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The Age of Wonder

Page 68

by Richard Holmes

12 CHA, ppl4-15

  13 CHA, ppl9-20

  14 CHA, pl4

  15 WH Papers 1, pxiv

  16 CHA, p24

  17 CHA, p112

  18 CHM, p24

  19 CHA, p23

  20 CHA, p21

  21 CHA, p24

  22 CHM, p7

  23 CHM, p6

  24 CHA, p41

  25 CHA, p25

  26 CHA, p30

  27 CHA, p136

  28 CHA, p26; CHM, plO

  29 CHM, pl2

  30 CHM, p11

  31 WH Papers 1, pxix

  32 Angus Armitage, Herschel, 1962, pl9

  33 CHM, pll; also CHA, pl08

  34 CHA, p110

  35 CHA, p109

  36 Armitage, pl9

  37 CHA, p33

  38 Helen Ashton, I Had a Sister, 1937, ppl53-61

  39 CHA, p33

  40 CHA, p34; Ashton, pl61

  41 CHA, p37

  42 CHM, p20

  43 CHA, p37

  44 CHA, pp29, 34

  45 CHM, p17

  46 WH Papers 1, pxvii

  47 WH Archive, William and Jacob Mss Letters 1761-63

  48 WH Archive Mss Letters March 1761; also WH Chronicle, p18

  49 WH Archive Mss Letters May 1761; also WH Chronicle, p26

  50 WH Archive Mss Letter October 1761; also WH Chronicle, p28

  51 WH Chronicle, p24

  52 WH Archive Mss Letter October 1761; also WH Chronicle, p28

  53 WH Papers 1, pxc, letter to Nevil Maskelyne

  54 Armitage, p21

  55 Ibid., p22

  56 Ibid., p20

  57 CHA, p7

  58 CHA, p113; CHM, p18

  59 CHA, p36

  60 Ian Woodward, ‘The Celebrated Quarrel between Thomas Linley and William Herschel’, pamphlet printed Bath (British Library catalogue L.409.c.585.1); also WH Chronicle, pp42-3

  61 WH Papers 1, ppxx-xxi

  62 Armitage, p22

  63 Crowe, 1986, pp124-9

  64 James Gleick, Isaac Newton, 2003

  65 Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne, 1989, pp70–1

  66 Howse, pp66-72

  67 Michael Hoskin, The Herschel Partnership, p21

  68 CHM, pp22-3

  69 CHA, p24

  70 CHM, p25

  71 CHM, p27

  72 CHM, p32

  73 CHA, p53

  74 CHA, p123

  75 CHM, p33

  76 CHA, p51; CHM, p35

  77 WH Mss 6278 1/8/8, dated 1784. But the use of the diminutive ‘Lina’ first becomes evident in manuscripts dating from 1779

  78 WH Mss 6290

  79 CHA, p52; CHM, p35

  80 CHA, p55

  81 CHA, p52; CHM, pp36-7

  82 CHM, pp37-8

  83 CHA, p55

  84 WH Papers 1, Introduction

  85 WH Mss 6290

  86 JB Correspondence 1; Hoskin, p46

  87 I owe these acute observations to Dr Percy Harrison, Head of Science, Eton College

  88 WH Mss, H W.2/1. 1f.i

  89 WH Mss, ‘Herschel’s First Observation Journal’, Ms 6280

  90 Michael Crowe, Extraterrestrial, 1994, pp42, 74-5. Herschel eventually increased it to 2,500 by 1820, and Edwin Hubble to 17,000 by the mid-twentieth century.

