The autobiography exists in three drafts. First there is the notebook of 1859 which sketches out shape and motivation; then there is an extensive draft entirely in Mary Somerville’s hand; most but not all of this draft reaches the printed version with some changes in arrangement as well as changes in spelling and punctuation. The punctuation of this first version is very light and some additional punctuation is certainly needed for print and, since Mary Somerville is avowedly a bad speller (see p. 97), the corrections of her spelling (probably not as insecure as Joanna Baillie’s) are uncontentious. This first draft peters out towards the end so that there is no firm conclusion to what was still a continuing life. The second draft is largely a copy of the first in Martha Somerville’s hand, with marginal comments and additions in Mary Somerville’s hand, and a few additional sheets wholly in Mary Somerville’s hand. There are also editorial comments in the margin in a third hand, probably Mary Charlotte’s, mostly injunctions to omit or confirmations that something has been omitted, which suggests that the final version was known at this stage. There are some additions in this version, most but not all of which appear in the printed text.
This edition does not pretend to be a complete re-editing of the recollections – indeed this would be impossible at this distance. Mary Somerville’s own final intentions are not completely clear and minor changes are usually not worth commenting upon. The text, as we have it, loses some of the colloquial flow of the first draft, simply by introducing punctuation, but I am persuaded that Mary Somerville would have expected her text to be corrected by the printers (see again her comments on p. 97). There is no doubt, however, that there are some editorial decisions taken by Martha, probably in conjunction with the younger daughter, Mary, but some, more worryingly, on the advice of Frances Power Cobbe, who worshipped Mary Somerville and probably wished to smooth out some of her imperfections. Letters from Frances Cobbe to Martha suggest a fair amount of input into the printed text:
I think your Introduction is most touching and so genuine and honest, it is sure to go straight to the reader’s heart […]. I have only made a few verbal alterations twisting some of the sentences a little (so as to avoid the little colloquialisms you fall into of ending your sentences with a preposition and dividing some of them a little differently). But I would not touch the substance of what you say for anything. […] Dear Martha I feel quite happy now about the work. The book will make the world love your Mother more and not admire her an atom the less.7
The intention of making Mary Somerville loveable has moved well away from Mary Somerville’s own aim.
The most extensive biographical work on Mary Somerville is by Elizabeth Chambers Patterson who has published both a brief account of Mary Somerville’s whole life, Mary Somerville, 1780–1872, 19798 and a scholarly study of the most significant period of Mary Somerville’s professional life, Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815– 1840, 1983.9 The latter is an indispensable vademecum for anyone who wants to look deeper into Mary Somerville’s professional life. Elizabeth Patterson uses the Personal Recollections, as well as the extensive Somerville archive deposited in the Bodleian Library to establish both biographical facts and feelings at any given point. She deals only briefly with the genealogy of the printed text of the Recollections. Here is what she says:
Her last work was an autobiography, begun in her eighty-ninth year and completed before her death in 1872. A heavily edited version of this work was published in 1873 […]. Her daughter, Martha, advised by their friend Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904), omitted from the printed life markedly scientific sections of the manuscript, as well as many references to persons and events they judged uninteresting or unsuitable as contents. A selection of letters to Mary Somerville from eminent persons was woven into the text. […] Personal Recollections emerges with many Victorian touches that would have been foreign to Mary Somerville herself (EP, 194).
This is true but, nevertheless, the effect of the Victorian touches is most interesting. The processes of the production of the final text, and hence of the version of Mary Somerville that her remaining family and friends wished to present to the world, are in themselves valuable and worth preserving but, at the same time, I think it worth restoring some of the rougher edges of the earlier drafts.
I have not restored the scientific sections that Herschel advised cutting.10 Other omitted passages are, however, too good to lose: I have, therefore, interpolated in the 1873 printed text some passages from first and second drafts. I have added nothing which is not in Mary Somerville’s hand, nor have I added without comment any passages, even though in her hand, if she herself has scored them out. It will be clear that the additional passages are mostly anecdotes which Martha, possibly Mary, and Frances Power Cobbe presumably deemed too trivial to be included but a modern audience may have a different notion of what is trivial. Some of the anecdotes were clearly offensive to a Victorian sensibility, although they did not upset Mary Somerville’s own more robust taste: the story of her being taught to swear as a child seems to have been copied in Martha’s hand into the second draft, but a marginal note says that it ‘must go’ and the offending passage has been snipped out of the manuscript. While the story is not in itself exceptional – what family cannot produce some similar embarrassing account? – the determined excision of it is significant. Other omissions seem minor, yet cumulatively, when added to the printed text, they work to produce a Mary Somerville far more concerned with her outer self, with her appearance. In the drafts Mary Somerville comments fairly regularly on her appearance and, by taking the comments out of her mother’s mouth and putting them into her own, Martha turns legitimate selfconcern, even occasionally self-absorption and vanity, into daughterly eulogy. Similarly, Mary Somerville’s youthful and not so youthful resentments are smoothed away, producing a more emollient personality than appears in the drafts. Occasionally, as with the story of the mean friend (p. 222), there may have been relatives still alive to offend but, more generally, the omissions paper over cracks in Mary Somerville’s serenity that, revealed, make her a little less noble but more congenial. To remember an insult for 50 years, as Mary Somerville does with Mrs Oswald’s outrageous rudeness (p. 44) may not be saintly but it is, to imperfect mortal readers, understandable.
At the same time, it would be another kind of falsification to try to remove the effects of Martha’s editing since the presentation of the mother by the daughter has a special quality in itself: Martha adds as well as taking away. She adds, of course, her own comments on both her parents; insists; just as tartly as her mother, that the obituaries were quite wrong in suggesting that Mary Somerville’s first husband assisted her studies, and she adds letters from contemporaries which act as personal and professional validations ofMary Somerville. I have, therefore, tried to provide a text that can be read simultaneously as the version of a Victorian daughter, Martha, and the production of her mother. The intended result is to offer a plurality ofMary Somervilles, all with their special kind of truth. I should like to look now a little more closely at some of these Mary Somervilles, trying to show that, although plural, they are not separate.
FEMINIST, MATHEMATICIAN, ASTRONOMER,
BOTANIST, GEOGRAPHER – SCIENTIST:
In this section I am particularly indebted to Elizabeth Patterson’s searching study. Its introduction (i–xiii) offers an admirable summation of the changing state of British science in the years 1815 to 1840, roughly the period of Mary Somerville’s London residence (allowing, of course, for her continental tours). Elizabeth Patterson sets out to answer the question: ‘How did Mary Somerville move from self-taught provincial to celebrated scientific lady?’ (EP, xiii), and does so against a wide understanding of the nature and status of science in the period.
How