The Lost World of James Smithson

by Heather Ewing

  9. Vibrating between Existence and the Tomb, 1807–1810

  1 Silvia Marzagalli, Les Boulevards de la Fraude: le negoce maritime et le Blocus continental, 1806–1813 (Paris, 1999), pp. 155–6. Klaus Rybiczka, "Tönning während der Blockade Anfang des 19 Jahrhunderts," Gesellschaft fur Tönninger Stadtgeschichte e.V. Mitteilungsblatt (1994), pp. 25–43.

  2 The London Gazette Extraordinary, September 16 and 17, 1807; copies in 302 Dept. of Foreign Affairs, Topografisk henlagte sager, England 1807 May—December, Lb. nr. 1989, Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen.

  3 Information on Tönning during the Blockade, and the holding of the English in the town, from the Tönning City Archive. Correspondence between the Gesellschaft fur Tönninger Stadtgeschichte e.V. and the author, November 2001.

  4 The "hurricane of war" comes from Smithson to Lord Holland, November 22, 1805; BL Add MS 51823, ff. 258–9. The comment about the climate of Schleswig-Holstein is from Smithson to Sir Joseph Banks, September 18, 1808; Banks Collection, Sutro Library, California. This letter is the central source for Smithson's thoughts and activities during this time and is frequently quoted in this chapter.

  5 The London Gazette Extraordinary, September 16 and 17, 1807; Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen.

  6 Francis James Jackson to George Canning, September 7, 1807; TNA: PRO FO 22/54. See also J. A. van Houtte, "The Low Countries and Scandinavia," in War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval, 1793–1830 (New York, 1965), p. 486.

  7 Smithson to Sir Joseph Banks, September 18, 1808; Banks Collection, Sutro Library, California.

  8 George Harward file, August 16, 1809; TNA: PRO FO 33/42, ff. 26, 28A.

  9 Reuben Smith was running a large merchant ship on the River Eider from Fred-erikstadt to the U.S. He had received permission from the Danish to pass an unlimited number of men through the territory and he used this freedom to his advantage. He cunningly offered to furnish the English with 1,000–1,500 men fit for service, dropping them at Tönning in parties of three hundred at a time, for which he would charge seven guineas a man; he also offered to convey the men all the way to England if necessary, for a fee to be negotiated. The French intercepted one of his letters (April 17, 1804), which sits today in the Archives Nationales (AN), F7/6451. The account of his arrest is in the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen. The despatches of J. M. Forbes, U.S. consul at Hamburg, to Secretary of States James Madison are filled with accounts of his efforts to maintain U.S. commerce in the region; Forbes made a trip to Tönning in October or early November 1807 but his letters to Madison do not specifically mention Smith's case. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Microfilm T211, Roll T-1.

  10 Jas. Thomson for the Danish Consul's Office, Leith, to His Excellency Count Weddel Jarlsberg, September 25, 1807; Rigsarkivet.

  11 Js. Lavine Wade, Königsberg, to the King, March 1, 1808; Rigsarkivet.

  12 Mrs. Harward writing on behalf of herself and her two girls, from "Sleswick" on August 20, 1807. Her husband, the former FO official, was imprisoned at Tönning like Smithson, and her other children were at "Lortmark & Ludwigsburg." Rigsarkivet.

  13 Smithson to Banks, September 18, 1808; Sutro.

  14 Smithson's petition was sent with a physician's report confirming his poor condition; the actual petition is missing from the files, but the covering documentation written by the government is extant. From Tönning Smithson's petition traveled to the Schleswig-Holstein chancel in Copenhagen, the first of many steps in the Danish bureaucracy. Finally on January 19, 1808, five months into Smithson's imprisonment, it was forwarded on for a final reckoning at the Superior Court at Gottorf. No records concerning Smithson have been found in the Tönning City Archives. Papers relating to his case, given the number 663, are located at the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen and at the Landesarchiv in Kiel, but there is no evidence that the petition was ever reviewed at the Superior Court in Gottorf (the papers of which are also located at Kiel). I am indebted to Helmut Wrunsch at Tönning for all his help in this matter, including the laborious transcription of the antique German into modern typescript; to Peter Buntzen at the Rigsarkivet for all his help; to Hans-Henning Freitag at the Landeshauptstadt Kiel; and especially to Judd Stitziel for the translation of the documents.

  15 Smithson to Banks, September 18, 1808; Sutro.

  16 There are no extant letters from Smithson to Greville dating from this period. Many years later, in 1819, Smithson wrote of his experiments on sulphurets in a letter to Berzelius. Smithson to Berzelius, June 16, 1819; Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

  17 John Thornton to Smithson, April 19, 1808. PWI: 39, Banks Collection, Sutro Library, California. I am grateful to Hugh Torrens for sharing his discovery of this letter with me.

