CHAPTER II.

LIFE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.

Amongst the scientific societies of Great Britain, the Royal Institution of London occupies a conspicuous place. It has had many imitators in its time, yet it remains unique. A “learned society” it may claim to be, in the sense that it publishes scientific transactions, and endeavours to concentrate within itself and promote the highest science, within a certain range of subjects. In some respects it resembles a college; for it appoints professors, and provides them with space, appliances, and materials for research, and a theatre wherein to lecture. For its members it provides a comfortable, well-stocked library, and a reading-room where daily and periodic journals may be consulted. But it has achieved a reputation far in excess of any it would have held, had that reputation depended solely on its publications, or on the numerical strength of its membership.

Founded in the year 1799 by that erratic genius Count Rumford, as a sort of technical school,[10] it would speedily have come to an end had not others stepped in to develop it in new ways. From the certain ruin which seemed impending in 1801, it was saved by the appearance upon the scene of the brilliant youth Humphry Davy, whose lectures made it for ten years the resort of fashion. In 1814 it was again in such low water that Faraday, travelling on the Continent at that time as amanuensis to Sir Humphry, was every month expecting to hear of its collapse. Until about 1833, when the two Fullerian Professorships were founded, it was continually in financial difficulties. The persistent and extraordinary efforts made by Faraday from 1826 to 1839, and the reputation of the place which accrued by his discoveries, were beyond all question its salvation from ruin. When it was founded it was located in two private houses in Albemarle Street, then regarded as quite out of town, if not almost suburban; the premises being altered and an entrance hall with staircase added. A little later the lecture-theatre, much as it still exists, was constructed. The exterior at first remained unchanged. The stucco pilasters of Grecian style, which give it its air of distinction, were not erected until 1838. The fine rooms of the Davy-Faraday laboratory at the south end were only added in 1896 by the liberality of Mr. Ludwig Mond. Besides the laboratories for research in physical chemistry, which have thus been associated with the older part of the Institution, additional rooms for the library have been provided in this munificent gift to science. The older laboratories of the Institution, though they retain some features from Rumford’s time, have been considerably remodelled. The old rooms where Davy, Young, Brande, Faraday, Frankland, and Tyndall conducted their researches are still in existence; but the chief laboratory was reconstructed in 1872 in Tyndall’s time; and it has been quite recently enlarged and reconstructed to accommodate the heavy machinery required in Professor Dewar’s researches on liquid air and the properties of bodies at low temperatures.

The spirit of the place may be summed up very briefly. It has existed for a century as the home of the highest kind of scientific research, and of the best and most specialised kind of scientific lectures. It was here that Davy first showed the electric arc lamp; that he astonished the world by decomposing potash and producing potassium; that he invented the safety lamp. It was here that Faraday worked and laboured for nearly fifty years. Here that Tyndall’s investigations on radiant heat and diamagnetism were carried on. Here that Brande, Frankland, Odling, Gladstone, and Dewar have handed on the torch of chemistry from the time of Davy. Professorships, of which the educational duties are restricted to a few lectures in the year, giving leisure and scope for research as the main duty, are not to be found anywhere else in the British Islands; those at colleges and universities being invariably hampered with educational and administrative duties.

[Sidenote: ROYAL INSTITUTION LABORATORIES.]

