The Lost World of James Smithson

by Heather Ewing

  Smithson's will as he finally penned it is unique in the annals of testaments. Many of his contemporaries, the men of the English Enlightenment who had, like him, dedicated themselves to advancing the frontiers of knowledge, were also approaching the end of their lives in the 1820s. A number of them had become very wealthy over the course of the years, as during their lifetimes science had started to become a career in which one could make one's fortune. In their wills, some of them made gestures of support for science, but none of them suggested a Smithsonian-like instrument for their wealth that would dramatically impact the direction of science or society.

  Humphry Davy, whose scientific genius netted him a knighthood and an heiress, believed there was no better use for a man's wealth than the promotion of science. As the abstemious William Hyde Wollaston, who had made a fortune in processing platinum, lay dying, Davy told his wife, "So will W. die! with perhaps two or three hundred thousand; yet these men might have applied money to the noblest purposes."21 Wollaston did leave £1,000 to the Geological Society and £2,000 to the Royal Society. At the Royal Society the dividends from this sum were to be used to promote experimental research. Although this bequest represented a small percentage of Wollaston's total wealth, the Donation Fund, as it was called, nevertheless formed the first money that the Royal Society received enabling it to patronize scientific research in any systematic way.22

  But Davy hardly made much of a donation to science himself when it came to the end. He wrote his will in 1827, at a time he was "feeling more than common symptoms of mortality." He died two years later, on the Continent, where he had penned the romantic discourse Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher. His fortune at his death totaled close to £30,000. Most of it he left to his wife and sole executor, Lady Davy. To his brother he entrusted some plate he had been awarded, with instructions that if it was not used by the family it be melted down or sold and the proceeds go to the Royal Society to found an annual medal for the most useful discovery in chemistry in Europe or America.23

  Smithson's old mentor Henry Cavendish, acknowledged as one of the wealthiest men of science in England, left an estate worth close to £1,000,000 in 1810; Smithson's estate, in contrast, totaled a little over £100,000. Most of Cavendish's wealth reverted to his family. Little was left to science; his old assistant Sir Charles Blagden declared that he was not a "person who gave the £40,000 [annual income] to hospitals." Cavendish left Blagden £15,000, but Blagden was virtually the only scientist so honored.24

  Count Rumford, who birthed the Royal Institution, was perhaps one figure who might have served as something of a role model for Smithson. He spent much of his life involved in philanthropic activities—most with the added goal of enhancing his own reputation. In addition to improving enterprises such as the workhouse in Munich and the Royal Institution in London, Rumford had endowed scientific prizes in his own name at the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, making it quite clear at the outset that he hoped very much to be awarded the first medals. America, the place of his birth, featured prominently in his final bequests. Upon his death in 1814 he left all his books and military designs to the United States government for the use of any military academy they might found. Like Wollaston and Davy, he left a sum to promote scientific research; Rumford's gift was to Harvard College, an annuity of $1,000, to endow a Rumford professorship dedicated to "the utility of the physical and mathematical sciences for the improvement of the useful arts, and for the extension of the industry, prosperity, happiness and well-being of Society."25

  Smithson's last testament did not in the end resemble any of these men's. It was a highly irregular document, its language strikingly informal and inexact. Solicitors were paid handsomely for drafting legal documents precisely to avoid the vague descriptors that cluttered Smithson's text. Defining one's mother as "Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley, & niece to Charles the proud Duke of Somerset," with no last name, address, or other identifying details, invited challenges and problems in probate. This is not to say that eighteenth-century gentlemen did not write quirky wills; the opening clause of the antiquarian Francis Douce's will read: "I give to Sir Anthony Carlisle £200., requesting him either to sever my head, or extract the heart from my body, so as to prevent any possibility of the return of vitality."26 But in light of the size of the estate and Smithson's unusual intentions for it, it is remarkable, not to say almost unprecedented, that he did not consult with a professional in the drafting of his will.27

  Smithson left all of his property in trust to his bankers, Messrs. Drummonds, instructing them to put it under the management of the Court of Chancery. He remembered first of all his servants John Fitall and Henri Honoré Sailly, leaving Fitall a £100 annuity and permitting Sailly to keep the outstanding bills and bonds signed by Smithson for five years at an interest of 5 percent. He then specified that "To Henry James Hungerford, my Nephew, heretofore called Henry James Dickinson [sic], son to my later brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Louis Dickinson [sic], now residing with Mr. Auboin [sic], at Bourg la Reine, near Paris, I give and bequeath for his life the whole of the income arising from my property of every nature & kind whatever …" He empowered his nephew to make a jointure should he marry, ensuring that any wife might also be provided for. The whole of his property "of every kind absolutely & forever" was to go to any children that Hungerford might have. Smithson was careful to note—in language that was exceedingly rare—that these included children legitimate or illegitimate; Smithson's father's will had, by contrast, reflected the traditional manner of citing children, repeatedly stating "lawfully begotten being always preferred."28

  Smithson's nephew Henry James Hungerford.

