PORTRAIT or COUNT RLTMFORD -WHEN SENT TO ENGLAND
AS AMBASSADOR FROM BAVARIA.. 179 e . AGED 45.
MEMOIR
SIR BENJAMIN THOMPSON,
COUNT RUMFORD,
WITH NOTICES OF HIS DAUGHTER.
BY GEORGE E. ELLIS.
PUBLISHED IN CONNECTION WITH AN EDITION OF
RUMFORD'S COMPLETE WORKS,
BY THE
f Jlrt* attb
BOSTON.
BOSTON:
ESTES AND LAURIAT,
301 WASHINGTON STREET.
Cambridge :
Press-work by John Wilson 6* Son.
TO
JACOB BIGELOW, M. D.
MY DEAR SIR :
IN inscribing this volume with your name, without having asked your
permission to do so, I must seek your indulgence after the act.
There is no name which, more fitly than yours, could be thus brought
into connection with the subject of the volume. As the first incumbent
of the Rumford Professorship in Harvard College, you paid a most fe-
licitous and discriminating tribute, in your Inaugural Address, to the dis-
tinguished man who founded that Professorship by a generous endow-
ment, and by making the College his residuary legatee. You initiated
and directed a method of fulfilling the duties of your office in strict
accordance with the wishes and purposes of Count Rumford, especially
with a view to those ends of practical public good which he so ardently
and successfully pursued. Your published lectures, The Elements of
Technology, have recently had the title which you assigned to them
adopted by an Institution of highest promise with us in its field and
objects. This Institution, also, you most happily inaugurated.
You presided for seventeen years over the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences with an ability and urbanity of which the Fellows
expressed to you their heartiest appreciation when you declined to be
longer a candidate for that position ; where also you had to direct the
administration of another generous trust confided by Count Rumford to
the Academy.
Your lengthened life and professional devotion, while they have
brought you to stand now as the oldest and most esteemed physician in
the city of your residence, have likewise permitted you to indulge your
taste and genius in the broadest culture of the many provinces of litera-
ture, art, and science in which you are an authority.
I may not put into print the epithets and encomiums attached to your
name by those who come nearest to you in the wide circles of your
friendship and personal intercourse.
Most respectfully yours,
GEORGE E. ELLIS.
Contents. xiii
biography of his Daughter. Extracts. Her Voyage. Her
Life in London. Reception of his Essays. His Employ-
ments in England. Improved Fireplaces. Popularity of his
Plans. Rumford Roasters. Endowment of Royal Society
and American Academy. Correspondence with Sir Joseph
Banks. Awards of Rumford Medal by the Royal Society.
Correspondence with American Academy. Recognition by
the Academy. The Rumford Fund. Action of the Legis-
lature, and of the Supreme Court in Equity upon the Fund,
and its Application. Awards of the Rumford Medal by the
Academy. .......... 205
CHAPTER VI.
Count Rumford and his Daughter leave England for Munich.
Circuitous Route on Account of the War. The Journey and
its Incidents. Sarah Thompson's Diary. Arrival in Munich.
Neutrality of Bavaria. Munich threatened by Austrian and
French Armies. Flight of the Elector. Rumford on the
Council of the Regency, and at the Head of the Electoral
Army. His Signal Services and Success. His Scientific
Feeding of the Troops. Gratitude of the Elector on his Re-
turn. Correspondence with Sir John Sinclair. Letters to
Colonel Baldwin and President Willard. Private Affairs of
the Count in America. Projected Institution in Concord.
Correspondence concerning it. The Countess's Court and
Domestic Life. Excursions. Festivals. Commemoration
of the Count's Birthday. Love Passages. Variances.
Excursions. The Count appointed Ambassador to England,
returns there. Not received as such. Correspondence.
Honors from America. Massachusetts Historical Society.
Invitation from the United States Government. Correspond-
ence. The Countess returns to America. Her Narrative.
Correspondence. ........ 269
CHAPTER VII.
Count Rumford as Founder of the Royal Institution of Great
Britain. His Plan and Proposals. Correspondence with
xiv Contents.
Thomas Bernard. Sketch of the Objects and Principles of the
Institution. Government to be informed of the Design.
Meetings of Managers. Character and Organization. Gen-
erous Patronage by the Nobility. Prospectus. Building pro-
vided for the Institution. Rumford's Generous Gifts. He
resides in the Institution. His Illness. Dr. Young appointed
Professor, Editor of Journal, and Superintendent. Rumford
visits Harrowgate. His Essay on Warm Bathing. Corre-
spondence. Colonel Baldwin. President John Adams.
President Willard. The Count's Letter to Sir H. Davy,
inviting him to the Royal Institution. Faraday's Professorship
and Directorship. Pictet's Visit to Rumford, and Descrip-
tion of the House at Brompton. The Bibliotheque Britan-
nique on the Royal Institution. Alleged Variances among
the Managers. Dr. Young. Progress and Course of the
Institution. ..... ... 378
CHAPTER VIII.
Count Rumford's Fame in Bavaria, Great Britain, and the United
States. Permanent Results of his Philanthropy. Tribute to
him from Dr. A. Joly. His Institutions in Bavaria. His
Permanent Influence in England and the United States. Con-
tinued Economical and Scientific Experiments, as described in
his Essays. The Propagation of Heat in Fluids : and in vari-
ous Substances. Inquiry concerning the Source of the Heat
excited by Friction. Rumford's Claims as a Discoverer.
Depreciation of him by some English Authorities. Economi-
cal Inventions. Franklin's Fireplaces. Rumford's Improve-
ments. Essay on the Construction of Kitchen Fireplaces and
Utensils. Savory Food. A Chinese Example. Replies
to Critics and Jesters. Appeal to the Rich. Pleasures of
Benevolence. Essay on Open Chimney Fireplaces. The
Count's Name attached to other than his own Inventions.
Essay on the Salubrity of Warm Rooms. Essays on the Man-
agement of Fires in closed Fireplaces, and on the Use of Steam
as a Vehicle for transporting Heat. Encomiums on Rumford's
Benevolence in the English Parliament. Cpbbett's Satire,
Boston follows Rumford's Method. - . . . . -451
Contents. xv
CHAPTER IX.
Countess Rumford in America. Correspondence. Letters from
her Father. Their Fate. Friendship and Letters of Sir
Charles Blagden. His Report of the Count's Matrimonial
Purposes. His Confidential Correspondence. Information
concerning Count Rumford. Breach of Intercourse. The
Count at Munich and Paris. His Tour with Madame Lavoi-
sier. Sarah's Account and Description of her Father.
His Letters from England and Bavaria. He writes to his
Daughter of his Intended Marriage, and sends for Legal Docu-
ments. His Marriage to Madame Lavoisier. Happy Pros-
pects. Letters from Colonel Baldwin. Letters from Sir
Charles Blagden. Unhappiness of the Count in his Marriage.
His Letters continued. Separates from his Wife. Sarah's
Explanation. The Count sends for his Daughter. His Let-
ters while awaiting her Arrival. His Visit to Munich and
Welcome Reception. Monsieur Guizot's Memoir of Madame
de Rumford. Tribute to her by the Comtesse de Bassanville. 510
CHAPTER X.
