The Lost World of James Smithson
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68 R. L. Arrowsmith, A Charterhouse Miscellany (1982), and Arrowsmith, Charterhouse Register, 1796–1872, with appendix of non-foundationers, 1614— 1769 (London, 1974). The first Charterhouse students to go up to Pembroke College, Oxford, on Dame Elizabeth Holford's Scholarship went in 1737. Many thanks to Brian Wilson for sharing his research on Pembroke's matriculations.
69 For background on Smithson's education see Robin Eagles, Francophilia in English Society, 1748–1815 (Macmillan, 2000), and George C. Braner, Jr., The Education of a Gentleman: Theories of Gentlemanly Education in England, 1660–1775 (New York, 1959). The description of Smithson's notes is from Walter R. Johnson, "A Memoir on the Scientific Character and Researches of james Smithson, Esq., F.R.S." (Washington, 1844).
70 Trevor I. Williams, "Wollaston, William Hyde (1766–1828)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Wollaston's friendship with Smithson is alluded to in Edward C. Howard to Henry Warburton, August 4, 1816, in the Wollaston Papers, Cambridge University Library, Manuscript Division, Add MSS 7736, Box 2.
71 For Adam Walker and Percy Bysshe Shelley, see James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Biography (University of Delaware Press, 2004), p. 74. Smithson's contemporary (and probable acquaintance) William Gregor's interest in chemistry was awakened by lectures by Priestley's associate John Waltire, which he heard while attending Bristol Grammar School in the late 1770s; John Ayrton Paris, A Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labours of the late Rev. William Gregor (London 1818), p. 17; Smithson Library, SIL.
2. Oxford: The Lure of Novelty, 1782–1784
1 Henrietta Maria Walker to the Earl of Shelburne, April 14, 1782; BL Bowood Papers, B50, ff. 7–12. See also Andrew Stockley, Britain and France at the Birth of America (University of Exeter, 2001).
2 Davies Giddy diary, April 10, 1785; DG12/1785, CRO. Graham Midgley has other examples of young men going up with their fathers; Midgley, University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford (London and New Haven, 1996), p. 16.
3 Christopher Hibbert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Oxford (London, 1988), p. 246. The tutor system was, and is, the backbone of the university system. All financial arrangements were handled between the family and the tutor, however, and the colleges today have no record of who served as tutor for which student. Elizabeth Macie made a series of regular payments in Smithson's first years at Pembroke to Edward Dupré, about £300 in total, making it very likely that Dupré served as Smithson's tutor. Biographical information on Dupré from the Jersey Heritage Trust and J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses (Oxford, 1888).
4 Smithson's matriculation entry is in the Oxford University Archives, SP 14. It was also published in Samuel P. Langley, "James Smithson," in G. B. Goode, ed., The Smithsonian Institution 1846–96, The History of Its First Half-Century (Washington, 1897), p. 9. The Pembroke register [Pembroke College Archives (40/5/1), Oxford], which also gives this information, was compiled in 1935 by the then bursar, L. E. Salt, from a variety of sources. Although Smithson was not entided to bear arms, someone could have petitioned for arms on Smithson's behalf. The College of Arms, however, has no record of Smithson (or Macie) ever being granted arms. I am very grateful to William Hunt, the Windsor Herald, for his help and research on this matter. Correspondence with the author, July 2004; March 2006.
5 Giddy diary, May 26, 1786; DG13/1786, CRO. Regarding his father's attendance at Oxford in the 1780s Giddy wrote: "Dr. Adams the Master more than once observed to me that I was of a sufficient Age, & sufficiently prudent to remain at Oxford alone like other young men." March 22, 1786; DG13/1786, CRO.
6 Giddy noted in his diary that he had executed the task, "but he [Egremont] did not live to receive it [the excerpt from the Oxford register]." George Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont, died in 1837, which suggests that Egremont's attention was drawn to James Smithson as the United States' claim to the Smithson bequest came to Chancery Court in late 1836. Giddy diary, May 26, 1786; DG13/1786, CRO.
7 Midgley, University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford, pp. 11–15. The commoners wore sleeveless gowns of simple black stuff, with streamers of black braids on either side of the yoke, and a cap without a tassel. The servitors wore the same gown but without the streamers, and instead of a square academic cap they wore a round hat, which was sometimes derisively called a cowpat.