  Only then, after he had laid all of these instructions out, did he write, "In the case of the death of my said Nephew without leaving a child or children, or the death of the child or children he may have had under the age of twenty-one years or intestate, I then bequeath the whole of my property, subject to the Annuity of One hundred pounds to John Fitall, & for the security & payment of which I mean Stock to remain in this Country, to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men." There was no further elaboration. He did not set out any program of operations or suggest how the management of such an establishment might be organized. And he made no special dispensation for any particular possessions, like his mineral cabinet or library or scientific apparatus, items that might have immediately benefited a research institution or university.

  There seems little question that Smithson wrote the will on his own. He had to hand a little guide called Plain Advice to the Public, to Facilitate the Making of Their Own Wills, which had just been published in August 1826. The book's intended audience was "the man of middling possessions," not the gentleman of fortune like Smithson. The proprietor of "large and extensive possessions," the author explained, could "well afford to pay for the assistance of a legal adviser." For various, evidently painful reasons, however, Smithson did not have great swathes of family real estate to devise nor complicated entails to draft. His holdings were mostly in the form of bank stock, and the number of people to whom he wished to bequeath his fortune was, by this stage in his life, few. He could dispose of his fortune in a relatively simple manner.29

  Smithson was probably attracted to the author of the pamphlet's stated desire "to infuse into his work as much as possible of that valuable ingredient— practical utility." He evidently followed the booklet closely in many of its recommendations. Included in the back of this little how-to book were a number of "fictitious wills" to be used as models, the mention of which Smithson noted clearly with a dash in the margin. He heeded all the suggestions regarding how best to remember faithful servants, including the language "free of legacy duty" in Joseph Fitall's annuity and indicating that it was to be payable quarterly, with the first payment to come three months after
Smithson's death.

  But there were, obviously, other ways in which Smithson departed dramatically from the advice imparted by the booklet. In writing a will that spoke to his deepest needs, he seems ultimately to have followed no guide but himself. He signaled what was most important to him in the very first sentence: his ancestry. For Smithson, the opening lines, presenting his inflated portrait of his parentage, were about as significant as the ones that decreed the possible future Smithsonian. They were his final opportunity to set the record straight, to broadcast his lineage and assert his claim to his father. The guide that Smithson consulted recommended commencing with "a formal introduction," one that identified the author through his domicile—street, city, and county, and in the case of someone like a merchant marine, his occupation. There was no direction to list one's parents, especially not in such vague and grandiose terms.

  Likewise, the idea for a Smithsonian Institution was not one that could be found in any book. In the matter of charitable giving, the guide suggested "a bequest to a public charity," recommending in one example a gift of £100 to benefit the poor of the parish of Islington and in another £100 "to the president, treasurer, and governor of Christ's Hospital, London, for the use and benefit of said institution." The author of Plain Advice to the Public, of course, even in his wildest, most imaginative suggestions, never came close to proposing that the beneficiary be all of mankind, in the form of a bequest to the government of a distant land.

  Having written his will and tidied up his affairs, Smithson went back to Paris. He may have returned as early as November or December 1826, as his friend John Guillemard recalled last seeing him in Paris in that year.30 In early June 1827 he was reunited with his eccentric protégé Pierre Henri Joseph Baume, who had just completed a long religious pilgrimage and was living in a monastery in Paris, his hair all grown out and people mistaking him "for a Moor," to his great distress. "Smithson very long conversation," Baume reported in his diary. Several times more that month the two of them met to talk, and in early July Baume set off on a trip to London via Brussels, a commission from Smithson in hand. The details of this commission remain unknown. Baume at this point in his life was fascinated by Robert Owen and programs for universal education; he harbored dreams of perfecting agriculture, and he was also entertaining ideas of setting up a society called "the Friends of Truth," whose members should be well versed in medicine. In 1821, dismissed from the court of Naples, he had taken a tour of "public institutions." It is possible that this trip to Belgium included a fact-finding mission on matters of educational or scientific institutions for Smithson; but it is equally possible, of course, that this commission was simply a request for books or Belgian lace. Whether Smithson discussed his bequest with any of his friends is not known; Baume never made any mention of it in his diaries.31

  Smithson was still in Paris in the summer of 1828. On July 8, 1828, he loaned the exorbitant sum of 20,000 francs—quite enough for a gentleman to live on for an entire year—to his former servant, Henri Honoré Sailly, who 'was then running the Hungerford Hotel on the rue Caumartin.32 At some point thereafter, he packed up his things and headed south to the Mediterranean, accompanied by his servant Herman Fropwell He traveled across the Continent in grand style, in his own private carriage, carrying himself, as ever, as the English aristocrat. Smithson brought many things with him on this journey—books, papers, his telescope, a large collection of silver, two gold snuffboxes, many fine pieces of gold and diamond jewelry, and "two paste board boxes containing medals coins stones &c." For his toilette he had assembled forty-four pocket handkerchiefs, nineteen cravats, seven waistcoats, thirteen pairs of stockings, two pair of underwear, three nightcaps, and more. He was not, however, carrying all of his belongings; the artworks he still owned, much of his library, probably much of his mineral collection, his scientific instruments, his gun, and his extensive china service he seems to have left behind in London or Paris—either in storage, or perhaps in the care of his nephew and sister-in-law.33

