Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

From about the year 1834 he resolutely declined invitations to dinners and such social gaieties; not, as some averred, from any religious asceticism, but that he might the more unrestrainedly devote himself to his researches. “If,” says Mrs. Crosse, “Babbage, Wheatstone, Grove, Owen, Tyndall, and a host of other distinguished scientists, were to be met very generally in the society of the day, there was one man who was very conspicuous by his absence—this was Faraday! His biographers say that in earlier years he occasionally accepted Lady Davy’s invitations to dinner; but I never heard of his going anywhere, except in obedience to the commands of royalty.” He did indeed occasionally dine quietly with Sir Robert Peel or Earl Russell; and of the few public dinners he attended, he enjoyed most the annual banquet of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Faraday does not, however, appear to have had any very direct relations with the world of art. Once he was consulted by Lord John Russell as to the removal of Raphael’s cartoons from Hampton Court to the National Gallery. His advice was adverse, on account of the penetrating power of dust. Though a sufficiently good draughtsman to prepare his own drawings, he had little or no knowledge of the technicalities of painting. Yet his sensitive and enthusiastic temperament had much in common with that of the artist, and he enjoyed music, especially good music, greatly. In early life he played the flute and knew many songs by heart. He took bass parts in concerted singing, and is said to have sung correctly in time and tune. In his circle of acquaintanceship were numbered several painters of eminence—Turner, Landseer, and Stanfield. His brother-in-law, Mr. George Barnard, the late well-known water-colour artist, has written the following note:—

My first and many following sketching trips were made with Faraday and his wife. Storms excited his admiration at all times, and he was never tired of looking into the heavens. He said to me once, “I wonder you artists don’t study the light and colour in the sky more, and try more for effect.” I think this quality in Turner’s drawings made him admire them so much. He made Turner’s acquaintance at Hullmandel’s, and afterwards often had applications from him for chemical information about pigments. Faraday always impressed upon Turner and other artists the great necessity there was to experiment for themselves, putting washes and tints of all their pigments in the bright sunlight, covering up one half, and noticing the effect of light and gases on the other....

Faraday did not fish at all during these country trips, but just rambled about geologising or botanising.

SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART.

Earlier in his career, Faraday and his brother-in-law used to enjoy conversaziones of artists, actors, and musicians at Hullmandel’s. Sometimes they went up the river in Hullmandel’s eight-oar boat, camping gipsy-wise on the banks for dinner, and enjoying the singing of Signor Garcia and his wife and of his daughter, afterwards Madame Malibran. From these things, too, he withdrew very largely when he ceased to dine out, though he still liked to hear the opera and to visit the theatre. Curiously enough, he seems to have had very little in common with literary men. In the last half of the previous century there had been many intimate relations between the leaders of literature and those of science. The circle which included Watt, Boulton, and Wedgwood included also Priestley and Erasmus Darwin. In our own time the names of Darwin, Huxley, Hooker, and Tyndall are to be found in conjunction with those of Tennyson, Browning, and Jowett. But the biographies of literary men and artists of the period from 1830 to 1850 bear few references to Faraday. He moved in his own world, and that a world very much apart from literature or art. In his method of working he was indeed an artist, often feeling his way rather than calculating it, and arriving at his conclusions by what seemed insight rather than by any direct process of reasoning. The discovery of truth comes about in many ways; and if Faraday’s method in science was artistic rather than scientific, it was amply justified by the brilliant harvest of discoveries which it enabled him to reap.

As is well known, Faraday never took out any patents for his discoveries; indeed, whenever in his investigations he seemed to come near to the point where they began to possess a marketable value from their application to the industries, he left them, to pursue his pioneering inquiries in other branches. He sought, indeed, for principles rather than for processes, for facts new to science rather than for merchantable inventions. When he had made the discovery of magneto-electric induction—the basis of all modern electric engineering—he carried the research to the point of constructing several experimental machines, and then abruptly turned away with these memorable words:—

I have rather, however, been desirous of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on magneto-electric induction than of exalting the force of those already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their full development hereafter.

PRACTICAL UTILITIES.

Several times was Faraday known, when asked about the possible utility of some new scientific discovery, to quote Franklin’s rejoinder: “What is the use of a baby?”