1831

At the time when he left the College, Mr. De Morgan was living with his family in Guilford Street, but removed in the autumn of 1831 to 5 Upper Gower Street, where he lived till our marriage in 1837. His only sister had been married the year before to Mr. Lewis Hensley, a surgeon of ability and good practice. My own family left Stoke Newington and settled at 31 Upper Bedford Place, Russell Square, in 1830.

State of Science

In May 1828, shortly after his first coming to London, Mr. De Morgan had been elected a Fellow of the Astronomical Society, and in February 1830 took his place on the Council. Of the state of Science just before that period, Sir John Herschel said: ‘The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this country, especially in its more exact departments. … Mathematics were at the last gasp, and Astronomy nearly so—I mean in those members of its frame which depend upon precise measurement and systematic calculation. The chilling torpor of routine had begun to spread itself over all those branches of Science which wanted the excitement of experimental research.’

1836

Soon after Mr. De Morgan's return to the college a great affliction befell the family in the sudden death of his sister Mrs. Hensley in her confinement. Her brother had left his home in Gower Street, satisfied that she was doing well, and on his return in the afternoon inquired as he entered the house how she was going on. The servant replied that Mrs. Hensley was dead. It had been quite unexpected, and was a terrible blow to her mother, her husband, and brothers. Mrs. Hensley left three daughters and the infant son whose birth immediately preceded her own death. It was many months before her brother Augustus recovered from the shock he received in hearing so suddenly of the event. In writing to my mother of the affliction of his own, he added, ‘As for me, I am stunned, and hardly know what I write.’ And it was far longer before the grief caused by this, his first experience of the death of one whom he loved most affectionately, abated.

The religious doubts and difficulties created in his mind by the doctrinal teaching of his early years were not the only troubles arising from the same cause. It was natural that a mother, so anxious and true-hearted as his, should not see without pain anything like what she thought carelessness in religious matters, and that her anxiety to produce a belief like her own should be intensified by her recent sorrow.

We passed the night in Garrison with Captain and Mrs. Phillimore, and set off in the cart next morning for Green Mountain, following a road which winds round Cross Hill at the same elevation above Garrison as the Captain's Cottage.

We were even now not much nearer our destination than when we left Mars Bay, but there is no choice of routes to perplex the tourist in Ascension, and we took perforce this dreaiy way—round the side of Cross Hill, then four miles across a barren plain, diversified by the familiar piles of clinker. Black, brown, and reddish brick-dust-coloured cinder was gathered into heaps around us, and ground into dust along our path.

Here and there the road would run for a short distance parallel to the iron pipe which conveys the water from Green Mountain to Garrison, and on passing a small square block of mason-work about half-way, we read thereon in neatly painted letters, “Lady Hill Tank.” Tanks are placed at intervals along the whole line of pipe to hold the reserve water, and, if possible, to gather any that may be collected in their neighbourhood. The next one we passed had the additional attractions of a pump and a trough, and bore the inscription, “God be Thanked Tank.” The next was called “Travellers' Tank,” and so on. Altogether I think we passed six of these tanks before reaching the bottom of the “Ramps.”

At daybreak on the 1st of August, David was hard at work with the men, dismantling the snug little Observatory. Again the sound of tools was heard outside Commodore's Cottage, but not, it seemed to me, with the same pleasant ring, and I longed to run away somewhere beyond the noise. However, I had fortunately little time to indulge in fancies. Camp gear, stores, earthenware, glass, kitchen utensils, everything must be packed before 3 p.m., and stowed on board the steam-launch in readiness to sail at 6 o'clock the following morning.

I often wonder how we got it done. I think it must have been, not only by the zealous assistance of officers and men, but by the stimulus we ourselves received from the invigorating atmosphere of sympathy and good will which surrounded us. At all events, before sunset, Commodore's Cottage was ruthlessly plundered of such of its contents as would fit our camp, and the croquet ground again stood empty as we had found it. I felt “rooted up” and miserable; but without a doubt that we were on the right way. So, to cover my nervousness and restlessness, I went to bed.

