The Project Gutenberg eBook, Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, by Mrs. John Herschel

CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

Joseph Brown sc
Caroline Herschel.
ÆTAT 92.

MEMOIR AND CORRESPONDENCE
OF
CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

By MRS. JOHN HERSCHEL.

WITH PORTRAITS.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1879.

INTRODUCTION.

Familiar to all as is the name this volume bears, it is not without hesitation that the following pages are given to the world. To subject the memorials of a deeply earnest life to the eyes of a generation overcrowded with books, raises a certain amount of diffidence.

Of Caroline Herschel herself most people will plead ignorance without feeling ashamed, and yet may we not assert that Caroline Herschel is well worth knowing.

Great men and great causes have always some helper of whom the outside world knows but little. There always is, and always has been, some human being in whose life their roots have been nourished. Sometimes these helpers have been men, sometimes they have been women, who have given themselves to help and to strengthen those called upon to be leaders and workers, inspiring them with courage, keeping faith in their own idea alive, in days of darkness,

When all the world seems adverse to desert.

These helpers and sustainers, men or women, have all the same quality in common—absolute devotion and unwavering faith in the individual or in the cause. Seeking nothing for themselves, thinking nothing of themselves, they have all an intense power of sympathy, a noble love of giving themselves for the service of others, which enables them to transfuse the force of their own personality into the object to which they dedicate their powers.

Of this noble company of unknown helpers Caroline Herschel was one.

She stood beside her brother, William Herschel, sharing his labours, helping his life. In the days when he gave up a lucrative career that he might devote himself to astronomy, it was owing to her thrift and care that he was not harassed by the rankling vexations of money matters. She had been his helper and assistant in the days when he was a leading musician; she became his helper and assistant when he gave himself up to astronomy. By sheer force of will and devoted affection, she learned enough of mathematics and of methods of calculation, which to those unlearned seem mysteries, to be able to commit to writing the results of his researches. She became his assistant in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope in the nights of midwinter, to write down his observations, when the very ink was frozen in the bottle. She kept him alive by her care; thinking nothing of herself, she lived for him. She loved him, and believed in him, and helped him, with all her heart and with all her strength. She might have become a distinguished woman on her own account, for with the “seven-foot Newtonian sweeper” given to her by her brother, she discovered eight comets first and last. But the pleasure of seeking and finding for herself was scarcely tasted. She “minded the heavens” for her brother; she worked for him, not for herself, and the unconscious self-denial with which she gave up her own pleasure in the use of her “sweeper,” is not the least beautiful feature in her life. She must have been witty and amusing, to judge from her books of “Recollections.” When past eighty, she wrote what she called “a little history of my life from 1772-1778” for her nephew, Sir John Herschel, the son of her brother William, that he might know something of his excellent grandparents, as well as of the immense difficulties which his father had to surmount in his life and labours. It was not to tell about herself, but of others, that she wrote them. There is not any good biography of Sir William Herschel, and the incidental revelations of him in these Recollections are valuable. They show how well he deserved the love and devotion she rendered to him. Great as were his achievements in science, and his genius, they were borne up and ennobled by the beauty and worth of his own inner life.

These memorials of his father and his aunt were much valued by Sir John Herschel, and they are carefully preserved by the family along with her letters. The perusal of them is like reading of another world. The glimpses of the life of a soldier’s family in Hanover at the time the Seven Years’ War was going on are very touching. Both father and mother must have been remarkable persons, and the sterling quality of character developed in William and Caroline Herschel was evidently derived from them. All the family seem to have been endowed with something like touches of genius, but William and Caroline were the only two who had the strong back-bone of perseverance and high principle which made genius in them fulfil its perfect work.

Her own recollections go back to the Great Earthquake at Lisbon; she lived through the American War, the old French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, and all manner of lesser events and wars. She saw all the improvements and inventions, from the lumbering post waggon in which she made her first journey from Hanover, to the railroads and electric telegraphs which have intersected all Europe, for she lived well down into the reign of Victoria. But her work of “minding the heavens” with her brother engrossed all her thoughts, and she scarcely mentions any public event.

Her own astronomical labours were remarkable, and in her later life she met with honour and recognition from learned men and learned societies; but her dominant idea was always the same—“I am nothing, I have done nothing; all I am, all I know, I owe to my brother. I am only the tool which he shaped to his use—a well-trained puppy-dog would have done as much.” Every word said in her own praise seemed to be so much taken away from the honour due to her brother. She had lived so many years in companionship with a truly great man, and in the presence of the unfathomable depths of the starry heavens, that praise of herself seemed childish exaggeration.

The Letters and Recollections contained in this volume will show what she really was. She would have been very angry if she could have foreseen their publication, yet, in consideration of the great interest they possess, we hope to be justified for making known to the world such an example of self-sacrifice and perseverance under difficulties.

The spelling has been modernised,—an old lady who had discovered eight comets might be allowed to spell in her own way; but it is pleasanter to read what is written in an accustomed manner. A word has been altered occasionally where the sense required it, otherwise no change has been made, and as little has been added as was possible, and only with the view of giving a slight connecting thread of narrative.

If these Recollections convey as much pleasure to the readers of them as they have given to the Editor, they will feel that they have gained another friend in Caroline Lucretia Herschel.

December, 1875.

NOTE.

When past ninety a second memoir was undertaken, and in order to encourage her to continue it her niece, Lady Herschel, wrote to her as follows:—.... “Now, my dearest aunt, you must let me make an earnest petition to you, and that is, that you will go on with your memoir until you leave England and take up your residence in Hanover. How can I tell you how much my heart is set upon the accomplishment of this work?... You know you cannot be idle while you live. But indeed, if I could tell you the influence which a short account by a stranger of your labours with your dear Brother had upon me when a child, and of my choosing you (then so unknown to me) as my guiding star and example, you would understand how the possession of such a record by your own hand would make me almost believe in auguries and presentiments, and perhaps inspire some future generations more worthily, as the record would be more genuine.”

August 9, 1841.

May we not echo this hope, and feel indeed that “SHE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH.”

M. C. H.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

EARLY LIFE IN HANOVER—MUSICAL TALENTS OF HER BROTHER WILLIAM—MARRIAGE OF HER SISTER—THE REGIMENT ORDERED TO ENGLAND—HER FATHER’S INDUSTRY—TYPHUS FEVER—CONFIRMATION—DEATH OF FATHER—ACCOMPANIES WILLIAM TO ENGLAND

[1]

CHAPTER II.

LIFE IN BATH—HEIMWEH—THE MIGHTY TELESCOPE—LAST PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC—CASTING THE GREAT MIRROR—WILLIAM HERSCHEL GOES TO LONDON—MADE ROYAL ASTRONOMER—REMOVAL TO DATCHET—ACCIDENTS—GRANT OF £2,000—LIFE AT SLOUGH—LETTERS FROM HANOVER—DISCOVERY OF A COMET

[29]

CHAPTER III.

WILLIAM HERSCHEL’S MARRIAGE—DISCOVERY OF THE EIGHTH COMET—EXTRACTS FROM DAY-BOOK AND DIARY—VISIT TO BATH—RETURN TO SLOUGH—RESIDES AT UPTON—ILLNESS—FEAR OF BLINDNESS

[78]

CHAPTER IV.

EXTRACTS FROM DIARY—WILLIAM HERSCHEL KNIGHTED—FAILING HEALTH—HER BROTHER’S PORTRAIT—DEATH OF ALEXANDER—DEATH OF SIR WILLIAM—HER RETURN TO HANOVER—RECOLLECTIONS WRITTEN AT HANOVER

[118]

CHAPTER V.

RETROSPECTION—LIFE IN HANOVER—HER HUMILITY—HER WORKS—MADE HON. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY—HER SWEEPINGS—BLANK IN HER LIFE AT HANOVER—LETTERS TO LADY HERSCHEL—LETTERS BETWEEN HER AND HER NEPHEW—VISIT FROM HER NEPHEW—FINISHES HER CATALOGUE OF THE NEBULÆ

[141]

CHAPTER VI.

LIFE IN HANOVER CONTINUED—LETTERS BETWEEN HER AND HER NEPHEW—HER WILL—FIRST CHAPTER OF HER HISTORY—RECEIVES THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY—FEARFUL STORM—HER PORTRAIT—HER NEPHEW’S MARRIAGE—PREPARATION FOR HER DEATH—PAGANINI—HER NEPHEW KNIGHTED—LADY HERSCHEL’S DEATH—RETROSPECTION

[196]

CHAPTER VII.

LETTERS FROM THE CAPE—HON. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY—CATALOGUE OF OMITTED STARS—LETTERS—SATURN AND HIS SIXTH SATELLITE—HER NEPHEW’S VISIT—HON. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY—EXTRACTS FROM DAY-BOOK—ANECDOTE OF THE OLD TELESCOPE—CHRISTMAS IN HANOVER—GOLD MEDAL FROM THE KING OF PRUSSIA—DECLINING STRENGTH—DEATH—FUNERAL

[262]

TO BINDER.

Portrait of Caroline Herschel. [Frontispiece.]

Portrait of Sir William Herschel, after the original by Abbott, in the National Portrait Gallery, to face p. [118].

Herschel’s Forty-foot Telescope, to face p. [29].

CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

CHAPTER I.
RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY LIFE IN HANOVER.

Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born at Hanover on the 16th of March, 1750. She was the eighth child and fourth daughter of Isaac Herschel, by Anna Ilse Moritzen, to whom he was married in August, 1732. The family consisted of ten children, four of whom died in early childhood.

A memorandum in the handwriting of Isaac Herschel, transcribed by his daughter in the original German at the beginning of her Recollections, traces the family back to the early part of the seventeenth century, about which time, it appears that three brothers Herschel left Moravia on account of their religion (which was Protestant), and became possessors of land in Saxony. One of these brothers, Hans, was a brewer at Pirna, a little town two miles from Dresden, and the father of two sons, one of whom, Abraham by name, was born in 1651, was the father of the above-mentioned Isaac, and the grandfather of Caroline Lucretia Herschel. Abraham Herschel was employed in the royal gardens at Dresden, he received commissions from various quarters on account of his taste and skill as a landscape gardener. Of his four children, Eusebius, the eldest, appears to have kept up little or no intercourse with his family after the father’s death in 1718. The second child, Apollonia, married a landed proprietor, Herr von Thümer. Benjamin, the second son, died in his third year; and Isaac, the youngest, was born 14th of January, 1707, and was thus an orphan at the early age of eleven years. His parents wished him to be a gardener like his father, but a passionate love of music led him to take every opportunity of practising on the violin, besides studying music under a hautboy-player in the royal band. When he was about one and twenty he resolved to seek his fortune, and went to Berlin, where the style of hautboy playing was so little to his taste that he soon left it, and went to Potsdam, where he studied for a year under the celebrated Cappell Meister Pabrïch, the means for so doing being supplied by his mother and sister; his brother, as he quaintly remarks, contenting himself with writing him letters in praise of the virtue of economy! In July, 1731, he went to Brunswick, and in August to Hanover, where he at once obtained an engagement as hautboy-player in the band of the Guards, and in the August following he married as above stated.

1675-1731. Early Recollections.

The family group to which Miss Herschel’s autobiography introduces us consisted of—

1. Sophia Elizabeth, born in 1733. [Afterwards Mrs. Griesbach.]

2. Henry Anton Jacob, born 20th November, 1734.

(4) 3. Frederic William, born 15th November, 1738.

(6) 4. John Alexander, born 13th November, 1745.

(8) 5. Carolina Lucretia, born 16th March, 1750; and

(10) 6. The little Dietrich, born 13th September, 1755.

With the exception of frequent absences from home which attendance on a regiment made inevitable, the family life went on smoothly enough for some years, the father taking every opportunity, when at home, to cultivate the musical talents of his sons, who depended for the ordinary routine of education on the garrison school, to which all the children went from the age of two to fourteen. Here the splendid talents of William early displayed themselves, and the master confessed that the pupil had soon got beyond his teacher. Although four years younger than Jacob, when the two brothers had lessons in French, the younger had mastered the language in half the time needed by the elder, and he in some measure satisfied his eager desire for knowledge by attending out of school hours to learn all that his master could teach of Latin and arithmetic. At fourteen he was an excellent performer both on the oboe and violin.

1743-1754. Early Recollections.

The first serious calamity recorded was the irreparable injury caused to the father’s health by the hardships of war. After the battle of Dettingen (June 16th, 1743) the troops remained all night on the field, which was soaked by heavy rains. The unfortunate bandmaster lay in a wet furrow, which caused a complete loss of the use of his limbs for some time, and left him with an impaired constitution and an asthmatical affection which afflicted him to the end of his life. During the dark times of the Seven Years’ War, the little Caroline, then her mother’s sole companion, often heard this grievous trouble spoken of, and the shadow of it cast a gloom over her childish recollections, most of which are of a sombre character. At three years old she was a deeply interested participator in all the family concerns, and of that period she writes:—

“It must have been in 1753 when my brother [Jacob, aged 19] was chosen organist to the new organ in the garrison church; for I remember my mother taking me with her the first Sunday on its opening, and that before she had time to shut the pew door, I took fright at the beginning of a preludium with a full accompaniment, so that I flew out of church and home again. I also remember to have seen my brother William confirmed in his new oböisten uniform.”

The next interesting event was the marriage of the eldest daughter, who was living with a family at Brunswick, and whom her sister says she had never seen until she came home to be married. The bridegroom, Mr. Griesbach, also a musician in the Guard, found no favour in the eyes of his sister-in-law, and it is evidently some satisfaction to her to have been told that her father never cordially approved the match,

“for ... he knew him at least to be but a very middling musician, and this alone would have been enough for my father’s disapprobation.”

Great preparations were made for

“providing and furnishing a habitation (which happened to be in the same house where my parents lived), which they did in as handsome a manner as their straitened income would allow, and to which my dear brothers took delight in contributing to the best of their ability. I remember how delighted I was when they were showing me the pretty framed pictures with which my brother William had decorated his sister’s room, and heard my mother relate afterwards, that the brothers had taken two months’ pay in advance for the wedding entertainment.... Though for stocking a family with household linen my mother was prepared at all times, as perhaps never a more diligent spinner was heard of; but to keep pace with the wishes of my dear brothers, by whom my sister was, as well as by her parents, exceedingly beloved—the whole family were kept for a time in an agreeable bustle to see that nothing that could give either pleasure or comfort might be wanting in her future establishment.... The fête (without which it would have been scandalous in those days to get married) ended with a ball, at which I remember to have been dancing among the rest without a partner.”

1753-1755. Early Recollections.

A little later, when war troubles broke up the household, and the bride returned to her mother, we are told:

“my sister was not of a very patient temper, and could not be reconciled to have children about her, and I was mostly, when not in school, sent with Alexander to play on the walls or with the neighbour’s children, in which I seldom could join, and often stood freezing on shore to see my brother skating on the Stadtgraben (town ditch) till he chose to go home. In short, there was no one who cared anything about me.”

The earthquake which destroyed Lisbon on the 1st November 1755, was strongly felt at Hanover, and became closely associated in the poor little girl’s mind with the trials and troubles which shortly afterwards fell upon the family. She says:—

“One morning early I was with my father and mother alone in the room, the latter putting my clothes on, when all at once I saw both standing aghast and speechless before me; at the same time my brothers, my sister, and Griesbach came running in, all being panic-struck by the earthquake.”

For a little while the family enjoyed a peaceful interval, during which the extraordinary proficiency of his two eldest sons was a growing source of delight to the father, whose utmost ambition was to see them become accomplished musicians; while the wider flights of William met with his most cordial sympathy. The following passage is one of the very few which reflect the brighter side of the picture:—

“My brothers were often introduced as solo performers and assistants in the orchestra of the court, and I remember that I was frequently prevented from going to sleep by the lively criticism on music on coming from a concert, or conversations on philosophical subjects which lasted frequently till morning, in which my father was a lively partaker and assistant of my brother William by contriving self-made instruments.... Often I would keep myself awake that I might listen to their animating remarks, for it made me so happy to see them so happy. But generally their conversation would branch out on philosophical subjects, when my brother William and my father often argued with such warmth, that my mother’s interference became necessary, when the names Leibnitz, Newton, and Euler sounded rather too loud for the repose of her little ones, who ought to be in school by seven in the morning. But it seems that on the brothers retiring to their own room, where they shared the same bed, my brother William had still a great deal to say; and frequently it happened that when he stopped for an assent or reply, he found his hearer was gone to sleep, and I suppose it was not till then that he bethought himself to do the same.

“The recollection of these happy scenes confirms me in the belief, that had my brother William not then been interrupted in his philosophical pursuits, we should have had much earlier proofs of his inventive genius. My father was a great admirer of astronomy, and had some knowledge of that science; for I remember his taking me, on a clear frosty night, into the street, to make me acquainted with several of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a comet which was then visible. And I well remember with what delight he used to assist my brother William in his various contrivances in the pursuit of his philosophical studies, among which was a neatly turned 4-inch globe, upon which the equator and ecliptic were engraved by my brother.”

1755-1756. Early Recollections.

Towards the end of the year 1755 the regiment was under orders for England, and the little household was at once broken up. A place in the court orchestra had been promised to Jacob, but the vacancy did not, unfortunately, occur in time, and he was obliged to smother his discontent, lower his ambition, and accept a place in the band with his younger brother. At length the sad hour of parting arrived:—

“In our room all was mute but in hurried action; my dear father was thin and pale, and my brother William almost equally so, for he was of a delicate constitution and just then growing very fast. Of my brother Jacob I only remember his starting difficulties at everything that was done for him, as my father was busy to see that they were equipped with the necessaries for a march.... The whole town was in motion with drums beating to march: the troops hallooed and roared in the streets, the drums beat louder, Griesbach came to join my father and brothers, and in a moment they all were gone. My sister fled to her own room. Alexander went with many others to follow their relatives for some miles to take a last look. I found myself now with my mother alone in a room all in confusion, in one corner of which my little brother Dietrich lay in his cradle; my tears flowed like my mother’s, but neither of us could speak. I snatched a large handkerchief of my father’s from a chair and took a stool to place it at my mother’s feet, on which I sat down, and put into her hands one corner of the handkerchief, reserving the opposite one for myself; this little action actually drew a momentary smile into her face.... My father left half his pay for our support in the hands of an agent in Hanover, but Griesbach, instead of following my father’s example, gave up his lodging and brought his wife with her goods and chattels to her mother, which arrangement was no small addition to our uncomfortable situation.”

Even at this early age, it is not difficult to trace in these childish recollections the influence of that intense affection for her brother William which made him more and more the centre of all her interests; next to him, her father filled a large place in her heart. Of the long year of separation, nothing is recorded. At last Jacob arrived (having “out of aggravation” got permission to resign his place when the hoped-for vacancy in the orchestra had been otherwise filled) he had travelled by post, while his father and brother, “who never forsook him for self-consideration,” were still toiling wearily on the march home.

“My mother being very busy preparing dinner, had suffered me to go all alone to the parade to meet my father, but I could not find him anywhere, nor anybody whom I knew; so at last, when nearly frozen to death, I came home and found them all at table. My dear brother William threw down his knife and fork, and ran to welcome and crouched down to me, which made me forget all my grievances. The rest were so happy ... at seeing one another again, that my absence had never been perceived.”

1756-1757. Early Recollections.

The visit to England appears to have further developed the love of show and luxury which painfully distinguished Jacob, who must needs import specimens of English goods and English tailoring, while all that William brought back was a copy of Locke on the Human Understanding, the purchase of which absorbed all his private means, as he never willingly asked his father for a single penny. But it was becoming apparent that he had not the physical strength to continue in the Guard during war time, and after the disastrous campaign of 1757, and the defeat at Hastenbeck,[^[1]] 26th July, 1757 (between 20 and 30 miles from Hanover), his parents resolved to remove him—a step apparently attended by no small difficulty, as our faithful chronicler narrates:—

“I can now comprehend the reason why we little ones were continually sent out of the way, and why I had only by chance a passing glimpse of my brother as I was sitting at the entrance of our street-door, when he glided like a shadow along, wrapped in a great coat, followed by my mother with a parcel containing his accoutrements. After he had succeeded in passing unnoticed beyond the last sentinel at Herrenhausen he changed his dress.... My brother’s keeping himself so carefully from all notice was undoubtedly to avoid the danger of being pressed, for all unengaged young men were forced into the service. Even the clergy, unless they had livings, were not exempted.”

During these times of public and private peril, the little girl was sent regularly to the garrison school with her brother Alexander till three in the afternoon, when she went to another school till six, to learn knitting.

“From that time forward I was fully employed in providing my brothers with stockings, and remember that the first pair for Alexander touched the floor when I stood upright finishing the front. Besides this my pen was frequently in requisition for writing not only my mother’s letters to my father, but for many a poor soldier’s wife in our neighbourhood to her husband in the camp: for it ought to be remembered that in the beginning of the last century very few women, when they left country schools, had been taught to write.”

In addition to these occupations, she was called upon to make herself useful when the fastidious Jacob honoured the humble table with his presence, “and poor I got many a whipping for being awkward at supplying the place of footman or waiter.” The sight of her mother constantly in tears; the prolonged absence of her father; the sister’s unhappiness at being homeless when about to become a mother; all these circumstances combined to sadden the personal recollections of a time of almost unsurpassed national calamity. After the loss of the battle at Hastenbeck, the Recollections thus conclude this period.

1757-1760. Early Recollections.

“Nothing but distressing reports came from our army, and we were almost immediately in the power of the French troops,[^[2]] each house being crammed with men. In that in which we were obliged to bewail in silence our cruel fate, no less than 16 privates were quartered, besides some officers who occupied the best apartments, and this lasted for about two years

A gap occurs here, between the years 1757 and 1760, several pages having been torn out in both the original “Recollections” and the unfinished memoir commenced in 1840. In the former, a sentence beginning “the next time I saw him [Jacob] was when he came running to my mother with a letter, the contents of which,” remains unfinished, and the narrative recommences with: “After reading over many pages, I thought it best to destroy them, and merely to write down what I remember to have passed in our family.” Accordingly there is no record of anything preserved during this interval until May, 1760, when the head of the family returned to it for good—broken in health and worn out by hardships to which he was no longer equal, but strong in purpose and devoting himself at once to the musical education of his children and to giving lessons to the numerous pupils who soon came to seek instruction from so excellent a master. Jacob returned for the second time from England at the end of 1759, and obtained the place of first violin in the court orchestra. As usual the appearance of this member of the family caused a general upset of domestic comfort, for

“when he came to dine with us, it generally happened that before he departed his mother was as much out of humour with him as he was at the beefsteaks being hard, and because I did not know how to clean knives and forks with brickdust.”

1760-1761. Early Recollections.

The younger children made great progress under their father’s careful training, and with all her propensity for seeing the dark side, the daughter’s recollections of this period afford glimpses of a tolerably happy household. If it was “a helpless and distracted family” to which, as she writes, her father returned, those epithets could ill apply to the father himself, for there is abundant evidence that he was a man of no ordinary character—one who, in spite of constant suffering of a most distressing kind, persisted in hard work to the very end, and who set his children a noble example of patience, unselfishness, and self-denial. To the last, as his daughter records,—

“Copying music employed every vacant moment, even sometimes throughout half the night, and the pen was not suffered to rest even when smoking a pipe, which habit he indulged in rather on account of his asthmatical constitution than as a luxury; for, without all exception, he was the most abstemious liver I ever have known; and in every instance, even in the article of clothing, the utmost frugality was observed, and yet he never was seen otherwise than very neat.... With my brother [Dietrich] now a little engaging creature of between four and five years old—he was very much pleased, and [on the first evening of his arrival at home] before he went to rest, the Adempken (a little violin) was taken from the lumbering shelf and newly strung and the daily lessons immediately commenced.... I do not recollect that he ever desired any other society than what he had opportunities of enjoying in many of the parties where he was introduced by his profession; though far from being of a morose disposition; he would frequently encourage my mother in keeping up a social intercourse among a few acquaintances, whilst his afternoon hours generally were taken up in giving lessons to some scholars at home, who gladly saved him the troublesome exertion of walking.... He also found great pleasure in seeing Dietrich’s improvement, who, young as he was, and of the most lively temper imaginable, was always ready to receive his lessons, leaving his little companions (with whom our neighbourhood abounded) with the greatest cheerfulness to go to his father, who was so pleased with his performances that—I think it must have been in October or November—he made him play a solo on the Adempken in Rake’s concert, being placed on a table before a crowded company, for which he was very much applauded and caressed, particularly by an English lady, who put a gold coin in his little pocket.

“It was not long before my father had as many scholars as he could find time to attend, for some of those he had left behind returned to him again, and several families who had sons of about the age of my little brother, became his pupils and proved in time very good performers. And when they assembled at my father’s to make little concerts, I was frequently called to join the second violin in an overture, for my father found pleasure in giving me sometimes a lesson before the instruments were laid by after practising with Dietrich, for I never was missing at those hours, sitting in a corner with my knitting and listening all the while.”

