Gunpowder and Geometry

by Benjamin Wardhaugh

  Hutton and his friends took this as proof, if any were needed, that Banks and his circle still held a grudge against Hutton and his mathematical friends, that his old enmity was, as Hutton put it, implacable. Hutton felt his treatment was cruel, and he was angered, perhaps disproportionately, by what he imagined as Banks’s triumph over him. Instead of casting about for another institution that might take his books (there were several) he determined to sell them off at auction.

  Isabella first worked through the library making a draft catalogue, to which Hutton then made additions and changes. He made a note of the books he would like to keep: something like one in ten. In November 1815 Hutton himself made a fair copy of the catalogue – changing his mind in complicated ways about what to keep – which was turned over to the firm of Sotheby’s for printing. The printed catalogue, which filled eighty pages, was available all over the country, and the sale was well attended. It took six days to sell everything, in the middle of June 1816.

  The dispersal of the library was greeted with horror when it became known to Hutton’s mathematical friends. It was, indeed, a real blow to the British mathematical community, which might otherwise have gained an excellent publicly accessible library of its own. The collection was twice the size of Playfair’s and nearly three times that of Maskelyne. The sale was surely a melancholy event to Hutton too, and it’s hard to understand quite why he persisted with it. For he didn’t, in the end, retire to the country, nor did he cease his work, continuing to produce new articles and new editions of his books for most of the next decade. Why then sell the books? Defiance? Despair?

  But still, the books went. Friends of Hutton acquired at least a few, and it was possible at the last minute to make sure some went to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle. A London bookseller named Weale also bought a few, bringing them together with items from the collections of Horsley, Maskelyne and others which he later resold. But most simply dripped away lot by lot, who knew where: 170 bound volumes of almanacs, going back to the early seventeenth century; sixty-odd volumes of Hutton’s own works, and over 150 offprints and pamphlets, some with his own manuscript corrections. Many of his personal friends, favourites and former favourites, were represented, some by fancy presentation copies and some by letters bound into the books: Maskelyne, Bonnycastle, Emerson, Ferguson, Franklin, Gregory, Leslie, Martin, Muller, Priestley, Simpson; a roll-call of the British scientific culture Hutton had known. Perhaps Hutton’s sense of the transience of that culture was part of the point.

  Manuscripts went too: a medieval Bible, works on mechanics, gunnery, astronomy. Most intriguingly of all, sold with the books was a collection of the mathematical instruments of Benjamin Franklin. Had Hutton known the great American scientist and statesman, in a relationship otherwise lost from the historical record? Both were close to John Pringle at the Royal Society in the 1770s, but of other evidence we have none.

  Some frivolous works were sold, as well. Cynthia: with the Tragical Account of the Unfortunate Loves of Almerin and Desdemona. Every Man His Own Brewer. So were what seems to have been the very last of Hutton’s childhood collection of border ballads: Allan Ramsay’s Poems and Scots Poems of Before 1600; the Gentle Shepherd, Caledonian Miscellany and Tim Bobbin’s Toy-Shop Opened. But on the whole, non-mathematical items in the sale catalogue were conspicuous by their rarity, and Hutton apparently hung on to much of what he, Catherine or Isabella might find entertaining. Absolutely none of their collection of music was sold.

  By the spring of 1817 Hutton was lamenting the sale, wishing he had kept the books together in a sale or gift to another institution. He went on lamenting it in his letters for five more years, but it was too late.

  Meanwhile, the mourning for young Charles was scarcely over when Margaret Hutton, too, sickened. She was in her early sixties, and already in the summer of 1814 she had been ‘very unwell’, telling Vignoles ‘I never expect to injoy sound health more’. She was correct, and although the winter of 1816 saw her still avidly reading and corresponding with Vignoles and others, by March 1817 she was dead.

