Parentage: introduction to the royal institution: earliest
experiments: first royal society paper: marriage.

It has been thought desirable to give you and the world some image of Michael Faraday, as a scientific investigator and discoverer. The attempt to respond to this desire has been to me a labour of difficulty, if also a labour of love. For however well acquainted I may be with the researches and discoveries of that great master-however numerous the illustrations which occur to me of the loftiness of Faraday’s character and the beauty of his life-still to grasp him and his researches as a whole; to seize upon the ideas which guided him, and connected them; to gain entrance into that strong and active brain, and read from it the riddle of the world-this is a work not easy of performance, and all but impossible amid the distraction of duties of another kind. That I should at one period or another speak to you regarding Faraday and his work is natural, if not inevitable; but I did not expect to be called upon to speak so soon. Still the bare suggestion that this is the fit and proper time for speech sent me immediately to my task: from it I have returned with such results as I could gather, and also with the wish that those results were more worthy than they are of the greatness of my theme.

It is not my intention to lay before you a life of Faraday in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The duty I have to perform is to give you some notion of what he has done in the world; dwelling incidentally on the spirit in which his work was executed, and introducing such personal traits as may be necessary to the completion of your picture of the philosopher, though by no means adequate to give you a complete idea of the man.

The newspapers have already informed you that Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts, on September 22, 1791, and that he died at Hampton Court, on August 25, 1867. Believing, as I do, in the general truth of the doctrine of hereditary transmission-sharing the opinion of Mr. Carlyle, that ’a really able man never proceeded from entirely stupid parents’-I once used the privilege of my intimacy with Mr. Faraday to ask him whether his parents showed any signs of unusual ability. He could remember none. His father, I believe, was a great sufferer during the latter years of his life, and this might have masked whatever intellectual power he possessed. When thirteen years old, that is to say in 1804, Faraday was apprenticed to a bookseller and bookbinder in Blandford Street, Manchester Square: here he spent eight years of his life, after which he worked as a journeyman elsewhere.

You have also heard the account of Faraday’s first contact with the Royal Institution; that he was introduced by one of the members to Sir Humphry Davy’s last lectures, that he took notes of those lectures; wrote them fairly out, and sent them to Davy, entreating him at the same time to enable him to quit trade, which he detested, and to pursue science, which he loved. Davy was helpful to the young man, and this should never be forgotten: he at once wrote to Faraday, and afterwards, when an opportunity occurred, made him his assistant. Mr. Gassiot has lately favoured me with the following reminiscence of this time:-

’Clapham Common, Surrey,

’November 28, 1867.

’My Dear Tyndall,-Sir H. Davy was accustomed to call on the late Mr. Pepys, in the Poultry, on his way to the London Institution, of which Pepys was one of the original managers; the latter told me that on one occasion Sir H. Davy, showing him a letter, said: “Pepys, what am I to do, here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution-what can I do?” “Do?” replied Pepys, “put him to wash bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly, if he refuses he is good for nothing.” “No, no,” replied Davy; “we must try him with something better than that.” The result was, that Davy engaged him to assist in the Laboratory at weekly wages.

’Davy held the joint office of Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Laboratory; he ultimately gave up the former to the late Professor Brande, but he insisted that Faraday should be appointed Director of the Laboratory, and, as Faraday told me, this enabled him on subsequent occasions to hold a definite position in the Institution, in which he was always supported by Davy. I believe he held that office to the last.

’Believe me, my dear Tyndall, yours truly,

’J. P. Gassiot.

‘Dr. Tyndall.’

From a letter written by Faraday himself soon after his appointment as Davy’s assistant, I extract the following account of his introduction to the Royal Institution:-

’London, Sep, 1813.

’As for myself, I am absent (from home) nearly day and night, except occasional calls, and it is likely shall shortly be absent entirely, but this (having nothing more to say, and at the request of my mother) I will explain to you. I was formerly a bookseller and binder, but am now turned philosopher, which happened thus:-Whilst an apprentice, I, for amusement, learnt a little chemistry and other parts of philosophy, and felt an eager desire to proceed in that way further. After being a journeyman for six months, under a disagreeable master, I gave up my business, and through the interest of a Sir H. Davy, filled the situation of chemical assistant to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in which office I now remain; and where I am constantly employed in observing the works of nature, and tracing the manner in which she directs the order and arrangement of the world. I have lately had proposals made to me by Sir Humphry Davy to accompany him in his travels through Europe and Asia, as philosophical assistant. If I go at all I expect it will be in October next-about the end; and my absence from home will perhaps be as long as three years. But as yet all is uncertain.’

This account is supplemented by the following letter, written by Faraday to his friend De la Rive, on the occasion of the death of Mrs. Marcet. The letter is dated September 2, 1858:-

’My Dear Friend,-Your subject interested me deeply every way; for Mrs. Marcet was a good friend to me, as she must have been to many of the human race. I entered the shop of a bookseller and bookbinder at the age of thirteen, in the year 1804, remained there eight years, and during the chief part of my time bound books. Now it was in those books, in the hours after work, that I found the beginning of my philosophy.

