FAILURE OF MEMORY.
With increasing age the infirmity of loss of memory made itself increasingly felt. He alludes frequently to this in his letters. To one friend who upbraided him gently for not having replied to a letter he says: “Do you remember that I forget?” To another he says he is forgetting how to spell such words as “withhold” and “successful.” To Matteucci, in 1849, he bemoans how, after working for six weeks at certain experiments, he found, on looking back to his notes, he had ascertained all the same results eight or nine months before, and had entirely forgotten them! In the same year he wrote to Dr. Percy:—
I cannot be on the Committee; I avoid everything of that kind, that I may keep my stupid head a little clear. As to being on a Committee and not working, that is worse still.
In 1859, in a letter to his niece, Mrs. Deacon, filled mainly with religious thoughts, he says: “My worldly faculties are slipping away day by day. Happy is it for all of us that the true good lies not in them.”
From the journals of Walter White comes the following anecdote under date December 22nd, 1858:—
Mr. Faraday called to enquire on the part of Sir Walter Trevelyan whether a MS. of meteorological observations made in Greenland would be acceptable. The question answered, I expressed my pleasure at seeing him looking so well, and asked him if he were writing a paper for the Royal. He shook his head. “No: I am too old.” “Too old? Why, age brings wisdom.” “Yes, but one may overshoot the wisdom.” “You cannot mean that you have outlived your wisdom?” “Something like it, for my memory is gone. If I make an experiment, I forget before twelve hours are over whether the result was positive or negative; and how can I write a paper while that is the case? No, I must content myself with giving my lectures to children.”
From another source we learn of a hitherto unrecorded incident which happened to Mr. Joseph Newton, for some time an assistant in the Royal Mint. While arranging some precious material on the Royal Institution theatre lecture-table, previous to a lecture on the Mint and minting operations by Professor Brande, Mr. Newton noticed an elderly, spare, and very plainly-dressed individual watching his movements. Imagining that this person was a superior messenger of the Institution, Mr. Newton volunteered some information as to the coinage of gold. “I suppose,” said the Mint employee, “you have been some years at the Royal Institution?” “Well, yes, I have, a good many,” responded the dilapidated one. “I hope they treat you pretty liberally—I mean, that they give you a respectable ‘screw,’ for that is the main point.” “Ah! I agree with you there. I think that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and I shouldn’t mind being paid a little better.” Mr. Newton’s surprise, on returning to the Royal Institution in the evening, to find that the man whom he had so recently patronised was none other than the illustrious but modest Michael Faraday can better be imagined than described.
A pretty instance, given on the authority of Lady Pollock, may be recorded of the feeling aroused by Faraday’s presence when he returned to his accustomed seat in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution, after a protracted absence occasioned by illness:—
As soon as his presence was recognised, the whole audience rose simultaneously and burst into a spontaneous utterance of welcome, loud and long. Faraday stood in acknowledgment of this enthusiastic greeting, with his fine head slightly bent; and then a certain resemblance to the pictures and busts of Lord Nelson, which was always observable in his countenance, was very apparent. His hair had grown white and long, his face had lengthened, and the agility of his movement was gone. The eyes no longer flashed with the fire of the soul, but they still radiated kindly thought; and ineffaceable lines of intellectual force and energy were stamped upon his face.
HONOURS OFFERED AND DECLINED.