... I could wish to know something more about the place where you now are.[58] How many miles is Collingwood from London? How many from Hastings? Have you any good people or neighbours about you? I think I read in Watson’s Gazetteer, Hawkhurst to be full of poor, and, what is worse, of smugglers. Pray take care of the dear boys and children, that they are not kidnapped in their little rambles from home. I can for the present only say so much of myself that my friends are almost going to kill me with their visits, like, as they say, the cat did her kitten with kindness. On Sunday I was even honoured with a visit from the Duchess of Anhalt Dessau and the Princess of Rudolstadt—the latter a little astronomer—who remained a whole hour with me. They are both daughters of the late Queen. [Sidenote: 1842 _Concerning her Brother._] MISS HERSCHEL TO LADY HERSCHEL. HANOVER, _Feb. 3, 1842_. ... Your mentioning the Government gift of the Kew Observatory to the Royal Society, recalls to my mind the struggles through a life of privations during the lapse of between twenty and thirty years, till my brother had realised a capital sufficient for living in a respectable manner by making seven, ten, twenty, and twenty-five-foot telescopes. For it was in 1782 when Mr. De Mainborg, the King’s private astronomer (formerly one of his tutors) at Kew, died, and my brother, in consequence of the discovery of the G. Sidus, was called from his lucrative employment at Bath. His friends had no other idea but that he was to succeed Mr. De Mainborg at Kew. But it was otherwise decreed, for the King was surrounded by some _wiseacres_ who knew how to bargain, and even £100 were offered if he would go to Hanover! But you know by what I once wrote on a former occasion that he settled at Datchet with £200 per annum, after four months’ travelling between London, Greenwich, and Windsor, and moving his workshop and instruments from a house at Bath, of which he had a lease. And at Michaelmas, 1782, was the first £50 he ever saw of the King’s money. This happened at the time when Parliament had granted to the King £80,000 a-year for encouraging sciences. This I only knew by what I heard at that time, and that Mr. West, R.A., with his giant Judas, Jervis, who made the altar-piece for St. George’s chapel (which I once heard Mrs. Beckedorff say had cost the King £30,000), and Herschel, were the first who benefited by this grant.