A serious interruption of this and all other occupations was caused by a severe attack of typhus fever which in the summer of 1761 threatened to be fatal, and

“reduced my strength to that degree that for several months after I was obliged to mount the stairs on my hands and feet like an infant; but here I will remark that from that time to this present day (June 5, 1821) I do not remember ever to have spent a whole day in bed.”

In spite of her strong objections to learning, the worthy mother had too correct a view of her duties to stand in the way of the necessary preparation for her daughter’s confirmation, who was accordingly, but not without complaints at the loss of time, released from her household avocations for this purpose. Alexander, who had been taken as a sort of apprentice by Griesbach, was now of an age to turn his great musical talents to profitable account, and returned to Hanover, where he obtained the somewhat mysterious situation of Stadtmusicus (Town Musician), the duties of which office involved

“little else to do but to give a daily lesson to an apprentice and to blow a Corale from the Markt Thurm; so that nearly all his time could be given to practice and receiving instruction from his father. There was no doubt but that he would soon become a good violin player, for his natural genius was such that nothing could spoil it.”

1761-1764. Early Recollections.

Although the absent brother William kept up regular correspondence with Hanover, many of his letters were written in English and addressed to Jacob, on such subjects as the Theory of Music, in which the family in general could not participate. Year after year went by, and William showed no inclination to leave England, to which country he was becoming more and more attached; the poor father, who felt his strength steadily declining, became painfully eager for his return. On the 2nd April, 1764, they were thrown into “a tumult of joy” by his appearance among them. The visit was a very brief one, offering no hope of any intention to settle in Hanover; the father was well aware that he at least could not look forward to another meeting on earth, while to the poor little unnoticed girl, this visit and its attendant circumstances stood out in her memory as fraught with anguish, which even her unskilled pen succeeds in representing as a grief almost too deep for words.

“Of the joys and pleasures which all felt at this long-wished-for meeting with my—let me say my dearest brother, but a small portion could fall to my share; for with my constant attendance at church and school, besides the time I was employed in doing the drudgery of the scullery, it was but seldom I could make one in the group when the family were assembled together.

“In the first week some of the orchestra were invited to a concert, at which some of my brother William’s compositions, overtures, &c., and some of my eldest brother Jacob’s were performed, to the great delight of my dear father, who hoped and expected that they would be turned to some profit by publishing them, but there was no printer who bid high enough.

“Sunday the 8th was the—to me—eventful day of my confirmation, and I left home not a little proud and encouraged by my dear brother William’s approbation of my appearance in my new gown.”

Not only was she disappointed in her fervent hope that the longed-for brother would not come at the very time when she was obliged to be much from home, but several of the precious days of his stay were spent in a visit to the Griesbachs at Coppenbrügge, and the Sunday fixed for his departure was the very day on which she was to receive her first communion.

1764-1767. Early Recollections.

“The church was crowded and the door open: the Hamburger Postwagen passed at eleven, bearing away my dear brother, from whom I had been obliged to part at 8 o’clock. It was within a dozen yards from the open door; the postilion giving a smettering blast on his horn. Its effect on my shattered nerves, I will not attempt to describe, nor what I felt for days and weeks after. I wish it were possible to say what I wish to say, without feeling anew that feverish wretchedness which accompanied my walk in the afternoon with some of my school companions, in my black silk dress and bouquet of artificial flowers—the same which had served my sister on her bridal day. I could think of nothing but that on my return I should find nobody but my disconsolate father and mother, for Alexander’s engagements allowed him to be with us only at certain hours, and Jacob was seldom at home except to dress and take his meals.”

From the state of hopeless lethargy in which the poor sister describes herself as going mechanically about her daily tasks after that memorable day, she was roused by a calamity which affected all alike. The father had a paralytic seizure the August following, by which he lost the use of his right side almost entirely, and although he so far recovered as to be able still to receive pupils in his own house, he never regained his former skill on the violin, and was reduced to a sad state of suffering and infirmity; a few months later he was pronounced to be in a confirmed dropsy. Changes of abode, not always for the better; anxieties, on account of Alexander’s prospects and Jacob’s vagaries; disappointment, at seeing his daughter grow up without the education he had hoped to give her; were the circumstances under which the worn-out sufferer struggled through the last three years of his life, copying music at every spare moment, assisting at a Concert only a few weeks before his death, and giving lessons until he was obliged to keep wholly to his bed. He was released from his sufferings at the comparatively early age of sixty-one on the 22nd March, 1767, leaving to his children little more than the heritage of his good example, unblemished character, and those musical talents which he had so carefully educated, and by which he probably hoped the more gifted of his sons would attain to eminence.

Miss Herschel describes herself as having fallen into “a kind of stupefaction,” which lasted for many weeks after the loss of her father, and the awakening to life had little of hope in the present or promise for the future, so far as she could see then. At the age of seventeen she had learned little beyond the first elements of education, and she was now deprived of the one friend who encouraged and sympathised with her desire for better instruction. The parents had never agreed on the subject. “When I had left school,” she writes,

1767. Early Recollections.

“My father wished to give me something like a polished education, but my mother was particularly determined that it should be a rough, but at the same time a useful one; and nothing farther she thought was necessary but to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen. Having added this accomplishment to my former ingenuities, I never afterwards could find leisure for thinking of anything but to contrive and make for the family in all imaginable forms whatever was wanting, and thus I learned to make bags and sword-knots long before I knew how to make caps and furbelows.... My mother would not consent to my being taught French, and my brother Dietrich was even denied a dancing-master, because she would not permit my learning along with him, though the entrance had been paid for us both; so all my father could do for me was to indulge me (and please himself) sometimes with a short lesson on the violin, when my mother was either in good humour or out of the way. Though I have often felt myself exceedingly at a loss for the want of those few accomplishments of which I was thus, by an erroneous though well-meant opinion of my mother, deprived, I could not help thinking but that she had cause for wishing me not to know more than was necessary for being useful in the family; for it was her certain belief that my brother William would have returned to his country, and my eldest brother not have looked so high, if they had had a little less learning.

* * * * *

But sometimes I found it scarcely possible to get through with the work required, and felt very unhappy that no time at all was left for improving myself in music or fancy-work, in which I had an opportunity of receiving some instruction from an ingenious young woman whose parents lived in the same house with us. But the time wanted for spending a few hours together could only be obtained by our meeting at daybreak, because by the time of the family’s rising at seven, I was obliged to be at my daily business. But during the summer months of 1766 very few mornings passed without our spending a few hours together, to which I was called by my friend’s loud cough at her window by way of notice that she was ready for me [she could not sleep, and was glad of my company. I lost her soon after, for she died of consumption]. Though I had neither time nor means for producing anything immediately either for show or use, I was content with keeping samples of all possible patterns in needlework, beads, bugles, horsehair, &c., for I could not help feeling troubled sometimes about my future destiny; yet I could not bear the idea of being turned into an Abigail or housemaid, and thought that with the above and such like acquirements with a little notion of Music, I might obtain a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection.”

It was with the same object of fitting herself to earn her bread, that, after her father’s death, she obtained permission to go for a month or two to learn millinery and dress-making; her eldest brother Jacob, before leaving them to join William at Bath, having graciously given his consent, “if it was only meant to learn to make my own things, but positively forbidding it for any other purpose.” The following account of this episode shows how customary such apprenticeship was among young ladies of good family, as a part of their education:—

1768. Early Recollections.

“My mother found some difficulty in persuading the lady to whom I wished to go, to receive me without paying the usual premium, but at last she gave me leave to come on paying one thaler per month. I felt myself rather humbled on going the first time among twenty-one young people with an elegant woman, Madame Küster, at their head, directing them in various works of finery. Among the group were several young ladies of genteel families, and as I came there on rather reduced terms, I expected that I should be kept in the back ground, doing nothing but the plain work of the business; but contrary to my fears, I gained in the school-mistress a valuable friend.... Here I found myself daily happy for a few hours, and one of the young women,[^[3]] after a lapse of thirty-five years, when I was introduced to her at the Queen’s Lodge, received me as an old acquaintance, though I could but just remember having sometimes exchanged a nod and smile with a sweet little girl about ten or eleven years old. But I soon was sensible of having found what hitherto I had looked for in vain—a sincere and disinterested friend to whom I might have applied for counsel and comfort in my deserted situation.”

A proposal from Jacob that Dietrich, whom the father on his deathbed had specially commended to his care, should be sent to England, caused his mother the utmost distress, on account of his being still too young to be confirmed; but her scruples were overcome and Dietrich was despatched in the summer as soon as a fitting escort could be found.

“But what was yet more aggravating was, that the loss of his company was supplied by a country cousin whom my mother permitted to spend the summer with us in order to have the advantage of my mother’s advice in making preparation for her marriage.... This young woman, full of good-nature and ignorance, grew unfortunately so fond of me that she was for ever at my side, and by that means I lost what little interval of leisure I might then have had for reading, practising the violin, &c., entirely. Besides this, I was extremely discomposed at seeing Alexander associating with young men who led him into all manner of expensive pleasures which involved him in debts for the hire of horses and carioles, &c., and I was (though he knew my inability of helping him) made a partaker in his fears that these scrapes should come to the knowledge of our mother.

“My time was, however, filled up pretty well with making household linen, &c., against Jacob’s return.... It was not, however, till the middle of the following summer that we saw him again, and I suppose his stay must have been prolonged on account of waiting till he had had the honour of playing before their Majesties, for which (in consequence of having composed and dedicated a set of six sonatas to the Queen) he was informed he would receive a summons.... After this his salary was augmented by 100 thalers,” and the promise of not being overlooked in future.

[Note.—Before I leave this subject I cannot help remembering the sacrifices these good people were making to pride. They played nowhere for money, for even when in 1768 (I think it was) the King’s theatre was first opened to the Public, and the Court orchestra was called upon to play there, they did it without any emolument, so that there was no way left to increase their small salaries but by giving a few subscription concerts in the winter, or by teaching. So much, by way of apology, for the emigration of part of my family to England.]

1768-1770. Early Recollections.

“We passed the winter in the utmost quiet, except when Alexander took it into his head to entertain gentlemen in his own apartment, which always made my mother very cross, else in general nothing disturbed us in our occupation. My mother spun, I was at work on a set of ruffles of Dresden-work for my brother Jacob, whilst Alexander often sat by us and amused us and himself with making all sorts of things in pasteboard, or contriving how to make a twelve-hour Cuckoo clock go a week.... As my mother saw that Dietrich’s confirmation was still uncertain, she insisted on having him back again.... Accordingly at the end of July they [Jacob and Dietrich] arrived, and Dietrich entered school again immediately,” but remained only until his confirmation the following Easter.

A new direction was suddenly given to all their plans by the arrival of letters from the absent brother William, who proposed that his sister should join him at Bath—

... “to make the trial if by his instruction I might not become a useful singer for his winter concerts and oratorios, he advised my brother Jacob to give me some lessons by way of beginning; but that if after a trial of two years we should not find it answer our expectation he would bring me back again. This at first seemed to be agreeable to all parties, but by the time I had set my heart upon this change in my situation, Jacob began to turn the whole scheme into ridicule, and, of course, he never heard the sound of my voice except in speaking, and yet I was left in the harassing uncertainty whether I was to go or not. I resolved at last to prepare, as far as lay in my power, for both cases, by taking, in the first place, every opportunity when all were from home to imitate, with a gag between my teeth, the solo parts of concertos, shake and all, such as I had heard them play on the violin; in consequence I had gained a tolerable execution before I knew how to sing. I next began to knit ruffles, which were intended for my brother William in case I remained at home—else they were to be Jacob’s. For my mother and brother D. I knitted as many cotton stockings as would last two years at least.”

Jacob remained with his family until the following July, when he returned to Bath, this time taking Alexander with him for two years’ leave of absence, the young Dietrich being deemed competent not only to supply his place in the orchestra, but also to attend his private pupils.

1772. Early Recollections.

Nothing is recorded in the interval between Jacob’s return to Hanover in the autumn and the long expected arrival of William in April, 1772, except one of the changes of abode, which were of such frequent occurrence, involving abundance of employment in making and altering articles of household use, which afforded some relief to the conscientious daughter, who was sorely troubled by uncertainty as to her duty in the matter of going to England or staying with her mother, although the latter had given her consent to the change.

“In this manner” [making prospective clothes for them] “I tried to still the compunction I felt at leaving relatives who, I feared, would lose some of their comforts by my desertion, and nothing but the belief of returning to them full of knowledge and accomplishments could have supported me in the parting moment, which was much embittered by the absence of my brother Jacob, who was with the Court which attended on the Queen of Denmark at the Görde, where my brother Dietrich had also been for some time, and but just returned when my brother William, for whose safety we had for several weeks been under no small apprehension, at last quite unexpectedly arrived.... His stay at Hanover could at the utmost not be prolonged above a fortnight.... My mother had consented to my going with him, and the anguish at my leaving her was somewhat alleviated by my brother settling a small annuity on her, by which she would be enabled to keep an attendant to supply my place.” They all went over to Coppenbrügge “to see my sister—I to take leave of her; the remaining time was wasted in an unsatisfactory correspondence: the letters from my brother Jacob expressed nothing but regret and impatience at being thus disappointed, and, without being able to effect a meeting, I was obliged to go without receiving the consent of my eldest brother to my going....

* * * * *

“But I will not attempt to describe my feelings when the parting moment arrived, and I left my dear mother and most dear Dietrich on Sunday, August 16th, 1772, at the Posthouse, and after travelling for six days and nights on an open (in those days very inconvenient) Postwagen, we were on the following Saturday conveyed in a small open vessel from the quay at Helvotsluis on a stormy sea, to the packet boat, which lay two miles distant at anchor; from which we were again obliged to go in an open boat to be set ashore, or rather thrown like balls by two English sailors, on the coast of Yarmouth.[^[4]] For the vessel was almost a wreck, without a main and another of its masts.

“After having crawled to one of a row of neat low houses, we found the party previously arrived from the ship devouring their breakfast; several clean-dressed women employed in cutting bread and butter (from fine wheaten loaves) as fast as ever they could. One of them went upstairs with me to help me to put on my clothes, and after taking some tea we mounted some sort of a cart to bring us to the next place where diligences going to London would pass. But we had hardly gone a quarter of an English mile when the horse, which was not used to go in what they called the shafts, ran away with us, overturning the cart with trunk and passengers. My brother, another person, and myself all throwing themselves out, I flying into a dry ditch. We all came off however, with only the fright, owing to the assistance of a gentleman who, with his servant, was accompanying us on horseback. These persons had come in the packet with us, and it was settled not to part till in London, where we arrived at noon on the 26th at an inn in the City. Here we remained till the evening of the 27th. My brother having business at the West-end of the town, left me under the care of our fellow travellers; but after his return, in the evening when the shops were lighted up, we went to see all that was to be seen in that part of London, of which I only remember the opticians’ shops, for I do not think we stopped at any other.

“The next day the mistress of the inn lent me a hat of her daughter’s—mine was blown into one of the canals of Holland, for we had storms by land as well as at sea—and we went to see St. Paul’s, the Bank, &c., &c. Mem: only the outside, except of St. Paul’s and the Bank, and we were never off our legs, except at meals in our inn. Towards evening we went to the West of the town, where, after having called on Despatch Secretary Wiese and his lady (Mr. Wiese conducted our correspondence with Hanover) we went to the inn, from whence we at ten o’clock in the evening started by the night coach for Bath on the 28th of August.... After taking some tea I went immediately to bed, and I did not awake till the next day in the afternoon, when I found my brother had but just left his room. I for my part was, from the privation of sleep for eleven or twelve days (not having above twice been in what they called a bed) almost annihilated.”

END OF RECOLLECTIONS, VOL. I.

The only allusion to this journey in Sir W. Herschel’s Journal is the brief entry:—“August 16, 1772. Set off on my return to England in company with my sister.”

SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL’S FORTY-FOOT TELESCOPE AT SLOUGH.
[To face page 29.

CHAPTER II.
LIFE OF THE BROTHER AND SISTER IN BATH.

At the time when William Herschel brought his sister back with him to Bath, he had established himself there as a teacher of music, numbering among his pupils many ladies of rank. He was also organist of the Octagon Chapel, and frequently composed anthems, chants, and whole services for the choir under his management. On the retirement of Mr. Linley (father of the celebrated singer, afterwards the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan) from the direction of the Public Concerts, he at once added this to his other avocations, and was consequently immersed in business of the most laborious and harassing kind during the whole of the Bath season. But he considered all this professional work only as the means to an end; devotion to music produced income and a certain degree of leisure, and these were becoming every day more imperatively necessary. Every spare moment of the day, and many hours stolen from the night, had long been devoted to the studies which were compelling him to become himself an observer of the heavens. Insufficient mechanical means roused his inventive genius; and, as all the world knows, the mirror for the mighty forty-foot telescope was the crowning result. To his pupils he was known as not a music-master alone. Some ladies had lessons in astronomy from him, and, at the invitation of his friend Dr. Watson, he became a member of a philosophical society then recently started in Bath, to which he for several years contributed a great number of papers on various scientific subjects. It soon came to pass that the gentlemen who sought interviews with him, asking for a peep through the wonderful tube, carried stories of what they had seen to London, and these were not long in finding their way to St. James’s.

1772. Life in Bath.

It was thus at the very turning-point of her brother’s career that Caroline Herschel became his companion and fellow-worker. No contrast could be sharper than that presented by the narrow domestic routine she had left to the life of ceaseless and inexhaustible activity into which she was plunged;—unless, indeed, it be that presented by the nature of the events she has to record, and the tone in which they are recorded. For ten years she persevered at Bath, singing when she was told to sing, copying when she was told to copy, “lending a hand” in the workshop, and taking her full share in all the stirring and exciting changes by which the musician became the King’s astronomer and a celebrity; but she never, by a single word, betrays how these wonderful events affected her; nor ever indulges in the slightest approach to an original sentiment, comment, or reflection not strictly connected with the present fact. Whether it be to record the presentation of the “golden medal,” or the dishonesty of the incorrigible Betties who then, and till her life’s end, so sorely tried her peace of mind, there is no difference in the style or spirit of the “Recollections.” Partly as apology and partly as complaint, the one grievance is harped on, even when fifty years’ experience might have convinced her that she had done something more for herself and the world than earn her bread by her own labour. “In short,” she writes, “I have been throughout annoyed and hindered in my endeavours at perfecting myself in any branch of knowledge by which I could hope to gain a creditable livelihood.” It is seldom, however, that she is diverted from the main theme to write about herself otherwise than incidentally, and in a note addressed to her nephew, she says:—“My only reason for saying so much of myself is to show with what miserable assistance your father made shift to obtaining the means of exploring the heavens.”

“On the afternoon of August 28th, 1772, I arrived with my brother at his house No. 7, New King Street, Bath, where we were received only by Mr. Bulman’s family, who occupied the parlour floor, and had the management of his servant and household affairs. My brother had formerly boarded with them at Leeds, whence, on Mr. Bulman’s failure in business, they had removed to Bath, where my brother procured for him the place of Clerk at the Octagon Chapel.... On our journey he had taken every opportunity to make me hope to find in Mrs. Bulman a well-informed and well-meaning friend, and in her daughter, a few years younger than myself, an agreeable companion. But as I knew no more English than the few words which I had on our journey learned to repeat like a parrot, it may be easily supposed that it would require some time before I could feel comfortable among strangers. But as the season for the arrival of visitors to the Baths does not begin till October, my brother had leisure to try my capacity for becoming a useful singer for his concerts and oratorios, and being very well satisfied with my voice, I had two or three lessons every day, and the hours which were not spent at the harpsichord were employed in putting me in the way of managing the family.... On the second morning, on meeting my brother at breakfast, he began immediately to give me a lesson in English and arithmetic, and showed me the way of booking and keeping accounts of cash received and laid out.... By way of relaxation we talked of astronomy and the bright constellations with which I had made acquaintance during the fine nights we spent on the Postwagen travelling through Holland.

“My brother Alexander, who had been some time in England, boarded and lodged with his elder brother, and with myself, occupied the attic. The first floor, which was furnished in the newest and most handsome style, my brother kept for himself. The front room containing the harpsichord was always in order to receive his musical friends and scholars at little private concerts or rehearsals.... Sundays I received a sum for the weekly expenses, of which my housekeeping book (written in English) showed the amount laid out, and my purse the remaining cash. One of the principal things required was to market, and about six weeks after coming to England I was sent alone among fishwomen, butchers, basket-women, &c., and I brought home whatever in my fright I could pick up.... My brother Alex, who was now returned from his summer engagement, used to watch me at a distance, unknown to me, till he saw me safe on my way home. But all attempts to introduce any order in our little household proved vain, owing to the servant my brother then had—a hot-headed old Welshwoman. All the articles, tea-things, &c., which I was to take in charge, were almost all destroyed: knives eaten up by rust, heaters of the tea-urn found in the ash-hole, &c. And what still further increased my difficulty was, that my brother’s time was entirely taken up with business, so that I only saw him at meals. Breakfast was at 7 o’clock or before (much too early for me, who would rather have remained up all night than be obliged to rise at so early an hour)....

“The three winter months passed on very heavily. I had to struggle against heimweh (home sickness) and low spirits, and to answer my sister’s melancholy letters on the death of her husband, by which she became a widow with six children. I knew too little English to derive any consolation from the society of those who were about me, so that, dinner-time excepted, I was entirely left to myself.”

1774-1775. Life in Bath.

Introductions to her brother’s scholars led to occasional evening parties, where her voice was in demand as well for single songs as to take part in duets and glees, and one of these ladies, Mrs. Colebrook, invited her to go to London on a visit. This visit was prolonged for several weeks owing to the deep snow, which rendered the roads impassable. The Duchess of Ancaster is said to have offered any sum to have a passage cut near Devizes, but without success, her Grace was in consequence unable to be present on the 18th January, when the Queen’s birthday was kept. Operas, plays, auctions, and all the usual amusements of the town, gave Miss Herschel a glimpse of the gay world; but the expense of dress and chairmen troubled her spirit too much to allow of her finding pleasure in these dissipations; and although Mrs. Colebrook is allowed to be both “learned and clever,” her society does not appear to have contributed much more to her happiness than that of some younger ladies whose companionship was offered, but whose visits she did not encourage, because, as she bluntly explains, she “thought them very little better than idiots.”

“The time when I could hope to receive a little more of my brother’s instruction and attention was now drawing near; for after Easter, Bath becomes very empty; only a few of his scholars whose families were resident in the neighbourhood remaining. But, I was greatly disappointed; for, in consequence of the harassing and fatiguing life he had led during the winter months, he used to retire to bed with a bason of milk or glass of water, and Smith’s ‘Harmonics and Optics,’ Ferguson’s ‘Astronomy,’ &c., and so went to sleep buried under his favourite authors; and his first thoughts on rising were how to obtain instruments for viewing those objects himself of which he had been reading. There being in one of the shops a two and a half foot Gregorian telescope to be let, it was for some time taken in requisition, and served not only for viewing the heavens but for making experiments on its construction.... It soon appeared that my brother was not contented with knowing what former observers had seen, for he began to contrive a telescope eighteen or twenty feet long (I believe after Huyghens’ description).... I was much hindered in my musical practice by my help being continually wanted in the execution of the various contrivances, and I had to amuse myself with making the tube of pasteboard for the glasses which were to arrive from London, for at that time no optician had settled at Bath. But when all was finished, no one besides my brother could get a glimpse of Jupiter or Saturn, for the great length of the tube would not allow it to be kept in a straight line. This difficulty, however, was soon removed by substituting tin tubes.... My brother wrote to inquire the price of a reflecting mirror for (I believe) a five or six foot telescope. The answer was, there were none of so large a size, but a person offered to make one at a price much above what my brother thought proper to give.... About this time he bought of a Quaker resident at Bath, who had formerly made attempts at polishing mirrors, all his rubbish of patterns, tools, hones, polishers, unfinished mirrors, &c., but all for small Gregorians, and none above two or three inches diameter.

“But nothing serious could be attempted, for want of time, till the beginning of June, when some of my brother’s scholars were leaving Bath; and then to my sorrow I saw almost every room turned into a workshop. A cabinet-maker making a tube and stands of all descriptions in a handsomely furnished drawing-room; Alex putting up a huge turning machine (which he had brought in the autumn from Bristol, where he used to spend the summer) in a bedroom, for turning patterns, grinding glasses, and turning eye-pieces, &c. At the same time music durst not lie entirely dormant during the summer, and my brother had frequent rehearsals at home, where Miss Farinelli, an Italian singer, was met by several of the principal performers he had engaged for the winter concerts.... He composed glees, catches, &c., for such voices as he could secure, as it was not easy to find a singer to take the place of Miss Linley.... Sometimes, in the absence of Fisher, he gave a concerto on the oboe, or a sonata on the harpsichord; and the solos on the violoncello of my brother Alexander were divine!... He also took great delight in a choir of singers who performed the cathedral service at the Octagon Chapel, for whom he composed many excellent anthems, chants, and psalm tunes.[^[5]] As soon as I could pronounce English well enough I was obliged to attend the rehearsals, and on Sundays at morning and evening service, which, though I did not much like at first, I soon found to be both pleasant and useful.

