The Lost World of James Smithson

by Heather Ewing

  23 Membership records of the Geological Society, Burlington House, London. Smithson referenced Smithson Tennant's article on the volcanic productions of the Lipari islands, published in the Transactions of the Geological Society in his paper "On a Saline Substance from Mount Vesuvius," Philosophical Transactions (1813).

  24 Smithson's transfers from his Hoare's account to a new Drummonds account began September 19, 1811, with a transfer of £854.9.10 and continued throughout the next three years. Hoare's Bank Archives. Drummonds account begins in September 1811; 1811 P-S, DR/427/228, f.541, Royal Bank of Scotland Archives. Drummonds as part of their war effort pulped most of their archive, retaining only one year a decade beginning in 1815, so of james Smithson's final years we have only 1815 and 1825. Many thanks to Philip Winterbottom for his assistance.

  25 Journal Book Copy (JBC) 40; Royal Society Archives (RS).

  26 Berzelius Archives, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. There are four letters from Smithson there, all dated 1818–19, suggesting that Smithson first met Berzelius when they were both in Paris at that time. Dinner Books for Holland House in the Holland Papers at BL.

  27 Papers related to Greville's collection and its purchase in BL Add MS 40716, ff. 12, 56, 73, 150, 164.

  28 D. L. Meyer, A Method of Making Useful Mineral Collections, to which are added some experiments on a Deliquescent Calcareous Earth, or Native fixed Sal Ammoniac (London, 1775), p. 6; Smithson Library, SIL.

  29 Fitton presented a description of the mineralogy of the Dublin area to the Geological Society in 1811, and he inscribed a copy of the subsequent publication to Smithson. William Fitton, Notes on the Mineralogy of Part of the Vicinity of Dublin, based on the work of the late Rev. Walter Stephens (London, 1812). It is inscribed "For James Smithson Esq.," Smithson Library, SIL.

  30 Johnston became F.R.S. in 1811, and was, along with Smithson, the only other guest at the Royal Society Club dinner in July 1810. Johnston gave Smithson some specimens for his mineral cabinet; see Smithson mineral notes, SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  31 Edward Howard, "Experiments and observations on certain stony substances, which at different times are said to have fallen on the Earth; also on various kinds of nature now," Philosophical Transactions 92 (1802). Smithson made a payment to him in 1813 of £30.18. He also made a payment that year of £10.12 to an R. Molyneux, which was the name of Howard's maternal family. Drummonds 1813 P-S, DR/427/240 ff. 545, 544. The two apparently stayed in fairly close contact, even after Smithson went abroad in 1814. "Pray also tell Wollaston to enquire about Smithson in his travels. I have not heard from him for months. He was then at Aix la Chapelle under the care of Mons. r Schlosser Banker." Howard to Henry Warburton, August 4, 1816, Wollaston Papers, Add MSS 7736, Box 2, Cambridge University Library.

  32 Smithson, "On the detection of very minute quantities of arsenic and mercury," Annals of Philosophy (1822).

  33 Trevor Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Early Nineteenth- Century Science (Cambridge, 1981) especially pp. 1–2, 87, 185. Golinski, Science as Public Culture, pp. 203–35, esp. pp. 218–19. J. Davy, ed., The Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 271; quoted in June Z. Fullmer, "Humphry Davy: Fund Raiser," in The Development of the Laboratory: Essays on the Place of Experiment in Industrial Civilization, Frank A. J. L. James, ed. (New York, 1989).

  11. Paris: Private Vices, Publick Benefits, 1814–1825

  1 François Arago, "Eloge for Ampére," translated for the Smithsonian and published in the Annual Report of 1872, pp. 124–5. Samuel P. Langley learned that the "distinguished foreigner" referred to by Arago in the éloge was in fact James Smithson from the American astronomer Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who was a friend of Arago's. Memorandum by Secretary S. P. Langley, September 14, 1894; SIA, RU 7000, Box 5.

  2 Annual Register for 1814, pp. 29–32. Edward Wedlake Brayley, A Topographical Description of London and Middlesex (London, 1820), vol. 3, pp. 89–92.

  3 Drummonds 1814 P-S, DR/427/246, f. 577; Royal Bank of Scotland Archives.

  4 Quoted in Edward Stanley, Before and After Waterloo (London, 1907), p. 291. See also Margery Elkington, Les Relations de Société entre 1'Angieterre et la France sous la Restauration (1814–1830) (Paris, 1929), p. 12.

  5 See Philip Mansel, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution, 1814— 1852 (New York, 2003), p. 53. Smithson owned a guidebook to the Louvre pictures; Smithson Library Collection, SIL. The "vampyre" quote is from Galignani's Messenger, Saturday, July 2, 1814.

