Part 4

It is more singular that a man of his benevolent spirit should never have taken a prominent part in any philanthropic movement. In some cases his religious views may have presented an obstacle, but this reason can hardly apply to many of those social movements in which the influence of his name, and his occasional presence and advice, would have been highly valuable. During the latter half of his life, he, as a rule, avoided serving on committees even for scientific objects, and was reluctant to hold office in the learned societies with which he was connected. I believe, however, that this arose not so much from want of interest, as from a conviction that he was ill-suited by natural temperament for joining in discussions on subjects that roused the passions of men, or for calmly weighing the different courses of action, and deciding which was the most judicious. It is remarkable how little even of his scientific work was done in conjunction with others. Neither did he spend time in rural occupations, or in literary or artistic pursuits. Beasts and birds and flowers he looked at, but it was for recreation, not for study. Music he was fond of, and occasionally he visited the Opera, but he did not allow sweet sounds to charm him away from his work. He stuck closely to his fireside, his laboratory, his lecture table, and his church. He lived where he worked, so that he had only to go downstairs to put to the test of experiment any fresh thought that flitted across his brain. He almost invariably declined dinner-parties, except at Lady Davy's, and at Mr. and Mrs. Masquerier's at Brighton, towards whom he felt under an obligation on account of former kindnesses. If he went to a _soirée_, he usually stayed but a short time; and even when away from home he generally refused private hospitality. Thus he was able to give almost undivided attention to the chief pursuit of his life.

His residence in so accessible a part of London did, however, expose him to the constant invasion of callers, and his own good nature often rendered fruitless the efforts that were considerately made to restrict these within reasonable limits. Of course he suffered from the curious and the inconsiderate of the human species; and then there were those pertinacious bores, the dabblers in science. "One morning a young man called on him, and with an air of great importance confided to him the result of some original researches (so he deemed them) in electrical philosophy. 'And pray,' asked the Professor, taking down a volume of Rees' Cyclopædia, 'did you consult this or any elementary work to learn whether your discovery had been anticipated?' The young man replied in the negative. 'Then why do you come to waste my time about well-known facts, that were published forty years ago?' 'Sir,' said the visitor, 'I thought I had better bring the matter to head-quarters immediately.' 'All very well for you, but not so well for head-quarters,' replied the Professor, sharply, and set him down to read the article."

"A grave, elderly gentleman once waited upon him to submit to his notice 'a new law of physics.' The visitor requested that a jug of water and a tumbler might be brought, and then producing a cork, 'You will be pleased to observe,' said he, 'how persistently this cork clings to the side of the glass when the vessel is half filled.' 'Just so,' replied the Professor. 'But now,' resumed this great discoverer, 'mark what happens when I fill the tumbler to the brim. There! you see the cork flies to the centre--positively repelled by the sides!' 'Precisely so,' replied the amused electrician, with the air of a man who felt perfectly at home with the phenomenon, and indeed regarded it quite as an old friend. The visitor was evidently disconcerted. 'Pray how long have you known this?' he ventured to ask Faraday. 'Oh, ever since I was a boy,' was the rejoinder. Crestfallen--his discovery demolished in a moment--the poor gentleman was retiring with many apologies, when the Professor, sincerely concerned at his disappointment, comforted him by suggesting that possibly he might some day alight upon something really new."[8]

But there were other visitors who were right welcome to a portion of his time. One day it might be a young man, whom a few kind words and a little attention on the part of the great philosopher would send forward on the journey of life with new energy and hopes. Another day it might be some intellectual chieftain, who could meet the prince of experimenters on equal terms. But these are hardly to be regarded as interruptions;--rather as a part of his chosen work.

Here is one instance in the words of Mr. Robert Mallet. "... I was, in the years that followed, never in London without paying him a visit, and on one of those times I ventured to ask him (if not too much engaged) to let me see where he and Davy had worked together. With the most simple graciousness he brought me through the whole of the Royal Institution, Albemarle Street. Brande's furnaces, Davy's battery, the place in the laboratory where he told me he had first observed the liquefaction of chlorine, are all vividly before me--but nothing so clear or vivid as our conversation over a specimen of green (crown) glass, partially devitrified in floating opaque white spheres of radiating crystals: he touched luminously on the obscure relation of the vitreous and crystalloid states, and on the probable nature of the nuclei of the white spheres. My next visit to Faraday that I recollect was not long after my paper 'On the Dynamics of Earthquakes' had appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He almost at once referred to it in terms of praise that seemed to me so far beyond my due, that even now I recall the very humble way I felt, as the thought of Faraday's own transcendent merits rushed across my mind. I ventured to ask him, had the paper engaged his attention sufficiently that I might ask him--did he consider my explanation of the before supposed _vorticose_ shock sufficient? To my amazement he at once recited _nearly word for word_ the paragraph in which I took some pains to put my views into a demonstrative shape, and ended with, 'It is as plain and certain as a proposition of Euclid!' And yet the subject was one pretty wide away from his own objects of study."