  91 Armitage, p22

  92 WH Mss 6290 7/8, dated January 1782; also WH Chronicle, p73

  93 WH Chronicle, p72

  94 WH Mss 6278 1/8/5

  95 CHA, p127

  96 CHA, p128

  97 CHA, p129

  98 CHM, p40

  99 WH Mss 6290

  100 Michael Crowe, Theories of the Universe, 1994

  101 James Ferguson, Astronomy Explained, 1756, p5; and discussed by Michael Crowe, Extraterrestrial, 1986, p60

  102 Crowe, Extraterrestrial, p170; also Crowe, Theories of the Universe, 1994, p73

  103 CHM, p42

  104 CHA, p61

  105 CHA, p61

  106 WH Papers vol 1, plxxxvii

  107 WH Mss W.3/1.4, drafted 1778-79; discussed Crowe, 1986, pp64-5

  108 WH Mss 6280, Observation Journal, 28 May 1776; and Crowe, 1986, p63

  109 WH Mss W.3/1.4, drafted 1778-79, from Crowe, 1986, p65

  110 CHA, p61

  111 WH Mss 6280, First Observation Book

  112 CHA, p61

  113 WH Mss 6280, First Observation Book

  114 Ibid., pp31ff, 170ff

  115 CHA, p62

  116 Simon Schaffer, Journal of the History of Astronomy, vol 12, 1981

  117 Howse, p147

  118 Schaffer, ‘Uranus and Herschel’s Astronomy’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol 12, 1981, p12

  119 WH Papers 1, p36

  120 WH Mss 6279; also WH Chronicle, p79

  121 WH Mss 6279; WH Chronicle, p81

  122 WH Papers 1; WH Chronicle, pp81-2

  123 Howse, pp147-8

  124 See WH Chronicle, pp78-80

  125 WH Chronicle, p86, from Schaffer, Journal of the History of Astronomy, vol 12, 1981, ‘Uranus and Herschel’s Astronomy’, p14

  126 Watson, letter to Herschel 25 May 1781, in WH Chronicle, p85

  127 Howse, Maskelyne, p149

  128 WH Chronicle, p95

  129 ‘A Letter to Sir Joseph Banks Bart. PRS’, 1783, in WH Papers 1, pp100-1

  130 WH Mss 6278 1/7, letter 19 November 1781; also JB Correspondence 1, p292

  131 JH Mss 6278 1/1/57

  132 JH Mss 6278 1/1/63

  133 Account of My Life to Dr Hutton’, 1809, from WH Chronicle, p79

  134 WH Chronicle, p95

  135 John Bonnycastle, Introduction to Astronomy in Letters to a Pupil, 1786 (expanded edition 1811), pp354-7

  136 Ibid., p241

  137 Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural History and the Theory of the Heavens, 1755 (translation 1969, British Library catalogue 9350.d.649), Part I, p67. Kant also wrote: ‘There is here no end but an abyss of real immensity, in the presence of which all the capability of human conception sinks exhausted, although it is supported by the aid of the science of mathematics.’ Part I, p65

  138 Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1791, Canto 1, lines 100-14, and Note to line 105; see also Canto 2, lines 14-82, and Canto 4, line 34

