Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/72

suitable for the purpose of an observing-place. Sir Wm. Watson spent nearly the whole time at our house, and he was not the only friend who truly grieved at my brother's going from Bath; or feared his having perhaps agreed to no very advantageous offers; their fears were, in fact, not without reason. . . . . The prospect of entering again on the toils of teaching, &c., which awaited my brother at home (the months of leisure being now almost gone by), appeared to him an intolerable waste of time, and by way of alternative he chose to be Royal Astronomer, with a salary of £200 a year. Sir William Watson was the only one to whom the sum was mentioned, and he exclaimed, "Never bought monarch honour so cheap!" To every other inquirer, my brother's answer was that the King had provided for him.

Everything was immediately packed for the removal, and on the 1st of August, when the brothers and sister walked over to Datchet from Slough (where the coach passed), they found the waggon, with its precious load of instruments, as well as household furniture, waiting to be unpacked. The new home was a large neglected place, the house in a deplorably ruinous condition, the garden and grounds overgrown with weeds. For a fortnight they had no female servant at all; an old woman, the gardener's wife, showed Miss Herschel the shops, where the prices of everything, from coals to butcher's meat, appalled her. But these considerations weighed for nothing in her brother's eyes against the delight of stables where mirrors could be ground, a roomy laundry, which was to serve for a library, with one door opening on a large grass-plot,