Often, too, if some interesting fact was exhibited to him, he would send to his brother _savants_ some such note as this:--

"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _4th May, 1852_.

"MY DEAR WHEATSTONE,

"Dr. Dubois-Raymond will be making his experiments _here_ next Thursday, the 6th, from and after 11 o'clock. I wish to let you know, that you may if you like join the select few.

"Ever truly yours,

"M. FARADAY."

It was indeed his wont to share with others the delight of a new discovery. Thus Sir Henry Holland tells me that he used frequently to run to his house in Brook Street with some piece of scientific news. One of these visits was after reading Bunsen and Kirchhoff's paper on Spectrum Analysis; and he did not stop short with merely telling the tale of the special rays of light shot forth by each metallic vapour, as the following letter will show. It is addressed to the present Baroness Burdett Coutts.

"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _Friday, 17th May_.

"DEAR MISS COUTTS,

"To-morrow, at 4 o'clock, immediately after Max Müller's lecture, I shall show Sir Henry Holland an apparatus which has arrived from Munich to manifest the phenomena of light which have recently been made known to us by Bunsen and Kirchhoff. Mr. Barlow will be here, and he suggests that you would like to know of the occasion. If you are inclined to see how philosophers work and live, and so are inclined to climb our narrow stairs (for I must show the experiments in my room), we shall be most happy to see you. The experiments will not be beautiful except to the intelligent.

"Ever your faithful Servant,

"M. FARADAY."

Sometimes, too, the exhibition of a scientific fact would take him away from home. Thus, when her Majesty and the Prince Consort once paid a private visit to the Polytechnic, Mr. Pepper arranged a surprise for the Royal party, by getting Faraday in a quiet room to explain the Ruhmkorff's coil--the latest development of his own inductive currents. This he did with his usual vivacity and enthusiasm, and the interview is said to have gratified the philosopher as well as the Queen.

He could not, however, escape the inroads made upon his time by correspondence. People would write and ask him questions. Once a solitary prisoner wrote to tell him, "It is indeed in studying the great discoveries which science is indebted to you for, that I render my captivity less sad, and make time flow with rapidity,"--and then he proceeds to ask, "_What is the most simple_ combination to give to a voltaic battery, in order to produce a spark capable of setting fire to powder under water, or under ground? Up to the present I have only seen employed to that purpose piles of thirty to forty pairs constructed on Dr. Wollaston's principles. They are very large and inconvenient for field service. Could not the same effect be produced by two spiral pairs only? and if so, what can be their smallest dimension?" And who was the prisoner who thus speculated on the applications of science to war? It was no other than Prince Louis Napoleon, then immured in the fortress of Ham, and now the ex-Emperor of the French. At another time he wrote asking for his advice in the manufacture of an alloy which should be about as soft as lead, but not so fusible,--a question which also had evident bearing upon the art of war; and offering at the same time to pay the cost of any experiments that might be necessary.

Often, too, the correspondents of Faraday thought that they were doing him a kindness. He says somewhere: "The number of suggestions, hints for discovery, and propositions of various kinds, offered to me very freely and with perfect goodwill and simplicity on the part of the proposers, for my exclusive investigation and final honour, is remarkably great, and it is no less remarkable that but for one exception--that of Mr. Jenkin--they have all been worthless.... I have, I think, universally found that the man whose mind was by nature or self-education fitted to make good and worthy suggestions, was also the man both able and willing to work them out."

Both the askers of questions and the givers of advice expected answers--and the answers came. Most of Faraday's letters, indeed, are of a purely business character: sometimes they are very laconic, as the note in which he announced to Dr. Paris one of his principal discoveries:--

"DEAR SIR,

"The _oil_ you noticed yesterday turns out to be liquid chlorine.

"Yours faithfully,

"M. FARADAY."

But in other letters, as may be expected, there is found the enthusiasm of his ardent nature, or the glow of his genial spirit. An instance or two may suffice.

"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _24th March, 1843_.

"DEAR SIR,

"I have received and at once looked at your paper. Many thanks for so good a contribution to the beloved science. What glorious steps electricity has taken in the days within our remembrance, and what hopes are held out for the future! The great difficulty is to remove the mists which dim the dawn of a subject, and I cannot but consider your paper as doing very much that way for a most important part of natural knowledge.

