Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ScientistsHubbard, Elbert
Science
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists
Hubbard, Elbert
Scientists -- Biography
Herschel could play the hautboy, the violin and the harpsichord. The
organ came easy. When he played the organ in the Chapel at Bath, fair
ladies forgot the Pump-Room, and the gallants followed them--naturally.
Herschel became the rage. He was a handsome fellow, with a pride so
supreme that it completed the circle, and people called it humility. He
talked but little, and made himself scarce--a point every genius should
ponder well.
The disarming of the populace--confiscating canes, umbrellas and
parasols--before allowing people to enter an art-gallery is necessary;
although it is a peculiar comment on humanity to think people have a
tendency to smite, punch, prod and poke beautiful things. The same
propensity manifests itself in wishing to fumble a genius. Get your
coarse hands on Richard Mansfield if you can! Corral Maude
Adams--hardly. To do big things, to create, breaks down tissue awfully,
and to mix it with society and still do big things for society is
impossible.
At Bath, Herschel was never seen in the Pump-Room, nor on the North
Parade. People who saw him paid for the privilege. "In England about
this time look out for a shower of genius," the almanackers might have
said.
To Bath came two Irishmen, Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Burke rented rooms of Doctor Nugent, and married the doctor's daughter,
and never regretted it. Sheridan also married a Bath girl, but added the
right touch of romance by keeping the matter secret, with the intent
that if either party wished to back out of the agreement it would be
allowed. This was quite Irish-like, since according to English Law a
marriage is a marriage until Limbus congeals and is used for a
skating-rink.
With the true spirit of chivalry, Sheridan left the questions of
publicity or secrecy to his wife: she could have her freedom if she
wished. He was a fledgling barrister, with his future in front of him,
the child of "strolling players"; she, the beautiful Miss Linlay, was a
singer of note. Her father was the leader of the Bath Orchestra, and had
a School of Oratory where young people agitated the atmosphere in
orotund and tremolo and made the ether vibrate in glee. Doctor Linlay's
daughter was his finest pupil, and with her were elucidated all his
theories concerning the Sixteen Perspective Laws of Art. She also proved
a few points in stirpiculture. She was a most beautiful girl of
seventeen when Richard Brinsley Sheridan led her to the altar, or I
should say to a Dissenting Pastor's back door by night. She could sing,
recite, act, and impersonate in pantomime and Greek gown, the passions
of Fear, Hate, Supplication, Horror, Revenge, Jealousy, Rage and Faith.
Romney moved down to Bath just so as to have Miss Linlay and Lady
Hamilton for models. He posed Miss Linlay as the Madonna, Beulah, Rena,
Ruth, Miriam and Cecilia; and Lady Hamilton for Susannah at the Bath,
Alicia and Andromache, and also had her illustrate the Virtues, Graces,
Fates and Passions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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