Margaret,Lady Herschel (
néeBrodie Stewart; 1810–1884) was a British
botanical artist and hostess. While she was in
Cape Colony, she and her husband made over a hundred botanical paintings of wild flowers, which they brought back to Europe for study. Her husband was one of the leading scientists of
Victorian Britain.
Life
Margaret Brodie Stewart was born in 1810.[1] Her father was Alexander Stewart DD, a
ScottishPresbyterian minister and
Gaelic scholar.[2]
She married Sir
John Herschel on 3 March 1829[2] at St. Marlyebone Church in London. Through her husband she met intellectual women like the mathematician
Mary Somerville, who visited Margaret and John's house regularly, and the novelist
Maria Edgeworth.[3]: 251 This led Margaret to seek out a friendship with John's aunt the astronomer
Caroline Herschel, where Margaret sought to learn about Caroline's scientific career.[3]: 253
As her children grew older and the household had more domestic staff, Margaret spent more time studying. She studied German and algebra, and supported her husband in his work. She also ensured that both her sons and daughters received equally solid educations, although the girls were not able to go away to school at eleven or attend university like their brothers.[3]: 256–257
Visit to Cape Colony
The voyage to Cape Colony was made so that her husband could catalogue the stars,
nebulae, and other objects of the
southern skies.[4] Her husband had his own inherited money and he paid £500 for passage on the S.S. Mountstuart Elphinstone. Together with their three children they departed from
Portsmouth on 13 November 1833.[2] They arrived in
Cape Town on 15 January 1834 and chose to live at Feldhausen, an old estate in
Claremont, a suburb of Cape Town, where her husband set up a private 21 ft (6.4 m)
telescope. He collaborated with
Thomas Maclear, the Astronomer Royal at the
Cape of Good Hope and the two families became close friends.
Herschel and her husband between 1834 and 1838 produced 131 botanical illustrations showing Cape flora. They used a
camera lucida to obtained outlines of the specimens and Margaret dealt particularly with the details. Their portfolio had been intended as a personal record, and despite the lack of floral dissections in the paintings, their accuracy made them valuable. 112 of their flower studies were collected and published as Flora Herscheliana in 1996.[5]
When
HMS Beagle called at Cape Town, Captain
Robert FitzRoy and the young naturalist
Charles Darwin visited Herschel on 3 June 1836. Later on, Darwin would be influenced by Herschel's writings in developing his theory advanced in The Origin of Species.[6]
They returned to England in 1838, where her husband became a
baronet, of
Slough in the County of Buckingham and she became Lady Margaret Herschel.[4]
Death and legacy
Lady Margaret Herschel died in 1884. Besides the posthumus publication Flora Herscheliana, some of her letters are in Trinity College[1] and others are in the
British Library.[7]
Private life
She had married her cousin
John Herschel on 3 March 1829[2] in Edinburgh, and they had nine daughters and three sons:[8]
Caroline Emilia Mary Herschel (31 March 1830 – 29 January 1909),[9] who married the soldier and politician
Alexander Hamilton-Gordon
^
abcWinterburn, Emily (2022). "Astronomy, Education From and the Herschel Family: Caroline to Constance". In Jones, Claire Gwen; Martin, Alison E.; Wolf, Alexis (eds.). The Palgrave handbook of women and science since 1660. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
ISBN978-3-030-78973-2.
^Warner, Brian; Rourke, John (1996). Flora Herscheliana. Sir John and Lady Herschel at the Cape, 1834 to 1838. Johannesburg: The Brenthurst Press.
ISBN9780909079550. The book also includes work by
Charles Davidson Bell and Thomas Bowler.
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