Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville Part 16

... We go to the Herschels' to-morrow, and there I shall finish this letter, as it is impossible to get it in time for Tuesday's post, but I have so much to do now that you must not expect a letter every post, and I had no time to begin this before, and I am too tired to sit up later to-night....

COLLINGWOOD, _Monday_.

This appears to be a remarkably beautiful place, with abundance of fine timber.... W. brought your dear nice letter; it makes me long to be with you, and, please G.o.d, I shall be so before long, as I set off this day fortnight.

_Wednesday._

Yesterday I had a great deal of scientific talk with Sir John, and a long walk in the grounds which are extensive, and very pretty.

Then the Airys arrived, and we had a large party at dinner.... I think, now, as I always have done, that Sir John is by much the highest and finest character I have ever met with; the most gentlemanly and polished mind, combined with the most exalted morality, and the utmost of human attainment. His view of everything is philosophic, and at the same time highly poetical, in short, he combines every quality that is admirable and excellent with the most charming modesty, and Lady Herschel is quite worthy of such a husband, which is the greatest praise I can give her. Their kindness and affection for me has been unbounded. Lady H. told me she heard such praises of you two that she is anxious to know you, and she hopes you will always look upon her and her family as friends. The christening went off as well as possible. Mr. Airy was G.o.dfather, and Mrs. Airy and I G.o.dmothers, but I had the naming of the child--Matilda Rose, after Lady Herschel's sister. I a.s.sure you I was quite adroit in taking the baby from the nurse and giving her to the clergyman. Sir John took Mrs. Airy and me a drive to see a very fine picturesque castle a few miles off.... I have got loads of things for experiments on light from Sir John with a variety of papers, and you may believe that I have profited not a little by his conversation, and have a thousand projects for study and writing, so I think painting will be at a standstill, only that I have promised to paint something for Lady Herschel. Sir John computes four or five hours every day, and yet his Cape observations will not be finished for two years. I have seen everything he is or has been doing.

Your affectionate mother, MARY SOMERVILLE.

[My mother continues her recollections of this journey.]

My next visit was to Lord and Lady Charles Percy at Guy's Cliff, in Warwicks.h.i.+re, a pretty picturesque place of historical and romantic memory. The society was pleasant, and I was taken to Kenilworth and Warwick Castle, on the banks of the Avon, a n.o.ble place, still bearing marks of the Wars of the Roses. I never saw such magnificent oak-trees as those on the Leigh estate, near Guy's Cliff.

I then visited my maiden namesake, Mrs. Fairfax, of Gilling Castle, Yorks.h.i.+re. She was a highly cultivated person, had been much abroad, and was a warm-hearted friend. I was much interested in the princ.i.p.al room, for a deep frieze surrounds the wall, on which are painted the coats of arms of all the families with whom the Fairfaxes have intermarried, ascending to very great antiquity; besides, every pane of gla.s.s in a very large bay window in the same room is stained with one of these coats of arms. Every morning after breakfast a prodigious flock of pea-fowl came from the woods around to be fed.

I now went to the vicinity of Kelso to visit my brother and sister-in-law, General and Mrs. Elliot, who lived on the banks of the Tweed. We went to Jedburgh, the place of my birth. After many years I still thought the valley of the Jed very beautiful; I fear the pretty stream has been invaded by manufactories: there is a perpetual war between civilization and the beauty of nature. I went to see the spot from whence I once took a sketch of Jedburgh Abbey and the manse in which I was born, which does not exist, I believe, now. When I was a very young girl I made a painting from this sketch. Our next excursion was to a lonely village called Yetholm, in the hills, some miles from Kelso, belonging to the gipsies. The "king" and the other men were absent, but the women were civil, and some of them very pretty. Our princ.i.p.al object in going there was to see a stone in the wall of a small and very ancient church at Linton, nearly in ruins, on which is carved in relief the wyvern and wheel, the crest of the Somervilles.

From Kelso I went to Edinburgh to spend a few days with Lord Jeffrey and his family. No one who had seen his gentle kindness in domestic life and the warmth of his attachment to his friends, could have supposed he possessed that power of ridicule and severity which made him the terror of authors. His total ignorance of science may perhaps excuse him for having admitted into the "Review" Brougham's intemperate article on the undulatory theory of light, a discovery which has immortalized the name of Dr. Young. I found Edinburgh, the city of my early recollections, picturesque and beautiful as ever, but enormously increased both to the north and to the south. Queen Street, which in my youth was open to the north and commanded a view of the Forth and the mountains beyond, was now in the middle of the new town. All those I had formerly known were gone--a new generation had sprung up, living in all the luxury of modern times. On returning to London I spent a pleasant time with my son and his wife, who invited all those to meet me whom they thought I should like to see.

