Finding Aid, §4 · flagged for the record
Cataloguer's Open Questions
The following points remain unresolved on the evidence of the items themselves. They are set down here for the record, not settled by this companion, and not settled by the Finding Aid either. Where the archive itself does not know, neither does this site.
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01
The Treherne connection
The relationship, if any, between Miss Agnes M. Treherne, Hon. Secretary to the Committee, and Mr. Aldous Treherne, F.R.A.S., who appears in the Committee Correspondence endorsing the editorial decision on the refraction section, is not stated in any catalogued item. The two share a surname, and the Correspondence alone among the Committee's papers gives Mr. Treherne a voice — but no document specifies whether or how the two are connected.
See Item /5 → -
02
The anonymous subscriber
The identity of the anonymous English subscriber to whom the stela was consigned in 1909 has not been established from any material in this archive. The Sealed Dossier records only that consignment was made through an intermediary firm of solicitors, Grindlay & Holt, without a named principal.
See Item /4 → -
03
Bramhall's squeeze
The present whereabouts of Prof. Bramhall's original squeeze of the stela's lower register — the working object underlying both his memorandum and Plate XI — are not recorded in any item in this archive and have not been traced.
See Item /3 → -
04
The dossier's own date
The date at which the Sealed Dossier was compiled, and the date at which it was recovered from the Director's private papers and added to this archive, are both unknown. The item is undated internally save for the dates of its individual enclosures, which range from May to July 1909.
See Item /4 → -
05
The unaccounted stretch
Between the unsupported 1930s trade-press rumor and the flood at Depot 4 on the night of 14–15 January 1954, no instrument of transfer, insurance schedule, customs entry, or correspondence covering the bow's crate has been located. The lacuna is reported as a lacuna, not resolved as knowledge.
See the Provenance Table → -
06
“The other one”
What the fourth line's phrase means by “the other one” is not explained anywhere in the archive. It is recorded, pencilled and unsigned, in the margin of the working print — and nowhere else.
Visit the Instrument Room → -
07
Cordelia's “different attitude”
Cordelia Ravensworth's private note — that the bow, for one lamplit moment, seemed to lie “in the other posture” than the one she found it in, before she set the impression aside as tiredness and bad light — is recorded only as her own passing observation. It is neither corroborated nor explained anywhere else in the archive.
See Item /6 → -
08
Ravensworth & Ravensworth
The precise family relationship between Edmund A. Ravensworth and Cordelia Ravensworth is not stated in any item catalogued here beyond the Director's own covering note identifying her as “my cousin.” The two share a surname and an evident closeness of correspondence; no document specifies the connection further.
See Item /4 → -
09
The interval's cover date
The cover of the Papers of the Interval reads 1911–1954, while its first reproduced warehouse entry is dated 3 December 1910 and the Finding Aid describes the underlying papers as 1910–1954. The discrepancy is preserved as part of the received item; no correction or explanation appears in the set.
See Item /7 →
The list records what the papers themselves decline to say, even after the available records have been set beside one another.
Read what the modern examination settles — and what it cannot →