The Age of Wonder (78 page)

Again, the question of the traditional Biblical age of the earth is gently passed over with the observation that geologists (notably Lyell) were now regularly producing ‘traces of extreme antiquity’, which contradicted the idea of any special creation, and simply made the formation of the earth ‘contemporaneous with that of the rest of the planets’. Presumably this was because the Creator made no difference between ‘one day and a thousand years’.
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In one remarkable passage, entitled ‘Errors of the Senses’, Somerville confronts the counter-intuitive nature of science. She even seems to suggest that science underwrites philosophical scepticism, by suggesting that none of man’s physical perceptions is ultimately capable of yielding any objective account of the surrounding universe at all: ‘A consciousness of the fallacy of our senses is one of the most important consequences of the study of nature. This study teaches us that no object is seen by us in its true place, owing to aberration; that the colours of substances are solely the effects of the action of matter upon light; and that light itself, as well as heat and sound, are not real beings, but modes of action communicated to our perceptions by the nerves. The human frame may therefore be regarded as an elastic system, the different parts of which are capable of…vibrating in unison with any number of superposed undulations, all of which have their perfect and independent effect. Here our knowledge ends; the mysterious influence of matter on mind will in all probability be for ever hid from man.’
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Again, the coming crisis in Victorian religious beliefs, a new kind of wonder born out of radical doubt, seems obscurely glimpsed in such passages. Nonetheless, the book was respectfully reviewed by the highly orthodox William Whewell, and went into numerous editions. It was notable because it was written by a woman, but not particularly
addressed
to women readers-let alone children. This pointed up the paradox that women were not yet accepted as equals by the male scientific community, although in the crucial field of interpretation and explanation to a general public, they were already the pioneers.

The first official woman member of the BAAS was not accepted until 1853, though this was not entirely through want of trying. Charles Babbage wrote archly, before the Oxford meeting of 1832: ‘I think that
ladies
ought to be admitted at some kind of assembly: remember the dark eyes and fair faces you saw at York and pray remember we absent philosophers sigh over the eloquent descriptions we have heard of their enchanting smiles…If you will only get up an evening
converzazione
for them at Oxford, I will try and start a ball for them at Cambridge.’
^64
♣

In October 1834 it was a sign of the times that Coleridge’s obituary appeared in the same edition of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
as its first full report of the highly successful fourth BAAS meeting in Edinburgh. As many as 1,200 members attended, including 400 women, though these were still only permitted at suitably selected sessions. The geologist Professor Adam Sedgwick gave the plenary address on the future role of science, which was fully quoted in the
Gentleman’s Magazine
’s summary. The open seminars, embracing the main scientific disciplines (astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, botany and statistics) lasted for a week. It was not dull, but it was becoming professional Victorian science. There were concerts, balls, steam-train rides and fireworks. David Brewster talked about his latest scientific toy, the kaleidoscope. Professor Buckland, the geologist, gave another admirable lecture on Fossil Reptiles, and called attention to God’s sense of humour in his grotesque creations: ‘He convulsed his audience with laughter…with his numerous comical hits.’
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7

Erasmus Darwin’s grandson, Charles Darwin, had gone up as an undergraduate to St John’s College, Cambridge, in autumn 1827. Initially he seemed bumbling and directionless, struggling to escape from the oppressive shadow of his grandfather. But he was soon inspired by his tutor, the kindly Professor of Botany, John Henslow, and began a microscopic study of pollen grains. He steadily came under the influence of the young science group based at Trinity and St John’s, was befriended by the Lancashire polymath William Whewell, and taken on a vigorous geological expedition to North Wales by the muscular Christian Adam Sedgwick (a disciple of Wordsworth’s).

‘No opinion can be heretical but that which is not true,’ declared Sedgwick stoutly at the Geological Society. ‘Conflicting falsehood we can comprehend; but truths can never war against each other. I affirm, therefore that we have nothing to fear from the results of our enquiries, provided they be followed in the laborious but secure road of honest induction.’
⁶⁶
Darwin would never forget that declaration as, for thirty years, he struggled with the implication of evolution by natural selection.

With Henslow he read and discussed the papers of Charles Babbage and John Herschel, becoming aware of the subtle implications of the inductive philosophy, and also of the rumbling dissatisfactions with the Royal Society. Inspired by Herschel’s
Natural Philosophy,
he heavily underlined a passage beginning: ‘To what, then, may we not look forward…what may we not expect from the exertions of powerful minds…building on the acquired knowledge of past generations?’
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But above all Darwin had begun to dream of a great tropical sea expedition. He studied the voyages of Bougainville, Cook and Banks, along with the
Personal Narrative
of Alexander von Humboldt. By April 1831, the end of his third and final year at Cambridge, he was dreaming of escape, as he confided to his sister Caroline. ‘All the while I am writing now my head is running about the Tropics; in the morning I go and gaze at Palm trees in the hothouse and come home and read von Humboldt: my enthusiasm is so great that I can hardly sit still on my chair…I never will be easy till I see the peak of Tenerife and the great Dragon tree; sandy dazzling plains, and gloomy silent forest are alternately uppermost in my mind.’
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At the age of twenty-two, and in the shining wake of Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin had departed aboard HMS
Beagle
in December 1831.

8

John Herschel’s marriage of 1829, according to his aunt Caroline’s prescription, had given him both emotional stability and independence, but did not cramp his scientific ambitions. While Margaret produced a large family, Herschel continued to plan the astronomical expedition to the southern hemisphere, now including his wife and children as an essential part of the scheme. In 1832 he turned down repeated offers of government sponsorship, determined to avoid any imperial implications of the kind that had been so fatal to Mungo Park’s second expedition.

