The Age of Wonder
Page 26
Perhaps our gracious Queen, by way of encouraging a female astronomer might be enduced to allow her a small annual bounty, such as 50 or 60 pounds, which would make her easy for life; so that if anything should happen to me she would not have the anxiety upon her mind of being left unprovided for.
She has often formed a wish but never had the resolution of causing an application to be made to her Majesty for this purpose. Nor could I have been prevailed upon to mention it now, were it not for her evident use in the observations that are to be made with the 40 foot reflector, and the unavoidable increase of the annual expense which, if my Sister were to decline, that office would probably amount to nearly one hundred pounds more for an assistant.46
Herschel made no bones about the fact that a female assistant, even his sister, would cost half as much as a male. It is possible to be indignant about this, but contemporary standards must be taken into account. Female domestic servants were paid £10 per annum, while a highly trained governess like Mary Wollstonecraft was paid £40 per annum by Lord Kingsborough in 1787. In fact a £60 stipend would have been handsome, exactly one-fifth of that paid to the Astronomer Royal. In Europe women who wanted to pursue science, like Voltaire’s beautiful mathematician Madame du Châtelet, or later Marie-Anne Paulze (Madame Lavoisier), simply had to have supportive or (even better) dead husbands, or private incomes. In Britain they had to be schoolteachers or children’s textbook writers, preferably both: like Margaret Bryan (astronomy), Priscilla Wakefield (botany) or Jane Marcet (chemistry). Only in the next generation was it possible to have a career like the physicist Mary Somerville, and (eventually) have an Oxford college named after you. But then, Caroline did live long enough to exchange letters with Mary Somerville drily remarking on this situation.47
Six days after the memorable Telescope Garden Party, on 23 August, the King summoned Banks to the palace. His Majesty informed him that he would renew the grant at nearly double Herschel’s requested sums, for a total of £2,000 — with an additional £50 per annum for Caroline for life. Here was true royal largesse. It also marked a social revolution: the first professional salary ever paid to a woman scientist in Britain.
But the gift came with a royal sting. The Telescope Garden Party had backfired. The King told Banks that he was annoyed at being placed in such a compromising position by the Herschels. His generosity had been taken advantage of, he had anyway expected quicker results, and in no circumstances would he ever provide a penny more towards the telescope. There were no royal witticisms.
Even Banks was shaken by this royal outburst, later described as a ‘Storm’. It may perhaps have taken the alarming form of an early temper tantrum, since George III’s madness would declare itself the following year. Banks privately summoned Herschel to Soho Square as early as possible the following morning. He was uncharacteristically tight-lipped: ‘I have this moment seen the King, who has granted all you ask but upon certain conditions which I must explain to you.’48
The exact nature of these conditions was never put into writing, but probably referred to accounting of expenses, and the timing of future payments. Certainly the Herschels’ account books now became minutely detailed, and included such things as the cost of the workmen’s beer at lunchtime, and of ‘four or five’ individual candles burned each night.49 Caroline later called the stipulations ‘ungracious’, and said they came with a blunt message ‘that more must never be asked for’. They were sufficiently severe for Herschel to consider actually refusing the whole grant, as his old friend William Watson immediately wrote offering to send him ‘one or two hundred pounds’ instead. Herschel was dismayed at the unexpected turn of events; and for a few days gloomily considered abandoning the whole project. Caroline, despite — or perhaps because of — the success of her own application, was positively indignant. ‘Oh! How degraded I felt even for myself, whenever I thought of it!’50
