William Robert Grove (1811–1896), scientist. [See Doc. No: 09380 and Doc. No: 09391].
3. John Tyndall (1820–1893), natural philosopher, succeeded Prof Michael Faraday (1791–1867), scientist as scientific adviser to Trinity House and Board of Trade, 1866.
4. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), botanist, traveller; succeeded his father as director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
5. James Fergusson (1808–1886), architectural writer; in 1867 he was engaged in collecting casts and photographs for the Indian Court of the International Exhibition in Paris of that year. He also prepared, under the authority of the secretary of state for India, a major work entitled, Fire and Serpent Worship; or Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India in the First and Fourth Centuries after Christ, from the Sculptures of the Buddhist Topes at Sanchi and Amravati, which was published by the India Office in 1868.
6. A civic hall since the mid-16th c., this was once the Friary Church of the Blackfriars of St Dominic, begun 1326, burned in 1413 and finished 1470.
7. Sir George Young (1837–1930), Secretary to the Factory and Workshops Acts Commission, J P for Berks; organised the first exploration of the Kaieteur Falls, Guyana.
8. Norwich Museum was founded in 1824 as a scientific collection only, but was opened to the public from 1845.
9. Robert Willis (1800–1875), professor of mechanism and archæologist; The Architectural History of the Conventual Buildings of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury (London: Tayler & Company, 1869).
10. Charles William Siemens (1823–1883) invented a regenerative process for making steel in 1868, it was later perfected as the Siemens-Martin process.
11. John Wilkins, son of George Wilkins, employed at Lacock ca.1867–1869.