As for the lectures at the Royal Institution, they may be divided under three heads: the afternoon courses; the juvenile lectures at Christmas; the Friday night discourses. The afternoon lectures are thrice a week at three o’clock, and consist usually of short courses, from three lectures to as many as twelve, by eminent scientific and literary men. Invariably one of these courses during the season, either before or after Easter, is given by one of the regular Professors; the remaining lecturers are paid professional fees in proportion to the duration of their course. The Christmas lectures, always six in number, are given, sometimes by one of the Professors, sometimes by outside lecturers of scientific reputation. But the Friday night discourses, given at nine o’clock, during the season from January till June, are unique. No fee is paid to the lecturer, save a contribution toward expenses if applied for, and it is considered to be a distinct honour to be invited to give such a discourse. There is no scientific man of any original claim to distinction; no chemist, engineer, or electrician; no physiologist, geologist, or mineralogist, during the last fifty years, who has not been invited thus to give an account of his investigations. Occasionally a wider range is taken, and the eminent writer of books, dramatist, metaphysician, or musician has taken his place at the lecture-table. The Friday night gathering is always a brilliant one. From the _salons_ of society, from the world of politics and diplomacy, as well as from the ranks of the learned professions and of the fine arts, men and women assemble to listen to the exposition of the latest discoveries or the newest advances in philosophy by the men who have made them. Every discourse must, so far as the subject admits, be illustrated in the best possible way by experiments, by diagrams, by the exhibition of specimens. Not infrequently, the person invited to give a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution will begin his preparations five or six months beforehand. At least one instance is known--the occasion being a discourse by the late Mr. Warren De la Rue--where the preparations were begun more than a year beforehand, and cost several hundreds of pounds. And this was to illustrate a research already made and completed, of which the bare scientific results had already been communicated in a memoir to the Royal Society. A mere enumeration of the eminent men who have thus given their time and labours to the Royal Institution would fill many pages. It is little cause for wonder then that the lecture-theatre at Albemarle Street is crowded week after week in the pursuit of science under conditions like these; or that every lecturer is spurred on by the spirit of the place to do his subject the utmost justice by the manner in which he handles it. There are no lectures so famous, in the best sense of the word so popular, certainly none sustained at so high a level, as the lectures of the Royal Institution.

[Sidenote: THE FAMOUS LECTURES.]

But it was not always thus. Davy’s brilliant but ill-balanced genius had drawn fashionable crowds to the morning lectures which he gave. Brande proved to be a much more humdrum lecturer; and though with young Faraday at his elbow he found his work of lecturing a task “on velvet,” he was not exactly an inspiring person. During Davy’s protracted tour abroad things had not altogether prospered, and his return was none too soon. Faraday threw himself whole-heartedly into the work of the Institution, not only helping as lecture assistant, but giving a hand also in the preparation of the _Quarterly Journal of Science_, which had been established as a kind of journal of proceedings.

But now Faraday was to take a quiet step forward. He appears at the City Philosophical Society in the character of lecturer. He gave seven lectures there, in 1816, on chemistry, the fourth of them being “On Radiant Matter.” Extracts are given from most of these lectures in Bence Jones’s “Life and Letters of Faraday”; they show all that love of accuracy, that philosophic suspense of judgment in matters of hypothesis, which in after years were so characteristic of the man.

He also kept a commonplace book filled with notes of scientific matters, with literary excerpts, anagrams, epitaphs, algebraic puzzles, varieties of spelling of his own name, and personal experiences, including a poetical diatribe against falling in love, together with the following more prosaic aphorism:--

What is Love?--A nuisance to everybody but the parties concerned. A private affair which every one but those concerned wishes to make public.

It also includes a piece in verse, by a member of the City Philosophical Society--a Mr. Dryden--called “Quarterly Night,” which is interesting as embalming a portrait of the youthful Faraday as he appeared to his comrades:--

Neat was the youth in dress, in person plain; His eye read thus, _Philosopher in grain_; Of understanding clear, reflection deep; Expert to apprehend, and strong to keep. His watchful mind no subject can elude, Nor specious arts of sophists ere delude; His powers, unshackled, range from pole to pole; His mind from error free, from guilt his soul. Warmth in his heart, good humour in his face, A friend to mirth, but foe to vile grimace; A temper candid, manners unassuming, Always correct, yet always unpresuming. Such was the youth, the chief of all the band; His name well known, Sir Humphry’s right hand.

At this date there were no evening duties at the Royal Institution, but Faraday found his evenings well occupied, as he explains to Abbott when rallied about his having deserted his old friend. Monday and Thursday evenings he spent in self-improvement according to a regular plan. Wednesdays he gave to “the Society” (_i.e._ the City Philosophical). Saturdays he spent with his mother at Weymouth Street; leaving only Tuesdays and Fridays for his own business and friends.

[Sidenote: CITY PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.]