"I am, my dear Sir,

"Most truly yours,

"M. FARADAY.

"J. P. JOULE, ESQ."

"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _15th Oct., 1853_.

"MY DEAR MISS MOORE,

"The summer is going away, and I never (but for one day) had any hopes of profiting by your kind offer of the roof of your house in Clarges Street. What a feeble summer it has been as regards sunlight! I have made a good many preliminary experiments at home, but they do not encourage me in the direction towards which I was looking. All is misty and dull, both the physical and the mental prospect. But I have ever found that the experimental philosopher has great need of patience, that he may not be downcast by interposing obstacles, and perseverance, that he may either overcome them, or open out a new path to the bourn he desires to reach. So perhaps next summer I may think of your housetop again. Many thanks for your kind letter and all your kindnesses uswards. My wife had your note yesterday, and I enjoyed the violets, which for a time I appropriated.

"With kindest remembrances and thoughts to all with you and her at Hastings,

"I am, my dear Friend,

"Very faithfully yours,

"M. FARADAY."

The following is written to Mr. Frank Barnard, then an Art student in Paris:--

"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _9th Nov., 1852_.

"MY DEAR NEPHEW,

"Though I am not a letter-writer and shall not profess to send you any news, yet I intend to waste your time with one sheet of paper: first to thank you for your letter to me, and then to thank you for what I hear of your letters to others. You were very kind to take the trouble of executing my commissions, when I know your heart was bent upon the entrance to your studies. Your account of M. Arago was most interesting to me, though I should have been glad if in the matter of health you could have made it better. He has a wonderful mind and spirit. And so you are hard at work, and somewhat embarrassed by your position: but no man can do just as he likes, and in many things he has to give way, and may do so honourably, provided he preserve his self-respect. Never, my dear Frank, lose that, whatever may be the alternative. Let no one tempt you to it; for nothing can be expedient that is not right; and though some of your companions may tease you at first, they will respect you for your consistency in the end; and if they pretend not to do so, it is of no consequence. However, I trust the hardest part of your probation is over, for the earliest is usually the hardest; and that you know how to take all things quietly. Happily for you, there is nothing in your pursuit which need embarrass you in Paris. I think you never cared for home politics, so that those of another country are not likely to occupy your attention, and a stranger can be but a very poor judge of a new people and their requisites.

"I think all your family are pretty well, but I know you will hear all the news from your appointed correspondent Jane, and, as I said, I am unable to chronicle anything. Still, I am always very glad to hear how you are going on, and have a sight of all that I may see of the correspondence.

"Ever, my dear Frank,

"Your affectionate Uncle,

"M. FARADAY."

His scientific researches were very numerous. The Royal Society Catalogue gives under the name of Faraday a list of 158 papers, published in various scientific magazines or learned Transactions. Many of these communications are doubtless short, but a short philosophical paper often represents a large amount of brain work; a score of them are the substance of his Friday evening discourses; while others are lengthy treatises, the records of long and careful investigations; and the list includes the thirty series of his "Experimental Researches in Electricity." These extended over a period of twenty-seven years, and were afterwards reprinted from the "Philosophical Transactions," and form three goodly volumes, with 3,430 numbered paragraphs--one of the most marvellous monuments of intellectual work, one of the rarest treasure-houses of newly-discovered knowledge, with which the world has ever been enriched. Faraday never published but one book in the common acceptation of the term--it was on "Chemical Manipulation,"--but there appeared another large volume of reprinted papers: and three of his courses of lectures were also published as separate small books, though not by himself. It is very tempting to linger among these 158 papers; but this is not intended as a scientific biography, and those readers who wish to make themselves better acquainted with his work will find an admirable summary of it in Professor Tyndall's "Faraday as a Discoverer." In Sections IV. and V., however, I have endeavoured to give an idea of his manner of working, and of the practical benefits that have flowed to mankind from some of his discoveries.

As these papers appeared his fame grew wider and wider. When a comparatively young man he was naturally desirous of appending the mystic letters "F.R.S." to his name, and he was balloted into the Royal Society in January 1824, not without strong opposition from his master, Sir Humphry Davy, then president. He paid the fees, and never sought another distinction of the kind. But they were showered down upon him. The Philosophical Society of Cambridge had already acknowledged his merits, and the learned Academies of Paris and Florence had enrolled him amongst their corresponding members. Heidelberg and St. Petersburg, Philadelphia and Boston, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Palermo, quickly followed: and as the fame of his researches spread, very many other learned societies in Europe and America, as well as at home, brought to him the tribute of their honorary membership.[9] He thrice received the degree of Doctor, Oxford making him a D.C.L., Prague a Ph.D., and Cambridge an LL.D., besides which he was instituted a Chevalier of the Prussian Order of Merit, a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus. Among the medals which he received were each of those at the disposal of the Royal Society--indeed the Copley medal was given him twice--and the Grande Médaille d'Honneur at the time of the French Exhibition. Altogether it appears he was decorated with ninety-five titles and marks of merit,[10] including the blue ribbon of science, for in 1844 he was chosen one of the eight foreign associates of the French Academy.