  Margaret’s death is as frustrating for the biographer as her life. Vast though her role in Charles Hutton’s life and his work undoubtedly was, and highly visible though she certainly was to him and everyone who knew him, the documentary sources have almost nothing to say about her. A handful of letters; a poem (the one about Samuel Horsley at the Royal Society); the inscription on her tombstone (now destroyed) and the licence for her marriage (its details partly false). Handwriting that is probably hers in some of Hutton’s mathematical and scientific manuscripts, assisting, revising, correcting. We don’t know what she died of or how long her final illness lasted; we don’t know for certain when her funeral took place or who attended it. Even her exact age is unknown, since the dates given in her marriage licence and on her tombstone are inconsistent. Like so many Georgian women, she is only partly visible in the sources we have.

  Be that as it may, Hutton was devastated. Margaret had been the mainstay of his life since shortly after his arrival in London forty-four years before, and they had weathered together the catastrophe of Hutton’s career in 1784, the death of their only child, the unexpected arrival of young Vignoles and his stormy departure. She had assisted with his calculations and his prose, and we shall never know how much of his success and sheer ability to get work done he owed to her. Proud of her husband to the end, she wrote to Vignoles in 1814, ‘Let it not be said my dear Charles, that a grandson of Dr. Huttons lived in vain. a meer ordinary being.’

  Her death left him, as he put it, ‘almost alone’ in the world. The bustling household of a few years before was now reduced to himself and Isabella, with a cook and a maid. In August 1817 Charles Hutton celebrated his eightieth birthday – if he celebrated it at all – in a bitter key.

  It was perhaps fortunate that Margaret had never known the whole story of Charles Vignoles, for a few months later a new thunderbolt arrived from that quarter. An attractive ward had been staying with Thomas Leybourn at the time of Vignoles’s arrival in the summer of 1813. She was Mary Griffiths, the eldest daughter of a Welsh farmer; she had worked as a milliner in London and cared for her two younger sisters after their parents’ death. Twenty-six to Vignoles’s twenty at the time of their meeting, she shared his emotional and romantic temperament. By the end of September that year they were secretly engaged.

  There ensued a voluminous clandestine correspondence, with all the ingredients of quarrel and reconciliation, misunderstanding and forgiveness. The sometimes feverish tone wasn’t helped by the infrequency of their meetings. Mary had no wish to enter upon a penniless marriage, but Vignoles had conceived a plan to go to Central America with the revolutionaries (you could hardly make it up) and would not leave her behind without making their union permanent. So clandestine correspondence was capped in July 1817 by a clandestine marriage; Mary posted down to Portsmouth overnight, and early on Sunday morning, the thirteenth, they were married in the village of Alverstoke. A fortnight later Vignoles left for America in the desperate hope of making his fortune, leaving his bride to inform her family and his.

  When the news broke, both families were appalled, and Hutton – who had paid for Vignoles’s American equipment and had been up to this point at least sporadically ‘amused’ by the young man’s letters and news – refused to have anything more to do with his grandson, refused even to have Isabella read aloud his letters to her. No more money, no more favours: nothing.

  Hutton cannot altogether be blamed for taking a dim view. Vignoles was twenty-four; he had entered upon a secret marriage with a woman he had no means of supporting, and quit the country leaving her pregnant in cheap lodgings. His American plans were little more than a fantasy – they changed several times and he eventually went not to join the rebels but to work as a surveyor in South Carolina and Florida – and his ability to support even himself appeared utterly remote. From Hutton’s point of view, if the young man had been trying to look li
ke a wastrel he could scarcely have done more, and it made matters worse when an offer of army employment came in just weeks after his departure, highlighting the fact that his own hotheadedness was largely to blame for his situation.

  But Hutton does seem to have overplayed his role of outraged older relative. After the initial burst of rage, Leybourn wrote a few months later to offer Vignoles his forgiveness as Mary’s former guardian. Hutton did no such thing, remaining steadily implacable as months lengthened into years, and refusing to do anything for Mary even when she was in real want; the Leybourns took her in for a while when she was ill after the birth of her first child.

  The affair became an open wound in the Hutton family. His aunt Isabella sympathised with Vignoles; so did aunt Ellen. Isabella wrote covertly, sometimes from the address of a friend, and enclosed a five-pound note when she could. Henry Hutton sided with his father, and would have nothing to do with a young man he thought culpably ungrateful as well as irresponsible.

