Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: May 28, 1913
WORK IS PROCEEDING APACE on the signalling device. The labourers are addressing themselves to their tasks with an enthusiasm I would like to attribute to a desire to communicate with higher intelligences but I think is rather due to Lord Fitzgerald’s generous purse; the little I have managed to scrape together from the estate is paltry in the extreme compared to the Clarenorris fortunes.
Already the first pontoon sections have been floated into Sligo Harbour and the lanterns tested and found to operate satisfactorily. Such successes are heartening after the delays and confusions of the early weeks. The plan is to assemble the cross from 170 pontoon sections, each one hundred yards long. This sounds a daunting proposition, given the sober truth that astronomical mechanics wait for no man, but the sections have been largely preassembled in the town boat yards and only remain to be floated and bolted into their finished form. Observing the great legion of labourers (of which there are no shortage in this poverty-blighted county), I have no fear that Project Pharos will not be completed by the time the extrasolar vehicle attains perigee. My outstanding concern—that of devising a universally comprehensible mode of communication with which to converse with the Altairii—has recently been resolved to my complete satisfaction. It is a universal truth that the laws of mathematics are the same upon the worlds of Altair as they are upon this one; to wit, the ratio of the circle’s radius to its circumference, which we call pi, must be as familiar to the Altairii as to us. Therefore I have designed an electrical relay whereby one arm of the cross will flash its lights twenty-two times for the other’s seven, this being the approximate fractional ratio of pi. Such a signal cannot fail to attract the attention of our stellanauts and pave the way for more intimate conversation, a code for which I am currently devising using primes and exponents.
May 31, 1913
Craigdarragh
Drumcliffe
County Sligo
My Dearest Constance,
Just a brief note to express my thanks for your generous invitation to the boating party at Rathkennedy. Of course I shall be there. Few things are more delightful to me than an afternoon on Lough Gill aboard Grania, and, coupled with a reading by Mr. Yeats, you temptress, how can I resist? Since our little soiree at the Gaelic Literary League, I have looked for an opportunity to meet him again. My dear Constance, wild horses wouldn’t keep me! I wonder, however, might I bring Emily? She will shortly be returning for the summer, and I know nothing would thrill her more than to hear Mr. Yeats reading his own incomparable verse. I sent her copies of In the Seven Woods and The Green Helmet and Other Poems, and she has devoured them as a starving man would a crust of bread! To actually meet this Olympian figure— I can assure you that she will be on her very best behaviour; no repeat of the histrionics at her birthday party. She conducts herself exceedingly well in adult company; quite the little charmer. It has been said by others that she reminds them of me, but it sometimes seems to me that she is a little too eager to grow up. Please do give it your consideration. Emily would be thrilled if it is acceptable. If the request is within your powers to grant, I will write to Emily to inform her, and I thank you once again for your kindness and hospitality. It will be good to meet Mr. Yeats again.
Yours Sincerely,
Caroline