1775-1782. Life in Bath.

“But every leisure moment was eagerly snatched at for resuming some work which was in progress, without taking time for changing dress, and many a lace ruffle was torn or bespattered by molten pitch, &c., besides the danger to which he continually exposed himself by the uncommon precipitancy which accompanied all his actions, of which we had a melancholy sample one Saturday evening, when both brothers returned from a concert between 11 and 12 o’clock, my eldest brother pleasing himself all the way home with being at liberty to spend the next day (except a few hours’ attendance at chapel) at the turning bench, but recollecting that the tools wanted sharpening, they ran with the lantern and tools to our landlord’s grindstone in a public yard, where they did not wish to be seen on a Sunday morning.... But my brother William was soon brought back fainting by Alex with the loss of one of his finger-nails. This happened in the winter of 1775, at a house situated near Walcot turnpike, to which my brother had moved at midsummer, 1774. On a grass plot behind the house preparation was immediately made for erecting a twenty-foot telescope, for which, among seven and ten foot mirrors then in hand, one of twelve foot was preparing; this house offered more room for workshops, and a place on the roof for observing.

“During this summer I lost the only female acquaintances (not friends) I ever had an opportunity of being very intimate with by Bulmer’s family returning again to Leeds. For my time was so much taken up with copying music and practising, besides attendance on my brother when polishing, since by way of keeping him alive I was constantly obliged to feed him by putting the victuals by bits into his mouth. This was once the case when, in order to finish a seven foot mirror, he had not taken his hands from it for sixteen hours together.[^[6]] In general he was never unemployed at meals, but was always at those times contriving or making drawings of whatever came in his mind. Generally I was obliged to read to him whilst he was at the turning lathe, or polishing mirrors, Don Quixote, Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, the novels of Sterne, Fielding, &c.; serving tea and supper without interrupting the work with which he was engaged, ... and sometimes lending a hand. I became in time as useful a member of the workshop as a boy might be to his master in the first year of his apprenticeship.... But as I was to take a part the next year in the oratorios, I had for a whole twelvemonth two lessons per week from Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing mistress, to drill me for a gentlewoman (God knows how she succeeded). So we lived on without interruption. My brother Alex was absent from Bath for some months every summer, but when at home he took much pleasure to execute some turning or clockmaker’s work for his brother.”

News from Hanover put a sudden stop for a time to all these labours. The mother wrote, in the utmost distress, to say that Dietrich had disappeared from his home, it was supposed with the intention of going to India “with a young idler not older than himself.” His brother immediately left the lathe at which he was turning an eye-piece in cocoanut, and started for Holland, whence he proceeded to Hanover, failing to meet his brother as he expected. Meanwhile the sister received a letter to say that Dietrich was laid up very ill at an inn in Wapping. Alexander posted to town, removed him to a lodging, and after a fortnight’s nursing, brought him to Bath, where, on his brother William’s return, he found him being well cared for by his sister, who kept him to a diet of “roasted apples and barley-water.” Dietrich remained in England, his brother easily procuring him employment until 1779, when he returned to Hanover, and shortly afterwards married a Miss Reif. The family now moved to a larger house, 19, New King Street, which had a garden behind it, and open space down to the river. It is incidentally mentioned, “that here many interesting discoveries besides the Georgium Sidus were made.”

In preparation for the oratorios to be performed during Lent, Miss Herschel mentions that she copied the scores of the “Messiah” and “Judas Maccabæus” into parts for an orchestra of nearly one hundred performers, and the vocal parts of “Samson,” besides instructing the treble singers, of which she was now herself the first. On the occasion of her first public appearance, her brother presented her with ten guineas for her dress,—

“And that my choice could not have been a bad one I conclude from having been pronounced by Mr. Palmer (the then proprietor of the Bath theatre) to be an ornament to the stage. And as to acquitting myself in giving my songs and recitatives in the ‘Messiah,’ ‘Judas Maccabæus,’ &c., I had the satisfaction of being complimented by my friends, the Marchioness of Lothian, &c., who were present at the rehearsals, for pronouncing my words like an Englishwoman.”

It is evident that had she chosen to persevere, her reputation as a singer would have been secure. The following year she was first singer at the concerts, and was offered an engagement for the Birmingham Festival, which she declined, having resolved only to sing in public where her brother was conductor. At this time he had repeated proposals from London publishers to bring out some of his vocal compositions, but with the exception of “The Echo” catch, none of them ever appeared in print. Besides the regular Sunday services, concerts and oratorios had to be prepared for and performed in steady routine, sometimes at Bristol also, while the poor prima-donna-housekeeper “hobbled on” with one dishonest servant after another, until Whit Sunday, 1782, when both brother and sister played and sung for the last time, in St. Margaret’s Chapel. On this occasion, their last performance in public, the anthem selected for the day was one of the last compositions, of which mention has been made above.

The name of William Herschel was fast becoming famous, as a writer, a discoverer, and the possessor and inventor of instruments of unheard-of power. He was now about to be released from the necessity of devoting the time to music which he was eager to give to astronomical science.[^[7]] It came about as follows:—

... “He was now frequently interrupted by visitors who were introduced by some of his resident scholars, among whom I remember Sir Harry Engelfield, Dr. Blagden, and Dr. Maskelyne. With the latter he was engaged in a long conversation, which to me sounded like quarrelling, and the first words my brother said after he was gone was: ‘That is a devil of a fellow.’... I suppose their names were not known, or were forgotten; for it was not till the year 1782 or 1783 that a memorandum of the names of visitors was thought of.... My brother applied himself to perfect his mirrors, erecting in his garden a stand for his twenty-foot telescope; many trials were necessary before the required motions for such an unwieldy machine could be contrived. Many attempts were made by way of experiment against a mirror for an intended thirty-foot telescope could be completed, for which, between whiles (not interrupting the observations with seven, ten, and twenty-foot, and writing papers for both the Royal and Bath Philosophical Societies) gauges, shapes, weight, &c., of the mirror were calculated, and trials of the composition of the metal were made. In short, I saw nothing else and heard nothing else talked of but about these things when my brothers were together. Alex was always very alert, assisting when anything new was going forward, but he wanted perseverance, and never liked to confine himself at home for many hours together. And so it happened that my brother William was obliged to make trial of my abilities in copying for him catalogues, tables, &c., and sometimes whole papers which were lent him for his perusal. Among them was one by Mr. Michel and a catalogue of Christian Mayer in Latin, which kept me employed when my brother was at the telescope at night. When I found that a hand was sometimes wanted when any particular measures were to be made with the lamp micrometer, &c., or a fire to be kept up, or a dish of coffee necessary during a long night’s watching, I undertook with pleasure what others might have thought a hardship.... Since the discovery of the Georgium Sidus [March 13, 1781], I believe few men of learning or consequence left Bath before they had seen and conversed with its discoverer, and thought themselves fortunate in finding him at home on their repeated visits. Sir William Watson[^[8]] was almost an intimate, for hardly a day passed but he had something to communicate from the letters which he received from Sir Joseph Banks and other members of the Royal Society, from which it appeared that my brother was expected in town to receive the gold medal. The end of November was the most precarious season for absenting himself. But Sir William went with him, and it was arranged so that they set out with the diligence at night, and by that means his absence did not last above three or four days, when my brother returned alone, Sir William remaining with his father.

“Now a very busy winter was commencing; for my brother had engaged himself to conduct the oratorios conjointly with Ronzini, and had made himself answerable for the payment of the engaged performers, for his credit ever stood high in the opinion of every one he had to deal with. (He lost considerably by this arrangement.) But, though at times much harassed with business, the mirror for the thirty-foot reflector was never out of his mind, and if a minute could but be spared in going from one scholar to another, or giving one the slip, he called at home to see how the men went on with the furnace, which was built in a room below, even with the garden.

“The mirror was to be cast in a mould of loam prepared from horse dung, of which an immense quantity was to be pounded in a mortar and sifted through a fine sieve. It was an endless piece of work, and served me for many an hour’s exercise; and Alex frequently took his turn at it, for we were all eager to do something towards the great undertaking. Even Sir William Watson would sometimes take the pestle from me when he found me in the work-room, where he expected to find his friend, in whose concerns he took so much interest that he felt much disappointed at not being allowed to pay for the metal. But I do not think my brother ever accepted pecuniary assistance from any one of his friends, and on this occasion he declined the offer by saying it was paid for already.

“Among the Bath visitors were many philosophical gentlemen who used to frequent the levées at St. James’s, when in town. Colonel Walsh, in particular, informed my brother that from a conversation he had had with His Majesty, it appeared that in the spring he was to come with his seven-foot telescope to the King. Similar reports he received from many others, but they made no great impression nor caused any interruption in his occupation or study, and as soon as the season for the concerts was over, and the mould, &c., in readiness, a day was set apart for casting, and the metal was in the furnace, but unfortunately it began to leak at the moment when ready for pouring, and both my brothers and the caster with his men were obliged to run out at opposite doors, for the stone flooring (which ought to have been taken up) flew about in all directions, as high as the ceiling. My poor brother fell, exhausted with heat and exertion, on a heap of brickbats. Before the second casting was attempted, everything which could ensure success had been attended to, and a very perfect metal was found in the mould, which had cracked in the cooling.

“But a total stop and derangement now took place, and nearly six or seven months elapsed before my brother could return to the undisturbed enjoyment of his instruments and observations. For one morning in Passion week, as Sir William Watson was with my brother, talking about the pending journey to town, my eldest nephew[^[9]] arrived to pay us a visit, and brought the confirmation that his uncle was expected with his instrument in town. A chaise was at the door to take us to Bristol for a rehearsal in the forenoon, of the ‘Messiah,’ which was to be performed the same evening. The conductor being still lost in conversation with his friend, was obliged to trust to my poor abilities for filling the music box with the necessary parts for between ninety and one hundred performers. My nephew had travelled all night, but we took him with us, for we had not one night in the week, except Friday, but what was set apart for an oratorio either at Bath or Bristol. Soon after Easter a new organ being erected in St. James’s Church, it was opened with two performances of the ‘Messiah;’ this again took up some of my brother’s time....

... The Tuesday after Whit Sunday, May 8th, my brother left Bath to join Sir William Watson at his father’s in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, furnished with everything necessary for viewing double stars, of which the first catalogue had just then appeared in the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’ A new seven-foot stand and steps were made to go in a moderate sized box, to be screwed together on the spot where wanted. Flamsteed’s Atlas, in which the stars had during the winter been numbered, catalogues of double stars, micrometers, tables, &c., and everything which could facilitate reviewing objects, had been attended to in the preparation for the journey.

“But when almost double the time had elapsed which my brother could safely be absent from his scholars, Alex, as well as myself, were much at a loss how to answer their inquiries, for, from the letters we received, we could learn nothing but that he had been introduced to the King and Queen, and had permission to come to the concerts at Buckingham House, where the King conversed with him about astronomy.”

It was during his absence at this time that the three following letters were written and received:—

Dear Lina,—

I have had an audience of His Majesty this morning, and met with a very gracious reception. I presented him with the drawing of the solar system, and had the honour of explaining it to him and the Queen. My telescope is in three weeks’ time to go to Richmond, and meanwhile to be put up at Greenwich, where I shall accordingly carry it to-day. So you see, Lina, that you must not think of seeing me in less than a month. I shall write to Miss Lee myself; and other scholars who inquire for me, you may tell that I cannot wait on them till His Majesty shall be pleased to give me leave to return, or rather to dismiss me, for till then I must attend. I will also write to Mr. Palmer to acquaint him with it.

I am in a great hurry, therefore can write no more at present. Tell Alexander that everything looks very likely as if I were to stay here. The King inquired after him, and after my great speculum. He also gave me leave to come to hear the Griesbachs play at the private concert which he has every evening. My having seen the King need not be kept a secret, but about my staying here it will be best not to say anything, but only that I must remain here till His Majesty has observed the planets with my telescope.

Yesterday I dined with Colonel Walsh, who inquired after you. There were Mr. Aubert and Dr. Maskelyne. Dr. Maskelyne in public declared his obligations to me for having introduced to them the high powers, for Mr. Aubert has so much succeeded with them that he says he looks down upon 200, 300, or 400 with contempt, and immediately begins with 800. He has used 2500 very completely, and seen my fine double stars with them. All my papers are printing, with the postscript and all, and are allowed to be very valuable. You see, Lina, I tell you all these things. You know vanity is not my foible, therefore I need not fear your censure. Farewell.

I am, your affectionate brother,

Wm. Herschel.

Saturday Morning,

probably May 25.

TO MISS HERSCHEL.

Monday Evening, June 3, 1782.

Dear Lina,—

I pass my time between Greenwich and London agreeably enough, but am rather at a loss for work that I like. Company is not always pleasing, and I would much rather be polishing a speculum. Last Friday I was at the King’s concert to hear George play. The King spoke to me as soon as he saw me, and kept me in conversation for half an hour. He asked George to play a solo-concerto on purpose that I might hear him; and George plays extremely well, is very much improved, and the King likes him very much. These two last nights I have been star-gazing at Greenwich with Dr. Maskelyne and Mr. Aubert. We have compared our telescopes together, and mine was found very superior to any of the Royal Observatory. Double stars which they could not see with their instruments I had the pleasure to show them very plainly, and my mechanism is so much approved of that Dr. Maskelyne has already ordered a model to be taken from mine and a stand to be made by it to his reflector. He is, however, now so much out of love with his instrument that he begins to doubt whether it deserves a new stand. I have had the influenza, but am now quite well again. It lasted only five or six days, and I never was confined with it.... There is hardly one single person here but what has had it.

I am introduced to the best company. To-morrow I dine at Lord Palmerston’s, next day with Sir Joseph Banks, &c., &c. Among opticians and astronomers nothing now is talked of but what they call my great discoveries. Alas! this shows how far they are behind, when such trifles as I have seen and done are called great. Let me but get at it again! I will make such telescopes, and see such things—that is, I will endeavour to do so.

The letter ends abruptly with this sentence, and only one more was written during this momentous interval.

1775-1782. Impending Changes.

TO MISS HERSCHEL.

July 3, 1782.

Dear Carolina,—

I have been so much employed that you will not wonder at my not writing sooner. The letter you sent me last Monday came very safe to me. As Dr. Watson has been so good as to acquaint you and Alexander with my situation, I was still more easy in my silence to you. Last night the King, the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, Princess Sophia, Princess Augusta, &c., Duke of Montague, Dr. Heberden, M. de Luc, &c., &c., saw my telescope, and it was a very fine evening. My instrument gave general satisfaction. The King has very good eyes, and enjoys observations with telescopes exceedingly.

This evening, as the King and Queen are gone to Kew, the Princesses were desirous of seeing my telescope, but wanted to know if it was possible to see without going out on the grass, and were much pleased when they heard that my telescope could be carried into any place they liked best to have it. About 8 o’clock it was moved into the Queen’s apartments, and we waited some time in hopes of seeing Jupiter or Saturn. Meanwhile I showed the Princesses, and several other ladies who were present, the speculum, the micrometers, the movements of the telescope, and other things that seemed to excite their curiosity. When the evening appeared to be totally unpromising, I proposed an artificial Saturn as an object, since we could not have the real one. I had beforehand prepared this little piece, as I guessed by the appearance of the weather in the afternoon we should have no stars to look at. This being accepted with great pleasure, I had the lamps lighted up which illuminated the picture of a Saturn (cut out in pasteboard) at the bottom of the garden wall. The effect was fine, and so natural that the best astronomer might have been deceived. Their royal highnesses and other ladies seemed to be much pleased with the artifice.

I remained in the Queen’s apartment with the ladies till about half after ten, when in conversation with them I found them extremely well instructed in every subject that was introduced, and they seemed to be most amiable characters. To-morrow evening they hope to have better luck, and nothing will give me greater happiness than to be able to show them some of those beautiful objects with which the heavens are so gloriously ornamented.

Sir William Watson returned to Bath after a fortnight or three weeks’ stay. From him we heard that my brother was invited to Greenwich with the telescope, where he was met by a numerous party of astronomical and learned gentlemen, and trials of his instrument were made. In these letters he complained of being obliged to lead an idle life, having nothing to do but to pass between London and Greenwich. Sir William received many letters which he was so kind as to communicate to us. By these, and from those to Alexander or to me, we learned that the King wished to see the telescope at Windsor. At last a letter, dated July 2, arrived from Therese, and from this and several succeeding ones we gathered that the King would not suffer my brother to return to his profession again, and by his writing several times for a supply of money we could only suppose that he himself was in uncertainty about the time of his return.

In the last week of July my brother came home, and immediately prepared for removing to Datchet, where he had taken a house with a garden and grass-plot annexed, quite suitable for the purpose of an observing-place. Sir Wm. Watson spent nearly the whole time at our house, and he was not the only friend who truly grieved at my brother’s going from Bath; or feared his having perhaps agreed to no very advantageous offers; their fears were, in fact, not without reason.... The prospect of entering again on the toils of teaching, &c., which awaited my brother at home (the months of leisure being now almost gone by), appeared to him an intolerable waste of time, and by way of alternative he chose to be Royal Astronomer, with a salary of £200 a year. Sir William Watson was the only one to whom the sum was mentioned, and he exclaimed, “Never bought monarch honour so cheap!” To every other inquirer, my brother’s answer was that the King had provided for him.

1782. Removal to Datchet.

Everything was immediately packed for the removal, and on the 1st of August, when the brothers and sister walked over to Datchet from Slough (where the coach passed), they found the waggon, with its precious load of instruments, as well as household furniture, waiting to be unpacked. The new home was a large neglected place, the house in a deplorably ruinous condition, the garden and grounds overgrown with weeds. For a fortnight they had no female servant at all; an old woman, the gardener’s wife, showed Miss Herschel the shops, where the prices of everything, from coals to butcher’s meat, appalled her. But these considerations weighed for nothing in her brother’s eyes against the delight of stables where mirrors could be ground, a roomy laundry, which was to serve for a library, with one door opening on a large grass-plot, where “the small twenty-foot” was to be erected; he gaily assured her that they could live on eggs and bacon, which would cost nothing to speak of now that they were really in the country!

The beginning of October, Alexander was obliged to return to Bath. The separation was truly painful to us all, and I was particularly affected by it, for till now I had not had time to consider the consequence of giving up the prospect of making myself independent by becoming (with a little more uninterrupted application) a useful member of the musical profession. But besides that my brother William would have been very much at a loss for my assistance, I had not spirit enough to throw myself on the public after losing his protection.

Poor Alexander! we had hoped at first to persuade him to change Bath for London, where he had the offer of the most profitable engagements, and we should then have had him near us ... but he refused, and before we saw him again the next year he was married.

Much of my brother’s time was taken up in going, when the evenings were clear, to the Queen’s Lodge to show the King, &c., objects through the seven-foot. But when the days began to shorten, this was found impossible, for the telescope was often (at no small expense and risk of damage) obliged to be transported in the dark back to Datchet, for the purpose of spending the rest of the night with observations on double stars for a second Catalogue. My brother was besides obliged to be absent for a week or ten days for the purpose of bringing home the metal of the cracked thirty-foot mirror, and the remaining materials from his work-room. Before the furnace was taken down at Bath, a second twenty-foot mirror, twelve-inch diameter, was cast, which happened to be very fortunate, for on the 1st of January, 1783, a very fine one cracked by frost in the tube. I remember to have seen the thermometer 1½ degree below zero for several nights in the same year....

1783. Life at Datchet.

... In my brother’s absence from home, I was of course left solely to amuse myself with my own thoughts, which were anything but cheerful. I found I was to be trained for an assistant-astronomer, and by way of encouragement a telescope adapted for “sweeping,” consisting of a tube with two glasses, such as are commonly used in a “finder,” was given me. I was “to sweep for comets,” and I see by my journal that I began August 22nd, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my “sweeps,” which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the star-light nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar frost, without a human being near enough to be within call. I knew too little of the real heavens to be able to point out every object so as to find it again without losing too much time by consulting the Atlas. But all these troubles were removed when I knew my brother to be at no great distance making observations with his various instruments on double stars, planets, &c., and I could have his assistance immediately when I found a nebula, or cluster of stars, of which I intended to give a catalogue; but at the end of 1783 I had only marked fourteen, when my sweeping was interrupted by being employed to write down my brother’s observations with the large twenty-foot. I had, however, the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours to assist him when he wanted another person, either to run to the clocks, write down a memorandum, fetch and carry instruments, or measure the ground with poles, &c., &c., of which something of the kind every moment would occur. For the assiduity with which the measurements on the diameter of the Georgium Sidus, and observations of other planets, double stars, &c., &c., were made, was incredible, as may be seen by the various papers that were given to the Royal Society in 1783, which papers were written in the daytime, or when cloudy nights interfered. Besides this, the twelve-inch speculum was perfected before the spring, and many hours were spent at the turning bench, as not a night clear enough for observing ever passed but that some improvements were planned for perfecting the mounting and motions of the various instruments then in use, or some trials were made of new constructed eye-pieces, which were mostly executed by my brother’s own hands. Wishing to save his time, he began to have some work of that kind done by a watchmaker who had retired from business and lived on Datchet Common, but the work was so bad, and the charges so unreasonable, that he could not be employed. It was not till some time afterwards in his frequent visits to the meetings of the Royal Society (made in moonlight nights), that he had an opportunity of looking about for mathematical workmen, opticians, and founders. But the work seldom answered expectation, and it was kept to be executed with improvements by Alexander during the few months he spent with us.

The summer months passed in the most active preparation for getting the large twenty-foot ready against the next winter. The carpenters and smiths of Datchet were in daily requisition, and as soon as patterns for tools and mirrors were ready, my brother went to town to have them cast, and during the three or four months Alexander could be absent from Bath, the mirrors and optical parts were nearly completed.

But that the nights after a day of toil were not given to rest, may be seen by the observations on Mars, of which a paper, dated December 1, 1783, was given to the Royal Society. Some trouble also was often thrown away during those nights in the attempt to teach me to re-measure double stars with the same micrometers with which former measures had been taken, and the small twenty-foot was given me for that purpose.... I had also to ascertain their places by a transit instrument lent for that purpose by Mr. Dalrymple, but after many fruitless attempts it was seen that the instrument was perhaps as much in fault as my observations.

July 8.—I began to use the new Newtonian small sweeper, (for a description of this instrument see note to Neb. No. 1, V. class, at the end of the catalogue of first 1000 Neb. and Cl.), but it could hardly be expected that I should meet with any comets in the part of the heavens where I swept, for I generally chose my situation by the side of my brother’s instrument, that I might be ready to run to the clock or write down memorandums. In the beginning of December I became entirely attached to the writing-desk, and had seldom an opportunity after that time of using my newly-acquired instrument.

My brother began his series of sweeps when the instrument was yet in a very unfinished state, and my feelings were not very comfortable when every moment I was alarmed by a crack or fall, knowing him to be elevated fifteen feet or more on a temporary cross-beam instead of a safe gallery. The ladders had not even their braces at the bottom; and one night, in a very high wind, he had hardly touched the ground before the whole apparatus came down. Some labouring men were called up to help in extricating the mirror, which was fortunately uninjured, but much work was cut out for carpenters next day.

That my fears of danger and accidents were not wholly imaginary, I had an unlucky proof on the night of the 31st December. The evening had been cloudy, but about ten o’clock a few stars became visible, and in the greatest hurry all was got ready for observing. My brother, at the front of the telescope, directed me to make some alteration in the lateral motion, which was done by machinery, on which the point of support of the tube and mirror rested. At each end of the machine or trough was an iron hook, such as butchers use for hanging their joints upon, and having to run in the dark on ground covered a foot deep with melting snow, I fell on one of these hooks, which entered my right leg above the knee. My brother’s call, “Make haste!” I could only answer by a pitiful cry, “I am hooked!” He and the workmen were instantly with me, but they could not lift me without leaving nearly two ounces of my flesh behind. The workman’s wife was called, but was afraid to do anything, and I was obliged to be my own surgeon by applying aquabusade and tying a kerchief about it for some days, till Dr. Lind, hearing of my accident, brought me ointment and lint, and told me how to use them. At the end of six weeks I began to have some fears about my poor limb, and asked again for Dr. Lind’s opinion: he said if a soldier had met with such a hurt he would have been entitled to six weeks’ nursing in a hospital. I had, however, the comfort to know that my brother was no loser through this accident, for the remainder of the night was cloudy, and several nights afterwards afforded only a few short intervals favourable for sweeping, and until the 16th January there was no necessity for my exposing myself for a whole night to the severity of the season.

I could give a pretty long list of accidents which were near proving fatal to my brother as well as myself. To make observations with such large machinery, where all around is in darkness, is not unattended with danger, especially when personal safety is the last thing with which the mind is occupied; even poor Piazzi[^[10]] did not go home without getting broken shins by falling over the rack-bar, which projects in high altitudes in front of the telescope, when in the hurry the cap had been forgotten to be put over it.