Next morning, as the sun rose, a rare procession passed down the coast. A steam-launch, with Captain Phillimore and David on board, towed along two wellladen lighters and a sailing pinnace, and carried, moreover, quite a tail of little surf-boats, or “dingeys.”

The day after Christmas was also a holiday in Garrison, and we had a visit during the morning from our old friend Sam the first, in Sunday suit, along with another Krooman whom he introduced as his “chum.”

“We come wish you merry Christmas-time,” said Sam; and we thanked them, hoping in turn that they had had a happy Christmas.

“No, ma, me no happy Christmas, other man drink it all,” said Sam.

I didn't quite understand him at first, but it gradually dawned upon me that, to poor Sam's thinking, Christmas happiness was in proportion to the amount of bubbly-water he could consume.

How I wish we could show our good will to these poor fellows in some other way than by giving them “something to drink!” But there are so few things that they appreciate. Some of them, indeed, accept money eagerly, but for the most part they “no care.” And it is no wonder, for all the money they earn has to be given up to the Big Brother.

Although it is an undoubted fact that the Krooman cannot live as a slave, and has been known in slavery to starve himself to death, yet this Big Brother system almost amounts to bondage.

I remember a story once told me by a learned friend. He had been explaining to a lady, with much care and minuteness, the reasons why the axis of the earth is slowly though constantly changing its direction in the heavens, and why, therefore, the star, which is the Pole star now, was not the Pole star 4000 years ago.

The lady had encouraged our friend to proceed with his explanation by the most marked attention, and by such appreciative interjections as “Really!” “Indeed!” “How beautiful!” In this way he was led to more than usually minute description, and with much unction proceeded to crown his argument as follows.

“Now you see, by this change of the direction of the earth's axis, if we have any permanent record of an observation of the angular distance of a star from the Pole, we can calculate how long ago that record was made.” “Of course!” “And in the Great Pyramid we have such a record.” “Indeed! how wonderful!” “The entrance passage points to the north, and its angle of inclination corresponds with the lower culmination of the Pole star of 4000 years ago.”

Here a little hand was laid on our friend's arm, and his feelings may be better imagined than described, when, in an anxious voice, the question was put, “And pray, Professor, what is an angle?”

TheBoxer remained with us until the 17th of November.

Some days before she left, David and I set out to Garrison one afternoon, on pleasure bent, and found the croquet ground, the aforetime site of our Observatory, converted into a lawn-tennis ground. Generally speaking, at 4 p.m. Garrison is dead, to all outward appearance—the sail-cloth blinds are still drawn round the verandahs, and nothing of life stirs abroad. But to-day there was life, without doubt, in front of Commodore's Cottage, and it struck fresh and charming upon us, in contrast to the solitude we had left behind.

Captain Alington of the Boxer, who had for the present taken up his quarters at Commodore's Cottage, was the prime mover of this lawn-tennis; the hospitable dispenser of tea to the combatants, and the active promoter of whatever healthful amusement gave pleasure to his junior officers, and to the few young people on board the Ascension. The spirit of dissipation seized upon us, and as a covering of cloud kindly promised to hide our folly from the contemptuous stars, we threw off the “Sun's Parallax” for a night, and gave ourselves up to mirth and revelry. The officers of the Boxer being accomplished players on wind and stringed instruments, we actually succeeded in getting up a dance; a thing unheard of in the annals of the island, and the few ladies did excellent duty to their numerous partners.

But the Kroomen have betatyed me into a long digression, and it is now absolutely necessary that I return to Commodore's Cottage and its inmates.

