On this day (May 25) in the year 1841, Maria Edgeworth took pen in hand and wrote the following letter describing her visit to the newly opened studio of Richard Beard. - - - - - - - - - To Fanny Wilson 11 Gloucester Place, Tuesday, 25 May 1841 . . .Lestock came with me to breakfast here at 8 oclock and then he took Honora and Captain Beaufort and me to the Polytechnic and we all had our likenesses taken and I will tell you no more lest I should some way or other cause you disappointment. For my own part my object is secure for I have done my dear what you wished. It is a wonderful mysterious operation. You are taken from one room into another up stairs and down and you see various people whispering and hear them in neighboring passages and rooms unseen and the whole apparatus and stool on high platform under a glass dome casing a snap-dragon blue light making all look like spectres and the men in black gliding about like &c. I have not time to tell you more of that. . . Cited from, Colvin, Christina edit. "Maria Edgeworth: Letters from England 1813-1844" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) 593-4 ------------------------------------------------------------- 05-25-98