  18 Kiel Weekly Journal for the Best of the Poor, May 11, 1808; Landeshauptstadt Kiel.

  19 In Rhees' biography (Rhees, James Smithson and his Bequest, p. 17) the Thorvaldsen bust is recorded as having been "presented to Mr. Smithson at Copenhagen by Dr. Brandis, physician to the King of Denmark." It is not known when or where Smithson and Brandis became friends, but Smithson does not seem to have visited Copenhagen, especially not after 1810, the year when Brandis assumed his post as physician to the Queen (not King) of Denmark. It is conceivable the two men met in Germany in the mid-1790s, but a connection forged in Schleswig-Holstein seems to make the most sense. For biographical information on Brandis see the Dansk biografisk Lexikon (Copenhagen, 1887–1905). No image of the Thorvaldsen sculpture that Brandis presented to Smithson, which was lost in the Smithsonian fire, survives. It was identified in early Smithsonian guidebooks as "a marble head of Saint Cecilia." The Thorvaldsens Muséum in Copenhagen, however, has no record of the bust, or of Thorvaldsen ever executing such a design. (It is difficult to imagine how St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music and usually depicted playing an instrument, would have been identified in a bust.) I am grateful to Dr. Margarethe Floryan for her assistance.

  20 Ralph Heathcote to his mother, May 2, 1806. Letters of A Young Diplomatist and Soldier During the Time of Napoleon (London, 1907), pp. 77–9.

  21 Ralph Heathcote to his mother, April 30, 1806. Letters of A Young Diplomatist, pp. 75–9.

  22 Archives Nationale, AF iv, 1494. See also E. d'Hauterive, La Police Secrete du Premier Empire (Paris, 1908), vol. 1, pp. 194, 484, 505.

  23 Monsieur Bourrienne, Minister at Hamburg to the Ministry at Paris, October 26, 1808. Letter 130, Microfilm at the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris.

  24 A. Raffalovich, "John Parish, Banquier et negociant a Hambourg," Journal des Economistes, vol. VII (1905), pp. 199–208; J. Walters and Raymond Walters, "The American Career of David Parish," Journal of Economic History, vol. 4, no. 2 (1944), pp. 149–66. When Smithson met Richard Parish, Parish's brother David had recently left the family's commercial house in Antwerp for an opportunistic posting as the American agent of the fantastically lucrative Spanish colonial bullion trade; while there he immediately began buying up property in northern New York with the idea of developing the St. Lawrence River as a trade route. The Parish family history was assiduously maintained by its descendants; family papers are located today in Hamburg Staatsarchiv, in Prague, at the New-York Historical Society, and at St. Lawrence University in New York. I have found no mention of Smithson; thanks to Mark McMurray at St. Lawrence for his assistance.

  25 Smithson to Banks, September 18, 1808; Sutro.

  26 Hoare's Bank. Payments began January 4, 1809; vol. 100 (1807–8), f. 117. Smithson appears also to have been getting help from a prominent Göteborg merchant, Martin Holtermann & Co., who had offices in Hamburg and Paris. Large sums of money were drawn, totaling some £850, beginning in April 1808 and continuing through August 12, 1809. Many thanks to my friend Patrik Ohlson for his help ferreting out information about Holtermann.

  27 Banks to William Hamilton, November 8, 1799; DTC, vol. 11, ff. 313–15; quoted in Gavin de Beer, The Sciences Were Never at War (London, 1960), p. 83. Dolomieu, a Knight of Malta, was threa
tened with criminal charges by the Neapolitans at Taranto on account of his supposed assistance in Napoleon's taking of Malta. Banks was unsuccessful in his efforts to secure Dolomieu's release, but did manage to have the conditions of his confinement improved. Dolomieu was eventually released in late March 1801, one of the first conditions specified by Napoleon for an armistice. De Beer, pp. 81–104. To the devastation of his colleagues, Dolomieu died later that year, his health having been severely compromised by his captivity.

  28 Delambre, "Eloge de Lagrange," Les Mémoires de I’nstitut (1812), p. 14; quoted in Jean-Pierre Poirier, Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist (Philadelphia, 1996), p. 382.

  29 De Beer, The Sciences Were Never at War, pp. 31–2; see also Douglas McKie, "Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, F.R.S, 1743–1794," Notes and Records of the Royal Society 7 (December 1949), pp. 1–41. De Beer posits that the intended recipient of the Copley Medal for 1793 was Lavoisier, and that the Royal Society with held the medal that year precisely in order to prevent fueling any persecution of him.

