Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Rapidly approaching the age of forty John Herschel might well have become a recluse. But in spite of two disastrously failed attempts at marriage he still longed for intimacy-for someone with whom he could share the rediscovered joys of his scientific life. His Scottish friend James Grahame came to his rescue. In a frankly engineered match he introduced Herschel to the family circle of Emilia Calder Stewart the widow of Dr Alexander Stewart a Gaelic scholar and a mathematician. The large and cheerful family filled a void in John Herschel’s life. Before long the youngest daughter Margaret Brodie caught his eye. Beautiful and possessed of a sweet countenance she was at nineteen only half his age. But Maggie was a highly intelligent and determined young woman fully capable of sharing Herschel’s intellectual interests. In September 1828 Herschel met up with Grahame and “rowed with him… by moonlight to Netley Abbey” to discuss his impending proposal to Margaret. As Herschel recalled it the friends “passed an hour in a close & whispered confidence in the main aisle under the ash trees with the stars looking in above. An unearthly scene! (MP)