"He is not only a Conservative, but declares himself 'a Tory of the Tories.'"
I afterward found that he fully justified his own description. At the university, he was one of the leading opponents of those measures which freed the academic degrees from religious tests. He was said to have been among those who objected to Sylvester, a Jew, receiving a degree.
I had decided to observe the eclipse at Gibraltar. In order that my results, if I obtained any, might be utilized in the best way, it was necessary that the longitude of the station should be determined by telegraph. This had never been done for Gibraltar. How great the error of the supposed longitude might have been may be inferred from the fact that a few years later, Captain F. Green of the United States Navy found the longitude of Lisbon on the Admiralty charts to be two miles in error. The first arrangements I had to make in England were directed to this end. Considering the relation of the world's great fortress to British maritime supremacy, it does seem as if there were something presumptuous in the coolness with which I went among the authorities to make arrangements for the enterprise. Nevertheless, the authorities permitted the work, with a cordiality which was of itself quite sufficient to remove any such impression, had it been entertained. The astronomers did, indeed, profess to feel it humiliating that the longitude of such a place as Gibraltar should have to be determined from Greenwich by an American. They did not say "by a foreigner," because they always protested against Americans looking upon themselves as such. Still, it would not be an English enterprise if an American carried it out. I suspect, however, that my proceedings were not looked upon with entire dissatisfaction even by the astronomers. They might prove as good a stimulant to their government in showing a little more enterprise in that direction as the arrival of our eclipse party did.
The longitude work naturally took me to the Royal Observatory which has made the little town of Greenwich so famous. It is situated some eight miles east from Charing Cross, on a hill in Greenwich Park, with a pleasant outlook toward the Thames. From my youth up I had been working with its observations, and there was no institution in the world which I had approached, or could approach, with the interest I felt in ascending the little hill on which it is situated. When the Calabria was once free from her wharf in New York harbor, and on her way down the Narrows, the foremost thought was, "Off for Europe; we shall see Greenwich!" The day of my arrival in London I had written to Professor Airy, and received an answer the same evening, inviting us to visit the observatory and spend an afternoon with him a day or two later.
I was shown around the observatory by an assistant, while my wife was entertained by Mrs. Airy and the daughters inside the dwelling. The family dined as soon as the day's work was over, about the middle of the afternoon. After the meal, we sat over a blazing fire and discussed our impressions of London.
"What place in London interested you most?" said Airy to my wife.
"The first place I went to see was Cavendish Square."
"What was there in Cavendish Square to interest you?"
"When I was a little girl, my mother once gave me, as a birthday present, a small volume of poems. The first verse in the book was:—
"'Little Ann and her mother were walking one day
Through London's wide city so fair;
And business obliged them to go by the way
That led them through Cavendish Square.'"