  139 WH Chronicle, p102

  140 JB Correspondence 1, p299

  141 WH Chronicle, p101

  142 JB Correspondence 1, p307

  143 WH Chronicle, pp103–4

  144 CHM, p45

  145 CHM, p46; Howse, p148

  146 WH Chronicle, pp115-16

  147 Peter Sime, William Herschel, 1890, pp259-61

  148 WH Chronicle, p116

  149 WH Mss 6278 1/8/6, 20 May 1782

  150 CHA, pp66-7

  151 CHM, pp48-9

  152 Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 1994, pp18-19

  153 Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, Part IV, lines 263-71

  154 Andrew Motion, Keats, Faber, 1997, pp27, 39, 121

  155 WH Papers 1, pxix

  156 Herschel to Johann Bode at Berlin, 20 July 1785, WH Mss 6278/11, p134

  157 WH Mss 5278 1/4

  158 Lucien Bonaparte, Wikipedia

  159 WH Papers 1, pxix

  160 CHA, p82

  161 Samuel Johnson, Collected Letters, edited by Bruce Redford, vol III, 25 March 1784, p144

  162 CHM, pp50-5

  163 Hoskin, pp74-5

  164 WH Mss 6281, Observation Journal No. 5, 1782

  165 WH Chronicle, p105

  166 WH Mss 6268 3/11

  167 Ibid.

  168 CHM, p52

  169 Ibid.

  170 WH Archive

  171 CHM, p52

  172 WH Papers 1, pp261-2; and WH Chronicle, pp222-3

  173 CHM, p52

  174 CHA, p77

  175 CHA, p76

  176 CHA, p77

  177 Ibid.

  178 Ibid.; and CHM, p55

  179 WH Chronicle, pp190-5: a risky claim perhaps

  180 WH Papers 1, pp157-66


  181 Ibid. Illustrated in Armitage and Crowe, 1996, excerpts

  182 Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe from Herschel to Hubble, Chicago UP, 1994

  183 WH Papers 1, p265

  184 WH Papers 1, p223

  185 WH Papers 1, p225, a phrase repeated at end of this paper, at p259. Other extraordinary descriptions of galaxies evolving like plants growing or humans ageing occur in ‘Catalogue of a Second Thousand of new Nebulae’, 1789, WH Papers 1, pp330 and 337-8. Also in ‘On Nebulae Stars, properly so called’, 1791, WH Papers 1, pp415ff. See discussion in Edwin Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae, 1933; and Michael Crowe, Theories of the Universe, 1996

  186 ‘On the Construction of the Heavens’, 1785, WH Papers 1, pp247-8

  187 Ibid., p27

  188 Ibid., p25. See JA. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol 7, 1976

  189 Bonnycastle, pp341-2

  190 WH Papers 1, p256

  Chapter 3: Balloonists in Heaven

  1 JB Correspondence 2, p299

  2 Exchange of Banks-Franklin letters, 1783, Schiller Institute, ‘Life of Joseph Franklin’ (internet)

  3 WH Letters, p62, to Franklin, 13 September 1783

  4 Ibid.

  5 L.T.C. Rolt, The Aeronauts, 1966, p29

  6 ‘Dossier Montgolfier (1)’, Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris

  7 Rolt, p30

  8 Schiller Institute, ‘Life of Joseph Franklin’ (internet)

  9 Auduin Dollfuss, Pilâtre de Rozier, Paris, 1993, p26

  10 Ibid., pp17-22

  11 Marquis d’Arlandes’s original account given in ibid., pp27–42; ‘la redingote verte, p41. Discussed in Rolt, pp46-9

  12 Rolt, p50

  13 Dr Robert Charles’s original account appears in Raymonde Fontaine, La Manche en Ballon, Paris, 1980

  14 Dr Charles’s original account in ibid. (photocopy)

  15 ‘Dossier Montgolfier (1)’, Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris

  16 David Bourgeois, Recherches sur l’Art de Voler, Paris, 1784, pp1–3

  17 Ibid., p3

  18 J.E. Hodgson, History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, OUP, 1924, p103

  19 Rolt, p31

  20 WH Letters, p67, to Franklin, 9 December 1783

  21 Ibid., p62, to Franklin, 13 September 1783

  22 Ms Album of balloon accounts, British Library catalogue 1890.e.15. See also WH Correspondence 2, p304, Blagden to Banks, 16 September 1784; and Hodgson, p97, footnote

  23 Hodgson, p66

  24 Samuel Johnson to Hester Thrale, 22 September 1783, Collected Letters, vol 4, pp203-4

  25 WH Mss 6280, Watson, letter 9 November 1783

  26 Horace Walpole, letter to H. Mann, 2 December 1783; see Rolt, p159 and Hodgson, p190

  27 Joseph Franklin, letters to Banks, 21 November 1783 and 16 January 1784; see Rolt, p158

  28 Gilbert White, 19 October 1784, in Life and Letters of Gilbert White, vol 2, pp134-6. See also Richard Mabey, Gilbert White, pp195-6. The solo pilot was in fact the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard

