My dear Henry
I send you the drawing made by Lady Augusta Fox <1> which you said you could copy or rather take off by sunlight. <2> I wish you would try & if it succeeds make two or three of them I should like to send her back a ditto of her own drawing copied by the Fountain of Light itself –
Yesterday there came to the office a Col. Graydon of the Royl. Engineers, who is I believe a very scientific officer – he has been a good deal on the disputed Boundary Line in America <3> & has written a short Memorandum upon it for Government – in which he states that a part of the difficulty lies in the faulty laying down of what is asserted to be the Meridian line, which is not only no Meridian but crooked in itself. He is to bring some day a Machine which he has invented for laying down & correcting Meridians, which as he described it is used with a theodolite & telescope so as to assist greatly in mapping a country correctly.
Do you think that Photography could be made to assist in marking upon paper the instantaneous effect or result of any observation so as to be of any use?
Yr Aff
W F Strangways
Notes:
1. Mary Augusta Fox, née Coventry (1812-1889), Lady Holland.
2. A reference to WHFT's photogenic drawing.
3. Colonel George Graydon (d. before 1852), whose 1825 'Celestial Compass' was highly respected. In the spring of 1839, a dispute broke out over interpretation of the Treaty of 1783, establishing the border between Maine (US) and New Brunswick (Canada), important for the timber rights. This, combined with Strangway's primitive understanding of WHFT's new art, almost certainly dates the letter to 1839.
4. In Kent.