We had hoped to spend our Christmas holidays at Green Mountain, but having no authentic information as to when the Mail would arrive, we dared not venture far from harbour. Counting from the departure of the previous Mail, she was due on the 10th of January; but the captain of a barque which arrived from the Cape on Christmas Eve, brought word from the agents there, that the steamer calling next at Ascension would leave Cape Town on Christmas Day. In this case we must expect her on the 3rd or 4th of January. It was very annoying to be “in boxes,” and in a state of uncertainty about our departure for ten days, but it would have been infinitely more annoying to be left behind. Accordingly, we gave up the idea of removing our household to the Mountain, and contented ourselves with making short excursions from Garrison instead.

It was now Ascension mid-summer, and there was light enough for a good walk after five o'clock. Our first spare afternoon was devoted to “Dead Man's Beach,” which I have already described as lying south of Pierhead, and which, notwithstanding its gloomy name, is bright and life-like, as the blue waves dance in the sunlight, and break in quick succession on the glistening sand.

After, having dwelt at Mars Bay for three weeks in perfect peace and harmony, we were beginning to fancy ourselves a model happy family, when one Sunday morning we had a rude awakening from our dream. While quietly reading after breakfast in the dining tent, Sam's black face suddenly appeared at the door without its accustomed grin, and wearing an expression altogether new.

“Graydon beat me—he say he kill me,” were the only coherent phrases in poor Sam's excited, broken English; and he really looked so savage and so unlike himself that I felt afraid of him. David was perplexed, and went at once to seek an explanation in the kitchen.

After a short time he came back, satisfied that he had read the Riot Act to good purpose. Sam had been teazing Graydon, who had lost his temper and threatened to strike him, but the little quarrel seemed to have passed over, and we thought we should hear no more of it. Judge then of my dismay when, an hour or two afterwards, I saw Graydon and Sam engaged in a hand to hand fight on the clinker! We both rushed out instinctively, to separate the combatants, who desisted immediately we appeared; but by this time they were bleeding profusely, and looked shamefully disreputable. Each, of course, blamed the other, but both were so excited, that it was impossible to arrive at any clear understanding of the matter.

The sun has set on our last Ascension Sunday; but a day or two yet remain for us to scramble among the clinker, and we have determined on a visit to the “Devil's Riding School.”

When, from Green Mountain, we had looked down upon all the little craters that are scattered over the plains, we had longed to get to them, and this was our first opportunity. At four o'clock on Monday morning we were astir, and, having well broken our fast, were ready within an hour to set out crater-climbing.

Dear old Jimmy Chivas was patiently waiting for me, tied to the verandah gate; Rover, and Brackley's little terrier, Captain, were wild with excitement, and, while we were getting ready, they kept running hither and thither, kicking up dust in all directions, and barking furiously; no doubt to the annoyance of the still slumbering Garrison. Fortunately Jimmy Chivas had seen too much of the world's vanities to care to join in these frolics, and started off sedately, after I had comfortably seated myself on his poor old back, and hung from the pommel of the saddle a leather bag, containing some bottles of ginger-beer and designed to carry a return freight of clinker souvenirs.

The night had been tolerably cool, and, as we turned southwards just before sunrise, we were met by a chilly breeze that was perfectly delightful.

And now followed a repetition of sea-discomfort—nausea and stuffiness; but on this occasion it was short lived, for after a couple of days the captain kindly arranged that our cabin, near the screw, should be changed for one on deck, far forward.

Here we caught the welcome current of air caused by the ship's motion, and for the first time in my sea experience I awoke in the morning refreshed. I awoke too, with the sweet sense of home upon me, and pleasant recollections of a certain dear old farmhouse; for my dreams had been mingled with the bleating of sheep, the cackling of geese and the crowing of cocks. Poor things, there was little chance of their being led out to green pastures, or participating ever again in the varied pleasures of a fascinating dung-hill. Prisoners they were, under sentence of death, but they crowed lustily, and “ba'a ba'aed” sweetly, nevertheless; and, grateful for the cheer their good spirits gave to me, I would hope that they dreamt not of to-morrow. I know not whether to ascribe it to the inspiriting influence of these, my feathered and four-footed neighbours, but certain it is, that on the third day of voyaging I could see things straight, and had sensations of pleasure in the prospect of dinner.

