The Age of Wonder (32 page)

Intrigued, she soon after persuaded her father to take her on a private visit to Herschel’s observatory at The Grove on 30 December 1786. The ‘great and extraordinary man’ received them in his genial manner with open arms, showed them over the unfinished forty-foot telescope in the garden, and talked unguardedly over tea about ‘the new views of the heavenly bodies and their motions’ which it would reveal. Fanny was entranced. She exclaimed excitedly: ‘he has discovered fifteen hundred universes! How many more he may find who can conjecture?’ Charles Burney was also inspired by this visit, and began to compose an extensive ‘Ode to Astronomy’ in Herschel’s honour, which he threatened to read out loud at future convivial suppers.
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By contrast, Caroline Herschel was rather silent, and much more of a puzzle. Fanny Burney evidently tried hard, but failed to get on terms with her. ‘She is very little, very gentle, very modest, very ingenuous; and her manners are those of a person unhackneyed and unawed by the world, yet desirous to meet and return its smiles.’ Those shy smiles seemed to be the extent of their communication. Equally, Caroline did not mention Fanny at all in her day book.
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Other visitors to The Grove had better luck. The German novelist Sophie von La Roche gushingly introduced herself to ‘the great man’s sister, who accompanies him on his path to immortality’. Perhaps Caroline found her fellow-countrywoman easier to placate than Fanny Burney, and made the inspired gesture of picking a bunch of daisies growing in the grass at the foot of the twenty-foot, and presenting them to her as a scientific keepsake. No doubt Sophie was intended to compare them to a star cluster beyond the Milky Way.
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Surprisingly, it was Nevil Maskelyne who began to take Caroline’s technical prowess most seriously. A correspondence sprang up between them, and slowly blossomed over the next decade. He later wrote a detailed description of her ‘large’ Newtonian sweeper and her method of working with it. This telescope, built in 1791, was a five-foot reflector with an even bigger aperture of 9.2 inches, but the same low magnification of twenty-five to thirty times, designed for still more effective comet-hunting. Its field of view, being slightly narrower than that of the two-foot sweeper at 1.49 degrees, required even greater familiarity with smaller patterns of the surrounding stars.
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Maskelyne remarked in passing that, like her brother, Caroline knew all the nebulae in the
Connaissance des Temps
instantly, and sight-read the night sky.
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During these same years Caroline was intensely involved in the final stages of setting up the great forty-foot telescope, intended as the climax of Herschel’s observation work on the nebulae. While continuing her regular night work as assistant on the twenty-foot, she was also helping to organise a vast team of workmen during the day, overseeing the accounts, and trying to bring some order to Herschel’s ever-increasing stream of distinguished and demanding visitors. In autumn 1787 these included the great French astronomer Pierre Méchain, director of the Royal Observatory in Paris and influential editor of the
Connaissance des Temps.
Praising Herschel for his preparatory work on the forty-foot, he also referred gallantly to ‘Miss Caroline, your worthy sister, whose celebrity will shine down through the ages’.
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When she discovered a second new comet in December 1788, any question of beginner’s luck melted away even in England.
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Her reputation continued to grow, especially in France and Germany.

Caroline remembered 1786-88 as the most intense and exciting years of her and William’s lives. They were both in their prime: in 1786 he was a vigorous forty-seven, she an animated and increasingly self-confident thirty-six. Their teamwork had never been closer. Thanks to Caroline, Herschel published over a dozen new papers with the Royal Society. (‘Very seldom could I get a paper out of his hands in time enough for finishing the copy against the appointed day for its being taken to Town.’
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) Their great catalogue of nebulae had long since overtaken Flamsteed, and now stood at over 2,000 clusters, her own reputation as ‘comet-hunter’ gave her an independent scientific standing, and above all the great forty-foot telescope held out the promise of immense new discoveries. Sir Joseph Banks, the Astronomer Royal and the King himself all supported them. Sir William Watson commissioned a bust of Herschel for the Royal Society. Perhaps they would find more planets, new life elsewhere in the solar system, or even new civilisations among the galaxies. By 1789 they would certainly better understand how the universe had been created than at any previous time in history. This moment of scientific optimism coincided with the political optimism in Britain and France. In 1789 the Bastille would fall, and the Rights of Man would be declared.