  Should Hutton have acted otherwise? He too had once abandoned a family-chosen career in favour of a more independent path, and he too had married a woman of whom – probably – his family disapproved. He too had used physical relocation to indulge in self-reinvention, leaving wife and, for a while, children behind in the process. Yet he had prized financial security and provided handsomely for his dependents; he had moved to jobs, not away from them. He had no reason to admire or to condone Vignoles’s conduct, and every reason to think it would end in disaster. He could have helped more than he did, but it would surely have required a superhuman magnanimity to take on the support of Mary, and perhaps an uncharacteristic recklessness to do so at a time when he realised he himself had not very much longer to live.

  12

  Peace

  Bedford Row, London. 21 September 1822. A small group clusters around the door of one of the handsome tall houses. A knock; the maid goes to fetch the master of the house; and white-haired Charles Hutton appears. A little slower now; a little deaf. His piercing eyes take in his friends. Olinthus Gregory, whom we know; Francis Baily, astronomer; Dr Andrew, one of the teachers from Addiscombe; a few more.

  Once inside, one of them reads from a paper. We have the honour, Sir, of waiting upon you. Respect … admiration … veneration … gratitude. He unveils a marble bust of Charles Hutton, the fruit of subscriptions from over a hundred well-wishers, and ‘a testimony of respect for your virtues and talents, and a tribute of gratitude for your important labours’.

  There’s no surprise to the scene, which has been long in the planning. But still, Hutton is moved almost to tears. ‘Nothing could be more gratifying to my feelings than this demonstration of your regard.’ ‘If … any thing could enhance the value of this Gift, it is the kind manner in which it is now presented. It is not in the power of any language to express my gratitude.’

  The decade around Waterloo had thrown Hutton an almost unbelievable series of new misfortunes through his continuing anxiety about his reputation, his intellectual legacy and of course his family. But there followed a period of something very like peace.

  We hear nothing more about Hutton’s plan to retire to the country; he stayed in Bedford Row. In 1821 the (now retired) General Henry Hutton moved to London to be near his father, bringing his second wife and second son. Ellen was occasionally around; widowed, she had married a Captain Wills in 1814 and visited her father from time to time. Hutton was reportedly ‘delighted’ by the society of his children, and affectionate towards them, particularly to devoted Isabella who was now his constant amanuensis for letters and other writing. His own hand he judged a ‘tottering scrawl’, though on occasion he did attempt a short letter himself.

  It was still a bookish house. ‘Cousin’ Catherine kept Charles and Isabella supplied with copies of her own novels and other writings, and she recommended other reading matter too, including the highly regarded novels of a Miss Austen. A portrait of Hutton in his later years gives a strong impression of cosy domesticity, complete with cap, book and fireplace.

  There were plenty of friends visiting and to visit, and the Huttons had still quite a social circle. In Bedford Row itself, social evenings involved poetry and music, lectures and discussions. There was an unending stream of scientific or semi-scientific visitors to entertain and be entertained by: the kind for whom Hutton would make notes in advance about topics of conversation – Olinthus Gregory, Thomas Leybourn. If there were fewer plays, skits and musical compositions since Vignoles had left, there was still conversation and companionship, and wit in plenty; and failing that, a quiet game of cards.

  Hutton was increasingly cheerful in his old age; he seems, even, to have had a reputation for a sense of humour. One day an unknown wag summoned a huge number of tradesmen to attend him: horses, chaises, coal dealers, physicians, accoucheurs, apothecaries, every article of luxury or utility that could be thought of. The coal waggons alone nearly blocked the street, and the prank went on all day as different trades came and, disappointed, went. There’s no record of his reaction, but evidently someone thought Hutton would see the funny side.

