His residence in so accessible a part of London did, however, expose him to the constant invasion of callers, and his own good nature often rendered fruitless the efforts that were considerately made to restrict these within reasonable limits. Of course he suffered from the curious and the inconsiderate of the human species; and then there were those pertinacious bores, the dabblers in science. "One morning a young man called on him, and with an air of great importance confided to him the result of some original researches (so he deemed them) in electrical philosophy. 'And pray,' asked the Professor, taking down a volume of Rees' Cyclopædia, 'did you consult this or any elementary work to learn whether your discovery had been anticipated?' The young man replied in the negative. 'Then why do you come to waste my time about well-known facts, that were published forty years ago?' 'Sir,' said the visitor, 'I thought I had better bring the matter to head-quarters immediately.' 'All very well for you, but not so well for head-quarters,' replied the Professor, sharply, and set him down to read the article."
"A grave, elderly gentleman once waited upon him to submit to his notice 'a new law of physics.' The visitor requested that a jug of water and a tumbler might be brought, and then producing a cork, 'You will be pleased to observe,' said he, 'how persistently this cork clings to the side of the glass when the vessel is half filled.' 'Just so,' replied the Professor. 'But now,' resumed this great discoverer, 'mark what happens when I fill the tumbler to the brim. There! you see the cork flies to the centre—positively repelled by the sides!' 'Precisely so,' replied the amused electrician, with the air of a man who felt perfectly at home with the phenomenon, and indeed regarded it quite as an old friend. The visitor was evidently disconcerted. 'Pray how long have you known this?' he ventured to ask Faraday. 'Oh, ever since I was a boy,' was the rejoinder. Crestfallen—his discovery demolished in a moment—the poor gentleman was retiring with many apologies, when the Professor, sincerely concerned at his disappointment, comforted him by suggesting that possibly he might some day alight upon something really new."[8]
But there were other visitors who were right welcome to a portion of his time. One day it might be a young man, whom a few kind words and a little attention on the part of the great philosopher would send forward on the journey of life with new energy and hopes. Another day it might be some intellectual chieftain, who could meet the prince of experimenters on equal terms. But these are hardly to be regarded as interruptions;—rather as a part of his chosen work.
Here is one instance in the words of Mr. Robert Mallet. "... I was, in the years that followed, never in London without paying him a visit, and on one of those times I ventured to ask him (if not too much engaged) to let me see where he and Davy had worked together. With the most simple graciousness he brought me through the whole of the Royal Institution, Albemarle Street. Brande's furnaces, Davy's battery, the place in the laboratory where he told me he had first observed the liquefaction of chlorine, are all vividly before me—but nothing so clear or vivid as our conversation over a specimen of green (crown) glass, partially devitrified in floating opaque white spheres of radiating crystals: he touched luminously on the obscure relation of the vitreous and crystalloid states, and on the probable nature of the nuclei of the white spheres. My next visit to Faraday that I recollect was not long after my paper 'On the Dynamics of Earthquakes' had appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He almost at once referred to it in terms of praise that seemed to me so far beyond my due, that even now I recall the very humble way I felt, as the thought of Faraday's own transcendent merits rushed across my mind. I ventured to ask him, had the paper engaged his attention sufficiently that I might ask him—did he consider my explanation of the before supposed vorticose shock sufficient? To my amazement he at once recited nearly word for word the paragraph in which I took some pains to put my views into a demonstrative shape, and ended with, 'It is as plain and certain as a proposition of Euclid!' And yet the subject was one pretty wide away from his own objects of study."
Often, too, if some interesting fact was exhibited to him, he would send to his brother savants some such note as this:—
"Royal Institution, 4th May, 1852.
"My Dear Wheatstone,
"Dr. Dubois-Raymond will be making his experiments here next Thursday, the 6th, from and after 11 o'clock. I wish to let you know, that you may if you like join the select few.
"Ever truly yours,
"M. Faraday."
It was indeed his wont to share with others the delight of a new discovery. Thus Sir Henry Holland tells me that he used frequently to run to his house in Brook Street with some piece of scientific news. One of these visits was after reading Bunsen and Kirchhoff's paper on Spectrum Analysis; and he did not stop short with merely telling the tale of the special rays of light shot forth by each metallic vapour, as the following letter will show. It is addressed to the present Baroness Burdett Coutts.
"Royal Institution, Friday, 17th May.
"Dear Miss Coutts,
"To-morrow, at 4 o'clock, immediately after Max Müller's lecture, I shall show Sir Henry Holland an apparatus which has arrived from Munich to manifest the phenomena of light which have recently been made known to us by Bunsen and Kirchhoff. Mr. Barlow will be here, and he suggests that you would like to know of the occasion. If you are inclined to see how philosophers work and live, and so are inclined to climb our narrow stairs (for I must show the experiments in my room), we shall be most happy to see you. The experiments will not be beautiful except to the intelligent.
"Ever your faithful Servant,
"M. Faraday."
Sometimes, too, the exhibition of a scientific fact would take him away from home. Thus, when her Majesty and the Prince Consort once paid a private visit to the Polytechnic, Mr. Pepper arranged a surprise for the Royal party, by getting Faraday in a quiet room to explain the Ruhmkorff's coil—the latest development of his own inductive currents. This he did with his usual vivacity and enthusiasm, and the interview is said to have gratified the philosopher as well as the Queen.
He could not, however, escape the inroads made upon his time by correspondence. People would write and ask him questions. Once a solitary prisoner wrote to tell him, "It is indeed in studying the great discoveries which science is indebted to you for, that I render my captivity less sad, and make time flow with rapidity,"—and then he proceeds to ask, "What is the most simple combination to give to a voltaic battery, in order to produce a spark capable of setting fire to powder under water, or under ground? Up to the present I have only seen employed to that purpose piles of thirty to forty pairs constructed on Dr. Wollaston's principles. They are very large and inconvenient for field service. Could not the same effect be produced by two spiral pairs only? and if so, what can be their smallest dimension?" And who was the prisoner who thus speculated on the applications of science to war? It was no other than Prince Louis Napoleon, then immured in the fortress of Ham, and now the ex-Emperor of the French. At another time he wrote asking for his advice in the manufacture of an alloy which should be about as soft as lead, but not so fusible,—a question which also had evident bearing upon the art of war; and offering at the same time to pay the cost of any experiments that might be necessary.