Count Rumford at Auteuil. Historical and Tragic Interest of
his Dwelling. His Daughter's Voyage to rejoin him. Her
Capture. Correspondence with Sir Charles Blagden. Her
Arrival at Auteuil. Her Letter to Mr. J. F. Baldwin. The
Count's Letters to him. The Count's Letters to his Mother.
The Daughter's Reception. Description of her Father's Home
and Circumstances. Visits from Madame Lavoisier de Rum-
ford. Projected Work on Order. The Count's Scientific
Labors as Foreign Associate of the French Institute. Papers
read before it. Three more Essays. Experiments of Broad
Wheels for Carriages. His Calorimeter and Photometer.
Life with his Daughter. Drives and Visits. His Intimate
Friends. Visit of Davy to Auteuil. The Count's last Days.
His Death. His Daughter's Strange Notions about that Event.
Announcement of his Death. His Funeral. Baron Deles-
sert's Address at his Grave. A Woman's Tribute. Cuvier's
xvi Contents.
Eloge. Notices of the Count's Death and Character in Eng-
land. Mr. Underwood's Sketch of him. Dr. Young's.
Dr. Thomson's. Colonel Baldwin's. Count Rumford's
Grave and Monument. His last Will. Rumford Professor-
ship at Harvard College. Dr. Bigelow's Discourse. Profes-
sor Treadwell and his Successors. The Daughter's Subsequent
Life and Correspondence. Her Final Return to America.
Her Death and Bequests. Rolfe. Rumford Institution.
Rumford's Statue at Munich. . . . .586
APPENDIX.
To page 13
.. . . 657
a n , -
45 ......
. 659
" " 67
. 660
" " 94 ....
. 663
" " Q4.
. 664
" 150
. 665
"58S . o -
. 676
INDEX . . .678
PREFACE.
THE circumstances which led the writer to the
preparation of the following Biography of Count
Rumford may properly be mentioned here.
In one of a series of letters with which I was favored
by my much-esteemed friend, the Hon. Robert C.
Winthrop, also my associate on the Council of the
Academy, during his last European tour, was a pas-
sage which I here copy. The letter was dated Munich,
August 19, 1867.
" You have not forgotten how' much there is here
to remind an American of his own country. No one
could drive in the beautiful English Garden (as it is
called) without remembering with pride that it was
originally laid out by Benjamin Thompson, Count
Rumford, who would almost seem to have been driven
from his native land (by unjust suspicions and preju-
dices, as I have always feared) in order to give him
a wider sphere for doing good to mankind. We
have never done honor enough to his memory in
America. Is there any portrait of him at Harvard,
where he endowed so valuable a Professorship ? I
do not remember any. [Mr. Winthrop for the mo-
vi Preface.
ment forgot the excellent portrait of the Count, the gift
of his daughter, which hangs in Massachusetts Hall,
Cambridge.] There ought to be a statue of him some-
where in America. I am glad to find that there is to
be one here. At the foundry here, a day or two since,
I found them actually engaged in casting one to adorn
one of the squares of Munich. This foundry itself
is a most interesting place to Americans. The mu-
seum connected with it contains the original models
of all the statues which have been cast here. There I
found .... But, after all, I think the Rumford statue
gave me the greatest satisfaction. It is a tardy act
of justice to one who did really great things for the
world, as well as for Bavaria. His Essays on Pauper-
ism, and his plans for its relief and prevention, would
alone entitle him to the blessing of mankind. Almost
everything which is valuable in our modern systems
of charity may be traced in his writings. When we
add all that he did for science, and for the advance-
ment of science, at the Royal Institution in London,
and at Harvard, and at our American Academy, his
claim to a statue seems to be far less equivocal, to
say the least, than that of many of those who have
lately received such commemoration. I trust we shall
have a portrait of him, one of these days, in the gallery
of our Historical Society, if nowhere else."
As I could not have a more fitting introduction to
this volume than is found in that most just tribute
to Count Rumford, so admirably expressed, so I most
Preface. vii
gratefully acknowledge that my share in this work came
of my possession of the letter which contained the
above matter. I had the letter, just received, in my
pocket, while attending one of the regular meetings
of the Academy. And it so happened, likewise, that
among the matters of business which occupied the
meeting was a report of progress from the Rumford
Committee of the Academy, in the trust assigned to
them of collecting and editing the works of our emi-
nent benefactor. Knowing that I had with me some-
thing so appropriate to the matter then in hand, I
read to the Academy the above extract from the letter
of our associate. I mentioned, likewise, that I had
in my house and had recently been reading with
great interest the contents of a very valuable manu-
script volume, loaned to me by its owner, my valued
friend, George Rumford Baldwin, Esq., of Woburn,
in which he had carefully copied the correspondence
of Count Rumford with his father, the late Colonel
Loammi Baldwin, and many other papers of bio-
graphical use. I suggested that possibly the Rum-
ford Committee might find help in examining these
documents. A proposition was then made and urged,
that I be requested to furnish a biographical memoir
of the Count as introductory to the edition of his
Works. Though surprised at the request, and wholly
unprepared to comply with it, I consented to enter-
tain and consider it. I had no other expectation or
purpose, in finally acceding to it, than that all which
viii Preface.
I should need to do in the case would be to gather
from published sources the materials for a brief prefatory
paper, which should give the dates and principal events
and labors of the Count's career. In undertaking to
do only this, the search and inquiry which were neces-
sary led on to further investigations, rewarded by such
an amount of authentic and interesting documents as in
the view of the Rumford Committee justified the assign-
ing of an additional volume for the memoir. As will
be noticed by the reader, the new material used in
the following pages -is mostly of manuscripts gathered
from public and private sources. I have indicated
these sources either in the text or the notes of this
volume.
The Life of Count Rumford contributed by Pro-
fessor Renwick to Sparks's Library of American Biog-
raphy, allowing for its necessary compactness, is a very
excellent performance. The writer, I suppose, had the
use of some of the Baldwin manuscripts above referred
to. Professor Pictet, in some letters of his published
in the BiblioMque Britannique, furnished the substance
of the matter which appears in the biographical sketches
of Count Rumford contained in the Encyclopaedias and
Biographical Dictionaries, all of which are imperfect,
and which repeat the same errors, trivial and impor-
tant. Colonel Baldwin's series of four articles on the
Count's life and labors, published in two volumes of
the Literary Miscellany, while the Count was living,
have a particular value.
Preface. ix
Besides the acknowledgments that will be found in
the following pages, made to friends for whose aid
and suggestions I am under obligations to them, I
must make here a special mention of the kind and
helpful assistance, sympathy, and information which
I have received from Mr. George Rumford Baldwin of
Woburn, Massachusetts ; Mr. Joseph B. Walker,
of Concord, New Hampshire; Dr. H. Bence Jones,
of London, Secretary of the Royal Institution of
Great Britain ; Mons. Jules Marcou, of Paris ; and
Mr. G. Henry Horstmann, United States Consul at
Munich.
