first appearance as a public singer. She was very successful, and her
friends anticipated that her well-cultivated and beautiful voice would
become a means of providing her with an ample income. She, however, had
so fully identified herself with her brother’s astronomical labours,
that she only regarded her musical acquirements as a means of setting
him free to devote himself more completely to the real object of his
life. His fame as a maker of telescopes had by this time spread all over
Europe, and many scientific societies, royal persons, and other
celebrities, ordered telescopes of him. On these orders he was able to
realise a large profit, but Caroline always grudged the time devoted to
their execution. Her aim for her brother was not that he should become
rich or even well-to-do, but that he should devote himself unreservedly
to advance the progress of astronomical science. She was ready to live
on a crust, and to give herself up to the most pinching economies and
even privations, for this end. She was the keeper of her brother’s
purse, and received his commands to spend therefrom anything that was
necessary for herself; her thrift and self-denial may be judged from the
fact that the sum thus abstracted for her own personal wants seldom
amounted to more than £7 or £8 a year.
The next great change in the life of the brother and sister took place
in 1782, when William Herschel left Bath and was appointed
Astronomer-Royal by George the Third. His salary of only £200 a year
involved a great loss of income, but this, in his eyes, was a small
matter in comparison with the advantage of having his time entirely free
to give up to his favourite studies. They bade farewell to Bath, and
settled first at Datchet, shortly after, however, removing to Slough.
Caroline had dismal visions of bankruptcy, but William was in the
highest spirits, and declared that they would live on eggs and bacon,
“which would cost nothing to speak of, now that they were really in the
country.”
Caroline was now installed as an assistant astronomer, and was given a
telescope, which she calls a “seven-foot Newtonian Sweeper”; and she was
instructed, whenever she had an evening not in attendance on her
brother, to “sweep for comets”; but her principal business appears, at
this time, to have been waiting on her brother, and writing down the
results of his observations; they worked quite as hard as they had done
at Bath. They laboured at the manufacture of instruments all day, and at
the observation of the heavens all night. No severity of weather, if the
sky was clear, ever kept them from their posts. The ink often froze with
which Caroline was writing down the results of her brother’s
observations. It has been well said that if it had not been for
occasional cloudy nights, they must have died of overwork. The apparatus
for erecting the great forty-foot telescope, and the iron and woodwork
for its various motions, were all designed by William Herschel, and
fixed under his immediate direction. His sister, in her _Recollections_,
wrote: “I have seen him stretched many an hour in the burning sun across
the top beam, whilst the iron-work for the various motions was being
fixed.” The penurious salary granted to William Herschel was
supplemented by special grants for the removal and the erection of all
this machinery; and in 1787 Caroline’s services to her brother were
publicly recognised by her receiving the appointment of assistant to her
brother at a salary of £50 a year. She was at all times grateful to
members of the royal family for acts of kindness shown by them to her
brother and herself; but it is evident that she felt that, so far as
money was concerned, she had not much cause for gratitude to the royal
bounty. She points out that at the time when Parliament was granting
George III. the sum of £80,000 a year for encouraging science, £200 was
considered a sufficient salary for the first astronomer of the day; and
yet money could flow liberally enough in some directions, for £30,000
was at that time being spent on the altar-piece of St. George’s Chapel,
Windsor. Even Caroline’s little salary of £50 a year was not regularly
paid. It was a trial to her again to become a pensioner on her brother’s
purse, and it was not till nine quarters of her official salary remained
unpaid, that she reluctantly applied to him for help. No wonder that in
reading, after her brother’s death, an account of his life and its
achievements, she remarks, “The favours of monarchs ought to have been
mentioned, _but once would have been enough_.”
It was after her brother’s marriage, in 1788, that the majority of
Caroline’s astronomical discoveries were made. She discovered her first
comet in 1786, her eighth and last in 1797. She was recognised as a
comrade by all the leading astronomers of Europe, and received many
letters complimenting her on her discoveries. One from De la Lande
addressed her as “Savante Miss,” while another from the Rev. Dr.
