Famous Men of Science

The longed-for time to see more of her brother never came to Caroline, except as she finally grew into his life-work, and became his second self.

He had one unalterable purpose, the study of the construction of the heavens. Nothing ever drew him from it. Nothing ever could draw him. And herein lay one of the elements of his great power. As an English writer has well said: "So gentle and patient a follower of science under difficulties scarcely occurs in the whole circle of biography." Yes, he was "gentle and patient," but with an untiring and never ending perseverance. Too poor to buy telescopes, he made them. With no time to read books during the day, he took the hours from sleep. With little opportunity for education, he educated himself.

In 1774, the music teacher made for himself a five-and-one-half-foot Gregorian telescope; and a year later, a Newtonian, with a four-and-a-half-inch aperture, which magnified two hundred and twenty-two times. The making of these instruments showed great mechanical skill and accurate knowledge. He began now to study the heavens in earnest, but the teaching must go on to provide daily bread. He directed an orchestra of nearly one hundred pieces, and Caroline copied the scores and vocal parts. So absorbed was he in his astronomical work, however, that at the theatre, between the acts, he would run from the harpsichord to look at the stars. This boyish eagerness and naturalness he kept through life.

He soon made a seven-foot reflector, then a ten-foot reflector. The mirrors for these telescopes were all made by hand, machines for the purpose not being invented till ten or more years later. Alexander, with his mechanical skill, assisted, and Caroline was always busy at the work. She says, "My time was 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 his 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. 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 while he was at the turning-lathe, or polishing mirrors, 'Don Quixote,' 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,' the novels of Sterne, Fielding, etc.; serving tea and supper without interrupting the work with which he was engaged."…

So busy that he could not find time to eat or sleep! Rare devotion of a rare mind! He now began to study every star of the first, second, third, and fourth magnitudes in the sky. He carefully observed the moon, and measured the height of about one hundred of her mountains. Her extinct volcanoes, and her unpeopled solitudes, without clouds or air, were an impressive study.

He was now forty years old, – not young to begin the study of a new and illimitable science, but not too old, for one is never too old to begin a great or a noble work.

Through Dr. William Watson, Fellow of the Royal Society, who happened – if anything ever happens in this world – to see Herschel at his telescope, he became a member of the Philosophical Society of Bath, and soon in 1780 sent two papers to the Royal Society, the one on the periodical star in Collo Ceti, and the other on the mountains of the moon, which were read by Dr. William Watson, Jr.

When he was forty-three, he says, "I began to construct a thirty-foot aërial reflector, and, having made a stand for it, I cast the mirror thirty-six inches in diameter. This was cracked in cooling. I cast it a second time, and the furnace I had built in my house broke." But he persevered. This same year, 1781, after he had lived in Bath nine years, on the night of Tuesday, March 13, having removed to a larger house, 19 New King Street, he says, "In examining the small stars in the neighborhood of H. Geminorum I perceived one that appeared visibly larger than the rest; being struck with its uncommon appearance, I compared it to H. Geminorum and the small star in the quarter between Auriga and Gemini, and, finding it so much larger than either of them, I suspected it to be a comet."

The orbit of this "comet" was computed and its distance from the sun found to be eighteen hundred million miles! The world soon awoke to the fact that a new planet had been found, the greatest astronomical discovery since Galileo invented the telescope, and the unknown musician at Bath had become famous! So little was Herschel known at this time, that one journal called him Mersthel, another Herthel, and still another Hermstel.

In December of the same year, 1781, Herschel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and received the Copley gold medal. He was no longer the poor German youth playing the oboe among the guards; he was the renowned discoverer. He called the planet Georgium Sidus, in honor of his sovereign, George III., but it was decided later to call it Uranus, from Urania the muse of astronomy.

Herschel went eagerly on with his work. Fame did not change his simple nature. The truly great are never ostentatious. He erected in his garden a stand for his twenty-foot telescope, and perfected his mirrors. "Though at times," says Caroline, "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 next year, 1782, Herschel went to London, and met with a gracious reception from George III. He wrote back to his devoted sister: "Dear Lina: 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."

Again he wrote, —

"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… I am introduced to the best company. To-morrow I dine at Lord Palmerston's, next day with Sir Joseph Banks, etc., etc. 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 endeavor to do so."

And this great ambition nerved him for action, continued and laborious, as long as he lived. He was never satisfied; always achieving. Little can be expected from those who are easily satisfied.

George III. wisely appointed Herschel Royal Astronomer, though with the too small salary of one thousand dollars yearly. He came back to Bath only to perform the last musical duty on Whit Sunday, 1782, the anthem for the day being his own composition, and to say good-by to his pupils.