There were two that especially helped me, the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” from which I gained my first notions of electricity, and Mrs. Marcet’s “Conversation on Chemistry,” which gave me my foundation in that science.

’Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a precocious person. I was a very lively imaginative person, and could believe in the “Arabian Nights” as easily as in the “Encyclopædia.” But facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an assertion. So when I questioned Mrs. Marcet’s book by such little experiments as I could find means to perform, and found it true to the facts as I could understand them, I felt that I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it. Thence my deep veneration for Mrs. Marcet-first as one who had conferred great personal good and pleasure on me; and then as one able to convey the truth and principle of those boundless fields of knowledge which concern natural things to the young, untaught, and inquiring mind.

’You may imagine my delight when I came to know Mrs. Marcet personally; how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to connect the past and the present; how often, when sending a paper to her as a thank-offering, I thought of my first instructress, and such like thoughts will remain with me.

’I have some such thoughts even as regards your own father; who was, I may say, the first who personally at Geneva, and afterwards by correspondence, encouraged, and by that sustained me.’

Twelve or thirteen years ago Mr. Faraday and myself quitted the Institution one evening together, to pay a visit to our friend Grove in Baker Street. He took my arm at the door, and, pressing it to his side in his warm genial way, said, ’Come, Tyndall, I will now show you something that will interest you.’ We walked northwards, passed the house of Mr. Babbage, which drew forth a reference to the famous evening parties once assembled there. We reached Blandford Street, and after a little looking about he paused before a stationer’s shop, and then went in. On entering the shop, his usual animation seemed doubled; he looked rapidly at everything it contained. To the left on entering was a door, through which he looked down into a little room, with a window in front facing Blandford Street. Drawing me towards him, he said eagerly, ’Look there, Tyndall, that was my working-place. I bound books in that little nook.’ A respectable-looking woman stood behind the counter: his conversation with me was too low to be heard by her, and he now turned to the counter to buy some cards as an excuse for our being there. He asked the woman her name-her predecessor’s name-his predecessor’s name. ‘That won’t do,’ he said, with good-humoured impatience; ’who was his predecessor?’ ‘Mr. Riebau,’ she replied, and immediately added, as if suddenly recollecting herself, ’He, sir, was the master of Sir Charles Faraday.’ ‘Nonsense!’ he responded, ‘there is no such person.’ Great was her delight when I told her the name of her visitor; but she assured me that as soon as she saw him running about the shop, she felt-though she did not know why-that it must be ‘Sir Charles Faraday.’

Faraday did, as you know, accompany Davy to Rome: he was re-engaged by the managers of the Royal Institution on May 15, 1815. Here he made rapid progress in chemistry, and after a time was entrusted with easy analyses by Davy. In those days the Royal Institution published ’The Quarterly Journal of Science,’ the precursor of our own ‘Proceedings.’ Faraday’s first contribution to science appeared in that journal in 1816. It was an analysis of some caustic lime from Tuscany, which had been sent to Davy by the Duchess of Montrose. Between this period and 1818 various notes and short papers were published by Faraday. In 1818 he experimented upon ‘Sounding Flames.’ Professor Auguste De la Rive had investigated those sounding flames, and had applied to them an explanation which completely accounted for a class of sounds discovered by himself, but did not account for those known to his predecessors. By a few simple and conclusive experiments, Faraday proved the explanation insufficient. It is an epoch in the life of a young man when he finds himself correcting a person of eminence, and in Faraday’s case, where its effect was to develop a modest self-trust, such an event could not fail to act profitably.

From time to time between 1818 and 1820 Faraday published scientific notes and notices of minor weight. At this time he was acquiring, not producing; working hard for his master and storing and strengthening his own mind. He assisted Mr. Brande in his lectures, and so quietly, skilfully, and modestly was his work done, that Mr. Brande’s vocation at the time was pronounced ‘lecturing on velvet.’ In 1820 Faraday published a chemical paper ’on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and on a new compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen.’ This paper was read before the Royal Society on December 21, 1820, and it was the first of his that was honoured with a place in the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’

On June 12, 1821, he married, and obtained leave to bring his young wife into his rooms at the Royal Institution. There for forty-six years they lived together, occupying the suite of apartments which had been previously in the successive occupancy of Young, Davy, and Brande. At the time of her marriage Mrs. Faraday was twenty-one years of age, he being nearly thirty. Regarding this marriage I will at present limit myself to quoting an entry written in Faraday’s own hand in his book of diplomas, which caught my eye while in his company some years ago. It ran thus:-

’25th January, 1847. ’Amongst these records and events, I here insert the date of one which, as a source of honour and happiness, far exceeds all the rest. We were married on June 12, 1821.

‘M. Faraday.’

Then follows the copy of the minutes, dated May 21, 1821, which gave him additional rooms, and thus enabled him to bring his wife to the Royal Institution. A feature of Faraday’s character which I have often noticed makes itself apparent in this entry. In his relations to his wife he added chivalry to affection.