[My mother returned to Rome in autumn in company with an old friend and her daughter.]

The winter pa.s.sed without any marked event, but always agreeably; new people came, making a pleasant variety in the society, which, though still refined, was beginning to be very mixed, as was amusingly seen at Torlonia's b.a.l.l.s and tableaux, where many of the guests formed a singular contrast with the beautiful Princess, who was of the historical family of the Colonnas. I was often ashamed of my countrymen, who, all the while speaking of the Italians with contempt, tried to force themselves into their houses. Prince Borghese refused the same person an invitation to a ball five times. I was particularly scrupulous about invitations, and never asked for one in my life; nor did I ever seek to make acquaintances with the view of being invited to their houses.

[The following letters give a sketch of life during the summer months at Rome:--]

MRS. SOMERVILLE TO W. GREIG, ESQ.

ROME, _3rd August, 1845_.

MY DEAR WORONZOW,

... I am glad you are so much pleased with my bust, and that it is so little injured after having been at the bottom of the sea. You will find Macdonald a very agreeable and original person. As to spending the summer in Rome, you may make yourself quite easy, for the heat is very bearable, the thermometer varying between 75 and 80 in our rooms during the day, which are kept in darkness, and at night it always becomes cooler. Thank G.o.d, we are all quite well, and Somerville particularly so; he goes out during the day to amuse himself, and the girls paint in the Borghese gallery. As for myself I have always plenty to do till half past three, when we dine, and after dinner I sleep for an hour or more, and when the sun is set we go out to wander a little, for a long walk is too fatiguing at this season. We have very little society, the only variety we have had was a very pretty supper party given by Signore Rossi, the French minister, to the Prince and Princess de Broglie, son and daughter-in-law of the duke. The young lady is extremely beautiful, and as I knew the late d.u.c.h.esse de Broglie (Madame de Stael's daughter) we soon got acquainted. They are newly married, and have come to spend part of the summer in Rome, so you see people are not so much alarmed as the English.... We went yesterday evening to see the Piazza Navona full of water; it is flooded every Sat.u.r.day and Sunday at this season; there is music, and the whole population of Rome is collected round it, carts and carriages splas.h.i.+ng through it in all directions. I think it must be about three feet deep. It was there the ancient Romans had their naval games; and the custom of filling it with water in summer has lasted ever since. The fountain is one of the most beautiful in Rome, which is saying a great deal; indeed the immense gush of the purest water from innumerable fountains in every street and every villa is one of the peculiarities of Rome. I fear from what I have heard of those in Trafalgar Square that the quant.i.ty of water will be very miserable.

The papers (I mean the Times), are full of abuse of Mr. Sedgwick and Dr. Buckland, but their adversaries write such nonsense that it matters little. I do not think I have anything to add to my new edition. If you hear of anything of moment let me know. Perhaps something may have transpired at the British a.s.sociation....

Your affectionate mother, MARY SOMERVILLE.

MRS. SOMERVILLE TO W. GREIG, ESQ.

ROME, _May 28th, 1845_.

MY DEAR WORONZOW,

I don't know why I have so long delayed writing to you. I rather think it is because we have been living so quiet a life, one day so precisely similar to the preceding, that there has been nothing worth writing about. This is our first really summer-like day, and splendid it is; but we are sitting in a kind of twilight. The only means of keeping the rooms cool is by keeping the house dark and shutting out the external air, and then in the evening we have a delightful walk; the country is splendid, the Campagna one sheet of deep verdure and flowers of every kind in abundance. We generally have six or seven large nosegays in the room; we have only to go to some of the neighbouring villas and gather them. Most of the English are gone; people make a great mistake in not remaining during the hot weather, this is the time for enjoyment. We are busy all the morning, and in the afternoon we take our book or drawing materials and sit on the gra.s.s in some of the lovely villas for hours; then we come home to tea, and are glad to see anyone who will come in for an hour or two. We have had a son of Mr. Babbage here. He is employed in making the railway that is to go from Genoa to Milan, and he was travelling with eight other Englishmen who came to make arrangements for covering Italy with a network of these iron roads, connecting all the great cities and also the two seas from Venice to Milan and Genoa and from Ancona by Rome to Civita Vecchia. However the Pope is opposed to the latter part, but they say the cardinals and people wish it so much that he will at last consent.... Many thanks for the _Vestiges_, &c. I think it a powerful production, and was highly pleased with it, but I can easily see that it will offend in some quarters; however it should be remembered that there has been as much opposition to the true system of astronomy and to geological facts as there can be to this. At all events free and open discussion of all natural and moral phenomena must lead to truth at last. Is Babbage the author? I rather think he would not be so careful in concealing his name....