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

  7 The illumination was done by the Englishman F. A. Windsor; see Mansel, p. 143. Smithson owned his pamphlet on the use of hydrogen gas for illumination (Paris, 1816), on which Windsor had proudly scrawled, "This is the only copy I have left of 1000 given away." Smithson Library, SIL.

  8 Humboldt to Pictet, May 26, 1808; quoted in Karl Bruhns, ed., Life of Alexander von Humboldt (London, 1873), vol. 2, p. 10.

  9 J. Erik Jorpes, Jac. Berzelius, His Life and Work, translated by Barbara Steele (Stockholm, 1970), p. 82. Smithson was scouring the city's dealers for interesting and unusual specimens soon after he arrived, and must have promptly established a place where he could conduct experiments. "Small green polished stone bought at Paris. August 1814, "he wrote in the notes he maintained on his collection. "This readily marked by a knife, yet it is scarcely possible to break it on the anvil with a hammer." Smithson notes; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  10 See Maurice Crosland, The Society of Arcueil (London, 1967). Berzelius' "cooking muck" comment is in Carl Gustaf Bernhard, "Berzelius as a European Traveler," in Evan Melhado and Tore Frängsmyr, Enlightenment Science in the Romantic Era: The Chemistry of Berzelius and its Cultural Setting (Cambridge, 1992) p. 228. Smithson's friendships with this younger generation are evidenced by the calling cards and signatures from his time in Paris, located in SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  11 "Smithson Tennant, F.R.S. (1761–1815)," Notes and Records of the Royal Society 17 (1962), p. 92.

  12 Blagden diary, October 2, 1814, Royal Society Archives. I am very grateful to Dr. Wales, whose father wrote a biography of Smithson Tennant, for directing my attention to this reference.

  13 Crosland, Society of Arcueil, p. 244. Smithson shared this fascination with Egypt and later published "An Examination of Some Egyptian Colours," Annals of Philosophy (1824).

  14 Blagden diary, October 9, 1814, and September 29, 1814; RS Archives.

  15 Blagden diary, September 29, 1814; RS Archives.

  16 Smithson, "On Native Hydrous Aluminate of Lead, or Plumb Gomme," Annals of Philosophy (1819).

  17 Blagden diary, February 5, 1815, RS Archives. Smithson's Drummonds bank ledger contains a £100 payment to "Smithson Tennant," on January 25, 1815; 1815 P-S, DR/427/252 f. 577.

  18 Alexander Marcet to Jacob Berzelius, March 29, 1815; H. G. Soderbaum, Jac. Berzelius Brefi vol. 3 (Uppsala, 1913), p. 119.

  19 Count Las Cases, Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena (London, 1824), quoted in Crosland, Society of Arcueil, pp. 278, 396–7.

  20 Quoted in Mansel, Paris Between 1814 and 1852, p. 71. Galignani's Messenger, April 18, 1815, reported that "Verdun, and imprisonment for life, immediately haunted the imagination of every Englishman—and many a gallant Officer who had boldly met the French in the field, now fled towards the coast with the utmost precipitation."

  21 June 5, 1815. Royal Institution, General Minutes, Vol. II, p. 79.

  22 Smithson's Drummonds bank ledgers list several large payments— £100 and £200 at a time, totaling some £1, 300—beginning in December 1814 and continuing through the end of March 1815; one entry gives "for the French attestation," as explanation, but it is otherwise not clear what these payments were for. 1814 P-S, DR/427/246, f. 577; 1815 P-S, DR/427/252, f. 577.

  23 SIA, RU 7000, Box 2. Alfred Marquiset, Jeux et Joueurs d'autrefois, 1789–1837 (Paris, 1917). Entry for George Ga
lway Mills (1765–1828), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, R. G. Thome, ed. (London, 1986), vol. 4, pp. 591–3.

  24 William Parson to Charles Blagden in Paris, February 20, 1818; BLA. p. 10, RS Archives.

  25 Davies Gilbert, undated diary entry [1826]. DG 14, CRO. Reprinted in Smithsonian Annual Report for 1884, p. 4.

  26 Archives de Paris, DQ8/644/fo. 71. Dickenson died in Paris on May 22, 1820; his will was probated by Smithson in London on September 6, 1820; TNA: PRO PROB 11/1634; and TS/11/623/2012.

  27 Smithson lived at one point at rue Montmartre, no. 121 (calling card at SI); in 1818 and 1819 he was at rue du Helder (letters to Berzelius of 1818 and 1819, located in the Royal Swedish Academy of Science), and in 1820 on the rue de la Chaussee d' Antin, no. 37 (letter to Smithson, undated [1820] in the Crewe Papers, held privately; I am very grateful to Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, for supplying me with a copy.

