Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

Author:Sarah Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

17 JUNE 1889

Lowlands House

Astounding night—my heart beats in my fingertips and disturbs the pen!—still I must make my account—the great thing I longed for has come to me at last!

These past days I have been sick—my head has ached—indeed I vomited three times, which caused John Bell joy, imagining we were to have a child, though thank God we are not. So being sick I slept last night as a child might sleep, having no thought of the hands of the clock—and woke before dawn to a sky with no cloud in it, and no pain or trouble in my mind or body. What then could I do, being awake and strong as a boy, but go to my telescope? John petitioned me with tears to remain indoors, but it was good Essex weather, the sky having the look of a black pool on which sunlight sometimes played—so I made some observations of Jupiter, my heart tender at the circling moons, and perfectly comprehending their stupid loyalty—

Since the moon waxed bright above the southwest horizon, I turned toward the darker portion of the sky, and passed an hour slewing back and forth, released for a time from the sorrow attending me on earth—then all at once my heart and mind halted, as a loose dog might halt at a high gate! It was a stop upon my soul! My eyes did not stop—for they had seen a blur in Cassiopeia, faint as a bird’s breath might be in winter—and having also a bluish look! I discovered that I was weeping, and could no longer see, and could hardly have told the moon from Jupiter for the heat and thickness of my tears—I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and looked again, in terror that I had knocked the eyepiece, and so lost my treasure as if I were on board ship and had thrown it overboard—but there, again: a pearly smear extending fully two degrees from a nucleus, this nucleus also having a blurred look, only seeming to thicken and brighten as I watched—a comet, beyond doubt or confusion!—undiscovered, unexpected, arriving in Essex out of the chilly vastness—seen first by me, a woman whose heart was broken, but whose mind could never be! I felt myself divide, as a cell divides in its dogged pursuit of life—so that in part I was dancing in Cassiopeia, and standing on its points with the comet in my palm; and in part I was with M. in some street in Bucharest, bringing him what I’d found as a dog going to her master—

I will repeat my observations tomorrow—I will be sure of what I’ve done—and have made meanwhile a document, which I shall take to the Royal Astronomical Society in London, that the matter may be examined and corroborated. The injustice done to Maria Mitchell was quickly restored—but who’d count on a woman’s luck!

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