A search which I was privileged to make among
the effects of Sarah, Countess of Rumford, in Concord,
New Hampshire, was rewarded, as will be seen, by the
discovery of much curious and interesting matter.
I hardly need to add, that, though I have done this
work as a labor of love in the service, as well as at
the request, of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, I alone am responsible for any errors which
it may contain, and for the statements and opinions
expressed in it.
G. E. E.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I .
PAGE
Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson. Ancestry and
Family of Thompson. His Birth. Death of his Father.
His early Education. His own Account of his early Years.
His Friends and Guardians. His School Days. Appren-
ticeship at Salem. Accident. Return to Woburn. Memo-
randa. Apprenticeship in Boston. Medical Student. School-
Teacher. Marriage. Military Commission. Farmer. . i
CHAPTER II.
Revolutionary Portents. Division of Parties. Governor Went-
worth. Thompson's Visits to Portsmouth. Military Review.
Intimacy and Favor with the Governor. Commissioned
Major. Jealousies and Enmities. Accused of Toryism.
Meditated Outrage. Flight from Concord. Refuge in Wo-
burn, Charlestown, and Boston. His Petition and Examina-
tion. Letters to Rev. Mr. Walker. Visits the Camp. Seeks
Employment. Departure. Newport. Secret Residence in
Boston. Sent to England. Confiscation of his Property.
Proscribed. . . . . . . . . . -55
CHAPTER III.
Major Thompson's Mission to Lord G. Germaine. His Services
to the Ministry. Made Secretary of Georgia. Explores
London. Objects of his Interest. Experiments. Visit to
Bath. Guest of Lord George. Fire-Arms and Gunpow-
xii Contents.
der. Sir Joseph Banks. Naval Service, and Experiments.
Made Under-Secretary of State. Loyalists in England.
Judge Curwen. Dr. Gardiner. President Laurens. Dis-
astrous Intelligence. Thompson commissioned as Lieutenant-
Colonel for Service in America. Arrival in Charleston, S. C.
In Action there. Arrival in New York. His Command.
Recruiting. Presentation of Colors. Severe Charges
against Thompson. Colonel Simcoe's Reflections. Returns
to England. Promotion. On Half-Pay for Life. Agency
for Loyalists. . . . . . . . . .100
CHAPTER IV.
Thompson receives Permission to travel on the Continent.
Gibbon and Laurens. Meeting with Maximilian de Deux
Ponts. Intercourse with French Officers. Visits Munich.
Goes to Vienna. Returns, by Invitation of the Elector, to
Munich. In England. Knighted. Permitted to enter the
Service of the Elector. His Career "and Services in Bavaria.
Offices and Honors. Schemes. Essays. Years of Prepa-
ration. Work-Houses at Mannheim and Munich. Military
Reforms. Soldiers' Gardens. Mendicancy : its Abuses,
Measures for its Removal. Wise and Efficient Plans. Seiz-
ure of Beggars. Experiments on Food. Minor Schemes of
Reforms. Sickness. Travels in Italy and Switzerland.
Visits to Hospitals and Poor-Houses. Returns to Munich.
Convalescence. Writes his Essays. Goes to England.
Economical Schemes there. Publishes his Essays. Visits
Ireland. Sends for his Daughter. .....
CHAPTER V.
Count Rumford's Family in America. Correspondence with
Baldwin resumed. Prepares for his Daughter. Correspond-
ence of Sarah Thompson. Friendship of President Willard of
Harvard College. Thompson's Provision for his Mother.
Sends over his Essays. Intention to visit America. Auto-
LIFE OF COUNT RUMFORD.
CHAPTER I.
Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson. Ancestry and
Family of Thompson. His Birth. Death of his Father.
His early Education. His own Account of his early
Tears. His Friends and Guardians. His School Days.
Apprenticeship at Salem. Accident. Return to Wo-
lurn. Memoranda. Apprenticeship in Boston. Medi-
cal Student. School-Teacher. Marriage. Military
Commission. - Farmer.
MASSACHUSETTS, during the second period of
its history, when, as a Province, it received its
chief magistrate and the authority for its administration
of government from the mother country, gave birth to
two men the most distinguished for philosophical genius
of all that have been produced on the soil of this con-
tinent. They were Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin
Thompson. They came into life in humble homes,
within twelve miles of each other, under like straits and
circumstances of frugality and substantial thrift. They
both sprang from English lineage, of an ancestry and
parentage yeomen on the soil on either continent, to be
cast, as their progenitors had been, upon their own
exertions, without dependence upon inherited means, or
patronage, or even good fortune. Born as subjects of
',2 Life of Count Rumford*
the English monarch, they both, at different periods of
their lives, claimed their privileges as such, visiting their
ancestral soil, though under widely unlike circumstan-
ces, and there winning fame and distinction for services
to humanity. We almost forget the occasion which
parted them in the sphere of politics, because they
come so close together in the more engrossing and
beneficent activity of their genius.
I cannot learn that these two eminent men, with so
much that was common between them in their interests
and pursuits, ever met together, or sought each other's
acquaintance, or even recognized each other's existence,
though they were contemporaries for more than thirty
years, were both in Europe the one in England, the
other in France for six of those years, and were
intimate in friendship or correspondence with some of
the same distinguished persons.
In the best work of their several lives they sought
to do, and eminently succeeded in doing, what should
prove effective of good to their common humanity in
the ordinary interests of existence, without distinction
of class, and without a view to any personal ends of
thrift or glory. Nor is there ground or occasion for
any broad distinction in our estimate of the moral char-
acter or of the private life of these two eminent men.
Neither of them had in his early, nor even in his later,
years that rigid purity of principle which insured that
all his domestic relations should be such as would
admit of record, according to the good New England
usage, on the few blank leaves between the Old and the
New Testament in the family Bible. There are details
concerning both these Benjamins of a sort which their
biographers must pass unmentioned, thankful if only
Life of Count Rumford. 3
they can be referred to foreign soil and foreign cus-
toms.
The services of Franklin as a patriotic statesman lift
him on a higher pedestal. Yet two widely discordant
opinions have been held and expressed as to the general
effect on the qualities of nobleness and unworldliness
of character, as illustrated in New England, of his cal-
culating, prudential, and thrift-bringing philosophy. If,
according to what we shall find was the judgment of one
of Benjamin Thompson's most intimate friends, his
eulogist, also, we shall see reason to admit that he
did not really love his fellow-men, and could not yield
even his own self-will and conform his own personal
habits to the ordinary conditions of sympathetic in-
tercourse, we may be led to recognize all the more
gratefully his patient, persistent, and ingenious indus-
try, given in so many ways to ends of true benevo-
lence.
Benjamin Thompson came on both sides of his
parentage from the original stock of the first colonists
of Massachusetts Bay. When, in his thirty-first year,
he had attained such distinction in England as to receive
the honor of knighthood from King George III., he
was naturally concerned to provide himself with proper
armorial bearings, and, if possible, to appropriate such
as might already be attached to the name which he bore.
