CHAPTER IV.
THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
The Royal Institution, as originally conceived, was an establishment for the benefit of the poor. It was founded at the close of the last century by Benjamin Thomson, a Royalist American in the service of the Elector Palatine of Bavaria, by whom he was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Count Rumford, as he is commonly called, was a practical philanthropist and a man of science, best known to this age by his association with the present-day doctrine of the nature of heat; and to his contemporaries, by his constant efforts to apply science to domestic economy. In 1796 Rumford put forth a “proposal for forming in London by private subscription an establishment for feeding the poor, and giving them useful employment, and also for furnishing food at a cheap rate to others who may stand in need of such assistance, connected with an institution for introducing and bringing forward into general use new inventions and improvements, particularly such as relate to the management of heat and the saving of fuel, and to various other mechanical contrivances by which domestic comfort and economy may be promoted.” Rumford, as he says in one of his letters to Thomas Bernard—another practical philanthropist, and one of his earliest associates in the undertaking here referred to—was “deeply impressed with the necessity of rendering it fashionable to care for the poor and indigent.” The immediate result was the foundation of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor; but as regards the associated Institution, it was eventually considered that it would be “too conspicuous, and too interesting and important, to be made an appendix to any other existing establishment, and consequently it must stand alone, and on its own proper basis.”
In 1799, Rumford conferred with the Committee of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor as to the steps to be taken to found, “by private subscription, a public institution for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general and speedy introduction of new and useful mechanical inventions and improvements; and also for teaching, by regular courses of philosophical lectures and experiments, the applications of the new discoveries in science to the improvement of arts and manufactures, and in facilitating the means of procuring the comforts and conveniences of life.” The Institution was duly launched in March, 1799, with Sir Joseph Banks as Chairman of Managers, Count Rumford as Secretary, and Mr. Thomas Bernard, the promoter of the Institution for the Protection and Instruction of Climbing Boys, and of the Society for the Relief of Poor Neighbours in Distress, as Treasurer. The second volume of the “Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor” contains a long account of the Institution, “so far as it may be expected to affect the poor,” from the pen of Mr. Bernard, concerning which Dr. Bence Jones, a former Secretary of the Institution, drily remarks, “It is difficult to believe that the Royal Institution of the present day was ever intended to resemble the picture given of it in this Report.”
Rumford, from the outset, threw himself with great zeal and ardour into the work of organising and starting the Institution, and it was mainly by his energy and administrative ability that so speedy a beginning was made. Mr. Mellish’s house in Albemarle Street was bought, and its apartments were quickly transformed into lecture rooms, model rooms, library, offices, etc. In May “a good cook was engaged for the improvement of culinary advancement—one object, and not the least important—for the Royal Institution.” Rumford was requested by the Managers to live in the house, to superintend the servants, to preserve order and decorum, and to control the expenses of housekeeping.
Towards the end of 1799 Dr. Garnett was secured as Lecturer and Scientific Secretary. Thomas Garnett, a physician, who at one time practised at Harrogate, and who is known to chemists for his researches into the composition of the Harrogate mineral waters, was at the time Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Philosophy at Anderson’s Institution in Glasgow. He had a considerable reputation as a lecturer, on the strength of which he was invited by Rumford to come to London. Garnett’s lectures began in March, 1800, in what is now the upper Library of the Institution, and which had been fitted up to accommodate the greatest possible number of auditors “with a greater deference to their curiosity than to their convenience.”
Although not altogether unsuccessful at the Institution, Garnett—in spite of “the Northern accent which he still retained in a slight degree, and which rendered his voice somewhat inharmonious to a London audience”—was hardly the type of man required for such a place, and differences soon arose between him and Rumford. To add to his difficulties he had, just prior to his removal from Glasgow, lost his wife, and the event seems to have wholly unnerved him. He grew listless and melancholy; and eventually, in 1801, he was called upon to resign. After leaving the Institution, he struggled on for a time, giving courses of scientific lectures in his own house, and at Tom’s Coffee-House in the City, and seeking for practice as a physician. Sick in mind and weak in body, he soon broke down, and died in 1802, at the age of thirty-six, leaving his children penniless. The Managers so far bettered the condition of the poor as to subscribe, on behalf of the Institution, £50 towards the publication of his posthumous work on the “Laws of Animal Life,” and to allow the book to be dedicated to them.
The accompanying illustration (p. [70]), from a drawing by Gillray, entitled “Pneumatic Experiments at the Royal Institution,” shows the theatre during a lecture by Garnett, with Davy acting as assistant. Sir John Hippesley is represented as breathing the “pleasure-giving air.” The standing figure near the door is Rumford, and among the audience are Isaac Disraeli, Lord Stanhope, Earl Pomfret, and Sir H. Englefield.
Accounts differ as to the precise means by which Davy was brought to the notice of Count Rumford, nor is it very important to know whether it was through the intervention of Davies Gilbert, or Dr. Hope, or Mr. Underwood, or, as was most probably the case, of all three.
In a letter to Hope now before me Davy writes:—