Faraday to Benjamin Abbott   15 April 1817

Royal Institution | March.¹ 15th. 1817.

Dear Abbott

I cannot exactly say how long it is since I wrote to you or since your last arrived here but I fear your mind will not be long in giving an idea of a space by far too considerable at least with myself I must confess that a fearful lapse of time has intervened between then and the present moment and what tends to exaggerate the idea is that the very circumstances which have caused the omission tend to make it appear more considerable[.] For as time is measured merely by the events that succeed each other the more of these that are put together the greater will appear the space over which they are expanded and the more distant will be two objects that bound them - Excepting regret however at these long intervals the only determination which has been raised in my mind by this last one is never to promise positively again and therefore for the future you must get your letters from this part of the world as you can catch them i.e either in bundles or single either in a continued series or insulated like land marks just to shew that certain relations are still existing and remain to be revived[.]

Notwithstanding this cavalier statement on my part I have still some out of sight hopes that you will not be guided by a similar determination or rather that from the effect of a little milk of human kindness - from communicativeness - from listlessness and above all from friendship & an excellent capacity your letters will come tumbling in upon me with more speed & in greater abundance than they have done and that though your pocket may not suffer for the shoes of the postman yet that mine may - not that I would encourage the least hopes in you that I shall relax from my determination or that you entice any more promises from me made only to be broken - but that setting me a good example I may par hazard be cheated at some unguarded moment into the writing you a letter even though to the neglect of other things[.]

I am quite ignorant of what your last contained for having left it lying on my desk day after day & week after week waiting for an answer it has at last been lost and this mishap has awakened me to a sense of my neglect - Now however that I am going to write (going do [sic] I say) I want a subject and hardly know what to do for one - to make up the loss in the best way I could i.e as far as concerned the filling up of the paper I resolved never once to retrograde in thought untill this sheet was full and in consequence you are likely to get a kind of olio, sallad, coat of many colours - tailors flag, or other compound thing having no one thing with either beginning or end to it in it - you must however find the best excuse for it you can - for I can offer you none and may therefore consider it as the scum that rises after long boiling from a pot of good contents or as the first dirty water that descends from newly running spouts or as - as - as any other bad precursor of a good thing - ah I think I have said too much[.] I am almost promising again but that would not be wonderful in a letter professing like this to have no two parts alike so that what has been said shall all go without alteration[.] Indeed I can neither afford time paper or pen for another letter at this instant[.]

I promised your brother that I would come down (or up) to you on or by next sunday at farthest and I mean to keep my word and even to dine with you if you choose c’est-a-dire if you have no objection - in explanation of which last word I w<<ish>> to say (troublesome politeness being banished that cordiality ma<<ke>> her place) if all is convenient[.]

It is hardly proper that I should pretend to write sense in this letter but I cannot help expressing hopes that I shall see Mrs. Abbott & all well when I come &

that I am as ever | Yours | M. Faraday

Address: Mr. B. Abbott | 4 Long Lane | Bermondsey