Michael Faraday, Man of Science

by Walter Jerrold

The year 1831 is an important one in the life of Michael Faraday, for it was then that he commenced his brilliant series of experiments in electro-magnetism. It is on his electrical research that his chief claim to be remembered as a scientist rests. He had earlier experimented in the same connection, but hitherto without attaining the results which he had anticipated. But from this time forward he devoted much energy to this branch of research, with such success that if we pick up any of the most recent works on electrical science we inevitably find an important position given in it to the name and discoveries of Michael Faraday. This is not the place to enter into a description of these experiments, though reference to them will of course be made later on in this biography in the chapter devoted to a consideration of Faraday's discoveries. In the year 1833 Faraday was appointed Fullerian Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution for life, without the obligation of having to deliver lectures in connection with the professorship.

In the year 1834 a boy living in a distant part of England wrote to Professor Faraday, saying that he was desirous of taking up a scientific career. Doubtless remembering his own beginning, Faraday sent "by return of post a kind and courteous reply," which that boy, grown to man's estate, and known as Doctor J. Scoffern, gratefully referred to in a graceful tribute which he wrote after Faraday's death. It was during this early part of Faraday's success that he once gave evidence in a judicial case, when the scientific testimony was so diverse that the judge, in summing up, levelled something very like a reproach at the scientific witnesses, saying, "Science has not shone this day." Faraday would never again appear as a witness in a court of law.

This is, perhaps, the most fitting place in which we can refer to some slight account of Faraday's home-life in the Institution, which is given by his brother-in-law George (Mrs. Faraday's youngest brother) and Miss Reid (her niece). George Barnard was much with the Faradays in these earlier times. "All the years I was with Harding I dined at the Royal Institution," he says. "After dinner we nearly always had our games just like boys—sometimes at ball, or with horse-chestnuts instead of marbles—Faraday appearing to enjoy them as much as I did, and generally excelling us all. Sometimes we rode round the theatre on a velocipede, which was then a new thing." It is said "that sometimes of an early summer morning the philosopher was to be seen going up Hampstead Hill on this velocipede." Barnard tells, too, of Faraday's unflagging good spirits and his faculty for entering with keen enjoyment into any fun that was going forward—pic-nics up the river, with rustic cookery, charades, or anything else the party seemed bent upon, Faraday would join in with delight; how he used to attend Hullmandel's conversaziones, where he met many of the leading singers and artists of the day—Garcia and Malibran, Sir Edwin Landseer, Clarkson Stanfield, J. M. W. Turner, and indeed most of the members of the Royal Academy. The last-named artist often applied to Faraday for chemical information about his pigments; upon Turner, and all artists who made similar requests, Faraday would always impress the importance there was in their prosecuting experiments with regard to their colours themselves, giving them a hint to put some of their colour and colour-washes in a bright sunlight, covering up one half and leaving the other exposed, and then observing the effect of light and gases on the latter. Mr. Barnard says that during their various country trips Faraday was in the habit of just "rambling about geologising or botanising."

Mrs. Faraday's niece, Miss Reid, was peculiarly well fitted to give reminiscences of her uncle, as she was for nearly twenty years (from 1826) one of the family at the Royal Institution. When she first went there Miss Reid was only a little child; and when her aunt was going out she was taken down to Faraday's laboratory, where, as she afterwards wrote, "I had, of course, to sit as still as a mouse, with my needlework; but my uncle would often stop and give me a kind word or a nod, or sometimes throw a bit of potassium into water to amuse me."

"In all my childish troubles," Miss Reid continues, "he was my never-failing comforter, and seldom too busy, if I stole into his room, to spare me a few minutes; and when perhaps I was naughty and rebellious, how gently and kindly he would win me round, telling me what he used to feel himself when he was young, advising me to submit to the reproof I was fighting against.

"I remember his saying that he found it a good and useful rule to listen to all corrections quietly, even if he did not see reason to agree with them.

"If I had a difficult lesson, a word or two from him would clear away all my trouble; and many a long wearisome sum in arithmetic became quite a delight when he undertook to explain it."

The same lady gives some admirable notes of a holiday the small family party spent at Walmer, in Kent. How they drove down on the outside of the coach, and how full of fun Faraday was, when they reached Shooter's Hill, over Falstaff and the men in buckram; "not a sight nor a sound of interest escaped his quick eye and ear."

"At Walmer we had a cottage in a field, and my uncle was delighted because a window looked directly into a blackbird's nest built in a cherry tree. He would go many times in a day to watch the parent birds feeding their young."

Sunrise and sunset were never-failing sources of delighted admiration to him; at such times he was the best of companions, and it has been described as a great treat to watch the glorious sight with him.