[My mother made some curious experiments upon the effect of the solar spectrum on juices of plants and other substances, of which she sent an account to Sir John Herschel, who answered telling her that he had communicated her account of her experiments to the Royal Society.]

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL TO MRS. SOMERVILLE.

COLLINGWOOD, _November 21st, 1845_.

MY DEAR MRS. SOMERVILLE,

I cannot express to you the pleasure I experienced from the receipt of your letter and the perusal of the elegant experiments it relates, which appear to me of the highest interest and show (what I always suspected), that there is a world of wonders awaiting disclosure in the solar spectrum, and that influences widely differing from either light, heat or colour are transmitted to us from our central luminary, which are mainly instrumental in evolving and maturing the splendid hues of the vegetable creation and elaborating the juices to which they owe their beauty and their vitality. I think it certain that heat goes for something in evaporating your liquids and thereby causing some of your phenomena; but there is a difference of _quality_ as well as of _quant.i.ty_ of heat brought into view which renders it susceptible of a.n.a.lysis by the coloured juices so that in certain parts of the spectrum it is retained and fixed, in others reflected according as the nature of the tint favours the one or the other. Pray go on with these delightful experiments. I wish you could save yourself the fatigue of watching and directing your sunbeam by a clock work. If I were at your elbow I could rig you out a heliotrope quite sufficient with the aid of any common wooden clock.... Now I am going to take a liberty (but not till after duly consulting Mr. Greig with whose approbation I act, and you are not to gainsay our proceedings) and that is to communicate your results in the form of "an extract of a letter" to myself--to the Royal Society. You may be very sure that I would not do this if I thought that the experiments were not intrinsically quite deserving to be recorded in the pages of the Phil. Trans. and if I were not sure that they will lead to a vast field of curious and beautiful research; and as you have already once contributed to the Society, (on a subject connected with the spectrum and the sunbeam) this will, I trust, not appear in your eyes in a formidable or a repulsive light, and it will be a great matter of congratulation to us all to know that these subjects continue to engage your attention, and that you can turn your residence in that sunny clime to such admirable account. So do not call upon me to retract (for before you get this the papers will be in the secretary's hands).

I am here nearly as much out of the full stream of scientific matters as you at Rome. We had a full and very satisfactory meeting at Cambridge of the British a.s.sociation, with a full attendance of continental magnetists and meteorologists, and within these few days I have learned that our Government meant to grant all our requests and continue the magnetic and meteorological observations. Humboldt has sent me his Cosmos (Vol. I.), which is good, all but the first 60 pages, which are occupied in telling his readers what his book is _not_ to be. Dr. Whewell has just published _another_ book on the Principles of Morals, and also _another_ on education, in which he cries up the geometrical processes in preference to a.n.a.lysis....

Yours very faithfully, J. HERSCHEL.

The Prince and Princesse de Broglie came to Rome in 1845, and Signore Pellegrino Rossi, at this time French Minister at the Vatican, gave them a supper party, to which we were invited. We had met with him long before at Geneva, where he had taken refuge after the insurrection of 1821. He was greatly esteemed there and admired for his eloquence in the lectures he gave in the University. It was a curious circ.u.mstance, that he, who was a Roman subject, and was exiled, and, if I am not mistaken, condemned to death, should return to Rome as French Minister. He had a remarkably fine countenance, resembling some ancient Roman bust. M.

Thiers had brought in a law in the French Chambers to check the audacity of the Jesuits, and Rossi was sent to negotiate with the Pope. We had seen much of him at Rome, and were horrified, in 1848, to hear that he had been a.s.sa.s.sinated on the steps of the Cancelleria, at Rome, where the Legislative a.s.sembly met, and whither he was proceeding to attend its first meeting. No one offered to a.s.sist him, nor to arrest the murderers except Dr. Pantaleone, a much esteemed Roman physician, and member of the Chamber, who did what he could to save him, but in vain; he was a great loss to the Liberal cause.

Towards the end of summer we spent a month most agreeably at Subiaco, receiving much civility from the Benedictine monks of the Sacro Speco, and visiting all the neighbouring towns, each one perched on some hill-top, and one more romantically picturesque than the other. It was in this part of the country that Claude Lorraine and Poussin studied and painted. I never saw more beautiful country, or one which afforded so many exquisite subjects for a landscape painter. We went all over the country on mules--to some of the towns, such as Cervara, up steep flights of steps cut in the rock. The people, too, were extremely picturesque, and the women still wore their costumes, which probably now they have laid aside for tweeds and Manchester cottons.

