That such a mission may be a splendid and fruitful one has been shown by Agnes Clerke; what careful preparation it requires, and how much it demands of those who would enter upon it, her career also shows.
The immense increase in astronomical literature is hardly realised except by those engaged in dealing with it. To give but one instance—“The Annual Index of Astronomical Literature for 1905,” published under the auspices of the Astronomische Gesellschaft, contains over two thousand references, collated from three hundred separate publications.
The strain of such work as I am indicating is great indeed, involving, as it should, the power of holding loose in the mind, so to speak, an immense mass of facts, and also a power of rapidly associating or dissociating them as work and discovery may suggest.
In one of her latest works, Modern Cosmogonies, Agnes Clerke herself dwelt upon this strain. “Year by year,” she says (p. 160), “details accumulate, and the strain of keeping them under mental command becomes heavier.”
Pathetic words! written—almost in blood! For not long before had been published her last large work, Problems in Astrophysics; a work she feared she could not live to complete—a work which at times she was only able to toil at for half-hour periods.
All through her life Agnes Clerke was a student. Lectures and Friday Evening Discourses at the Royal Institution which bore upon her work she was careful to attend. A three months’ visit to Sir David and Lady Gill at the Cape in 1888 gave her some Observatory opportunities which increased her power of clearly realising the records of observatory and laboratory work. Sir George Baden-Powell invited her to accompany his yachting party to Novaya Zemlya for the solar eclipse of August 1896. When I expressed very strongly my regret that she had declined this invitation (chiefly I now know because she feared she might be prevented from keeping literary engagements absolutely to time), she surprised me a week later with an earnest request that she and I should form a little expedition of two, and try what we could see. She had divined an unspoken longing of mine, and I cannot refrain from recording the unselfish love that would fain have gratified me. But it could not be.
She was awarded in 1892 the Actonian Prize of one hundred guineas for her works on Astronomy, by the Royal Institution; and in 1901 was commissioned by the Managers to write the first Essay under the Hodgkins Trust, on Low Temperature Research at the Royal Institution by Professor Sir James Dewar from 1893-1900.
In 1903 she received the distinction of being elected an Hon. Member of the Royal Astronomical Society—an honour and title held previously only by Mrs. Somerville, Caroline Herschel, and Ann Sheepshanks. I may perhaps be permitted to say that my own deep gratification in my share of this great honour conferred on us by the Society was heightened by receiving it with Agnes Clerke.
She was a frequent attendant at the meetings of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association, and always an interested one. Occasionally she spoke; but she had no liking for speaking in public, nor indeed was she well suited for it.