Wiser counsels eventually prevailed. As Banks must have pointed out, the grant was, after all, spectacularly generous; and the future of astronomy in Britain was at stake. He may also had warned Herschel, in confidence, about the King’s fragile mental state. Watson sent a long, soothing letter on 17 September, urging a larger perspective, a wider field of view: ‘I most sincerely sympathise with you, & feel in some measure as you must feel at the unworthy treatment you (& I may add Science) has received. But I sincerely hope by the latter part of your letter that the Storm is passed … Let me hope, my dear Sir, that this affair has ceased to give you inquietude, & has not lessened your zeal for Science. Remember you have much cause for comfort & even of exultation. By your great discoveries … you have gained a high and universal reputation.’51
Herschel’s anger at the King’s peremptory attitude gradually faded, as the circumstances of his illness became known. Caroline found it less easy to forgive. She eventually blamed George’s courtiers. ‘I must say a few words of apology for the good King, and ascribe the close bargains which were made between him and my Brother to the shabby, mean-spirited advisors who were undoubtedly consulted on such occasions.’ By contrast, Sir Joseph Banks remained ‘a sincere and well-meaning friend to the last’.52
Relations between Slough and Windsor never quite recovered their initial warmth, and it was only with the advent of the Prince Regent that further grants and honours were to be resumed, over twenty years later. Herschel was to be awarded a late knighthood in 1816, but his £200 stipend as the King’s Astronomer at Windsor remained unchanged for the next three decades, by which time wartime inflation had virtually halved its value.53
Gradually exultation and the hectic regime were resumed. ‘From this time on the utmost activity prevailed to forward the completion of the 40 foot … and several 7 foot telescopes were finished and sent off.’ A new optical workman was hired to oversee the polishing, and an enormous second mirror was successfully cast, much thicker than the first, and weighing in at nearly a ton. The quarterly instalment of Caroline’s royal stipend was promptly delivered in October 1787, precisely £12.10s. It was her first ever professional payment: as she proudly noted, ‘my Salary’. The ‘astronomical assistant’, for all her protests about royal behaviour, was evidently thrilled. It was ‘the first money I ever in all my life thought myself to be at liberty to spend to my own liking. A great uneasiness was by this means removed from my mind … For nothing but Bankruptcy had all the while been running through my silly head.’54
In November Pierre Méchain and Jacques Cassini came from Paris to inspect the preparations for the forty-foot, news of which was spreading across Europe. They also observed many of Herschel’s ‘new universes’ through the twenty-foot, and went away thoughtful and deeply impressed.55 At about this time, before the forty-foot was finally mounted, the Herschels gave a celebratory banquet which spilled out from the house, across the lawn and finished up with a kind of musical crocodile, dancing into one end of the tube and out the other. It must have been an extraordinary moment, and Caroline was in the highest spirits: ‘God Save the King was sung in it by the whole company, who got up from dinner and went into the tube, among the rest two Miss Stowes, the one a famous pianoforte player.’ Friends picked up oboes, ‘or any other instrument they could get hold of’, and accompanied the singing and dancing. ‘I, you will easily imagine,’ recalled Caroline fondly, ‘was one of the nimblest and foremost to get in and out of the tube.’56
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It was a moment of hilarity and the highest spirits. Yet perhaps Caroline’s nimble dancing ‘in and out of the tube’ disguised a certain anxiety. Towards the end of 1787 her emergence as a serious astronomer in her own right was threatened by a crisis in her relations with William that she must have long dreaded. The great brother-sister team was threatened by Herschel’s growing friendship with an attractive neighbour. This woman was none other than the thirty-six-year-old Mrs Mary Pitt of Upton.57
Herschel and Caroline had often walked over to Upton village on summer afternoons to take tea with the Pitts in their handsome brick-f
loored parlour, before beginning their long nights of stellar observation. The little path was less than a mile long, eastwards along the escarpment and between large, scented hayfields.58 It made an idyllic walk, especially when they were coming back in the early evening, with Venus setting in the western sky.