Maskelyne saluted her as “My worthy sister in astronomy.” Royal and
other distinguished visitors constantly visited the wonderful forty-foot
telescope at Slough, and either William Herschel or his sister were
required to be in attendance to explain its marvels. The Prince of
Orange, on one occasion, called, and left an extraordinary message “to
ask Mr. Herschel, or if he was not at home, Miss Herschel, if it was
true that Mr. Herschel had discovered a new star, whose light was not as
that of the common stars, but with swallow-tails, as stars in
embroidery.” The only glimpse we get, through the peaceful labours of
Caroline’s long life, of the strife and turmoil of the French
Revolution, is the note she makes of the visit, to her brother’s
observatory, of the Princesse de Lamballe. “About a fortnight after
this,” the diarist observes, “her head was off.” The absence of all
comment upon the wonderful political events of the time is noticeable,
and so also is Caroline’s thinly-veiled contempt for any science less
sublime than that to which she and her brother were devoted. Her
youngest brother, Dietrich, was a student of the insect world. “He
amuses himself with insects,” she wrote to her nephew; “it is well he
does not see the word _amuses_, for whenever he catches a fly with a leg
more than usual, he says it is as good as catching a comet.” Her
brother’s marriage, though far from welcome at the time it took place,
was a great blessing to her; for it gave her a most tender and
affectionate sister, and ultimately a nephew, the inheritor of his
father’s great gifts, and the being to whom, after William Herschel’s
death in 1822, Caroline transferred all the devoted and passionate
attachment of which her nature was capable.
The great mistake of her life was going back to Germany after Sir W.
Herschel’s death in 1822. She was then seventy-two years of age, and the
previous fifty years of her life, containing all her most precious
memories and associations, had been spent in England. In this country,
also, were all those who were dearest to her. Yet, no sooner was her
brother dead, than she felt life in England to be an impossibility. She
little thought that she had still twenty-six years to live; indeed she
had long been under the impression that her end was near, but while her
brother lived she kept this to herself, because she wished to be useful
to him as long as she possibly could. She never really re-acclimatised
herself to Germany. “Why did I leave happy England?” she often said. The
one German institution she thoroughly enjoyed was the winter series of
concerts and operas, which she constantly attended, and she mentions
with pleasure, in her letters, that she was “always sure to be noticed
by the Duke of Cambridge as his countrywoman, and that is what I want; I
will be no Hanoverian.” She laments the death of William IV., chiefly
because, by causing a separation of the crowns of England and Hanover,
it seemed to break a link between herself and the country of her
adoption.
She never revisited England, but she kept up a constant communication
with it by letters to her sister-in-law, her nephew, and later to her
niece, Sir John Herschel’s wife. At that time the post between London
and Hanover was an affair of fifteen days, and letters were carried by a
monthly messenger, of whose services she seldom failed to avail herself.
She took the keenest interest in her nephew’s distinguished career. His
letters to her are full of astronomy. In 1832 he made a voyage to the
Cape to observe the stars in the Southern Hemisphere. When Miss Herschel
first heard of the intended voyage she refused to believe it. But when
she was really convinced of it, the old impulse was as strong upon her
as upon a war-horse who hears the trumpet. “Ja! if I was thirty or forty
years younger and could go too!” she exclaimed.
On 1st January 1840 the tube of the celebrated forty-foot telescope was
closed with a sort of family celebration. A requiem, composed by Sir
John Herschel for the occasion, was chanted, and he and Lady Herschel,
with their seven children and some old servants, walked in procession
round it, singing as they went. On hearing of this from Slough, Miss
Herschel recalls that the famous telescope had also been inaugurated
with music. “God save the King” had then been sung in it, the whole
company from the dinner-table mounting into the tube, and taking any
musical instruments they could get hold of, to form a band and
orchestra.
The most laborious of all her undertakings she accomplished after her
brother’s death. It was “The Reduction and Arrangement in the form of a
catalogue, in Zones, of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ, observed by
Sir W. Herschel in his Sweeps.” It was for this that the gold medal of
the Royal Astronomical Society was voted to her in 1828.
All through her life in Hanover she lived with the most careful economy,
seldom or never consenting to draw upon Sir John Herschel for the
annuity of £100 that had been left her by her brother. She said it was
impossible for her to spend more than £50 a year without making herself
ridiculous. The only luxuries she granted herself were her concert and
opera tickets, and her English bed, which all sufferers from the inhuman
German bedding must be thankful to hear she possessed. The
self-forgetfulness and devotion to others which had characterised her in
youth accompanied her to her grave. Every detail with regard to the
disposition of her property and the arrangements for her funeral had
been made by herself, with the view of giving as little trouble as
possible to her nephew, and making the smallest encroachment upon his
time. In her latest moments her only thought for herself was embodied in
a request that a lock of her beloved brother’s hair might be laid with
her in her coffin.
IV
SARAH MARTIN
THE DRESSMAKER AND PRISON VISITOR OF YARMOUTH
“Two men I honour and no third. First the toilworn craftsman that
with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the earth and makes
her man’s.... A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who
is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread,
but the bread of Life.... Unspeakably touching is it however when I
find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the
lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest.