  30 Quoted in de Beer, The Sciences Were Never at War, p. 197. Faujas de St. Fond, A Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, edited by Sir Archibald Geikie (Glasgow, 1907), vol. 1, p. 53.

  31 Smithson to Cuvier, April 2, 1806; MS 627, fo. 101, Fonds Cuvier, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. Translation from the Smithsonian; SIA, RU 7000, Box 1.

  32 Draft of a letter from Charles Blagden to Delambre, August 2, 1808; Blagden Papers, BLA.d21.a, Royal Society Library.

  33 Draft of a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to Delambre, n.d. [c. late 1808/early 1809]. Delambre to Comte d'Hunebourg, April 16, 1809. Printed in translation by David Eugene Smith, Delambre and Smithson (New York, 1934). See also Procès Verbaux de VAcademie des Sciences, March 20 and June 19, 1809, vol. 4, p. 179 and pp. 220–21.

  34 Smithson was highly skeptical of many of Pinkney's observations. "Folly!," he wrote in one margin. "Indeed she was AWFUL pretty," he wrote in another, concerning the French wife of one of the secretaries in the consulate, whose "perfect beauty" excited in Pinkney "such a mixed emotion of wonder, awe, and pleasure." Pinkney, Travels through the South of France in 1807 and 1808 by a route never before performed, made by permission of the French government. (London, 1814), pp. 148, 343. Smithson Library, SIL.

  35 Paul R. Sweet, Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography (Columbus, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 14–15.

  36 Between 2000 and 2003 the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science (BBAW) hosted an interdisciplinary thematic study devoted to Classical Berlin; details at www.berliner-klassik.de.

  37 Laurence Brockliss, "Humboldt's Rift," The Times Literary Supplement, June 10, 2005. Sweet, Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, vol. 2, p. 57.

  38 Humboldt to Dohna, March 25, 1809, Gcsammelte Schriften, 10, pp. 31–2, printed in Sweet, p. 56.

  39 That Holland House had continental servants is mentioned in Derek Hudson, Holland House in Kensington (London, 1967), p. 85. Beckford's servant is in Timothy Mowl, William Beckford: Composing for Mozart (London, 1998), p. 203. Bill Richmond is discussed in Pierce Egan, Boxiana; or, Sketches of antient & modem Pugilism (London, 1818), pp. 440–49. Information on Henri Honoré Sailly is from Smithson's bank account at Hoare's and from his will (TNA: PRO PROB 11/1763).

  40 William Allen (1770–1843) is discussed in Ian Inkster, "Science and Society in the Metropolis: A preliminary examination of the social and institutional context of the Askesian Society of London, 1796–1807," Annals of Science 34 (1977), pp. 1 32. See also E. C. Cripps, Plough Court: The story of a notable pharmacy, 1715— 1927 (Allen and Hanbury, 1927).

  41 Smithson's mineral notes; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  42 Hoare's, vol. 9, f. 91.

  43 Minutes of May 10, 1810, and June 7, 1810, pp. 544, 546–50. RS Archives.

  44 For biographical information see Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish: The Experimental Life (Lewisburg, PA, 1999), pp. 366–7, 453, 462–3, 673–4, 694.

  10. London: A New Race of Chemists, 1810–1814

  1 Smithson gave his address as St. James's Place in the byline of his "On the Composition of Zeolite," Philosophical Transactions (1811); Boyle's Court Guide indicates that the exact address was No. 3. In 1841 Alexander Dallas Bache in the United States wrote to Faraday asking for any information on Smithson and the Royal Institution. Faraday replied that he had only the address "3 Stanhope Place" to supply; Faraday to Bache, November 12, 1841; Letter 1371 in Frank A. J. L. James, The Correspondence of Michael Faraday (London, 1996), vol. 3. There is no known Stanhope Place, according to English Heritage research. Presumably this was in fact the St. James's Place address. After the Smithsonian was established, Faraday in correspondence with the Secretary Joseph Henry stated: "I did not know Mr Smithson though I think I used to hear his name I was then of no consequence." Faraday to Henry, July 23, 1851; Letter 2448 in Correspondence of Michael Faraday (London, 1999), vol. 4. Smithson moved in 1812 to 19 Crawford Street, according to Boyle's Court Guide.

  2 PRO TS 11 documents reveal that Henry James Hungerford (Enrico de la Batut in Italy) was born in Pondicherry. His passport documents, at the SIA in RU 7000, show that he was twenty-one in 1829, indicating that he was probably born in 1808. His father, Henry Louis Dickenson, referred in his will to Mary Ann as "going by my name and the mother of my Son." It is not clear that they were ever married. Her last name is given as Coates in the will; in the French archives recording the decease of Dickenson she is listed as Marianne Corson. Archives de Paris, DQ8/644/fo. 71.