Mary’s husband, John Pitt, was frail, and he died in September 1786. That winter the Herschels’ teatime visits had become more regular, as a sharp-eyed neighbour, Mrs Papendiek, noticed. ‘Widow Pitt, poor woman, complained much of the dullness of her life, and we did our best to cheer her, as did also Dr Herschel, who often walked over to her house with his sister of an evening, and as often induced her to join his snug dinner at Slough. Among friends it was soon discovered that an earthly star attracted the attentions of Dr Herschel.’ The ‘star’ innuendo was an obvious one to make, but the true world of English provincial gossip was revealed in that little word ‘snug’.59
Gossip did not concern Mary Pitt. She was a large, plain, kindly woman, whose friends described her as ‘sensible, good-humoured and unpretending’. An oval miniature portrait shows her in simple country clothes, with her hair caught up in a knotted scarf, as if about to go on a long country walk. But she is also wearing a good, expensive necklace, and her large eyes suggest a certain thoughtful and determined air.60 She was a woman of independent means, but with few social ambitions, and no wish to live in town. Altogether she had a calm, pleasant, down-to-earth quality that might well have appealed to a distracted astronomer, increasingly driven by his work and his celebrity. Now she was vulnerable, and perhaps that made her doubly attractive to a man like Herschel. Her only son, Paul, was often away from home at Eton; and her elderly mother, the wealthy Mrs Baldwin, was widowed, invalid and demanding. Mary Pitt was lonely, and William Herschel, in his own way, was lonely too.61
By early spring 1787 there began to be talk of marriage. Caroline, for whom the evening walks to Upton with her brother had seemed so innocent, was evidently unprepared for this, and shaken once she realised what was afoot. She wrote nothing in her journal, but there are tiny indications of increasingly erratic emotional behaviour. In February, when Alexander’s wife died in Bath, she reacted with quite uncharacteristic violence. Her sister-in-law’s death was not unexpected, as she had been ill for some time, and anyway Caroline had never been close to her, regarding her as a bore and a gossip. But according to Herschel, who responded phlegmatically enough himself, Caroline was almost hysterical with grief. As he told Alexander: ‘Having been up all night Carolina was still in bed when your letter came. Poor Girl, she has hardly had a dry eye today; however our late sister’s health had been so very bad we cannot say she died unexpectedly and therefore we should not grieve too much … Carolina is not well enough to write today but will either tomorrow or next day endeavour to take up the pen. Last week I went to London to cast a 40 foot speculum, much thicker and stronger than my present one.’62
Herschel himself was evidently looking towards the future. He foresaw no financial problem in marriage. On the contrary, Mary Pitt turned out to be much wealthier than he had supposed. She had inherited a life interest in her husband’s estate (her son Paul was left a handsome £2,000 to be going on with), and her difficult mother had promised to bequeath her all her properties (including the Crown Inn). It was calculated that this alone would bring rents worth at least £10,000 per annum.63 At the very least, the future financing of the forty-foot would not be put at risk. Though Herschel had never been a fortune-hunter (and would never cease manufacturing telescopes), this must have been a vital consideration, especially after his contretemps with the King.
But what of Caroline? The new situation posed delicate questions of social roles, domestic powers and emotional loyalties, which Herschel tried hard to negotiate. His initial proposal was that he would continue his working establishment, with Caroline as mistress of The Grove, while his married home would become Upton, with Mary. In effect he was proposing a double life: as a husband in one place, and as a man of science in the other. This seemed eminently reasonable to him, and was perhaps not unsatisfactory to Caroline.64
It would take one of Jane Austen’s unwritten novels to do justice to the social and emotional complications of this unfolding situation. The path between Upton House and The Grove must have been the scene of much drama. Herschel himself was evidently divided between attraction to Mary Pitt, loyalty to his sister and dedication to his science, none of which he hoped need be exclusive. Caroline had much to fear, and very little power of decision in her hands (though more than she first thought). Mary Pitt too was faced with real dilemmas, not least the risk of committing her fortune to a man with divided loyalties, and to coming between such a long-established brother-and-sister collaboration, all the more intense for being largely unexpressed.
