TWELVE
London: The Will, 1825-1829
I James Smithson Son to Hugh first Duke of Northumberland, & Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley & niece to Charles the proud Duke of Somerset, now residing in Bentinck Street Cavendish Square, do this twenty third day of October one thousand eight hundred & twenty six, make this my last will & testament … .
—James Smithson, October 1826
WHEN SMITHSON CROSSED the Channel in the spring of 1825, sailing towards the white cliffs of Dover, it must have seemed as if he were headed in the wrong direction. Fashionable society was teeming over to France, on their way to the biggest social event of the year: the coronation of King Charles X, held at Reims Cathedral on May 29, 1825. The roads from Paris were clogged with carriages, and every lodging in the region around Reims was let, sometimes at prices well over the cost of the entire house. Tens of thousands not privileged enough to be inside for the ceremony pressed into the square before the cathedral, as the King, in ermine robes and laden with jewels, made his way down the nave. When it was over the artillery thundered from the ramparts and all the bells in town set to swinging, the last element of a monumental piece of theatre designed to reaffirm the glory of the Bourbon monarchy.
Smithson steered clear of this spectacle, and it cannot have been lost on him that the person England sent as ambassador-extraordinary was none other than the Duke of Northumberland, now the third duke, the son of Smithson's half-brother Hugh Percy. The Northumberlands had arrived in Paris months before the ceremony, and were ubiquitous in society, even calling on Georges Cuvier to see the collections at the Jardin des Plantes.1 The duke famously bore the whole cost of the mission, and his performance in France was so voluptuous that a young poet at the outset of his career named Victor Hugo dubbed him the "Arabian Nights ambassador." The night of the actual coronation the duke hosted a ball, "a magnificent, fairylike spectacle," in which every lady found a diamond in her bouquet. Upon his return to England the Crown rewarded the duke for his "exceptional magnificence" with a diamond-hiked sword.2
Smithson had once sworn, "My name will live on in the memory of men when the titles of the Northumberlands and Percys are extinct or forgotten." There had been a time in his youth when excitable earls had stood on tables in Revolutionary Paris and renounced their titles and all hereditary privileges; there had been a time, he had believed, when it seemed likely that the system as it had long existed would cease to support itself and a new egalitarian society with reason as its queen would triumph. He had now lived to see three Dukes of Northumberland parading their magnificence across the stage of society. With every passing year it became ever clearer that—despite the progress of science—the Northumberlands, each more ostentatious than the last, were thriving.
Smithson, in contrast, had not yet succeeded in bringing eternal fame to his name. He had known many of the scientific greats of his era, the "Men," as he called them, "to whom it is given to make alone the progress of a century."3 But he was not apparently destined to enter that league himself. A lifetime dedicated to augmenting the store of natural knowledge had resulted in no ground-breaking discoveries. And now he was back in London, a city where it was much harder to ignore the family story that so preoccupied him. Hungerford Market, on the site of his maternal family's ancestral palace, sat cheek by jowl with Northumberland House at the head of the Strand, around the location of Charing Cross station today. On a stroll to see the latest prints in the glass-fronted shops of the Strand, Smithson would have passed in quick succession the Northumberland Coffeehouse and the Hungerford Coffeehouse, an inevitable reminder of his rich illicit parentage.
Soon after his arrival in London he was welcomed back to the Royal Society Club, attending the dinner as the guest of his friend Sir George Staunton—who had recently hosted Smithson's raffish Paris associate Pierre Henri Joseph Baume for almost two months at his "bachelor's villa" in the country.4 He toured the city's latest attractions, taking in the popular show at the Egyptian Hall on the wonders of Ancient and Modern Mexico, which included a panorama of Mexico City and a live Mexican Indian living in a hut. And he perused the specimens of native filigree silver from Saxony and the "rarissime" crystallized serpentine from Pennsylvania in the auction of minerals held at Mr. Thomas' great room on King Street.5 But Smithson's journey back to London in 1825—around the time of his sixtieth birthday—seems to have been one primarily dedicated to putting his house in order. This was to be, as he most likely knew, his last trip to England; it was a time to organize his possessions and write his will. He may well have been the Mr. Smithson who sold some paintings in the fall of 1825 at Edward Foster's auction house on Greek Street.6 Over at Drummonds bank he tended to his finances, selling a series of Exchequer bills totaling more than £7,000 and reinvesting the money in Bank of England stock.7
Even while going through his possessions Smithson found material that he deemed worthy of publication. One was an old letter from Joseph Black, dated 1790, which he published with commentary as "A letter from Dr. Black describing a very sensible balance," in the Annals of Philosophy in the spring of 1825. The article afforded Smithson the opportunity to publicize the cordial relationship he had enjoyed with the late and much revered chemist of the Scottish Enlightenment. It also gave him the chance to promote a tool he had long found useful in the manipulation of very small samples—an instrument emblematic of the micro-chemistry experimental method that stood at the heart of his reputation both at home and abroad. He praised the balance as "a very valuable addition to the blowpipe apparatus, as it enables the determination of quantities in the experiments with that instrument, which was an unhoped-for accession to its powers."
