Читать книгу The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science - Richard Holmes - Страница 23

What had happened to him in the interval? From his intermittent letters to Jacob, and things he subsequently told Caroline, it is possible to reconstruct the outline of his adventures, though with many gaps. Against all expectation, he had not remained in London, or gone back to his friends in Kent, but had boldly struck into the remote north of England. Surprisingly he used his military contacts to obtain the post of civilian music master to the Durham militia, which was stationed under the Earl of Darlington at Richmond in Yorkshire.⁴⁶ This was as much a social engagement as a military one, and Herschel was soon completely independent, working as a freelance musician and music teacher in Leeds, Newcastle, Doncaster and Pontefract, and as an organist in Halifax. Little is known about these posts, except that he was constantly on the move, frequently lonely, and sometimes weeping with homesickness.

Every so often Jacob received letters from William with varied English postmarks, and written-with remarkable versatility-in German, French or English as the mood and subject took him. These letters were also covered in mechanical diagrams, and frequently shifted without a break from words to musical notation. They give a sense of Herschel’s mind switching with extraordinary agility between different modes of expression and zones of thought-literary, mechanical, musical, philosophical.⁴⁷

From Yorkshire on 11 March 1761 he wrote in a fit of melancholy for which he chose slightly faltering English: ‘I must tell you a certain anxiety attends a vagrant life. I do daily meet with vexations and trouble and live only by hope. Many a restless night have I had; many a sigh and-I will not be ashamed to say it-many a tear.’ But a fortnight later he was writing from Sunderland in sprightly French about two pretty girls he had just met-one of them ‘la plus belle du monde, la Beauté elle-meme personnifée’-whose accomplishments included excessive blushing, flirting and playing the guitar. Sadly they only met once, though Herschel later confessed that they corresponded for over a year-another indication of his loneliness, perhaps.⁴⁸

He chose German for his philosophical reflections. All of these were thoughtful, but many of them gloomy: the stoic doctrines of Epictetus, the optimism of Leibniz (’not the least credible nor feasible’), the origins of evil, the nature of sin, the ethical (rather than the intellectual) necessity for Christian religion in European society. ‘In all ages there have been philosophers who have had thoughts above their religion, and have been true Deists’-but it was ‘impossible’ in the present state of education for ‘a whole nation to be true Deists’. William himself described God memorably, in German, as ‘the unknowable, must-exist Being’.⁴⁹ With this formula he was able to set aside, for the time being at least, the problem of a personal Creator.

He had thought often about the ‘immortality of the soul’, but said (to Jacob at least) that he preferred not to draw any conclusions. His unchar-acteristically pious explanation seems to disguise a scientific reservation that there was no ‘intelligible’ data on the matter: ‘My feeble understanding is not capable of pushing so far into the secrets of the Almighty; and as all those propositions have something unintelligible about them, I think it better to remain content with my ignorance till it pleases the Creator of all things to call me to Himself and to draw away the thick curtain which now hangs before our eyes.’ In fact ‘pushing far into secrets’ was always Herschel’s natural instinct and delight.⁵⁰ Perhaps music provided a way of pondering these questions, and at this time he composed an oratorio based on Milton’s Paradise Lost, though the manuscript score has not survived.⁵¹

Another way would be astronomy. For the glowing exception to these dark truths about human life was always the life of Nature, already an endless source of clarity and consolation for Herschel. ‘If one observes the whole Natural World as one, one finds everything in the most Beautiful Order; it is my favourite maxim: Tout est dans l’ordre!’⁵²

Riding between musical engagements, from one remote provincial northern town to another, often crossing over the moors alone at night, he found himself studying the panoply of stars overhead as he had done as a boy. He became well acquainted with the moon, and would later write that at this time he had intended ‘to fix upon the moon for my habitation’.⁵³ He also later told several tales about these lonely rides, one being how on one occasion he was reading so intently that when his horse stumbled and threw him, he somersaulted over its head and landed upright still holding his book in his hand, a perfect demonstration of the Newtonian law of ‘circular motion’.⁵⁴

