< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu
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CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL.

more and more eager for his return, and on the 2d of April, 1764, to the great joy of the family, he made his appearance. The visit was brief, and gave no hope that he would settle in Hanover. In describing it, Caroline is spoken of as "the poor little unnoticed girl," and the event as standing in her memory "fraught with anguish too deep for words." She was disappointed in her hope of enjoying this visit of her brother, for it came at the time of her confirmation. She says:

"With my constant attendance at church and school, besides the time I was employed in doing the drudgery of the scullery, it was but seldom I could make one of the group when the family were assembled together."

The Sunday fixed for his departure was the very day on which she was to receive her first communion:

"The church was crowded and the door open. The Hamburger post-wagon passed at eleven, bearing away my dear brother, from whom I had been obliged to part at eight o'clock. It was within a dozen yards from the open door; the postilion 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. I wish it were possible to say what I wish to say, without feeling anew that feverish wretchedness which accompanied my walk in the afternoon with some of my school-companions, in my black-silk dress and bouquet of artificial flowers, the same which had served my sister on her bridal day. I could think of nothing but that on my return I should find nobody but my disconsolate father and mother, for Alexander's engagements allowed him to be with us only at certain hours, and Jacob was seldom at home except to dress and take his meals."

The last years of her father's life are thus described:

"Changes of abode, not always for the better; anxieties, on account of Alexander's prospects, and Jacob's vagaries; disappointment at seeing his daughter grow up without the education he had hoped to give her—were the circumstances under which the worn-out sufferer struggled through the last three years of his life, copying music at every spare moment, assisting at a concert only a few weeks before his death, and giving lessons until he was obliged to keep wholly to his bed. He was released from his sufferings at the comparatively early age of sixty-one, on the 22d of March, 1767, leaving to his children little more than the heritage of his good example, unblemished character, and those musical talents which he had so carefully educated, and by which he probably hoped the more gifted of his sons would attain to eminence."

Caroline was now seventeen, with only the barest rudiments of education, and for the next two years the time passed uneventfully in household occupations; but at the age of twenty a new turn was suddenly given to her thoughts by the arrival of letters from William, proposing that she should join him at Bath, in England.

"To make trial if by his instruction I might not become a useful singer for his winter concerts and oratorios, he advised my brother Jacob to give me some lessons by way of beginning; but that, if after a trial of two years we should not find it answer our expectation, he would bring me back again. This at first seemed agreeable to all parties, but, by the time I had set my heart upon it, Jacob began to turn the whole scheme into ridicule, and, of course, he never heard the sound of my voice except in speaking, and yet I was left in the harassing uncer-
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