Great Bastards of History

by Juré Fiorillo

  James Smithson lived the life of a typical aristocrat, but never quite fit in. He was slight of build, with a strong nose, and wavy hair like his father. Smithson spent his early years in Paris, where he was raised by a nurse. His mother visited infrequently, spending her time socializing and eventually remarrying. Elizabeth Macie brought the boy to England when he was nine years old. He was enrolled in the finest schools and associated with wealthy Britons. Material things were his for the asking. His mother was well-off, and they lived among the upper class in Weston, a suburb of Bath in the southwest region of the country.

  Hugh Smithson Percy financed the boy’s education, enabling Smithson to attend Pembroke College at Oxford University. Financial support was all that Smithson Percy ever offered his son—and even that was done covertly, so as not to incur the wrath of his well-connected wife. Yet, when the duchess died, leaving Smithson Percy a widower, he chose not reach out to his son. There is no evidence that the two ever met.

  SMITHSON PERCY’S BEHAVIOR TOWARD HIS ILLEGITIMATE SON WAS COMMON. THE LIAISONS OF THE ARISTOCRACY FREQUENTLY PRODUCED BASTARD CHILDREN; THESE CHILDREN WERE OFTEN PRESENTED AS “COUSINS” OR DISTANT RELATIVES.

  Smithson Percy’s behavior toward his illegitimate son was common. The liaisons of the aristocracy frequently produced bastard children; these children were often presented as “cousins” or distant relatives. Indeed, Smithson appears to have escaped the stigma usually associated with illegitimacy. His status as bar sinister was known; fortunately, such matters were not discussed in polite society. However, the inner turmoil Smithson experienced was considerable, and he spent much of his life searching for his own identity.

  Living with a borrowed name, and lacking full English citizenship, Smithson felt groundless and unsettled. He also maintained a slight French accent from his years in Paris, which further underscored his strangeness. Because of his illegitimacy, his prospects and opportunities were limited. Considering his parentage, this was especially frustrating for Smithson. His father was a duke and lived in a castle. “The best blood of England flows in my veins; in my father’s side I am a Northumberland, on my mother’s I am related to kings, but this avails me not,” he noted.

  Smithson’s biological father, Hugh Smithson Percy, funded Smithson’s education, but did so covertly, and never acknowledged him as his son.

  IN NAME ONLY

  When James Smithson was eight years old, he became a naturalized English citizen. But his naturalized status was not equivalent to full English citizenship, and he was ineligible for many rights afforded other young men of his social class. According to the crown, Smithson was not entitled to be “of the Privy Council or a member of either House of Parliament or take any office or place of trust either civil or military or have any grants of lands, tenements, or hereditaments.”

  It was a stinging pronouncement for a boy who already felt like an outsider. His half-brother—Smithson Percy’s legitimate son—was lauded as a hero for his service during the American Revolutionary War. Many of Smithson’s peers embarked on careers in government service, careers that increased their social standing. Smithson could only watch from the sidelines.

  JAMES SMITHSON UNDERSTOOD THAT HIS SUCCESS OR FAILURE LAY WITHIN HIS OWN HANDS. NO HELP WOULD BE FORTHCOMING FROM HIS FAMOUS FATHER, A MAN KNOWN FOR HIS LAVISH SPENDING AND LOVE OF EXCESS.

  After his mother’s death, he applied to the crown for permission to legally change his surname to Smithson, publicly acknowledging his true heritage for the first time. “Since her death,” Smithson told a friend, “I make little mistery [sic] of my being brother to the present Duke of Northumberland.”

  Although he had already established a reputation in the scientific world as James Macie, he was eager to use the name Smithson. His request was granted, but the crown declared that he had no right to any titles held by his father, the duke—a right that his legitimate half-brother did have. Smithson Percy’s wealth and power had increased twofold; as a bastard, however, Smithson was deprived of the honors conferred to the son of a duke. He understood that his success or failure lay within his own hands. No help would be forthcoming from his famous father, a man known for his lavish spending and love of excess. The duke was fond of hosting huge parties that writer Horace Walpole dubbed “pompous festino.” More than a thousand guests at a time attended these famous extravaganzas, where the grounds were lit up with “arches and pyramids of light.”

