The Lost World of James Smithson

by Heather Ewing

  26 For George Washington's Farewell Address as published in The Independent Chronicle, September 26, 1796, see http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/farewell.

  27 Royal Institution of Great Britain, The Archives of the Royal Institution of Great Britain in Facsimile: Minutes of Managers' Meetings, 1799–1900 (Yorkshire, Scholar Press, 1979), vol. 1, p. 1. For analysis of the early Royal Institution I have relied on Morris Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organization: The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (Ithaca, New York, 1978) and Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992).

  28 Thomas Webster to Thomas Garnett, n.d. [August or September 1800], printed in Nicholas Edwards, "Some Correspondence of Thomas Webster (circa 1772–1844), Concerning the Royal Institution," Annals of Science 28 (February 1972), pp. 51–53.

  29 J. Davy, ed., The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy Bart. (London, 1839–40), vol. 2, pp. 211–13; Golinski, Science as Public Culture, p. 202.

  30 Royal Society Archives, Journal Book Copy 37. See also RS Council Minutes 1782–1810, vol. 7, Copy.

  31 The Times, April 3, 1802, p. 3, col. c.

  32 Obituary for Albany Wallis, Gentleman's Magazine, September 1800, pp. 908–9. The lawsuit, Smithson v. Bayley, is at TNA: PRO C13/23/67. It was lodged November 24, 1802, and on December 9 Wallis' heir paid £4,000 into Hoare's via his agent Hugh Smith. Smithson wrote to his bankers on February 17, 1803: "I am in daily expectation of Col. B. Wallis paying £4000 into your house. I beg, when he does so, to have it laid out in Exchequer bills or India bonds as you think best, if you consider this as the best way, as a temporary one, of disposing of this money." Hoare's Bank Archives, File Box B from Tin Box 27, envelope 10. The rest of the money came in £200 payments, the last one finally in late 1809. Albany Wallis was appointed by the House of Commons as a solicitor to the prosecution for one of the great political trials in British history, the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of British India. The prosecution of Hastings for colonial misdeeds ended in April 1795 with acquittal—a failure for Wallis. When Smithson loaned Wallis the money, Wallis and his partner were unsuccessfully petitioning the House of Commons for the nearly £30,000 they felt they were still owed for their services. BL Add MS 37890, ff. 351–2. Albany Wallis had a son around Smithson's age, who drowned in the Thames as a Westminster schoolboy in 1776; I imagined that a connection between Smithson and Albany Wallis' son, who was with a number of Westminster scholars at the time of his death, might have been the reason Smithson was friendly with Wallis or would have agreed to loan him the astonishing sum of £8,000 in 1795. However, the records of Westminster School do not show that Smithson matriculated there. Like most schools of the period, though, they do not hold complete accounts of their students, especially if the students did not board. Personal communication with Westminster School archivist, 2003.

  33 Bath Chronicle, Thursday May 29, 1800, p. 3, col. 2. The Sussex Weekly Advertiser or Lewes Journal, Monday June 2, 1800, vol. 52, no. 2805. Thanks to Hugh Torrens for this information.

  34 Smithson to Lord Malmesbury, February 28, 1802; Hants RO, 9M73/G2215.

  35 The name change is noted on June 18, 1800, in Hoare's Bank Ledger vol. 68 (1800–1801).

  36 Blagden diary, October 2, 1814; Royal Society Blagden Papers. William Thomson spread the word in Italy, informing one colleague that Smithson "ora ha mutato nome, e si chiama Smithson." William Thomson to Ottaviano Targioni-Tozzetti, December 6, 1803; OTT 75, vol. 4, BNCF.

  37 Georgiana Henderson (neé Keate), MSS diary, 1802; collection of Susan Bennett. I am extremely grateful to Susan Bennett for sharing her research on Georgiana and the Hungerford family with me.

  38 Georgiana's husband John Henderson was the one who wrote to Keate about the naming of the child, according to Farington's diary; Diary of Joseph Farington, entries for April 14 and June 1, 1797; The Diary of Joseph Farington, Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre, eds (Londond and New Haven, 1979), vol. 3. Although Georgiana was disinherited by her father, the executors of the will seem to have felt that Keate had been unjust in his treatment of her and did not fulfill all the terms of his bequests. In her diary Georgiana mentions being involved in the sale of her father's collections, helping to move them to the auction house. Personal communication with Susan Bennett, May 2006.

  39 At the end of 1788, for example, Smithson gave A. Raby, a banker with associations to Lunar Society members such as Josiah Wedgwood, the large sum of £2,500, followed by another £500 a few months later; perhaps this was related to some kind of speculative undertaking. Over the course of the next few years Smithson received a few installments of £75 from Raby, but there is no evidence of any real restitution of the £3,000. Hoare's Bank Archives.