In the long days of the summer months many ten- and seven-foot mirrors were finished; there was nothing but grinding and polishing to be seen. For ten-foot several had been cast with ribbed backs by way of experiment to reduce the weight in large mirrors. In my leisure hours I ground seven-foot and plain mirrors from rough to fining down, and was indulged with polishing and the last finishing of a very beautiful mirror for Sir William Watson.

An account of the discoveries made with the twenty-foot and the improvements of the mechanical parts of that instrument during the winter of 1785, is given with the Catalogue of the first 1000 new nebulæ. By which account it must plainly appear that the expenses of these improvements, and those which were yet to be made in the apparatus of the twenty-foot (which in fact proved to be a model of a larger instrument), could not be supplied out of a salary of £200 a year, especially as my brother’s finances had been too much reduced during the six months before he received his first quarterly payment of fifty pounds (which was Michaelmas, 1782). Travelling from Bath to London, Greenwich, Windsor, backwards and forwards, transporting the telescope, &c., breaking up his establishment at Bath and forming a new one near the Court, all this, even leaving such personal conveniences as he had for many years been used to, out of the question, could not be obtained for a trifle; a good large piece of ground was required for the use of the instruments, and a habitation in which he could receive and offer a bed to an astronomical friend, was necessary after a night’s observation.

It seemed to be supposed that enough had been done when my brother was enabled to leave his profession that he might have time to make and sell telescopes. The King ordered four ten-foot himself, and many seven-foot besides had been bespoke, and much time had already been expended on polishing the mirrors for the same. But all this was only retarding the work of a thirty or forty-foot instrument, which it was my brother’s chief object to obtain as soon as possible; for he was then on the wrong side of forty-five, and felt how great an injustice he would be doing to himself and to the cause of Astronomy by giving up his time to making telescopes for other observers.

Sir William Watson, who often in the lifetime of his father came to make some stay with us at Datchet, saw my brother’s difficulties, and expressed great dissatisfaction. On his return to Bath he met among the visitors there several belonging to the Court (among the rest Mde. Schwellenberg), to whom he gave his opinion concerning his friend and his situation very freely. In consequence of this my brother had soon after, through Sir J. Banks, the promise that £2000 would be granted for enabling him to make himself an instrument.

Immediately every preparation for beginning the great work commenced. A very ingenious smith (Campion), who was seeking employment, was secured by my brother, and a temporary forge erected in an upstairs room.

1784-1785. Removal from Datchet to Clay Hall.

It soon became evident that the big, tumble-down old house, which had been taken possession of with such eagerness, would not do: the rain came through the ceilings; the damp situation brought on ague, and in June the brother and sister left it for a place called Clay Hall, Old Windsor. But here again unlooked-for troubles arose in consequence of the landlady being a “litigious woman,” who refused to be bound to reasonable terms, and at length, on the 3rd of April, 1786, the house and garden at Slough were taken, and all the apparatus and machinery immediately removed there.

1786. Removal from Clay Hall to Slough.

... And here I must remember that among all this hurrying business, every moment after daylight was allotted to observing. The last night at Clay Hall was spent in sweeping till daylight, and by the next evening the telescope stood ready for observation at Slough.... A workman for the brass and optical parts was engaged, and two smiths were at work throughout the summer on different parts for the forty-foot telescope, and a whole troop of labourers were engaged in grinding the iron tools to a proper shape for the mirror to be ground on (the polishing and grinding by machines was not begun till about the end of 1788). These heavy articles were cast in town, and caused my brother frequent journeys to London, they were brought by water as far as Windsor.... At Slough no steady out-of-door workman for the sweeping handle could be met with, and a man-servant was engaged as soon as one could be found fit for the purpose. Meanwhile Campion assisted, but many memorandums were put down: “Lost a neb. by the blunder of the person at the handle.” If it had not been sometimes for the intervention of a cloudy or moonlight night, I know not when my brother (or I either), should have got any sleep; for with the morning came also his workpeople, of whom there were no less than between thirty and forty at work for upwards of three months together, some employed in felling and rooting out trees, some digging and preparing the ground for the bricklayers who were laying the foundation for the telescope, and the carpenter in Slough, with all his men. The smith, meanwhile, was converting a washhouse into a forge, and manufacturing complete sets of tools required for the work he was to enter upon. Many expensive tools also were furnished by the ironmongers in Windsor, as well for the forge as for the turner and brass man. In short, the place was at one time a complete workshop for making optical instruments, and it was a pleasure to go into it to see how attentively the men listened to and executed their master’s orders; I had frequent opportunities for doing this when I was obliged to run to him with my papers or slate, when stopped in my work by some doubt or other.

I cannot leave this subject without regretting, even twenty years after, that so much labour and expense should have been thrown away on a swarm of pilfering work-people, both men and women, with which Slough, I believe, was particularly infested. For at last everything that could be carried away was gone, and nothing but rubbish left. Even tables for the use of workrooms vanished: one in particular I remember, the drawer of which was filled with slips of experiments made on the rays of light and heat, was lost out of the room in which the women had been ironing. This could not but produce the greatest disorder and inconvenience in the library and in the room into which the apparatus for observing had been moved, when the observatory was wanted for some other purpose; they were at last so encumbered by stores and tools of all sorts that no room for a desk or an Atlas remained. It required my utmost exertion to rescue the manuscripts in hand from destruction by falling into unhallowed hands or being devoured by mice.

But I will now return to July, 1786, when my brother was obliged to deliver a ten-foot telescope as a present from the King to the Observatory of Göttingen. Before he left Slough on July 3rd, the stand of the forty-foot telescope stood on two circular walls capped with Portland stone (which, cracking by frost, were afterwards covered with oak) ready to receive the tube. The smith was left to continue to work at the tube, which was sufficient employment cut out for him before he would want farther direction. The mirror was also pretty far advanced, and ready for the polish, for I remember to have seen twelve or fourteen men daily employed in grinding or polishing.

1786. Life and Work at Slough.

To give a description of the task (or rather tasks) which fell to my share, the readiest way I think will be to transcribe out of a day-book which I began to keep at that time, and called “Book of work done.”

July 3.—My brothers William and Alex. left Slough to begin their journey to Germany. Mrs. [Alex.] Herschel was left with me at Slough. By way of not suffering too much by sadness, I began with bustling work. I cleaned all the brass-work for seven and ten-foot telescopes, and put curtains before the shelves to hinder the dust from settling upon them again.

4th.—I cleaned and put the polishing-room in order, and made the gardener clear the work-yard, put everything in safety, and mend the fences.

5th.—I spent the morning in needle-work. In the afternoon went with Mrs. Herschel to Windsor. We chose the hours from two to six for shopping and other business, to be from home at the time most unlikely for any persons to call, but there had been four foreign gentlemen looking at the instruments in the garden, they had not left their names. In the evening Dr. and Mrs. Kelly (Mr. Dollond’s daughter) and Mr. Gordon came to see me.

6th.—I put all the philosophical letters in order, and the collection of each year in a separate cover.

* * * * *

12th.—I put paper in press for a register, and calculated for Flamsteed’s Catalogue.

Mem.—When Flamsteed’s Catalogue was brought into zones in 1783, it was only taken up at 45° from the Pole, the apparatus not being then ready for sweeping in the zenith.

By July 23rd the whole Catalogue was completed all but writing it in the clear, which at that time was a very necessary provision, as it was not till the year 1789 that Wollaston’s Catalogue made its appearance. Many sweeps nearer the Pole than the register of sweeps, which only began at 45°, being made, it became necessary to provide a register for marking those sweeps and the nebulæ discovered in them.

14th.—Dr. and Mrs. Maskelyne called here with Dr. Shepherd.

15th.—I spent the day with Mrs. Herschel at Mrs. Kelly’s. We met Dr. and Mrs. Maskelyne and Dr. Shepherd, Marquis of Huntley, &c., &c., there.

16th.—I ruled part of the register of sweeps.

* * * * *

18th.—I spent the whole day in ruling paper for the register; except that at breakfast I cut out ruffles for shirts. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Ramsden (Dollond’s sister) called this evening. I tried to sweep, but it is cloudy, and the moon rises at half-past ten.

19th.—In the evening we swept from eleven till one.

20th.—Prince Charles (Queen’s brother) Duke of Saxe-Gotha and the Duke of Montague were here this morning. I had a message from the King to show them the instruments.

* * * * *

I had intended to go on with my Diary till my brother’s return, but it would be tedious, so of the rest I shall give only a summary account, and will mention in this place that all what follows would but be the same thing over again; for the advantage of being quietly at work in the presence of my brother to whom I could apply for information the moment a doubt occurred, never returned again, and often have I been racking my poor brains through a day and a night to very little purpose. I found it necessary to continue my memoranda of “work done” to the last day I had the care of my brother’s MS. papers. But I had rather copy a few days more, as they contain the discovery of my first comet, and will serve also to show that I attempted to register all discovered nebulæ, after a precept my brother had left me, as this was necessary for revising the MS. of the catalogue of the first thousand nebulæ, which he expected at his return to find ready for correction from the printers.

22nd.—I calculated all the day for Flamsteed’s Catalogue. Lord Mulgrave called this evening.....

23rd.—Received letters from Hanover. Finished calculating for Flamsteed’s Catalogue.

The two following short letters were carefully preserved, and, though they contain nothing of importance, they are of interest as being of the very few from the same pen which are not on scientific subjects.

FROM W. HERSCHEL TO CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

Hanover, Friday, July 14, 1786.

Dear Sister,—

This morning we arrived safely at Hanover. We are a little tired, but perfectly well in health. We travelled extra post all the way through very bad roads. The post is going out in a very little time, so that I write in a hurry that you might hear from us so much sooner. After a night or two of sleep here (by way of recovery) I shall go on to Göttingen; but when I have collected my thoughts better together I will write more. Mamma is perfectly well and looks well. Jacob looks a little older, but not nearly so much as I expected. In Sophy [Mrs. Griesbach] there is hardly any change, but a few white hairs on her head. John [Dietrich] is just the same as before, his little boy seems to be a charming creature. Farewell, dear Lina. I hope we shall see you again in a few weeks. I must finish for Alexander to write. Adieu once more.

FROM W. HERSCHEL TO CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

[August, 1786.]

Dear Lina,—

We are still in Hanover, and find it a most agreeable place. I have been in Göttingen, where Jacob went along with me, and the King’s telescope arrived there in perfect order. The Society of Göttingen have elected me a member. We long very much to hear from you, as we have never had a letter yet. This is the fourth we have sent you, and we hope you received the former ones. This day fortnight we have fixed for our setting out from this place, and be assured that we shall be happy to see old England again, though old Germany is no bad place. Yesterday and the day before I have seen the Bishop of Osnaburgh and the Prince Edward. If an inquiry should be made about our return, you may say (I hope with truth) that we shall be back by about the 24th of August. Adieu, Lina.

24th.—I registered some sweeps in present time and Pole distance. Prince Resonico came with Dr. Shepherd to see the instruments. I swept from ten till one.

* * * * *

28th.—I wrote part of Flamsteed’s Catalogue in the clear. It was a stormy night, we could not go to bed.

29th.—I paid the smith. He received to-day the plates for the forty-foot tube. Above half of them are bad, but he thinks there will be as many good among them as will be wanted, and I believe he intends to keep the rest till they return. Paid the gardener for four days which he worked with the smith. I registered sweeps to-day. By way of memorandum I will set down in this book in what manner I proceed.

I began some time ago with the last sweep which is booked in the old register (Flamsteed’s time and P. D.), viz., 571, and at different times I booked 570, 569, 568, 567, 566, 565. To-day I booked 564; 563 is marked not to be registered; 560 and 561 I was obliged to pass over on account of some difficulty. The rest of the day I wrote in Flamsteed’s Catalogue. The storm continued all the day, but now, 8 o’clock, it turns to a gentle rain.

30th.—I wound up the sidereal timepiece, Field’s and Alexander’s clocks, and made covers for the new and old registers.

31st.—I booked 558, 557, and 554; 556, 555, I was obliged to leave out on account of some difficulty.

Mem.—I find I cannot go on fast enough with the registering of sweeps to be serviceable to the Catalogue of Nebulæ. Therefore I will begin immediately to recalculate them, and hope to finish them before they return. Besides, I think the consequences of registering the sweeps backwards will be bad.

1786. Slough.—The first Comet.

August 1.—I have counted one hundred nebulæ to-day, and this evening I saw an object which I believe will prove to-morrow night to be a comet.

2nd.—To-day I calculated 150 nebulæ. I fear it will not be clear to-night. It has been raining throughout the whole day, but seems now to clear up a little.

1 o’clock.—The object of last night is a comet.

3rd.—I did not go to rest till I had wrote to Dr. Blagden and Mr. Aubert to announce the comet. After a few hours’ sleep, I went in the afternoon to Dr. Lind, who, with Mr. Cavallo, accompanied me to Slough, with the intention of seeing the comet, but it was cloudy, and remained so all night.

MISS HERSCHEL TO DR. BLAGDEN.

August 2, 1786.

Sir,—

In consequence of the friendship which I know to exist between you and my brother, I venture to trouble you, in his absence, with the following imperfect account of a comet:—

The employment of writing down the observations when my brother uses the twenty-foot reflector does not often allow me time to look at the heavens, but as he is now on a visit to Germany, I have taken the opportunity to sweep in the neighbourhood of the sun in search of comets; and last night, the 1st of August, about 10 o’clock, I found an object very much resembling in colour and brightness the 27 nebula of the Connoissance des Temps, with the difference, however, of being round. I suspected it to be a comet; but a haziness coming on, it was not possible to satisfy myself as to its motion till this evening. I made several drawings of the stars in the field of view with it, and have enclosed a copy of them, with my observations annexed, that you may compare them together.

August 1, 1786, 9^h 50ʹ. Fig. 1. The object in the centre is like a star out of focus, while the rest are perfectly distinct, and I suspect it to be a comet.

10^h 33ʹ. Fig. 2. The suspected comet makes now a perfect isosceles triangle with the two stars a and b.

11^h 8ʹ. I think the situation of the comet is now as in Fig. 3, but it is so hazy that I cannot sufficiently see the small star b to be assured of the motion.

By the naked eye the comet is between the 54 and 53 Ursæ Majoris and the 14, 15, and 16 Comæ Berenices, and makes an obtuse triangle with them, the vertex of which is turned towards the south.

Aug. 2nd, 10^h 9ʹ. The comet is now, with respect to the stars a and b, situated as in Fig. 4, therefore the motion since last night is evident.

10^h 30ʹ. Another considerable star, c, may be taken into the field with it by placing a in the centre, when the comet and the other star will both appear in the circumference, as in Fig. 5.

These observations were made with a Newtonian sweeper of 27-inch focal length, and a power of about 20. The field of view is 2° 12ʹ. I cannot find the stars a or c in any catalogue, but suppose they may easily be traced in the heavens, whence the situation of the comet, as it was last night at 10^h 33ʹ, may be pretty nearly ascertained.

You will do me the favour of communicating these observations to my brother’s astronomical friends.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

Carolina Herschel.

August 2nd, 1786.

Slough, near Windsor.

MISS HERSCHEL TO ALEX. AUBERT, ESQ.

Slough, August 2, 1786.

Dear Sir,—

August 1st, in the evening, at 10 o’clock, I saw an object very much resembling (in colour and brightness) the 27 of Mr. Messier’s Nebulæ, except this object being round. I suspected it to be a comet; but a haziness came on before I could convince myself of its having moved. I made several figures of the objects in the field, whereof I take the liberty to send the first, that you might compare it with what I saw to-night.

In Fig. 1 I observed the nebulous spot in the centre, a bright red but small star upwards, another very faint white star following, and in the situation as marked in the figure. There is a third star preceding, but exceedingly faint. I suspected several more, which may perhaps appear in a finer evening, but they were not distinct enough to take account of.

In Fig. 2, August 2nd, are only the red and its following star: the preceding, in Fig. 1, is partly hid in the rays of the comet, and by one or two glimpses I had, I think it is got before it.

In Fig. 3 I took the comet in the edge by way of taking in the assistance of another star of about the same size and colour as that in the centre.

The only stars I can possibly see with the naked eye which might be of service to point out the place of the comet are 53 and 54 Ursæ Maj., from which it is at about an equal distance with the 14, 15, and 16 Comæ Ber., and makes an obtuse angle with them. I think it must be about 1° above the parallel of the 15 Comæ.

I made these observations with my little Newtonian sweeper, and used a power of about 30: the field is about 1½ degree.

I hope, sir, you will excuse the trouble I give you with my wag [qy. vague] description, which is owing to my being a bad (or what is better) no observer at all. For these last three years I have not had an opportunity to look as many hours in the telescope.

Lastly, I beg of you, sir, if this comet should not have been seen before, to take it under your protection in regard to A. R. and D. C.

With my respectful compliments to the ladies, your sisters, I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

Car. Herschel.

DR. BLAGDEN TO MISS HERSCHEL.

Gower Street, Bedford Square,

August 5, 1786.

Madam,—

Mr. Aubert’s letter, as well as that with which you favoured me, both arrived safe. The evening was fine on Thursday, but Mr. Aubert was prevented from going to Loam Pit Hill, and I have no opportunity of making astronomical observations here, so that I believe the comet has not yet been seen by anyone in England but yourself. Yesterday the visitation of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich was held, where most of the principal astronomers in and near London attended, which afforded an opportunity of spreading the news of your discovery, and I doubt not but many of them will verify it the next clear night. I also mentioned it in a letter to Paris, and in another I had occasion to write to Munich, in Germany. If the weather should be favourable on Sunday evening, it is not impossible that Sir Joseph Banks and some friends from his house may wait upon you to beg the favour of viewing this phenomenon through your telescope.

Accept my best thanks for your obliging attention in communicating to me the news, and believe me to be, with great esteem,

Your obedient, humble servant,

C. Blagden.

ALEX. AUBERT, ESQ., TO MISS HERSCHEL.

London, 7th August, 1786.

Dear Miss Herschel,—

I am sure you have a better opinion of me than to think I have been ungrateful for your very, very kind letter of the 2nd August. You will have judged I wished to give you some account of your comet before I answered it. I wish you joy, most sincerely, on the discovery. I am more pleased than you can well conceive that you have made it, and I think I see your wonderfully clever and wonderfully amiable brother, upon the news of it, shed a tear of joy. You have immortalized your name, and you deserve such a reward from the Being who has ordered all these things to move as we find them, for your assiduity in the business of astronomy, and for your love for so celebrated and so deserving a brother. I received your very kind letter about the comet on the 3rd, but have not been able to observe it till Saturday, the 5th, owing to cloudy weather. I found it immediately by your directions; it is very curious, and in every respect as you describe it. I have compared it to a fixed star, on Saturday night and Sunday night....

* * * * *

You see it travels very fast—at the rate of 2° 10ʹ per day—and moves but little in N. P. D. These observations were made with an equatorial micrometer of Mr. Smeaton’s construction, which your brother must recollect to have seen at Loam Pit Hill. I need not tell you that meridian observations with my transit instrument and mural quadrant must have been much more accurate. I give you a little figure of its appearance last night and the preceding night upon the scale of Flamsteed’s Atlas Cœlestis [here follows the sketch-figure].

By the above, you will see it will be very near 19 of Comæ Berenices to-night, and it will be a curious observation if it should prove an occultation of one of the stars of the Comæ. Notice has been given to astronomers at home and abroad of the discovery. I shall continue to observe it, and will give you by-and-by a further account of it. In the meanwhile believe me to be, with much gratitude and regard,

Dear Miss Herschel,

Your most obedient and obliged

humble servant,

Alex. Aubert.

P.S.—I was glad to hear to-day, by my friends at our club, that they had seen you last night in good health; pray let me know what news you have of your brother, and when we may expect to see him. I have had twice at Loam Pit Hill his serene highness the Duke of Saxe Gotha, and entertained him, Count Bruhl, and Mr. Oriani (a Milanese astronomer), with your comet last night. My sisters return you many thanks for your kind remembrance, and, with their best compliments, enjoin me to wish you joy.

1786. Employments at Slough.

MISS HERSCHEL TO DIETRICH HERSCHEL.

Slough, August 4, 1786.

Dear Brother,—

We received yesterday William’s and Alexander’s letter, and find that they intend to leave Hanover on the 8th of August, therefore they will not see the contents of this. However, as you have an instrument, I think you are entitled to information of a telescopic comet which I happened to discover on the 1st of August, and which I found, by the observations of the 2nd, to have moved nearly three-quarters of a degree. Last night it was cloudy, but I hope the weather will be more favourable another night, that we may see a little more of it. I believe you have a pair of Harris’s maps; the place where I saw the comet is between 53 and 54 Ursæ Maj. and the 14, 15, and 16 Comæ Ber. of Flamsteed’s Catalogue. All stars of Flamst. are in Bode’s Cat. to be found, and if you cannot do without it, I dare say it is to be met with at Hanover....

I found it with a magnifier of about 30, with a field of about 1½ degree. Now, if you have a piece which is nearly like this, I would advise you to make use of that in sweeping all around this place, for it must be, by the time you receive this letter, at a considerable distance.

When I saw it, it appeared like a very bright, but round, small nebula.

The first letter I received from Hanover from William gave us the greatest satisfaction imaginable, for it contained an account of the good health of all our dear relations. I hope our dear mother does not grieve too much now they have left her. I dare say William will pay soon another visit, and then I will take that opportunity of coming to see her. Farewell, dear brother; give my best love, &c.

To this period of Miss Herschel’s life belongs a folio manuscript book, written with the utmost neatness, which she sent with one of her various consignments of papers to her nephew after her return to Hanover, and introduced as follows:—

Dear Nephew,—

This is the fragment of a book which was too bulky for the portfolio in which I was collecting such papers as I wished might not fall into any other but your own hands. They contain chiefly answers of your father to the inquiries I used to make when at breakfast before we separated each for our daily tasks.

1786-1787. Employments at Slough.

The information is of a very miscellaneous kind, but matters connected with her special study form the greater part of the questions. For instance:—

“Given the true time of the transit—take a transit.

Do the same thing another way.

To find what star Mercury is nearest.

Take its place in the Nautical Almanac.

Another way....

* * * * *

Time of a star’s motion to be turned into space.

* * * * *

To adjust the quadrant when fastened to the telescope.

* * * * *

A logarithm given, to find the angle.

Oblique spherical triangles.”

4th.—I wrote to-day to Hanover, booked my observations, and made a fair copy of three letters. Made accounts. The night is cloudy.

5th.—I calculated nebulæ all day. The night was tolerably fine, and I saw the comet.

6th.—I booked my observations of last night. Received a letter from Dr. Blagden in the morning, and in the evening Sir J. Banks, Lord Palmerston, and Dr. Blagden, came and saw the comet. The evening was very fine.

7th, 8th.—Booked my observations; was hindered much by being obliged to find a man to assist the smith. Dr. Lind and Mr. Cavallo came on the 8th, and Mr. Paradise in the afternoon, but the evening was cloudy.

9th.—I calculated 100 nebulæ....

10th.—Calculated 100 nebulæ. The smith borrowed a guinea. He complains of Turner (the gardener), but we will, if possible, have patience till my brother returns.

11th. I completed to-day the catalogue of the first thousand.

12th. ... calculated 200 nebulæ of the second thousand.

13th. Professor Kratzensteine, from Copenhagen, was here to-day. In the evening I saw the comet and swept.

14th. ... I calculated 140 nebulæ to-day, which brought me up to the last discovered nebulæ, and, therefore, this work is finished.

15th. I went up with Mrs. H. to Windsor to pay some bills and to buy several articles against my brother’s return.

16th. ... my brothers returned about three in the afternoon.

It would be impossible for me, if it were required, to give a regular account of all that passed around me in the lapse of the following two years, for they were spent in a perfect chaos of business. The garden and workrooms were swarming with labourers and workmen, smiths and carpenters going to and fro between the forge and the forty-foot machinery, and I ought not to forget that there is not one screw-bolt about the whole apparatus but what was fixed under the immediate eye of my brother. I have seen him lie stretched many an hour in a burning sun, across the top beam whilst the iron work for the various motions was being fixed.

At one time no less than twenty-four men (twelve and twelve relieving each other) kept polishing day and night; my brother, of course, never leaving them all the while, taking his food without allowing himself time to sit down to table.

The moonlight nights were generally taken advantage of for experiments, and for the frequent journeys to town which he was obliged to make to order and provide the tools and materials which were continually wanting, I may say by wholesale.

The discovery of the Georgian satellites caused many breaks in the sweeps which were made at the end of 1786 and beginning of 1787, by leaving off abruptly against the meridian passage of the planet, which occasioned much work, both in shifting of the instrument and booking the observations. Much confusion at first prevailed among the loose papers on which the first observations were noted, and some of them have perhaps been lost; for I remember several configurations of the situation of the satellites having been made by Sir William Watson and Mr. Marsden, and only one could be found....

