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Lacock Abbey
Sunday May 22
My dear Father,
I have to thank you for two letters, and a five pound note, & a pamphlet on Photography received as also a book on Geology, which I will read. Is it a present? I hope Mamma 1 has received 2 letters I sent her. The 2nd I sent last night. Yesterday I played cricket at Corsham v. Bowood. & it was cooler luckily than it had been some days before. My Fannin [sic] plates are yet waiting an opportunity of being taken. I am probably going to drive over to Bradenstoke on Tuesday with Mr Palmer who has those two useful things a carriage & a horse that will go. I don’t think the reverent gentleman can be over burdened with work for he seems to have a good deal of leisure. He and his wife are living in Lacock village till their parsonage is completed near the top of the hill, the which parsonage has risen a few feet above the ground [illegible deletion] and is expected to be pretty being f built apparently of much the same stone as Mr Merewethers 2 house, which is bound thereabouts. Mr Nicholl 3 is said to be a cricketer but I don’t know if the statement rests on good authority. I am going to see how much damage the white horse has done to the old fencing. I think that with regard to the building of the hall & dining room, the dining room must be put set down as later than 1732 on the authority of Bucks 4 view, but it is not impossible that the hall was built first, Perhaps John Ivory Talbot 5 did not build the dining room. I have just glanced at the pamphlets pamphlet on photography , which you sent. The prints especially are in a are [sic] good prints which is sufficient to shew that the negative when intensified was fit for printing, but you would have preferred a comparative experiment. I should think that probably the process was only applicable to wet collodion & would not help me in the Fannin process but it could be tried. It has the merit of simplicity, except the Covering process, for I don’t know if it is easy to apply the fumes of iodine. Photography seems rather active at present, & more inclined than usual to throw out a few new branches. I am glad to hear that the carriage has been sold, & that Aleck 6 has got a place for the summer. Pul Pullen 7 tells me that shortly before the horses came South, the grey horse ran
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H Fox Talbot Esq
13 Gt Stuart St
Edinburgh
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