Herschel now began to explore further the work of James Ferguson (1710-76), a man after his own heart who had started life as an illiterate Highland farm-labourer, and had become one of the most distinguished practical astronomers and demonstrators. His Astronomy Explained (1756) ran to numerous popular editions, and he later vividly described in his Autobiography (1773) how he fell in love with astronomy. He would take a blanket out into the fields after work, and lie on his back measuring star distances and patterns with beads on a string held up over his head. He then transferred these, by the light of a stub of candle on a stone, to his first paper star-maps, spread out beside him on the grass. He said he imagined the ecliptic (the sun’s curving path through the heavens) like a high road running through the stars. Gradually he taught himself astronomy and built his own telescopes. He later invented various devices for projecting constellations during his lectures, and his ‘Eclipseon’ for showing the various movements of the solar system.

Living in lonely bachelor lodgings, Herschel spent more and more time reading about stellar theory. He followed Robert Smith’s Harmonics (1749) with his Compleat System of Opticks (1738), which contained illustrated sections on astronomical observations.⁵⁵ He began to be preoccupied with various cosmological problems: what was the relation between music, mathematics and star patterns? Was there life on the moon? What was the structure and composition of the sun? How far away were the nearest stars? What was the true size and shape of the Milky Way? Many of these problems would emerge in his earliest scientific papers, and would continue to fascinate him for the rest of his life.

He was approaching thirty, and to all appearances he was alone and adrift in a foreign land. But he was not disorganised or depressed. Much of his father’s military discipline, and his own professionalism, now stood him in good stead. He worked immensely hard, with an energy and determination that never left him. His musical appointments were increasingly important, regular and better paid. At Halifax he was conducting an orchestra, playing the organ, giving singing lessons, and composing his own music. He was also learning Italian.

After a period of physical weakness in his late teens (which Caroline had anxiously remarked on), William had grown into a tall, commanding figure, with a high, intellectual forehead, and very striking dark eyes. Outwardly at least, he was cheerful and sociable. It is evident that he made friends wherever he went. At one concert he was joined by the Duke of York, brother of the new King George III, who accompanied him (rather badly) on the violoncello. On another occasion he was invited to conduct one of his own symphonies at St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh. At the reception afterwards, he chanced to meet the philosopher David Hume, and was promptly invited out to dinner.⁵⁶ There was something about Herschel’s mixture of intensity and innocence that simply charmed people. And talented German exiles were, of course, popular.

Herschel was brought back to Hanover by a combination of circumstances. His work at Halifax had led to the first really serious opportunity of his career: the possibility of being appointed the organist of the new Octagon Chapel at Bath, when its building was completed. Bath was fast becoming the most fashionable city in England-nearly ready for Beau Brummell-and all kinds of other musical work would obviously be available there. Herschel immediately thought of his brothers, Jacob and Alexander. He had heard too that his father Isaac was ill, and not likely to live much longer. There may also have been worries about the younger children under Jacob’s care-Caroline and little Dietrich.⁵⁷ At all events, the prodigal son suddenly reappeared in Hanover in the summer of 1764. He arrived saying he had just observed an eclipse of the sun as he rode over the Luneburger Heath.

Caroline was then fourteen, and her appearance following her illness must have shocked him. But there was little that he could do for her immediately, and after an absence of nearly seven years his visit to Hanover lasted a mere fortnight. It was a sober reunion. Isaac, obviously failing, could not persuade him to remain, and instead William spoke of future plans for his brothers as musicians in England. Nothing was said of Caroline at this point. William must have known it was the last time he would see his father alive.

Caroline remembered William’s departure after his flying visit with grief and frustration. It was the day of her first communion, and William had particularly admired her appearance in a new black silk dress. But she was sent to church by Jacob, and not allowed to see William off. She never forgot that moment. ‘The church was crowded and the door open. The Hamburg Postwagen passed at eleven, bearing away my dear brother…It was within a dozen yards from the open door; the postillion giving a smettering blast on his horn. Its effect on my shattered nerves, I will not attempt to describe, nor what I felt for days and weeks after.’ She walked home alone, ‘in feverish wretchedness’, wearing her new dress and painfully aware that she was carrying the bouquet of artificial flowers that her elder sister Sophia had worn on her ill-fated wedding day.⁵⁸

Their father died of a stroke in 1767, but William did not return for the funeral. He would not come back to Hanover for another eight years.⁵⁹