A Tale of Two Telescopes

And so the memorable opposition of 1894 ended. At the end of November, Lowell and Pickering returned to Boston. Pickering returned to Harvard from his sabbatical. Henceforth he and Lowell’s paths would diverge. Rather than return to Sevenels, Lowell took occupancy of a small high house at No. 11 West Cedar Street for the winter. He may have wished to strike a new note of confidence and independence—but he may also have wanted to escape witnessing the final stages of his mother’s long and painful illness. An invalid for many years, she had been diagnosed with Bright’s disease, consisting (according to the medical lights of the time) of a triad of dropsy (edema), albumin in the urine, and kidney disease. Since the family need not worry about expense, she had doubtless taken her turns with such treatments as warm baths, blood-letting, squill, digitalis, mercury compounds, opium, diuretics and laxatives, and various diets, but ultimately all in vain. For the last year or so her health had taken a serious turn for the worse—and this may help to explain why her “Darling Percy” was so often back in Boston during the summer of the great Mars campaign. Though we do not know the details of Elizabeth Lowell’s particular case, her daughter and Percival’s sister Bessie—later to become a campaigner for better prenatal care—became convinced that her Bright’s disease had been brought on by childbirth and complications related to eclampsia [2]. Whatever the case, Katharine probably lingered for a while before death, mercifully, came at last in April 1895.