B Museum
Dec. 20/61
My dear Mr Talbot
I owe you many apologies for not having answered your last letter before. I fully intended so doing but having been very busy have put this off from day to day.
I think we should be very glad to have your promised translation of Sir Thomas Phillipps’s Cylinder – and if you would send it to me before Jan 9. I would communicate it to the Society on that Evening.
I have not seen anything of Sir H. Rawlinson for a long time, but Norris who was here the other day – tells me that he is hard at work again after a month’s rest in the autumn – I was very sorry not to be able to come and see you at Milburn [sic] Tower<1>, but though in Edinburgh for a day – I was only passing through – and my time was necessarily given to the friends I was with
Every sincerely yrs
W. S. W. Vaux
Notes:
1. Millburn Tower, Gogar, just west of Edinburgh; the Talbot family made it their northern home from June 1861 to November 1863. It is particularly important because WHFT conducted many of his photoglyphic engraving experiments there. The house had a rich history. Built for Sir Robert Liston (1742-1836), an 1805 design by Benjamin Latrobe for a round building was contemplated but in 1806 a small house was built to the design of William Atkinson (1773-1839), best known for Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford. The distinctive Gothic exterior was raised in 1815 and an additional extension built in 1821. Liston had been ambassador to the United States and maintained a warm Anglo-American relationship in the years 1796-1800. His wife, the botanist Henrietta Liston, née Marchant (1751-1828) designed a lavish American garden, sadly largely gone by the time the Talbots rented the house .