He could not have done better than to adopt a device
which, as we shall soon see, was the product of his own
youthful ingenuity alike in designing and in engraving,
and equally characteristic of his nature, circumstances,
and prospects in life. But he seems to have forgotten
this, and to have aimed higher, in this instance failing in
his flight. His emblazoned diploma of arms is now
4
'Life 'of Coitnt Ritmford.
before me in all its original glory and beauty, with its
rich adornments, and the proper attestations of Garter
and Clarenceux kings in heraldry, and their well-pro-
tected seals, enclosed in tin casings. The Knight him-
self must have furnished the information written on that
flowery parchment.
In it he is described as " Son of Benjamin Thomp-
son, late of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New
England, Gent : deceased, and as of one of the most
ancient families in North America; that an island which
belonged to his ancestors at the entrance of Boston Har-
bor, near where the first New England settlement was
made, still bears his name ; that his ancestors have ever
lived in reputable situations in that country where he
was born, and have hitherto used the arms of the ancient
and respectable family of Thompson, of the county of
York, from a constant tradition that they derived their
descent from that source," &c.
The new knight was mistaken in this account of
himself, so far as relates to the man whose name is still
borne by the island in our harbor. That name was de-
rived from one David Thompson, whom the first charter
colonists to our bay found already seated here, and who
was regarded as an interloper. He belonged to a mys-
terious class of men, described as the " Old Planters,"
who occupied many of the headlands and some of the
islands of the bay, and could show no rights of posses-
sion. This Thompson died in Dorchester before 1638,
leaving an infant son.
Before the son of this Thompson had grown to man-
hood, indeed almost as soon as we hear of the father,
the ancestors of the subject of this memoir were already
in occupancy on the main-land. The head of the family
Life of Count Rumford. 5
here may have come from York, in England, though
the fact is not on record. His first paternal ancestor,
James Thompson, was of Winthrop's company, and at
the age of thirty-seven was in Charlestown, in 1630.
He was one of the first settlers of that portion of the
original bounds of the town which, running more than
ten miles up into the country, was soon set off as a
separate precinct under the name of Woburn. Here
the family with numerous descendants and branches
continued till the birth of our subject, as many that
sprung from the first comer do to this day. He him-
self was a man of worth, position, and trust in an
arduous enterprise, being one of the " selectmen " of
the town, and he lived nearly to the age of ninety.
Captain Ebenezer Thompson and Hannah Convers
were the grandparents, Benjamin Thompson and Ruth
Sirnonds were the father and mother, of our subject; the
mother being the daughter of an officer who performed
distinguished service in the French and Indian War,
which was in progress at the time of the birth of his
eminent grandson. The parents were married in 1752,
and went to live at the house of Captain Ebenezer
Thompson. Here, under his grandfather's roof, the
future Count Rumford was born, March 26, 1753, in
the west end of the strong and substantial farm-house
which is still standing a few rods south of the meeting-
house in North Woburn. This house was, till quite
recently, occupied by the Count's first cousin, the widow
of Willard Jones.*
The father of our subject died November 7, 1754, in
his twenty-sixth year, leaving his wife and her child,
hardly twenty months old, to the care and support of
* Sewall's History of Woburn, p. 390, &c.
6 Life of Count Rumford.
the grandparents. In March, 1756, when the child
was three years old, his widowed mother was married to
Josiah Pierce, Jr., of Woburn. Mr. Pierce took his
wife and her child to a new home, which, now removed,
stood but a short distance from the old homestead,
opposite the present conspicuous and venerable Baldwin
mansion.
The Biographic Nouve/Ie,. in its article on Count
Rumford, says that he would have been left in his
infancy to absolute destitution, had not his grandfather
taken pity on him. The article in the Encyclopedia
Britannic a says that the child's step-father banished him
from his mother's house almost in his infancy. Chal-
mers's Biography substantially repeats the statements.
These are drawn from, and are .supposed to be warranted
by, certain particulars given by M. A. Pictet, in the
EibliotHeque Britannique. Pictet was an intimate, con-
fidential, and admiring friend of Count Rumford,
and has recorded much very interesting information
concerning him which can be got from no other source.
I shall have occasion by and by to draw largely and
gratefully from that information. Meanwhile, it is in
place here to say that while M. Pictet was on a visit to
England in 1801, he spent several days in the house
of Count Rumford, at Brompton Row, as his guest,
and was wont to draw from him confidentially par-
ticulars of his life, of which he took notes for subse-
quent publication.
I anticipate the relation of this friendship and its
results so far as to translate from Pictet such matter as
has been made the basis of the at least over-colored
statements that have been referred to. It will be noticed
by the error in the first paragraph following, that Pictet,
Life of Count Rumford. 7
though he might have been a close listener, was not
a perfectly accurate reporter of his friend's communi-
cations.
" Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, whom half
Europe takes to be an Englishman, was born in North Amer-
ica in 1753. His family, of English origin, was long settled in
New Hampshire, and lived in a place formerly called Rumford,
and now Concord, and owned land there before the war of
Independence.
" ' If the death of my father,' he said to me one day, ' had
not, contrary to the order of nature, preceded that of my grand-
father, who gave all his property to my uncle, his second son, I
should have lived and died an American husbandman. This
was a circumstance purely accidental, which, while I was still
an infant, decided my destiny in attracting my attention to ob-
jects of science. The father of one of my companions, a very
respectable minister, and, besides, very enlightened, (by name,
Bernard,) gave me his friendship, and, of his own prompting,
undertook to instruct me. He taught me algebra, geometry,
astronomy, and even the higher mathematics. Before the age
of fourteen, I had made sufficient progress in this class of studies
to be able without his aid, and even without his knowledge, to
calculate and trace rightly the elements of a solar eclipse. We
observed it together, and my computation was correct within four
seconds. I shall never forget the intense pleasure which this
success afforded me, nor the praises which it drew from him.
I had been destined for trade, but. after a short trial my thirst
for knowledge became inextinguishable, and I could not apply
myself to anything but my favorite objects of study. I attended
the lectures of Dr. Williams, and afterwards those of Dr.
Winthrop, at Harvard College, and I made under that happy
teacher a sufficiently rapid progress.'
" c But at the age you then were,' said I to him, ' is a young
man the master of his own actions ? How could you follow
so, without opposition, the sort of instinct which carried you to-
wards a vocation so different from that which had been destined
for you ? '
8 Life of Count Rumford.
" ' Ah ! ' he replied, c shortly after the death of my father my
mother contracted a second marriage, which proved for her a
source of misfortunes. A tyrannical husband took me away
from my grandfather's house with her. I was then a child ; my
grandfather, who survived my father only a few months, left
me but a very slender subsistence. I was then launched at the
right time upon a world which was almost strange to me, and I
was obliged to form the habit of thinking and acting for myself,
and of depending on myself for a livelihood. My ideas were
not yet fixed ; one project succeeded another, and perhaps I
should have acquired a habit of indecision and inconstancy, per-
haps I should have been poor and unhappy all my life, if a
woman had not loved me, if she had not given me a subsis-
tence, a home, an independent fortune.'
