Some short passages from Agnes Clerke's writings are given which give an idea of her style of writing as well as of her versatility.

Precursors of Newton

(from Edinburgh Review, 1879)

Planning and writing

Agnes Clerke's second book, The System of the Stars, appeared in November 1890, five years after the History. The author described it as ‘a general survey of knowledge regarding our sidereal surroundings’ – by which was meant the entire observable universe, believed to be confined within one single great agglomeration of stars. The first part of the meticulously planned book dealt with the characteristics of the various varieties of stars, the second with star groupings, nebulae, and, finally, with the structure and evolution of the cosmos. An appendix had useful tables, listing stars of different types, stellar motions and masses. The book was as successful as the History and was, moreover, more advanced and more sophisticated, being not merely a record of accepted facts but a critical discussion of their contemporary interpretation.

David Gill, who took an interest in the book from the beginning, remained involved in its progress throughout. As the chapters were written, they were sent to Gill who returned them with his ‘scribblings in margins’. Some chapters involved longer notes and warnings such as ‘You cannot evolve star distances from your inner consciousness – you must be peculiarly careful about facts’. He gave a caution about her uncompromising views on the finite nature of the stellar system.

Nature's spiritual clues

Margaret Huggins, commenting on Agnes Clerke's Modern Cosmogonies, claimed that it was ‘not only history, but a work of philosophical thinking and of imaginative insight of a very high order’. ‘Where else’, she asked, ‘is shown in recent philosophical writing such vision and faculty divine for seizing and pointing out the reasonable spiritual clues, set in what we call Nature – clues helping to sustainment of soul in the midst of the majestic mysteries surrounding us.’ Years before, referring to The System of the Stars (1890), she had admired her friend's reverence for the Deity at a time when ‘it has become much a fashion to be really afraid to even mention the word God when science is concerned’. In that book, Agnes Clerke had referred to ‘the vision of a Higher Wisdom’, brought about by the study of astronomy, and to ‘the sublime idea of Omnipotence, to which the stars conform their courses while “they shine forth with joy to Him who made them”’.

Such pious sentiments were common enough in the writings of an earlier generation. Mary Somerville in the Introduction to The Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834) refers to ‘the goodness of the great First Cause, in having endowed man with faculties by which he can not only appreciate the magnificence of his works, but trace with precision the operation of his laws’. John Herschel mentions ‘the Master-workman with whom the darkness is even as the light’.

The world scene

The election of Agnes Clerke and Margaret Huggins to the Royal Astronomical Society, almost 70 years after their only two predecessors were similarly honoured, would appear to indicate that women played a very small role in astronomy in nineteenth century Britain. That indeed was the case. An international register compiled early in the new century listed all observatories, astronomers and their instruments operating world-wide at that time. It showed that those engaged in astronomy or allied fields (geophysics, navigation, meteorology) in institutions throughout the entire world numbered fewer than a thousand. In Britain, the number of people in permanent paid posts in astronomy barely exceeded 100, of whom half were computers.

A conspicuous aspect of these statistics relates to the position of women. The United States, in contrast to all other countries, employed women on the staff of their observatories for astronomical research. They were part of the accepted scheme of things. Nineteen names of members of the well-established women's team of spectroscopists and photometrists at Harvard are recorded. Each of the four all-women colleges in the United States also had two or three female astronomers on its academic staff, while a few further women were employed as computers at other institutions. The grand total was fifty.

The history of the Harvard scheme, which started in 1875, has been told many times. Though the women were not highly ranked nor well paid, they were doing cutting-edge research and constantly making discoveries in the fast-growing field of astrophysics.

The Edinburgh Review

The move to London effectively marked the beginning of Agnes and Ellen Clerke's prolific literary careers. Agnes' first articles in the Edinburgh Review were written in Italy and published in 1877.