  29 Charles Burney, letter, September 1783. See Roger Lonsdale, Charles Burney, p385

  30 Rolt, p60

  31 Horace Walpole, June 1785, from Hodgson, p203

  32 Rolt, p65

  33 Sophia Banks Ms album, BL 1890.e.15. See also Hodgson, p97, footnote, and broadsheet poem ‘The Ballooniad’ (1784)

  34 Portrait of Lunardi reproduced in Catalogue of Well-Known Balloon Prints and Drawings, Sotheby’s, 1962, p42. See also ‘Le triomphe de Lunardi’, a series of six allegorical paintings by Francesco Verini, c.1787, held at Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget

  35 Account assembled from Vincent Lunardi, My First Aerial Voyage in London, 1784; see also Lunardi, Five Aerial Voyages in Scotland, 1785

  36 Lesley Gardiner, Vincent Lunardi, 1963, pp53-60

  37 Amanda Foreman, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, HarperCollins, 1998, p173

  38 Gardiner, p56

  39 Charles Burney, letter 24 September 1784, in Lonsdale, 1965, p365

  40 p59

  41 Johnson, 13 September 1784, Collected Letters of Samuel Johnson, edited by Bruce Redford, vol 4, p404

  42 Johnson, 18 September 1784, ibid., p407

  43 Ibid., p408

  44 Johnson, 29 September 1784, ibid., pp408-9

  45 Johnson, 6 October 1784, ibid., p415

  46 The glamorous threesome were celebrated in a famous coloured lithograph by John Francis Rigaud, Captain Vicenzo Lunardi, Assistant Biggin and Mrs Sage in a Balloon, now held in the Yale Center for British Art. In the event, only two actually took off.

  47 Mrs Sage, A Letter by Mrs Sage, the First English Female Aerial Traveller, on Her Voyage in Lunardi’s Balloon, 1785. British Library catalogue 1417.g.24

  48 Gardiner, p60

  49 Ibid., p44. On p77 she also describes ascending through a snow cloud

  50 Tiberius Cavallo, History and Practice of Aerostation, 1785

  51 Gardiner

  52 Kirkpatrick to William Windham, in Hodgson, pp147-8

  53 Hodgson, pp143–4

  54 Johnson, 17 November 1784, Letters, p438

  55 Johnson’s gift is confirmed in James Sadler’s memoir, Balloon: Aerial Voyage of Sadler and Clay field, 1810. See also Hodgson, pp150, 403n

  56 See Foreman and Hodgson

  57 John Jeffries, Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with M. Blanchard as Presented to the Royal Society, 1786. ‘The First Voyage’, pp10–11 (the ‘Second Voyage’ being the historic Channel Crossing). British Library catalogue 462.e.10 (8)

  58 Jeffries, Two Aerial Voyages, pp55-65

  59 Ibid.; but also drawn from a slightly racier account published exclusively for American readers as ‘The Diary of John Jeffries, Aeronaut: The First Aerial Voyage across the English Channel’, in The Magazine of American History, vol XIII, January 1885, and supplied to me as a pamphlet reprint (1955) by the Wayne County Library, USA

  60 Photograph supplied by Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris

  61 Jeffries, Diary, p16

  62 Jeffries, Two Aerial Voyages, p69

  63 Jeffries, Diary, p21

  64 Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1791, Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 143-76, footnote on Susan Dyer

  65 Rolt, p91

  66 Darwin, The Botanic Garden, Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 143-76

  67 Rolt, pp 99-104

  68 James Sadler, An Authentic Account of the Aerial Voyage, 1810; see Hodgson, p150

  69 Reproduced in Henry Beaufoy, ‘Journal Kept by HBHS during an Aerial Voyage with Sadler from Hackney’, British Library catalogue B.507 (1); see also Hodgson, fig 36

  70 James Sadler, Across the Irish Channel, 1812, p16

  71 Ibid., p23

  72 See Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, 1974, p149

  73 Windham Sadler, Aerostation, 1817. British Library catalogue RB.23.a.23973

  74 Windham Sadler, ‘Progress of Science, while Ballooning neglected’, an Appendix to Aerostation, 1817, p16

  75 Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds, 2000, which includes beautiful illustrations of Howard’s cloud paintings. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter’s Guide, 2006, suggests cloud study as both a science and an entire philosophy of life

