Faraday to Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas   2 September 1839

Royal Institution | 2 Sept 1839

My dear Sir

I have been this morning to the Royal Society and find that Mr Roberton is out of town1[.] I have also been to the Athenaeum to look for Brewsters Encyclopaedia2 & the volume of the Metropolitana[.] Brewsters work is not there but I found out that the references in the Metropolitana were not to the pages but to certain divisions of the paragraphs so <(876)> is at page 6143. I send you therefore our volume of the work with papers in place perhaps you can let me have it back in a day or two[.]

As to Brewster I do not know what to do except to suggest to you to go to the British Museum where it must be and I enclose a note to Sir Henry Ellis4 or to the Librarian which you can either use or burn.

Newman promises that I shall have all the Daguerre apparatus tomorrow afternoon[.]

I durst not try to write in French: I hope Madam Dumas5 will think kindly of me and excuse any trouble I may inadvertently be giving her with my cramped hand[.]

Ever My dear Sir | Your faithful admirer | M. Faraday

M. Dumas | &c &c &c

2
Brewster (1830).
3
Barlow (1836), article 876.
4
Henry Ellis (1777-1869, DNB). Librarian of the British Museum from 1827.
5
Hermenie Dumas, née Brongniart. Married Dumas in 1826. See Crosland (1992), 184.

Bibliography

BARLOW, Peter (1836): “Manufactures”, Encyclopedia Metropolitana, 8: 85-834.

BREWSTER, David (1830): The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 18 volumes, Edinburgh.

CROSLAND, Maurice (1992): Science under Control: The French Academy of Sciences 1795-1914, Cambridge.

Please cite as “Faraday1204,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday1204