The Postcard
An Emerald Series postcard that was designed and printed in Ireland.
The card was posted in Eastbourne using a ½d. stamp on Tuesday the 18th. June 1907. It was sent to:
Miss Day,
c/o J. Mantrill Esq.,
Howell Hill,
Ewell,
Surrey.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"June 18th.
Thought you would like
to have a P.C. from me.
I am having a very jolly
time & I see that old
Eastbourne is looking
just the same. I saw
Mrs. Stuart yesterday,
we are going out
together on Wednesday
afternoon.
With love from M. M."
Howell Hill
Howell Hill is a 5-hectare (12-acre) nature reserve east of Ewell in Surrey. It is owned by Surrey County Council and managed by the Surrey Wildlife Trust.
There are chalk spoil heaps on this calcareous grassland site. Around 260 species of flowering plants have been recorded, including mouse-eared hawkweed, kidney vetch, common spotted orchid, common knapweed, fragrant orchid and white helleborine orchid.
Cleopatra's Needle and the Sphinxes
Cleopatra's Needle is the popular name for each of a pair of ancient Egyptian obelisks re-erected in London and New York City in 1877 and 1881 respectively. The removal of the obelisks from Egypt was presided over by Isma'il Pasha, who had greatly indebted the Khedivate of Egypt during its rapid modernisation.
The London and New York needles were originally made in Heliopolis (modern Cairo) during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III.
More than 1,000 years later they were moved to the new Caesareum of Alexandria, which had been conceived by Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. They stood in Alexandria for almost two millennia.
-- The Sphinxes
Cleopatra's Needle is flanked by two faux-Egyptian sphinxes, designed by the English architect George John Vulliamy.
The sphinxes are cast in bronze, and bear hieroglyphic inscriptions that say "The good god, Thuthmosis III given life".
The sphinxes appear to be looking at the Needle rather than guarding it, due to the sphinxes' improper or backwards installation. The Embankment has other Egyptian flourishes, such as buxom winged sphinxes on the armrests of benches.
On the 4th. September 1917, during the Great War, a bomb from a German air raid landed near the needle. In commemoration of this event, the damage remains unrepaired to this day, and is clearly visible in the form of shrapnel holes and gouges on the right-hand sphinx. Restoration work was carried out in 2005.
-- Cleopatra's Needle
Cleopatra's Needle was presented to the United Kingdom in 1819 by the ruler of Egypt and Sudan, Muhammad Ali, in commemoration of the victories of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and Sir Ralph Abercromby at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.
Although the British government welcomed the gesture, it declined to pay to move the obelisk to London.
-- Transportation of the London Needle
The obelisk remained in Alexandria for 58 years until 1877, when Sir William James Erasmus Wilson, a distinguished anatomist and dermatologist, sponsored its transportation to London from Alexandria at a cost of some £10,000 (equivalent to over £1,000,000 in 2020).
It was dug out of the sand in which it had been buried for nearly 2,000 years, and was encased in a great iron cylinder, 92 feet (28 metres) long and 16 feet (4.9 metres) in diameter. It was built at the Thames Iron Works, shipped to Alexandria in separate pieces, and built around the obelisk.
The cylinder, named the Cleopatra, had a vertical stem and stern, a rudder, two bilge keels, a mast for balancing sails, and a deck house. It acted as a floating pontoon which was to be towed to London by the ship Olga.
The effort almost met with disaster on the 14th. October 1877, in a storm in the Bay of Biscay, when Cleopatra began wildly rolling, and became uncontrollable. The Olga sent out a rescue boat with six volunteers, but the boat capsized, and all six crew were lost – they are named on a bronze plaque attached to the foot of the needle's mounting stone.
Captain Booth of the Olga eventually managed to get his ship next to Cleopatra and rescued the six men on board it. Booth reported the Cleopatra "abandoned and sinking", but she stayed afloat, drifting in the Bay, until found four days later by Spanish trawler boats.
Cleopatra was then rescued by the Glasgow steamer Fitzmaurice and taken to Ferrol in Spain for repairs. The Master of the Fitzmaurice lodged a salvage claim of £5,000 which had to be settled before departure from Ferrol, but it was negotiated down and settled for £2,000.
The paddle tug Anglia, under the command of Captain David Glue, was then commissioned to tow the Cleopatra back to the Thames. Upon their arrival in the estuary on the 21st. January 1878, the school children of Gravesend were given the day off.
In the same year, Elbert E. Farman, the then-United States Consul General in Cairo secured the other needle for the United States – the needle was transported by Henry Honychurch Gorringe. It was placed in Central Park just outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Both Wilson and Gorringe published books commemorating the transportation of the Needles: Wilson wrote 'Cleopatra's Needle: With Brief Notes on Egypt and Egyptian Obelisks' (1877), and Gorringe wrote 'Egyptian Obelisks' (1885).