* * * * *

That the discovery of these satellites must have brought many nocturnal visitors to Slough may easily be imagined, and many times have I listened with pain to the conversation my brother held with his astronomical friends when quite exhausted by answering their numerous questions. For I well knew that on such occasions, instead of renewing his strength by going to rest, that there were too many who could not go on without his direction, among whom I often was included, for I very seldom could get a paper out of his hands time enough for finishing the copy against the appointed day for its being taken to town. But considering that no less than seven papers were delivered to the Royal Society in 1786-1787, it may easily be judged that my brother’s study had not been entirely deserted. I had always some kind of work in hand with which I could proceed without troubling him with questions; such as the temporary index which I began in June, 1787. Some years after, the index to Flamsteed’s observations, calculating the beginning and ending of sweeps and their breadth, for filling up the vacant places in the registers, and works of that kind, filled up the intervals when nothing more necessary was in hand.

My brother Jacob was with us from April till October, 1787, when he returned to Hanover again. Alexander came only for a short time to give his brother the meeting, Mrs. H. being too ill to be left long alone. (She died in January of 1788.)

Professor Snaidecky often saw some objects through the twenty-foot telescope, among others the Georgian satellites. He had taken lodgings in Slough for the purpose of seeing and hearing my brother whenever he could find him at leisure; he was a very silent man.

My brother’s bust was taken by Lochée, according to Sir Wm. Watson’s order. Professor Wilson and my brother Jacob[^[11]] were present.

In August an additional man-servant was engaged, who would be wanted at the handles of the motions of the forty-foot, for which the mirror in the beginning of July was so far finished as to be used for occasional observations on trial.

1786-1787. Slough—Appointed Assistant Astronomer.

Such a person was also necessary for showing the telescopes to the curious strangers, as by their numerous visits my brother or myself had for some time past been much incommoded. In consequence of an application made through Sir J. Banks to the King, my brother had in August a second £2,000 granted for completing the forty-foot, and £200 yearly for the expense of repairs, such as ropes, painting, &c., &c., and the keep and clothing of the men who attended at night. A salary of fifty pounds a year was also settled on me as an assistant to my brother, and in October I received twelve pounds ten, being the first quarterly payment of my salary, and the first money I ever in all my lifetime thought myself to be at liberty to spend to my own liking. A great uneasiness was by this means removed from my mind, for though I had generally (and especially during the last busy six years) been almost the keeper of my brother’s purse, with a charge to provide for my personal wants, only annexing in my accounts the memorandum for Car. to the sums so laid out—when cast up, they hardly amounted to seven or eight pounds per year since the time we had left Bath. Nothing but bankruptcy had all the while been running through my silly head, when looking at the sums of my weekly accounts and knowing they could be but trifling in comparison with what had been and had yet to be paid in town, for my brother had not been fortunate enough to meet with a reasonable man for a caster who could also furnish the crane, &c., and his bills came in greatly overcharged. But more of this in another place. I will only add that from this time the utmost activity prevailed to forward the completion of the forty-foot. An additional optical workman was engaged, and preparation made for casting the second mirror. Journeys to town were made for moulding, and at the end of January a fine cast mirror arrived safely at Slough. Several seven-foot telescopes were finished and sent off.

The fine nights were not neglected, though observations were often interrupted by visitors. Messrs. Cassini, Mechain, Le Genre, and Carochet spent November 26th and 27th with my brother, and saw many objects in the twenty-foot and other instruments.

1787-1788. Slough—Marriage of Dr. Herschel.

The Catalogue of the second thousand new nebulæ wanted but a few numbers in March to being complete. The observations on the Georgian satellites furnished a paper which was delivered to the Royal Society in May. The 8th of that month being fixed on for my brother’s marriage, it may easily be supposed that I must have been fully employed (besides minding the heavens) to prepare everything as well as I could against the time I was to give up the place of a housekeeper, which was the 8th of May, 1788.

END OF RECOLLECTIONS.

CHAPTER III.
LIFE AFTER HER BROTHER’S MARRIAGE.

With the second volume of “Recollections” all connected narrative and detailed relation of daily events ceases, and for the ten years from 1788 to 1798 there is not even the journal, which, however, was resumed in the latter year. All has been destroyed. An event so important as her brother’s marriage[^[12]] is only noticed as fixing the date when the “place of a housekeeper” had to be resigned. Miss Herschel lived from henceforth in lodgings, coming every day for her work, and in all respects continuing the same labours as her brother’s assistant and secretary as before. But it is not to be supposed that a nature so strong and a heart so affectionate should accept the new state of things without much and bitter suffering. To resign the supreme place by her brother’s side which she had filled for sixteen years with such hearty devotion could not be otherwise than painful in any case; but how much more so in this where equal devotion to the same pursuit must have made identity of interest and purpose as complete as it is rare. One who could both feel and express herself so strongly was not likely to fall into her new place without some outward expression of what it cost her—tradition confirms the assumption—and it is easy to understand how this long significant silence is due to the light of later wisdom and calmer judgment which counselled the destruction of all record of what was likely to be painful to survivors.

Her later letters abundantly show that she had learned to love the gentle sister-in-law whom she so pathetically entreats to hold on with her in their common old age, and the journals of her astronomical researches sufficiently prove that her zeal in “minding the Heavens” knew no abatement. It was at this period also that she made some of her most important discoveries. Before the end of 1797 she had announced the discovery of eight comets, to five of which the priority of her claim over other observers is unquestioned. A packet, in coarse paper, bearing the superscription, “This is what I call the Bills and Receipts of my Comets,” contains some data connected with the discovery of these objects, each folded in a separate paper, and marked “First Comet,” “Second Comet,” &c., &c. Some of the correspondence on the occasion of her first discovery has already been quoted, and in a note she explains that many of the letters from distinguished men which she received had been given to collectors of autographs. The letter to the Astronomer Royal, announcing the discovery of her second comet, has been preserved, with his answer.

1788. Second Comet discovered.

MISS HERSCHEL TO THE REV. DR. MASKELYNE.

Dear Sir,—

Last night, December 21st, at 7^h 45ʹ, I discovered a comet, a little more than one degree south—preceding β Lyræ. This morning, between five and six, I saw it again, when it appeared to have moved about a quarter of a degree towards δ of the same constellation. I beg the favour of you to take it under your protection.

Mrs. Herschel and my brothers join with me in compliments to Mrs. Maskelyne and yourself, and I have the honour to remain,

Dear sir,

Your most obliged, humble servant,

Carolina Herschel.

Slough, Dec. 22, 1788.

P.S.—The comet precedes β Lyræ 7ʹ 5ʺ in time, and is in the parallel of the small star (β being double). See fifth class, third star, of my catalogue.—Wm. H.

THE REV. DR. MASKELYNE TO MISS HERSCHEL.

Greenwich, December 27, 1788.

Dear Miss Caroline,—

I thank you for your favour of the 22nd instant, containing an account of your discovery of a second comet on the 21st, and recommending it to my attention.

I received it only on the 24th, at ten in the morning, owing to the slowness of our penny post.

I delayed acknowledging it till I could inform you at the same time I had seen it. The frost, unfortunately for us astronomers, broke up the very same morning that your letter arrived, in consequence of which the weather has been so bad that I could not get a sight of your comet till last night, the 26th, when, at 6^h 34ʹ, it followed α Lyræ in the A. R., 3ʹ 7ʺ of time, and was 2° 30ʹ S. of it. This only by the divisions of the equatorial and meridian circles, but true to a minute or two of declination and five seconds of time. I compared it more accurately with a small telescopic star nearer it, which, when settled hereafter, will determine its place within 30ʺ of a degree. Hence its A. R. was about 18^h 33ʹ 55ʺ, and distance from the North Pole 53° 59ʹ. By your observation of December 22nd, 5^h 31ʹ in the morning, its A. R. was 18^h 35ʹ 12ʹ, and P. D. 56° 56ʹ. Hence it has moved retrograde in A. R. about the rate of 17ʹ of time per day, and 30ʹ per day northward in declination, which agrees nearly with your observation of its approach towards δ Lyræ. Its motion is fortunately favourable for our keeping sight of it for some time, which may be very useful, especially if it should be moving from us, which there is an equal chance for, as the contrary. It appeared to me very faint, and rather small, but the air was hazy. By its faintness and slow motion, it is probably at a considerable distance from the earth. Time will explain these things. Let us hope the best, and that it is approaching the earth to please and instruct us, and not to destroy us, for true astronomers have no fears of that kind. Witness Sir Harry Englefield’s valuable tables of the apparent places of the Comet of 1661, expected to return at this time, with a delineation of its orbit, who, in page 7, speaks of the possibility of seeing a curious and beautiful transit of it over the sun’s disk, should the earth and comet be in the line of the nodes at the same time, without horror at the thought of our being involved in its immense tail. I would not affirm that there may not exist some astronomers so enthusiastic that they would not dislike to be whisked away from this low terrestrial spot into the higher regions of the heavens by the tail of a comet, and exchange our narrow uniform orbit for one vastly more extended and varied. But I hope you, dear Miss Caroline, for the benefit of terrestrial astronomy, will not think of taking such a flight, at least till your friends are ready to accompany you. Mrs. Maskelyne joins me in best compliments to yourself and Dr. and Mrs. Herschel. If your observation was precise as to the difference of A.R. of the comet and β Lyræ, it may be of use for determining the orbit, especially if the comet should be going off from us. I have not yet examined whether it can be the French comet discovered by M. Messier, on the 26th of last month, which was going from the earth. Its apparent motion must have turned at right angles to its former one, which is possible, but not very probable. I could not see your comet with the night glass, nor would its faintness allow of illuminating the wires.

I remain, dear Miss Caroline,

Your obedient and obliged humble servant,

N. Maskelyne.

DR. HERSCHEL TO SIR H. ENGLEFIELD.

December 22, 1788.

Sir,—

Your intelligence of the comet I received, but on account of the long time elapsed since the 2nd and 3rd of this month we have not been able to recover the fugitive. Last night, however, my sister discovered a comet near β Lyræ, which you will find no difficulty to follow as its motion is very slow, and the comet a pretty visible object. We saw it again this morning, and it seems to go towards δ Lyræ, you will see it pass by β Lyræ. It is a much larger object than the nebula near β Lyræ, discovered by Mr. Darquier, of Toulouse (Connoissance des Temps, 75).

SIR H. ENGLEFIELD TO DR. HERSCHEL.

Petersham, December 25, 1788.

Dear Sir,—

I am much obliged to you for your account of the comet, and beg you to make my compliments to Miss Herschel on her discovery. She will soon be the great comet finder, and bear away the prize from Messier and Mechain.

The weather yesternight was bad, and to-night I have looked for it, in the moments of fine weather, with a good night-glass, but am not sure that I saw it, though I thought I perceived it about half-way between β and δ Lyræ. The glass I used showed D’Arquier’s nebula, though but faintly. Before I could get any other telescope ready, the weather clouded. If you have seen it again, pray be so good as to give me its place when you saw it last, and with what power and light it may be seen. I was going to write to Messier about his comet, but have deferred it, as I would not mention yours without your leave, and could not find it in my heart to write without doing it.

Believe me, dear Sir,

With all the wishes of the season,

Your much obliged and faithful

H. C. Englefield.

1788-1790. The Third Comet seen.

DR. HERSCHEL TO SIR J. BANKS.

Sir,—

The last time I was in town, you expressed a wish to see my observations on the comet which my sister, Caroline Herschel, discovered in the evening of the 21st of last December, not far from β Lyræ.

As she immediately acquainted the Reverend Dr. Maskelyne and several other gentlemen with her discovery, the comet was observed by many of them. The Astronomer Royal in particular having, I find, obtained a very good set of valuable observations on its path, it will be sufficient if I communicate only those particulars which relate to its first appearance, and a few other circumstances that may perhaps deserve to be noticed.

Dec. 21st, 1788.—About 8 o’clock I viewed the comet which my sister had a little while before pointed out to me with her small Newtonian sweeper. In my instrument, which was a ten-foot reflector, it had the appearance of a considerably bright nebula, of an irregular round form, very gradually brighter in the middle, and about five or six minutes in diameter. The situation was low, and not very proper for instruments with high powers.

Dec. 22nd.—About half-after 5 o’clock in the morning I viewed it again, and perceived that it had moved apparently in a direction towards δ Lyræ, or thereabout. I had been engaged all night with the twenty-foot instrument, so that there had been no leisure to prepare my apparatus for taking the place of the comet; but in the evening of the same day I took its situation three times....

In every observation I found the small star which accompanies β Lyræ exactly in the parallel of the comet.

These transits were taken with a ten-foot reflector, and the difference in right ascension, I should suppose, may be depended upon to within a second of time. The determination also of the parallel can hardly err so much as 15 seconds of a degree.

This, and several evenings afterwards, I viewed the comet again with such powers as its diluted light would permit, but could not perceive any sort of nucleus which, had it been a single second in diameter, I think, could not well have escaped me. This circumstance seems to be of some consequence to those who turn their thoughts on the investigation of the nature of comets, especially as I have also formerly made the same remark on one of the comets discovered by Mr. Mechain in 1787, a former one of my sister’s in 1786, and one of Mr. Pigott’s in 1783 in neither of which any defined, solid nucleus, could be perceived.

I have the honour to remain,

Sir, &c.,

Wm. Herschel.

Slough, near Windsor,

March 3, 1789.

The third comet was discovered on the 7th January, 1790; the fourth on the 17th April of the same year, during her brother’s absence from home. It was announced to Sir Joseph Banks in the following letter:—

April 19th, 1790.

Sir,—

I am very unwilling to trouble you with incomplete observations, and for that reason did not acquaint you yesterday with the discovery of a comet. I wrote an account of it to Dr. Maskelyne and Mr. Aubert, in hopes that either of those gentlemen, or my brother, whom I expect every day to return, would have furnished me with the means of pointing it out in a proper manner.

But as perhaps several days might pass before I could have any answer to my letters, or my brother return, I would not wish to be thought neglectful, and therefore if you think, sir, the following description is sufficient, and that more of my brother’s astronomical friends should be made acquainted with it, I should be very happy if you would be so kind as to do it for the sake of astronomy.

The comet is a little more than 3½° following α Andromedæ, and about 1½° above the parallel of that star. I saw it first on April 17th, 16^h 24ʹ sidereal time, and the first view I could have of it last night was 16^h 5ʹ. As far as I am able to judge, it has decreased in P. D. nearly 1°, and increased in A. R. something above 1ʹ.

These are only estimations from the field of view, and I only mention it to show that its motion is not so very rapid.

I am, &c.,

C. H.

1790. Letters about the Third Comet.

MISS HERSCHEL TO ALEX. AUBERT, ESQ.

Slough, April 18, 1790.

Dear Sir,—

I am almost ashamed to write to you, because I never think of doing so but when I am in distress. I found last night, at 16^h 24ʹ sidereal time, a comet, and do not know what to do with it, for my new sweeper is not half finished; and besides, I broke the handle of the perpendicular motion in my brother’s absence (who is on a little tour into Yorkshire). He has furnished me to that instrument a Rumboides, but the wires are too thin, and I have no contrivance for illuminating them. All my hopes were that I should not find anything which would make me feel the want of these things in his absence; but, as it happens, here is an object in a place where there is no nebula, or anything which could look like a comet, and I would be much obliged to you, sir, if you would look at the place where the annexed eye-draft will direct you to. My brother has swept that part of the heavens, and has many nebulæ there, but none which I must expect to see with my instrument. I will not write to Sir J. Banks or Dr. Maskelyne, or anybody, till you, sir, have seen it; but if you could, without much trouble, give my best respects and that part of this letter which points out the place of the comet to Mr. Wollaston, you would make me very happy.

I am, dear sir, &c., &c.,

C. H.

SIR JOSEPH BANKS TO MISS HERSCHEL.

Soho Square, April 20, 1790.

Madam,—

I return you many thanks for the communication you were so good as to make to me this day of your discovery of a comet. I shall take care to make our astronomical friends acquainted with the obligations they are under to your diligence.

I am always happy to hear from you, but never more so than when you give me an opportunity of expressing my obligations to you for advancing the science you cultivate with so much success.

Dear Madam,

Your faithful servant,

J. Banks.

ALEX. AUBERT, ESQ. TO MISS HERSCHEL.

London, the 21st April, Wednesday, 1790.

Dear Miss Herschel,—

I am much obliged to you for your kind letter. The night before last was cloudy. Last night, or rather this morning, about half-past two, I got up to look for the phenomenon; it was somewhat hazy. I observed with a common night-glass of Dollond’s a faint something in a line between α and π Andromedæ, much like a faint star; it had no coma nor fuzzy appearance. By looking at Flamsteed’s Atlas I find no small star there. I was preparing to attack it with a good magnifying power, and to get its place with my Smeaton’s equatorial micrometer, but when I was ready a haze came on and soon after too much daylight, so I can say no more to it as yet. If I saw what you judged a comet, it must have moved but little since you saw it; it was as large as a star of 7th magnitude, but rather faint. I sent this morning to Dr. Maskelyne: he says he could see nothing with a good night glass, but will try again the next fair morning, and after trying he will answer you; in the meanwhile he begs his best compliments. I will also try again. Pray let me know if you think it was the comet I saw. I have mentioned it to no one but to Mr. Wollaston, who thanks you sincerely, but did not find himself well enough to observe; he lives in Charter House Square; direct upon occasion there to the Rev. Francis Wollaston.

You cannot, my dear Miss Herschel, judge of the pleasure I feel when your reputation and fame increase; everyone must admire your and your brother’s knowledge, industry, and behaviour. God grant you many years health and happiness. I will soon pay you a visit, as soon as your brother returns. If I have any instrument you wish to use, it is at your service.

Believe me, &c., &c.,

Alexander Aubert.

1790. Letters from Astronomers.

REV. DR. MASKELYNE TO MISS HERSCHEL.

Greenwich, April 22, 1790.

Dear Miss Herschel,—

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * If I misunderstand anything I shall be obliged to you for an explanation. The weather has not permitted me to see anything of the comet yet, but it seems now mending, and I hope to be able to make something of it to-morrow morning. Your second communication, at the same time that it gives me fresh spirits as to the certainty of its being a comet, will certainly assist me in more readily finding it. I feared that your using your new telescope might make that a bright comet to you which might prove but a very faint one, if at all visible, in a common night-glass, which is what we first use to discover a comet with. As soon as I shall have seen it I will send you a line. I sent intelligence of your discovery to M. Mechain, at Paris, last Tuesday, and will send to him your farther communication next Friday. Mr. Maskelyne joins me in best compliments to yourself and Mrs. Herschel, and Dr. Herschel on his return. Dr. Shepherd sent advice of it from me last Tuesday to the Master of Trinity, at Cambridge, who perhaps may convey the agreeable intelligence to your brother.

I remain, dear Miss Herschel,

My worthy sister in astronomy,

Your faithful and obliged humble servant,

N. Maskelyne.

J. DE LA LANDE TO CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

Rue Collége Royal, le 12 Juillet, 1790.

Ma chère et savante Commère,—

J’ai reçu avec la plus délicieuse satisfaction la première lettre dont vous m’avez honoré; je ne pouvois attribuer votre silence à une timidité que votre reputation condamne, mais je l’aurais attribué à mon peu de mérite si vous aviez continué de me refuser une réponse. Vous écrivez si bien que vous ne pouvez pas avoir à cet égard une excuse légitime.

1790. Letters.

Vous verrez bientôt M. Ungeschick, qui a baptisé votre filleule Caroline; dites-lui qu’elle se porte beaucoup mieux, ainsi que le petit Isaac (je l’ai ainsi nommé en mémoire d’Isaac Newton); pour sa sœur je ne pouvois lui donner un nom plus illustre que le vôtre; c’est ce que j’ai fait remarquer en annonçant sa naissance dans notre Moniteur ou Gazette Nationale du 31 janvier. Je ne pouvois vous donner un compère d’un plus grand mérite que M. Delambre. Il fait actuellement des tables des Satellites de Jupiter qui surpassent de beaucoup celles de M. Wargentin.

Votre commère ma nièce calcule des tables pour trouver l’heure en mer par la hauteur du soleil. Mde. du Piery calcule des observations d’éclipses. Pour moi, je suis occupé des étoiles, j’en ai déjà 6,000; votre compère Le-Français[^[13]] y met beaucoup de soin. Nous tâchons tous de seconder vos heureux travaux et ceux de votre illustre frère; nous vous prions tous de recevoir vous-même et de lui présenter nos respects.

Remerciez-le bien de la complaisance qu’il a eu de m’envoyer la rotation de l’anneau, dont j’étois bien curieux. Je suis avec autant d’attachement que de respect, Savante Miss,

Votre très-humble et très

obéissant serviteur,

De la Lande.

Plusieurs de mes étoiles ont servi à comparer votre comète qui a disparu le 30 juin, mais que M. Messier et M. Méchain ont suivis sans interruption, jusques dans le crépuscule.

Je vous prie de demander les bontés de votre digne frère pour M. Ungeschick, qui est un astronome de mérite, et qui a bien du zèle, mais en vous voyant le zèle augmentera.

MISS HERSCHEL TO M. DE LA LANDE.

Slough, Sept. 12th, 1790.

Dear Sir,—

Our good friend, General Komavzewski, will persuade me to believe that I am capable of giving you pleasure by writing a few lines; but I am under an apprehension that he is overrating my abilities. You, my dear sir, certainly overrated them when you thought me deserving of expressing your esteem for me in so public a manner as the General and Mr. Ungeschick have informed me of.

I do not only owe you my sincerest thanks for your good opinion of me, but my utmost endeavours shall be to make myself worthy of it if possible. My good brother has not been omissive in furnishing me with the means of becoming so in some respects. An excellent Newtonian sweeper, of five-feet focal length, is nearly completed, which, being mounted at the top of the house, will always be in readiness for observing whenever my attendance on the forty or twenty-foot telescopes is not required.

I hope the little god-daughter is in good health, and wish she may grow and give happiness and pleasure to her parents and uncle.

I beg to present many respectful compliments to the ingenious ladies you mentioned in your letter.

Mrs. Herschel desires to be remembered to you, sir. We do not give up the hopes of seeing you again at Slough, and are wishing it may not be long before you visit England again.

I remain, dear sir,

With greatest esteem, &c., &c.,

C. Herschel.

1791-1795. Two more Comets discovered.

Another foreign correspondent was inspired to soar above the ordinary level of scientific communications, and addressed Miss Herschel in a strain of high-flown adulation, of which the following is a translation:—

Göttingen, May 10, [about 1793.]

Permit me, most revered lady, to bring to your remembrance a man who has held you in the highest esteem ever since he had the good fortune to enter the Temple of Urania, at Slough, and to pay his respects to its priestess. I still recall the happy hours passed in England in earlier days of sweet remembrance, and above all, those which I was privileged to spend near you in a society as genial as it was intellectual.

Give me leave, noble and worthy priestess of the new heavens, to lay at your feet my small offering on eclipses of the sun, and at the same time to express my gratitude and deepest reverence. The bearer is a young Mr. Johnston, who has been studying here, and is now returning to England. He is a young man of excellent character, and possessed of unusual capacity and attainments.

May I venture to ask, most honoured Miss, that when you or your brother make any discovery, you will grant me early notice of it, as you once had the kindness to promise to do. You can hardly fail to make them at Slough, where every day is rich in discovery, especially when one of your own subjects—the comets—comes to offer its homage.

How happy should I esteem myself if there were any service I could render you here, most admirable lady astronomer, that I might be permitted to prove how entirely my heart is devoted to you.

Prof. Seyffer.

The fifth comet was discovered December 15th, 1791, and a simple record of the fact is all that the packet devoted to it contains, with the information, “My brother wrote an account of it to Sir J. Banks, Dr. Maskelyne, and to several astronomical correspondents.” The discovery of the sixth is treated with equal brevity. “Oct. 7, at 8h. mean time. I discovered a comet, my brother settled its place on the 8th, and I wrote to Sir J. Banks, Dr. Maskelyne, and to Mr. Planta. The letter to Mr. Planta is printed in the Philosophical Transactions.”

None of the correspondence in connection with the seventh has been preserved, excepting her own letter announcing its discovery to Sir J. Banks.

MISS HERSCHEL TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS.

Slough, Nov. 8, 1795.

Sir,—

Last night, in sweeping over a part of the heavens with my five-foot reflector, I met with a telescopic comet. To point out its situation I transcribe my brother’s observations of it from his journal.

* * * * *

* * * * *

It will probably pass between the head of the Swan and the constellation of the Lyre, in its descent towards the sun. The direction of its motion is retrograde.[^[14]]

* * * * *

* * * * *

As the appearance of one of these objects is almost become a novelty, I flatter myself that this intelligence will not be uninteresting to astronomers, and therefore hope, sir, you will, with your usual kindness, recommend it to their notice.

I have the honour to be,

With great respect, &c., &c.,

Caroline Herschel.

Two years later the eighth and last comet was discovered, on the 6th of August, 1797. It was the occasion of the following letter:—

MISS HERSCHEL TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS.

August, 17, 1797.

Sir,—

This is not a letter from an astronomer to the President of the Royal Society announcing a comet, but only a few lines from Caroline Herschel to a friend of her brother’s, by way of apology for not sending intelligence of that kind immediately where they are due.