Sublimer in this world know I nothing than the Peasant Saint, could
such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to
Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth
from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great
darkness.”—_Sartor Resartus_, pp. 157, 158.
EVERY one of us has probably been tempted at one time or another to say
or think when asked to join in some good work, “If only I had more time
or more money, I would take it up.” It is good for us, therefore, to be
reminded that neither leisure nor wealth are necessary to those whose
hearts are fixed upon the earnest desire to leave this world a little
better and a little happier than they found it.
This lesson was wonderfully taught by Sarah Martin, a poor dressmaker,
who was born at Caister, near Great Yarmouth, in 1791. In her own
locality she did as great a work in solving the problems of prison
discipline, and how to improve the moral condition of prisoners, as Mrs.
Fry was doing about the same time upon a larger scale in London. It is
very extraordinary that this poor woman, who was almost entirely
self-educated, and who was dependent on daily toil for daily bread,
should have been able, through her own mother-wit and native goodness of
heart, to see the evil and provide the same remedies for it as were in
course of time provided throughout the land, as the result of study
given to the subject, by statesmen, philosophers, and philanthropists.
When Sarah Martin first began to visit the prison at Great Yarmouth,
there was no sort of provision for the moral or educational improvement
of the prisoners. There was no chaplain, there were no religious
services, there was no school, and there was no employment of any kind,
except what Satan finds for idle hands to do. The quiet, little,
gentle-voiced dressmaker changed all this.
She was first led to visit the prison in 1819, through the compassionate
horror which filled her when she heard of the committal to prison of a
woman for brutally ill-treating her child. Without any introduction or
recommendation from influential persons, she knocked timidly at the gate
of the prison, and asked leave to see this woman. She had not told a
single human creature of her intention, not even her grandmother, with
whom she lived. She was fearful lest she should be overcome by the
counsels of worldly wisdom that she had better mind her own business,
that the woman’s wickedness was no concern of hers, and so forth. Her
first application at the gaol was unsuccessful; but she tried again, and
the second time she was admitted without any question whatever. Once in
the presence of the prisoner, the first inquiry by which she was met was
a somewhat rough one as to the object of her visit. When the poor
creature heard and felt all the deep compassion which had moved Sarah
Martin to her side, she burst into tears, and with many expressions of
contrition and gratitude besought her visitor to help her to be a better
woman.
From the date of this visit, the best energies of Sarah Martin’s life
were devoted to improving the lot of the prisoners in Great Yarmouth
Gaol. She did not—indeed, she could not—give up her dressmaking. She
worked out at her customers’ houses, earning about 1s. 3d. a day. Her
first resolve was to give up always one day a week to her prison work,
and as many other days as she could spare. She began teaching the
prisoners to read and write; she also read to them, and told them
stories. A deeply religious woman herself, it pained her that there were
no services of any kind in the prison, and she prevailed upon the
prisoners to gather together on Sunday mornings and read to one another.
To encourage them in this she attended herself, not at first as the
conductor of the service, but as a fellow-worshipper. This was very
typical of her method and character. She was among them as one who
served, not as one seeking power and authority. Another illustration of
this sweet humility in her character may be given. She wished those of
her pupils who could read to learn each day a few Bible texts; and she
always learned some herself, and said them with the prisoners. Sometimes
an objection was made. In her own words, “Many said at first, ‘It would
be of no use,’ and my reply was, ‘It is of use to me, and why should it
not be so to you? You have not tried it, but I have.’” There was a
simplicity in this, a complete absence of the “Depart from me, for I am
holier than thou,” which was irresistible, and always silenced excuse.
Soon after the commencement of the Sunday services in the prison, it was
found necessary, through the difficulty of finding a reader, that Sarah
Martin herself should conduct the service. At first she used to read a
sermon from a book, but later she wrote her own sermons, and later still
she was able to preach without writing beforehand. According to the
testimony of Captain Williams, the Inspector of Prisons for the
district, the whole service was in a high degree reverent and
impressive. The prisoners listened with deep attention to the clear,
melodious voice of their self-appointed pastor.
At no time did she seek to obtain from the governor of the prison any
authority over the prisoners; that is, she never sought to control them
against their will; authority over them she had, but it was the
authority which proceeded from her own personal influence. The prisoners
did what she wished, because they knew her devotion to them. Her hold
over them is best proved by the fact that never but once did she meet
from them with anything that could be called rudeness or insult.
Next to her care for godliness and education, her chief thoughts were
given to provide employment for the prisoners, first for the women, and
then for the men. A gentleman gave her 10s., and in the same week
another gave her £1. Her gratitude for the possession of this small
capital is touching to read of. She expended it in the purchase of
materials for baby-clothes, and borrowing patterns, she set the women to
work upon making little shifts and wrappers. The garments, when
completed, were sold for the benefit of the women who had made them.
