Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/46

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26
Caroline Lucretia Herschel
[1772.

with her mother, although the latter had given her consent to the change.

"In this manner" [making prospective clothes for them] "I tried to still the compunction I felt at leaving relatives who, I feared, would lose some of their comforts by my desertion, and nothing but the belief of returning to them full of knowledge and accomplishments could have supported me in the parting moment, which was much embittered by the absence of my brother Jacob, who was with the Court which attended on the Queen of Denmark at the Görde, where my brother Dietrich had also been for some time, and but just returned when my brother William, for whose safety we had for several weeks been under no small apprehension, at last quite unexpectedly arrived. . . .

His stay at Hanover could at the utmost not be prolonged above a fortnight. . . . My mother had consented to my going with him, and the anguish at my leaving her was somewhat alleviated by my brother settling a small annuity on her, by which she would be enabled to keep an attendant to supply my place." They all went over to Coppenbrügge "to see my sister—I to take leave of her; the remaining time was wasted in an unsatisfactory correspondence: the letters from my brother Jacob expressed nothing but regret and impatience at being thus disappointed, and, without being able to effect a meeting, I was obliged to go without receiving the consent of my eldest brother to my going. . . .

*****

"But I will not attempt to describe my feelings when the parting moment arrived, and I left my dear mother and most dear Dietrich on Sunday, August 16th, 1772, at the Posthouse, and after travelling for six days and nights on an open (in those days very inconvenient) Postwagen,