| Description | Written from 10, Porchester Square, Hyde Park, W.
Regrets he has been somewhat long in replying to Gregory's letter, but the delay was unavoidable as he had to await Murray's return to England and since then there has been some slight further delay, owing to .Murray's being unwell.
He tackled Markham about the pendulum matter. Markham's reply was that the statements in Gregory's letter were no doubt perfectly accurate, but he lost sight of the business when he handed everything over to Scott in December 1900. He remembered however that Gregory had told him that the plans of setting the pendulums in Melbourne was given up, and when he saw Scott about it last May, Scott told him that it was decided to take out the pendulum at Kew. It was in consequence of this that Markham made the statement in his address that "the pendulum observations will be taken with an instrument supplied in this country".
In view of this statement by Markham, Kempe thought it necessary to wait until Murray returned to see whether he could throw any more light on the matter . Murray wrote as follows "About May last I asked Captain Scott about the Melbourne pendulums, and he told me it had been decided not to take them. I never doubted that this decision had been come to in concurrence with Gregory - in fact I fancied (pure fancy however) that some difficulty of manufacture had probably come in the way. I know how sensitive Captain Scott was to offending any donor, how supersensitive he was as to possibly offending Gregory, and I am certain that he would never have come to such a decision without some misunderstanding. All Shackleton recalls agrees with my statement. He says - early in the year Captain Scott told him that it had been decided to give up the Melbourne pendulums. My theory is that some letter of Gregory's has been misunderstood. It is the very last thing I could imagine Scott doing without his concurrence."
From all this it seemed to Kempe that there must have been some misunderstanding and that Markham's speech was due to what Scott told him. He hopes Gregory may have had some opportunity of dicussing this matter with Bernacchi when he was at Melbourne, and that some arrangement may have been come to with regard to his Melbourne pendulums. Of course if any useless expense has been incurred by the Observatory owing to any fault here the question of making good any loss should be considered by those ultimately responsible, so perhaps Gregory could write to Kempe again about this.
Some amendments in pencil. |