talk and whispers among the King's equerries at Windsor Castle. That a man should be "wretched" and "in danger of ruin," who had established himself at Bath and was making a large income there[1] points to something more serious than she could realise or wished to repeat. Probably the equerries knew about it, and, without revealing secrets, gave her an indistinct idea that something was or had been seriously wrong.
At the very end of 1786, Miss Burney is still in raptures: "This morning my dear father carried me to Dr. Herschel. That great and very extraordinary man received us almost with open arms. He is very fond of my father, who is one of the council of the Royal Society this year, as well as himself." The fondness and the friendship must have been commonplace, when, twelve years later. Dr. Burney did not know that Dr. Herschel had been married for ten years, and was the father of a son six years of age. But the young lady's admiration knows no abatement. Nine months after, it rises to, "Dr. Herschel is a delightful man; so unassuming with his great knowledge, so willing to dispense it to the ignorant, and so cheerful and easy in his general manners that, were he no genius, it would be impossible not to remark him as a pleasing and sensible man." Miss Burney's picture is not over-coloured, according to the evidence of other eye-witnesses. She was then thirty-four years of age, and seven years after married a French emigrant, without fortune and without prospects. Enthusiasm such as she showed for William Herschel,
- ↑ Memoirs, p. 321, "Was called from his lucrative employment at Bath."
