2 Albert Terrace
Feb 4/54
Dear Sir
In looking over my papers, now that I have a little leisure to attend to my own affairs I find a note from you which ought to have been earlier answered.
Most likely you will have received the information which you wrote for, as immediately on receipt of your note, I sent to the man who wanted your pictures, desiring him to send you the account of expense &c Wanting however personally to pay my respects to you I did not write & so have been involuntarily wanting in proper attention to your communication
I trust that a sufficient excuse for this oversight will be found in the constant distraction caused by the necessity of attending to a multiplicity of small & confusing details connected with the exhibition in Suffolk St & the affairs of the Society. 1
Your will have seen by the works shown in our exhibition that we have not been standing still during the last year & that the different applications of your discovery are being most skilfully practised. I feel however in my own experience the great necessity there is for a surer method than the usual one of producing positive copies
No great use can be made of the art until the experiments 2 wh. are making by yourself & Mr Niepce 3 come to a perfect result. If we could be sure that by the exercise of taste & watchfulness we could always produce in the usual way good positive pictures, of agreable tint & permanently fixed, this process of printing wd perhaps be no slower of or more difficult than the way in wh. proof impressions of good [illegible deletion] engraving are struck off, but at present the process of printing is uncertain both in its theory & its results
In the French experiments, the result obtained appears to be not the means of engraving by means of light, but a method of increasing the precision & lessening the duration of the work of the skilled engraver
I hope that the honour of finally solving this question will by your researches be won for the country.
It would be a rare good fortune for the same hand to have commenced & completed the structure of photographic Art.
I am Sir Yours obedly
Roger Fenton
H. F. Talbot Esq
[envelope:]
H. F. Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
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