  James Smithson was a diligent young student, dedicated to scientific research, who even risked drowning to gather geological observations. Library of Congress

  When Smithson Percy died, he was one of the richest men in England; his numerous properties made up 1 percent of the country. He left nothing to his illegitimate son. Smithson’s mother, however, willed him a great deal of valuable property when she died. He was a savvy businessman and made quite a bit of money from selling and renting properties he owned. He managed his finances well, leaving an estate worth more than £100,000 (though it was just a fraction of the value of his father’s estate).

  SEDUCED BY SCIENCE

  While attending Oxford, Smithson developed a passion for science and research. He was a diligent and studious young man who was intensely focused on his work. He was the finest chemist and mineralogist in the class, according to his classmate Sir David Gilbert. He received a master’s degree in arts in 1786. A year later, he was accepted into the esteemed Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. Smithson was the youngest fellow in the organization.

  “It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inherit the earth with him, and consequently, no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil,” Smithson wrote in his journal. His quest for knowledge took him on dozens of research expeditions. At nineteen, he joined a group of scientists on an expedition to Scotland and the Isle of Staffa in the Hebrides. He was the youngest, but most enthusiastic, member of the group. Bravely standing on a pail supported by a rope, Smithson was lowered into a mine to search for minerals. On another occasion, he nearly drowned trying to collect geological specimens under water.

  A photo of the Smithsonian Institute from 1898. Today, the Smithsonian is the largest museum complex in the world, housing a zoo, library, and nine research centers. Library of Congress

  Smithson maintained a nomadic lifestyle, moving frequently throughout Europe. He never married and never remained in one place for very long. “The man of science is of no country, the world is his country, all mankind his countrymen,” he often remarked. A lonely man, Smithson channeled his energies into his work, examining thousands of specimens of minerals, plants, and vegetables. He designed his own portable laboratory, and he carted the kit with him wherever he went. He had an insatiable hunger for knowledge; for Smithson, no observation was insignificant, and no discovery too small.

  “Chemistry is yet so new a science,” he wrote, “that what we know of it bears so small a portion to what we are ignorant of; our knowledge in every department of it is so incomplete, consisting so entirely of isolated points, thinly scattered, like lurid specks on a vast field of darkness, that no researches can be undertaken without producing some facts that extend beyond the boundaries of their immediate object.” An associate recounted Smithson “happening to observe a tear gliding down a lady’s cheek, endeavored to catch it on a crystal vessel” to examine it.

  Smithson was also a prolific writer, publishing nearly thirty scientific papers on everything from geology to chemistry to mineralogy. The gentleman scientist considered no subject too unimportant; one of his papers was titled The Art of Making Coffee, another, Some Improvements in Lamps. “Every man is a valuable member of society who by his observations, researches, and experiments procures knowledge for men,” he wrote. In 1802, he upset popular science by proving zinc carbonates were true carbon minerals, rather than zinc oxides, as had previously been thought. Zinc spa
r was renamed smithsonite, posthumously, in his honor. It was an honor he would have cherished, as Smithson longed for recognition all his life.

  IN 1802, SMITHSON UPSET POPULAR SCIENCE BY PROVING ZINC CARBONATES WERE TRUE CARBON MINERALS, RATHER THAN ZINC OXIDES, AS HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN THOUGHT. ZINC SPAR WAS RENAMED SMITHSONITE, POSTHUMOUSLY, IN HIS HONOR.

