Part 2

This is not the place for enlarging upon the family influences of her home life, but it should be said that these were truly fostering, and that she was a devoted and loving daughter, to whom the parental sympathy, strongly given on both sides, was at once inspiration and joy. Mrs. Clerke was a remarkable woman, with rare powers of insight and of capacity for love. Her conversational powers were of a high order, as was her musical ability. Those privileged to be present at her afternoon gatherings will not easily forget their pleasures; and intimate friends will long remember the charms of her music. Her rendering of old Irish airs on Ireland’s national instrument--the harp--was delightful; and so indeed was her piano-playing. She told me one day near the close of her life, when near her eightieth birthday, that she practised on her instruments every day. This was interesting; and showed that power of persevering work--even under the natural disabilities of age--which was a marked feature in her daughter Agnes.

The bust, a photograph of which is here reproduced, was executed in Rome when Mrs. Clerke was about fifty years of age.

In considering the fostering influences of Agnes Clerke’s home life, that of her only brother, Aubrey St. John Clerke, should be mentioned.

Mr. Clerke won the first gold medal of Trinity College, Dublin, in Mathematics at his Degree examination in 1865, and was awarded a studentship of £100 a year for seven years--the highest honour obtainable at the Degree examination. He also won the second gold medal conferred by the University for Experimental and Natural Science.

Mr. Clerke has told me--what indeed I always believed--that although not professing to be a mathematician, his sister’s perception of mathematical truth was singularly clear; and I feel sure that her brother’s mathematical powers and knowledge of Natural Science were a great advantage to her, for the helpfulness of thorough sympathy is very great. In her later life she took lessons in mathematics, and expatiated to me on the pleasure she felt in them. Not that she aimed at making herself a mathematician; she was too wise to so err. Her object was simply to go far enough to enable her to do better her own particular work. No one that I have known--man or woman--better understood that the half may be better than the whole; that the art of doing, consists, greatly, in--not doing. She could renounce. And in these days great renunciation is necessary if useful work is to be done.

In 1861 the Clerke family moved to Dublin, and in 1863 to Queenstown. The winters of 1867 and of 1868 were spent at Rome; those of 1871 and 1872 at Naples; and the next four winters at Florence--the summers of 1874-76 being passed at the Bagni di Lucca. Both sisters profited to the full from this sojourn in Italy, as their subsequent writings show; but Agnes at Florence worked specially hard, reading constantly in the Public Library there, and always, I believe, with one great object before her.

It is a question of much interest to examine into the early leanings and aspirations of those who distinguish themselves later, and Agnes Clerke early determined her life work. Before leaving Skibbereen, about the age of fifteen, she had clearly before her the intention of writing a history of Astronomy, and it is thought, had actually written a few chapters. Her first article accepted for the Edinburgh Review, is in harmony with the above facts.

Agnes Clerke’s first wish to examine into Science generally, was roused by the perusal of Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues; but as regards Astronomy, Sir John Herschel’s Outlines was her earliest guide--and I can imagine how much this really great book was to her, from my own early use of it.

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Well do I remember reading an article in the Edinburgh Review for October 1880, on “The Chemistry of the Stars.” I admired it much: I wondered who had written it, for it seemed to me to be unlike the work of any one then known in the scientific world. Five years later I solved my puzzle, for in 1885 appeared the History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century; and I had not looked far into it before I exclaimed: “Now I know who wrote that article in the Edinburgh Review!”

Shortly after--dining at a house where to dine was always to share in a feast of reason and flow of soul--and sitting between our distinguished and kindly host Sir William Bowman, and Sir Robert Ball, Sir Robert and I exchanged ideas about the new History of Astronomy, and about its author, the new “Unknown.” With all his own acuteness, Sir Robert showed that the writer could not be a practical astronomer. But I was delighted to find that my admiration for the History was fully shared by him, and that his praise of it was very warm.

Shortly afterwards I entered upon a friendship, and upon a companionship in Astronomy, which have been among my best pleasures.

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Agnes Clerke’s literary life may be said to have begun in 1877 with the acceptance of her article “Copernicus in Italy,” by Henry Reeve, then editor of the Edinburgh Review, who recognised the value of his new contributor and kept her at work. The number of her contributions to the Edinburgh is fifty; and they are all of a high order.