" ' I married, or, rather, I was married, at the age of nine-
teen. I espoused the widow of a Colonel Rolfe, daughter of the
Rev. Mr. Walker, a highly respectable minister, and one of the
first settlers of Rumford. He was already connected with my
family. He had made three voyages to England on matters of
public interest. He was a very cultivated man, and of a most
generous character. He heartily approved of the choice of his
daughter, and he himself united our destinies. This excellent
man became sincerely attached to me ; he directed my studies,
he formed my taste, and my position was in every respect the
most agreeable that could possibly be imagined.'
" Here a pang of feeling checked him. I dropped the subject
till the next day. Such are my notes.
" Unexpected circumstances drew him from this peaceful
retreat, and snatched him from those favorite studies which
would probably have formed the principal occupation of his
life, in order that he might play a part on the great stage of
the world, for which he would not seem to have been pre-
pared." *
* Marc Auguste Pictet was born in 1752, in Geneva, where he died in 1825. He
was highly distinguished as a philosopher in Natural Science, and as a statesman and
man of letters, founder of the Society of Physics at Geneva, and member of the
French Institute and the Royal Society. In 1796, with his brother Charles, and
Life of Count Rumford. 9
There are several matters in this relation which will call
for remark further on. At present we are concerned
with those sentences in it which reflect upon Thomp-
son's relatives, especially his step-father, charges of
neglecting, wronging, or ill-treating him in his early
years. Baron Cuvier, who was a very intimate friend
of Count Rumford in the latter part of his life, and
who delivered an eloge upon him before the French In-
stitute, said in it something very similar to the above,
the authority for which must be supposed to be either
a communication from .the Count himself, or the asser-
tions made by Pictet.
Cuvier said : " Rumford has informed us himself
that he should probably have remained in the modest
condition of his ancestors if the little fortune which they
had to leave him had not been lost during his infancy.
Thus, like many other men of genius, a misfortune in
early life was the cause of his subsequent reputation.
His father died young. A second husband removed
him from the care of his mother, and his grandfather,
from whom he had everything to expect, had given all
he possessed to a younger son, leaving his grandson
almost penniless. Nothing could be more likely than
such a destitute .condition to induce a premature display
of talent,"* &c.
Now, if these statements and imputations really rest
upon positive assertions made by him whom they con-
F. G. Maurice, he planned and edited the voluminous periodical work, the BibliothZquc
Britannique, which, in 1816, became the BibliothZque Universelle.
His ten letters, embracing his tour in England, Ireland, and Scotland, were re-
published in a volume at Geneva. The above extract in the text is translated from
his ninth letter, dated London, ith August, 1801. (Vol. XIX. Science et Arts.}
* Cuvier's Eloge. A translation of this Eloge appeared in the Boston Daily Adver-
tiser of the 1 8th and I9th October, 1815.
io Life of Count Rumford.
cern, it might seem unnecessary and unreasonable to go
behind them and dispute them. Yet we know for a
certainty that they do contain errors, and there is room
for supposing that Count Rumford's friends might have
misunderstood him, and that, being both of them French-
men, they may themselves have erred in a matter of
sentiment, by exaggerated expressions. It is possible,
too, that, looking back from his state of popular ce-
lebrity, comfort, and affluence, the Count himself may
have seen the hardships of his early years as unre-
lieved.
It is certain, however, that there is exaggeration or
over-coloring in what is reported as having come from
his lips. Young Thompson was born in the same state
of life, and to the same conditions of labor and personal
dependence, as those of his ancestors for several gene-
rations, who, tilling their acres, cutting their lumber
and fuel, and working at their varied trades, had won
the means of a frugal subsistence, and maintained the
respectable position of New England yeomen. True,
it was a misfortune to him that he lost his father before
he was two years old. But he had an excellent mother,
who never neglected him, but seems to have treated him
with a redoubled love. His own letters to her from
abroad, after he had achieved his great distinctions,
letters continued to the close of her life and full of
affection, and the munificent pecuniary provision
which he made for her, will be duly recognized in the
course of this biography, as showing the tender and
grateful regard of the son for the mother.
As to the cc tyrannical step-father " who cc removed
him from the care of his mother," I have sought in
vain for a shadow of a reason to justify the harsh
Life of Count Rumford. u
epithet, and have evidence that disposes of the other
charge as purely fictitious. Josiah Pierce, Jr., appears
to have been a kind and faithful husband, and, as has
been said, he took his wife's child with her to a new
home. They had afterwards four children. Her first
child by this new husband, Josiah Pierce, jd, about
four years younger than Benjamin Thompson, grew
up with him as a playmate, and in after life corre-
sponded with him. The son of this half-brother of
Thompson, the Hon. Josiah Pierce, of Gorham, Me.,
had heard nothing from his father that would warrant an
imputation of the sort we are considering.*
It was not usual among the self-respecting groups of
New England households, the staple of the thrifty
country towns of those days, where there was a minister
that had authority, where neighbors had mutual over-
sight, and the law and its officers had cognizance of
private relations now released from its control, it was
not usual that a fatherless child should be wronged in
property rights, or even in domestic privileges. Indeed,
so far was young Thompson from being neglected or
misused in his early years, that it seems from the facts
to be now related of his boyhood and apprenticeship,
he was, for one in his place, unusually favored by friends
and by fostering help. There were evidently many of
his kindred, and of those who were not of his kindred,
who were interested for him. It is to be considered,
* In Volume XXXIII. of Silliman's American Journal of Science, &c., p. 21, is a
" Sketch of the early History of Count Rumford, in which some of the Mistakes of
Cuvier and others of his Biographers are corrected"} by John Johnston. Read before
the Natural History Society of the Wesleyan University, June 30, 1837. The writer
does correct some mistakes, but makes others. This article introduces a letter from
the Hon. Josiah Pierce, in which he says, "My grandmother (Rumford's mother)
lived in my father's house for seven years previous to her death, which occurred
June n, 1811."
12 Life of Count Rumford.
too, that he exercised the patience and sympathy of his
friends somewhat severely, till the bent of his genius,
asserting and proving itself, offered a more favorable
interpretation of what had appeared in him as fickle-
ness, inconstancy of purpose, and even a determined
unwillingness to apply himself to any routine and re-
warding work.
It may be as well to mention here one of the earliest
and most valued and steadfast friends of young Thomp-
son, his townsman and neighbor, and confidential inti-
mate in boyhood, though his senior, the sharer with
him in his early scientific tastes and pursuits, his sup-
porter in the severe trouble which attended his opening
manhood, and his correspondent and agent while abroad.
This was the late Colonel Loammi Baldwin, of Woburn,
a very distinguished officer in the early part of the Revo-
lutionary War, and afterwards the most eminent engi-
neer in our country, whose enterprise in the Middlesex
Canal was the great work of its time. He was born
January 10, 1744, nine years before Thompson, and
died October 20, 1807, nearly seven years before his
friend. It is to his interest in young Thompson from
his boyhood, which led him to preserve papers of that
period, as well as those which related to his mature
years, that the biographer is very largely indebted. His
only surviving son, George Rumford Baldwin, Esq.,
also a very eminent civil engineer, has kindly allowed
me the free use of these papers of his father.