Caroline’s picture of her brother at this period is heroic, but also unintentionally disturbing in its impression of his single-mindedness. The gentle, humorous, sociable man that Fanny Burney had observed is very little in evidence. Here instead was the man who cut down trees. He was in the grip of his dreams, ruled by a new kind of scientific obsession, intensely focused, workaholic, self-denying. He was driving, driven, indefatigable, omnipresent: ‘The garden and workrooms were swarming with labourers and workmen, smiths and carpenters going to and fro between the forge and the forty-foot machinery, and I ought not to forget that there was not one screw-bolt about the whole apparatus but what was fixed under the immediate eye of my brother. I have seen him lie stretched many hours in a burning sun, across the top beam whilst the iron work for the various motions was being fixed. At one time no less than twenty-four men (twelve and twelve relieving each other) kept polishing [the mirrors] day and night; my brother, of course, never leaving them all the while, taking his food without allowing himself time to sit down to table.’
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The subliminal image of Herschel almost crucified along the top beam of his telescope frame could not have been deliberate. Yet amidst all the bustle and excitement, Caroline slowly became aware of a growing financial crisis, which threatened to bring the entire project to a halt and wreck their fortunes. Over £500 had been wasted on the casting of a first, faulty mirror, a setback so severe that Alexander had urged the mirror’s ‘secret destruction’ because it called into question the whole viability of their casting techniques.
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Herschel had also seriously underestimated the costs of constructing the revolving gantry and paying the workmen for polishing the mirrors. Despite the sales of telescopes, they were threatened by bankruptcy. The whole glorious project could collapse in disaster and humiliation. By the summer of 1787 Herschel had to consider the delicate business of a new application to the King.

It was once again Sir Joseph Banks, the master of scientific diplomacy, who came to his aid. Although the huge half-ton mirrors were not yet finished, there was still a lot to see at The Grove: the great wooden gantry was partly installed on its turntable, now over seventy feet high, zone clocks and micrometers were assembled, and above all the enormous metal tube of the telescope was lying on its side, slumbering on the grass supported by wooden chocks, and ready to be winched into position. It was the moment, urged Banks, to give a Royal Telescope Garden Party.

Accordingly, on 17 August 1787 an impressive cortège of royal carriages rattled down from Windsor Castle, and Herschel and Caroline played host for the afternoon to a glittering party of dignitaries. The company included King George III and Queen Charlotte, the Duke of York, the Princess Royal, the Princess Augusta, the Duke of Queensberry, the Archbishop of Canterbury, many lords and ladies in waiting, a number of foreign visitors, and several distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society, although Banks himself seems to have remained tactfully absent. It was an impressive display which had the subtle effect, just as Banks would have foreseen, of further publicly committing the King to the scheme for which he was the acknowledged benefactor.

It also provided the occasion for another of the royal witticisms, a great additional gain. Caroline remembered it well even fifty years later. ‘One anecdote of the old tube…Before the optical parts were finished, many visitors had the curiosity to walk through it, among the rest King George III and the Archbishop of Canterbury: following the King, and finding it difficult to proceed, the King gave him his hand, saying, “Come, my Lord Bishop,
I will show you the way to heaven.
”’
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Now was the precise psychological moment to apply for the royal top-up grant. Herschel drafted a long letter to Banks for submission to the King, explaining the financial shortfall, the replacement of the faulty first mirror, the technical requirements of the gantry (now to be eighty feet high), and the fact that he expected no immediate profits except purely scientific ones. In an elegant formula probably devised by William Watson (if not by Banks himself), Herschel stated that his sole aims were ‘the advancement of astronomy, the honour of a liberal Monarch, and the glory of a nation which stands foremost in the cultivation of arts and sciences’. All details were then costed. The new sum required was huge: £950. But there were also, of course, the continuing running costs, which he estimated could (with careful economies) be kept at £200 per annum. If this increased grant was again assumed to cover operations until 1789, then the total requested (though not specifically stated) was in the region of £1,400-a very large amount indeed.
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Amazingly, Herschel did not stop there. He also raised through Banks something entirely new: the question of a separate royal stipend for Caroline as his official ‘astronomical assistant’. No British monarch had ever granted a woman a salary, or even a pension, for scientific work before. The very idea that Caroline might be eligible was as novel as that she might be elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society, or to a professorship at Oxford or Cambridge or Edinburgh. The one concession Herschel made to convention (again probably advised by Banks himself) was that this stipend might come officially from Queen Charlotte. His phrasing was a fine mixture of reason,
politesse
and provocation. It also contained the interesting claim that the idea for the request had originally come from Caroline herself. She was after all
the ladies’ comet hunter.

You know, Sir, that observations with this great telescope [the forty-foot] cannot be made without four persons: the Astronomer, the Assistant, and two workmen for the motions. Now, my good industrious Sister has hitherto supplied the place of Assistant, and intends to continue to do that work. She does it indeed much better, to my liking, than any other person I could have, that I should be very sorry ever to lose her from that office.

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.
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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.
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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.’
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