The exhibit of Ancient and Modern Mexico, from a pamphlet in Smithson's library. The Mexican Indian is seen talking to a visitor in the foreground.
He was probably pleased to see the article republished within the year in Thomas Gill's monthly magazine, the Technical Repository. Smithson's 1823 paper, "Method of fixing particles on the sappare," had also been reprinted by this periodical, which was geared towards transmitting useful information to working men and entrepreneurs, people who could apply new knowledge to their practices. It was hoped that the diffusion of such information might in turn engender new discoveries; in the mind of utilitarians like Smithson, the diffusion of knowledge was another way of spurring the increase of knowledge. One did not need to have specialized equipment, or specialized knowledge, in order to contribute materially to the store of natural knowledge. The reprinting of these two papers in the Technical Repository would have satisfied Smithson in another way as well; the publications enabled Smithson to pass on information about a body of working methods that had served him well for decades, techniques that were rapidly becoming obsolete in the face of the latest advances in chemistry.
The other paper Smithson published in London, entitled "A Method of Fixing Crayon Colors," was an account of his clever transformation of a pastel portrait in order to preserve it while traveling. Smithson informed the editor that he wished "to transport a crayon portrait to a distance for the sake of the likeness, but without the frame and glass, which were bulky and heavy." He consulted various authorities but was dissatisfied with all their proposed solutions on how best to fix the colors. He settled finally on a solution of his own making: the shellacking of the portrait with "a drying oil diluted with spirit of turpentine." He proceeded cautiously, coating first the back and waiting a few days for it to dry before applying the mixture to the front. And then, he informed the journal with delight, "my crayon drawing became an oil painting."8
This kind of work sat at the heart of Smithson's interests, his faith in the amelioration of the human condition through the spread of knowledge. For him no object was unworthy of study; he had analyzed his lead pencil, the Napoleon coin in his pocket, and the indelible green stain left by crushing a gnat on paper. No discovery was too minor to be shared. Some small observation could prove the missing ingredient, the u
nresolved question, in some other scientist's labors. "When the sole view is to further a pursuit of whose importance to mankind a conviction exists," he argued, "all that can do so should be imparted, however small may appear the merit which attaches it." He chastised his fellow scientists for not publicizing the improvements they had developed in their apparatus and their working methods. Finding a better way of doing something translated into a saving of time, money, and resources. And it benefited not only other scientific laborers like himself; it had ramifications for society as a whole. "In all cases means of economy tend to augment and diffuse comforts and happiness," Smithson emphasized. "They bring within the reach of the many what wasteful proceedings confine to the few."9
Smithson would have found on his return to London in the mid- 1820s a group of reformers alight with such thinking. The London Chemical Society's radical journal The Chemist, which praised Smithson's work a few times during its short one-year existence, condemned the elitism of high science in the capital—especially as embodied in the dandified president of the Royal Society, Sir Humphry Davy. While the scientific establishment shunned the working classes, George Birkbeck, the head of the London Chemical Society, determined to bring education to the masses. Drawing on his experiences lecturing at the Andersonian Institution in Glasgow, where he had developed classes for working men after "observing the intelligent curiosity of the 'unwashed artificers, '" he launched the London Mechanics' Institution. It offered evening classes in chemistry, mathematics, and electricity; the program was phenomenally successful. By 1826 every large town in England and many small ones had mechanics' institutes.10
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was also founded at this time, the brainchild of Birkbeck's friend and fellow Scot, the Whig reformer Henry Brougham. It had similar goals, seeing science—chemistry, in particular—as an essential subject in the dissemination of knowledge in society. "The pleasures of Science go hand in hand with the solid benefits derived from it," Brougham argued, and "they tend, unlike other gratifications, not only to make our lives more agreeable, but better; and that a rational being is bound by every motive of interest and of duty, to direct his mind towards pursuits which are found to be the sure path of virtue as well as of happiness."11
The year 1825, when Smithson returned to London, also marked the beginning of what came to be called University College, London. Like the Scottish universities—and in distinct contrast to Oxford and Cambridge—the university in London was open to all regardless of religious beliefs. It signaled the first break in the tradition of elite channels, it stressed the widening of possibilities for all, and science featured prominently in the studies offered. The university quickly gained support from Brougham and other leading utilitarians; pamphlets circulated promoting the scheme, and a joint-stock company was founded to manage the funds raised.12
It is likely that Smithson was aware of many or most of these developments. He was an avid consumer of news, and these institutions addressed matters that had long been at the heart of his interests. But Smithson was not solicited, as he had been at the founding of the Royal Institution, to be a patron of any of these new ventures—despite the fact that many who served as shareholders of the new university in London were or had been prominent leaders at the Royal Institution, and some, like the radical politician Henry Warburton, were good friends.13 If by chance Smithson was feeling unappreciated or overlooked by the London community of philanthropic reformers, perhaps he learned of a new quarter where his work was being well received and eagerly consumed. In 1825 the American Journal of Arts & Sciences, the leading scientific journal in the United States, which was otherwise known as "Silliman's Journal" after its founder Benjamin Silliman, reprinted Smithson's "Method of fixing particles on the sappare"—which was retitled simply "Blowpipe Experiments." And in May 1826 the Franklin Journal and American Mechanics' Magazine, based in Philadelphia, reprinted Smithson's article on transforming the pastel portrait into an oil painting.
