Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline HerschelHerschel, John, Mrs.
History
Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel
Herschel, John, Mrs.
Herschel, Caroline Lucretia, 1750-1848
It would be impossible for me, if it were required, to give a regular
account of all that passed around me in the lapse of the following two
years, for they were spent in a perfect chaos of business. 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 is 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 an hour 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 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.
The moonlight nights were generally taken advantage of for experiments,
and for the frequent journeys to town which he was obliged to make to
order and provide the tools and materials which were continually
wanting, I may say by wholesale.
The discovery of the Georgian satellites caused many breaks in the
sweeps which were made at the end of 1786 and beginning of 1787, by
leaving off abruptly against the meridian passage of the planet, which
occasioned much work, both in shifting of the instrument and booking the
observations. Much confusion at first prevailed among the loose papers
on which the first observations were noted, and some of them have
perhaps been lost; for I remember several configurations of the
situation of the satellites having been made by Sir William Watson and
Mr. Marsden, and only one could be found....
* * * * *
That the discovery of these satellites must have brought many nocturnal
visitors to Slough may easily be imagined, and many times have I
listened with pain to the conversation my brother held with his
astronomical friends when quite exhausted by answering their numerous
questions. For I well knew that on such occasions, instead of renewing
his strength by going to rest, that there were too many who could not go
on without his direction, among whom I often was included, for I very
seldom could get a paper out of his hands time enough for finishing the
copy against the appointed day for its being taken to town. But
considering that no less than seven papers were delivered to the Royal
Society in 1786-1787, it may easily be judged that my brother’s study
had not been entirely deserted. I had always some kind of work in hand
with which I could proceed without troubling him with questions; such as
the temporary index which I began in June, 1787. Some years after, the
index to Flamsteed’s observations, calculating the beginning and ending
of sweeps and their breadth, for filling up the vacant places in the
registers, and works of that kind, filled up the intervals when nothing
more necessary was in hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel — John Shaqi
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