Dr. Young, who, whilst Professor at the Royal Institution, knew Rumford well, said of him in the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica:’
Count Rumford certainly possessed considerable facility of conversation, and there was a very laudable spirit of originality in his views and mode of reasoning, although he had never leisure to acquire profound learning in any department of study. In person he was above the middle size, with a dignified and pleasing expression of countenance and a mildness in his manner and tone of voice. He was ambitious of fame and distinction, and had too great a propensity to dictate without sufficiently regarding the opinions of those who were of equal authority with himself. His mode of life was abstemious, and his health was even supposed to have suffered from too great abstinence, though his regimen was much more the result of medical opinion regarding his health than of his own peculiar taste for temperance.
By his will, of which Lafayette was a witness, he made a bequest to his daughter, and another to Harvard College
for the purpose of founding, under the direction and government of the corporation, overseers, and governors of that university, a new institution and professorship, in order to teach by regular courses of academical and public lectures, accompanied with proper experiments, the utility of the physical and mathematical sciences for the improvement of the useful arts, and for the extension of the industry, prosperity, happiness, and well-being of society.
He left all his military books and papers to the Government of the United States, and the snuff-box given to him by the Emperor of Austria to Baron Delessert, and his gold enamelled watch to his friend Mr. Parker. He thus showed his regard for Davy:
I give to Sir Humphry Davy, Knight, Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, my plain gold watch, as a token of my esteem.
Madame de Rumford gave up her interest in the lease of the Count’s house at Brompton to his daughter, who went to London in May 1815 and lived there for twenty years, during which period she returned to Paris for three years. In 1835 she went to America, and then she returned to Paris until 1844, when she revisited America. In the room in which she was born she died, when seventy-eight years of age, December 21, 1852. She left her property chiefly to form the Rolfe and Rumford Asylum for the Poor and Needy at Concord.
The memory of Count Rumford is preserved in Munich by a stone monument in the English Garden, erected by public subscription in 1795, and by a bronze statue placed in 1867 by the present King in the finest street in the city.