Map of a Nation (43 page)

T
ENSION HAD BEEN
brewing under the surface of the Shetlands
project
since its conception. During the Paris–Greenwich triangulation of the
1780s, the British and French parties had each asserted the excellence of their respective national instruments, Jesse Ramsden’s theodolite and Jean Charles de Borda’s repeating circle. Thirty years later, the same antagonism affected the Shetland geodesists. From his first glimpse of the zenith sector, Mudge had felt its superiority to the French geodesists’ equivalent. ‘The French multiplying-circle surely cannot be put on a footing’ with the zenith sector, he cried. ‘It can do nothing more than … approximate to the
perfection
, which a few Observations, made with such an Instrument as the one I am using, gives.’ During the Shetlands measurement each party refused to renounce their own instrument, and the trip therefore acquired added
significance
as a chance to test the relative merits and accuracy of the British zenith sector and French repeating circle. ‘Any opportunity of bringing these two instruments into direct comparison with each other would be hailed with satisfaction by astronomers,’ an onlooker recorded. ‘Something in that respect was anticipated from the co-operation of the French and English geodesists, during the year 1817.’

But the friction surrounding the instruments paled beside the personal animosity between Colby and Biot. The two men’s hostility was fuelled by the presence of Mudge’s friend, the mathematician Olinthus Gregory, who ‘attached himself to Captain Colby’ after Mudge’s exit. A histrionic and
petulant
, but fiendishly hard-working man, Gregory had leapt to the defence of Mudge when Rodriguez had attacked his skill and honesty back in 1812, in his critique of the meridian arc measurement. In melodramatic tones Gregory had accused Rodriguez of corrupting science’s impartiality with jingoism, by aiming at ‘the depression of English (and perhaps other) ingenuity and
exertion
, in order to the undue exaltation of the French scientific character’. He had even criticised the editors of the Royal Society’s journal for agreeing to print this ‘attempt by
a
foreigner
to cast discredit upon a great national
undertaking
’. Thomas Thomson, a chemist and the editor of a scientific journal called
The Annals of Philosophy
, had attempted to mediate between Gregory and Rodriguez, and had reprimanded the former for employing in his
censure
an unprofessional tone, a ‘style quite new to astronomical discussion’. Thomson’s rebuke had unleashed from Gregory a torrent of ‘low abuse’ regarding Thomson’s unpatriotic feelings, his lack of scientific credibility, his
parasitic dependence on the Royal Society and his attempted suppression of Gregory’s own work. Finally Thomson had struck back: ‘Has [Gregory] made any addition to any branch of science whatever?’ he demanded. ‘I myself never heard of any of his investigations or discoveries.’

33. Olinthus Gregory by Thomson, after Derby, 1823.

 

When Gregory was introduced to Biot in Scotland in 1817, the meeting sparked memories of the hostile feelings of this earlier squabble. Biot was a close colleague and particularly good friend of Rodriguez, and Colby’s apparent intimacy with Gregory, Rodriguez’s enemy, earned both Britons the French astronomer’s derision. Colby had further reason to dislike Biot as it was rumoured that, while in Scotland, he had penned an article for the
Caledonian Mercury
that expressed opinions highly critical of the Ordnance Survey. Furthermore, Gregory whispered in Colby’s ear,
Biot was
an atheist
. Richard Zachariah Mudge regretted the antagonism that was splitting the French and British surveying parties in two and conjectured that ‘had the ice once been melted between Biot and Colby, they would
have mutually valued and respected each other. But it was fated that an eternal frost would separate them.’

In July 1817 these warring factions boarded a boat at Aberdeen and set sail for the Shetlands. Colby was struck by the islands’ exoticism and described them as ‘the rocks of the ancient Thule’. When their boat finally docked on the Shetlands’ mainland, Colby and Gregory instantly set off on foot for Lerwick, at the former’s characteristic hurtling pace. Biot found himself left to make his own way and was incensed by the discourtesy. However, the geodesists appear to have temporarily put their animosity behind them, and soon both parties were conducting observations on the island of Unst, the most northerly point of the British Isles. But this semblance of amicability did not last. Colby swiftly and rather arbitrarily decided that Unst was not suitable for his purposes and removed the British surveying team to Balta, an uninhabited island off Unst’s east coast, ‘where there were just tents sufficient to shelter it and its inhabitants from the weather’. Biot was quite happy with his spot on Unst and declared himself flabbergasted by Colby’s erratic and arrogant behaviour. He refused to move.

The surveying parties thus went their separate ways. And with the split came the failure of one of the chief ambitions of the Shetlands
measurement
, the comparison of the French repeating circle and the British zenith sector. ‘One great disadvantage attending your removal from M. Biot is that a comparison cannot be made between the results of the observations … with the sector and circle of repetition,’ Mudge wrote disapprovingly to Colby. ‘This is a very great misfortune.’ Rumours of Colby and Biot’s spat gradually made their way to London and Joseph Banks intepreted the
separation
as Biot’s admission of the French instrument’s inferiority, commenting that he could ‘see no Reason’ why Biot shouldn’t join Colby on Balta, ‘but the fear that he Should be obligd to Confess that Ramsdens Zenith Sector is a Capital instrument’.

