Auchinean Largs. 3d. April
My dear Mr. Faraday
A long time has passed since we received your kind words of sympathy2, & more than three months since the accident that called them forth & yet I have not to report more than improvement - nothing yet like capacity for work. We thought even that a great deal was achieved when a few days ago, Mr. Thomson managed to walk for about ten minutes in the garden on his crutches. Since then he has daily repeated the experiment successfully but as yet without any assistance from the injured limb. We hope that it may in time be as useful as ever, but this is a result for which we look uncertainly & with much anxiety.
We have passed the winter, since Xmas, at Largs, on the Ayrshire coast. We were on a visit for the holy days when the accident happened, & were spared the pain of inflicting on our friends the penalties of a long illness in their house, by my Father3 having one here to which we were able to remove at once, & where we have had the advantages of fine air, & a charming prospect of sea & hills, & frequent visits from kind friends.
Mr. Thomson has felt very much being so long kept away from his work, altho’ it has been kindly & ably undertaken for him by Professors Rogers4 & Grant5 two of his colleagues.
Lately all other cares have been overpowered by the deep distress into which we have been thrown by the death of my Uncle6, under such painful circumstances. He was the kindest of friends, & now that the startling severity of the first shock is past, memory is busy in recalling many familiar scenes of kindness, reaching over nearly the whole of life, & henceforth overshadowed by the thoughts of his suffering & mysterious death.
As you knew my Uncle at Aberdeen7, perhaps it may not be obtrusive for me to say that some business-anxieties (now proved to have been greatly imaginary) preyed upon his mind to such an extent that it must have become quite unhinged, altho’ to his friends it was only apparent that he was looking ill & harassed - but this was accounted for by his health being a good deal deranged.
He had never known anything but prosperity, & as his advice was always considered judicious, the money of several friends, & the savings of others, who could ill afford to lose them, were in his hands. This seems to have been the chief source of his anxiety, & from remarks he had made, his suffering seems more to have arisen from his delicate sense of honor than from wounded pride or fear of pecuniary loss. In the midst of so much that is painful we have the consolation of hoping that in his last sad hours, when neither his wife nor my Father were allowed to see him, the veil fell from his mind, & he saw things as they really were. He aided as much as he could the efforts of the medical men to restore him, & he was observed by the doctor who sat up with him during the last night to be frequently praying fervently. He shook his head when it was suggested he might get better, but his expression was calm & peaceful, & he resigned himself to their care as quietly & gently as a child. There are many touching circumstances which I do not feel able to write, (indeed I have perhaps claimed your attention too long) all shewing the unselfishness which marked his mental suffering, & the kindness & benevolence which characterized his last days, as they had done his life. He had never told my Father that he had any anxieties, & we cannot help regretting bitterly that my Aunt had not confided to him, the morbid state in which she knew my Uncle’s mind to be. A more calm investigation of the state of his affairs than he was able to give, would have relieved him of the error which proved so fatal. I trust this regret may never occur to Mrs. Crum8. Her grief is already almost too heavy to be borne.
You will forgive me that I have pressed upon you so much of our own grief. I wished you to know some of the circumstances, which painful as they are, contain more of consolation to us than wd. appear possible from the bare fact, as it must reach people generally.
Mr. Thomson intends writing to you soon. We hope you are well, & that Mrs. Faraday has not suffered much from this severe winter.
I hope I may be allowed to join in the kind regards which my husband wishes to send to her, & I remain
Dear Mr. Faraday | Yours very sincerely | Margaret Thomson.
THOMPSON, Silvanus P. (1910): The Life of William Thomson Baron Kelvin of Largs, 2 volumes, London.
Please cite as “Faraday3975,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday3975