  Presumably Smithson hoped to recuperate for a season or more along the coast somewhere. He settled for a while in Genoa, a sprawling amphitheatre of a town perched high on the hills, with broad vistas out to the sea. If he was beyond the point of taking long walks into the countryside, the city's views remained a salve to the spirit. Mary Shelley was another visitor who took in "the theatre of Nature from my windows," during the melancholy months following her husband's drowning off Livorno in 1822.34

  Genoa, while not a spot traditionally sought after by those with pulmonary complaints, did offer plenty of comfort to the wealthy tourist, especially one scientifically minded, and it was a place to which Smithson had long been attracted.35 The city boasted an excellent museum of natural history, a large mineral collection, and a botanical garden; and at the university the first chemistry professorship had been held by the English physician William Batt, a man Smithson had known back in his Grand Tour days.36

  It was in Genoa, at the end of June, that Smithson passed his final hours. Death was the ultimate experiment for the men of the Enlightenment, the final opportunity to observe and record, to try to collect useful information. Smithson's friend Wollaston, who had died the year before of a brain tumor, spent his last day trying to communicate his state of alertness—"endeavouring," it seemed to one friend, "to convert his death into a grand philosophical experiment, to give data for determining the influence of the body on the mind, and to try whether it was possible for the latter to remain until the very last."37 Likewise, when Amédée Berthollet, the son of Smithson's good friend, committed suicide in 1810, he did it in a manner that his bereft father must have reluctantly admired; he stuffed all the cracks and crevices of the room, set a watch upon the table, lit a charcoal brazier, and proceeded to catalogue the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, until his writing descended into illegible scribbles and finally trailed off altogether.38

  How did Smithson die? And what of, in the end? There is no record—only the knowledge that the English vice consul, summoned probably by Smithson's servant, hurried to the house that same day, June 27, 1829. He came with a Mr. Gibbs, an English agent resident in Genoa who had served as Smithson's banker. Together the two men made arrangements for a funeral. The vice consul inventoried all Smithson's possessions, making special note of his "Geneva gold watch," which Fropwell the servant had taken into his custody "and for which the said Herman is to account for." The vice consul then "put the papers and the most valuable objects in boxes and a trunk on which he placed the Consular Seals, except for the underwear and clothes of the deceased. A part of these would have to be washed. He had, however, left these under the care of a servant of the deceased, a person to be fully trusted; and wrote to the relatives of the deceased in order to have their instructions." Going through the belongings the men had found a receipt of the will, which Smithson had carried with him.39

  At the annual anniversary meeting of the Royal Society that year, held on November 30, 1829, Davies Gilbert, Smithson's old friend from Pembroke, sat in the chair as president. "In no previous interval of twelve months," he declared, "has the society collectively, or have its individual members, experienced losses so severe." The Royal Society had lost from its ranks William Hyde Wollaston, Thomas Young, and most especially Sir Humphry Davy, all three of whom represented Britain as Foreign Associates of the Institut in Paris. Gilbert took some time to recall the particular contributions that each had made to science before going on to list the further deaths the society had suffered: Dr. Edward Ash, Lord Buchan (David Steuart Erskine), Lord Oriel (John Foster), and, finally, James Smithson. Smithson, Gilbert reminisced, "was distinguished by the intimate friendship of Mr. Cavendish, and rivalled our most expert chemists in elegant analyses."40

  Smithson died far from London, out of sight of this scientific community, and public notice of his death was slow in coming. Davies Gilbert at the Royal Society had probably learned of the loss of his friend only shortly before that anniversary meeti
ng at the end of November, following the probate of Smithson's will. The Times observed it a week or so later, printing the will in its entirety and finally bringing word of Smithson's extraordinary contingency bequest to light. The Gentleman's Magazine commemorated him in a few paragraphs in early 1830, mistakenly reporting the death as having taken place in October 1829, "In the South of France." Its obituary opened by quoting from the will Smithson's ostentatious description of his own family heritage: "Son to Hugh first Duke of Northumberland, & Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley & niece to Charles the proud Duke of Somerset." The editors immediately disparaged Smithson's ancestral claims, stating that "in the account of the family in Sir R. C. Hoare's Hungerfordiana, we find no Elizabeth, nor the name of Macie, which was that which Mr. Smithson originally bore."41

  From scientific quarters there were few observations of Smithson's passing. There was no éloge at the Institut, that true marker of statesmanship in international science, though Smithson's friend Georges Cuvier sat in the chair. It was in fact only at the Royal Society's anniversary meeting in November 1830, a year and a half after Smithson's death, that the president Davies Gilbert communicated a more complete recognition of his college friend. Gilbert's tribute consisted primarily of "the trifling but characteristic" recollection of Smithson's delight over his analysis of a lady's tear—a story, Gilbert told the assembled, that Smithson relished to tell. "Smithson, once observing a tear gliding down a lady's cheek, endeavoured to catch it on a crystal—one half of the drop escaped; he preserved the other, however, submitted it to the re-agents, and detected what was then called microcosmic salt, with muriate of soda, and other saline substances, held in solution."42