Her capital grew from thirty shillings to seven guineas, and in all more
than £400 worth of clothing, made in this way, was sold. The advantages
were twofold. First, the women were employed and taught to sew, and
secondly, each woman was enabled to earn a small sum, which was saved
for her till the time of her release from prison. This money was
frequently the means of giving the discharged prisoner a chance of
starting a new life and gaining an honest livelihood.
Sarah Martin gave particular attention to this very important branch of
her work. A man or a woman just out of prison, branded with all the
stigma and disgrace of the gaol, is too often almost forced back into
crime as the only means of livelihood. Endless were the devices and
schemes which Sarah Martin employed to prevent this. She would seek out
respectable lodgings for the prisoners on their discharge; she would see
their former employers and entreat that another chance might be given;
her note-books and diaries are filled with items of her own personal
expenditure in setting up her poor clients with the small stock-in-trade
or the tools necessary to start some simple business on their own
account.
After many years of patient and devoted work she was well known
throughout the whole town and neighbourhood, and was no longer entirely
dependent on her own slender earnings. Her grandmother died in 1826, and
she then inherited a small income of about £12 a year. She removed into
Yarmouth, and hired two rooms in a poor part of the town. Shortly after
this she entirely gave up working as a dressmaker. She could not, of
course, live on the little annuity she inherited from her grandmother;
this was not much more than enough to pay for her rooms. But she did not
fear for herself. Her personal wants were of the simplest description,
and she said herself that she had no care: “God, who had called me into
the vineyard, had said, ‘Whatsoever is right, I will give you.’” It
would, indeed, have been to the discredit of Yarmouth if such a woman
had been suffered to be in want. Many gifts were sent to her, but she
scrupulously devoted everything that reached her to the prisoners,
unless the donor expressly stated that it was not for her charities but
for herself. About 1840, after twenty-one years’ work in the prison and
workhouse of the town, the Corporation of Yarmouth urged her to accept a
small salary from the borough funds. She at first refused, because it
was painful to her that the prisoners should ever regard her in any
other light than as their disinterested friend; she feared that if she
accepted the money of the Corporation she would be looked upon as merely
one of the gaol functionaries, and that they would “rank her with the
turnkeys and others who got their living by the duties which they
discharged.” It was urged upon her that this view was a mistaken one,
and she was advised at least to accept a small salary as an experiment.
She replied, “To try the experiment, which might injure the thing I live
and breathe for, seems like applying a knife to your child’s throat to
know if it will cut. As for my circumstances, I have not a wish
ungratified, and am more than content.” The following year, however, it
was evident that her health was giving way, and another attempt was
made, which ended in the Corporation voting her the small sum of £12 a
year, not as a salary, but as a voluntary gift to one who had been of
such inestimable service to the town. She did not live long after this.
Her health gradually became feebler, but she continued her daily work at
the gaol till 17th April 1843. After that date she never again left her
rooms, and after a few months of intense suffering, she died on the 15th
October. When the nurse who was with her told her the end was near, she
clasped her hands together and exclaimed, “Thank God, thank God.” They
were her last words. She was buried at Caister; the tombstone which
marks her grave bears an inscription dictated by herself, giving simply
her name and the dates of her birth and death, with a reference to the
chapter of Corinthians which forms part of the Church of England Service
for the Burial of the Dead. Well, indeed, is it near that grave, and
full of the thoughts inspired by that life, for us to feel that “Death
is swallowed up in victory.”
The citizens of Yarmouth marked their gratitude and veneration for her
by putting a stained-glass window to her memory in St. Nicholas’s
Church. Her name is reverently cherished in her native town. Dr.
Stanley, who was Bishop of Norwich at the time of her death, gave
expression to the general feeling when he said, “I would canonise Sarah
Martin if I could!”
V
MARY SOMERVILLE
MARY SOMERVILLE, the most remarkable scientific woman our country has
produced, was born at Jedburgh in 1780. Her father was a naval officer,
and in December 1780 had just parted from his wife to go on foreign
service for some years. She had accompanied her husband to London, and
on returning home to Scotland was obliged to stay at the Manse of
Jedburgh, the home of her brother-in-law and sister, Dr. and Mrs.
Somerville. Here little Mary was born, in the house of her uncle and
aunt, who afterwards became her father and mother-in-law, for her second
husband was their son. In the interesting reminiscences she has left of
her life, she records the curious fact that she was born in the home of
her future husband, and was nursed by his mother.