The Age of Wonder (36 page)

In a bravura passage, Darwin also considers Herschel’s disturbing suggestion that the entire cosmos may eventually wither back into ‘one dark centre’. This implies that the universe not only had a beginning, but will have a physically destructive end, a ‘Big Crunch’. There are hints here too of Milton’s vision of the falling rebel angels dropping out of the firmament in Book I of Herschel’s favourite,
Paradise Lost.
This itself had possible political overtones for a reader in the 1790s, especially after the execution of Louis XVI in 1792.

So, late descried by Herschel’s piercing sight,
Hang the bright squadrons of the twinkling night…
Flowers of the sky! Ye to age must yield,
Frail as your silver sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven’s high arch shall rush,
Sun sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,
And death and night and chaos mingle all!
⁹⁹

Darwin’s note to this section calmly remarks: ‘From the vacant spaces in some parts of the heavens, and the correspondent clusters of stars in their vicinity, Mr Herschel concludes that the nebulae or constellations of fixed stars are approaching each other, and must finally coalesce in one mass.
Philosophical Transactions
Vol. LXXV.’ He adds however the consoling thought that a new universe may arise, phoenix-like, from the collapsed one (which might please contemporary proponents of multiverses). ‘The story of the phoenix rising from its own ashes with a twinkling star upon its head, seems to have been an ancient hyroglyphic emblem of the destruction and resuscitation of all things.’
¹⁰⁰

Atheistical ideas were growing among Continental astronomers, and with the declaration of war against France these became even more suspect in Britain. In 1792 Herschel’s great friend Jérôme Lalande published a third, enlarged edition of his authoritative
Traité d’Astronomie,
in three volumes, which expressed increasingly sceptical views. Eight years later he wrote an approving Preface to the
Dictionnaire des Athées
(1800). His final view before his death in 1807 was delivered with a flourish: ‘I have searched through the heavens, and nowhere have I found a trace of God.’
¹⁰¹

Pierre Laplace, another avowed atheist, now drew on Herschel’s ‘nebulae hypothesis’ of star formation, and applied it to the formation of the solar system. He expanded this in the first volume of his classic
Mécanique Céleste
(1799). In effect he reasoned that the sun had slowly condensed out of a nebulous cloud of stardust, and then spun off our entire planetary system, just as in a thousand other star systems. There was no special act of Creation. In this way he was able to give a purely materialist account of the creation of the earth, the moon and all the planets. No divine intervention or Genesis was required, nor was it visible anywhere else in the universe.
¹⁰²
Years later, Herschel’s son John would argue that the nebula theory did not apply to the solar system, which was a special case, a ‘singularity’.

Laplace’s cool confidence in avowing atheistical sentiments was legendary. The story was told that after Napoleon had inspected a copy of Laplace’s
Système du Monde,
he challenged the astronomer about his beliefs. ‘Monsieur Laplace! Newton has frequently spoken of God in his book. I have already gone over yours, and I have not found His name mentioned a single time.’ To this Laplace made the magnificent and disdainful reply: ‘Citizen First Consul, I have no need of
that hypothesis.
’
¹⁰³

Herschel however was still interested in extraterrestrial life, and in 1795 published one of his most extraordinary papers, ‘On the Nature and Construction of the Sun’, with the Royal Society, suggesting that the sun had a cool, solid interior and was inhabited by intelligent beings. He reiterated his original claim that the moon was inhabited, and added that by analogy ‘numberless globes’ among the stars must support ‘living creatures’. However, he disapproved of God-hunting within the galaxy, and attacked the ‘fanciful poets’ who had suggested that the sun was ‘a fit place for the punishment of the wicked’, viz. a fiery hell constructed for divine vengeance.
¹⁰⁴

