Ɛpsilon

Edward Magrath to Faraday   25 May 1849

Athenaeum | 25 May 1849.

Dear Faraday

Until I received your note1 and the Extract I had never heard of Arnetts2 ‘Books of the Ancients’3[.] Some Weeks since my Brother Henry4 told me had seen in a fugitive publication a paragraph which may probably be the same & which I have in my hand for the first time. I had forgotten the matter altogether[.]

I think you and I were first acquainted in the same year you were appointed to the Royal Institution5. I know this much that it was during the following year you went with Sir Humphrey Davy to Paris and I heard you say that you were there when Napoleon6 returned from the Campaign in Russia (1812)7.

I have never kept a dairy and must therefore in all matters of my past Life refer to memory alone. I have never paid the slightest attention to the many publications in which your name and mine have appeared in connection - because there has been in them for the most part more of error than truth, and also because I have always systematically abstained from all connection or communication with the press whether they chose to treat me roughly or smoothly. One is sure to get rough treatment if you notice mistatements or shew the slightest sensitiveness at personal attacks[.]

Whenever I have been asked proper questions about you I have answered frankly and openly and in some instances have corrected misinformation which (if true) might have gratified my vanity, but I did not choose to indulge it at the expense of truth. For instance I have been often asked if I knew you in early youth. My answer has been invariably No! Not until you became a member like myself, of the Dorset St. Society to which we were introduced at different periods by John Tatum8[.]

E. Magrath

Athenaeum | Friday 25 May 1849.

2
John Andrews Arnett. Pseudonym of John Hannett. Otherwise unidentified.
3
Arnett (1837).
4
Otherwise unidentified.
5
That is in 1813.
6
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, NBU). Emperor of France, 1804-6 April 1814. Exiled on Elba until 1 March 1815. Lost battle of Waterloo and finally abdicated on 22 June 1815.
7
The chronology here is incorrect. Napoleon had returned from Russia in December 1812. Faraday saw him in Paris a year later on 19 December 1813. Bowers and Symons (1991), 33.
8
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. Founder of the City Philosophical Society on which see James (1992b).

Bibliography

ARNETT, John Andrews (1837): An Inquiry into the Nature and Form of the Books of the Ancients: with a history of the art of bookbinding, from the times of the Greeks and Romans to the present day, London.

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

JAMES, Frank A.J.L. (1992b): “Michael Faraday, The City Philosophical Society and the Society of Arts”, Roy. Soc. Arts J. 140: 192-199.

Please cite as “Faraday2188,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2188