  28 Both Gay-Lussac and Cordier inscribed pamphlets to "Monsieur de Smithson" in 1814, 1815, and 1816; Smithson Library, SIL. Smithson signed himself as such in an undated [November 1814] letter to the chemist Louis Augustin d'Hombre-Firmas; at the Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin, and also in an undated [c. 1819, according to notes at L'Institut] letter to Cordier; L'Institut de France, Fonds Cordier, 2724, item 246.

  29 Galignani's Traveller's Guide through Holland and Belgium (Paris, 1822), Smithson Library, SIL.

  30 Margaret Marriott bequeathed to Smithson "two portraits of himself painted in Oil Colours one very large and one smaller." She wrote her will in 1821 and died in 1827. The Smithsonian retrieved the Aix-la-Chapelle picture from the descendants of Henry Dickenson's wife in the late nineteenth century; the whereabouts (and the appearance) of the other "very large" portrait remain unknown today. TNA: PRO PRO B 11/1733.

  31 This medallion is sometimes referred to as having been done by the famous Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. The mark, however, is that of Pierre Joseph Tiolier. Many thanks to Rick Stamm for his work on this.

  32 Joseph Henry related Wheatstone's story in a letter to General John Henry Lefroy, February 12, 1878. Henry had spent a day with Wheatstone in London in 1870; Henry to Caroline Henry, July 1, 1870; Joseph Henry Papers. I am grateful to Kathy Dorman for her assistance in this matter.

  33 L. Agassiz, "Letter on the Smithsonian Institution," Science, March 28, 1919, p. 301; quoted in H. S. Torrens, "Smithson, James Lewis (1764–1829)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  34 Smithson, "Experiences sur l'Ulmine," Journal de Physique (April 1814), pp. 311–15 (trans. M. Vogel). Smithson, "Memoire sur la Composition de la Zeolite," Journal de Physique, August 1814, pp. 144–9 (trans. Smithson). The extensive list of errata for the April 1814 article, which Smithson annotated in his own copy, was published in the August issue, on pp. 150–51; Smithson Library, SIL.

  35 James Smithson, "On Some Compounds of Fluorine," Annals of Philosophy (1824).

  36 James Smithson, "A Discovery of Chloride of Potassium in the Earth," Annals of Philosophy (1823).

  37 B. A. Gould, Putnam's Monthly Magazine (January-June 1853), p. 105. Gould was friends with Arago and received his information on Smithson's gambling from the French astronomer. Memorandum by Secretary S. P. Langley, September 14, 1894; SIA, RU 7000, Box 5.

  38 Smithson to Berzelius, December 30, 1818; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Archives.

  39 Arago, "Eloge for Ampére," Annual Report of 1872, pp. 124–5.

  40 "I know of no other habit in which he indulged which was at all eccentric." John Guillemard to Richard Rush, July 4, 1837; Box 13, Rush Family Papers, Princeton.

  41 "Plain dinner" invitation from Smithson to Berzelius, December 30, 1818; Archives, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Becquerel note to Smithson, undated, from a nineteenth-century translation; SIA, RU 7000, Box 2. James Smithson, "On Some Capillary Metallic Tin," Annals of Philosophy (1821).

  42 Hans-Christian Oersted to his wife, March 5, 1823; Oersted Papers, Danish Royal Library. Thanks to Else Mogeson at Eriksen Translations, Inc., for the English translation.

  43 "Great beauty" quote in James Smithson, "Method of Fixing Particles on the Sappare," Annals of Philosophy (1823). "Little more than visible," in Smithson, "On a Native Compound of Sulphuret of Lead and Arsenic," Annals of Philosophy (1819).

  44 Mention of Cuvier and Lavoisier parties are in Carl Gustaf Bernhard, Tluough France with Berzelius: Live Scholars and Dead Volcanoes (Oxford, 1989), p. 40. Replies to Smithson's invitations are in SIA, RU 7000, Box 2.

  45 Hans-Christian Oersted to his wife, February 23, 1823; Oersted Papers, Danish Royal Library. Translation by Mogeson.

  46 J. C. F. Hoefer, Nouvelle Biographic Générale (Paris, 1852) and Marcel Roche, Le Philanthrope Charles de Lasteyrie, Importateur de la Lithographie en France (Brive, 1896). Lasteyrie du Saillant could have been the source of a pamphlet Smithson owned on French industry and might have also gotten Smithson interested in the school run by the reformed church in Paris, which provided free education and vocational training for Protestant boys and girls deprived of other education. Du Développement à Donner à quelques Parties Principales et Essentielles de notre Industrie Intérieure, et de 1'Affermissements de nos Rapports Commerciaux avec les Pays Etrangers (Paris, 1819) and Eglises Réformées de France, Rapport sur 1'état de 1'Ecole [d'enseignement mutual] au 31 dßcembre 1818 (Paris, 1819). Smithson Library, SIL.