  Smithson died in the summer of 1829 after a prolonged illness. He was sixty-four and had accumulated a small fortune in his lifetime. He willed his estate to his nephew Henry James Hungerford, with the contingency clause that should Hungerford die without heirs—Smithson had taken care to specify “children, legitimate or illegitimate”—the proceeds of the estate were to be passed on to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”

  Smithson’s heir died childless, six years after his uncle. Hungerford’s mother contested the will, but an English court declared that the estate was to go to the United States, as Smithson had ordered.

  AN ILLEGITIMATE SON’S LEGACY

  Rejected by his biological father, ignored by his homeland, and deprived of his birthright, Smithson was an island unto himself. His bequeath to America perplexed many. Perhaps Smithson identified with America—a new country striving to establish its identity and place in the world. The scientist had spent his life trying to accomplish the very same goals.

  Alexander Graham Bell is shown overseeing the removal of Smithson’s body in Italy. It was shipped to the United States and burried at the Smithsonian Institute. Library of Congress

  “Smithson always seems to have regarded the circumstances of his birth as doing him a peculiar injustice,” stated former secretary of the Smithsonian Institute Samuel Langley. “[I]t was apparently this sense that he had been deprived of honors properly his which made him look for other sources of fame than those which birth had denied him, and constituted the motive of the most important action of his life, the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.”

  The institution that bears James Smithson’s name is the largest museum complex in the world. Located between Independence and Constitution avenues in Washington, D.C., it houses the National Zoo, nineteen museums, nine research centers, an impressive research library, and the offices for Smithsonian magazine. Seventy-five years after Smithson’s death, Smithsonian regent Alexander Graham Bell arranged to have the scientist’s remains relocated to Washington. He is interred in a tomb inside the building that bears his name.

  It was “entirely fitting that the man who never saw this country, but who nearly a century ago appreciated the potentialities of the American people, should find his last resting place among those he served so well,” Bell stated.

  In life, fame eluded the illegitimate Smithson. In death, he found immortality. Today, his name graces one of America’s most vaunted institutions. “My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten,” Smithson wrote. His words were prophetic.

  CHAPTER 8

  BERNARDO O’HIGGINS

  HOW THE VICEROY’S ILLEGITIMATE SON BECAME A NATIONAL HERO

  1778–1842

  HIDDEN AND DISOWNED BY HIS GUILT-RIDDEN ROYALIST FATHER, YOUNG BERNARDO O’HIGGINS JOINED THE ANTI-MONARCHIST SIDE IN THE CHILEAN WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE AND ENDED UP AS THE COUNTRY’S DICTATOR.

  BERNARDO O’HIGGINS COULDN’T BELIEVE HIS EYES. FROM THE BELL TOWER of the village church in Rancagua that day in 1814, he looked with eager anticipation for the promised reinforcements that would bolster his embattled forces in the Chilean War of Independence and the whole revolutionary cause. And, yes, here they came, a cloud of dust announcing their approach. And then—what was this?—the advancing troops suddenly halted, turned, and marched away without joining O’Higgins’s men struggling against the Royalist supporters of imperial Spain.

  With a shout, he hurried down from the tower, mounted his horse, and sped off at full gallop to the front of his outnumbered and under-equipped force. It was to no avail. The clash went on briefly. Then O’Higgins, rising in his saddle, cried out, “O vivir honor o morer con gloria! El que sea valiente que me siga!—Live with honor or die with glory! He who is brave, follow me!”

  With that rallying cry, the illegitimate son of the man who had been Spanish America’s highest official was transformed into Chile’s greatest revolutionary hero, outdoing the illustrious father who had alternately ignored him, kept him secret, provided for his upbringing and education, exiled him, disowned and disinherited him, and then, four days before the father’s death, bequeathed to him the O’Higgins name and a legacy that made him the largest landowner in southern Chile.

  Ruddy complexion showing his Irish ancestry, Bernardo O’Higgins led Chilean Patriots in the overthrow of colonial rule in Chile.