Though he had never passed through a university career, he was made a member of the Senate of the University of London, which he regarded as one of his chief honours; and he showed his appreciation of the importance of the office by a diligent attendance to its duties.

As the recognized prince of investigators, it is no wonder that on the resignation of Lord Wrottesley, an attempt was made to induce him to become President of the Royal Society. A deputation waited upon him and urged the unanimous wish of the Council and of scientific men. Faraday begged for time to consider. Tyndall gives us an insight into the reasons that led him to decline. He tells us: "On the following morning I went up to his room, and said, on entering, that I had come to him with some anxiety of mind. He demanded its cause, and I responded, 'Lest you should have decided against the wishes of the deputation that waited on you yesterday.' 'You would not urge me to undertake this responsibility,' he said. 'I not only urge you,' was my reply, 'but I consider it your bounden duty to accept it.' He spoke of the labour that it would involve; urged that it was not in his nature to take things easy; and that if he became president, he would surely have to stir many new questions, and agitate for some changes. I said that in such cases he would find himself supported by the youth and strength of the Royal Society. This, however, did not seem to satisfy him. Mrs. Faraday came into the room, and he appealed to her. Her decision was adverse, and I deprecated her decision. 'Tyndall,' he said at length, 'I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if I accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires you to confer upon me, I would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year.'"

In 1835 Sir Robert Peel desired to confer pensions as honourable distinctions on Faraday and some other eminent men. Lord Melbourne, who succeeded him as Prime Minister, in making the offer at a private interview, gave utterance to some hasty expressions that appeared to the man of science to reflect on the honour of his profession, and led to his declining the money. The King, William IV., was struck with the unusual nature of the proceeding, and kept repeating the story of Faraday's refusal; and about a month afterwards the Premier, dining with Dr. (now Sir Henry) Holland, begged him to convey a letter to the Professor and to press on him the acceptance of the pension. The letter was couched in such honourable and conciliatory terms, that Faraday's personal objection could no longer apply, and he expressed his willingness to receive this mark of national approval. A version of the matter that found its way into the public prints caused fresh annoyance, and nearly produced a final refusal, but through the kind offices of friends who had interested themselves throughout in the matter, a friendly feeling was again arrived at, and the pension of £300 a year was granted and accepted.

In 1858 the Queen offered him a house at Hampton Court. It was a pretty little place, situated in the well-known Green in front of the Palace; and in that quiet retreat Faraday spent a large portion of his remaining years.

In October 1861 he wrote a letter to the managers of the Royal Institution, resigning part of his duties, in which he reviewed his connection with them. "I entered the Royal Institution in March 1813, nearly forty-nine years ago, and, with the exception of a comparatively short period during which I was abroad on the Continent with Sir H. Davy, have been with you ever since. During that time I have been most happy in your kindness, and in the fostering care which the Royal Institution has bestowed upon me. Thank God, first, for all His gifts. I have next to thank you and your predecessors for the unswerving encouragement and support which you have given me during that period. My life has been a happy one, and all I desired. During its progress I have tried to make a fitting return for it to the Royal Institution, and through it to science. But the progress of years (now amounting in number to three-score and ten) having brought forth first the period of development, and then that of maturity, have ultimately produced for me that of gentle decay. This has taken place in such a manner as to make the evening of life a blessing; for whilst increasing physical weakness occurs, a full share of health free from pain is granted with it; and whilst memory and certain other faculties of the mind diminish, my good spirits and cheerfulness do not diminish with them."

When he could no longer discharge effectually his duties at the Trinity House, the Corporation quietly made their arrangements for transferring them, and, with the concurrence of the Board of Trade, determined that his salary of 200_l._ per annum should continue as long as he lived. Sir Frederick Arrow called upon him at Albemarle Street, and explained how the matter stood, but he found it hard to persuade the Professor that there was no injustice in his continuing to receive the money; then, taking hold of Sir Frederick by one hand and Dr. Tyndall by the other, Faraday, with swimming eyes, passed over his office to his successor.