The paternal grandfather, his maternal uncle, Joshua
Simonds, the step-father, and the maternal grandfather,
successively the responsible guardians of the child and
youth, had in view, as a matter of course, to educate
and train him for their own respectable way of living,
Life of Count Rumford. 13
leaving to his own development and use of opportunities
the chance of rising, as so many children around him
and under similar circumstances with himself had risen,
to any more conspicuous position. The lands which
had been allotted to his progenitor, in the first settle-
ment of the town, had of course been divided from time
to time in the partition of his estate among the steadily
increasing number of his descendants. But some of
them had added to their respective shares, and clearing
and tillage had made portions of the original acres more
valuable than the whole had been. The child's grand-
father had died previously to October 16, 1755, for the
agreement among his heirs, including that of the guar-
dians of a minor son and of Benjamin, the grandson,
bears that date.
By this instrument, it was provided that his mother,
Ruth, should have the improvement "of one half of the
garden at the west end" of the house where her child
and she had been living with his grandparents, and " the
privilege of land to raise beans for sauce." The guar-
dian of her child's minor uncle was likewise to "give
the said widow eighty weight of beef, eight bushels of
rye, two bushels of malt, and two barrels of cider for
the present year"; while she also had the "liberty of
gathering apples to bake, and three bushels of apples for
winter, yearly and every year." (See Appendix.)
When the boy was taken to his step-father's, Mr.
Pierce, according to the custom of the time and com-
munity, covenanted with the child's guardian for an
allowance of two shillings and fivepence, old tenor, per
week, for maintenance, till his step-son should be seven
years old.
If Pictet and Cuvier received an impression from the
14 Life of Count Rumford.
Count that any wrong had been done him in his child-
hood by his grandfather's unequal distribution of his
estate, their informant failed' to explain to them the dif-
ferent usage which prevailed in New England from that
followed in Europe in the partition of property on the
decease of the head of a family.
The Rev. Samuel Bewail, the faithful historian of the
town of Woburn, coming of a family which has given
three chief-justices to Massachusetts, might well be
supposed to hold the laws of his native State in reverent
regard. His impartiality, therefore, is to be recognized
in the fidelity with which he represents the shortcom-
ings of that town, in some periods of its history, in
evading the statutes which so carefully provided for the
interests of a common-school education for all children.
But at the time in which Benjamin Thompson was in
his early pupilage, the town was particularly favored in
having for a village school-teacher an accomplished and
faithful man, Mr. John Fowle, a graduate of Harvard
College in 1747. It is evident from the handwriting
of Thompson when he was only thirteen years of age,
from the spelling and the almost faultless grammatical
expressions in his letters and compositions before he
had reached manhood, and from his skill in accounts,
that he had not only had remarkable native powers, but
that he had also been the subject of careful and thorough
training. His chirography was clear, strong, and ele-
gant, and it remained the same through his life. Nor
was his style one whit inferior in terseness, exactness,
and simplicity to that of Franklin. The high authority
of Mr. George B. Emerson has been given for the asser-
tion, that, under the mode of instruction through which
young Thompson and his contemporaries enjoyed the
Life of Coitnt Runiford. 15
opportunities provided by law in Massachusetts, there
was afforded a better training, and to better results, than
are realized now from all our elaborate provisions for
public; education.*
Thompson, like other youths, was entitled only to a
" grammar-school education/* that is, to be taught to
read, to spell, to write, to construct sentences gram-
matically, and to understand the rules of arithmetic.
The range was a narrow one compared with that which
is professedly covered now. But the lessons that were
taught, and the way of teaching them, were such as to
quicken 'the faculties, and to excite, if it was latent in
the pupil, a desire for more, while affording him help
to attain it. There was also an able and faithful min-
ister in young Thompson's parish, the Rev. Josiah
Sherman, a part of whose official duty it was to exercise
a supervision over the village school and over fatherless
children. There were no manuals for English grammar
in those days, and as a substitute was found in a Latin
text-book, a bright pupil incidentally acquired "an
entrance" into that tongue.
Thompson indicated from his early years an incon-
stancy and indifference to the homely routine tasks
and the rural employments which were required of him,
while, at the same time, he exhibited an intense mental
activity, a spirit of ingenuity and inventiveness, and was
found seeking for amusement in things which afterwards
proved to lead him to the profitable and beneficent
occupations of his mature life. He showed a particular
ardor for arithmetic and mathematics, and it was remem-
bered of him, afterwards, that his playtime, and some of
* Lecture in Historical Course before the Lowell Institute, on "Education in Mas-
sachusetts : Early Legislation and History," February 16, 1860.
1 6 Life of Count Rumford.
his proper worktime, had been given to ingenious me-
chanical contrivances, soon leading to a curious interest
in the principles of mechanics and natural philosophy.
His guardians, of course, undertook, as their respon-
sibility, to engage him in the practical drudgery of
country life, that he might be fitted for work which
would promise direct results. So far as they found they
were likely to fail in this purpose, they would regard
him as indolent, flighty, and unpromising.
He was also, for a while, a pupil in a school at Byfield,
under the charge of a family connection. In 1764, when
he was eleven years old, he was for a time put under the
tuition of Mr. Hill, an able teacher in Medford, a town
adjoining Woburn. Thus it would seem that the youth,
for one born in his sphere of life, was not neglected.
There is abundant evidence, likewise, that many kind
friends were interested in him before he began to draw
others to serve his aims. Young Baldwin alone was
invaluable to him.
It being plain to his guardians that he was either
too good of too unpromising material out of which to
make a thriving farmer, the alternative was to train him
for a merchant or trader. To this end, on October 14,
1766, he was apprenticed to Mr. John Appleton of
Salem, an importer of British goods, and a dealer in all
the miscellaneous articles which formed the stock of a
warehouse in so flourishing and rich a place as that
town then was. Mr. Appleton was a man of great
respectability, and did a large business. I have before
me a bill for goods bought from the store, receipted by
Thompson when he was fourteen years old, which, for
grace of penmanship, mercantile style, and business-like
signature, might be regarded as proving that the youth
Life of Count Rumford. 17
had found his proper position. He lived in his master's
family as a member of the household. But there is
something better than tradition to warrant the inference
that his heart was not in his employment. Instead of
watching for customers over the counter, he was apt to
busy himself with tools and instruments which he had
hid away under it. And, when the sound would not
betray him, he ventured to play his fiddle, for he was
a skilful musician, and passionately fond of music of
every kind.
The following document, relating to the apprentice-
ship of young Thompson with Mr. Appleton, has a
claim to be introduced here on that ground, if not, also,
as an illustration of the exercise of the right of private
judgment in the art of spelling and in the use of capital
letters.*
" To MR. JOHN APPLETON IN SALAM.
j
"MEDFORD, June ye 26: 1767.