The Edinburgh Review, described by Agnes Clerke as ‘an organ of high critical thought’ was a quarterly journal devoted to literary, political and occasionally scientific subjects of topical interest. It carried lengthy reviews of recently published books or papers but went far beyond their immediate subject matter to wider general discussions. The contributors were anonymous. As its title suggests, the Edinburgh Review originated in Edinburgh at the beginning of the century but had long been published in London. Henry Reeve (Figure 3.1), its editor from 1855 onwards, was a distinguished man of letters and an influential figure on the London literary scene. The Edinburgh Review took a Liberal stance in political matters, as opposed to the Tory philosophy of its contemporary and rival the Quarterly Review.

Evidently keen to enter the field of journalism but unsure as to where to begin, Agnes Clerke offered Reeve two different topics from her Italian repertoire – recent politics and history of science – hoping, no doubt, that one or other would succeed. Reeve not only accepted both articles but asked for more.

Growing up in Skibbereen

John Clerke, a man of profound all-round learning, was to his children a painstaking teacher, competent to instruct them in Latin, Greek, mathematics and the sciences. On the practical side, he had a chemistry laboratory in the house where he performed experiments, and a telescope mounted in the garden through which the children were sometimes treated to views of Saturn's rings or Jupiter's satellites.

Astronomy for him was more than a hobby. The four-inch telescope, probably a portable transit instrument, was equipped with a chronograph for timing the transits of stars across the meridian. With this arrangement Clerke was able to provide a time service for the town of Skibbereen, which was as yet unconnected to the outer world by either railway or telegraph.

The principle of timekeeping by the stars is that the astronomer, by referring to a catalogue of star positions, knows the exact instants when these stars cross the southern meridian in the sky each day or night. The time thus recorded is sidereal time, which the astronomer, again by use of the almanac, is able to convert to local mean solar time, in this case Skibbereen time. This in turn could be converted to Dublin time (the standard Irish time, itself 25 minutes behind Greenwich mean time) by allowing for the difference in longitude between the two places.

The Clerkes

Agnes Mary Clerke, born on 10 February 1842 in Skibbereen, Co. Cork, was the second of three children of John William Clerke, manager of the Provincial Bank in that town, and his wife Catherine Mary née Deasy (Figure 1.1).

The Clerkes were a well-known and extensive family in West Cork. According to one account, the founder of the line was a major in King William's army who stayed on in Ireland after 1691. In the nineteenth century the Clerke family records yield a remarkable number of highly talented persons. Agnes' grandfather, St John Clerke, was a much loved physician in Skibbereen; his cousin was the renowned Dr Jonathon Clerke of Bandon. The latter's son, Major Sir Thomas Henry Shadwell Clerke, was made a knight of the Royal Hanoverian Order after service in the Peninsular War, and became a military journalist. He took a keen interest in the sciences and in 1823 became a founder member of the Royal Astronomical Society, to which Agnes Clerke was to be elected some 90 years later. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Geographical Society. He was made Foreign Secretary of the latter society on account of his linguistic prowess. Among other noted members of the Clerke clan in the nineteenth century was Skibbereen-born Thomas W. Clerke, LTD, Judge of the Supreme Court in the USA, author of important treatises on law and co-founder in 1841 of the Irish Emigrant Society.

Studies in Homer

Another revision of her History of Astronomy was now due, but before tackling it Agnes Clerke turned ‘as a sort of recreation’ to preparing a little volume on Homer which came out early in 1892. ‘Greek enough to read the Iliad and the Odyssey in the original can be learned with comparative ease’, she wrote, ‘and what trouble there may be in its acquisition meets an ample reward in mental profit and enjoyment of a high order.’ As an adult she had made herself proficient in Greek with a volume of Homer and a dictionary – the best way, she thought, of mastering a dead language, much better than spending months on the disheartening drudgery of committing grammar to memory (though keeping a Grammar always by for reference). Her intention in writing about Homer was to share her own pleasure with her readers and to promote a ‘non-erudite’ study of Homer's ‘noble poetic monuments’ at a time when archaeological discoveries were uncovering actual physical evidence for the existence of ancient civilisations.