I often during my winters in Rome went to paint from nature in the Campagna, either with Somerville or with Lady Susan Percy, who drew very prettily. Once we set out a little later than usual, when, driving through the Piazza of the Bocca della Verita, we both called out, "Did you see that? How horrible! "It was the guillotine; an execution had just taken place, and had we been a quarter of an hour earlier we should have pa.s.sed at the fatal moment. Under Gregory XVI. everything was conducted in the most profound secrecy; arrests were made almost at our very door, of which we knew nothing; Mazzini was busily at work on one side, the Jesuitical party actively intriguing, according to their wont, on the other; and in the mean time society went on gaily at the surface, ignorant of and indifferent to the course of events. We were preparing to leave Rome when Gregory died. We put off our journey to see his funeral, and the Conclave, which terminated, in the course of scarcely two days, in the election of Pius IX. We also saw the new Pope's coronation, and witnessed the beginning of that popularity which lasted so short a time. Much was expected from him, and in the beginning of his reign the moderate liberals fondly hoped that Italy would unite in one great federation, with Pius IX. at the head of it; entirely forgetting how incompatible a theocracy or government by priests ever must be with all progress and with liberal inst.i.tutions. Their hopes were soon blighted, and after all the well-known events of 1848 and 1849, a reaction set in all over Italy, except in gallant little Piedmont, where the const.i.tution was maintained, thanks to Victor Emmanuel, and especially to that great genius, Camillo Cavour, and in spite of the disastrous reverses at Novara. Once more in 1859 Piedmont went to war with Austria, this time with success, and with the not disinterested help of France. One province after another joined her, and Italy, freed from all the little petty princes, and last, not least, from the Bourbons, has become that one great kingdom which was the dream of some of her greatest men in times of old.

We went to Bologna for a short time, and there the enthusiasm for the new Pope was absolutely intolerable. "Viva Pio Nono!" was shouted night and day. There was no repose; bands of music went about the streets, playing airs composed for the occasion, and in the theatres it was even worse, for the acting was interrupted, and the orchestra called upon to play the national tunes in vogue, and repeat them again and again, amid the deafening shouts and applause of the excited audience. We found the Bolognese very sociable, and it was by far the most musical society I ever was in. Rossini was living in Bologna, and received in the evening, and there was always music, amateur and professional, at his house.

Frequently there was part-singing or choruses, and after the music was over the evening ended with a dance. We frequently saw Rossini some years later, when we resided at Florence. He was clever and amusing in conversation, but satirical. He was very bitter against the modern style of opera-singing, and considered the singers of the present day, with some exceptions, as wanting in study and finish. He objected to much of the modern music, as dwelling too constantly on the highest notes of the voice, whereby it is very soon deteriorated, and the singer forced to scream; besides which, he considered the orchestral accompaniments too loud. I, who recollected Pasta, Malibran, Grisi, Rubini, and others of that epoch, could not help agreeing with him when I compared them to the singers I heard at the Pergola and elsewhere. The theatre, too, was good at Bologna, and we frequently went to it.

One evening we were sitting on the balcony of the hotel, when we saw a man stab another in the back of the neck, and then run away. The victim staggered along for a minute, and then fell down in a pool of blood. He had been a spy of the police under Gregory XVI., and one of the princ.i.p.al agents of his cruel government. He was so obnoxious to the people that his a.s.sa.s.sin has never been discovered.

From Bologna we went for a few weeks to Recoaro, where I drank the waters, after which we travelled to England by the St. Gothard pa.s.s.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: The vessel on board which this bust was s.h.i.+pped for England ran on a shoal and sank, but as the accident happened in shallow water, the bust was recovered, none the worse for its immersion in salt water.]

CHAPTER XVI.

PUBLISHES "PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY"--LETTER FROM HUMBOLDT--CHRISTMAS AT COLLINGWOOD--LETTER FROM MRS. SOMERVILLE--FARADAY--LETTER FROM FARADAY--KEITH JOHNSTONE'S MAPS--WINTER AT MUNICH--SALZBURG--LAKE OF GARDA--MINISCALCHI--POEM BY CATERINA BRENZONI--LETTER FROM BRENZONI--LETTER FROM MRS. SOMERVILLE--eLOGE BY MINISCALCHI--WINTER AT TURIN--BARON PLANA--CAMILLO CAVOUR--COLLINE NEAR TURIN--GENOA--TERESA DOVIA--FLORENCE--MISS F.P. COBBE--VIVISECTION--EXCURSIONS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD--CHOLERA--MISERICORDIA--PIO NONO IN TUSCANY--COMET--TUSCAN REVOLUTION--WAR IN LOMBARDY--ENTRY OF VICTOR EMMANUEL INTO FLORENCE--LETTERS FROM MRS. SOMERVILLE--MY FATHER'S DEATH--LETTER FROM MISS COBBE.