It was a gloomy home-coming. I was tired and cross, and the skies were angry too. Clouds were thicker and heavier than I had ever seen them in Garrison; and not even the news of a complete measurement of Mars on the previous night, could remove the heavy weight of fog that had settled on me and Mars Bay. My bright vision of a land where skies were always blue was bidding me farewell, and the parting was grievous. To be sure the tents were much improved since my former visit, and altogether there was now a good foundation on which to build comfort; but I looked at everything through the fog, having, unfortunately, lost my couleur-de-rose spectacles for the time, and I felt that I should not find them until I had seen Mars.

No observations were possible that night, and next day—Sunday, it rained heavily. This was the first wet day we had experienced in Ascension, and the first we had ever spent under canvas. Our tent doors of course faced windward, and a tepid shower-bath roused us early in the morning.

The bedroom-tent was now floored with undressed planks. The ropes were well secured to the ground by iron pegs, driven into the clinker, the usual wooden pegs having no hold here. An ample mosquito net protected the bed; and a military-chest of drawers, an iron wash-stand, a bath, and a couple of wicker chairs completed the furnishing.

In order to make the process of taking root on Ascension intelligible, it is necessary first to explain something of the nature of its soil, and the peculiar manner of its cultivation. In other words, to make our own particular story less incoherent, it will be advisable, in the first place, to tell the little I know of the past history of our new home, and in what condition we found it in 1877.

Like its upturned face, the history of Ascension is featureless and colourless, being only redeemed from utter inanity by its contradictoriness. Doubtless there were stirring times here once on a day when Vulcan's forge was alight, but that was before we short-sighted mortals dared to peep into this now deserted workshop of the grimy god.

On Ascension Day, 1501, Juan de Nova, the great Portuguese navigator, found the fire gone out, and only hills of cinder and plains of ash to bear record of past labours. Ascension, so called by its discoverer from the fact of his having sighted it on Ascension Day, is one of the peaks of a submarine volcanic ridge which separates the northern and southern basins of the Atlantic, and is situated in lat. 8° S., long. 14° W., almost midway between the coasts of Africa and South America. It is one of the most isolated islands in the world, and has no land nearer than St. Helena, which lies 800 miles to the South-East.

Three days brought us within sight of Ascension. What a sight it was! The sun had been up some hours when we anchored in Clarence Bay on the 13th of July, and the “Abomination of Desolation” seemed to be before our eyes as we looked eagerly at the land.

A few scattered buildings lay among reddish-brown cinders near the shore—a sugar-loaf hill of the same colour rose up behind and bounded the view. We looked about in a sort of hopeless way for “Green Mountain,” but it was nowhere to be seen, and we set it down as a fable—a mere myth. “Nothing green,” we said, “exists, or could exist here.” Stones, stones, everywhere stones, that have been tried in the fire and are now heaped about in dire confusion, or beaten into dust which we see dancing in pillars before the wind. Dust, sunshine, and cinders, and low yellow houses frizzling in it all!

Is that Ascension?

Well, not quite; its coast presented a livelier scene, though one that we would gladly have dispensed with. A black perpendicular wall of rock jutted out into the bay, and on either side of it a stretch of white glistening sand swept to north and south. It is on this rock that the “Tartar Stairs” are cut, and here we must land.

A few days after the triple excitement of Mars, the Orontes, and the Mail, two blood-stained travellers arrived at our encampment towards sunset, with torn clothes and limping gait. At first sight of them I felt a thrill of alarm, but was soon relieved by a familiar voice calling out cheerily, “Halloo, Gill, we have not fallen among thieves, only upon the clinker—the horse bolted with us, made too free with the road, and a big bump threw us out on the top of each other.”

