From Robert Chambers to William Kemp   6 October 1848

Dear Sir,

1 am sorry to find that M^r Brockie’s letter so entirely represents your own views and feelings, considering as I do that letter to be misrepresentative of fact and to me wholly unjust. Things seem even worse now than before, since my explanations come back to me again misrepresented. I must now limit myself to a brief and final protest against the misconstructions of which I have to complain.

You speak in this letter of your claim to originality “having never before been disputed.” I never disputed it. On the contrary, I am the first brother geologist who has given anything like adherence to it—a circumstance which ought perhaps to have obtained for me somewhat different treatment. You speak of my acknowledgments being slighting and partial. I on the contrary assert that they are at once respectful and complete. You are introduced by name as the discoverer or first investigator of the Eildon terraces; the early date of these labours is stated; your name is repeatedly mentioned throughout my abridged description, twice in quotations from your own language. The style in which these acknowledgments are made is matter of taste—I was not making an after-dinner speech to introduce your health, or penning a village paragraph about a testimonial-presentation for a provincial newspaper, but writing a scientific work on a new and unaccepted subject, where dignified as well as moderate language was called for. I will put it to any gentleman accustomed to treat scientific subjects, if, in the circumstances, a warmer tone would have been in good taste, or at all more favourable to your reputation.

Altogether overlooking the explanation in my last letter, you ask why your subsequent researches were concealed. Let me refer you for answer to my former letter. You also repeat, though in a moderated tone, your complaint about the authorship of the notes. Let me say once for all that I really could not have supposed such a thing at all likely, as that might expressly be called sea-side ones,—which 1 then had in my eye, the whole object being to show the order in which M Maclaren’s, Mr Milne’s, and my own labours, had stood. Perhaps it would have been well to express the limitations upwards which I had in view as well as downwards; if so, the omission was a mere oversight, which there should have been no liability to misinterpret, as M^r Brockie has done, when the date of your Eildon researches is elsewhere so explicitly stated. As to the authorship of the paper in the Journal, the writing of a few notes for such a paper is so insignificant an honour in comparison with priority in scientific discovery, that I can scarcely think it worth speaking of. However, I had always understood that the paper was written by Mr Smibert, whom I had despatched for the purpose (with any design, by the way, but that of suppressing your merits), and who still insists that he only received from you a few necessary jottings. I was the more ready to speak of a third party as concerned here, since it implied there being another person who had examined the Eildon terraces, and thought them of consequence.

I would hope that M^r Brockie’s sentiments are not shared by yourself, as it would be very painful to me to think that one to whom I really owe so much for his kindly lent assistance and whose meritorious researches I thought I had been doing my best to bring under the respectful notice of the world, was left under such a dissatisfaction.

I am, | dear Sir, | yours very sincerely, | R. Chambers.

P.S. I have sent a letter to the Athenaeum, saying little beyond an emphatic denial that you had been in any peculiar way my leader in this investigation, or that I had concealed your share in it.