Biot became happier the moment he was free of the British surveying team. He found Unst a friendly and helpful place, and a young carpenter who expressed interest in Biot’s endeavours was persuaded to act as his assistant for two months. Thomas Edmondston was the owner of Buness House, a
sixteenth
-century whitewashed cottage that is still owned by his descendants,
on the island’s east coast, overlooking the sea. Edmondston was fascinated by natural philosophy and he gladly opened his home and grounds to the French astronomer. Biot lodged with him for weeks and set up his pendulum
apparatus
in Edmondston’s sheepfold and his repeating circle in the magnificent and exposed garden. Edmondston’s ‘warm hospitalities made up for a chilly climate,’ he wrote. Despite his falling out with Colby, Biot was able to report to his French colleagues: ‘I was very much helped in my operations. I found everywhere the most generous attentiveness, and the greatest freedom from those antisocial prejudices, which perhaps often have less force in reality than in the minds of those who imagine them.’ Upon his return to Paris, Biot ensured that his host on Unst was formally thanked. Edmondston replied that ‘the hope of facilitating even in the most subordinate degree, the
advancement
of such enlightened, & benevolent views, and the happiness of possessing the friendship of so amiable and excellent a character as Mr Biot, were in themselves far more than sufficient reward for the inconsiderable attention which I could have it in my power to show to him.’

The Shetlands measurement had been intended to mark the restoration of amicable communication between French and British scientists in the wake of Waterloo.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
had commented that ‘it is
pleasing
to observe the perfect concurrence of two great nations in an operation for the benefit of science’. But the project had quickly descended into
xenophobic
and childish feuding: a ‘French Disconnection’ if you will, which formed an unedifying follow-up to the successful Anglo-French collaboration of the 1780s. Although the British and French geodesists both completed their independent observations satisfactorily and the arc was extended to the Shetlands, the proper comparison of the repeating circle and zenith sector never happened. By the end of his stay, Biot could not even bring himself to mention Colby’s name. He had never got the hang of its spelling anyway, referring to the hot-tempered map-maker as Kirby or Kolby in
correspondence
home. Once he returned to France he entirely omitted Colby’s name from his published account of his expedition and simply denoted him as ‘one of the officers serving under [Mudge]’. Mudge himself was dismayed at the furore that had erupted after his departure. He mourned that, ‘as the queen who gave up Calais said that “that word would be found written on her
heart”, I may say that Shetland will be written on mine, for I have never ceased to deplore, with the keenest recollection, the happiness that I thought before me nipped in the bud, and I sent home, as it were, invalided’.

 

W
ILLIAM
M
UDGE’S HEALTH
never fully recovered after his exit from the Shetlands debacle. The following year, he excused himself from the Ordnance Survey to recuperate in France for two months, and shortly
afterwards
decided to move from central London to Croydon. But the pressure of directing the Ordnance Survey refused to lessen. Although he resolved to spend the Christmas of 1819 with his family, he found himself yet again
confined
to London. It was to be his last Christmas.

In January 1820, while examining at the East India Company’s college at Addiscombe, Mudge suffered a severe attack of internal inflammation. He had long been ‘subject to the
hyp
, or something like it’, referring to hypochondria, but now his worries were materialising in real physical
symptoms
. His beloved daughter Jenny rushed to his bedside. The following month Mudge’s condition had deterioriated further and she wrote to her aunt’s husband, Mudge’s great friend Richard Rosdew, asking him to visit immediately. The map-maker rallied for a while, and in March Mudge considered himself well enough to supervise Addiscombe’s examinations. But the effort was too much. On 29 March, he became severely unwell. He never recovered and on 16 April 1820 this diligent, kind, rather depressive man died at the relatively young age of fifty-eight. The Interior Surveyor Robert Dawson mourned his death. ‘We are left in sorrow and reflection,’ he grieved. ‘The General’s kind and amiable disposition, his mildness of temper, gentleness of command, and many marks of attachment and regard given to me particularly, and evidently always ready for his Friends, have created and nourished a Love for him in my heart, which will ever be the first impulse with which I shall cherish his memory.’
The Times
commemorated
the map-maker as ‘the late celebrated and scientific General Mudge’.

William Roy had been arguably responsible for the Ordnance Survey’s foundation, but William Mudge had taken charge of it for twenty-nine years. Under his watch, the Trigonometrical Survey had travelled all the way from Land’s End in Cornwall almost up to the Shetland Islands.
Thirty-seven
of the most accurate maps of the British Isles had been published, covering nearly the whole of southern England and the West Country up to a line running between Bath, Oxford, Hertford and Ipswich, and also
including
Pembrokeshire. A few months after Mudge’s death, the
Caledonian Mercury
proclaimed: ‘such part of the Survey as has been already published, both for accuracy of delineation and beauty of execution, surpasses any work of the kind ever produced in this or any other country’.

William Mudge had been largely responsible for the early Ordnance Survey’s direction and ambition. He had fought the corner of map
enthusiasts
among the general public, adamant that they deserved access to this astounding feat of cartography. And although his encouragement of the Ordnance Survey’s foray into geodesy in the meridian arc measurement and the Shetlands extension had inevitably delayed work on the First Series of maps, those projects signified his unremitting sensitivity to the wider responsibilities of a national mapping agency. It is poignant that, two months before Mudge’s death, George III died, and, two months after it, Joseph Banks. The three demises marked the end of an era for British map-making.