with the director on the best methods for discovering such stars. Chandler preferred the time-honored techniques of visual observing. Because he distrusted detections made via spectral photography, he omitted nearly all of Mrs. Fleming’s recent finds from his second variable star catalogue, published in 1893. Adding further insult in a supplement, he characterized more than a dozen of her discoveries as “alleged but unconfirmed.” Worse, in February 1894, in the respected international journal Astronomische Nachrichten, Chandler impeached the integrity of the entire Harvard Photometry study published in the observatory’s Annals. He cited fifteen “serious errors” in the monitoring of variable stars with Pickering’s meridian photometer. In each of these cases, the magnitude listed for a given date conflicted with other reliable observers’ reports, or with the known pattern of the variable in question, indicating that the photometer had been focused on the wrong star. Possibly the instrument was fatally flawed. If it never pointed reliably, then misidentification might be rampant, and the work worthless.
A colleague of Chandler’s digested the charges for public consumption in the pages of the Boston Evening Transcript on March 17, 1894, asserting that “adverse statements so sweeping and from so well-known an authority as Dr. Chandler call for an explanation which shall be satisfactory to scientific men.”
It was said of Pickering that he loved to discuss but refused to dispute. Forced to make some rejoinder, he wrote a brief letter to the Transcript’s editor, printed March 20. He called the attack “unwarranted,” adding that the questions raised in it were “scientific in their character” and therefore “unsuited to a discussion in a daily journal.” He promised a full reply “through the proper channels.” Meanwhile the press in New York and Boston continued to harp on the story.
Mrs. Draper heard of the fracas firsthand from Pickering and also read all about it in the New York Evening Post. It struck her as ludicrous for Chandler to assail Pickering’s photometric work—work that had been rewarded with the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Benjamin Valz Prize from the French Academy of Sciences. In her opinion, Pickering’s achievements had excited Chandler’s jealousy.
The May 1894 issue of the Nachrichten carried Pickering’s official response. He conceded that the fifteen variable stars pointed out by Chandler had indeed been wrongly identified in the Annals, but they were isolated and understandable instances. As for Chandler’s broader accusation, well, “It is somewhat as though it should be argued from a physician’s losing twenty percent of his cholera patients that he had been equally unfortunate in his general practice.”
Newspapers nevertheless kept up their coverage of “Astronomers at War” through the summer months. Harvard president Charles Eliot defended the observatory throughout. On July 31 he cautioned Pickering, “As I have said to you before, the best way of meeting this and all other criticism is to issue more fresh good work, and this I doubt not that you are bent on doing. My chief anxiety in connection with this matter is that it should not disturb your peace of mind or impair your scientific activity. At first it had to a little; but I hope the temporary effect is wearing off. If it does not, I beg to repeat what I said to you at our last conversation—you ought to take a good vacation.”
The Pickerings’ prescribed vacation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire restored some of the director’s equanimity. He felt even better that fall, when a new photometric catalogue from the Potsdam Observatory appeared. It showed near-perfect agreement with the myriad magnitude determinations made at Harvard.
• • •
WILLIAM PICKERING, HAVING RELUCTANTLY relinquished his house and position of authority in Arequipa, returned from Peru via Chile, where he observed the total solar eclipse of April 16, 1893. As soon as he resettled in Cambridge, he began plotting his next rendezvous with Mars. Favorable orbital alignments coming up in October 1894 offered William the irresistible opportunity to build on his observations of 1892. It had been his good fortune to find himself ideally situated south of the equator for the last close approach. This time the American Southwest offered the most desirable perspective. Luckily for William, the wherewithal for mounting a trip to the Arizona Territory came to him in the person of Percival Lowell. The wealthy Lowell had recently developed a passion for planetary astronomy, and required an expert’s guidance for his first serious endeavor in the field. A Boston Brahmin and Harvard alumnus, Lowell knew the Pickering brothers socially through the Appalachian Mountain Club.
Edward Pickering granted William a year’s leave without pay to join Lowell’s “Arizona Astronomical Expedition.” He also allowed Lowell the yearlong lease of a 12-inch Clark telescope and mount for $175 (a sum equal to 5 percent of the equipment’s value). Lowell and William successfully negotiated with another telescope maker, John Brashear of Pittsburgh, for the loan of a second, larger instrument—an 18-inch refractor—to further their cause. On July 14, a euphoric William wrote Edward from Flagstaff to say the seeing in Arizona rivaled that at Arequipa.
At Arequipa itself, Bailey tried to estimate the danger to the Harvard station posed by the opening salvos of civil war in Peru. The country was still rebuilding itself, settling its international debts and internal turmoil after years of fighting as Bolivia’s ally in conflicts with Chile. As early as July 1893, Bailey had half-jokingly proposed “to remove the lenses and use the telescope tubes for cannon” if the need arose. Two months later, after taking serious stock of his available defenses (“two or three revolvers”), he concluded that the wisest move in the event of an armed attack would be to surrender “and rely on the government for indemnity.” He laid in extra provisions as a precaution and built heavy wooden shutters for the windows and doors. These were not quite complete when rioting and shooting broke out in Arequipa, bringing government troops into the city. After the death of President Francisco Morales Bermúdez in Lima in April 1894, increasing violence prevented the vice president’s succession to office. Bailey added an adobe wall between the station and the road, and then another wall along the northern perimeter, facing in the direction of a village that was now rebel-occupied territory. Rebels also controlled the area surrounding the original observing site on Mount Harvard.
Spring elections restored a former president, Andrés Avelino Cáceres, to office in summer, but the political situation remained unstable. The observatory carried on its normal activities to the extent possible. In early September, assistant George Waterbury set out, as he did every ten days or so, to check on the weather gauges installed atop El Misti. When he reached the 19,000-foot summit, he found the meteorology shelter had been vandalized and several of the instruments stolen.
• • •
“DEAR UNCLE DAN,” ANTONIA MAURY wrote to Daniel Draper, the Central Park meteorologist, on September 2, 1894, from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, “I have been having a good time here and have got well rested in the last three weeks. I am still however too lazy to be able to make any plans for the winter. I have to be in Cambridge for about two weeks to finish up some odds and ends. Then Mrs. Fleming is going to attend to the printing of the work, so I shall be free. I think a little of going with Carlotta [her sister] to study at Cornell, but may decide to study by myself in Boston where I can have excellent library advantages.”
She had missed the agreed-upon deadline of December 1, 1893, for completing her work at the observatory, but felt close to finishing now. Unfortunately, the remaining “odds and ends” overwhelmed her, especially as she also resumed her teaching duties for the semester. Her father, the Reverend Mytton Maury, whose lack of a permanent posting no doubt added to his daughter’s stress, expressed his concerns to Pickering on November 12. “I wish you would try to give Miss Maury every assistance in finishing up the work in hand,” he wrote. “It is most important that she should go away. She is growing so nervous that she often wakes long before daybreak & can’t get to sleep again.” Along with the increase in her anxiety from September to November, her winter plans had taken the shape of a trip to Europe. “She and her brother are to sail on
