| Caroline Herschel | Caroline Lucretia Herschel | ||
| Caroline Herschel | Caroline Lucretia Herschel | ||
| 1 | "I am nothing, I have done nothing; all I am, all I know, I owe to my brother. I am only a tool which he shaped to his use—a well-trained puppy dog would have done as much." |
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| 2 | So wrote Caroline Herschel of herself, her marvellous sister-love, self-denying and almost abject, inspiring her to disclaim all honour, that her beloved brother might have all the glory of their joint fame. |
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| 3 | Yet Mr. South, addressing the Astronomical Society, when the medal was presented to her in 1828, said: "She it was who reduced every observation, made every calculation; she it was who arranged everything in systematic order; and she it was who helped him to obtain his imperishable name. But her claims to our gratitude do not end here; as an original observer she demands, and I am sure she has, our unfeigned thanks." After enumerating her discoveries, Mr. South added: "Indeed, looking at the joint labours of these extraordinary personages, we scarcely know whether most to admire the intellectual power of the brother, or the unconquerable industry of his sister." |
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| 4 | She was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1750, and brought up in the narrowest possible manner. The serious occupations of her life, in addition to housework, were "sewing, ornamental needlework, knitting, plaiting hair, and stringing beads and bugles." These activities, at that time, were the only ones considered proper for women. |
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| 5 | "It was my lot," she once wrote, "to be the Cinderella of the family. I could never find time for improving myself in many things I knew, and which, after all, proved of no use to me afterward, except what little I knew of music, which my father took pleasure in teaching me— N. B., when my mother was not at home. Amen." |
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| 6 | Yet these troubled years were happy, illumined as they were by a great love. From childhood, Caroline's hero, her king who could do no wrong, was her brother William, twelve years her senior. She was happiest when she could be of service to him, and the unceasing joy of her life lay in her unswerving devotion to him and his interests. |
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| 7 | William Herschel first went to England as a member of a band under his father's direction. The tour was successful, and was repeated. Finally, William established himself as a music teacher at Bath. |
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| 8 | The father died when Caroline was seventeen, and the family was left without means. Cinderella's lot became increasingly difficult. After five years of toil and privation, William came unexpectedly from Bath, and took Caroline back to England with him. |
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| 9 | The hard work continued, but who minds hard work, when the Bird of Joy is singing in the heart? Caroline toiled early and late for her beloved William, keeping his house, thriftily managing his purse, arranging his accounts, collecting from his music pupils, and, at night, "minding the heavens" for him. |
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| 10 | Every room in the little house became a workshop where telescopes and other astronomical instruments were in process of manufacture. Once, when he was working at a seven-foot mirror for his telescope, never pausing to rest for over sixteen hours, the faithful Caroline put bits of food into his mouth while he worked. |
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| 11 | At the time he began his work, six or eight inches was the largest-sized mirror used in a telescope. When they were casting the mirror for a thirty-foot reflector, the molten metal leaked from the vessel containing it and, falling upon the stone floor, sent pieces flying about in all directions. William Herschel, overcome by disappointment and weariness, fell, exhausted, upon a "heap of brickbats." "Come," said Caroline, cheerily; "we will try again." Fortunately, the second casting was a success. |
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| 12 | Having naturally a good voice and being carefully trained by her brother, Caroline eventually appeared as a public singer and made some money which she devoted to her brother's needs. She regarded her voice only as a possible means of setting him free from some of the eternal music-teaching, and enabling him to continue his astronomical work. |
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| 13 | She spent scarcely anything on herself— seldom more than thirty-five or forty dollars a year. Orders came in rapidly for telescopes from learned societies in England and abroad, but, while William realised a fair profit from every telescope, Caroline begrudged the time thus spent. |
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| 14 | In 1782, William Herschel was appointed Astronomer Royal by King George III, at a salary of a thousand dollars a year. Greatly elated, the two left Bath, and settled in the country. All day they worked at instruments and every night they studied the heavens, resenting the enforced rest caused by an occasional cloudy night. |
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| 15 | Caroline by this time had a telescope of her own, which she called "a seven-foot Newtonian sweeper," and all her evenings, when her brother did not require her assistance, were spent in "sweeping the heavens for comets." She wrote down all of his observations as he made them, though sometimes it was so cold that the ink froze and had to be thawed before she could continue. |
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| 16 | The great forty-foot telescope was erected under their personal direction, and the astronomer's salary was supplemented by a special grant. At this time, too, Caroline was appointed her brother's assistant, at a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, which, however, was not regularly paid. After her brother's death, she wrote one, sarcastically: "The favours of monarchs ought to have been mentioned, but once would have been enough." |
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| 17 | In 1788, William married, greatly to Caroline's grief. She threw herself into her work with renewed energy and ambition. Between 1786 and 1797, she discovered eight comets, and was recognised as a comrade by all the leading astronomers of Europe, many of whom took the trouble to write her congratulatory letters upon her achievements. |
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| 18 | One wrote as follows: "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 amiable brother, upon the news of it, shed a tear of joy. You have immortalised your name. 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 deserving a brother." |
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| 19 | On one occasion, the Prince of Orange called at their house to know if it were true that Mr. Herschel had "discovered a new star, whose light was not as that of the common stars, but with swallow tails, as stars in embroidery." This probably referred to Caroline's comet, and the idea of a "star with embroidered swallow tails" amused her immensely. |
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| 20 | In 1822, after having been in ill health for three years, Sir William Herschel died— and poor Caroline's faithful heart was almost broken. "Not one comfort was left to me," she wrote, long afterward, "but that of retiring to the chamber of death, there to ruminate without interruption on my isolated situation." Pitifully she moaned, over and over, "Oh, why cannot I die too!" |
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| 21 | Lamenting that she had "nothing to do," she arranged to leave England and return to her relatives in Germany, expecting, vainly, to find them sympathetic. Apparently, the relatives were unconscious of the fact that there were astronomers in the family, or that any Herschel, except themselves, had accomplished anything really worth while. |
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| 22 | Disappointed, Caroline asked herself over and over: "Why did I leave happy England!" She was seventy-two, and, old trees are not easily transplanted, but eventually her courage and strength reasserted themselves, and she began a long labour of love. She wrote, in the form of a catalogue, The Reduction and Arrangement in Zones of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ Observed by Sir William Herschel in his Sweeps. When this was completed, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was awarded to her. |
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| 23 | Afterward, she devoted herself to her nephew, Sir John Herschel, the third great astronomer of the name. When he wrote to her, in 1832, of his intention to visit the Cape and observe the stars in the Southern Hemisphere, she was incredulous; it did not seem as if such things could be. But, when finally convinced of it, the old fever burned in her cheeks and the old joy sang in her blood. "Oh," she cried, "if I were thirty or forty years younger, and could go too!' |
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| 24 | She lived to be ninety-eight, spending only about half of the annuity of five hundred dollars a year left her by her brother. She continually asserted that she could not use more without "making herself ridiculous." Her only luxuries were an English bed and an occasional ticket to opera or concert. |
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| 25 | She died quietly, in her sleep, with no pain. Court carriages joined in her funeral procession and garlands of laurel and palm were sent by the Crown Princess. But, unmindful of these Royal honours, in the narrow house where at last she slept, the work-worn, loving hands clasped but one treasure—a lock of her beloved brother's hair. |
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| 26 | Her nephew writes that her last days were "unquiet." Feeling, perhaps, that the time of change was near, one cannot wonder that she grew impatient, and longed to join him whom she loved with the beautiful, unselfish devotion, which, as much as her scientific work, has made the name of Caroline Herschel immortal. |
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