  3 Royal Society Club minutes, August 23, 1810; RS Archives. Sir Alexander Johnston, Smithson's neighbor in St. James's, was the only other guest that evening.

  4 For example, Alexander Marcet, "A Chemical Account of Various Dropsical Fluids," inscribed "From the Author"; Smithson Library, SIL. Smithson was also distributing copies of his own works. As "James Smithson, Esqr. M.R.I." he gave two copies of his Ulmin paper to the Royal Institution in 1813; RI, Managers' Minutes, vol. V, p. 362, item 4. The copy of that same paper that he gave Sir Joseph Banks, inscribed "Sir Joseph Banks From the Author," is located now at the BL, shelfmark 8896.U1.

  5 Thomas Thomson, A History of the Royal Society from its institution to the end of the eighteenth century (London, 1812), p. 485.

  6 Davy dreaming of greatness and utility is quoted in the foreword by Sir John Meurig Thomas to E. A. Davis, ed., Science in the Making: Scientific Development as Chronicled by Historic Papers in the Philosophical Magazine— with commentaries and illustrations, vol. 1: 1798–1850 (London, 1995), p. xiii. For Carlyle see, George A. Foote, "Sir Humphry Davy and his audience at the Royal Institution," Isis 43 (1952), p. 7; quoted in Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture (Cambridge, 1992), p. 194.

  7 The squall at the opera comment is from Bostock to Marcet, March 16, 1811; quoted in Gilbert Papers, University of London archives, Box 4, file 1, folder B. Refining and exalting quote from John Davy, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy (London, 1836), p. 210.

  8 Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy, pp. 164, 217. Golinski, "The Literature of the New Sciences," in James Chandler, ed., The New Cambridge History of English Literature: The Romantic Period (Cambridge, forthcoming). Available at http://www.unh.edu/history/golinski/paper7.htm.

  9 Maurice Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organization: The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (London, 1978), p. 98.

  10 Golinski, Science as Public Culture, p. 193.

  11 Thomas Kelly, A History of Adult Education in Great Britain (Liverpool, 1962), quoted and discussed in Berman, pp. 94–5.

  12 William L. Bird, Jr., "A Suggestion Concerning James Smithson's Concept of 'Increase and Diffusion, '" Technology and Culture (April 1983), pp. 246–55, 248 especially.

  13 F. Kurzer, "A History of the Surrey Institution," Annals of Science 57, no. 2 (April 2000), pp. 109–41.

  14 Golinski, Science as Public Culture, pp. 221–2.

  15 Thomas Thomson, "On the Daltonian Theory of Definite Proportions in Chemic
al Combinations," Annals of Philosophy (1813); quoted in David M. Knight, ed., Classical Scientific Papers: Chemistry (New York, 1968).

  16 J. Davy, ed. The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. (London, 1839–40), vol. 1, pp. 382–84.

  17 Quoted in David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power (Cambridge, 1996), p. 39.

  18 Recollection by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, quoted in C.W.P. MacArthur, "Davy's Differences with Gay-Lussac and Thenard: New Light on Events in Paris and on the Transmission and Translation of Davy's Papers in 1810," Notes and Records of the Royal Society (1985), p. 216.

  19 Golinski, Science as Public Culture, p. 254; Knight, Humphry Davy, p. 68.

  20 Roy Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 202. Humphry Davy, Royal Institution 1805 lectures; quote about Newton from Davy's unpublished 1811 lectures, Royal Institution Archives. I am grateful to David Haas for his research into Smithson at the Royal Institution.

  21 Smithson mineral notes; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2. H. S. Torrens, "Thomson, William (1760–1806)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  22 James Smithson, "On a Saline Substance from Mount Vesuvius," Philosophical Transactions 103 (1813). Smithson explained that the "present saline substance was sent to me from Naples to Florence, where I was, in May 1794, with a request to ascertain its nature. … I was informed by letter, that it had 'flowed out liquid from a small aperture in the cone of Vesuvius, ' and which I apprehend to have happened in 1792 or 1793." In the Smithsonian Archives is a list of specimens in William Thomson's handwriting, "sent to Mr. Macie via Dr. Robertson Nov. r 22 [17]96." Number 7 on this list is "Vitriolated tartar, probably with copper, spewed out liquid f]ro]m a small aperture in the cone of Vesuvius." Thomson described obtaining these specimens in his Breve Notizia di un Viaggiatore suite incrostazioni silicee termali d'ltalia, e specialmente di quelle dei Campi Flegrei nel regno di Napoli [1795], p. 25; Smithson marked this paragraph in his copy. Smithson Library, SIL.