bread not have become a race for riches instead of a race for fame? She herself had hopes of becoming a prima donna in the music world. Her friends cherished the same hope. But neither for her nor for her brother William did the race for fame lead along that road. For her brother Jacob, her detestation, it might possibly have so led. Dr. Burney, the author of a General History of Music and other works, was also of that opinion. William Herschel to him was the "greatest astronomer" of the age, while of Jacob he writes: "Herschel, master of the King's band at Hanover, and brother of the great astronomer, is an excellent instrumental composer in a more serious and simple style than the present."[1] Other women are mentioned by Dr. Burney among the singers of fame in those days, but Miss Herschel gets no such honourable mention in the annals of music.
For some years following her arrival in England the lives of the two Herschels are so intermingled that the history of Caroline is to a large extent the history of William also. They were both running the same course, and the one was holding out a helping hand to the other in the same race, the race for bread and the race for fame. Flighty, uncertain, bullying Jacob sunk out of their life in October 1787; but another brother, more to Caroline's mind, had entered it, and continued to diffuse a pleasant savour in the household at Bath, Alexander,[2] about five years older than his sister. He was of great assistance both as a violinist and a mechanician. Alexander was not of the same cheery, hopeful nature as William. On the contrary, he went amongst
