Having just been informed by the newspapers that your nephew is safely landed in this country, I hasten to write you a few lines by this night’s mail to congratulate you most sincerely on this event, which I know will give you pleasure.
I am unable to send you any further details about him or his family, as I am not aware if he is arrived as yet in town, and should this not be the case, my letter will perhaps be the first to give you this welcome news, which I shall certainly be delighted at.
I trust you continue enjoying your health; and with best wishes, &c., &c.,
Yours most sincerely,
Adolphus.
1838. Return of Sir John Herschel.
SIR JOHN HERSCHEL TO MISS HERSCHEL.
London, May 20, 1838.
Here we are, my dear aunt, at last, safely landed and housed, all in good health and, as you may suppose, in good spirits at our return. We ourselves and our six little ones were very comfortable during our nine weeks’ voyage in the good ship Windsor, which is lying snug and sound in the river at Blackwall, with all our things on board, telescopes and all (as well as the astronomical results of our expedition). We left our ship, however, at the entrance of the Channel, and got to London in a steamer under the flag of King Leopold, of Belgium, which, having been to Glasgow to take in her machinery, was returning without passengers, not yet being fitted up for their reception. This was a most opportune and unexpected piece of good fortune, as I assure you we found most sensibly, by the non-arrival of the ship till this morning, having been four days longer at sea, beating about against contrary winds. I have more particulars to tell than would fill this paper, which I must reserve till our meeting, which will not now be longer delayed than is indispensable for getting our baggage on shore, and passing it through the Custom House, and transporting it by a barge to Windsor, and so to Slough. I hope and trust to find you as well in health as your two letters to John Stewart and Mary Baldwin allow us to suppose....
The visit promised in the foregoing letter was paid in July, when Sir John Herschel, accompanied by his little son, spent a few days with his aunt, whose intense anxiety as to the proper treatment of her little grand-nephew—his sleep, his food, his playthings—kept her in a constant state of alarm on his account. “I,” she writes, “rather suffered him to hunger than would let him eat anything hurtful; indeed, I would not let him eat anything at all without his papa was present.” Great as was the joy of the dear venerable lady to rest her aged eyes once more on almost the only living being upon whom she poured some of that wealth of affection with which her heart never ceased to overflow, it is on the disappointments and shortcomings of those few precious days that she dwells; and, if she could have felt resentment towards her nephew, it would have been roused by the abrupt termination of his visit. Her lamentations are piteous. Solely with the intention of sparing her feelings, her nephew went away without letting her know the exact time beforehand of his departure, and made no formal leave-taking, when he bade her good-night to return to his inn. To her infinite dismay and distress, she found that he and his son had quitted Hanover at four o’clock on the following morning. It was kindly intended, but it was a mistake that gave intense pain. Her introduction to her little grand-nephew is described as follows by his father:—