I have so little faith in the expedition of messengers of all descriptions that I undertook to be my own, with an intention of stopping in town and write and deliver a letter myself, but unfortunately I undertook the task with only the preparation of one hour’s sleep, and having in the course of five years never rode above two miles at a time, the twenty to London, and the idea of six or seven more to Greenwich in reserve, totally unfitted me for any action. Dr. Maskelyne was so kind as to take some pains to persuade me to go this morning to pay my respects to Sir Joseph, but I thought a woman who knows so little of the world ought not to aim at such an honour, but go home, where she ought to be, as soon as possible.

The letter which you sent, sir, to my brother, was the only one received at Slough in my absence; it arrived towards noon on the 16th, and was brought by a porter from an inn.

I hope you will excuse the trouble I give by sending this, though I know it is entirely useless, because Dr. Maskelyne had probably my memorandum which I took to Greenwich with him when he called in Soho Square, and therefore I can say nothing but what you, sir, are acquainted with already; but I shall be a little more comfortable when I can say to my brother I have written to Sir J. Banks concerning the comet.

With the utmost respect,

I remain, sir,

Your most obedient servant,

C. Herschel.

1795-1797. Ceases to reside with her Brother.

We are now reduced to the short diary-like entries in a small book entitled “Extracts from a Day-Book kept during the years 1797 and 1821,” which begins: “1797, in October I went to lodge and board with one of my brother’s workmen (Sprat), whose wife was to attend on me. My telescopes on the roof, to which I was to have occasional access, as also to the room with the sweeping and observing apparatus, remained in its former order, where I most days spent some hours in preparing work to go on with at my lodging.” A chance memorandum shows how the leisure time was employed; thus—“At the ending of 1787, or beginning of 1788, began to make use of some of the proof-sheets of Wollaston’s Catalogue along with Flamsteed’s;” and again, “December 24th, 1797, received notice for printing the Index, which was not at all adapted for that purpose; but March 8th, 1798, the copy was completed, and taken to the Royal Society, and in the course of the summer the print was corrected.” The following letter to the Astronomer Royal bears on this subject:—

1797-1798. Astronomical.

MISS HERSCHEL TO REV. DR. MASKELYNE.

Slough, Sept. 1798.

Dear Sir,—

I have for a long while past felt a desire of expressing my thanks to you for having interested yourself so kindly for the little production of my industry by being the promoter of the printing of the Index to Flamsteed’s Observations. I thought the pains it had cost me were, and would be, sufficiently rewarded in the use it had already been, and might be in future, to my brother. But your having thought it worthy of the press has flattered my vanity not a little. You see, sir, I do own myself to be vain, because I would not wish to be singular; and was there ever a woman without vanity? or a man either? only with this difference, that among gentlemen the commodity is generally styled ambition.

I wish it were possible to offer something which could be of use to our Royal Astronomer than merely thanks. Perhaps the enclosed catalogue may be of some little service on some occasion or other. I was obliged to bring it into that form by way of scrutinizing the real number of omitted stars, and find it now very useful when my brother, in sweeping, &c., observes stars which are not contained in Wollaston’s Catalogue, to know immediately by this order of R. A. if they are in any of Flamsteed’s omitted stars, and if they are, what number they bear in the catalogue of omitted stars, which number we find in the first column. The rest of the columns will want no explanation, except the last, which would not be complete, or even intelligible, without the assistance of the catalogue of omitted stars, and the notes to that catalogue, for they are short memorandums collected from the descriptions in the catalogue, and from the notes to some of the stars.

As our Index contains all the corrections and information which I possibly could collect, those corrections and memorandums of which I had the pleasure, about eighteen months ago, to write a copy for Dr. Maskelyne, will consequently be laid aside, else I ought to take notice that there are one or two errors and several omissions which should have been corrected in that copy, but with which it will now be needless to trouble you, sir.

What has laid me under particular obligation to you, my dear sir, was your timely information, the August before last, of your having proposed the printing of the Index to the P. R. S. The papers were then in so incomplete a state, that it needed each moment which could possibly be spared from other business to deliver them with some confidence of their being pretty correct.

Many times do I think with pleasure and comfort on the friendly invitations Mrs. Maskelyne and yourself have given me to spend a few days at Greenwich. I hope yet to have that pleasure next spring or summer. This last has passed away, and I never thought myself well or in spirits enough to venture from home. If the heavens had befriended me, and afforded us a comet, I might, under its convoy, perhaps have ventured at an emigration. However, I cannot help thinking that I shall meet with some little reward for the denial it has been to me not coming this summer in seeing the improvements Miss Maskelyne has made (more perceptibly) in those accomplishments she seemed to be in so fair a way of attaining when I was there last.

With my best respects and compliments to Mrs. M.,

I remain, with the greatest esteem,

Your most obliged and humble servant,

C. Herschel.

1798. Extracts from Day-book.

DIARY.

May 29th and 30th.—Was mostly spent at the Observatory, Professor Vince[^[15]] being there.

July 30th.—My brother went with his family to Bath and Dawlish. I went daily to the Observatory and work-rooms to work, and returned home to my meals, and at night, except in fine weather, I spent some hours on the roof, and was fetched home by Sprat.

* * * * *

September 11th.—Dined at my brother’s. Professor Pictet and Dr. Ingenhouse, &c., were there. Cloudy night.

October 7th.—Finished the MS. Catalogue of omitted stars for Dr. Maskelyne.

* * * * *

December 31st.—Mem. Uncommonly harassed in consequence of the loss of time necessary for going backward and forward, and not having immediate access to each book or paper at the moment when wanted.

1799. Extracts from Day-book.

January 4th.—Spent the evening at my brother’s. Sir Wm. Watson[^[16]] and Mr. Wilson[^[17]] were there.

February 11th.—My brother went to Bath to make some stay there, having taken a house on Sion Hill.

February 26th.—Mrs. Herschel, Miss Cobet, and the servants left Slough for Bath. Russell, the horse-keeper, and his wife, were, along with me, left in charge of the house, from which I seldom was absent at any other time but to go to dinner at my lodging every day at one o’clock.

March 29th.—The Prince of Orange stepped in to ask some questions about planets, &c.[^[18]]

Lord Kirkwall and a gentleman came to see the instruments.

April 1st.—My brother arrived at Slough, and on the 11th he took a paper to the R. S., which he brought with him for me to copy in the clear. The fine nights were spent with sweeping.

* * * * *

May 14th.—Was interrupted in works on account of the Montem.

[Montem].—Was visited by Mrs. Owen, the Elds, Linds,[^[19]] &c., at my lodgings, or wherever they could find me.

June.—Began re-calculating all the sweeps as a constant work for leisure time.

* * * * *

June 8th.—My brother returned. I drank tea with him and Mrs. H., and at seven went home to my lodgings.

* * * * *

July 15th.—Agreed for apartments at Newby’s, the tailor, in Slough (Mr. S. and Mrs. B. speaking well of them as sober, industrious people), I am to enter at Michaelmas.

* * * * *

August 19th.—I went to Greenwich to meet some company at Dr. Maskelyne’s, and after having spent a week at the R. Observatory, I went with Dr., Mrs., and Miss M. to pay a visit to Sir George Schuckburgh, at Buxted Place, where I left the Ms. on the 30th, and arrived at Slough the 31st.

It was so very rarely that Miss Herschel ever slept from home, that this visit was a memorable event in her experience. A small sheet, written by Miss Maskelyne, headed “Journal from the 19th to the 30th of August, 1799,” is preserved, with the superscription: “By Miss Maskelyne’s memorandum only I found it possible to have any recollection of the occurrences during the eleven days I had intended to spend at Greenwich for the purpose of copying the memorandums from my brother’s second volume of Flamsteed’s Observations into Dr. Maskelyne’s volume. But the succession of amusements, &c., &c., left me no alternative between contenting myself with one or two hours’ sleep per night during the six days I was at Greenwich, or to go home without having fulfilled my purpose.”

The journal was enclosed in a letter from Mrs. Maskelyne, which bears pleasant testimony to the agreeable impression which her visitor must have made on the ladies, as well as the astronomer.

Buxted Place, August 30, 1799.

Dear Miss Herschel,

We thank you for your polite message, are sorry you left Buxted at eight o’clock; hoped you would have taken two dishes of coffee, and not gone till half-past eight, for we were up at seven, to be ready to accompany you to Uckfield.

Margaret has sent the enclosed, and will be glad to hear if it is what you meant; she was writing it when you stopped at the door, but did not venture to open it for fear of disturbing us. Present our compliments to Dr. and Mrs. Herschel. Pray let me know what sort of a journey you have had to your dear sweeper, and accept our love.

I am, dear Miss Herschel,

Your humble servant,

S. Maskelyne.

1799-1800. Letters.

The following letter has reference to this visit, and is inserted here, although belonging to a somewhat later date:—

MISS HERSCHEL TO THE REV. DR. MASKELYNE.

January, 1800.

Dear Sir,

If it was not highly necessary to make you acquainted with the safe arrival of your valuable present at Slough, I might perhaps be a long while before I should think myself sufficiently collected to express the grateful feelings the sight of it occasioned me. My being pleased at having two such useful and convenient instruments has but very little connection with my present ideas; and if they had come to me from any other hands but those of the Astronomer Royal, I should use them as occasion required, and think myself much obliged to the giver. But as it is, I cannot help wishing I were capable of doing something to make myself deserving of all these kind attentions.

I feel gratified in particular when I think of the stipulation I was making when you were taking measure of the distance [apart] of my eyes: viz., that if you in future should change in opinion, and not think me worthy of the present, not to bestow it on me.

Mrs. Maskelyne’s good-natured looks, and all she said at the time, come now again to my remembrance, and seeing not only the binocular (which I had but a conditional expectation of receiving), but also the night-glass, makes me hope that during the time I had the honour of being in the company of such esteemed friends, I have suffered no loss in their former good opinion of me, which was a circumstance I often feared might have happened; for I have too little knowledge of the rules of society to trust much to my acquitting myself so as to give hope of having made any favourable impressions.

You see, dear sir, that you have done me more good than you were perhaps aware of: you have not only enabled me to peep at the heavens, but have put me into good humour with myself.

With my respectful compliments to Mrs. and Miss Maskelyne,

I remain, with many thanks, Dear sir,

Your much obliged and humble servant,

C. Herschel.

The following is from a friend who took the deepest interest in the career of both brother and sister:—

ED. PIGOTT, ESQ. TO MISS HERSCHEL.

Bath, St. James’s Square,

April 30, 1799.

Madam,

It is with much satisfaction that I received through the hands of Dr. Herschel, the valuable publication you are so kind as to send me, and which indeed is the more welcome as I have the volumes of the “Historia Cœlestis,” and shall most probably have occasion to use them. Were Flamsteed alive, how cordially would he thank you for thus rendering the labours of his life so much more useful and acceptable to posterity, for he surely little thought that his great work required to be elucidated by an additional folio volume of explanations, errata, and indexes, the advantages of which, by their excellence and accuracy, must every day be more and more acknowledged, and future astronomers, as well as those of the present times will doubtless often be conscious of the merit and obligation you are entitled to.

With many thanks, I remain,

Dear madam,

Your most obedient

Edwd. Pigott.

Dr. and Mrs. Herschel, whom I have occasionally the pleasure of seeing, though by no means so often as I could wish, are well, and desired to be mentioned to you.

1799-1800. Extracts from Diary.

August 31st.—At six in the evening both my brothers arrived from Bath. Alexander gave me a call.

September 8th.—Professor Vince, his lady, and Alexander came to see me.

October 18th.—My brother returned from Bath, but with a violent cough and cold, and was obliged to go to Newbury for change of air and meet Mrs. H., who was there on a visit.

November 19th.—The bailiffs took possession of my landlord’s goods, and I found my property was not safe in my new habitation.

* * * * *

December 31st.—The king had been at the Observatory.

* * * * *

* * * * *

February 1st.—My brother went to Bath.

Mem.—Miss Baldwin [^[20]] frequently call on me.

* * * * *

* * * * *

April 28th.—My brother went to town for a fortnight. I was at the Observatory after he was gone, from ten till two, to select work for me to do at home.

April 29th.—From ten till three at the Observatory to make order in the books and MSS.

May 1st.—Dined with Dr. Lind. Fetched my nephew from Mrs. Clark and brought him to his boarding-dame, Mrs. Howard, at Eton. Worked every day some hours at the Observatory.

* * * * *

May 26th.—I went to take leave of my nephew, who entered at Dr. Gretton’s School.

* * * * *

June 23rd.—Paid my rent, and gave notice of quitting my apartments at Michaelmas.

June 25th.—Began to pack up what I must take to Bath with me, for there I am to go!

June 29th.—I dined with Mrs. H. and went with her to the Terrace, where I took leave of my friends at the Lodge. Everything was arranged for my books and furniture to remain at my lodging, to which my brother was to keep the keys. But on receiving information they would be seized along with my landlord’s goods by bailiffs, I prepared the same night for their removal, and all was safely lodged in a garret at Mrs. H.’s by July 2 at night.

July 3rd.—I left Slough by the nine o’clock Newbury coach, and remained with the Miss Whites [at Newbury] till next morning.

July 4th.—At six in the evening I was received at Bath by my brother Alex. and his old housekeeper in a house Mrs. H. had taken for the next winter in Little Stanhope Street. The house had been uninhabited, and the furniture moved into it from the house on Sion Hill by strangers, labourers; the things met me helter-skelter in the passage, some belonging to the drawing-room amongst curry-combs and bridles and other stable utensils. My first care was to make an inventory of the whole, before I let a stranger come into the house, but by the 10th of July I hired a maid of all work to assist me to bring the house into habitable order, and by July 29th I was ready for resuming the work of re-calculating sweeps, or despatching some copying, &c., which was sent me by the coach from Slough, and from the printer in London, my brother being with his family at Tunbridge Wells.

Sept. 10th.—I received a box from Slough. My brother was come home, and Alex. went to assist in re-polishing the forty-foot mirror, and left Bath Sept. 15; he returned

Oct. 2nd.—Some of my time during his absence I spent at his house on Margaret’s Hill to clean and repair his furniture, and making his habitation comfortable against his return.

Oct. 29th.—I received notice that in about a fortnight I should be wanted at Slough.

FROM DR. HERSCHEL IN LONDON TO CAROLINE HERSCHEL AT BATH.

London, Nov. 7, 1800.

Dear Sister,—

Last night my paper on which I have been so long at work was read at the society. I came to London to bring it, and have been so hurried as not to be able to look out any work for you, but shall now be at liberty to do something of that kind. My things here are in considerable disorder, and in a short time Mrs. Herschel and myself wish to come for a little time to Bath, then we will let you know if it’s soon, that you may come here on a visit before we go, that I may point out to you the work that is most necessary to be done in our short absence. I thought it best to give you this early notice, because, though we have not fixed upon the time, it will be towards the latter end of this month that we mean to come for perhaps a fortnight or three weeks, according to the weather; for, if that should be fine we shall return, that I may have a few sweeps before you go back to Bath. Miss Baldwin is at Slough, and stays while we are away, so that you will have company, and the chaise will also be left, so that you can pay visits at Windsor, and show yourself to all your friends and ours.

My last paper consisted of eighty pages, so that you will have a piece of work to gather it together out of the scraps I leave. Some part of it was brought together in the beginning by Miss Baldwin and Mrs. Herschel which will show the order, but the rest remains in bits, which I have gathered together and numbered....

Remember me to our good brother Alexander, and, with compliments from Mrs. Herschel,

I remain, dear sister,

Your affectionate brother,

Wm. Herschel.

P.S.—The bacon and cheese are very excellent. I have not had time to try Alexander’s green lenses; they look beautiful.

1800-1801. Extracts from Diary.

Nov. 14th.—I left Bath, slept the night at the inn at Newbury, and left there between three and four.

Nov. 15th.—I arrived at my brother’s house, and as soon as I had dined began to calculate and copy a paper which was to go to the R.S.

Nov. 24th.—My brother went with Mrs. H. and Miss Baldwin to Bath, the keys to Obs., &c., were given me to make order and for despatching memorandums which would have employed me for much longer time than it was likely I should be allowed for doing them to my own satisfaction.

Dec. 15th.—The family returned, my brother extremely ill, and the next day I had my furniture transported to Windsor, where I had taken a couple of rooms to board and lodge with my eldest nephew, G. Griesbach, and

Dec. 17th.—I slept there for the first night.

March 28th.—The MSS. and astronomical books in general were removed out of the observatory above stairs and lodged in my brother’s library. This alteration proved to be an additional clog to my business (which besides was daily increasing on me) for I lost by this means my workroom and found it very difficult to keep the necessary order among the MSS. * * * * *

April 20th.—Moved from Windsor to a small house at Chalvy, rented from Mr. House, the wood-cutter.

June 9th.—My brother went to Bath; by the 25th he was returned.

July 1st.—Alexander came from Bath.

July 29th.—I went to Slough to take (along with Alex.) care of the house whilst my brother, with his family, were from home.

* * * * *

* * * * *

February 20th.—The first time Mrs. Beckedorff’s[^[21]] name being mentioned in my memorandums as having dined with her, and the whole party leaving the dining-room on the Princesses Augusta, Amelia, and the Duke of Cambridge coming in to see me.

March 2nd.—I went with Mrs. H. and Miss Baldwin to town on a visit to Dr. and Miss Wilson, and went with a party to F. Griesbach’s concert at the Opera House. The 4th we returned.

April 7th.—I shut my house at Chalvy, and went with my maid to Slough, the latter to supply the place of the servants Mrs. H. took with her to town.

May 6th.—My brother went to take a paper to the R. S., and remained there till the 15th.

May 26th.—I returned home to Chalvy very ill with a bad leg, having waited too long before I called in assistance.

June 27th.—The carriage was sent to take me to Slough. Hitherto work had been daily sent me.

July 13th.—My brother, Mrs. H., my nephew John, and Miss Baldwin left Slough to go to Paris.

August 25th.—All returned with my nephew dangerously ill. Going daily for some hours to work at the Observatory, and to receive visitors and letters, had not hastened my recovery, for it required no less than seven months before I could be without the attendance of Dr. Pope.

March 25th.—I moved from Chalvy to Upton.

April 3rd.—Spent the day at Slough. Dr. and Miss Wilson, Miss Whites, and Professor Johnes, from Cambridge, were there.

April 12th.—Had an account of my sister Griesbach’s death. She died March 30th.

May 1st.—From the 1st till the 18th I worked with my brother at Slough, when he went to town, and I returned to Upton; but went daily to the library to work till the 26th, when my brother, with his family, came home from town.

June 13th.—Alexander arrived from Bath.

June 25th.—Spent a melancholy day at the Queen’s Lodge on account of the French having taken Hanover.

September 18th.—My brother Alex. returned to Bath.

October 18th.—I changed my rooms for the accommodation of Mr. and Mrs. Slaughter, who had taken the house and gardens at Upton, excepting two rooms for my habitation.

November 6th.—I spent the day at Slough. Professor Valis,[^[22]] with his lady, from Marlow, was there.

November 19th.—I dined at Slough to meet Dr., Mrs., and Miss Maskelyne.

December.—Almost throughout the whole month I worked at Slough from breakfast till nine in the evening.

1801-1805. Extracts from Diary.

March 16th.—Finished re-calculating sweeps.

Mem.—Above 8,760 observations have been brought to [the year] 1800.

April 4th.—Dined at Slough to meet Mrs. Bates and a large party. In the evening we heard Mrs. B. sing Mad Bess, &c., &c.

April 18th.—I went to Slough. My brother went, with his family, to Bath.

May 10th.—My brother returned.

August 5th.—My brother Alexander came from Bath.

* * * * *

* * * * *

November 22nd.—I went to make some stay at Slough during the time my brother spent in town with his family.

December 10th.—I returned to Upton.

January 14th.—I went, with my brother’s family, to a morning concert, to my nephew, H. Griesbach, to hear the Hanoverian Concert-Meister Le Vec play.

* * * * *

March 5th.—Went to make some stay with my brother at Slough, Mrs. H. being in town.

March 27th.—All returned, and I went with my work to Upton again.

* * * * *

* * * * *

August 14th.—I went to stay with Alex. at Slough while my eldest brother went with his family from home. They had intended to have left Slough on the 12th, but were detained in consequence of a report of an expected invasion.

* * * * *

* * * * *

In September was much hindered in my work by the packing of the Spanish telescope, which was done at the barn and rick-yard at Upton, my room being all the while filled with the optical apparatus.

September 24th.—I went to work with my brother at Slough.

October 1st.—When Mrs. H., with her niece, returned from Newbury, I went again to Upton. The Spanish telescope left England in October.[^[23]]

November 13th.—I went to Slough, the family to town; but, in the absence of the moon, my brother was at home, and much observing, and work was despatched.

December 1st.—All came home, and I went to my solitude again.[^[24]] During the winter months I suffered much from a violent cough and cold, and found great difficulty in despatching the copying, &c., which daily was sent to me when I was unable to go to my brother.

* * * * *

1805-1806. Extracts from Diary.

May 1st.—I went to Slough to make some stay with my brother.

* * * * *

July 4th.—My brother went to Gravesend to meet my youngest brother (who came to pay us a visit), and was detained there for a passport.

July 6th.—In the evening they both arrived at Slough.

July 10th.—Alexander joined us from Bath.... The same day my eldest brother went to the visitation of the Observatory at Greenwich, and my brother D. accompanied him. They returned on the 12th.

July 13th.—We went all to the Terrace, and took our tea with Mrs. Bremeyer and Mr. Beckedorff at the Castle.

July 23rd.—Dietrich took leave of his friends at Cumberland Lodge. Alex. and I accompanied him. In Windsor I went shopping to buy presents for my Hanoverian relations.

July 24th.—D. left us. My eldest brother and Mrs. H. accompanied him to London.

* * * * *

* * * * *

August 1st.—I left Upton for Slough. My brother went with Mrs. H. and Miss B. on an excursion. My nephew went to spend the holidays at Newbury, at the Miss Whites. One man and a woman were left with me to take care of the house. I distracted my thoughts by undertaking an amazing deal of work; among the rest, I made catalogues of all books and MSS. my brother’s library contained, and arranged them, to the best of my knowledge, according to what the confined room would allow.

1806-1807. Extracts from Diary.

September 8th.—My brother and family returned, and I went with my works to Upton. Dr. and Miss Wilson were at Slough from September 22nd to September 30th.

Mem.—During September, and the early part of October, many days were spent at Slough in assisting my brother when the 40-foot mirror was re-polishing.

December 28th.—I went to see Mrs. Bremeyer, but found she had died ten hours before my arrival at the Castle.

January 15th.—My brother went to Bath to see his brother and Sir Wm. Watson.

January 24th, 5th, and 6th.—I spent with my friends at Windsor. My brother returned with a violent cough, added to a nervous headache which it had been hoped would, by change of air, have been removed. My brother brought the place of a comet announced in the papers with him. I had also heard of it at the Castle, and saw it on the 27th at Upton. Next day I had my sweeper carried to Slough, but the nights of the 28th, 29th, and 30th were not clear enough, and I could not find it again till the 31st, when my brother began his observations on it....

May 2nd.—I left Upton for Slough, to work with my brother. Mrs. H. being in town till

June 18th.—Spent the day at Slough, Mr. and Mrs. Watt being there on a visit, and a large party to dinner.

Aug. 13th.—I went with Mrs. H. and my nephew to pay a visit to our friends at Cumberland Lodge. My brother, again finding it necessary to recruit his strength by absenting himself for a few days from his work-rooms, had left Slough for Tunbridge Wells just the day before, and at our return we found the Duke of Kent, with the Dukes of Orleans, &c., waiting for us, and my nephew [ætat. 15] and myself showed them Jupiter, the Moon, &c., in the seven-foot.

Aug. 29th.—I dined at the Castle. The Queen and Princess Elizabeth honoured me with kind enquiries after the health of my brother, &c. The Princesses Augusta and Mary also came to see me in Miss Beckedorff’s room. On coming home the next day, I found my brother had arrived the day before.

Sept. 22nd.—In taking the forty-foot mirror out of the tube, the beam to which the tackle is fixed broke in the middle, but fortunately not before it was nearly lowered into its carriage, &c., &c. Both my brothers had a narrow escape of being crushed to death.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Oct. 1st.—Received an account and letters announcing a comet.

Oct. 2nd.—Saw the comet, visible to the naked eye.

Oct. 4th.—My brother came from Brighton. The same night two parties from the Castle came to see the comet, and during the whole month my brother had not an evening to himself. As he was then in the midst of polishing the forty-foot mirror, rest became absolutely necessary after a day spent in that most laborious work; and it has ever been my opinion that on the 14th of October his nerves received a shock of which he never got the better afterwards; for on that day (in particular) he had hardly dismissed his troop of men, when visitors assembled, and from the time it was dark till past midnight he was on the grass-plot surrounded by between fifty and sixty persons, without having had time for putting on proper clothing, or for the least nourishment passing his lips. Among the company I remember were the Duke of Sussex, Prince Galitzin, Lord Darnley, a number of officers, Admiral Boston, and some ladies.