Unlike Joseph Priestley, whose library was burnt down by a Birmingham mob in 1794, Herschel managed to avoid any public reputation for heterodox opinions. Visits to his observatory were regarded as uplifting, even religious experiences. Joseph Haydn claimed that his visit to Herschel at Slough in 1798 had helped him compose his oratorio
The Creation.
No scepticism undermines Haydn’s joyful celebration of a universe abounding in benevolence, and still safely in the hands of the omnipotent God of Genesis. The dramatic moment of declaration occurs when Chaos, suggested by the key of C-minor, gives way to D-flat major, then to C-major, with the thunderous Scriptural proclamation, ‘Let there be light!’
¹⁰⁵

In 1800 Herschel’s continued interest in the sun led him to return to the problem of the prismatic distribution of solar light. While making direct observations of the sun (an extremely hazardous operation), he noticed that there were some indications of heat just outside the visible spectrum. In a series of experiments with thermometers mounted along a marked bar, he succeeded in measuring raised temperatures above the visible spectrum of solar light. Though he did not name it, he had discovered the presence of infra-red light. Once again he had broken a boundary of conventional knowledge.

News of this discovery spread rapidly through the scientific community. Henry Cavendish came over from Cambridge to see the experiment, and Benjamin Thompson, a founding member of the newly formed Royal Institution, came down from London. Sir Joseph Banks, delighted to offset Herschel’s slow progress on the forty-foot, wrote that he considered that this would ultimately prove a more important discovery even than that of Uranus.
¹⁰⁶

On 3 July 1800 a young Cornishman named Humphry Davy wrote excitedly to his friend Davies Giddy: ‘You have undoubtedly heard of Herschel’s discovery concerning the production of heat by invisible rays emitted from the sun. By placing one thermometer within the red rays, separated by a prism, and another beyond them, he found the temperature of the outside thermometer raised by more than that of the inside.’
¹⁰⁷
This marked a decisive advance on Newton’s famous optical experiments with the prism, and implied a hitherto wholly unsuspected power in nature. It would also eventually lead to a decisive breakthrough in stellar astronomy in the twentieth century.

Herschel’s public reputation as an astronomer steadily increased. In September 1799 he had been secretly commissioned by the War Office to provide a hundred-guinea spy telescope to be mounted on the walls of Walmer Castle, on the extreme south-east coastal point of Kent, to give early warning of a possible French invasion fleet. It was thought that the telescope could also spot any signs of the suspected aerial invasion by troop-carrying Montgolfiers.
¹⁰⁸

In 1801 Herschel was included in the first volume of the new biographical series of
Public Characters,
alongside Nelson, Pitt, Charles James Fox, Erasmus Darwin, the artists James Northcote and John Opie, Priestley, the anthropologist Lord Monboddo, the actress Sarah Siddons and the Bishop of Llandaff (who was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh and promptly blew up his entire laboratory). Besides astronomy, Herschel’s entry remarks on his gift for languages, his interest in metaphysics and (perhaps rather out of date) his habit of breaking off a concert to run outside and observe the stars. It also mentions in passing the remarkable talents of his sister Caroline.
¹⁰⁹

In July 1802 Herschel and his wife undertook a visit to Paris, during the short-lived Peace of Amiens. They were greeted as guests of honour by the Institut de France, and chaperoned by their old friend Lalande. They were introduced to the great mathematician Laplace, and were granted an audience with Napoleon, an interview that was chiefly memorable for the ice creams they were given to eat. They initially met the future Emperor in the garden of the Malmaison Palace, where he was supervising the irrigation of some newly planted flowerbeds. He was small and animated, appearing to be expertly informed on whatever subject arose (for example the construction of canals). Then, making a display of extreme informality, Napoleon bustled the party through some french windows into a drawing room, and flung himself down upon an upholstered chair. Herschel pointedly refused to sit in his presence, but carefully answered ‘a few questions on Astronomy and the construction of the Heavens’. After further rather stilted conversation, Napoleon became sententious and announced to the assembled company that astronomy ‘gave proof of an Almighty Wisdom’. Given the pronounced atheistical views of Laplace, his Chief Scientific Advisor (who was also present), Herschel thought Napoleon was being hypocritical, and actually believed nothing of the sort.