And so the busy months pass, and he gives more lectures in the privacy of the City Society, one of them, “On some Observations on the Means of obtaining Knowledge,” attaining the dignity of print at the hands of Effingham Wilson, the enterprising City publisher, who a few years later printed Browning’s “Paracelsus” and Alfred Tennyson’s first volume, “Poems: Chiefly Lyrical.” By the time he has given nine lectures he has gained confidence. The discourses had all been written out beforehand, though never literally “read.” For the tenth lecture--on Carbon--he wrote notes only. This is in July, 1817, and in these notes he touches on a matter in which he had been very busily aiding Sir Humphry Davy, the invention of the safety lamp. Many of the early forms of experimental apparatus constructed, and some of the early lamps, are still preserved in the museum of the Royal Institution. Dr. Clanny had, in 1813, proposed an entirely closed lamp, supplied with air from the mine, through water, by bellows. After many experiments on explosive mixtures of gas and air, and on the properties of flame, Davy adopted an iron-wire gauze protector for his lamp, which was introduced into coal mining early in 1816. In Davy’s preface to his work describing it, he says: “I am myself indebted to Mr. Michael Faraday for much able assistance in the prosecution of my experiments.”

[Sidenote: A RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE.]

And well might Davy be grateful. With all his immense ability, he was a man almost destitute of the faculties of order and method. He had little self-control, and the fashionable dissipations which he permitted himself lessened that little. Faraday not only kept his experiments going, but made himself responsible for their records. He preserved every note and manuscript of Davy’s with religious care. He copied out Davy’s scrawled researches in a neat clear delicate handwriting, begging only for his pains to be allowed to keep the originals, which he bound in two quarto volumes. Faraday has been known to remark to an intimate friend that amongst his advantages he had had before him a model to teach him what he should avoid. But he was ever loyal to Davy, earnest in his praise, and frank in his acknowledgment of his debt to his master in science. Still there arose the little rift within the lute. The safety lamp, great as was the practical advantage it brought to the miner, is not safe in all circumstances. Davy did not like to admit this, and would never acknowledge it. Examined before a Parliamentary Committee as to whether under a certain condition the safety lamp would become unsafe, Faraday admitted that this was the case. Not even his devotion to his master would induce him to hide the truth. He was true to himself in making the acknowledgment, though it angered his master. One Friday evening at the Royal Institution--probably about 1826--there was exhibited an improved Davy lamp with a eulogistic inscription; Faraday added in pencil the words: “The opinion of the inventor.”

At this time he began to give private lessons in chemistry to a pupil to whom he had been recommended by Davy. His lectures at the City Society in Dorset Street were continued in 1818, and at the conclusion of those on chemistry he delivered one on “Mental Inertia,” which has been recorded at some length by Bence Jones.

In 1818 he attended a course of lessons on oratory by the elocutionist Mr. B. H. Smart, paying out of his slender resources half a guinea a lesson, so anxious was he to improve himself, even in his manner of lecturing. His notes on these lessons fill 133 manuscript pages.

His other notes now begin to partake less of the character of quotations and excerpts, and more of the nature of queries or problems for solution. Here are some examples:--

“Do the pith balls diverge by the disturbance of electricity in consequence of mutual induction or not?”

“Distil oxalate of ammonia. Query, results?”

“Query, the nature of the body Phillips burns in his spirit lamp?”

The Phillips here mentioned was the chemist Richard Phillips (afterwards President of the Chemical Society), one of his City friends, whose name so frequently occurs in the correspondence of Faraday’s middle life. Phillips busied himself to promote the material interests of his friend who--to use his own language--was “constantly engaged in observing the works of Nature, and tracing the manner in which she directs the arrangement and order of the world,” on the splendid salary of £100 per annum. The following note in a letter to Abbott, dated February 27, 1818, reveals new professional labours:--

I have been more than enough employed. We have been obliged even to put aside lectures at the Institution; and now I am so tired with a long attendance at Guildhall yesterday and to-day, being subpœnaed, with Sir H. Davy, Mr. Brande, Phillips, Aikin, and others, to give chemical information on a trial (which, however, did not come off), that I scarcely know what I say.

Shortly afterwards Davy again went abroad, but Faraday remained in England. From Rome Davy wrote a note, the concluding sentence of which shows how Faraday was advancing in his esteem:--

Rome: October, 1818.