Here was a thrilling tale wherewith to stir up our quiet life, and after hearing it in full detail I registered an inward vow, never to drive across the clinker with that horse. Our friends, happily, did not seem hurt, beyond a few bruises and some slight cuts about the arms, but these were enough to stain their torn sleeves and give them an air quite touching and heroic.

Of course there was considerable abuse of our thoroughfare, and we now heard for the first time, that the day the Orontes was in harbour, several of her officers, with two lady passengers, had set out with the intention of paying us a visit. But the bumping had been such as to bump a wheel off one cart; and some accident, I forget what, having happened to the other, the whole party was obliged to return to Garrison without having been able to reach our inaccessible retreat.

New Year's Day, 1878, was a hot day in Ascension, and we tried hard to keep cool by recalling former New Year's Days spent in Scotland, much to the disadvantage of the present one.

What a burden life becomes when its chief end is to war against heat! Life, did I say? It is only existence in such latitudes, and with brain half-awake you speculate dreamily about life, with its hurry and feverish bustle, as a thing far off and beyond you; and if sometimes you try to grasp it, nerves and spirit fail, you miss it, and, worn out with the effort, sink back into a deeper lethargy than before. That is to say, if you do not wear some gre-gre strong enough to defy the evil power of indolence—a Fetish too evil and too powerful in these climes to be easily overcome. But English pluck and Scotch endurance can do it. Stay at home, or hang these gre-gres round your neck.

In Ascension each man wore one; and at six o'clock this New Year's morning my husband and two of the island officers were hard at work, practising for a rifle-match that they were to shoot the same afternoon against three officers of H.M.S. Sea-gull, then in harbour.

David was sadly out of practice; neither did the scoring of his allies, in this preliminary canter, give much promise of success, especially as their opponents had a high reputation as marksmen.

Fortunately the clouds did not follow us, and the triangulation of the Mars stars now advanced apace. A week of lovely evenings, and fresh strength to use them—what more could the heart of astronomer desire? Alas! this was Mars Bay, and not Arcadia! I cannot think why the poet says,

It seems to me that man, and woman too, wants a very great deal; and the beauty of the universe and the contemplation of the glory of far-off worlds, what consolation do they give, when the kitchen-chimney smokes, when a tooth aches or a new shoe pinches?

“Is life worth living?” asks one of our modern philosophers, and another answers, “That depends on the liver.” True, oh Punch. Then why should we sneer if a man fears indigestion as a mortal foe, and the heart of woman fails when a good cook falls sick in the desert where there is none to replace him?

Such piteous case was ours! Hill fell a victim to severe rheumatism at this time, and woe is me! I had never attended cooking classes at South Kensington.

Although we did not know it at the time, our cook had been originally invalided here for this very malady, caught, like every evil thing, on the Gold Coast; and the damp air of the Mountain had unfortunately brought on a relapse.

Some weeks now passed by pleasantly and busily, but so entirely devoid of incident, that I fear my readers would find in a daily chronicle of them only monotonous repetition.

Sometimes a pretty little donkey would peep over the rocks at us and scamper off again; sometimes a wild cat would mistake my larder for public property, and bring involuntary fasts into the camp. Almost daily a ship of some kind passed us; sometimes so far off as to seem a mere white speck on the horizon, at other times so close that we could easily read her signals without the help of a glass. “What news of the East?” “Is England at war?” “When is the mail due?” were invariable questions; and often, when outward-bound vessels found that a mail was expected soon, they would send letters ashore at Garrison, so that Ascension has still good claim to its old name, “The Sailor's Post Office.”

About the middle of November H.M.S. Beacon, homeward-bound from China, put into harbour for coals and provisions, and her coming made another break in our little community, for at sight of her Graydon grew home-sick. Having exceeded his term of service on the West Coast by two years, he might have gone home with the Orontes in September; and David could not find it in his heart to oppose him now, much as we were likely to suffer by a change.