Agnes Clerke, with her family, returned to England in 1877, and settled in London. With the publication of the History of Astronomy in 1885 may be said to have begun her astronomical life.

She read systematically, and cultivated personal relations with a wide circle of astronomical workers, in person, or by correspondence. I consider that these relations had much to do with the success of her work. Her sympathies were so keen, her interest so warm, her longing for further truth so intense,--that every one liked to offer her all they could!

In 1890 appeared her second book, The System of the Stars.

The Observatory for December 1890 contains an article by me on this work. A review, in the strict sense of the term, it was not, because there was much in the book which, for obvious reasons, I could not discuss without becoming controversial. But upon one important question I spoke strongly; and I venture now to recall and re-urge the position I then tried to expound. Briefly it is this. The progress of Science and the growth of its literature during the last quarter of a century has been so enormous, that a new order of worker is imperatively called for; and I hailed in Agnes Clerke an admirable example of such a worker, devoting herself to Astronomy, which is at once the oldest and, in its new developments, the youngest of the Sciences--the science which Poincaré has lately so eloquently declared has given the conception of law to all the others.

I ventured to sketch what should be the qualifications and aims of such workers; and the years which have gone by since 1890 have but deepened my conviction that there is a splendid and ever-growing field--even now white unto harvest--ready for these special workers. Their mission is to collect, collate, correlate, and digest the mass of observations and papers--to chronicle, in short, on one hand; and on the other, to discuss and suggest, and to expound: that is, to prepare material for experts, and at the same time to inform and interest the general public. There is urgent need of better educated public opinion in this country.

That such a mission may be a splendid and fruitful one has been shown by Agnes Clerke; what careful preparation it requires, and how much it demands of those who would enter upon it, her career also shows.

The immense increase in astronomical literature is hardly realised except by those engaged in dealing with it. To give but one instance--“The Annual Index of Astronomical Literature for 1905,” published under the auspices of the Astronomische Gesellschaft, contains over two thousand references, collated from three hundred separate publications.

The strain of such work as I am indicating is great indeed, involving, as it should, the power of holding loose in the mind, so to speak, an immense mass of facts, and also a power of rapidly associating or dissociating them as work and discovery may suggest.

In one of her latest works, Modern Cosmogonies, Agnes Clerke herself dwelt upon this strain. “Year by year,” she says (p. 160), “details accumulate, and the strain of keeping them under mental command becomes heavier.”

Pathetic words! written--almost in blood! For not long before had been published her last large work, Problems in Astrophysics; a work she feared she could not live to complete--a work which at times she was only able to toil at for half-hour periods.

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All through her life Agnes Clerke was a student. Lectures and Friday Evening Discourses at the Royal Institution which bore upon her work she was careful to attend. A three months’ visit to Sir David and Lady Gill at the Cape in 1888 gave her some Observatory opportunities which increased her power of clearly realising the records of observatory and laboratory work. Sir George Baden-Powell invited her to accompany his yachting party to Novaya Zemlya for the solar eclipse of August 1896. When I expressed very strongly my regret that she had declined this invitation (chiefly I now know because she feared she might be prevented from keeping literary engagements absolutely to time), she surprised me a week later with an earnest request that she and I should form a little expedition of two, and try what we could see. She had divined an unspoken longing of mine, and I cannot refrain from recording the unselfish love that would fain have gratified me. But it could not be.

She was awarded in 1892 the Actonian Prize of one hundred guineas for her works on Astronomy, by the Royal Institution; and in 1901 was commissioned by the Managers to write the first Essay under the Hodgkins Trust, on Low Temperature Research at the Royal Institution by Professor Sir James Dewar from 1893-1900.

In 1903 she received the distinction of being elected an Hon. Member of the Royal Astronomical Society--an honour and title held previously only by Mrs. Somerville, Caroline Herschel, and Ann Sheepshanks. I may perhaps be permitted to say that my own deep gratification in my share of this great honour conferred on us by the Society was heightened by receiving it with Agnes Clerke.