The Comet Sweeper by Claire Brock

Author:Claire Brock
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785781667
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

Chapter IV

Distinguished at Last

William Herschel’s marriage affected his sister so dramatically that she stopped recording her memories. The final sentence in her First Autobiography reads:

And the eighth of that month being fixed for my Brothers marriage; it may easily be supposed that I must have been fully employed (besides minding the heavens) to prepare every thing as well as I could, against the time I was to give up the place of a Houskeeper which was the 8th May. 1788.1

That Caroline Herschel – who rarely specified exact dates unless they were especially momentous – mentioned the date twice in one sentence, indicates the dramatic nature of the event of William’s marriage. But it is noticeable that Herschel referred only to her loss of domestic status. Now she received a salary for her astronomical work, she had, finally, a long-desired professional role to fulfil. On 21 December 1788, Caroline Herschel discovered her second comet, although that comet ‘ferret’ Charles Messier had anticipated her.

The 1790s, a cataclysmic decade in European history, would be similarly significant for the ‘female astronomer’. Further cometary finds would occur on 7 January and 17 April 1790 (the latter discovered, tellingly, while William and Mary Herschel were on ‘a little tour into Yorkshire’),2 15 December 1791, 7 October 1793, 7 November 1795 and 14 August 1797 (with William again absent). This final comet encouraged a flurry of activity in the normally sedate Caroline, who, with ‘so little faith in the expedition of messages of all descriptions’, sped to London after one hour’s sleep to announce the find herself; although, unfortunately, she claimed in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks,

I undertook the task with only the preparation of one hour’s sleep, and having in the course of five years never rode above two miles at a time, the twenty to London, and the idea of six or seven more to Greenwich in reserve totally unfitted me for any action.3

An awareness of the unfeminine lack of propriety in such an action sent Herschel scuttling home, but the initial impulse revealed her zeal for her own discoveries. As Sir Harry Englefield wrote on Christmas Day 1788 to William, after Caroline’s find four days earlier, she had begun to set the world of astronomy alight and deserved all the accolades with which she was showered: ‘She will soon be the great comet finder, and bear away the prize from Messier and Mechain.’4

Herschel’s lifelong admirer, the French astronomer Lalande, paid her an intense compliment when he named his daughter Caroline. This notice was especially pleasing for Herschel, as Lalande’s son was called Isaac, after Newton. This was an incentive to continue succeeding in astronomy, and a welcome boost to her activities. As she put it: ‘I look upon this mark of your esteem however, as an incitement for spending what life and health may yet fall to my share, in the service of this noble Science.’5

Increasingly, her achievements were even being lauded in the popular press of the day, and it is likely

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