On April 5th, 1816, Herschel was created a Knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, and duly attended one of the Prince Regent’s levées in May. He went to town in 1819 to have his portrait painted by Artaud. The resulting fine likeness is in the possession of his grandson, Sir William James Herschel. The Astronomical Society chose him as its first President in 1821; and he contributed to the first volume of its memoirs a supplementary list of 145 double stars. The wonderful series of his communications to the Royal Society closed when he was in his eightieth year, with the presentation, June 11th, 1818, of a paper on the Relative Distances of Star-clusters. On June 1st, 1821, he inserted into the tube with thin and trembling hands the mirror of the twenty-foot telescope, and took his final look at the heavens. All his old instincts were still alive, only the bodily power to carry out their behests was gone. An unparalleled career of achievement left him unsatisfied with what he had done. Old age brought him no Sabbath rest, but only an enforced and wearisome cessation from activity. His inability to re-polish the four-foot speculum was the doom of his chef d’œuvre. He could not reconcile himself to it. His sunny spirits gave way. The old happy and buoyant temperament became overcast with despondency. His strong nerves were at last shattered.
On August 15th, 1822, Miss Herschel relates:—“I hastened to the spot where I was wont to find him with the newspaper I was to read to him. But I was informed my brother had been obliged to return to his room, whither I flew immediately. Lady Herschel and the housekeeper were with him, administering everything which could be thought of for supporting him. I found him much irritated at not being able to grant Mr. Bulman’s[C] request for some token of remembrance for his father. As soon as he saw me, I was sent to the library to fetch one of his last papers and a plate of the forty-foot telescope. But for the universe I could not have looked twice at what I had snatched from the shelf, and when he faintly asked if the breaking-up of the Milky Way was in it, I said ‘Yes,’ and he looked content. I cannot help remembering this circumstance; it was the last time I was sent to the library on such an occasion. That the anxious care for his papers and workrooms never ended but with his life, was proved by his whispered inquiries if they were locked, and the key safe.”
[C] The grandson of one of Herschel’s earliest English friends.
He died ten days later, August 25th, 1822. Above his grave, in the church of Saint Laurence at Upton, the words are graven:—“Coelorum perrupit claustra”—He broke through the barriers of the skies.
William Herschel was endowed by nature with an almost faultless character. He had the fervour, without the irritability of genius; he was generous, genial, sincere; tolerant of ignorance; patient under the acute distress, to which his situation rendered him peculiarly liable, of unseasonable interruptions at critical moments: he was warm-hearted and open-handed. His change of country and condition, his absorption in science, the homage paid to him, never led him to forget the claims of kindred. Time and money were alike lavished in the relief of family necessities. He supported his brother Alexander after his retirement from the concert-stage in 1816, until his death at Hanover, March 15th, 1821. Dietrich’s recurring misfortunes met his unfailing pity and help. He bequeathed to him a sum of £2,000, and to his devoted sister, Caroline, an annuity of £100.
His correspondents, abroad and at home, were numerous; nor did he disdain to remove the perplexities of amateurs. In a letter, dated January 6th, 1794, we find him explaining to Mr. J. Miller of Lincoln’s Inn, “the circumstances which attend the motion of a race-horse upon a circle of longitude.” And he wrote shortly afterwards to Mr. Smith of Tewkesbury:—“You find fault with the principles of gravitation and projection because they will not account for the rotation of the planets upon their axes. You might certainly with as much reason find fault with your shoes because they will not likewise serve your hands as gloves. But, in my opinion, the projectile motion once admitted, sufficiently explains the rotatory motion; for it is hardly possible mechanically to impress the one without giving the other at the same time.”
On religious topics he was usually reticent; but a hint of the reverent spirit in which his researches were conducted may be gathered from a sentence in the same letter. “It is certainly,” he said, “a very laudable thing to receive instruction from the great workmaster of nature, and for that reason all experimental philosophy is instituted.”
To investigate was then, in his view, to “receive instruction”; and one of the secrets of his wonderful success lay in the docility with which he came to be taught.