The following, translated from a letter of Miss Herschel’s niece, Mrs. Knipping, to her cousin, Sir J. Herschel, is a most precious fragment, expressing the sentiments of one who for years contributed to lighten the grievous burden of age and growing infirmity by her constant affection and appreciative sympathy. The regret that so little remains from the same pen is enhanced by the fact that no notes, or memorials of any kind, appear to exist by which we might hope to picture to ourselves one whose unconscious self-portraiture makes us crave to see and know and become familiarly acquainted with her, as she was seen and known by others. Comparatively recent as was her death, to the best of our knowledge all have passed away from whose lips we could hope to gather the impressions of personal acquaintance. Excepting from the letters already quoted on the occasion of her nephew’s two visits to Hanover, it is not until she lay on her death-bed that we obtain a glimpse of her drawn by any other hand than her own.
January 13, 1848.
... I felt almost a sense of joyful relief at the death of my aunt, in the thought that now the unquiet heart was at rest. All that she had of love to give was concentrated on her beloved brother. At his death she felt herself alone. For after those long years of separation she could not but find us all strange to her, and no one could ever replace his loss. Time did indeed lessen and soften the overpowering weight of her grief, and then she would regret that she had ever left England, and condemned herself to live in a country where nobody cared for astronomy. I shared her regret, but I knew too well that even in England she must have found the same blank. She looked upon progress in science as so much detraction from her brother’s fame, and even your investigations would have become a source of estrangement had she been with you. She lived altogether in the past, and she found the present not only strange but annoying. Now, thank God, she has gone where she will find again all that she loved. I shall long feel her loss, for I prized and loved her dearly, and it is to me a most precious recollection that she loved me best of all those here, admitted me to closer intimacy, and allowed me to know something even of her inner life.
1848. The End of All.
All the necessary instructions about her property, her house, her burial, she had written years before; even the sum which she considered sufficient had been carefully set apart for the funeral expenses, and everything, down to the minutest trifle, had been arranged, so that her executor, Sir John Herschel, might have the least possible trouble. She especially prayed him not to come should her death occur in the winter; but the reiterated instructions through the long series of letters show how keen was her anxiety that whatever she possessed of value should pass into his hands, and that no one of her Hanoverian connections, with the exception of Mrs. Knipping [who, with Miss Beckedorff, was entrusted with her keys], should intermeddle. She desired to be laid beside her father and mother, and an inscription[[68]] of her own composition records how she was her brother’s assistant, &c. She was followed to the grave by many relations and friends, the Royal carriages forming part of the procession; the coffin was covered with garlands of laurel and cypress and palm branches sent by the Crown Princess from Herrnhausen, and the holy words spoken over it were uttered in that same garrison church in which, nearly a century before, she had been christened, and afterwards confirmed. One direction she could not put on paper, but she desired Mrs. Knipping to place in her coffin a lock of her beloved brother’s hair and an old, almost obliterated, almanack that had been used by her father.
APPENDIX.
The inventory of the books, pictures, &c., in the sitting-room of No. 376 Braunschweiger Strass, is too characteristic to be omitted. The following is a copy of it:—
Inventory of engravings, all in good black frames, with gilded beads, and glazed:—
My Nephew, J. H.
My Mother.