Faraday to Benjamin Abbott1   16 May 1836

Royal Institution | 16 May 1836

Dear Abbott

I write to you from the Laboratory where I must remain to watch an experiment and I am not sure I shall be able even by these means to finish my letter at once but it has been driven of[f] so long that I am resolved one way or another to do it[.] You may imagine my toil & occupation when I tell you that within the last fortnight I have given order to the Porters in the Hall that I will see no one for the future on Tuesday[s] Thursdays or Saturdays or on other days after 4oclk let them be who they will. I have not made an experiment of research for the last two months2 and I find myself engaged in every body’s business but my own[.]

And indeed this is hardly to be wondered at. Twenty years ago I was fully employed & the twenty years since has brought its share of duty toil connection & relations as the former score had done before it and it sometimes astonishes me that I can still keep up any of the old feelings & association with You Tatum3 Chambers4 Woodward5 Linthurst6 Magrath Johnson7 Ruhn8 Paine9 Kitchen10 Finlayson11 & the many others I knew & shall know & who continually favour me with a call[.] But I find that health fails under the endeavour to do all things and I have been obliged to make & follow the rule I told you of[.]

I am glad to hear that you prosper at Lewes[.] Home must be the place for happiness however we may remember with pleasure the former times for the former times never were & never can be the present. I do not know whether Mantle12 [sic] will find his new house as fortunate to him as you do yours. It will be a struggle to him13[.]

With respect to modern experiments on sound I am not aware of any work on the matter indeed I know from frequent enquiry there is no good compendium[.] Herschells treatise in the Metropolitana (Encyclopedia)14 is I understand good & I think that there are some good French and German works but do not know them[.] The experiments are very beautiful & interesting but require much apparatus of a peculiar & nice nature[.]

I was at Brighton for 3 days at Easter it was all the time I could spare & as usual I went to see nobody not even my early friend Mr Masquierer15 who lived at Mr Riebau16 when I was an apprentice…. Poor Mr Riebau is dead but his son in law & grandson are in health & prosperous. Kitchen who was also a companion of mine at that time is dead but the third amongst us Finlayson is alive & well[.]

I do not know what gave rise to the Calcutta report17. Here I have been for 23 years & here I may live many years longer for I have no intention of changing[.]

With best remembrances to Mrs Abbott18 | I am my dear Abbott | Very Truly Yours | M. Faraday


Address: Mr B Abbott | Castle Place | Lewes

1
Benjamin Abbott (1793–1870, DQB). A member of the City Philosophical Society and a close friend of Faraday’s in the 1810s.
2
The previous entries in his laboratory notebook were Faraday, Dairy, 29 February 1836, 2: 2991-3025.
3
John Tatum (d.1858, age 86, GRO). Silversmith of 53 Dorset Street. Appears in London directories until 1827. Probably the same as John junior noted in Grimwade (1982), 677.
4
Unidentified.
5
Charles Woodward (c.1789–1877, B3). Scientific lecturer and a former member of the City Philosophical Society.
6
Unidentified.
7
Charles Johnson (1791–1880, ODNB). Professor of Botany at Guy’s Hospital 1830–1873. A member of the City Philosophical Society, Nature, 1880, 22: 517.
8
Unidentified. Reading doubtful.
9
James Paine (d.1855, age 76, GRO). Musician and George Riebau’s son-in-law.
10
Unidentified.
11
John Finlayson (1770–1854, ODNB). Disciple of the millenarian Richard Brothers (1757–1824, ODNB). For Faraday’s connection see James (2010), 20.
12
Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790–1852, ODNB). Geologist.
13
Mantell moved in April 1836. See Curwen (1940), 131.
14
Herschel, J.F.W. (1830).
15
John James Masquierer (1778–1855, ODNB). Painter. According to Thompson (1898), 7-8 Masquierer lodged with Riebau and while there taught Faraday drawing. See also Prescott (1985), 29.
16
George Riebau (1759–c.1836). Bookseller of 2 Blandford Street. Appears in London directories from1802 to 1836; Ramsden (1987), 122. Baptism noted in records of St Martin in the Fields. Faraday was apprenticed to him as a book binder, 1805–1812.
17
Possibly related to the foundinging of the Calcutta Medical College in 1835.
18
Eliza Ann Abbott (d.1892, age 92, GRO).

Bibliography

CURWEN, E. Cecil (1940): The Journal of Gideon Mantell Surgeon and Geologist, London.

GRIMWADE, Arthur G. (1982): London Goldsmiths, 1697-1837: Their Marks and Lives, 2nd edition, London.

PRESCOTT, Gertrude M. (1985): “Faraday: Image of the Man and the Collector”, in Gooding and James (1985), 15-31.

RAMSDEN, Charles (1987): London Bookbinders, 1780-1840, London.

THOMPSON, Silvanus P. (1898): Michael Faraday, His Life and Work, London.

Please cite as “Faraday0917a,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 10 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0917a