He also briskly rejected a proposal from the Royal Society to underwrite part of his expenses. He wished to make himself ‘responsible to no one for the results of my expedition’, and to retain ‘the unconditional power of prosecuting it or abandoning it at any moment that it may suit my
caprice’.
He would not even consider sailing in a Royal Navy ship, except in the unlikely event of a declaration of war with another maritime power. ‘But on the other hand, in that event, the King’s ships would have other fish to fry than landing stargazers at the world’s end.’
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Like Banks before him, John Herschel had the freedom of action that belonged to a wealthy man. He had inherited £25,000 under his father’s Will ten years before, and further lands and property were now left him by his mother, Lady Herschel, on her death in 1832.
⁷⁰
So he confidently committed all his own resources to the project. After considering the peripatetic possibilities of South America, with thoughts of Banks and Humboldt in mind, he finally decided to set up a full-scale observatory and scientific station in South Africa.

On 13 November 1833 John and his family left Portsmouth for passage to Cape Town. The dismantled twenty-foot telescope was put aboard in a series of padded packing cases, and his declared intention was a major astronomical expedition to observe and map all the stars of the southern hemisphere, just as his father Sir William had done for the northern. Perhaps it was no coincidence that this was the very scheme that Sir Joseph Banks had been dreaming about in the last months before his death.

The Herschels remained at Cape Town for four years, mapping and cataloguing the stars and nebulae, and botanising in the hills above Cape Town. Their packed notebooks show a ceaseless family activity: daily meteorological observations, zoological and botanical notes, and hundreds of beautiful plant drawings made, with infinite care, using a
camera lucida.
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Throughout this time their correspondence with Caroline was never discontinued, and John confided to her that these were the happiest years of his whole life. The young and vivacious Lady Herschel also wrote frequently to her ‘aunt’. She acted as hostess to numerous scientific visitors, and often proudly recalled her father-in-law Sir William Herschel, and ‘his tough little German sister’.
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One of their most notable visitors was young Charles Darwin, on his way back from the Galapagos islands in June 1836. He wrote to his sister as the
Beagle
docked at the Cape of Good Hope: ‘I have heard so much about [Herschel’s] eccentric but very amiable manners, that I have a high curiosity to see the Great Man.’
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He was not disappointed. Always on the lookout for fine specimens, Darwin tracked Sir John to his ‘most retired charming situation’ six miles up country from the main settlement, in a remote clearing surrounded by fir and oak trees, with the twenty-foot installed like some heathen totem pole at the centre.

Herschel himself was never still, an intense, animated figure obsessively bustling about with innumerable projects and observations-in fact just like his father. He appeared ‘to find time for everything’, even collecting rare Cape bulbs and carpentering bits of furniture. Darwin, who always valued a tranquil and ruminative lifestyle, initially found Herschel’s ceaseless activity intimidating and ‘rather awful’. But gradually he saw that the Great Man was ‘exceedingly good natured’, that his wife Lady Herschel was kindness itself, and that the whole Cape project was truly astonishing. He counted this meeting with Sir J. at this early moment in his career ‘a memorable piece of good fortune’.
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Herschel’s expedition to the Cape came to represent for Darwin the important ideal of the independent working scientist, which inspired the rest of his life. On his return to London, his friend Charles Lyell wrote to Darwin: ‘Don’t accept any official scientific place, if you can avoid it, and tell no one that I gave you this advice…My question is, whether the time annihilated by learned bodies is balanced by the good they do? Fancy exchanging Herschel at the Cape for Herschel as President of the Royal Society-which he so narrowly escaped being!…Work exclusively for yourself and for science…Do not prematurely incur the honour or penalty of official dignities.’
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9

Several times Caroline Herschel-by then in her eighties-imagined sailing out to join John’s family with her seven-foot telescope, hoping she might ‘shake off some 30 years from my shoulders that I might accompany you on your voyage’. It would be like reviving the old days with her brother at Bath. Her sense of frustration expressed itself in a deliberate, comic return to the broken English of her first years in England. ‘Ja! If I was 30 or 40 years
junger
and could go too?
In Gottes namen!
’
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Caroline did discover, however, a startling new skill in the art of public relations. She learned to feed the local Hanover newspapers with scientific tales from the Cape, in such a way that they were soon being picked up by the international press. Thus Herschel’s work had a following right across Europe. Perhaps she had learned the importance of good publicity from her old friend Sir Joseph Banks in Soho Square. One of her earliest
coups
appeared in
The Times
for 27 June 1834.

The
Hamburg Correspondent
…has the following from Hanover. The friends of astronomy will be pleased to learn that Sir John Herschel has written from the Cape of Good Hope to his aunt, Miss Caroline Herschel, resident here. He has already fixed his Astronomical instruments, especially his 20 foot telescope, and ere now has begun his observations…He resides in the country, about five miles from Cape-Town, near the Table Mountain, in an enchanting valley; lofty trees, rare and beautiful shrubs and flowering plants surround his dwelling; his eye gazes upon clear and cloudless skies, studded with those innumerable stars that are the objects of his elevated pursuits. He is sanguine in his hopes of making important discoveries.
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Sometimes these news stories moved slightly beyond Caroline’s control. The following year, on 25 August 1835, the
New York Sun
ran a huge splash scoop that Sir John Herschel had finally proved one of his father’s most daring astronomical speculations to be true.
Herschel had discovered life on the moon!
The highly dramatic story held the front page of the newspaper for four days, doubled its circulation, and set off a frenzy of excitement from the east coast to the west. Each day the
New York Sun
gave more and more details of Herschel’s observations: mighty forests growing in the lunar craters, strange plants, fishes, beaver-like animals (all enormous because of the low lunar gravity), and finally, small apelike creatures with highly intelligent faces and convenient bat-like wings, flitting through the tenuous lunar atmosphere.
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