The United States over the preceding decades had slowly been developing its own native culture of science. Scientific societies, like the relatively long-standing American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, had been joined by a growing number of specialist departments at universities, as well as new scientific journals and literature. America was still dependent on Europe in many ways, and it had nothing like the traditions of patronage and institutional support that Europe enjoyed. Its audience was smaller, too, as many fewer men had the leisure to devote themselves to the pursuit of science.14 But President John Quincy Adams had urged his countrymen to "return light for light," to cultivate knowledge and send it back in the direction of Europe. Adams had advocated the establishment of national institutions for the promotion of science: an astronomical observatory, a national university, and an exploring expedition.15
Even if Smithson was unaware of the reprinting of his papers in American journals, he had probably long had his eye fixed on the United States. Europe, by the 1820s, viewed America as the future. It was a country that seemed admirably unburdened by many of the troubles that plagued the Old World. "Our countrymen do not believe that America is more advanced in knowledge and refinement than Europe," the Edinburgh Magazine explained to its readers, "but they know that, with slight divergencies, both hemispheres are in this respect nearly abreast of each other. And they know that, both being yet far from the goal, their generous transatlantic rivals start unencumbered by many old prejudices and social trammels which we cannot here escape from."16
These opinions on the unencumbered status of people in the New World, now reaching general circulation, were ones that Smithson, who had spent a lifetime brooding over the disenfranchisement caused by the circumstances of his birth, had likely mulled over for a very long while. He probably watched with interest, and perhaps even pleasure, as the elite of London engaged in debates about England's decline. Prince Meckler-Muskau, touring England in 1826-8, concluded that the country had outlived her "highest greatness, and is already declining." And Charles Babbage, inventor of the difference engine, the forerunner of modern computers, published his controversial Reflections on the Decline of Science in England in 1830, attacking the leadership and dilettantism of the Royal Society.17
And in the late summer of 1826, as Smithson turned his attention to the writing of his will, America was very much in the news. July 4 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the United States had planned extensive festivities for the jubilee anniversary. Around the country men hailed the genius of America, celebrating its traditions of self-government—while in the same breath often condemning the corrupt and aged institutions of Europe. In the days that followed July 4, however, the celebrations took on a completely new and even more exalted cast, when the news spread that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two of the last founding fathers, had passed away on that milestone day. President John Quincy Adams first learned of Jefferson's death on July 6. "A strange and very striking coincidence," he wrote in his diary. It was only three days later, as he headed north to be with his ailing father, that he learned belatedly of his father's death and comprehended truly the magnitude of the event. "In this most singular coincidence," President Adams proclaimed, "the finger of Providence is plainly visible!"18
Ten days before he died, Jefferson penned one last paean to the idea of America. "The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth," he declared, "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God."19 America's democratic experiment had already inspired several generations of Utopian visionaries. Coleridge's Pantisocracy, his unrealized communitarian living experiment on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, was one of a number of such schemes birthed during the turbulent 1790s. Now, in 1826, a voyaging band of scientists and educators, in a
boat named The Philanthropist, were making their way down the Ohio River to their experimental settlement at New Harmony, Indiana. The "Boatload of Knowledge," as it came to be known, was the visionary idea of Robert Owen, the reformer who had revolutionized working conditions at the New Lanark mills in Scotland. His Utopia was to be a place where the pursuit of knowledge, fostered by progressive educational theories, could thrive, in America's "new fertile soil, new for material and mental growth."
It is not known whether Smithson knew of the plans for New Harmony. Accounts of life on the settlement had already reached Europe by the fall of 1826, as Goethe, for one, was talking of it. William Maclure, a Scottish geologist turned American citizen who was one of the leaders of the New Harmony community, had been a friend of the late William Thomson and perhaps knew others in Smithson's circle. Smithson's protégé Baume might have been another conduit of news; he was awestruck by Owen and developing a close relationship with him (Owen, in fact, would later christen the illegitimate son Baume fathered in an incestuous relationship with his sister). The New Harmony project was one, presumably, that Smithson would have admired. It embodied the belief that scientific knowledge could enlarge and empower the human mind; and it evinced, too, the faith that reformers placed in the United States, "the cradle," as Owen called it, "of the future liberty of the human race."20
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