1Faraday to William Buckland   12 January 18492

Royal Institution | 12 Jany. 1848 [sic]

My dear Dean

I shall be hard at work at the Trinity House tomorrow evening or I should have made an exertion to reach the Deanery, as it is I shall not be able.

My Soap bubbles were all very good but my Carbonic acid was too recently prepared, indeed only the moment before[.] I had learnt the lesson before but in the hurry of the moment forgot it again.

I wish I could come tomorrow night that we might blow Soap bubbles against each other. What a beautiful & wonderful thing a soap bubble is?

My sincere respects to Mrs. Buckland[.]

Ever Truly Yours | M. Faraday

Revd. Dr. Buckland | &c &c &c

1
This letter is black-edged, due to the death of one of Sarah Faraday’s brothers, the silversmith William Barnard (1801-1848, GRO, Grimwade (1982), 431) on 20 October 1848.
2
Dated on the basis that this letter refers to Faraday’s fourth Christmas lecture delivered on 6 January 1849 “On the Chemical History of a Candle”, RI MS GB 2: 50. For the reference to soap bubbles see Faraday (1861), 108.

Bibliography

FARADAY, Michael (1861): A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle; to which is added a Lecture on Platinum, London.

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

Please cite as “Faraday2147,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2147