  47 Jens Wolff, Runakefii: Le Runic Rim-Stock, ou Calendrier Runique (Paris, 1820). Smithson Library, SIL. R. Composto, "Airoldi, Cesare," Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1960). Salvatore Carbone, Fonti per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano negli Archivi Nazionale di Parigi (Rome, 1962), pp. 145–6.

  48 Baume biographical information from Roger Cooter's research in the Baume Collection, Manx Museum. Smithson's Spanish stock—thirteen certificates, equalling "350 piastres rente d'Espagne," listed in the inventory made after his death—yielded some 24,127 francs in 1829. SIA, RU 7000, Box 1.

  49 Personal communication with Roger Cooter.

  50 "If unhappily this depressing Doctrine (which is that of Smithson and of so many others who appear to me superior men) cannot be successfully contested] by men … oh well! … I wouldn't lose heart because of that, I would think that the genie for good had been put on earth to do constant battle with the genie for evil; to prevent him making Progress and push him back to proper boundaries; I would be happy to be officially appointed in charge of this good work!" Dreams book (November 1824), p. 18; Baume Papers, Manx Museum. Thanks to Roger Cooter.

  51 Lester D. Stephens, Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815–1895 (Chapel Hill, 2000). I am grateful to Professor Stephens for sharing his thoughts and suggestions with me; correspondence with the author, June 2004. Thanks also to Stephen Mackessy for information on early venom studies.

  52 It is possible that this work may be another indication of his attention to scientific discourse in the United States; in 1822, the same year Smithson's arsenic paper was published, the Technical Repository reprinted Benjamin Silliman's article from the American Journal of Science and Arts (vol. 3), entitled "On the Tests for Arsenic." It opens, "It is a question very interesting to Medical jurisprudence, whether there is any test for arsenic, which can be implicitly relied on, to such an extent as to justify, on that ground alone, the condemnation of an accused person." The article discusses the tests of a Dr. T. D. Porter, who was a faculty member of the University of South Carolina and once a pupil of Silliman's. His "experiments appear, then, to throw still greater suspicion on the infallibility of tests for arsenic, and, are worthy of being repeated." Perhaps Smithson took this as an invitation. Technical Repository, vol. 1, no. 82.

  53 Smithson's published papers are collected in William J. Rhees, ed., "The Scientific Writings of james Smithson," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 21 (Washington, 1881).

  54 Nicolaas Rupke, The Great Chain of History: Willia
m Buckland and the English School of Geology (Oxford, 1983), pp. 42–63.

  55 John C. Thackray, ed., To See the Fellows Fight: Eye Witness Accounts of the Meetings of the Geological Society of London and its Club, 1822–1868 (British Society for the History of Science monograph no. 12, 2003), p. 2.

  56 Rupke, The Great Chain of History, pp. 44–9.

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

  58 Smithson, "An Account of an Examination of Some Egyptian Colors," Annals of Philosophy (1824).

  59 Honoré de Balzac, Peau de Chagrin (tr. The Wild Ass's Skin by Herbert Hunt (Penguin, 1977)), p. 41.

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

  61 Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin, p. 42. One of Smithson Tennant's friends, for whom he was the executor and beneficiary, enclosed a passage from Pindar's Odes in with his will: "In the paths of dangerous fame / Trembling cowards never tread; / Yet since all of mortal frame / Must be numbered with the dead, / Who in dark inglorious shade / Would his useless life consume / And with deedless years decay'd / Sink unhonour'd to the tomb? / I that shameful lot disdain / I this doubtful list will prove."

  62 Dickenson wrote his will at Paris on July 17, 1819; he died May 22, 1820. Smithson probated the will on September 16, 1820; TNA: PRO PROB 11/1634. The freezing of the Seine is mentioned in a letter Chaptal wrote to Bentham, on January 12, 1820; a precis of the letter, listed in a sale catalogue, is found in the Chaptal dossier at the Archives de l'Academie des Sciences, Paris.

  63 Louis Jebb searched for Dickenson's tomb at Père Lachaise in August 2003, but the tombs in the area were so deteriorated as to be unidentifiable. Charles Read, "La sepulture des protestants étrangers," Bulletin de la Société du Protestantisme Français (1887), t. xxxv.

  64 A list was made of eight letters written by Smithson which were presented in the 1831 court case. Among them were letters from Smithson to Henry James Dickenson on July 4, 1822, and to Henry James Hungerford on n.d. [postmark October 1825], March 22 and September 16, 1826; TNA: PRO TS/11/623/2012. Smithson's friend John Guillemard confirmed that it was Smithson who had ordered the nephew to adopt the name Hungerford; Guillemard to Richard Rush, July 1, 1837; Rush Family Papers, Princeton.