James South to Faraday   12 January 1866

Friday Jany 12th. 1866 | Observatory Kensington

My Dear Old Friend,

It was with great grief, that I read in a letter written me at your kind wish, by your good niece, Miss Barnard, that it has pleased God to call from this world, your honest - able - and intelligent Assistant, the late Charles Anderson¹.

To your sensitive Heart, the Blow, I am sure, must be a severe one; for his long service, (38 years) and strong attachment to you, had made him, in Royal Institution scientific matters, almost “part and parcel,” of yourself.

The old Soldier, has I think, left behind him a Daughter² to bewail his loss; but I am unacquainted with her position in society; if however, the Managers of the Institution, or any portion of them, wishing to shew their high sense of his long and valuable service to Science, think it right to do so, by giving to his Mortal remains a Funeral and suitable Monument in the Highgate Cemetery, or elsewhere, I shall have great pleasure in contributing any sum, which may be required - and also if deemed desirable, would give any further amount towards raising an Annuity for the Daughter of the British Soldier of 22 years service, and of 38 years standing as Chemical Assistant to Mr. Faraday in the laboratory of the Royal Institution³.

With greatest difficulty have I, since I received your niece’s Letter on Wednesday⁴ night written this much in reply to it; for unlike you, I am not blessed with a Niece, most kindly to act as amanuensis to me. This must be my excuse for sending you such a scrawl, and that too, after so long an interval; nor is this all, as you begged your Niece to make the removal of our Friend, Charles Anderson, known to me, bear with me if I say, how truly grateful I should feel to her, if she would write out and send me a copy of it, at her leisure, for I have no one here to do it for me.

I saw Dixon⁵ my honest Oculist on Saturday⁶, and he begged me, “on no account whatever, to let any one persuade me, to submit to an Operation for my Cataracts, as there would be scarcely a chance of it’s success.”

I am suffering much in the ligaments of the scapula, from a fall in the street which I had in October last, when I was nearly run over, and which I shall never lose - and my Cough threatens me almost with suffocation.

Sincerely hoping that you have entirely shaken off your recent attack, let me beg you to present my kindest regards and best thanks to Miss Barnard - My love to Mrs. Faraday and yourself & believe me to be ever my Dear Old Friend

Yours most sincerely & affectionately | J. South

To, | M. Faraday Esqre. | &c &c

PS. Excuse all this bad writing, my right shoulder is so painful, & my paralytic hand so inefficient, that I can scarcely hold my pen; and my Cataracts so dense and so darkening, that I can scarcely perceive the nibs of my pen; the vision so imperfect that to get the best, I am obliged to fish for it; indeed all taken together, I am a miserable old man, who has lived to see almost all his friends die before him.