"M? APPELTON, Sir, these lins left us all well, as I hope
they may find you. Thompson has wrote to me diuers times
about his affairs, and he saith he is Contented, and hath Sum
priuyledge of trade for him Self, and that you, Sir, would let
him haue Sum fish to Ship, if I would send you an order for
them : acordingly I send one inclosed. Pray Sir, if he Shipeth
any thing, See it insured in a proper manner. Sir, if Ben Sends
to Sea and dont make Pay, let me haue Notis of it. Pray, Sir,
tak Spechal Care about the Company he keeps, and I should be
glad to know the General Run of his behauour, both as to trade
and Company : and if you will fauour me with an acount there
of, I shal tak is as fauour. As to his Cloath, I Exspect his
* The original manuscript was communicated at a meeting of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, in October, 1864, by the Assistant Librarian, the late Dr. John
Appleton, to whose grandfather it was addressed, and is published in the Proceedings
of the Society for that year, pp. 4, 5.
VOL. II. 2
1 8 Life of Coitnt Rumford.
Mother will giue me and a Count there of, Sir, I hear you Hue
Shingel as yet, but dont Exspect it will be so long. Sir, Remem-
ber me to Ben 1 } and to M* West. No more at this time. So
I Remain yours to Serue,
"JOSHUA SIMONDS."
John Sparhawk Appleton, of Salem, the son of the
gentleman to whom the above letter is addressed, has
appended to it the following: "Benjamin Thompson
(afterwards Sir Benjamin, and Count Rumford) was
apprenticed to John Appleton, merchant, Salem, Octo-
ber 14, 1766, with whom he continued until about
October, 1769, as appears by some memoranda sent
to Professor Levi Hedge, Cambridge, this 25th March,
1817."
In a memoir of the late Francis Peabody, President
of the Essex Institute in Salem, communicated to
that body by Hon. C. W. Upham, a very interesting
reference is made to the temporary residence of young
Thompson in that town. Mr. Upham traces that very
laborious and flourishing institution back through a
series of organizations, all having scientific and literary
objects in view, to a social evening club, formed about
the middle of the last century to promote literature and
philosophy. Beginning at that date, Salem and its*
neighborhood was the home of many prominent men,
distinguished for enterprise in commerce and for attain-
ments in law, science, and manufacturing skill, whose
names are now famous in the history of the past. Mr.
Upham suggests that the lad of thirteen years, from the
farm in Woburn, must have found, from his genius
for observation and the improvement of opportunities,
some efficient impulse and help for his future course
in the place of his service. His employer, though
Life of Co^lnt Rumford. 19
keeping a retail variety-store, after the style of that day,
under the same roof with his dwelling-place, on the
south side of Essex Street, was also engaged in com-
mercial pursuits. His apprentice had open eyes and
ears for all that was to be seen or heard, in store or
house, from customers or visitors ; and his mechanical
and chemical propensities were well known. Doubtless
he was employed by others in the preparation of the
fireworks, in glorification over the repeal of the Stamp
Act, in the composition of which he met with so severe
an accident. The properties of gunpowder were then,
as they continued to be, a favorite matter for his studies
and experiments.*
In his confidential relation of the incidents of his
early life to Monsieur Pictet, it will be remembered
that the Count, as reported by his friend, spoke of a
very respectable and enlightened minister, " Mr. Ber-
nard," who gave him such efficient patronage and such
impulse in his mathematical studies. Many who have
followed with interest the career of Thompson, meeting
with this name of Bernard, copied from Pictet's state-
ment in sketches of Count Rumford's life, supposing it
to refer to the minister of his native town, have been
puzzled in identifying him. The name, in his case, as
in that of one of our royal Governors, Sir Francis Ber-
nard, and of his son Thomas, a very intimate friend of
Rumford's, in London, was confounded with Barnard.
It was in Salem, not in Woburn, that young Thompson
found this friend. The Rev. Thomas Barnard was the
minister of the First Church in Salem from 1755 to
1776. His eldest son, Thomas, after graduating from
Harvard in 1766, taught school in Salem, and was
* Essex Institute Historical Collections. Second Series. Vol. I. Part II. 1869.
2O Life of Count Rumford.
ordained as minister of the North Church there in
1773. Both of these ministers were men of marked
ability and fine scholarship, took part in founding or
purchasing, successively, the " Social Library," the
" Kirwan Library/' and the cc Philosophical Library,"
represented now by the cc Salem Athenaeum," and gave
much attention to scientific pursuits. The Appleton
family, and of course young Thompson as a member of
it, worshipped with the congregation of the elder Bar-
nard. The son coming to teach in Salem in the same
year in which Thompson began his apprenticeship there,
and having a younger brother who was one of Thomp-
son's "companions," we find in the facts a full expla-
nation of the assertion of M. Pictet. Thompson was
a handsome and engaging youth, of evidently bright
faculties. The interest of his minister was thus drawn
to him, and he probably received the aid and encourage-
ment of the new teacher. It was thus that he was
" taught algebra, geometry, astronomy, and even the
higher mathematics," so that before the age of fifteen
he was able to calculate an eclipse.
The subjoined letter, from the boy to his friend in
Woburn, contains one word of faulty grammar, which,
as unusual with him, is to be accounted as a slip of the
pen :
"SALEM, Nov. 12, 1768.
" DEAR SIR, I did not go to Mr. Derby's after them Pis
tols till yesterday, but he had not got them, having sent them
home some time before (for they were not his). But he told me
another man had got them who lived up in Danvers about a
mile. Upon this I rode up to this man, but he had sent them
home to the owner, about two or three days before, who lives at
Beverly. This man saith that the price is four dollars. The
Barrels are very good, the locks but ordinary. If you conclude
BOOK-PLATE ENGRAVED BY BENJAMIN THOMPSON ABOUT 1768
{ PAOE 21.)
Life of Count Rumford. 2 1
to take them, I can get them at that price, but I don't think
much under.
Votre tres humble Serviteur, Monsieur,
BN THOMPSON.
To MR. LOAMMI BALDWIN, Woburn.
We must regard the perseverance of the youth in
going, in his spare time, in so many directions, to hunt
up " them Pistols," as an offset to the inelegance in
describing them.
His skill and ingenuity, which are said to have been
remarkable in this exercise of them, were constantly put
to use by the boys of his acquaintance, in engraving
upon the handles of their knives and other implements
the names and certain devices of their owners. Doubt-
less, also, his facility in this work was improved by
elder persons in marking silver. Indeed, he was an
able and accurate draughtsman, and an accomplished
designer. I have before me a copy of an engraved
plate, wrought by him when in Salem, three inches and
five eighths long by two inches and seven eighths broad.
From the lopped bough on one side of an old and top-
less tree is suspended a shield, and from a green shoot
on the other side a square and compass. The shield,
inscribed " B. Thompson," is beautifully proportioned,
and traced with all the heraldic accompaniments. On
the upper right-hand corner an open eye is looking
from a quarter of a radiated sun, below which is a ship
in full sail. Beneath the shield is a young lion couched,
an open and a closed book, a sword, and another com-
pass. This work seems to have been intended for a
book-plate.