Nov. 3rd.—I came home to Upton (Mrs. H. returned from Brighton), but went most days to assist my brother in the polishing-room or library, and from the 10th December to the 22nd I was entirely at Slough going on as above uninterruptedly, Mrs. Herschel being with my nephew, and Miss Baldwin at Newbury with the Miss Whites.

Jan.—Many days at work in the library and workrooms assisting my brother.

Feb. 3rd.—When at work in the library the Duke of Cambridge came in. We were obliged to a storm for his visit, as he came in for the shelter.

Feb. 6th.—When I came to Slough to assist my brother in polishing the forty-foot mirror, I found my nephew very ill with an inflammatory sore throat and fever.

Feb. 9th.—Still very ill; and my brother obliged to go on with the polishing of the great mirror, as every arrangement had been made for that purpose. Mem. I believe my brother had reason for choosing the cold season for this laborious work, the exertion of which alone must put any man into a fever if he were ever so strong.

Feb. 10th.—From this day my nephew’s health kept on mending.

Feb. 19th.—My nephew mending, but my brother not well.

Feb. 26th.—My brother so ill that I was not allowed to see him, and till March 8 his life was despaired of, and by

Mar. 10th.—I was permitted to see him, but only for two or three minutes, for he is not allowed to speak.

Mar. 22nd.—He went for the first time into his library, but could only remain for a few moments.

April 7th.—I went to stay at Slough, my brother going by short stages to Bath, Mrs. H., my nephew, and Miss Baldwin with him.

May 9th.—My brother returned, nearly recovered, but with a violent cold and cough caught on the journey.

May 24th.—I went to Slough to be with my brother till the 31st. In fine nights observing; working in the daytime, and writing a paper on comets, filled up the time, though neither my brother nor myself were well.

June 7th.—Was the Montem, of course much company.

June 13th.—I dined at the Castle to meet Lady and Miss Banks, Mr. De Luc,[^[25]] &c.

* * * * *

July 1st.—Alexander arrived at Slough. Mem. We received very distressing accounts from our brother at Hanover.

July 21st till 26th.—My brother was absent, and I was daily at work in the library.

Sept. 5th.—Alexander returned to Bath, leaving his brother far from well. The laborious exertions required for the polishing of the forty-foot mirror, besides the overlooking and directing the workmen out of doors, who were at work on the repairs of the apparatus, during the month of August, had again proved too much for him.

Oct. 4th.—I went to Slough; my brother, Mrs. H., my nephew, and his cousin, went to Brighton. My brother was absent about a week, during which time I worked as long as I could see in the library, and spent the evenings in booking observations, &c., and such works as could be done within doors.

Nov. 2nd.—My brother went to town, endeavouring to gain some information about my brother Dietrich, who, according to a message from a merchant in town, ought to have by this time been in England.

Nov. 6th.—A letter from Harwich arrived informing us that D. was waiting there for a passport.

Nov. 7th.—D. arrived at Slough, but was obliged to return for his trunk and to show himself at the alien office, and I did not see him till the evening of the 9th.

Dec. 19th.—Dietrich left Slough for lodgings in Pimlico, London. Came with Fr. Griesbach the day before Christmas Day, and returned to town the 26th.

1809. Extracts from Diary.

Mem. From the hour of Dietrich’s arrival in England till that of his departure, which was not till nearly four years after, I had not a day’s respite from accumulated trouble and anxiety, for he came ruined in health, spirit, and fortune, and, according to the old Hanoverian custom, I was the only one from whom all domestic comforts were expected. I hope I have acquitted myself to everybody’s satisfaction, for I never neglected my eldest brother’s business, and the time I bestowed on Dietrich was taken entirely from my sleep or from what is generally allowed for meals, which were mostly taken running, or sometimes forgotten entirely. But why think of it now!

Jan.—Throughout the whole month I had a cough, my nephew a sore throat and fever. Great flood and stormy weather. The communication between Slough and Upton was very troublesome to me.

Jan. 13th.—I spent the day at Slough. Dietrich came for the evening to assist at a concert. I was shocked to see him so much worse, but I was obliged to see him return to town the next morning with Fr. Griesbach. I was prevented by my own illness and the severity of the weather from going to see him in town, and

Feb. 5th.—I sprained my ankle in coming home in the evening from Slough, by attempting to walk through the snow in pattens, and my brother was obliged to send me work to Upton, for it was not till a fortnight after, that I could walk again, and I felt the effects of the accident for above three months after.

Mar. 9th.—I went to Slough to work with my brother. His family were from home. Much work was done during the time, but the polishing the forty-foot was interrupted on the 24th by the hot weather.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Oct. 2nd.—Alex left Slough. I was very ill, and had Dr. Pope to attend me.

Oct. 9th.—Dismissed Pope and went to Dr. Phips.

Oct. 17th.—My nephew went to Cambridge. His mother and Miss Baldwin remained in lodgings at Cambridge.

Nov. 20th.—Phips pronounced me out of danger from becoming blind, which he ought to have done much sooner, or rather not to have put me unnecessarily under such dreadful apprehension.

Dec. 6th.—Dietrich went to London for the winter.

CHAPTER IV.
DIARY—continued—1810.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

April 29th.—My nephew took leave of me, returning to Cambridge.

May 4th.—I went to Slough, my brother going to town with Mrs. H. He returned after a short stay, and I remained with him till Mrs. H. came home again. Some of my last days of staying at Slough I spent in papering and painting the rooms I was to occupy in a small house of my brother’s attached to the Crown Inn, to which I removed.

July 13th.—I went to remain at my brother’s house during the time he, with Mrs. H. and Miss Baldwin, went to Scotland.

* * * * *

Sept. 18th.—My brother and the family returned, and Dietrich came to Slough, a room being prepared for him in my cottage.

* * * * *

Dec. 1st.—Dietrich went to town to enter on his winter engagement.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

Joseph Brown SC.
SIR W^M. HERSCHEL, B^T.
From a Drawing by Lady Gordon,
after a Painting by L.T. Abbott in the National Portrait Gallery.
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE ST. 1876.

July 22nd.—My brother with his family left Slough on a tour to Edinburgh and Glasgow. I went to his house till they returned, Sept. 18th.

Aug. 6th.—Dietrich came to Slough, and I left him to the care of Mrs. Cock, at my habitation.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

May 11th.—I went to be with my brother; Mrs. H. went to town for a month.

June 1st.—Dietrich came to Slough, disengaged from all business in town to spend the last few weeks he was to be in England with us.

June 12th.—Mrs. H. returned from town, and I went home to look to the necessary preparations for Dietrich’s precarious (sic) journey he was obliged to make through Sweden.

June 27th.—My eldest brother went to Oxford, came back the 30th, and Alexander arrived the same day from Bath.

July 8th.—Dietrich left us; Alex accompanied him to town.

July 14th.—Dietrich left Harwich, and at the end of the month we received a letter dated Gottenburg, July 18, and so far we knew that he was safe, but of receiving any further account we had not the least prospect, for all communication, with Hanover in particular, was cut off.

Sept.—Mrs. Goltermann came to see me, and took a bed at my cottage, I being left alone at my brother’s house. The family were at Dawlish with Sir William Watson.

Oct. 5th.—My nephew left Slough for Cambridge with intention of not returning till his studies were ended at the University. The latter end of September Mr. Goltermann received a few lines which came open through France to him, dated September 4, showing that a letter of August 15th had been lost, and that at Helsinförs Dietrich had been robbed of his pocketbook when under examination; to this accident we were indebted for knowing that he was got home, as he was obliged to write for a duplicate bill of exchange; such letters were, though unsealed, allowed to pass through France.

1813. Extracts from Diary.

1813.—The three last months of the preceding year I spent mostly in solitude at home, except when I was wanted to assist my brother at night or in his library.

* * * * *

Jan. 25th.—Congratulatory letters arrived from Cambridge on my nephew’s having obtained the Senior Wranglership. He was then contending for another prize, which a few days after he also obtained, so that from the time he entered the University till his leaving he had gained all the first prizes without exception.

* * * * *

* * * * *

March 5th.—Miss S. White, with her maid Sally (one of my nephew’s nurses), came to be present at my nephew’s twenty-first birthday.

March 7th and 8th.—I joined the company who dined there on this occasion, and I must not forget that my nephew presented me with a very handsome necklace, which I afterwards sent to my niece Groskopf, when a bride, and I being too old for wearing such ornaments.

* * * * *

March 17th.—My nephew went again to Cambridge to offer himself as candidate for a fellowship, there being three vacant, and at the conclusion of the examination he obtained the first choice of the three.

March 25th.—I went to be with my brother. Mrs. Herschel and Miss Baldwin followed my nephew to Cambridge to assist him in settling his occasional residence there.

* * * * *

* * * * *

May 3rd.—I intended to pay a long-promised visit to Mrs. Goltermann, but found my brother too busy with putting the forty-foot mirror in the tube, the carriage having broke down between the polishing-room and the tube. Therefore I postponed my journey till I was sure I should not be wanted at home.

May 10th.—I went to London, and met with a friendly reception at Mrs. Goltermann’s.

May 11th.—I went with Mrs. G. and a Mrs. Kramer to Kensington. I remained with Miss Wilson whilst they paid a charitable visit to the two ladies attendant on the Duchess of Brunswick, who were left in a very distressed situation by the death of their mistress.

The evening we spent at Buckingham House with Mrs. Beckedorff.

May 12th.—The forenoon and early part of the afternoon were spent in shopping and visiting, the evening again at Buckingham House, where I just arrived as the Queen and Princesses Elizabeth and Mary, and the Princess Sophia Mathilda of Gloucester, were ready to step into their chairs going to Carlton House, full dressed for a fête, and meeting me and Mrs. Goltermann in the hall, they stopped for near ten minutes, making each in their turn the kindest enquiries how I liked London, &c., &c.

On entering Mrs. Beckedorff’s room I found Madame D’Arblay (Miss Burney), and we spent a very pleasant evening.

May 15th.—I went to the Exhibition; the evening at Baron Best’s, where I met the Beckedorffs. On my return home I found a letter from my brother with Sir William Watson’s direction that I might give them the meeting in town. The next morning I spent a few hours with them, and next day Sir William, with Lady Watson and Miss Jay, called on me in Charles Street. Baron Best also called and brought me the place of a comet from the “Hamburger Zeitungen.”

1814. Extracts from Diary.

May 18th.—I went home and found a great deal of work prepared for me. The evening was spent in sweeping for the comet, but I could not find it, the weather was not clear.

June 14th.—I returned to continue my works in the daytime at my own rooms, and the fine evenings assisting my brother when observing, but we were much interrupted by Mrs. H. being seriously ill. She was confined to her room and bed from the 25th of June till the 8th of August before perfectly recovered.

July 24th.—Alexander arrived at Slough to spend the summer and work with his brother.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

Nov. 13th.—I had a call from Miss Joanna Baillie.

Nov. 29th.—Mr. Rehberg brought the first letter from our brother Dietrich, dated November 10th, which, though still written with great caution, gave us, after a lapse of sixteen months, the assurance that he and his family were living.

Dec. 4th.—I met Madame D’Arblay and Mr. Rehberg, &c., at the Castle.

Jan. 1st.—My nephew, John Herschel, brought me, for a New Year’s present, a new publication by him.

Mem.—The winter was uncommonly severe. My brother suffering from indisposition, and I, for my part, felt I should never be anything else but an invalid for life, but which I very carefully kept to myself, as I wished to be useful to my brother as long as possibly I could....

Feb. 7th.—I was obliged to move to a small cottage in Slough, at a considerable distance from my brother. I began to move, and slept there for the first night, the 22nd.

April 1st.—My brother went to Bath to see his brother and Sir William Watson. His cough still very bad, and the 12th, when he came home, we learned that he had been taken very ill on the road and suffered much when at Bath. It was not till many weeks after, when the warm weather came on, that he felt relieved. A few days after his return from Bath, we received notice by a message from the Queen of the Duchess of Oldenburg’s intention of coming to see my brother’s instruments. Everything was put in readiness for either a morning or evening visit, but the weather being very bad, the visit was put off till the arrival of the Emperor.

May 4th.—I went to be with my brother. Mrs. H. and Miss B. went to meet my nephew in town, who was keeping a term in the Temple, where he had commenced to be a student for the law in February.

* * * * *

June 10th.—My brother, being about this time engaged with re-polishing the forty-foot mirror, it required some time to restore order in his rooms before any strangers could be shown into them, and I again was assisting him to prepare for the reception of the Emperor Alexander and the Duchess of Oldenburg, &c., as they were at Windsor for Ascot Races. But we might have saved ourselves the trouble, for they were sufficiently harassed with public sights and festivities.

* * * * *

Sept. 13th.—During the time I was with my brother I saw among the visitors, &c., General P., who informed us of General Komarzewsky’s death, and on my expressing a hope it might not be true, le Général said he had buried him himself at Paris, and had erected to him a little monument as long as seven years ago.

1815-16. Extracts from Diary.

Sept. 30th.—I came to my home again, but under the greatest concern at being obliged to leave my brother without my little help. But I have since been with him every morning till he told me he should leave off. His strength is now, and has for the last two or three years not been equal to the labour required for polishing forty-foot mirrors. And it was only by little excursions and absence from his workrooms, he for some time recovered from the effects of over-exertion.

Nov. 15th.—I went to work with my brother, which chiefly consisted of calculations and constructing new tables for the Georgian satellites, &c., &c.

Nov. 29th.-Mrs. H. returned, and I continued calculating and copying at home.

* * * * *

Aug. 11th.—Alexander left Slough, my eldest brother with him, going on to Dawlish to recruit his strength again. His declining health had a sad effect on Alexander’s spirits, and I was in continual fear of the consequences; for nothing but the thoughts of the yearly meeting had till now kept up his spirits. From what is yet to follow, it will be seen that our next meeting was not only the last, but a very distressing one.

Sept. 11th.—I went to be with my brother, and remained with him till the 12th of October. The first fortnight of my being with him he was not able to do anything which required strength.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Jan. 2nd.—I was obliged to attend at Slough by eight o’clock, to be present when the Archdukes John and Louis of Austria visited my brother and his instruments.

Jan. 9th.—My nephew received a diploma of being Member of the University of Göttingen. The packet brought very satisfactory letters from our brother at Hanover.

Feb. 4th.—My brother sent the carriage to fetch me home [from the Castle], and I was desired to write to our brother Alexander at Bath, from whom a most melancholy letter had that morning arrived, acquainting us with his being confined to his bed, having received an injury to his knee.

April 5th.—My brother received the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order.

May 12th.—My brother went to town to prepare for going to a levée at the Regent’s next Tuesday. He brought me the keys to the library for going there to work.

* * * * *

June 17th.—I went to my brother’s house, and was left in the deepest concern for his health. He went with his family to Cambridge. [Alexander was to make a journey to Hanover.]

Sept. 2nd.—I saw Alexander led by Captain Stevens on board ... of whom I had the assurance that he would see Alexander safe to Dietrich’s friend, Mr. Münter, in Bremen. A few hours after I left the place [Wapping], taking with me receipts from everybody with whom I had had occasion to keep accounts. I came very ill to Mrs. Goltermann’s, where I remained a week under her care.

Sept. 9th.—I went home.

* * * * *

Sept. 23rd.—We were at a fête the Queen gave at Frogmore. I was obliged to return with my brother soon after he had been noticed by and conversed with the Queen and Regent, being too feeble to be long in company.

Sept. 26th.—We had letters from Hanover to acquaint us with Alexander’s arrival in improved health, after a pleasant journey both by sea and land.

1817. Extracts from Diary.

October, Nov., Dec.—Nothing particular happened, my nephew remaining at home working with his father, and I took the opportunity of working on my MS. Catalogue at those times when I was left without employment.

* * * * *

March 27th.—I spent the day at my brother’s, Sir Robert and Lady Liston being there on a visit before their return to Constantinople.

May 10th.—I met Sir William and Lady Watson at dinner at my brother’s, but was grieved to see the sad change in Sir William’s health and spirits, and felt my only friend and adviser was lost to me.

* * * * *

June 9th.—All the family came home. I returned to my house with astronomical work to finish.

June 14th.—Spent the day at Lady Herschel’s to meet Mrs. and Miss Maskelyne.

July 10th and 11th.—Spent at my brother’s, the mornings at work in the library the evenings with the company....

July 14th.—I spent with Mrs. Beckedorff and brought tickets of invitation to a fête at Frogmore, for our family, with me; where we all went on the 17th of July; but almost as soon as the Royal party sat down to dinner I was obliged to go home with my brother, after having twice been honoured by the notice and conversation of the Queen and Regent, &c., &c. He found himself too feeble to remain in company. It was said that there were above two thousand persons invited.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Nov. 7th.—Prepared for going into mourning for the Princess Charlotte. Mrs. De Luc died a few days after or before the Princess.

Feb. 11th.—I went to my brother, and remained with him till the 23rd. We spent our time, though not in idleness, in sorrow and sadness. He is not only unwell but low in spirits.

April 13th.—Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg and the Prince of Hesse Homburg came to see my brother and his instruments. They were attended by Count O——, Baron K——, and Baron G——. The latter being well informed in the science of astronomy.

Mem. I lost my attendants, the C.’s, at the latter end of April, and a waste of my time was the consequence, for I never after met with anyone who was deserving of my trust.

June 8th.—The Prince and Princess Schaumburg von der Lippe, attended by Fraulein U., came to see my brother. Their behaviour to him was truly kind and affectionate on leaving him, with a hope to see him in the same place—in the garden at the foot of the forty-foot telescope—five or six years hence, when they should come to England again.

* * * * *

June 25th.—From this day to July 8th I was with my brother. The family at Newbury; he being so far well that without interruption, I was supplied with copying as he wrote.

July 16th.—I went to my brother’s, to be present in the evening when the Archduke Michael of Russia, with a numerous attendance, came to see Jupiter, &c.

July 21st.—

Mem. Began to copy the numbering of stars from my brother’s 2nd volume of Flamsteed’s Observations into one of my own, having succeeded to procure all the three volumes complete at the price of four guineas.

1818. Extracts from Diary.

Aug. 8th.—I spent the afternoon with my brother, who found himself very unwell, but with the assistance of my nephew, he had the pleasure of showing the Princess Sophia of Gloucester (who came in the evening accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and several lords and ladies) many objects in the ten-foot telescope.

Aug. 18th.—I went to my brother’s, his family left home for Brighton, where he intended to follow as soon as the repairs of the forty-foot should be finished; but he was all the time too ill for being anywhere but at home. The first evening we were alone, the Princess Sophia came to see the moon. She was accompanied by Lady Mary Paulet, another lady, and some gentlemen. After their departure, my brother seemed much pleased with the intelligent enquiries made by the Princess; but with much concern I saw that he had exerted himself too much above his strength.

Aug. 25th.—I was obliged to leave my brother for a few hours to call on the Princess Sophia Matilda, who desired to see me.

* * * * *

Sept. 8th.—I spent some hours with the Princess at the Castle.

Oct. 14th.—The Ertz Herzog Maximilian of Austria came to see my brother, charged with messages from his mother to both my brother and myself, we having had the honour of seeing her Imperial Highness at Slough, in 1786, when on a visit to the King, with her husband the Archduke of Milan.

Nov. 12th.—I spent some hours in the forenoon with the Princess at the Castle. I left her with a promise of coming soon again, but it was to be my last visit for a long time to come, for....

Nov. 17th.—The Queen died. The 3rd of December the Princess returned my books with a kind note, and on the 4th she left Windsor.

Dec. 5th, 6th, 7th.—I spent in Windsor to see Mrs. and Miss Beckedorff at short intervals. Miss Wilson, Miss S. White, Miss Baldwin, Mr. Beckwith (Miss B.’s bridegroom) were visitors for several days at Slough, to see the funeral of the Queen.

* * * * *

Dec. 16th.—My brother went to town, to sit for his portrait by Mr. Artaud.

Feb. 3rd.—My brother went to town. The 4th I received a note from Mrs. Beckedorff, desiring me to spend the next and last day with her, but I went immediately and took (as I then thought) my last leave of both mother and daughter, for I could not leave my brother on his return on the 5th to be received only by the servants, as he went from home very unwell with a cold.

Feb. 7th.—My nephew arrived in town, and on the 12th all came home and I returned to my habitation.

Feb. 28th.—I heard of the death of Mrs. Beckedorff’s daughter, at Hanover. My brother consented to my going next morning to London, and before two o’clock, after I had procured a lodging in Pimlico, I was with the poor mourners at Buckingham House, and remained till March 4th, when I left them, hoping they would be able to leave England on the 9th.

March 11th.—Was Miss Baldwin’s wedding-day, which I spent at Slough, with the family.

April 2nd.—My brother left Slough, accompanied by Lady H. for Bath, he being very unwell, and the constant complaint of giddiness in the head so much increased, that they were obliged to be four nights on the road both going and coming.

The last moments before he stepped into the carriage were spent in walking with me through his library and workrooms, pointing with anxious looks to every shelf and drawer, desiring me to examine all and to make memorandums of them as well as I could. He was hardly able to support himself, and his spirits were so low, that I found difficulty in commanding my voice so far as to give him the assurance he should find on his return that my time had not been misspent.

1819-1820. Extracts from Diary.

When I was left alone I found that I had no easy task to perform, for there were packets of writings to be examined which had not been looked at for the last forty years. But I did not pass a single day without working in the library as long as I could read a letter without candlelight, and taking with me papers to copy, &c., &c., which employed me for best part of the night, and thus I was enabled to give my brother a clear account of what had been done at his return.

May 1st.—But he returned home much worse than he went, and for several days hardly noticed my handiworks.

* * * * *

June 21st.—I went with my brother to town. He was to sit to Mr. Artaud. We remained till Friday, whilst Lady Herschel entertained the Wilson family at home, who were attending the funeral of Miss Wilson at Upton.

July 8th.—We thought my brother was dying. On the 9th he was persuaded to be blooded in the arm, which something relieved him.

Aug. 10th.—My brother and Lady H. took me with them to town.

Aug. 11th.—We went to the Bank and did what was thought necessary.

Aug. 12th.—I went with Lady H. to see my brother’s portrait, and ordered a copy for myself.

Aug. 25th.—

Mem.—The 13th we came home, and one day passes like the other. I have much to do and can do but little beyond going daily to my brother, and often we are both unable to look about business. The present hot weather bears hard on enfeebled constitutions. Thermometer most days above 80 degrees.

Oct. 15th.—I went to my brother, his family being in town.

Oct. 29th.—I returned to my home.

A small slip of yellow paper, containing the following lines, traced by a tremulously feeble hand, belongs to this year:—

“Lina,—There is a great comet. I want you to assist me. Come to dine and spend the day here. If you can come soon after one o’clock we shall have time to prepare maps and telescopes. I saw its situation last night—it has a long tail.”

July 4th, 1819.

Then follows:—

“I keep this as a relic! Every line now traced by the hand of my dear brother becomes a treasure to me.

“C. Herschel.”

The next year opens, as so many previous ones have done. The bare facts of the steadily narrowing life being set down with the same brevity and unswerving attention to the one object. The family was in much anxiety on account of the failing health of Mrs. Beckwith, the niece of Lady Herschel, of whom, as Miss Baldwin, frequent mention has been made. The spring and summer were passed in taking the sufferer to different places in the country, but she was sinking in a rapid decline, and died in the autumn.

1819-1821. Extracts from Diary.

Nov. 10th.—The remains of Mrs. Beckwith were brought to Upton to be buried, and to me was left the melancholy task of keeping up my poor brother’s spirits on such a melancholy occasion, when at the same time my own were at their lowest ebb, and being besides much molested about this time by the rejoicing of an unruly mob at the acquittal (as they called it) of the Princess of Wales.

From the 26th to 29th I was with my brother.

March.—We lost our brother Alexander, who died at Hanover.[^[26]]

* * * * *

May 22nd.—Again with my brother. My chief care was to see that my brother was not fatigued by too many visitors, and reading to him to prevent his sleeping too much.

* * * * *

* * * * *

The volume ends in October, 1821.

“Here closed my Day-book, for one day passed like another, except that I, from my daily calls, returned to my solitary and cheerless home with increased anxiety for each following day.”

1822. Death of Sir William Herschel.

On the 25th of August, 1822, Sir William Herschel died in his house at Slough.

A small book, containing a very few pages, entitled “Memorandum from 1823 to,” &c., gives the sad history of the last days of that long life of indefatigable toil over which the devoted sister had watched so long with untiring love. It would be easy, and perhaps in some respects preferable, to tell the story without the details, but it would be at the cost of much that is characteristic and illustrative of the nature which has thus far been unfolded from within, and it is the last chapter of her life which she thought worth recalling to memory and committing to paper. The terrible blow of the death of her brother seems to have deprived her of all power or desire to do or to will anything beyond the one stern, dogged resolve to leave England for ever as soon as the beloved remains were buried from her sight. Six months after her return to Hanover she thus prefaced this last and most pathetic of her Recollections:—

Hanover, April 15th, 1823.

