Part 37

Since writing the above the author has ascertained, that towards the close of April, 1770, the orrery was purchased for the college of New-Jersey. On the 23d of that month, Dr. Witherspoon, then the president of that college, accompanied by some gentlemen, went to Norriton for that purpose, and it appears that the orrery was then nearly finished.

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This circumstance gave, at the time, some dissatisfaction to the more immediate friends of the Philadelphia institution; though it is confidently believed that no degree of censure, whatever, could be justly imputed to Mr. Rittenhouse, on the occasion; perhaps, none was fairly chargeable on any of the parties. Mr. Rittenhouse, however, experienced some unpleasant sensations; although, in order to avoid any suspicion of his having been actuated by an undue partiality towards the College of Princeton, he had made such a stipulation in favour of its sister-institution, as could not fail, when made known, to remove any imputation of impropriety of conduct on his part, in the transaction. This is explained by the following passage in the letter to his brother-in-law, last referred to,—evidently penned without any reserve. After noticing the dissatisfaction just mentioned, he says—“I would not, on any account, incur the imputation of cunning; nor are there, probably, many persons living who deserve it less: yet I am greatly mistaken if this matter” (his transfer of the Orrery to Princeton College) “does not, in the end, turn out to my advantage, and consequently, to your satisfaction. At present, the point is settled as follows: I am to begin another” (Orrery) “immediately, and finish it expeditiously, for the College of Philadelphia. This I am not sorry for; since the making of a second will be but an amusement, compared with the first: And who knows, but that the rest of the colonies may catch the contagion.”

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Footnote 157:

The following extract of a letter from Dr. Smith to Mr. Barton, written the day after Mr. Rittenhouse’s on the same subject, will further explain the embarrassing circumstances that attended this transaction, and the delicate situation in which Mr. Rittenhouse, particularly, was placed.

“I never,” said the Doctor, “met with greater mortification, than to find Mr. Rittenhouse had, in my absence, made a sort of agreement to let his Orrery go to the Jersey College. I had constantly told him, that if the Assembly did not take it, I would take it for our College, and would have paid the full sum, should I have begged the money. I thought I could depend, as much as on any thing under the sun, that after Mr. Rittenhouse knew my intentions about it, he would not have listened to any proposal for disposing of it, without advising me, and giving our College the first opportunity to purchase. I think Mr. Rittenhouse was never so little himself, as to suffer himself to be taken off his guard on this occasion. This province is willing to honour him, as her own: and believe me, many of his friends wondered at the newspaper article; and regretted that he should think so little of his noble invention, as to consent to let it go to a village; unless he had first found, on trial, that his friends in this city had not spirit to take it: For if he would wish to be known by this work—and introduced to the best business and commissions for instruments, from all parts of the continent,—his Orrery being placed in our College, where so many strangers would have an opportunity of seeing it, was the sure way to be serviceable to Himself.

“You will think, by all this, that I am offended with him, and that our friendship may hereby be interrupted: Far from it—I went to see him, the day the newspaper announced the affair. I soon found that I had little occasion to say any thing: he was convinced, before I saw him, that he had gone too far. But still, as no time was fixed for delivering the Orrery, I was glad to find he had concluded that it should not be delivered till next winter; against which time, he said, he could have a second one made, if this one staid with him for his hands to work by. As I love Mr. Rittenhouse, and would not give a man of such delicate feelings a moment’s uneasiness, I agreed to wave the honour of having the first Orrery, and to take the second.”

In fact, the Orrery was not at that time finished; for Mr. Rittenhouse then informed Dr. Smith, that he was under the necessity of waiting for brass from England, to enable him to complete it. “The result (continued the Doctor) will be, I think, that he will keep his Orrery till towards winter; and should they not then receive it, in the Jersies, they will take it at New-York.”

On the 7th of the following month, Dr. Smith wrote thus finally, to Mr. Barton, on this subject—“Your and my friend, Mr. Rittenhouse, will be with you on Saturday. The Governor says, the Orrery shall not go: he would rather pay for it, himself. He has ordered a meeting of the Trustees on Tuesday next; and declares it as his opinion, that we ought to have the first Orrery, and not the second,—even if the second should be the best.”

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The second Orrery was soon completed: for, on the 15th of March, 1771, only ten months after the date of his last quoted letter to the Rev. Mr. Barton, he wrote to that gentleman, on the subject, in these words. “Dr. Smith bids me to tell you he will write by your son William. He is fully employed, at present, with his Lectures, and has great success, having raised upwards of two hundred pounds. I am sure you would afford me some additional compassion, if you knew the drudgery of explaining the Orrery to two hundred persons, in small companies of ten or twelve, each: the satisfaction they universally express, makes however some amends.”

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Footnote 158:

The Rev. Dr. Peters wrote thus to Mr. Barton, under the date of March 22, 1771—“Dr. Smith has done wonders in favour of our friend Rittenhouse. His zeal has been very active: he has got enough to pay him for a second orrery; and the assembly has given him 300l. The Doctor, in his introductory lecture, was honoured with the principal men of all denominations, who swallowed every word he said, with the pleasure that attends eating the choicest viands; and in the close, when he came to mention the orrery, he over-excelled his very self!”—“Your son will acquaint you with all the particulars respecting it. The lectures are crowded by such as think they can, thereby, be made capable of understanding that wonderful machine: whereas, after all, their eyes only will give them the truth, from the figures, and motions, and places, and magnitudes of the heavenly bodies.”