Familiar Studies in Homer was a collection of essays on aspects of the Hellenic world as gleaned from the Iliad and the Odyssey. It included one on Homeric Astronomy based on an article originally published in Nature. Other delightful essays dealt with such matters as Homer's dogs and horses, trees and flowers, herbs and food.

The state of astronomy in about 1880

In those early years in London, while carrying out her many literary commitments, Agnes Clerke soon realised how far astronomy had advanced since she had studied it in Ireland.

That decade had been a time of unprecedented progress. Until the mid-nineteenth century astronomy had been principally concerned with the positions and movements of the heavenly bodies. Astronomers recorded with ever greater precision the paths of the planets against the background of the distant ‘fixed’ stars in order to understand their motions in space and to predict their future locations. They also searched for slight shifts in the positions of the stars themselves in order to discover their distances and their motions through space. For this purpose they produced star charts and compiled massive catalogues, but worried little about the nature of the stars themselves.

The motions of the planets around the sun had been elucidated by Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century in his great law of gravitation. Since Newton's time, more refined mathematical applications of that law were capable of explaining intricate details of the movements of the various bodies in the solar system caused by their gravitational influences on each other. Academic astronomers, who worked on these problems, tended to be mathematicians. Other astronomers specialised in studying the appearances of the sun, moon and planets through the telescope. The stars themselves, however, being enormously distant tiny points of light, appeared to be beyond the grasp of earthly observers.

The British Astronomical Association

Apart from the Royal Institution, which welcomed the public to its scientific lectures, there was for a long time little opportunity in London for Agnes Clerke and like-minded women to foregather with people who shared their enthusiasm for astronomy.

Men astronomers, amateur and professional, enjoyed a common fraternity at the Royal Astronomical Society, founded in 1832, which met every month in London. A fraternity it truly was, as women were excluded by statute from its ranks. Fellowship of the Society was open to any man with an interest in astronomy, provided he was duly nominated and paid his fees. It was at the same time much more than a social club. The Presidency of the Society or the award of its gold medal were high accolades, and many leading members were also fellows the Royal Society.

In 1890 the British Astronomical Association was founded to cater for the interests of amateur astronomers, some of whom were dissatisfied with the Royal Astronomical Society because the fees were high and because women were ineligible. Some complained also that the society was becoming too academic. The suggestion of forming a society to include ordinary lovers of astronomy came originally from W.H.S. Monck, the Dublin amateur astronomer who had been Aubrey Clerke's student contemporary, in a letter to the Observatory magazine, citing as a model the older Liverpool Astronomical Society to which Agnes Clerke belonged by correspondence since 1885.

Continued dealings with the Cape

David Gill, tremendous enthusiast that he was, never ceased to complain that his Observatory at the Cape was inadequately funded. The Cape Observatory, like the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, operated under the British Admiralty. In practice this meant that Gill was not independent of the Astronomer Royal in Greenwich: to quote Brian Warner, historian of the Cape Observatory, ‘from 1887 [when financial support for his Cape Catalogue was halted] until his retirement Gill had continually to fight the effects of Christie's hostility to almost every proposal that emanated from the Cape.’ He kept the catalogue going from that date onwards by contributing half of his own salary to it.