This rather froze the atmosphere, until the conversation turned to English racehorses (admirable, thought Napoleon), the English police system (slack), and English newspapers (unlicensed and amazingly out-spoken). Napoleon then had the delicious ice creams served, in several different fruit flavours, while he observed that it was singularly hot, the temperature in the Malmaison garden being precisely 38 degrees in the shade. Herschel noted that the First Consul pointedly used the new centigrade system, and made the quick mental calculation that this meant it was 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Suddenly Napoleon rose from his chair, made a brisk farewell, and without more ado swept out through a side door, pursued by several anxious aides and officers. Herschel only relaxed when he was returning to their hotel in a carriage with Laplace, discussing the rotations of double stars. He suggested that three stars might orbit round a common centre of gravity; but Laplace with an ironic smile contended that as many as six was possible, if not advisable. The First Consul crowned himself sole Emperor four years later.
¹¹⁰

During this diplomatic episode little John, now aged ten, was left in the care of an elderly Polish Count, who showed him the animals in the Jardin des Plantes, which looked as lonely as himself. Aunt Caroline did not go on this Paris trip, but was left behind at the observatory to look after the telescopes and the visitors. She must particularly have missed meeting Lalande, who always included her in his letters, and would still send ‘a thousand tender respects to
la savante Miss
’.
^111
♣

Yet the trip was to prove important to her in one way. On the family’s return from Paris to ‘dear old England’, the excitement of reunion began a new bond with her nephew John. The little boy had fallen ill on the return journey at Ramsgate, and it was Caroline who nursed him back to health, and listened to his tales of Continental adventures, and how he had sadly missed out on those delicious French ice creams. She had always felt tenderly towards the child, and after her move out to Slough in 1799 she noted: ‘my dear nephew was only in his sixth year when I came to be detached from the family, but this did not hinder John and I from remaining the most affectionate friends’. Small herself, she loved sitting beside him on the carpet, ‘listening to his prattle’. From the age of eight he would bring scraps of poetry to her, written ‘in a most shocking handwriting’.
¹¹²

The solitary, rather solemn little boy came to adore his aunt, and it was she, as much as his father, who inspired in him an early passion for science and astronomy. The shy and diminutive Caroline was able to play with him, and enter deeply into his childhood world, in a way that his father, now about to enter his sixties, was unable, or simply too distracted, to do. She arranged games for him in the garden, and messy experiments on the floor of her lodgings. ‘Many a half or whole holiday he was allowed to spend with me…dedicated to making experiments in chemistry, where generally all boxes, tops of tea-cannisters, pepper-boxes, teacups etc served for the necessary vessels, and the sand-tub furnished the matter to be analysed. I only had to take care to exclude water, which would have produced havoc on my carpet.’
¹¹³

When John was found climbing in the scaffolding of the forty-foot, or secretly having tea with the workmen, or cutting geometrical shapes in the panelling of the drawing room with a chisel, it was Caroline who always leaped to his defence.
¹¹⁴
It was also she who gave him several workshop tools for his birthdays, including the small wood-plane, proudly incised with the name ‘John’ on the handle, which he kept for the rest of his life.
¹¹⁵

When John was sent to Eton at the age of eight, it was Caroline who saw how unhappy he was there, and tried to persuade William and Mary to choose a different mode of education from John’s extrovert stepbrother Paul, who had flourished at the school. Mary was reluctant to make the change until she saw John knocked down in a boxing match with an older boy, after which she summarily withdrew him and employed a private tutor, much to Caroline’s delight.
¹¹⁶
A portrait of John at this time shows a small, delicate, wide-eyed boy, wistfully holding a wooden hoop, with the towers of Windsor Castle and Eton distantly on the horizon.

In an extraordinary way the relationship between Caroline and her young nephew began to heal whatever suppressed strains and rivalries there were within the Herschel household. Caroline and Mary were increasingly united in their concern for John’s welfare, while Caroline knew how to interpret emotionally-as well as scientifically-between father and son. Later, this mentoring relationship would take on unusual importance.
^♣