Mr. Hatchett’s letter contained praises of you which were very gratifying to me; for, believe me, there is no one more interested in your success and welfare than your sincere well-wisher and friend,

H. DAVY.

In the next year Davy wrote again, suggesting to Faraday that he might possibly be asked to come to Naples as a skilled chemist to assist in the unrolling of the Herculaneum manuscripts. In May he wrote again, from Florence:--

It gives me great pleasure to hear that you are comfortable at the Royal Institution, and I trust that you will not only do something good and honourable for yourself, but likewise for science.

I am, dear Mr. Faraday, always your sincere friend and well-wisher,

H. DAVY.

The wish that Davy expressed that Faraday might “do something” for himself and likewise for science was destined soon to come to fulfilment. But in the case of one who had worked so closely and had been so intimately associated as an assistant, it must necessarily be no easy matter always to draw a distinction between the work of the master and that of the assistant. Ideas suggested by one might easily have occurred to the other, when their thoughts had so long been directed to the same ends. And so it proved.

[Sidenote: BEGINS ORIGINAL RESEARCHES.]

Reference to Chapter III. will show that already, beginning in 1816 with a simple analysis of caustic lime for Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday had become an active worker in the domain of original research. The fascination of the quest of the unknown was already upon him. While working with and for Davy on the properties of flame and its non-transmission through iron gauze, in the investigation of the safety lamp, other problems of a kindred nature had arisen. One of these, relating to the flow of gases through capillary tubes, Faraday had attacked by himself in 1817. The subject formed one of the six original papers which he published that year. In the next two years he contributed in all no fewer than thirty-seven papers or notes to the _Quarterly Journal of Science_. In 1819 began a long research on steel which lasted over the year 1820. He had already given evidence of that dislike of half-truths, that aversion for “doubtful knowledge” which marked him so strongly. He had exposed, with quiet but unsparing success, the emptiness of the claim made by an Austrian chemist to have discovered a new metal, “Sirium,” by the simple device of analysing out from the mass all the constituents of known sorts, leaving behind--nothing.

[Sidenote: HE FALLS IN LOVE.]

And now, Faraday being twenty-nine years of age, a new and all-important episode in his life occurred. Amongst the members of the little congregation which met on Sundays at Paul’s Alley, Red Cross Street, was a Mr. Barnard, a working silversmith of Paternoster Row, an elder in the Sandemanian body. He had two sons, Edward Barnard, a friend of Faraday’s, and George, who became a well-known water-colour artist; and three daughters; one who was already at this time married; Sarah, now twenty-one years of age; and Jane, who was still younger. Edward had seen in Faraday’s note-book those boyish tirades against falling in love, and had told his sister Sarah of them. Nevertheless, in spite of all such misogynistic fancies, Faraday woke up one day to find that the large-eyed, clear-browed girl had grown to a place in his heart that he had thought barred against the assaults of love. She asked him on one occasion to show her the rhymes against love in his note-book. In reply he sent her the hitherto unpublished poem:--

R. I. Oct. 11th, 1819.

You ask’d me last night for the lines which I penn’d, When, exulting in ignorance, tempted by pride, I dared torpid hearts and cold breasts to commend, And affection’s kind pow’r and soft joys to deride.

If you urge it I cannot refuse your request: Though to grant it will punish severely my crime: But my fault I repent, and my errors detest; And I hoped to have shown my conversion in time.

Remember, our laws in their mercy decide That no culprit be forced to give proof of his deed: They protect him though fall’n, his failings they hide, And enable the wretch from his crimes to receed (_sic_).

The principle’s noble! I need not urge long Its adoption; then turn from a judge to a friend. Do not ask for the proof that I once acted wrong, But direct me and guide me the way to amend.

M. F.

What other previous passages between them are hinted at in the letter which he sent her, is unknown; but on July 5, 1820, he wrote:--

Royal Institution.

You know me as well or better than I do myself. You know my former prejudices, and my present thoughts--you know my weaknesses, my vanity, my whole mind; you have converted me from one erroneous way, let me hope you will attempt to correct what others are wrong.

* * * * *

Again and again I attempt to say what I feel, but I cannot. Let me, however, claim not to be the selfish being that wishes to bend your affections for his own sake only. In whatever way I can best minister to your happiness either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. Do not injure me by withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be more than a friend by making me less; and if you cannot grant me more, leave me what I possess, but hear me.