In 1892 Gill declined to be considered for the Chair at Cambridge, which went to his friend Sir Robert Ball from Dublin, insisting that he could do more for astronomy by staying at the Cape. Only a year later, however, in 1893, he was despondent, and Agnes Clerke took upon herself to alert him to a possible opening at home, following the death of Charles Pritchard, Savilian Professor at Oxford. ‘You will be surprised at my telegraphing you about the Savilian Professorship’ she wrote in a follow-up letter, ‘but it seemed to me so important under the circumstances that you knew the appointment is still open that I risked incurring the blame of officiousness.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of extraordinary scientific progress. In astronomy, bigger and better telescopes, and the techniques of spectroscopy and photography, brought about a revolution in humankind's vision of the universe. The documentation – in the English-speaking world at least – of the astronomical labours of that important era was almost entirely due to Agnes Mary Clerke, historian of astronomy and painstaking chronicler of astrophysical discovery as she witnessed it over thirty years of her active life. This remarkable woman, educated solely within her own family and through her own private studies, not only kept abreast of astronomical progress world-wide but also had a genuine understanding of the matters on which she reported and the gift of communicating them through her fluent and prolific writings. Her books – in particular her Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century, first published in 1885 and reprinted over almost twenty years – are treasured by historians and by amateur lovers of astronomy alike as sources of reliable and enjoyable information on that period. She was also much in demand in her lifetime as a contributor to literary journals and encyclopaedias.

Agnes Clerke numbered among her circle of friends and correspondents many of the eminent astronomers of the day. Unobtrusive and gentle by nature, she nevertheless became an authority on astrophysics and a figure of respect in the literary world.

The Magnum Opus 1903

Agnes Clerke's third and last major book was Problems in Astrophysics. This was the book that she had told Gill, as far back as September 1894, was ‘haunting’ her, and which she felt ‘driven to try’. It was to be very different from her other books, and very ambitious – not an account merely of past events and achievements, but of desiderata and of ideas for future research. It was to be, she believed, her magnum opus.

It would appear that Agnes Clerke began writing in earnest at the beginning of 1898, after her mother's death. Gill's reaction, on hearing that the book was in progress and to be finished in a year, was:

A new edition of The System of the Stars

As soon as Problems in Astrophysics had been reviewed in 1903 Agnes Clerke decided to bring out a second edition of her earlier book, The System of the Stars. The first edition of 1890 had been published by Longmans, but as that firm was not interested in a second edition Agnes Clerke arranged with Blacks, the publishers of her other two major books, to take it on.

‘I want to make the book essentially of the twentieth century, retaining the old form yet little of the substance’, Agnes Clerke told Gill, adding ‘I shall be covetous of photographs, advice, information – nothing that you will be kind enough to tell me will come amiss’. A few days later she wrote to Campbell at Lick, telling him also of her plan for the new edition, having first thanked him for his kind review of her Problems which had appeared in the last number of Astrophysical Journal. ‘I do not venture to ask for loan of any valuable photos which you are reserving for separate and special publication, but may beg leave to use your diagrams from Bulletins.’ Campbell replied positively, saying that he hoped to be in a position to allow her to use the Lick nebula photographs.

Agnes Clerke wrote in a similar vein to Pickering, asking for permission to reproduce certain sets of Harvard spectra among her full-page photographic illustrations.

Of Agnes Clerke's London-based friends, Sir David Gill continued to take an active interest in astronomy after he retired. He was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1908 and was the Society's President in 1909–11. He died in 1914; Lady Gill survived him until 1919.

The Tulse Hill observatory ceased to function in 1908, when Sir William Huggins was 85. The instruments reverted to the Royal Society, which had originally supplied them, and were given to the Cambridge University Observatory. The Hugginses in their retirement collected and edited their scientific papers, which were published in a handsome volume, The Collected Scientific Papers of Sir William Huggins, in 1909. Sir William Huggins died in 1910; Lady Huggins died in 1916.

In a reorganisation of British astronomy, Sir Norman Lockyer's solar observatory at South Kensington was transferred to Cambridge University in 1910, greatly to his disappointment. He then set up a private observatory at Sidmouth, Devon, later named the Norman Lockyer Observatory, which opened in 1913 and still flourishes. He died in 1920.

Walter Maunder retired in 1913 after 40 years of service with the Royal Observatory, but resumed his duties after the outbreak of the First World War, when many of the Greenwich staff were absent on military service. His wife Annie also returned to Greenwich from 1915 to 1920, as a volunteer. Both continued to be active in the British Astronomical Association until their deaths. Walter died in 1928, Annie in 1947.