  It wasn’t all fun and games; there was always more work to do, and Hutton went on helping to promote mathematics and learning in ways he thought were valuable. Working, through his personal connections and the continual revision and re-presentation of his writings, to disseminate the values he thought important in a changing world. Friends sent him their books and papers for comment: Francis Baily on the fixing of an astronomical instrument; a Newcastle teacher on Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s novel system of education. Others continued to consult him as an expert on bridges. The Corporation of London wrote in 1819 about a proposed replacement for London Bridge, and he gave a judgement about such matters as the flow of the tide after the enlargement of arches or the removal of the existing bridge, the depth of water and the function of the present bridge as a sort of dam; the need for further embankments.

  And a chief employment, still, was new editions of his works. The Recreations reappeared in 1814, the Dictionary in 1815: the latter with substantial additions and improvements which Hutton said had cost him ‘immense labour’. There were further editions of the Course in 1813 and 1819–20. Some of his helpers were now gone, and it isn’t clear whose assistance he had in seeing all those words and numbers through the press. Quite possibly Olinthus Gregory’s, although Gregory was involved in massive projects and teaching commitments of his own. Writing in the new edition of the Dictionary Hutton mentioned rather charmingly that his old friend Nevil Maskelyne, who had died in 1811, ‘did not publish much’. Maskelyne had published eight books, forty-nine editions of the Nautical Almanac and thirty papers in the Philosophical Transactions.

  Hutton still busied himself, too, with recommendations for mathematical jobs, and with philanthropy more generally. Friends and the children of friends benefited from letters written on their behalf, and one day Gregory, on one of his regular visits, found Hutton reading a letter from the wife of a penniless country schoolmaster, ‘the tears trickling down his cheeks’. – ‘What do you mean to do?’

  ‘I mean,’ replied the Doctor, smiling, ‘to demand a guinea from you, and the same sum from every friend who calls upon me to-day; then to make up the amount twenty guineas, and send it off by this night’s post.’

  At the same time, Hutton maintained his own personal networks. Friends still visited, and so did more or less distant relations. There were cousins on the Vignoles side with whom he kept in touch. Thus a Gilbert Austin – cousin of the dead Charles Henry Vignoles – and his wife and nephew were house guests in 1805, and the following year Austin sent Hutton a copy of his book on rhetorical delivery, for what it was worth. He felt ‘profound respect’ towards his distinguished relative. Of Hutton’s own brothers, on the other hand, there is practically no sign in the documents; a Robert Hutton, who may have been one, was buried at Long Benton in 1769.

  Hutton had also, over the years, kept in touch with a number of friends fr
om the intellectual circle in Newcastle; he sent them copies of his papers and advertisements for his books, and from time to time he acquired books published in the city, including the odd work on mining. Northerners always seem to me to be slightly over-represented in the pages of The Ladies’ Diary during Hutton’s time as editor; that may have been another way to make new connections and maintain old ones.

  There was a particular connection with the Bruce brothers, John and Edward, who kept a school in Newcastle and with whom Hutton corresponded. Their school in fact was on Percy Street, very close to where Hutton was born, and they had become the town’s leading science and mathematics teachers. They had close ties with the Literary and Philosophical Society founded at Newcastle in 1793, as did another prominent local teacher. William Turner, the co-founder of the society and one of its most prominent lecturers, was also the Unitarian minister at Hanover Square Chapel, where Hutton and his family had once worshipped. Hutton received news of the ‘Lit and Phil’ with interest, asking John Bruce to send him any pamphlets that were printed from its lectures.

  As well as gifts to the Lit and Phil itself, Hutton agreed to support William Turner’s philosophical lectures there, the Newcastle Jubilee school and the Schoolmasters’ Association, all with regular subscriptions. When the Lit and Phil decided to build new premises in 1822 Hutton was particularly interested; the site they settled on faced his old schoolhouse across Westgate Street, and he asked to see the plans as well as contributing to the building fund. The foundation stone was laid in September 1822, and one of the toasts at the celebratory dinner was to Dr Charles Hutton, ‘a native of the town, who reflected the highest honour upon it by his eminence in science, by his many acts of benevolence, which shewed at once his remembrance of his native place, and his zeal for the promotion of knowledge’.