CHAPTER PAGE [I Childhood and Youth] 1 [II First Visit to Japan] 8 [III Korea] 13 [IV His First Book, “Chosön”] 17 [V The Coup d’Etat and the Japanese March to the Sea] 20 [VI The Soul of the Far East] 29 [VII Second Visit to Japan] 41 [VIII Japan Again—the Shinto Trances] 52 [IX The Observatory at Flagstaff] 61 [X Mars] 76 [XI The Permanent Observatory—Interludes and Travels] 92 [XII Illness and Eclipse] 98 [XIII Mars and Its Canals] 107 [XIV The Solar System] 120 [XV Later Evolution of the Planets] 136 [XVI Interludes] 145 [XVII The Effect of Commensurate Periods] 157 [XVIII The Origin of the Planets] 168 [XIX The Search for a Trans-Neptunian Planet] 176 [XX Pluto Found] 195 [ Appendix I Professor Russell’s Later Views on the Size of Pluto] 203 [ Appendix II The Lowell Observatory by Professor Russell] 206
ILLUSTRATIONS
[Percival Lowell, Age 61] Frontispiece [Percival Lowell and His Biographer] Facing Page 4 [Percival Lowell and the Members of the Korean Embassy] 16 [Observing and Drawing the Canals of Mars] 116 [Gaps in the Asteroids and the Rings of Saturn] 166 [Predicted and Actual Orbits of Pluto] Page 199
BIOGRAPHY OF
PERCIVAL LOWELL
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
The particular assortment of qualities a man inherits, from among the miscellaneous lot his ancestors no doubt possessed and might have transmitted, is of primary importance to him. In this Percival Lowell was fortunate. From his father’s family he derived a very quick apprehension, a capacity for intellectual interests, keen and diversified, and a tireless joy in hard mental labor; while from his mother’s people he drew sociability, ease of companionship and charm; from both families a scorn of anything mean or unworthy, a business ability and the physical health that comes from right living. His life is the story of the use he made of these heirlooms.
The son of Augustus Lowell and Katharine Bigelow (Lawrence), Percival Lowell was born in Boston on March 13, 1855, at 131 Tremont Street where the Shepard stores now stand. The region was then residential, and his parents went there so that his mother might be near her father, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, whose house was on Park Street, now the main portion of the Union Club. He had fallen ill since his return as Minister to England, and was now failing fast. Percival was her first-born, but others followed rapidly, involving removal to larger quarters; first to Park Square, and then to 81 Mount Vernon Street, where even the games of little boys were tinged by the overshadowing events of the day,—the drilling and the battles of the Civil War. He went to a dame school kept by Miss Fette; and being always a good scholar learned what he should; for he developed normally. After infancy the summer was spent at Beverly in the pleasures and occupations of early childhood.
But in the spring of 1864 there came a sudden change. His mother was far from well, and losing ground so fast that his father was advised to take her abroad for a complete change as her only chance,—a heroic remedy which proved in time successful. So the family sailed in the Africa, a paddle-wheel steamer of 2500 tons with the sails of a full-rigged ship,—the father with an invalid wife, four children aged from nine to two, a nurse sea-sick all the time; and in addition the care of three more children of a friend in Europe, with a nurse who was well, but bereft of sense. However, they arrived safely, spent the summer in England, and, as all Americans did in those days, went to Paris for the winter.
Here Percival began a life different from that of his contemporaries at home; for with his younger brother and his cousin, George P. Gardner,—one of the children who had crossed with him on the Africa—he went to a French boarding school kept by a Mr. Kornemann. We were allowed to come home for Sundays, but spent the rest of the week at the school,—a very wise arrangement; for, although there were some English boys, the atmosphere was French, and we learned the language easily, by the native method of teaching it. To Percival this was a great benefit throughout his life.
Two winters were spent in this way, the intervening summer being passed by the family in travel. In the spring of 1866 his parents proposed to go for a few weeks to Italy, and take the children with them; but Percival was so ill at ease in travel that he was left at the famous boarding school kept by the Silligs at Vevey. Although in mature life a constant traveller, this event was not out of character, for not being yet old enough to enjoy the results of travel, or feel the keen interest in them later aroused, he was too restless to find pleasure in long journeying without an object. On their return from Italy the family picked him up and went to Germany, where they were caught by the seven weeks’ war with Austria. When it broke out they were at Schwalbach in Nassau, one of the smaller states that took sides against Prussia. Percival always remembered vividly what he there saw, exciting enough for a small boy; the sudden clatter of a galloping horse, as a man in civilian dress passed the hotel up a small lane to the left. It was the burgomaster carrying word of Prussian advance, followed quickly by the sound of several more horses, and three videttes in blue galloped past, turning up the main road in front of the hotel where they supposed the burgomaster had gone. Up the road they went and disappeared round a turn to the left at the top of the slope. Scarcely had they vanished when a squad of green-clad Nassau infantry appeared, and following half-way up the hill hid behind a wood pile. It was not long before the Prussian videttes, having failed to find the burgomaster, came into sight again, leisurely walking their horses down the road. When abreast of the wood pile the Nassau squad stole out, firing from the hip in the manner of the day. Whether they hit anyone we never knew, but the enemy was wholly dispersed, for one of the horsemen wheeled up the hill, another spurred his horse down past the hotel, and the third jumped his over the wall into the garden of the baths. That afternoon a Nassau regiment marched into the town and bivouacked in the streets, leaving in the morning to be replaced later in the day by a Prussian regiment, which in its turn marched off to its rendezvous near Kissingen.