Footnote 159:

The author of The Vision of Columbus, a Poem, (first published at Hartford in Connecticut, in the beginning of the year 1787,) alludes to the Rittenhouse-Orrery, and to the numerous resort of persons to the College-Hall, for the purpose of viewing that machine, in the following lines, (book vii.)

“See the sage RITTENHOUSE, with ardent eye, Lift the long tube and pierce the starry sky; Clear in his view the circling systems roll, And broader splendours gild the central pole. He marks what laws th’ eccentric wand’rers bind, Copies Creation in his forming mind, And bids, beneath his hand, in semblance rise, With mimic orbs, the labours of the skies. There wond’ring crouds with raptur’d eye behold The spangled Heav’ns their mystic maze unfold; While each glad sage his splendid Hall shall grace, With all the spheres that cleave th’ ethereal space.”

Footnote 160:

In a letter from Dr. Smith to Mr. Barton, dated March 23, 1771, is this paragraph:—

“I have been so busy these two months past, that I could not find a moment’s leisure to write. A good deal of time was to be given to the public lectures, the Orrery, and the getting our dear friend Rittenhouse brought into as advantageous a light as possible, on his first entrance into this town as an inhabitant; all which has succeeded to our utmost wishes; and the notice taken of him by the province, is equally to his honour and theirs. The loss of his wife has greatly disconcerted him; but we try to keep up his spirits, under it.”

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The italicised words, in the foregoing paragraph, have reference to a great domestic calamity Mr. Rittenhouse had experienced, only a very few months before,—the death of an affectionate wife, whom he tenderly loved. This afflicting event appears to have overspread, for some time, the highly sensible and delicate mind of our Philosopher, with a considerable degree of gloominess. In this mood, then, he thus commenced the letter just quoted: “You are not unacquainted with the dismal apprehensions of losing what is most dear to you” (alluding, here, to a dangerous fit of illness from which Mrs. Barton, the writer’s sister, had recently recovered;) “and therefore you can better judge, than I can describe, what I feel at present. I do, indeed, endeavour to bear my loss in the manner you recommend: but how irksome does every thing seem! Nothing interesting, nothing entertaining! except my two little girls; and yet my reflecting on their loss sinks me the deeper in affliction. What adds to my misfortune, is the hurry of business I am engaged in, and know not how to get rid of. My design, at present, is to keep the children with me, until I can conveniently take a ramble to Europe.” And, in the same strain of melancholy reflections, he concluded this letter to his friend and brother-in-law: “I suppose,” said he, “you have been informed, that the Assembly have made me a donation of three hundred pounds. This would have been very agreeable to me, if my poor Eleanor had lived: but now, neither money—nor reputation—has any charms; though I must still think them valuable, because absolutely necessary in this unhappy life.”

Although such was the keen sensibility of this amiable man, on so distressing an occasion, his numerous avocations of business and studies, aided by the correctness of his own reflections, gradually dispelled these over-shadowings of his dejected mind; and ere long, he very naturally regained his usual serenity and cheerfulness of temper.

A new phænomenon in the heavens soon after engaged his attention: this was the Comet which appeared in June and July, 1770. His Observations on this Comet, with the elements of its Motion and the Trajectory of its Path, were communicated to the American Philosophical Society, through his friend Dr. Smith, on the 3d of August, soon after the Comet’s disappearance, and were dated at Norriton the 24th of the preceding month. The letter to Dr. Smith, that covered this communication, and in which he says, “Herewith I send you the fruit of three or four days labour, during which I have covered many sheets, and literally drained my ink-stand several times”—will demonstrate how completely his mind was occupied in those researches.

About the close of the following autumn, some accounts of Observations of this Comet in England and France, respectively, reached this country, when a further correspondence on the subject took place between Dr. Smith and Mr. Rittenhouse. These communications are published, entire, in the first volume of the Philosophical Society’s Transactions; and, with those already noticed, complete the list of our Astronomer’s papers in that volume. It is here worthy of remark, that a comparison of Mr. Rittenhouse’s Observations of this Comet with those of M. Messier in France and Mr. Six in England, confirmed the theory of the American Observer.

Before this subject is dismissed, however, it may not be deemed uninteresting to subjoin an extract of a letter which Mr. Rittenhouse addressed to the Rev. Mr. Barton (from Norriton,) on the 30th of July, respecting the same Comet: it will, at least, serve to shew the zeal of our Astronomer, on the occasion.

“I told you,” said Mr. Rittenhouse, “that some intricate calculation, or other, always takes up my idle hours” (he seems to have considered all his hours as “idle” ones, which were not occupied in some manual employment,) “that I cannot find time to write to my friends as often as I could wish: a new object has lately engrossed my attention. The Comet which appeared a few weeks since was so very extraordinary, that I could not forbear tracing it in all its wanderings, and endeavouring to reduce that motion to order and regularity, which seemed void of any. This, I think, I have accomplished, so far as to be able to compute its visible place for any given time: and I can assure you, that the account from York, of its having been seen again near the place where it first appeared, is a mistake. Nor is Mr. Winthrop of Boston happier, in supposing that it yet crosses the Meridian, every day, between twelve and one o’clock, that it has already passed its perihelion, and that it may, perhaps, again emerge from the Southern Horizon. This Comet is now to be looked for no where but a little to the North of, and very near to, the Ecliptic. It rises now a little before day-break; and will continue to rise sooner and sooner, every morning. Yet perhaps, on account of its smallness, we may see it no more; though I rather think we shall: But I must stop, for fear of tiring you.”