Harriet Jane Moore to Faraday   14 August 18501

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August 14th

My dear Mr. Faraday

Though you and Mrs. Faraday will not try how this pretty spot would suit a philosopher I hope you have found Norwood agreeable, and enjoyed picnics with my friends the Gypsies, whom I never see without thinking it would be pleasant to pass a summer under their tents. We have had a great deal of thunder and lightning this summer; and one storm in which the hail fell far larger than I had ever seen, the stones were like hazel nuts, and rejoiced the glaziers of the neighbourhood. We had a too short but very agreeable visit from our friends the Lyells2 lately; he finds books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing; and she is interested in all that interests him. They are now geologising in the Hartz Mountains, or Saxon Switzerland3. I often I think over the delightful lectures I heard last spring4, and only wish I could remember and understand every word of them, for they encrease my stock of happiness, for which I feel grateful to you. I trust that (if not sooner) I shall have the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs. Faraday, to whom I beg my kind regards, next winter in health & happiness.

Believe me dear Mr. Faraday | Your’s Most Sincerely | Harriet Moore

The Cedars | Sunning Hill | Berks

My sister5 I am happy to say has somewhat improved since she left London.

1
Dated on the basis that the Faradays were at Norwood at this time.
2
Charles Lyell and Mary Elizabeth Lyell, née Horner (1808-1873, Burkhardt et al. (1985-94), 4: 652). Conchologist who married Lyell on 12 July 1832.
3
See Lyell to Moore, 3 August 1850, in Lyell (1881), 2: 163-4.
4
Possibly Faraday’s course of six lectures “Upon some points of domestic chemical philosophy” which he delivered on 27 April, 4, 11, 18, 25 May and 1 June 1850. Faraday’s notes are in RI MS F4 J19.
5
Julia Moore (d.1904, age 100, GRO). Sister of Harriet Jane Moore.

Bibliography

LYELL, Charles (1881): Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, 2 volumes, London.

Please cite as “Faraday2314,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2314