  40 Charles Hadfield, British Canals: An Illustrated History (Newton Abbott, 1969), pp. 115–120.

  41 A copy of the inventory of possessions at time of Smithson's death is in SIA, RU 7000, Box 1.

  42 London World City, pp. 317–18; Hadfield, British Canals, p. 122.

  43 Hoare's ledgers show payments such as "To Martin & Co for Tunnel under the Thames," from early January 1799 through August 1803. See also John Richardson, The Annals of London: a year-by-year record of a thousand years of history (London, 2000), p. 249.

  44 JS mineral catalogue, SIA, RU 7000, Box 2. A number of Smithson's colleagues were making such trips; Humphry Davy, for example, spent some of the summer of 1801 in Cornwall, where he met up with George B. Greenough, and the summer of 1802 in Derbyshire and North Wales with Samuel Purkis. David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 55.

  45 Smithson, "A Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines," Philosophical Transactions (1802). I am indebted to Steven Turner for his explanations of this work (personal communication with the author, 2006), and to Daniel Kelm for the opportunity to witness a re-creation of a part of this experiment. See also John Sampson White, "Calamine and James Smithson," Matrix: A Journal of the History of Minerals, vol. 2, no. 2 (March–April 1991), pp. 17–19. A specimen of hydrozincite, which Smithson presented to Haüy, was given to the Smithsonian in the 1970s by the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Although the Smithsonian in its first decades held Smithson's immense collections of minerals, today this sliver of hydrozincite is the only specimen in the Smithsonian that was once owned by Smithson. The Muséum still retains four other gifts from Smithson. Thanks to Gian-Carlo Parodi of the Muséum for his assistance.

  46 Smithson, "A Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines," Philosophical Transactions (1802).

  47 James Smithson, "On the Composition of the Compound Sulphuret from Huel Boys, and an Account of its Crystals," Philosophical Transactions (1808).

  48 A review of Humphry Davy's Elements of Chemical Philosophy explained the recent progress in chemical theory, in particular the establishment of a law of definite proportions: "the science is principally indebted after Mr. [William] Higgins, to Dalton, Gay Lussac, Smithson, and Wollaston." Quarterly Review, vol. VIII (1812), p. 77.

  49 Smithson to Lady Holland, November 10, 1801; BL Add MS 51846, ff. 163–4.

  50 Georgiana Henderson (neé Keate), MSS diary, 1802; collection of Susan Bennett. Smithson to Lady Holland, November 10, 1801; BL Add MS 51846, ff. 163–4. Several years later, on the Continent in 1806, he recalled for the esteemed French scientist Georges Cuvier the details of one of his fossil finds in the Sussex chalk; Smithson to Cuvier, July 26, 1806; L'Institut de France, Fonds Cuvier, No. 3228, item 27.

  51 Smithson to Lord Holland, December 3, 1801; BL Add MS 51822, ff. 54–5.

  52 The statue of Isis is mentioned in "An Examination of Some Egyptian Colors," Annals of Philosophy (1824). Dickenson's army career is reconstructed from records in TNA: PRO, WO 25/745. His diary detailing his trip home to England is in the SIA, RU 7000, Box 2. See also correspondence in the Long Collection at the SIA, Accession # T90020.

  53 Horace Walpole to Richard G
ough, Monday August 24, 1789; Walpole Correspondence 42, pp. 259–60. Gough, Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (London, 1786–96), vol. 2, pp. 186–91. The Hungerfords erected two chantries in Salisbury Cathedral in the 1400s. By the eighteenth century they were in a ruinous state. The Iron Chapel, or Walter Lord Hungerford's Chapel, was removed in 1779 by Earl Radnor to make way for a pew for his family, though the monuments were preserved in a different part of the Cathedral. Only traces of the brass effigies on the tombs of Walter Lord Hungerford and his wife were still visible in the 1780s, having been vandalized, probably during the Civil War. The architect James Wyatt demolished the other chapel, the Robert Hungerford chapel, during renovations in 1789.

  54 On April 19, 1803, Smithson's bank account reveals that he acquired £100 in Hammersley's notes, the eighteenth-century equivalent of traveler's checks. Hoare's Bank Archives, vol. 77 (1802–3), ff. 88–9. Three days later—after what one might fairly presume was a trouble-free passage across the Channel—his passport was signed in Paris on April 22. The passport, which indicates that Smithson was given a laissez-passer to enter France for himself "avec son Domestique, ses Hardes, et ses Baggages," can be found in F7/6461, Archives Nationales, Paris. The servant might well have been Joseph Fitall, who was in Smithson's pay at this time. If Fitall endured the years of incarceration that followed during the Napoleonic Wars with Smithson, it might explain why he was especially remembered in Smithson's will. Fitall also owned the portrait of Smithson as an Oxford student, given to him perhaps at the end of his service to Smithson. The Smithsonian purchased this painting from Fitall's widow in 1850; it survived the fire of 1865 because it was on display in the library in the unscathed west wing of the building.