He moved to Datchet in 1782, and set up his twenty-foot telescope. In 1783 he had made three reviews of the heavens. In 1784 he made a fourth review with his twenty-foot telescope. Caroline says: "My brother began his 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 crash or a fall, knowing him to be elevated fifteen feet or more on a temporary crossbeam, 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… I could give a pretty long list of accidents which were near proving fatal to my brother as well as myself."

A gentleman who visited him at Datchet wrote: "The thermometer in the garden stood at 13° Fahrenheit; but in spite of this, Herschel observes the whole night through, except that he stops every three or four hours and goes in the room for a few moments. For some years Herschel has observed the heavens every hour when the weather is clear, and this always in the open air, because he says that the telescope only performs well when it is at the same temperature as the air. He protects himself against the weather by putting on more clothing. He has an excellent constitution, and thinks about nothing else in the world but the celestial bodies."

But, occupied as Herschel was about "celestial bodies," he yet found time to think about earthly things, for we find him at forty-five, May 8, 1783, marrying Mary, the wealthy widow of John Pitt, Esq., a lady of much intelligence and amiability.

The sad feature of the new relationship was the misery it brought to Caroline. Her whole life had centred in William. For eleven years she had devoted every moment, every wish, every thought to him. She had watched all night among the stars with him, month after month, and year after year, in cold and in heat, and superintended his home by day. His every desire was her law. She loved no other, and he was her all. Perhaps she ought to have known that another might come into his life, but she trusted blindly, and did not question the future.

When the wife came into the home, Caroline went out of it forever. For more than twenty years she lived in lodgings, always "cheerless and solitary," her only happiness found in coming day by day to help her brother in his great work. Sometimes, when the wife was absent, Caroline came back for a few days and lived over the old unalloyed life, and then went back to her lonely lodgings.

For ten years following this marriage, she probably told her heart-aches in her journal; but before her death she destroyed the record of these years, that the feelings of those who were alive might not be pained. In later days she became more reconciled to Lady Herschel, as "a dear sister, for as such I now know you," and idolized their only son, the renowned Sir John Herschel, born nine years after their marriage.

In 1785, Herschel began to construct his great forty-foot telescope, and the next year removed to Slough, not far from Windsor. "In the whole of the apparatus," he said, "none but common workmen were employed, for I made drawings of every part of it, by which it was easy to execute the work, as I constantly inspected and directed every person's labor; though sometimes there were not less than forty different workmen employed at the same time. While the stand of the telescope was preparing, I also began the construction of the great mirror, of which I inspected the casting, grinding, and polishing; and the work was in this manner carried on with no other interruption than that occasioned by the removal of all the apparatus and materials from where I then lived, to my present situation at Slough." He had his first view through the telescope February 19, 1787. George III. gave twenty thousand dollars for the building of this instrument, and one thousand dollars yearly for its maintenance.

A half-century afterwards, the woodwork having become decayed, it was taken down, the great tube laid horizontally, and, after Sir John Herschel and his family had passed through it, a poem written by Sir John having been read, it was sealed January 1, 1840, and placed on piers.

With this great telescope, Herschel discovered two satellites of Saturn, Mimas and Enceladus; one on August 27, 1789, and the other on September 17 of the same year. Two years before this, January 11, 1787, he discovered two satellites of Uranus, Oberon and Titania. Sixty years afterwards, Mr. Lassell, of England, discovered the remaining two satellites of Uranus, called Ariel and Umbriel.

From this time his work went forward grandly. He had already completed more than two hundred seven-foot, one hundred and fifty ten-foot, and eighty twenty-foot mirrors. For many of the telescopes sent abroad he made no stands, but provided the drawings. He wrote much about Saturn and its rings, and showed that its most distant satellite, Japetus, turns once on its axis in each revolution about its primary, as our moon does about the earth.

He studied carefully the nature of the sun, its probable gaseous surface, and its spots, and was the first to suspect their periodic character. What would Herschel have said to the wonderful photographic representations of these spots given by Professor Langley, in his New Astronomy; spots which are one billion square miles in size; more than five times the surface of the land and water on the earth? He saw, as astronomers to-day see, that heat cannot be produced without expenditure of force; and that the sun is probably cooling, even though scarcely perceptibly for ages to come. He saw what science now generally concedes, the rise and fall of the solar system; its gradual fitness for the coming of man, through almost countless centuries; and its final unfitness, when his generations shall have gone forever.

He wrote much about the Milky Way, believing at first that it could be completely resolved into stars, about eighteen millions of them; but later he changed his theory, having found so much nebulous matter – in a state of condensation as though new worlds were forming, possibly to be the homes of some new race, or of man in the ages to come.