  A CELT COMES TO CHILE

  Irish-born Ambrose Higgins (he added the “O’” prefix in later life to prove his lineage with the noble Irish Catholic clan that had been stripped of its ancestral lands in the seventeenth century by the Protestant Oliver Cromwell) came to South America by a roundabout route that is still uncertain. He once said that, like many Irish youths, he enlisted in the English army, only to be denied promotion because he was Catholic.

  He then migrated to Catholic Spain in the 1740s where other Irish had fled, including a priest uncle with whom he settled in Cádiz. A bright young man, he trained as an engineer and soon was involved with the Spanish army in designing roads, bridges, and buildings across the country. He then either volunteered or was assigned to the developing Spanish domain in South America, arriving there about 1750.

  He soon became known as “the man who brought the mail to Chile.” Chile in the 1750s was part of the viceroyalty of Peru, a vast territory consisting of present-day Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile, and governed from Lima. Chile, a string bean of a country nearly 3,000 miles (4,828 km) long, was wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the forbidding 2-mile-high (3.2 km) Andes Mountains. Among the poorest of Spanish colonies, it was effectively cut off from the others during the Southern Hemisphere winter, unreachable except by arduous trek over the mountain passes or via the hostile Atacama Desert to the north.

  Engineer Higgins conceived of a chain of shelters for travelers and mail carriers along the mountain passes and successfully campaigned to have them built. He then went on to build schools, bridges, churches, and government buildings and to construct roads linking the few cities. Leading military campaigns against the fierce Araucano People, he pushed them back into the more remote southern sectors of the country. He then rose through the colonial hierarchy to become captain-general of Chile, military commander, governor, and finally viceroy of all Peru.

  BERNARDO’S BAPTISMAL CERTIFICATE LISTS “DON AMBROSIO O’HIGGINS, A BACHELOR” AS HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER AS “A LADY OF QUALITY, ALSO UNMARRIED, WHOSE NAME IS NOT GIVEN HERE FOR THE SAKE OF HER REPUTATION.”

  ONE THING LED TO ANOTHER

  In his fifties, O’Higgins had never married. He was simply too busy. Then, as the governor inspecting his territories, he met a slender, black-haired, attractive young woman, whose father was one of southern Chile’s leading landowners. Isabel Riquelme may have been eighteen at the time; some historians say she was as young as fourteen. O’Higgins was distinguished-looking, husky but with a florid Irish complexion. Behind his back, he was called “El Camaron”—“the shrimp.” He courted the pretty teenager, some forty years younger, until in the old expression “one thing led to another,” and Isabel became pregnant.

  O’Higgins’s mother, Isabel riquelme, was considered a noted beauty in eighteenth Century Chile. She was still a teenager when her son was born. La colección fotográfica del Museo Histórico Nacional de Chile

  O’Higgins declined to marry her, explaining that an officer of the crown could not marry a “criollo”—someone born in Chile rather than in Spain—without express consent of the
Spanish king. He seems never to have requested the permission, however, and he never visited mother or infant after the child’s birth on August 20, 1778. He did not dodge the issue, however.

  Bernardo’s baptismal certificate lists “Don Ambrosio O’Higgins, a bachelor” as the father and the mother as “a lady of quality, also unmarried, whose name is not given here for the sake of her reputation.” The “conditional” baptism was performed in 1783, when Bernardo was already more than four years old.

  Bernardo was given his mother’s surname, Riquelme, but at his father’s command, he was taken from his mother at an early age and placed in the care of Don Juan Albano Pereira, an elderly friend of O’Higgins, at Albano’s country home near Talca, in Chile. Then one day in 1788, when Bernardo was ten years old, a heavy-set, florid-faced man came to the Albano home. He was treated with great deference by the family and introduced to the little boy. Bernardo solemnly shook the man’s hand. He was not told the identity of this imposing figure, only that he was a representative of the king and the newly appointed ruler of the land. It was the only time father and son ever met.