  8. The Hurricane of War, 1803–1807

  1 Christophe Léribault, Les Anglais à Paris au 19 e Siècle (Paris, 1994), p. 14. Diary of Henry Louis Dickenson; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  2 Smithson to Lord Holland, December 3, 1801; BL Add MS 51822, ff. 54–5.

  3 James Smithson, "Seigneur Anglais" in Hanau near Frankfurt to an unidentified Italian [probably Giorgio Santi in Pisa or Massimiliano Ricca in Siena], September 4, 1804; Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena, Autografi Porri: 36/15.

  4 Michael Lewis, Napoleon and His British Captives (London, 1962), p. 69.

  5 Smithson to Cuvier, July 26, 1806; L'Institut de France, Fonds Cuvier, No. 3228, item 27.

  6 John Goldworth Alger, Englishmen in the French Revolution (London, 1889), p. 262.

  7 J. P. T. Bury, and J. C. Barry, eds, An Englishman in Paris, 1803: The Journal of Bertie Greatheed (London, 1953), quoted in Tom Pocock, The Terror Before Trafalgar: Nelson, Napoleon and the Secret War (New York, 2003), p. 76.

  8 The following comments are drawn from Smithson's annotations in A. G. Camus, Voyage dans les départemens nouvellement réunis … à la fin de Van X [1802], 2 vols (Paris, 1803); Description de la Ville de Bmxelles (Brussels, 1794); and C. M. Dubois-Maisonneuve, Nouveau voyage de France, 2 vols (Paris, 1806). Smithson Library, SIL.

  9 Dubois-Maisonneuve, Nouveau voyage, vol. 1, p. 333.

  10 Camus, Voyage, vol. 1, pp. 125–8.

  11 Smithson, "Some Observations on Mr. Penn's Theory Concerning the Formation of the Kirkdale Cave," Annals of Philosophy (1824).

  12 Essai sur Cassel et ses Environs (Cassel, 1798), especially pp. 63–79, 182. Smithson bought "terra luminia" from an apothecary in Kassel in 1804; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2. Chenevix's presence in Kassel is revealed in Charles Blagden to Sir Joseph Banks, October 6, 1803; DTC, vol. 14, ff. 457–9. I am grateful to Dr Gerhard Menk at the Staatsarchiv Marburg for his search for evidence of Smithson's stay at Kassel.

  13 Smithson to Cuvier, July 26, 1806; L'Institut de France, Fonds Cuvier, No. 3228, item 27.

  14 William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book Eleventh: France, lines 363–4 in The Complete Poetical Works (London, 1888).

  15 Smithson to Lord Holland, November 22, 1805; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 258–9.

  16 "Secondly, [I write] to recall to you a certain wager, which, if I mistake not much, is come to its termination both according to the spirit and the letter of it, monarchy being reestablished in France, as I always maintained that it would. … I hope that you have not forgotten that we have a second wager, that I gave you a second guinea to receive an other hundred when a Bourbon is King of France, as I think the period not now remote when that wager too will be mine." Smithson to Lord Holland, November 22, 1805; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 258–9.

  17 Smithson mineral catalogue notes; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  18 Smithson's police file is F7/6461, subtitled no. 9890, "Smithson agent anglais sur le Rhin," in the Archives Nationales, Paris. This account is the only indication that Smithson spoke German. All his correspondence with German friends so far identified was conducted in French.

  19 Mengaud described Smithson as being "cinq pieds, cinq pouces" (five feet and five thumbs or inches, the French foot, based on le pied du Roi, being about 1.07 feet); F7/6461, Archives Nationales. Charles C. Gillispie gives an account of French measurements in the preface to his The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783–84 (Princeton, 1983), p. ix.

  20 Mengaud to Talleyrand, S.E. le ministre des Relations Extérieures, Francfort 22 Mess. or an 13 [July 11, 1805]; F7/6461, Archives Nationales.

  21 Count Rumford to Lady Palmerston, October 14, 1795; quoted in Brian Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer (London, 1957), p. 330.

