Part 4 (1/2)
At times her brother was enabled to dispense with her attendance. You would suppose that such leisure nights she would gladly give up to rest.
Not she. Her brother might, at some unforeseen moment, require her aid, and consequently she preferred to be close at hand. A seven-foot telescope planted on the lawn helped to while away the hours of waiting; and it was to the occupation of these hours that science owed the discovery of the comet of 1786, of the comet of 1788, of the comet of 1791, of the comet of 1793, and of that of 1795, now connected with the name of Encke. Many, also, of the nebulae contained in Sir William Herschel's catalogues were detected by her keen and accurate gaze during these nights of lonely observation. Indeed, as South remarked, when looking at the joint-labours of these two enthusiasts, we scarcely know whether the warmer praise should be given to the intellectual might of the brother or the ardent industry of the sister.
In 1797, continued her eulogist, she presented to the Royal Society a catalogue of 560 stars, taken from Flamsteed's observations, the exact positions of which had not been previously defined.
Soon after the death of him to whom she had given up so much of her life, her best energies, and her ripest faculties, she returned to Hanover,--unwilling, however, to relinquish the astronomical researches which had been so pure and permanent a source of pleasure. She undertook and completed the laborious ”reduction” or registration of the places of 2500 nebulae, down to the 1st of January 1800; thus presenting in one view the results of all the observations Sir William Herschel had made upon those wonderful bodies, and triumphantly bringing to a close half a century of scientific toil.
We return to Miss Herschel's biography, in order to gather up a few particulars of her last years, and to exhibit some of the tenderer features of her character.
On the occasion of her nephew's marriage, in 1829, she wrote to him in the following terms:--
”MY DEAREST NEPHEW,--I have spent four days in vain endeavours to gain composure enough to give you an idea of the joyful sensation your letter of February 5th has caused me. But I can at this present moment find no words which would better express my happiness than those which escaped in exclamation from my lips, according to Simeon (see St. Luke ii. 29), 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'
”I have now some hopes of pa.s.sing the few remainder of my days in as much comfort as the separation from the land where I spent the greatest portion of my life, and from all those which are most dear to me, can admit. For, from the description given me of the dear young lady of your choice, I am confident my dear nephew's future happiness is now established.
”I beg you will give my love to your dear lady, and best regards to all your new connections where they are due, in the best terms you can think of, for I am at present too unwell for writing all I could wish to say.
”I have suffered much during this severe winter, and have not been able to leave my habitation above three or four times for the last three months; and feel, moreover, much fatigued by sitting eight times within the last ten days to Professor Tiedemann for having my picture taken--which he did at my apartment, and now he has taken it home to finish. I must conclude, for I wish to say a few words to your dear mother. It is now between eleven and twelve, and perhaps you are at this very moment receiving the blessing of Dr. Jennings; in which I most fervently join by saying, 'G.o.d bless you both!'”
Though eighty-three years old, Miss Herschel retained all her old powers of memory; and in a letter to her new niece, Lady Herschel, written in 1833, she narrated some amusing reminiscences of her nephew's early childhood.
He was only in his sixth year, she said, when she was separated for a while from the family circle. But this did not hinder ”John” and her from remaining the most affectionate friends, and many a half or whole holiday he spent with her, devoting it to chemical experiments, in which all kinds of boxes, tops of tea-canisters, pepper-cruets, tea-cups, and the like, served for the necessary vessels, and the sand-tub furnished the matter to be a.n.a.lysed. Miss Herschel's task was to prevent the introduction of water, which would have produced havoc on her carpet.
For his first notion of building, ”John” was indebted to the affection of his aunt, who, on his second or third birthday, lifted him in the trenches to lay the south corner-stone of the building which was added to Sir William's original house at Slough. On further reflection, she felt convinced that this incident occurred in the second year of her nephew's age, for she remembered being obliged to use ”a deal of coaxing” to make him part with the money he was to lay on the comer-stone.
About the same time, when she was sitting near him one day, listening to his prattle, her attention was drawn to his repeated and formidable hammering. On investigating into its object, she found that it was the continuation of the labour of many days, during which he had undermined the ground about the corner of the house, had entirely removed the corner-stone, and was zealously toiling to overthrow the next! His aunt gave the alarm, and old John Wilts.h.i.+re, a favourite carpenter, ran to the spot, exclaiming, ”Heaven bless the boy! if he is not going to pull the house down!”