Sarah Barnard showed the letter to her father. She was young, and feared to accept her lover. All her father would say by way of counsel was that love made philosophers say many foolish things. The intensity of Faraday’s passion proved for the time a bar to his advance. Fearing lest she should be unable to return it with equal force, Miss Barnard shrank from replying. To postpone an immediate decision, she went away with her sister, Mrs. Reid, to Ramsgate. Faraday followed to press his suit, and after several happy days in her company, varied with country walks and a run over to Dover, he was able to say: “Not a moment’s alloy of this evening’s happiness occurred. Everything was delightful to the last moment of my stay with my companion, because she was so.”

Of the many letters that Faraday wrote to his future wife a number have been preserved. They are manly, simple, full of quiet affection, but absolutely free from gush or forced sentiment of any kind. Extracts from several of them are printed by Bence Jones. One of these, written early in 1821, runs as follows:--

I tied up the enclosed key with my books last night, and make haste to return it lest its absence should occasion confusion. If it has, it will perhaps remind you of the disorder I must be in here also for the want of a key--I mean the one to my heart. However, I know where my key is, and hope soon to have it here, and then the Institution will be all right again. Let no one oppose my gaining possession of it when unavoidable obstacles are removed.

Ever, my dear girl, one who is perfectly yours, M. FARADAY.

Faraday obtained leave of the managers to bring his wife to live in his rooms at the Institution; and in May, 1821, his position was changed from that of lecture assistant to that of superintendent of the house and laboratory. In these changes Sir Humphry Davy gave him willing assistance. But his salary remained £100 a year.

Obstacles being now removed, Faraday and Miss Barnard were married on June 12. Few persons were asked to the wedding, for Faraday wished it to be “just like any other day.” “There will,” he wrote, “be no bustle, no noise, no hurry ... it is in the heart that we expect and look for pleasure.”

[Sidenote: A HAPPY MARRIAGE.]

His marriage, though childless, was extremely happy. Mrs. Faraday proved to be exactly the true helpmeet for his need; and he loved her to the end of his life with a chivalrous devotion which has become almost a proverb. Little indications of his attachment crop up in unexpected places in his subsequent career; but as with his religious views so with his domestic affairs, he never obtruded them upon others, nor yet shrank from mentioning them when there was cause. Tyndall, in after years, made the intensity of Faraday’s attachment to his wife the subject of a striking simile: “Never, I believe, existed a manlier, purer, steadier love. Like a burning diamond, it continued to shed, for six and forty years, its white and smokeless glow.”

In his diploma-book, now in possession of the Royal Society, in which he carefully preserved all the certificates, awards, and honours bestowed upon him by academies and universities, there may be found on a slip inserted in the volume this entry:--

25th January, 1847.

Amongst these records and events, I here insert the date of one which, as a source of honour and happiness, far exceeds the rest. We were _married_ on June 12, 1821.

M. FARADAY.

And two years later, in the autobiographical notes he wrote:--

On June 12, 1821, he married--an event which more than any other contributed to his earthly happiness and healthful state of mind. The union has continued for twenty-eight years, and has nowise changed, except in the depth and strength of its character.

When near the close of his life, he presented to the Royal Institution the bookcase with the volumes of notes of Davy’s lectures and of books bound by himself, the inscription recorded that they were the gift of “Michael _and_ Sarah Faraday.”

Every Saturday evening he used to take his wife to her father’s house at Paternoster Row, so that on Sunday they should be nearer to the chapel at Paul’s Alley. And in after years, when he was away on scientific work, visiting lighthouses, or attending meetings of the British Association, he always tried to return for the Sunday.

A letter from Liebig in 1844 (see p. 225) gives one of the very few glimpses of contemporary date of the impression made by Mrs. Faraday upon others.

One month after his marriage Faraday made his profession of faith before the Sandemanian church, to which his wife already belonged, and was admitted a member. To his religious views, and his relations to the body he thus formally joined, reference will be found later.

[Sidenote: FIRST ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.]

Faraday now settled down to a routine life of scientific work. His professional reputation was rising, and his services as analyst were being sought after. But in the midst of this he was pursuing investigations on his own account. In the late summer of this year he made the discovery of the electro-magnetic rotations described in