“Eighteen months have elapsed since I could acquire fortitude enough for noting down in my Day-book any of those heartrending occurrences I witnessed during the last nine months of the fifty years I have lived in England, and I cannot hope that ever a time will come when I shall be able to dwell on any one of those interesting but melancholy hours I spent with the dearest and best of brothers. But if I was to leave off making memorandums of such events as either affect or are interesting to me, I should feel like what I am, viz., a person that has nothing more to do in this world.

“But to regain the thread of my narration, it is necessary to take notice of the vacancy between the present date and the ending of the year 1821, and the only way in which I can possibly fill up this vacancy must be to take a few dates with memorandums marked in my almanac and account books for the year 1822, without making any comments on what my feelings and situation must have been throughout that whole interval.

“By some letters I wrote during the first four months of 1822 to my brother Alex^r. here at Hanover, I see that I was employed in copying from the Philosophical Transactions the first twelve papers of my brother’s publications. The time required for this purpose I could only obtain by making use of most of the hours which are generally allotted to rest, as during the day my time was spent in endeavours to support my dear brother in his painful decline. And besides, the hope that we might continue yet a little longer together began to forsake me, for my own health and spirits were in that state that I was in daily expectation of going before.[^[27]] Therefore each moment of separation from my dear brother I spent in endeavours to arrange my affairs so that my nephew, J. Herschel, as the executor of my will, might have as little trouble as possible.

[A letter of eighteen pages would have been found along with a will, if I had (as I then daily expected) died before my brother. After the sad events of the succeeding two years, I thought it necessary to destroy both the will and the letter.] My thoughts were continually divided between my brother’s library, from which I was now on the point of being severed for ever, and my own unfinished work at home endeavouring to bring by degrees all into its proper place.”

Recollections written at Hanover.

Diary—(continued).

May 13th.—Lady Herschel and my nephew went to town: I was left with my brother alone, but was counting every hour till I should see them again, for I was momentarily afraid of his dying in their absence.

May 20th. * * * *

The summer proved very hot; my brother’s feeble nerves were very much affected, and there being in general much company, added to the difficulty of choosing the most airy rooms for his retirement.

July 8th.—I had a dawn of hope that my brother might regain once more a little strength, for I have a memorandum in my almanac of his walking with a firmer step than usual above three or four times the distance from the dwelling-house to the library, in order to gather and eat raspberries, in his garden, with me. But I never saw the like again.

The latter end of July I was seized by a bilious fever, and I could for several days only rise for a few hours to go to my brother about the time he was used to see me. But one day I was entirely confined to my bed, which alarmed Lady Herschel and the family on my brother’s account. Miss Baldwin[^[28]] called and found me in despair about my own confused affairs, which I never had had time to bring into any order. The next day she brought my nephew to me, who promised to fulfil all my wishes which I should have expressed on paper; he begged me not to exert myself for his father’s sake, of whom he believed it would be the immediate death if anything should happen to me....[^[29]] Of my dear nephew’s advice I could not avail myself, for I knew that at that time he had weighty concerns on his mind. And, besides, my whole life almost has passed away in the delusion that next to my eldest brother, none but Dietrich was capable of giving me advice where to leave my few relics, consisting of a few books and my sweeper. And for the last twenty years I kept to the resolution of never opening my lips to my dear brother William about worldly or serious concerns, let me be ever so much at a loss for knowing right from wrong. And so it has happened that at the time when I was stupefied by grief at seeing the death of my dear brother, I gave myself, with all I was worth, up to my brother Dietrich and his family, and from that time till the death of D. I found great difficulty to remain mistress of my own actions and opinions. In respect to the latter we never could agree. And this it was which prompted me to send Flamsteed’s works to Göttingen (I would rather have kept them till now) for fear they might be offered for sale. Having about this time received very distressing accounts of family misfortunes from Dietrich at Hanover, I could find no rest on his account till I should have made my £500 stock over to him, but this required my presence at the bank, and I could not think of leaving Slough till my brother should be engaged for some days with his family previous to the departure of my nephew, who was going to accompany a friend abroad. And besides, I knew that my absence would then be scarcely perceived, as a very sensible elderly lady (Mrs. Morsom) would be there on a visit.

1822. Recollections written at Hanover.

Aug. 8th.—I went, and at six o’clock in the afternoon of the 10th I was home again. My nephew had left Slough the same morning.

I found my brother seated by the ladies, but so languid that I thought it necessary to take a seemingly unconcerned leave for the night.

Aug. 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th. I went as usual to spend some hours of the forenoon with my brother.

Aug. 15th.—I hastened to the spot where I was wont to find him with the newspaper which I was to read to him. But instead I found Mrs. Morsom, Miss Baldwin, and Mr. Bulman, from Leeds, the grandson of my brother’s earliest acquaintance in this country. I was informed my brother had been obliged to return to his room, whither I flew immediately. Lady H. and the housekeeper were with him, administering everything which could be thought of for supporting him. I found him much irritated at not being able to grant Mr. Bulman’s request for some token of remembrance for his father. As soon as he saw me, I was sent to the library to fetch one of his last papers and a plate of the forty-foot telescope. But for the universe I could not have looked twice at what I had snatched from the shelf, and when he faintly asked if the breaking up of the Milky Way was in it, I said “Yes,” and he looked content. I cannot help remembering this circumstance, it was the last time I was sent to the library on such an occasion. That the anxious care for his papers and workrooms never ended but with his life was proved by his frequent whispered inquiries if they were locked and the key safe, of which I took care to assure him that they were, and the key in Lady Herschel’s hands.

After half an hour’s vain attempt to support himself, my brother was obliged to consent to be put to bed, leaving no hope ever to see him rise again. For ten days and nights we remained in the most heartrending situation till the 25th of August, when not one comfort was left to me but that of retiring to the chamber of death, there to ruminate without interruption on my isolated situation. Of this last solace I was robbed on the 7th September, when the dear remains were consigned to the grave.

1822. Departure from England.

Sept. 9th.—I returned to my house and began selecting the books and clothing I should want to take with me to Hanover, where I thought it best to go with the Michaelmas messenger.

Sept. 27th.—I had disposed of my furniture, partly by presents and partly by sale; and after settling with my landlord, &c., I left my house for Lady Herschel’s, to remain there till business should call her and my nephew to town.

Oct. 3rd.—My friends as well as myself were made easy by the arrival of my brother Dietrich, who came to fetch me.

Oct. 7th.—I took leave of Princess Augusta and all my friends and connections in Windsor.

Oct. 10th.—At 9 in the morning I left Slough with my brother D. Lady H. and my nephew followed the next day.

* * * * *

Oct. 14th.—Princess Sophia Matilda sent her carriage for me to spend the day with her at Blackheath.

Oct. 16th.—I went with my brother to Mortlake to take leave of Baron Best and family; and thence we directly proceeded to Bedford Place, where all my friends were assembled, among whom I had the comfort of seeing once more my nephew’s friend, and the favourite of my dear departed brother, Mr. Babbage. He had only that day arrived from the North. I could find no opportunity for any conversation with him, but just by a pressure of the hand recommended my nephew in incoherent whispers to the continuance of his regards and friendship.

From all these sorrowing friends and connections I was obliged to take an everlasting leave, and in the few hours we were for the last time together, I was obliged to sign many papers, among which was a receipt for a half year’s legacy. I signed this with great reluctance ... but Lady H. and my nephew insisted on my taking it, according to my brother’s will. This unexpected sum has enabled me to furnish myself with many conveniences on my arrival here, of which otherwise I should have perhaps debarred myself.

Oct. 17th.—In the morning we left our lodging for an inn near the Tower. Mr. Beckwith joined us, and settled at the Custom House for our baggage. My nephew came for a moment to us, and after his departure I saw no one I knew or who cared for me.

Oct. 18th.—At ten o’clock we went on board of the steam packet.

Oct. 20th.—At noon we landed after a stormy passage at Rotterdam.

Oct. 21st.—At daybreak we began to proceed on our way, and

Oct. 28th.—We arrived at the habitation of my brother, in Hanover.

A note, dated September 29th, 1828, apologizes to her nephew for troubling him with the above and other papers, adding:—

I have destroyed my Day-book, but in doing so I was tempted to extract some dates which I thought might still be interesting to me, and bring the past once more to my recollection; but as that would only be a drawback to the satisfaction I almost daily may enjoy by hearing of the fame of my dear nephew, it is best to remove all that can bring the past to my recollection.

The letters which follow are the only documents from which any particulars can be drawn for this and many following years. No Day-book or note-book of any kind appears to have been kept, or at any rate preserved, from the time of the return to Hanover in October, 1822, until the year 1833.

CHAPTER V.
RETROSPECTION.

As we close the record of Miss Herschel’s residence in England, we may pause for a moment to look back over the space she had traversed while following, with unvarying diligence and humility, the path her brother marked out for her, first in blessed hourly companionship, when she was as necessary in his home as in his library, or among his instruments; and latterly, when with saddened heart but unflagging determination she continued to work for him, but saw his domestic happiness pass into other keeping.

1822. Retrospection.

While they toiled together through those first ten years of ever-deepening interest and marvellous activity, during which the rapid juxtaposition of mirror-grinding, concerts, oratorios, music lessons,[^[30]] and frequent papers written for philosophical societies, almost takes the breath away as we read,—the brother had abundant opportunity of learning how far he could trust to his companion’s readiness, as well as capability, to accept of duties as utterly remote from all that her previous life had prepared her for as if he had asked her to accompany him on a pilgrimage to Mecca. And thus, of all of whom he had made trial, it was not the brilliant Jacob, nor the gifted Alexander, but the little quiet, home-bred Caroline, of whom nothing had been expected but to be up early and to do the work of the house, and to devote her leisure to knitting and sewing, in whom he found that steady devotion to a fixed purpose which he felt it was possible to link with his own. “I did nothing for my brother,” she said, “but what a well-trained puppy-dog would have done: that is to say, I did what he commanded me. I was a mere tool which he had the trouble of sharpening.” Such was always her own modest self-estimate. It is hardly too much to say that, to have worked as she had worked, and to have done all that she had accomplished, and to claim no more than the credit due to passive obedience to orders, is a depth of humility of that rare and noble kind which is in itself a form of greatness. It must not be forgotten, that the progress of astronomical science since Sir William Herschel’s great reflector startled the world, has not been greater than has been the change, both in opinion and practice, on the subject of female employments and education. The appointment of a young woman as an assistant astronomer, with a regular salary for her services, was an unprecedented occurrence in England. She had watched and shared in every effort and every failure from the first seven-foot telescope to the construction of the ponderous machinery that was to support the mighty tube of which she herself made the first crude model in pasteboard. When, finally, her brother was summoned to the King, and wrote to tell her how he fared at Court, she accepted the decision, by which he exchanged a handsome income for the sake of obtaining the command of his own time, and £200 a-year from his gracious sovereign, with only a passing expression of regret from the housekeeper’s point of view, and threw herself heart and soul into the new life at Datchet. One all-sufficing reward sweetened her labours—“I had the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours in assisting him.” When the dignity of original discovery gave her a distinct and separate claim to the respect of the astronomical world, she must have found out that she was something better than a mere tool. The requisite knowledge of algebra and mathematical formulæ for calculations and reductions she had to gather when and how she could: chiefly at meals, and at any odd moments when her brother could be asked questions, and the answers were carefully entered in her Commonplace Book, where examples of taking equal altitudes, and how to convert sidereal time into mean time, follow upon pages of problems, oblique plain triangles, right-angled spherical triangles, how to find the logarithm of a number given, and theorems for making tables of motion. With this slender store of attainment she accomplished a vast amount of valuable work, besides the regular duties of assistant to so indefatigable an observer as Sir William Herschel. He was invariably accustomed to carry on his telescopic observations till daybreak, circumstances permitting, without any regard to season; it was the business of his assistant to note the clocks and to write down the observations from his dictation as they were made. Subsequently she assisted in the laborious numerical calculations and reductions, so that it was only during his absences from home, or when any other interruption of his regular course of observation occurred, that she was able to devote herself to the Newtonian sweeper, which she used to such good purpose. Besides the eight comets discovered by her, she detected several remarkable nebulæ and clusters of stars previously unnoticed, especially the superb nebula known as No. 1, Class V., in Sir William Herschel’s Catalogue. Long practice taught her to make light of her work. “An observer at your twenty-foot when sweeping,” she wrote many years after, “wants nothing but a being who can and will execute his commands with the quickness of lightning; for you will have seen that in many sweeps six or twice six objects have been secured and described in one minute of time.”

The ten years from 1788 to 1798, although a blank as regards her personal history—the Recollections cease with her brother’s marriage—were among the busiest of her life, and in the year last mentioned the Royal Society published two of her works, namely, “A Catalogue of 860 Stars observed by Flamsteed, but not included in the British Catalogue,” and “A General Index of Reference to every Observation of every Star in the above-mentioned British Catalogue.” It is in reference to these that she wrote the very interesting letter to the Astronomer Royal, which is given among others, in its place, in the Journal. But another work, which was not published, was the most valuable, as it was the most laborious of all her undertakings. This was “The Reduction and Arrangement in the form of a Catalogue, in Zones, of all the Star-clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir W. Herschel in his Sweeps.” It supplied the needful data for Sir John Herschel when he undertook the review of the nebulæ of the northern hemisphere; and it was for this that the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was voted to her in 1828, followed by the extraordinary distinction of an Honorary Membership. This Catalogue was not completed until after her return to Hanover, and Sir David Brewster wrote of it as “a work of immense labour,” and “an extraordinary monument of the unextinguished ardour of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science.”

Her Sweepings.

Although the Recollections cease in 1788, there are some volumes recording the nature and results of her nightly “sweepings,” which Miss Herschel kept very regularly, and, as an unique example of a lady’s journal, a few of the entries may be of interest.

1788. Sept. 9th.—My brother showed me the five satellites of Saturn. He made me take notice of a star, which made a double star last night with the fifth satellite.

* * * * *

Dec. 8th.—I swept for a comet which was announced in the papers as having been discovered the 26th of November by Mr. Messier. According to the observations of that date, it should have been within a few degrees of the Pole star (by my brother’s calculation), but though I swept with great attention a space of at least ten or twelve degrees all around the pole over repeatedly, I could find nothing.

Another night of unavailing search, with thermometer 20°.[^[31]]

1790. Jan. 7th.—I have swept all this evening for my [third] comet in vain. My brother showed me the G. Sidus in the twenty-foot telescope, and I saw both its satellites very plainly.

1791. Aug. 2nd.—I began to sweep at 1.30, from the horizon through the Pleiades up as high as the head of Medusa. Left off with β Tauri. Afterwards I continued with horizontal sweeps till daylight was too strong for seeing any longer.

1792. May 3rd.—My brother having desired me by way of practice to settle the stars α Persei and Castor, and α Virginis, by some neighbouring stars in Wollaston’s Catalogue, I made last night an attempt to take their places. The moon was near the full, therefore no sweeping could be done.

1795. May 1st.—Mem. In the future when any great chasms appear in my journals, it may be understood that sweeping for comets has not been neglected at every opportunity which did offer itself. But as I always do sweep according to the precept my brother has given me, and as I often am in want of time, I think it is very immaterial if the places where I have seen nothing are noted down.

Nov. 7th.—0.40 sidereal time. About an hour ago I saw the comet [seventh] which is marked in the annexed field of view [diagrams drawn with extreme neatness illustrate the entries when necessary]. When I perceived it first the two small stars were entirely covered by it, and it appeared to be a cluster of stars mixed with nebulosity; but not knowing of such an object in that place, I kept watching it, and perceived it to be a comet by its having moved from the two small stars, so as to leave them entirely free from haziness.

1797. Aug. 14th.—C. H.’s comet. At 9.30 common time, being dark enough for sweeping, I began in the usual manner with looking over the heavens with the naked eye, and immediately saw a comet nearly as bright as that which was discovered by Mr. Gregory, January 8, 1793. I went down from the observatory to call my brother Alexander, that he might assist me at the clock. In my way into the garden I was met and detained by Lord S. and another gentleman, who came to see my brother and his telescopes. By way of preventing too long an interruption, I told the gentlemen that I had just found a comet, and wanted to settle its place. I pointed it out to them, and after having seen it they took their leave.

1822. Retrospection.

These entries were continued with great regularity to the year 1819, at which time, as the Diary shows, Sir William’s increasing feebleness made her close daily attendance more necessary, and her pen was in greater request than the “sweeper.” The last volume concludes with a carefully drawn eye-draft of the situation of a comet visible at Hanover, January 31st, 1824. Thenceforth the instrument which had done such good service in her hands for forty years of steady work, became the chief ornament of her sitting-room, until her disquieting fears for its ultimate fate led her to send it back to England.

Sad as is the story of those last years of declining old age, while the beloved brother lived we know that his sister’s life was full of occupation. It is not until the cruel hour comes, and she knows that death and the grave will soon claim him, that she allows the sense of her own bitter desolation to find expression. When all was over, her only desire seems to have been to hurry away. Hardly was he laid in his grave than she collected the few things she cared to keep, and left for ever the country where she had spent fifty years of her life, living and toiling for him and him only. “If I should leave off making memorandums of such events as affect, or are interesting to me, I should feel like—what I am, namely, a person that has nothing more to do in this world.” Mournful words: doubly mournful when we know that the writer had nearly half an ordinary lifetime still between her and that grave which she made haste to prepare, in the hope that her course was nearly run. Who can think of her, at the age of seventy-two, heart-broken and desolate, going back to the home of her youth in the fond expectation of finding consolation, without a pang of sympathetic pity? She found everything changed. In addition to those changes, for which she might have been in some measure prepared, there were others of a kind to admit of neither cure nor alleviation. The life she had led for fifty years had removed her, she little guessed how much, from the old familiar paths: her thoughts, her habits, all her ideas had been formed and moulded in a totally different world: more bitter still, she found herself alone in her great sorrow and quenchless love; pride in the distinction reflected on themselves from relationship to the illustrious astronomer was a miserable substitute for the reverential affection she had looked to find for one of the kindest and most generous of brothers. But the bitterest suffering of all was from a source which was, and ever remained, beyond the reach of help. “You don’t know,” wrote one of Miss Edgeworth’s sisters, “the blank of life after having lived within the radiance of genius;” and this was the blank in which Miss Herschel doomed herself not only to live, but to try to begin anew, when past three score and ten. The extracts from her letters bear strong testimony to the gallant struggle she made to find interests and occupations in what those about her, as well as she herself, looked upon as a kind of exile, and “Why did I leave happy England?” was often her cry, more especially as time went on, and interest in her nephew and his family came mercifully to fill the heart still so yearning and ready for affection. When she heard the news of Sir John Herschel’s intended departure for the Cape, she wrote, “Ja! if I was thirty or forty years junger and could go too? in Gottes nahmen!” her interest in the science to which she had devoted her best years never ceased, though she persisted to the end in ridiculing the bare suggestion that the Rosse telescope could by any possibility be so good as the forty-foot. The homage paid to her as a savante amused as well as gratified her. “You must give me leave to send you any publication you can think of,” she wrote to her nephew, “without mentioning anything about paying for them. For it is necessary I should every now and then lay out a little of my spare cash in that for the sake of supporting the reputation of being a learned lady (there is for you!), for I am not only looked at for such a one, but even stared at here in Hanover!” Her deprecation of the membership of the Irish Academy, conferred on one who for so many years had “not even discovered a comet,” was thoroughly sincere as well as characteristic, but she found pleasure in receiving the homage which was naturally paid to her; no man of any scientific eminence passed through Hanover without visiting her; from the Royal Family she received the most kind and graceful attentions; and it became a matter of public concern to note the presence of the well-known tiny figure at the Theatre, where her constant appearance in extreme old age was in itself a marvel. The frugal simplicity of her habits made it a positive perplexity to dispose of her income; she protested that £50 a-year was all she could manage to spend on herself, and she pertinaciously resisted receiving the pension of £100 per annum left to her by her brother, often devoting the quarterly or half-yearly payment to the purchase of some handsome present for her nephew or niece. She wrote full instructions and made the most careful arrangements for every detail of business in connection with her own burial and the disposal of her property—that is of the little she reserved, for her generosity towards her relations was as great as the expenditure on herself was small.

In these last remarks I have anticipated events, and must now return to the year 1822, when the correspondence begins.

1822. Journey to Hanover.

FROM MISS HERSCHEL TO LADY HERSCHEL.

Rotterdam, Monday, Oct. 21, 1822.

Dear Lady Herschel,—

At this present moment I have nothing to wish for, besides the means of convincing myself by one look of your and my dear nephew’s health. After a very troublesome passage of forty-eight hours, we find ourselves almost restored to our former condition and composure, with only the difference that we have no more hunting after our trunks from Custom-house to Custom-house, and can proceed on our way to Hanover in peace after one night’s rest here in a very good inn. But the last night was truly dismal, for the sailors themselves confessed that it was what is called a high sea. At one time a spray conveyed a bucket-full of water into my bed, which was regarded as nothing in comparison to the evils with which I was surrounded. I was the most sick of all on board, and the poor old lady was pitied by all who enquired after her, but I had four ladies in the same cabin with me, who encouraged me to hold out, which at one time I thought would have been impossible. Something happened to the vessel for want of a good pilot in the Thames, and at Blackwall we laid still three hours, then we hobbled on to near Gravesend, and there lay in a high sea at anchor all night, whilst they were hatching and thumping to mend the vessel we were to go in. In consequence of this, we could not reach the spot where a pilot could meet us time enough on Sunday evening, and lay again at anchor. At half past eleven I set foot on shore, where so many people were assembled to gaze on us that it set me a crying, and now I am glad to be shut up once more in a room by myself and where I can make proper preparations for travelling further, which hitherto I have not had the opportunity of doing. All my clothes which I had prepared for the ship or sleeping on the road were locked up at the Custom-house, and I could not get hold of them again till we entered this house. So much for our adventures at present, and I beg and hope you will soon and often let us know how you are with my nephew, and how and where you can pass the following winter months in the most comfortable way.

My brother is gone into the street to look about him. The weather is fine, and I wish my dear nephew was with him, for it looks very tempting and new all about me, and I think he would enjoy seeing the bustle on the water with which this house is surrounded. My brother has charged me with millions of compliments and thanks to yourself and our nephew, but I cannot afford him quite so many, as else there would be no room for all those I owe to my dear Lady H. and my nephew, who took last Friday so long a walk to see us once more. My fears for what was to come and regret for what I left behind were so stupifying that it made me almost insensible to all what was passing about me, only this I shall remember, with satisfaction, that his looks were better than I have seen for a long time past.

I am now going to direct the little parcel for Professor Swinden, and likewise to Mr. Crommelin, jun., and to Professor Moll, at Utrecht, and Gauss will not be forgotten as we go along.

I beg you will remember me to Miss Baldwin (who I hope is with you), and particularly to Mr. Beckwith, whom I shall never be able to thank sufficiently for the friendly care he has shown to me on all, and especially on the last occasion of helping me on with my packages.

Farewell, my dear Lady Herschel, and let me hear soon that you and my nephew are well.

Miss Baldwin will write, and of course she will inform me of her own and all friends’ health, &c.

Ever your affectionate

Car. Herschel.

1822. Arrival in Hanover.

FROM MISS HERSCHEL TO LADY HERSCHEL.

Hanover, Oct. 30, 1822.

My dear Lady Herschel,—

We arrived here at noon, on the 28th, without the least accident, but not without the utmost exertion and extreme fatigue to both my brother and myself, from which it will be some time before I shall get the better, on account of the many visits of our friends, who come to convince themselves of our safe arrival, of which I hope you will have been informed long before this can reach you, as Mr. Quintain has promised me to send you a line the moment he reaches London. He left Hanover yesterday. I had wrote a letter in hopes he would have taken it, but that was impossible, and the post from here has been changed from Tuesday to Monday.

Mr. Hausmann called also here yesterday, and you may easily imagine that many inquiries are made after you and my dear nephew by all those who come near me, and I hope you will soon enable me, by a few lines, to inform them of your welfare and health, and give me the comfort to know that you have regained some of your former composure, after the late melancholy change and unsettled state in which we all were involved.

I found Mrs. H. in personal appearance so different from what I had imagined, that I can hardly believe her to be the same; she is just sixty-three years of age, and suffers much from rheumatism, which has taken away partially the use of her hands, but she is still of so cheerful a disposition and so active by way of overcoming disease by exercise, that I cannot wonder enough, and her reception of me was truly gratifying; the handsomest rooms, three or four times larger than what I have been used to, from which I can step in her own apartments, have been prepared for me and furnished in the most elegant style. But I cannot say that I feel well enough to enjoy all these good things nor be able to show myself to those who wish to see me, at least not at present.

Mrs. Beckedorff sent to enquire after me when I had been hardly two hours arrived. Miss B. is confined with a severe cold. My brother went yesterday to see them, and we have postponed our meeting till Saturday, when she will come to town for the winter.

From Rotterdam I sent a letter which I hope you have received, and by which you will have seen that our passage was not of the most agreeable kind.