  22 Smithson to Sir Joseph Banks, September 18, 1808; Banks Collection, Sutro Library, California. Published in A. Grove Day, "James Smithson in Durance: Letter from James Smithson to Sir Joseph Banks, from Hamburg, September 1808, as a Prisoner of War," Pacific Historical Review (1943). Copy in SIA, R U 7000, Box 6.

  23 Smithson to Lord Holland, June 13, 1806; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 32–3.

  24 Smithson to Lord Holland, November 22, 1805; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 258–9.

  25 "Having waited for the capture of Holland, to avoid the circuitous passage by the pole, I now expect to be soon at home." Smithson to Lord Holland, November 22, 1805; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 258–9.

  26 Smithson to unknown [Ricca or Santi], September 4, 1804; Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena, Autgrafi Porri: 36/15.

  27 Ralph Heathcote to his mother, May 7, 1806; Letters of A Young Diplomatist and Soldier during the time of Napoleon (London, 1907), p. 79.

  28 Claire Harman, Fanny Burney (New York, 2001), pp. 288–9.

  29 Royal Institution of Great Britain, The Archives of the Royal Institution of Great Britain in Facsimile: Minutes of Managers' Meetings, 1799–1900 (Yorkshire, Scholar Press, 1979, vol. IV, p. 74. Copley was permitted to exchange the ticket for a new one, despite the fact that "Mr. Macie Smithson is now on the Continent, and his address not known."

  30 Smithson to unknown [Ricca or Santi], September 4, 1804; Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena, Autgrafi Porri: 36/15.

  31 Letter of William Artaud to his father, quoted in Ingamells, Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, p. 28.

  32 "Gian-Vicenzo Petrini (1725–1814)," Diccionario Enciclopedico Escolapio (Vol. II) (Salamanca, 1983), p. 433. Petrini to Fabbroni, n.d. [c. 1802]; Fabbroni Papers, APS F B 113.

  33 Laura Vigni, "II 'Perfido Insinuatore d'Iniquità,'" in La Scienza Illuminata: Paolo Mascagni nel suo Tempo (Siena, 1996), pp. 69–83.

  34 H. S. Torrens, "Thomson, William (bap. 1760, d. 1806)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  35 Smithson to Lord Holland, June 13, 1806; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 32–3. Brook Taylor had been the focus of diplomatic jousting among France, Hesse, and England; Napoleon was convinced Taylor had been among those plotting the Emperor's death and demanded that the Elector refuse to receive Taylor, else Napoleon would have to assume a tacit alliance between England and Hesse. Despite a polite request from the Elector, George III declined to send a different representative in Taylor's stead. When Taylor finally appeared at Kassel, the French minister in Kassel, Baron Lou
is Pierre Edouard Bignon, had stalked off from the city until the matter was resolved—which it was, finally, by Taylor slipping away with Ralph Heathcote in the midst of the dancing at a masked ball he was hosting. Smithson, once again passionately taking the side of the English, told Lord Holland that Taylor had been "driven away with indignity." Countess Louisa E. C. von der Groeben, Ralph Heathcote: Letters of a Young Diplomatist and Soldier During the Time of Napoleon, giving an account of the dispute between the Emperor and the Elector of Hesse (London, 1907), p. 58.

  36 I am indebted to Steve Turner for his interpretation of his experiment; Steven Turner, "Draft document, commenting on Smithson's investigation of a mineral sample, 1806," April 2006. James Smithson, "Account of a Discovery of Native Minium," Philosophical Transactions 96 (1806).

  37 Smithson to Cuvier, July 26, 1806; L'Institut de France, Fonds Cuvier, No. 3228, item 27. In a letter to Lord Holland, he announced he was soon going to Pyrmont; and, probably still thinking about his box of books in Milan, he offered to be of assistance in helping others retrieve their possessions: "There is a picture of the late L.d Bristol's at one of the inns of this town. And I am told effects of his at Pyrmont where I am going soon. If I can be of any use in sending these things to England, or selling them, it will be with great readiness." Smithson to Holland, June 13, 1806; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 32–3.

  38 Niall Ferguson, House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets (1798–1848), (London, 2000), p. 64.

  39 Smithson to Lord Holland, June 13, 1806; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 32–3.

  40 Over the course of eight months in Germany, Denon sent more than 250 cases of artworks—pictures, statues, and other fine objects—to Paris. Dominique-Vivant Denon: L'Oeil de Napoleon (Louvre, 1999), pp. 172, 503–4.

  41 Lettre à Madame la Comtesse F de B [Fanny de Beauhamaisj; contenant un récit des événements qui se sont passés à Lubeck dans la journée du jeudi 6 novembre 1806, et les suivantes (Amsterdam, 1807). Smithson made no markings in the booklet. Smithson Library, SIL.