In 1834, Sir John, as already stated, made a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, in order to undertake a series of observations of the southern heavens. His aunt had now reached the ripe old age of eighty-four, an age attained by few,--and when attained, bringing with it in almost every case a painful diminution of physical energy, and a corresponding decline in mental force. But such was not the case with this remarkable woman. She still continued an active correspondence with her nephew, and manifested the liveliest interest in all his movements. It is astonis.h.i.+ng to mark the vivacity and clearness of the letters she wrote at this advanced period of her life. Thus, on the 1st of May 1834, she writes to Sir John:--
”Both yourself and my dear niece urged me to write often, and to write always twice; but, alas! I could not overcome the reluctance I felt of [at] telling you that it is over with me for getting up at eight or nine o'clock, dressing myself, eating my dinner alone without an appet.i.te, falling asleep over a novel (I am obliged to lay down to recover the fatigue of the morning's exertions), awaking with nothing but the prospect of the trouble of getting into bed, where very seldom I get above two hours' sleep. It is enough to make a parson swear! To this I must add, I found full employment for the few moments, when I could rouse myself from a melancholy lethargy, to spend in looking over my store of astronomical and other memorandums of upwards of fifty years' collecting.”
Later in the year she writes:--
”I know not how to thank you sufficiently for the cheering account you give of the climate agreeing so well with you and all who are so dear to me, and that you find all about you so agreeable and comfortable;... so that I have nothing left to wish for but a continuation of the same, and that I may only live to see the handwriting of your dear Caroline, though I have my doubts about lasting till then, for the thermometer standing 80 and 90 for upwards of two mouths, day and night, in nay rooms (to which I am mostly confined), has made great havoc in my brittle const.i.tution. I beg you will look to it that she learns to make her figures as you find them in your father's MSS., such as he taught me to make. The daughter of a mathematician must write plain figures.
”My little grand-nephew making alliance with your workmen shows that he is taking after his papa. I see you now in idea, running about in petticoats among your father's carpenters, working with little tools of your own; and John Wilts.h.i.+re (one of Pitt's men, whom you may perhaps remember) crying out, 'Dang the boy, if he can't drive in a nail as well as I can!'
”I thank you for the astronomical portion of your letter, and for your promise of future accounts of uncommon objects. It is not _cl.u.s.ters of stars_ I want you to discover in the body of the Scorpion [the astronomical sign, so called], or thereabout, for that does not answer my expectation, remembering having once heard your father, after a long, awful silence, exclaim, 'Hier ist wahrhaftig ein loch ein Himmel!' [Here, indeed, is a great gap in Heaven!], and, as I said before, stopping afterwards at the same spot, but leaving it unsatisfied.”
These extracts may seem trivial to some of our readers, but they are not so, rightly considered. They ill.u.s.trate the wonderful mental vivacity of their venerable writer, and in this respect are useful; but still more useful in showing how cheerfully she bore the burden of her years, and with what intellectual serenity she looked forward to her end.
We own that the lives of the Herschels are what the world would call uneventful. The discovery of a new planet, or of the orbit of a star, seems less romantic to the vulgar taste than the slaughter of ten thousand men on a field of battle. It will seem to the unthinking that the victorious general or the daring seaman, the leader of a forlorn hope, or the captain who goes down with his sinking s.h.i.+p, affords an example worthier of imitation than the patient, watchful, enthusiastic astronomer or his devoted sister. _His_, they will say, was a n.o.ble life. Be it so; but every life is n.o.ble which is spent in the path of duty. Do what comes to your hand to do with all honesty and completeness, and you will make _your_ life n.o.ble. Subdue your pa.s.sions, master your evil thoughts, observe the laws of temperance and purity, be truthful, be firm, be honest, and keep ever before you the law of Christ as the law of your daily work, and you will make _your_ life n.o.ble. We cannot all be great commanders or daring captains, we cannot all be distinguished men of science; but we can all be righteously-living men, endeavouring to raise others by our example, and it is a higher aim to live purely than to live successfully. We cannot all command the success, just as we do not all enjoy the intellectual powers, of a Herschel; but we can emulate the industry and perseverance of the astronomer, we can copy the devoted affection and self-denial of his sister. The sorriest mistake of which men can be guilty,--yet it is a mistake which has clouded many lives,--is to suppose that duty is less imperative in its claims on the humble and unknown than on men raised or born to eminent position. Let it be understood and remembered that each one of us can rise to a standard of true heroism, by cultivating the graces of the Christian character, and doing the work which G.o.d has appointed.
Sir John Herschel returned to England in 1838, and in July of the same year he and his little son paid a visit to Miss Herschel. It is characteristic that her intense anxiety as to the proper treatment of her little grand-nephew--his sleep, his food, his playthings--greatly disturbed her peace. ”I rather suffered him,” she writes, ”to hunger, than would let him eat anything hurtful; indeed, I would not let him eat anything at all unless his papa was present.” Her biographer remarks, that great as was her joy to see once more almost the only living being upon whom she poured some of that wealth of affection with which her heart never ceased to overflow, yet it was on the disappointments and shortcomings of those few days, those precious days, that she chiefly dwelt; and the abrupt termination of her nephew's visit filled her with the deepest sorrow. With the generous, but, as it proved, mistaken intention of sparing her feelings, her nephew left without informing her beforehand of the exact time of his departure, simply bidding her good-night prior to his return to his inn. Great was her distress when she found that he and his son had quitted Hanover at four o'clock on the following morning.