8 Quoted in Hibbert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Oxford, p. 320.
9 Buttery Books 1782–6, Pembroke College Archives, Oxford.
10 Vicesimus Knox quoted in Midgley, University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford, p. x. Interestingly, Elizabeth Macie made several payments to "Boldero & Co. for V. Knox" and "to Mr. Knox's bill" from late 1786 to 1788; if this V. Knox is Vicesimus, perhaps she procured Knox's counsel for her second son Henry Louis Dickenson, who did not attend university; Hoare's Archives, vol. 26, ff. 5–6, and vol. 29, ff. 232–3.
11 Pembroke's Master William Adams had been a Fellow of Pembroke when Johnson arrived in 1728; he was also a cousin of Johnson's tutor William Jorden and took over Jorden's students when Jorden left Oxford in late 1729. Had Johnson not left Oxford that same week, he would have enjoyed Adams as his tutor, a bond that the two probably relished. Adams told Boswell that he (Adams) was Johnson's "nominal tutor, but he was above my mark." Aleyn Lyell Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings: Part V (London, 1928), pp. 6, 34. See also Douglas Macleane, A History of Pembroke College, Oxford (Oxford, 1897), p. 203. For Johnson at Pembroke see Boswell's Life of Johnson, George Birkbeck Hill, L. F. Powell, eds, 6 vols (Oxford, 1934–64), and also W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (New York and London, 1977), p. 588.
12 Richard Price was the author of Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution (1784). The "new aera in the history of mankind" quote is in Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000), p. 402. The "amendment in human affairs" quote is from a letter to Adams, March 25, 1785, printed in W. Bernard Peach and D. O. Thomas, eds, The Correspondence of Richard Price, 3 vols (Duke University Press, University of Wales Press, 1991).
13 J. James, Jr. to J. James, Sr., December 12, 1781; printed in Margaret Evans, ed., Letters of Richard Radcliffe and John James of Queen's College, Oxford, 1755–83 (Oxford, 1888), p. 177.
14 Quoted in J. A. Bennett, S. A. Johnston, and A. V. Simcock, Solomon's House in Oxford: New Finds from the First Museum (Oxford, 2000), p. 21. See also A. V. Simcock, The Ashmolean Muséum and Oxford Science, 1683–1983 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 7–10. And E. G. W. Bill, Education at Christ Church Oxford, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 136–7.
15 G. L'E. Turner, "The Physical Sciences," in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 5: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1986). The "Lyceum of Brittain" is from Thomas Hutchins to Joseph Black, April 10, 1784; EUL, Gen 873/11/167–68.
16 H. M. Sinclair and A. H. T. Robb-Smith, A Short History of Anatomical Teaching in Oxford (Oxford, 1950), pp. 37–8.
17 Chemistry had been taught at Oxford in various guises, the first teacher generally being recognized as Peter Stahl, who came to England in 1658 and gave his first course at Oxford in 1660; prior to Wall, the subject was occasionally covered by the lecturers in anatomy. Dr. John Parsons, who taught anatomy at Christ Church, gave a course of lectures in the 1760s, the syllabus of which is located at Christ Church. Turner, "The Physical Sciences," p. 660; personal communication with A. V. Simcock, 2000.
18 Nitre was potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, the primary raw material in gunpowder. Quoted in Dorothy Stansfield, Thomas Beddoes, M.D., 1760–1808: Chemist, Physician, Democrat (Dordrecht, Lancaster, c. 1984), p. 15.
19 Martin Wall, Dissertations on Select Subjects in Chemistry and Medicine (Oxford, 1783), p. vii.
20 Colin Russell, Science and Social Change, 1700–1900 (Macmillan, 1983), pp. 13–15; Richard Yeo, "Natural Philosophy (Science)," in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776–1832 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 320–28.
21 William Drew to Lady Holland, October 27, 1798; BL Add MS 51814, ff. 62–3.
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p; 22 Smithson's friend William Thomson was a friend of Price's. Thomson sent a full report of the event up to Scotland. Wall had been tarred by virtue of his earlier promotion of Price's ingenuity; he was worried that Joseph Black would think that he supported Price's alchemical work. Both men had heard that Black had referenced the scandal in his lectures that fall at Edinburgh. Correspondence between Joseph Black and Martin Wall and William Thomson, concerning Dr. Price, November 1782; EUL Gen 873/II/19–23F. See also H. C. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks: The Autocrat of the Philosophers (London, 1952), pp. 151–7.
23 Joseph Black quoted in Arthur Donovan, "British Chemistry and the Concept of Science in the Eighteenth Century," Albion, vol. 7, no. 2 (1975), p. 133.
24 Alexander Law, "Notes of Doctor Black's Lectures on Chemistry"; quoted in Henry Guerlac, "Joseph Black," Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, 1970).
25 Smithson, "On the Discovery of Acids in Mineral Substances," Annals of Philosophy (1823).
26 Quoted in Donovan, "British Chemistry," Albion (1975), p. 200.
27 Jan Golinski, "Chemistry," in Roy Porter, ed., Science in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 388–91.
28 Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 112–14.
29 Martin Wall, "An Inaugural Dissertation on the Study of Chemistry," in Dissertations on Select Subjects in Chemistry and Medicine (Oxford, 1783), pp. 85–7.
30 Beddoes to Black, February 23, 1788; quoted in Trevor Levere, "Dr. Thomas Beddoes at Oxford: Radical Politics in 1788–1793 and the Fate of the Regius Chair in Chemistry," Ambix, vol. 28, part 2 (July 1961), pp. 161–9.
31 Letters of Richard Radcliffe and John James, pp. 176–7.
32 Quoted in Rupert Christiansen, Romantic Affinities: Portraits of an Age, 1780–1830 (London, 1988), p. 41.
33 Mrs. Harris to her son, February 16, 1765; printed in the Right Hon. The Earl of Malmesbury, G.C.B., ed. A Series of Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, His Family and Friends, from 1745 to 1820 (London, 1870), vol. 1, p. 122.
34 J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry (London, 1962), vol. 3, pp. 705–6.
35 Letters of Richard Radcliffe and John James, p. 177.
36 Bill, Education at Christ Church, p. 317.
37 Davies Gilbert, eulogy of james Smithson at the anniversary dinner of the Royal Society, November 30, 1830. Quoted in the Philosophical Magazine (January-June 1831), vol. ix, p. 41. This opinion of Smithson's reputation during his university years was seconded by John Guillemard, who told Richard Rush, "I know not whether he was at any School but he entered of Pembroke College Oxford about the year 1783 and took an honorary degree of M.A. on the 26th of May 1786 soon after which he left the University. He was at that time considered as distinguished for his knowledge of Chemistry, a Science which he cultivated with success during his whole life." Letter of July 4, 1837, Rush Family Papers, Princeton.
38 Others connected to Oxford, like William Thomson, the astronomer Thomas Hornsby, and the botany professor John Sibthorpe, all stepped forward to sponsor Wall, but Smithson did not. Royal Society Archives, EC/1788/06.
39 William Thomson to Joseph Black, August 28, 1784; EUL Gen 873/11/184–5. Martin Wall's chemistry course covered minerals in several lectures dedicated to earthy substances, metals, and salts. Lecture XIV "Of Earthy Substances," touched on the "Advantages of the chemical Mode of arranging Minerals." Martin Wall, A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures in Chemistry (Oxford, 1782), p. 22.
40 Theodore M. Porter, "The promotion of mining and the advancement of science: the chemical revolution and mineralogy," Annals of Science 38 (1981), pp. 543–70. M. D. Eddy, "Scottish chemistry, classification and the early mineralogical career of the 'ingenious' Rev. Dr John Walker (1746 to 1779)," British Journal for the History of Science 35 (December 2002), pp. 411–38; M. D. Eddy, "Scottish chemistry, classification and the late mineralogical career of the 'ingenious' Rev. Dr John Walker (1746 to 1779)," British Journal for the History of Science 37 (December 2004), pp. 373–99.
41 Rachel Laudan, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, 1650–1830 (Chicago, 1987), p. 61. Quote (emphasis Smithson's) is from James Smithson, "On the Composition of Zeolite," Philosophical Transactions 101 (1811).
42 J. J. Berzelius, The Use of the Blowpipe … (London, 1822), p. 20; quoted in D. R. Oldroyd, "Edward Daniel Clarke, 1769–1822, and his role in the history of the Blowpipe," Annals of Science, vol. 29, no. 3 (October 1972), pp. 213–35. In 1802 Smithson asked his friend Charles Greville: "Pray are you acquainted with Cavallo? I much want to see a portable blowpipe, constructed with a bladder, which he described some years ago, to the R. Society, as it is quite impossible to stand the fatigue of blowing with one's lungs when one has a number of specimens to try at the same time." Smithson to Greville, July 16, n.y. [1802]; BL Add MS 42071, f. 166.
43 Oersted to his wife, March 5, 1832; Oersted Papers, Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen. Smithson, "Method of fixing particles on the sappare," Annals of Philosophy (1823).
44 Martin Welch, "The Ashmolean as Described by its Earliest Visitors," in Tradescant's Rarities: Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum, Arthur MacGregor, ed., (Oxford, 1983), pp. 59–68.
45 Christopher Pegge to Mark Noble, March 29, 1784; MS. Eng. misc. d. 149, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
46 Sinclair and Robb-Smith, Short History of Anatomy Teaching at Oxford, pp. 40–41.
47 H. S. Torrens, "Thomson, William (bap. 1760, d. 1806)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). See also G. Waterston, "William Thomson (1761–1806): a forgotten benefactor," University of Edinburgh Journal 22 (1965), pp. 122–34; and R. T. Gunther, "William Thomson, FRS: A Forgotten Mineralogist," Nature 143 (1939), pp. 667–8.
48 B. B. Woodward, rev. Jacob W. Grober, "Shaw, George (1751–1873)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). David Philip Miller, "Gilbert (formerly Giddy) Davies (1767–1839)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Norman Moore, rev. Claire L. Nutt, "Austin, William (1754–93)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). See also Alexander George Gibson, The Radcliffe Infirmary (Oxford, 1926), p. 96.
49 H. S. Torrens, "Sadler, James (bap. 1753, d. 1828)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Michael Neve, "Beddoes, Thomas (1760–1808)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Although Beddoes and Smithson both became best friends with their fellow Pembroke student Davies Giddy, there is no indication that Smithson and Beddoes were friendly.
50 James Smithson, "A Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines," Philosophical Transactions 93 (1802).
51 William Thomson to Joseph Black, November 15, 1784. EUL Gen 873/II/160–1.
3. Staffa: The Cathedral of the Sea, 1784
1 See J. E. Hodgson, The First English Aeronaut, James Sadler, of Oxford (1753— 1828) (London, 1928). The quote is from The Rambler's Magazine; or, The Annals of Gallantry, Glee, Pleasure, and the Bon Ton (1784), vol. 2, p. 393.
2 Boulton and Watt sent up a balloon to which they attached a firework, intending to mimic the effects of thunder from the explosion; the tremendous shouts of the crowd, however, drowned out the sounds and the experiment was deemed a failure. Quoted in Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford, 1963), p. 253.
3 The principal account of the journey is Barthélemy Faujas de St. Fond, A Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, 2 vols, Sir Archibald Geikie, ed. (Glasgow, 1907). Andreani's diary of the Paris and London segments of his journey survives and has been published; Diario di Viaggio di un Gentiluomo Milanese: Parigi-Londra 1784 (Milan, 1975). Daniel Preston, "William Thornton (20 May 1759–28 Mar. 1828)," American National Biography, vol. 21 (New York and Oxford, 1999), pp. 609–11.
4 Blagden to Sir Joseph Banks, October 6, 1803; DTC, vol. XIV, pp. 157–9.
5 G. L. Herries Davies, The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology, 1578–1878 (New York, 1969), p. 145.
7 Davis A. Young, Mind Over Magma (Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 25.
8 Thomas Percy in an October 11, 1765 letter to Lady Northumberland wrote, "Dr Blair [Hugh Blair, professor of rhetoric and mentor to Algernon Percy at Edinburgh] has brought the two Mr Grevilles [Charles and his brother Robert] to. .. [Algernon], and a great friendship seems to have commenced on both sides." BL Add MS 32334, f. 9, quoted in Bertram Davis, Thomas Percy: A Scholar-Cleric in the Age of Johnson (Philadelphia, 1989), p. 147.
9 Andreani, Diario di Viaggio di un Gentiluomo Milanese, Parigi–Londra 1784, pp. 82–5. Carl Gustaf Bernhard, "Berzelius as a European Traveler," in Evan Melhado and Tore Frängsmyr, eds, Enlightenment Science in the Romantic Era (Cambridge, 1992), p. 225. Mémoires et Souvenirs de Auguste-Pyramus de Candolle, écrits par lui-même et publics par son fits (Geneva and Paris, 1862), p. 272.
10 William Thomson was the guest of a Dr. Coombe, and Smithson was the invitee of Charles Blagden; List of Visitors, November 1783-June 1788, vol. 392; JBC XXXI, 488–9, Royal Society Archives (RS).
11 Faujas, A Journey, vol. 1, pp. 123–4, 232.