* * * * *
You compliment me on having a steady hand, but if you were to see the blotting I make before I can make it hang together (when I am composing, as it were, a letter) you would not say so, and, after all, it will cause you some trouble to understand me, for the letter begins to my dear niece, and soon after I find myself talking to you....
SIR J. F. W. HERSCHEL TO MISS HERSCHEL.
Fellhausen, Oct. 24, 1835.
Dear Aunt,—
The last accounts we have of you are that you are elected a member of the Astronomical Society, and that to keep you in countenance, and prevent your being the only lady among so many gentlemen, you have for a colleague and sister member, Mrs. Somerville. Now this is well imagined, and we were not a little pleased to hear it. May you long enjoy your well-earned laurels!
As I presume our news will interest you more than comments upon what goes on in Europe, in the first place be it known to you, that we are all well and, thank Heaven, happy. The children, one and all, thrive uncommonly.... The stars go on very well, though for the last two months the weather has been chiefly cloudy, which has hitherto prevented me seeing Halley’s comet. Encke’s (yours) escaped me, owing to trees and the Table Mountain, though I cut away a good gap in our principal oak avenue to get at it. However, Maclear, at the Observatory, succeeded in getting three views of it with the fourteen-foot Newtonian of my father’s (the Glasgow telescope) on the 14th, 19th, and (?) 24th of September. If you have an opportunity of letting this become known to Encke, pray do so—(I shall write to him shortly myself). It was in or near the calculated place, but no measures could be got.
I have now very nearly gone over the whole southern heavens, and over much of it often. So that after another season of reviewing, verifying, and making up accounts (reducing and bringing in order the observations) we shall be looking homewards. In short, I have, to use a homely phrase, broken the neck of the work, and my main object now is to secure and perfect what is done, and get all ready to begin printing the moment we arrive in England; or, if that is not possible, at least to have no more calculation to do....
1835. Duke of Cambridge.
FROM H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE.