not bear to be kept long confined to the same occupation. It was, therefore, to Caroline that her brother turned for help in the construction of the tools and woodwork for grinding and polishing lenses and mirrors, etc. It was she who made the pasteboard tube that was to hold the first large mirror, and the dexterity of her fingers, and the desire to be useful, which, as a little child, helped her to make "bags and sword-knots," made her now, as she expresses it, "almost as useful as a boy in the first year of his apprenticeship."
In all these things it was the loving sympathy with all his aspirations and efforts that gave a subtle virtue to the actual mechanical aid she afforded. She desired nothing for herself; she would be nothing of herself; all her life flowed into his life, nourishing it, and strengthening his heart under all disappointments and difficulties. She never tired, but kept pace with him in all his work, standing beside him day and night, both of them working as though bodily needs or material comforts did not exist. She never failed him. After a time, when she was set "to mind the heavens," and began to taste the delights of discovery with her "Newtonian sweeper," she laid it aside, having time for no more than three or four opportunities to use it in the course of as many months, in order not to neglect her brother's work. This consisted chiefly in doing endless sums and acting as his secretary, noting down all he saw in his sweeps, standing by him through winter nights when the very ink froze in her pen. As before in music, so now in astronomy, she refused to be anything but her brother's helper. Throughout her life her one word was, "All I am, all I know, I owe to him. I am only the tool he fashioned. I did no more for him than a well-trained puppy-dog might have done." Long afterwards when, in very advanced life, she received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and was elected an honorary member, she energetically deprecated all mention of herself, because whatever was said in praise of her took away what ought to be given to her brother.[1]
What Caroline Herschel felt and thought when her adored brother took a wife nobody ever heard or knew. She seems to have confided her feelings to her diaries alone, and those she destroyed.
It was a shock and a trial, sharper most likely than even that caused in after years by his death, because it was mingled with more purely personal jealousy and bitterness. What it must have been to see another woman promoted to have the sole right of caring for his comfort and of ministering to his wants, after the many years she had lived for nothing else, must have been terribly hard to bear. Even the fact that his wife brought him an ample fortune, setting him free from all need to beg from government for the small sums needed to carry on his work, was only an additional aggravation. How to keep down household expenses had been one of Caroline Herschel's hardest problems; and the little addition she had been to his expenditure — not ever more than seven or eight pounds a year — had been always a source of regret, which no amount of work done for him could make her feel that she had earned.
And now he was going to be rich, he would need her care and thrift no longer, and it was the woman whom he had preferred before her, who was to have the happiness of freeing him for life from all anxiety about money matters! It was a very bitter trial, and although she has not left on record anything she said, what she did is painfully significant — she "gave up her place as housekeeper," and went to "lodge with Sprat, one of her brother's workmen," whose wife was to wait on her. She only reserved to herself the right of access to the roof of her brother's house (which was the observatory), and to the work-room. Here she came to work every day, "returning home for her meals."
Doubtless she was not the only one of the three who was unhappy.
In a letter, long afterwards, to her nephew, she mentions that when her brother "was about to enter on the married state," he had wished to make her independent, which she entirely refused, but requested him to ask for some small salary for her as his assistant. This he did, and obtained the promise of fifty pounds a year. She not only prepared to live but to save out of it for her relations at Hanover. The incidental mention of her numerous changes of abode, give us a glimpse of comfortless lodgings and of the long distances she had to go in all weathers to and from her work, till health and strength alike failed under the additional strain. But there is not one word of complaint. She continued obdurate, accepting nothing from the new comer. How and when she began to soften we are not told, but
- ↑ The medal was awarded for her valuable work, "The Reduction and Arrangement, in the form of a Catalogue, in Zones, of all the Star-Clusters in Nebulæ observed by Sir William Herschel in his Sweeps."
