Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/50

 34 HISTORY OF THE [1820-30 determinations and do other scientific work ; but the vessels Dorothea and Trent encountered a violent gale and had to put back. Nevertheless, Fisher swung his pendulum in Spitz- bergen and got good results. In 1821 he was appointed astronomer (and chaplain also) to Parry's Expedition in search of a North- West Passage, and he prepared the scientific report on this expedition in 1825. In 1834 he took charge of the Greenwich Hospital School with great success, and became a constant attendant at the meetings of the Society and the dinners of the R.A.S. Club till his death in 1873. A picturesque figure of a different kind is that of Dr. Lee of Hartwell, and an excuse for mentioning him here may be found in the fact that though he was only the second treasurer of the Society, and did not succeed Dr. Pearson until 1831, it is due to him that we have recovered a copy of the original accounts. On receiving them from Dr. Pearson he had them copied * very neatly, and apparently returned the original, which has in any case disappeared. But the copy remained among his books, and was ultimately presented to the Society a few years ago by Mrs. Lee, the relative into whose possession they had passed, on an occasion when it became necessary to remove the library from Hartwell. The volume published under the title Speculum Hartwellianum renders it unnecessary to dwell on the astronomical activities of Dr. Lee or of Admiral Smyth, who observed with him, but a sidelight is thrown on the old gentleman by the following extract from Reminiscences (Macmillan, 1922), by Constance Battersea (a daughter of the second son of N. M. Rothschild, who married (1877) Cyril Flower, created Lord Battersea in 1892) : Hartwell House was an attraction to us in our young years, and we used periodically to visit its strange old owner, the learned Dr. Lee. He would take us into his wonderful and crowded museum, where on one occasion he presented me with a little stuffed bird, hoping that it might prove the forerunner of a collection of my own, for he said that the pleasure of collecting, no matter what, was one of the chief roads that led to a happy life. On one unforgettable starlight night we were admitted to his famous observatory and invited to look through the telescope, receiving much valuable information at the time. To us the astronomer seemed a very old man, and when, in company with one of his own years, he came to dine at Aston Clinton, we were not astonished at seeing the two aged guests of my parents dropping placidly off to sleep after their repast. The Hartwell estate has been in the possession of one family
 * Perhaps by his secretary, Mr. B. Smith ? See p. 2 i.