Not surprisingly, Herschel’s first proposal was promptly turned down by Mary Pitt. The wealthy widow was perhaps not so vulnerable as she appeared. Herschel politely withdrew his offer, as Mrs Papendiek, all agog, soon learned. ‘Dr Herschel expressed his disappointment, but said that his [astronomical] pursuit he would not relinquish; that he must have a constant Assistant and that he had trained his Sister to be a most efficient one. She was indefatigable, and from her affection for him would make any sacrifice to promote his happiness.’65 Caroline was safe.
But only temporarily. After some months the delicate negotiations were reopened, and a different compromise was agreed upon. Mary Pitt as Mrs William Herschel would become undisputed mistress of both establishments, at The Grove and at Upton. She would keep her own servants in both houses, preside at William’s table in both, and oversee all his business accounts, including his scientific expenses (which of course she would be underwriting). Two of her maidservants would be kept at both houses, and finally, there would be a footman whose sole job was to take messages along the path between Upton and The Grove.
What was left for Caroline? She would remain at The Grove, but no longer as its mistress and housekeeper. She would move out permanently to the apartment above the stables, next to the observatory buildings. Here she would remain purely as William’s ‘astronomical assistant’, though she could continue as an astronomer in her own right with her sweeper telescopes on the flat roof.
Perhaps a greater blow to her pride was that Caroline would have no further control of the business accounts. In fact she would be offered a quarterly salary of £10, just like a regular employee. This was the same sum that William had once given her just to buy a dress for her singing performances. Caroline pointedly refused this financial proposal, though it is obvious that William would have much preferred her to accept, as no doubt it would have greatly eased his conscience.
But Caroline’s increasingly prickly sense of independence would not allow it. Indeed she later came to believe, or at least to claim, that she had arranged the royal salary precisely to avoid having to accept the fraternal one. ‘I refused my dear Brother’s proposal (at the time he resolved to enter the married state) of making me independent, and desired him to ask the King for a small salary to enable me to continue his assistant. £50 were granted to me, with which I was resolved to live without the assistance of my Brother.’ In fact of course the royal stipend had begun eighteen months before the marriage. Caroline would not feel able to accept her brother’s offer for another fifteen years.66
Whatever Herschel’s feelings for Mary Pitt, he was evidently uncertain about the whole arrangement, and was asking advice from the faithful William Watson as late as March 1788, a mere six weeks before the wedding. Watson ‘collected the general opinion’ of Herschel’s friends, and found that all were in favour of the union, ‘excepting some little fears with respect to Astronomy’. It was thought that Herschel might ‘relax somewhat’ the intensity of his night observations. Personally Watson thought this would be a good thing for his health — ‘I fear your endeavours are too fatiguing, both to your mind and body’ — and that it would ‘likewise turn out to the advantage of Scienc
e upon the whole’. No one apparently said a word about Caroline, unless she was included under the rubric of ‘Astronomy’.67
William Herschel and Mary Pitt were married on 8 May 1788, at the tiny parish church of Upton. Sir Joseph Banks rode down from London to be best man. In an inclusive gesture, Caroline Herschel was asked to be one of the two formal witnesses, and when William Watson volunteered to be the other one, Caroline gallantly agreed.68
Caroline’s last entry in her journal before the wedding is poignant in its determinedly matter-of-fact tone: ‘The observations on the Georgian satellites furnished a paper which was delivered to the Royal Society in May. And 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.’69
There is no emotional outburst, no tears or recriminations. The only clue to the strength of Caroline’s feelings is the fact that she unconsciously repeats the date of William’s wedding in the same sentence, and suddenly invents that wonderfully imaginative phrase, ‘minding the Heavens’. It is such a tender and ironic description of her entire career: she is the housekeeper to the heavens. But she then seems to hurry it away — the career and the phrase — into a bracket. Caroline did eventually give one further indication of her feelings. It was an entirely silent one, yet was the most dramatic personal gesture she ever made. She completely destroyed her personal journals covering the whole of the next decade of her life. Her records do not begin again until October 1798.♣