EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.
Hanover, June 19, 1832.
... I found my aunt wonderfully well and very nicely and comfortably lodged, and we have since been on the full trot. She runs about the town with me and skips up her two flights of stairs as light and fresh at least as some folks I could name who are not a fourth part of her age.... In the morning till eleven or twelve she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite “fresh and funny” at ten or eleven, p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances! to the great delight of all who see her.... It was only this evening that, escaping from a party at Mrs. Beckedorff’s, I was able to indulge in what my soul has been yearning for ever since I came here—a solitary ramble out of town, among the meadows which border the Leine-strom, from which the old, tall, sombre-looking Markt-thurm and the three beautiful lanthorn-steeples of Hanover are seen as in the little picture I have often looked at with a sort of mysterious wonder when a boy as that strange place in foreign parts that my father and uncle used to talk so much about, and so familiarly. The likeness is correct, and I soon found the point of view.
Yesterday, being the anniversary of Waterloo, there was a great military spectacle here in a large esplanade, where there is erected a tall and very pretty column, with a bronze “Victory” at the top, hopping on one leg. A few guns were fired, a sermon preached, the veil of the statue (shown for the first time) pulled off by the Duke of Cambridge, and a good dinner eaten by 350 personages, of which number I had the honour to be one unit, in a vast saloon in the Herrenhauser Palace, about the length, breadth, and height of St. George’s Hall, at Windsor, the Duke presiding and giving the toasts, &c., in honour of the Waterloo heroes. The saloon was ornamented most curiously with guns, swords, and pikes, arranged in patterns, and with Waterloo trophies, and a panoramic view of the field of Waterloo in compartments. No ladies were admitted to the table, and (what say you to the gallantry of the Hanoverian military?) there was no ball in the evening, nor any the slightest provision for the amusement or participation of the fair. So Mars and Venus, I suppose, have had a “tiff!” Adieu.
1832-1833. Her Life in Hanover.
TO LADY HERSCHEL.
Hanover, Dec. 4, 1832.
My dearest Niece,—
I shall in future, when I have anything to say to my dear nephew address myself to you, well knowing his time is too precious for spending even on reading.... Thank him most heartily for the “Edinburgh Review,” and the description of the wonderful machine.... But here is the grievance—I cannot possibly read the Review, my sight is almost lost, and I must wait till Miss Beckedorff or somebody can read to me.... Dr. Tias, who travelled through Hanover, called on me to-day. He talked strangely about my nephew’s intention of going to the Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Hausmann told me some weeks ago that the Times contained the same report, to which I replied, “It is a lie!” but what I heard from Dr. Tias to-day makes me almost believe it possible. Ja! if I was thirty or forty years younger, and could go too? in Gottes nahmen! But I will not think about it till you yourself tell me more of it, for I have enough to think of my cramps, blindness, sleepless nights, &c.
TO SIR J. F. W. HERSCHEL.