  76 Carl Grabo, A Newton Among Poets: Shelley’s Use of Science in Prometheus Unbound, North Carolina UP, 1931

  77 Erasmus Darwin, ‘The Loves of the Plants’, 1789, from Part II of The Botanic Garden

  78 Coleridge Notebooks I, entry for 26 November 1799; see Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, pp253-4

  79 Wordsworth, Peter Bell, 1819, stanza 1, lines 5-6

  80 Shelley at University College, Oxford in 1811, as recalled by T.J. Hogg in ‘Shelley at Oxford’, New Monthly Magazine, 1832; republished in his Life of P.B. Shelley, 1858

  Chapter 4: Herschel Among the Stars

  1 WH Mss W.1/5.1; and see ‘Description of a Forty-Foot Reflecting Telescope’, 1795, WH Papers 1, pp485-527 (with magnificent en
gravings of the telescope, the gantry, the moving mechanisms and the zone clocks and bells)

  2 Michael Hoskin, The Herschel Partnership as Viewed by Caroline, Science History Publications, Cambridge, 2003, p79

  3 J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’ (with illustrations), Journal for the History of Astronomy, 7, 1976

  4 Hoskin, p79

  5 WH Mss W.1/5.1; further details in Astronomical Observations’ (1814), WH Papers 2, p536, footnote

  6 Hoskin, p81

  7 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, in WH Chronicle, p174

  8 WH Chronicle, p145

  9 WH Chronicle, p152

  10 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, in WH Chronicle, pp145-6

  11 Ordinance Survey map, Royal Berkshire, 1830, reproduced in Hoskin, p58

  12 CHA, p81

  13 WH Chronicle, p172

  14 John Adams, April-May 1756, Diaries and Autobiography, edited by L.H. Butterfield, 1964

  15 CHA, p83

  16 Ibid.

  17 CHA, p86

  18 CHA, p89

  19 Sketch of ‘small’ sweeper in CHA, p70

  20 Michael Hoskin, ‘Caroline Herschel’s Comet Sweepers’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 12, 1981; and CHA, p70

  21 WH Mss C1/1.1, 34-5; and CHA, p88

  22 CHA, pp89-90

  23 James Thomson, ‘Summer’, lines 1,724-8, from The Seasons, 1726-30

  24 Claire Brock, The Comet Sweeper, Icon Books, Cambridge, pp150-1

  25 WH Mss 6267 1/1/3, for 2 August 1786

  26 WH Mss 6267 1/1.1. Memorandum made 2 August 1786

  27 Hoskin, p85

  28 CHM, p68

  29 WH Papers 1, pp309-10

  30 Howse, Maskelyne, p155

  31 Hoskin, p83

  32 Fanny Burney, Diary, September 1786, from WH Chronicle, pl69

  33 Ibid.

  34 Ibid., pp169-70

  35 Ibid.

  36 Sophie von La Roche, Diary, 14 September 1786, from Brock, pp154-5

  37 WH Chronicle, p252

  38 Nevil Maskelyne, 6 December 1793; see CHA, p70

  39 Pierre Méchain, 28 August 1789; see WH Chronicle, p219

  40 Hoskin, pp103-7

  41 WH Chronicle, pl71

  42 CHA, p91

  43 CHM, p209

  44 CHM, p309

  45 Hoskin, p87

  46 WH Mss 6278 1/5; and Hoskin, p88

  47 CHM, p274; see Patricia Fara, Pandora’s Breeches, 2004

  48 Hoskin, p88

  49 Ibid., p90

  50 CHM, p209

  51 WH Mss 6280; and Hoskin, p89

  52 CHM, p211

  53 Hoskin, pp88-90

  54 CHA, p94

  55 Ibid.

  56 CHM, p308

  57 WH Chronicle, p172

  58 OS map from Hoskin, p58

  59 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, WH Chronicle, p174

 

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