-- The Location of the London Needle
A wooden model of the obelisk had previously been placed outside the Houses of Parliament, but the location had been rejected, so the London needle was finally erected on the Victoria Embankment, which had been built a few years earlier in 1870, on the 12th. September 1878.
Alexander Stewart Herschel
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 18th. June 1907 was not a good day for Alexander Stewart Herschel, because he died on that day.
Alexander Stewart Herschel, DCL, FRS, who was born in February 1836, was a British astronomer.
Although much less well known than his grandfather William Herschel or his father John Herschel, he did pioneering work in meteor spectroscopy.
He also worked on identifying comets as the source of meteor showers.
The Herschel graph, the smallest non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graph, is named after Herschel due to his pioneering work on Hamilton's Icosian game.
-- Alexander Stewart Herschel - The Early Years
The second son and fifth child of Sir John and Lady Margaret Herschel's twelve children, Alexander was born on the 5th. February 1836 at Feldhausen, near Cape Town, South Africa, where they had been since 1834 for Sir John's astronomical work.
His older brother was Sir William Herschel, 2nd. Baronet, and his younger brother John Herschel the Younger was born in 1837.
The family left for England on the 11th. March 1838, returning a few weeks before Queen Victoria's coronation.
After some private education, Alexander was sent to Clapham Grammar School in London in 1851, of which Charles Pritchard, who would later become Savilian Professor of Astronomy, was headmaster.
In 1855, Alexander proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as twentieth wrangler in 1859. While an undergraduate he helped James Clerk Maxwell with his illustrations of the mechanics of rotation by means of the apparatus known as "the devil on two sticks."
-- Alexander Stewart Herschel's Career
From Cambridge Herschel passed in 1861 to the Royal School of Mines in London, and began the observation of meteors which he continued to the end of his life. He wrote, chiefly on meteorological subjects, papers for the British Meteorological Society, and between 1863 and 1867, he contributed many articles to the Intellectual Observer.
From 1866 to 1871, Herschel was lecturer on natural philosophy, and professor of mechanical and experimental physics in the Andersonian University of Glasgow.
From 1871 to 1886, he was the first professor of physics and experimental philosophy in the University of Durham College of Science, Newcastle upon Tyne.
At the Durham College, Herschel provided, chiefly by his personal exertions, apparatuses for the newly installed laboratory, some being made by his own hands. When the college migrated as Armstrong College to new buildings, the new Herschel Physical Laboratory was named after him.
Herschel made accurate records of his observations of shooting stars in a long series of manuscript notebooks. He also accomplished important work in the summation, reduction, and discussion of the results of other observers with whom he corresponded in all parts of the world.
With Robert P. Greg he formed extensive catalogues of the radiant points of meteor streams, the more important of these being published in the Reports of the British Association for 1868, 1872, and 1874.
A table of the radiant points of comets computed by Herschel alone is in the Report for 1875. He was reporter to the committee of the British Association on the 'observations of luminous meteors,' and from 1862 to 1881 drew up annually complete reports of the large meteors observed, and of the progress of meteoric science.
For the British Association (1874–81) he prepared reports of a committee, consisting of himself, his colleague at Newcastle, George A. Lebour, and John T. Dunn, which was formed to determine the thermal conductivities of certain rocks.
For the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, he prepared the annual reports on meteoric astronomy each February from 1872 to 1880, and contributed many other important papers to the Notices.
In a June 1872 paper, Alexander showed the connection between meteors (the Andromedids) and comets (Biela's Comet), and he predicted the shower which recurred on the 27th. November of that year.
Besides meteoric astronomy, Herschel was interested in many branches of physical science, and became a member of the Physical Society of London in 1889 and of the Society of Arts in 1892.
He contributed frequently to Nature, an article on "The Matter of Space" in 1883 being specially noteworthy.
Alexander worked much with photography, and in 1893 the Amateur Photographic Association presented an enlarged carbon print portrait of Alexander Herschel to the South Kensington Museum for the British Museum Portrait Gallery.
Herschel became fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1867, and on the 12th. June 1884 was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, an honour already conferred upon his grandfather, his father, and his younger brother John.
In 1886, he gave up his professorship, and was made Doctor of Civil Law of Durham University.
-- Alexander Stewart Herschel's Personal Life and Death
In 1888, with other members of his family, Alexander reoccupied the house in Slough, now called Observatory House, where his grandfather, Sir William Herschel, had lived.
Here he resided until his death, absorbed in study, but late in life he made a journey to Spain in order to observe the solar eclipse of 1905.
Alexander died unmarried aged 71 at Observatory House on the 18th. June 1907, and was laid to rest in the Church of St. Laurence, Upton-cum-Chalvey, in the chancel where his grandfather lies.