His study of the variable stars attracted wide attention. He found that the star Mira Ceti was for several months invisible to the naked eye; then it grew brighter and brighter, and finally disappeared for months, as before. He saw that other stars are periodic, and came to the conclusion that this is occasioned by the rotation of the star upon its axis, by which different parts of its surface are presented to us periodically.

He made a catalogue of double stars, and found by laborious calculations that such stars have a common centre of gravity; that one sun revolves about another. He found that our solar system has a motion of its own; a grand orbit round some as yet unknown centre, and that other systems have a like motion.

What this centre may be, whether a great sun like Sirius, one hundred times larger than ours, with unknown powers and unknown uses, is of course only conjecture.

Herschel gave much attention to nebulæ, discovering and describing twenty-five hundred new nebulæ and clusters. He gave his life to the study of the construction of the heavens. Concerning his statement of the general construction, Professor Holden, himself a brilliant astronomer, says: "It is the groundwork upon which we have still to build… As a scientific conception it is perhaps the grandest that has ever entered into the human mind. As a study of the height to which the efforts of one man may go, it is almost without a parallel… As a practical astronomer he remains without an equal. In profound philosophy he has few superiors. By a kindly chance he can be claimed as the citizen of no one country. In very truth his is one of the few names which belong to the whole world."

The distinguished man, though unassuming and gentle in manner, must have had a realizing sense of the greatness of his work, for he said, "I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light takes two millions of years to travel to this globe."

He gave much study to light and heat. So boundless was his knowledge believed to be, that a farmer called one day to ask the proper time for cutting his grass.

"Look at that field," said the scientist, "and when I tell you it is mine, I think you will not need another proof to convince you that I am no more weatherwise than yourself or the rest of my neighbors."

He worked earnestly till he was seventy-six, always depending upon his faithful and inseparable Caroline for aid in his labors. He made a telescope for her, with which she swept the heavens for comets, finding eight, five of which she discovered for the first time.

At seventy-six his health began to fail. He had worked incessantly from his struggling boyhood, but brain work does not wear us out; care and anxiety bring the marks of age upon us. He now took little journeys away from Slough for change of scene and air, while Caroline stayed at home to copy his papers for the Royal Society, and to arrange his manuscripts. In 1816, he was made a knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, by the Prince Regent, and in 1821 was the first president of the Royal Astronomical Society, his son being its first foreign secretary.

In February, 1818, Caroline spent twelve precious days with her brother, "not in idleness," she says, "but in sorrow and sadness. He is not only unwell, but low in spirits." Later he went to Bath with Lady Herschel. "The last moments before he stepped into the carriage," says the loving Caroline, "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.

"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 candle-light, and taking with me papers to copy, etc., which employed me for the 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."

On the 4th of July, 1819, Herschel sent a note to his dear co-worker. "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."

Caroline wrote on this small slip of yellow paper: "I keep this as a relic! Every line now traced by the hand of my dear brother becomes a treasure to me."

Every day hereafter she spent the forenoon with Sir William. On the 15th of August she went as usual and found that he was confined to his room. "I flew there immediately," she says. "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 workroom 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 heart-rending 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 of September, when the dear remains were consigned to the grave."

Faithful and devoted watcher over his dead body, to the last! When he had been buried in the little church at Upton, Windsor, at the age of eighty-four, honored by all Europe and America, Caroline could live no longer where remembrance of him made it intolerable.

She went back to Hanover, "a person," she said, sadly, "that has nothing more to do in this world," to live with her brother Dietrich. She had come to England, a girl of twenty-two; she went back an elderly woman, seventy-two. The home in Germany did not prove a happy one, but how could it without William? She lived simply, not spending half of the five hundred dollars a year left her by her dead brother.

She had already published "A Catalogue of eight hundred and sixty 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." She also prepared "The Reduction and Arrangement, in the form of a Catalogue in Zones, of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir William Herschel in his Sweeps," "a work," said Sir David Brewster, "of immense labor; an extraordinary monument of the unextinguished ardor of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science."

For this the Royal Astronomical Society voted her the gold medal, and gave her the unusual distinction of honorary membership.

Sixteen years after her return to Hanover, Sir John Herschel, her nephew, who had made his wonderful review of the southern heavens, discovering as many new nebulæ as his father, took his only boy, Willie, to see her.

She was now eighty-eight. The visit was overwhelming to her affectionate heart. She watched the child with the most intense delight. Fearing the results if she knew the time of their departure for England, Sir John, with mistaken kindness, went away at four o'clock in the morning, without saying good-by. But the anguish of separation was thereby rendered greater.