Like other geniuses in mechanical inventions, ex-
cepting only that, being brighter than many of them,
22 Life of Count Rumford.
Thompson's delusions came in early youth and were
sooner outgrown in manhood, he experimented upon
the desideratum of a machine which should realize
" perpetual motion." He even thought he had been
successful in contriving one. He had the privilege of
making occasional visits to his family in Woburn, gen-
erally of brief duration, and his conveyance was neces-
sarily upon his own feet, and the time taken was not to
interfere with his duties to his employer. His friend
Baldwin records* that Thompson walked one night
from Salem to Woburn, in order to show him parts of
this wonderful instrument of wheels, and to explain its
mechanical powers. The friend, however, adds that he
" was never able to gain any information concerning the
principles upon which it was expected to act."
Though the young apprentice was well understood in
Salem to be a dabbler in a great many pursuits and
occupations, with tools and experiments and mechanics
and chemistry, which did not appertain to his calling
with his employer, it does not appear that he failed of
rendering him due service. He undoubtedly had an
aversion to the business, while compelled by supposed
necessity to commit himself to it. His apprenticeship
covered a period of intense popular excitement over the
preliminary events leading to the Revolutionary War.
The youth must have heard the heated discussions of
the time, and been more or less initiated understand-
ingly into the merits of the issue which was soon to
open, disastrously as it at first seemed to bear on his
own personal experience. His employer was among the
signers of the non-importation agreement, by which the
mercantile and trading class in the Province sought to
* In the "Literary Miscellany," Cambridge. Vol. I. pp. 352-361.
Life of Count Rumford. t 23
express their resentment, in conformity with the popular
feeling against the oppressive measures of the British
Ministry. This agreement, which the watchful patriots
took care should be strictly kept even by those who
might have reluctantly entered into it, of course so
affected the business of Mr. Appleton as to make the
services of Thompson less necessary to him. In the
mean while the boy, more engaged, we must venture to
say, in his scientific experimenting than in the cause of
demonstrative patriotism, came very near to losing his
eyesight, if not also his life, by an alarming accident.
He had undertaken to prepare some fireworks for use
in a public jubilation over the news of the repeal of the
Stamp Act. While grinding his materials in a mortar,
a terrific explosion, probably caused by some grains of
sand in the compound, involved his head, hands, and
breast in its fearful consequences. He suffered a long
confinement and much pain, and was regarded as very
fortunate in escaping permanent injury.
The following correspondence shows that young
Thompson was at home, probably in a state of con-
valescence, at the time of its date :
" WOBURN, Allgt. 14, 1769
" MR. LOAMMI BALDWIN,
" SIR, Please to give the Direction of the Rays of Light
from a Luminous Body to an Opake, and the Reflection from
the Opake Body to another equally Dense and Opake ; viz 1 , the
Direction of the Rays of the Luminous Body to that of the
Opake, and the direction of rays by reflection to the other opake
Body. Your, &c.
"BENJ* THOMPSON.
" N. B. From the Sun to the Earth, Reflected to the Moon
at an angle of 40 Degrees."
24 Life of Count Rumford.
" WOBURN, Augt 1 6, 1769.
" MR. BENJ. THOMPSON,
" SIR, It is almost impossible to describe the" directions the
rays pass. Suppose one was at the Equinoctial Line, at twelve
o'clock. At that place then I imagine that the rays of the Sun
would pass directly straight to the eye of the beholder. But
suppose the Sun to be just arising, then I imagine that the rays
would pass in a curve line, and so grow straighter as it rises
higher in the horizon. The reason is, I conjecture, owing to
the Vapours that ascend out of the earth. I would prove it thus.
Take a bowl and put a dollar in it, and then carefully filling it
with fair water, till it seems to be heaped as it will do if the
brim was dry, and go off to a distance that brings your eye level
with the top of the bowl, and you can see the dollar in the
bottom of the bowl ; and that air nigh the ground is something
of the same nature is the opinion of
" Your Humble Servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN."
"WOBURN, August 1 6th, 1769.
" MR. LOAMMI BALDWIN,
" SIR, Please to inform me in what manner fire operates
upon Clay, to change the Colour, from the Natural Colour to
red, and from red to black, &c. ; and how it operates upon
Silver, to change it to Blue.
" I am your most Humble, and Obedient Servant,
"BENJf THOMPSON.
" God save the King."
" WOBURN, Aug* 1769.
" MR. LOAMMI BALDWIN
" SIR, Please to give the Nature, Essence, Beginning of
Existence, and Rise of the Wind in General, with the whole
Theory thereof, so as to be able to answer all Questions relative
thereto.
" Yours,
"BENJ. THOMPSON."
Life of Count Rumford. 25
The following is written on the back of the above :
" WOBURN, Augt 1 5th, 1769.
" SIR, There was but few beings (for Inhabitants of this
world) created before the airy Element was : so it has not been
transmitted down to us how the Great Creator formed the
matter thereof. So I shall leave it till I am asked only the
Natural cause, and why it blows so many ways in so short a
time as it does."
In the autumn of 1769, Thompson was sent to Bos-
ton, to engage in a business similar to that which he
had been learning at Salem. He was put as an appren-
tice clerk with Mr. Hopestill Capen, a dry-goods dealer.
Here he had as a fellow-apprentice the late Samuel Park-
man, who became, after the Revolutionary War, one of
the largest and richest merchants of Boston. Thomp-
son records the beginning of his attendance on a French
school, held in the evening, on October 27, 1769. He
remained in this situation till the spring of the following
year, and would appear then to have left it from the
falling off in the business of his employer, who had also
entered into the non-importation agreement.
I have seen it stated as a matter of fact by one of
Count Rumford's biographers, in a sketch already re-
ferred to,* that young Thompson, while in the employ
of Mr. Capen, was present on the 5th of March, 1770,
on the occasion known to fame and popular oratory as
" the Boston Massacre " ; when the hated soldiery, repre-
senting, in our capital, the cause of tyranny, goaded by
the jeers and insults of a street crowd of boys and men,
fired into it and killed four victims. It is said that
Thompson "was there found, sword in hand, among
the most eager to attack those whom he considered the
* American Journal of Science. Vol. XXXIII. p. 24.
26 Life of Count Rumford.
enemies of his country." There may be tradition to
authenticate this statement, which came as from a trust-
worthy source to the writer of it. But I know of no
documentary attestation of it.
Fortunately there is preserved a very interesting and
suggestive relic, which Mr. Thompson left behind him
in his abrupt departure from his home, for reasons soon
to be stated, and which is very significant of the tastes
and occupations of his youth. It is a memorandum-
book of substantial linen paper, with parchment cover
and a brass clasp, some leaves of which have been cut
out, thirty-six of those it may have originally contained
being still left. This memento is now before me ; and
the fragmentary information and the curious matter of
its contents may be turned to a profitable account. *
The contents of the book are, as will be seen, very
miscellaneous, giving tokens of the bent of genius of
the youth, with anticipatory hints of the characteristics
and occupations of his mature life. The boy in this
case was certainly father of the man. About fifty of
the seventy-two remaining pages have upon them some
sketch or record ; the others, unfortunately, being blank.
Twenty of the pages at the beginning and the end
of the book contain a most extraordinary variety of
sketches and etchings with pen and pencil, some of
them being colored by paints. A portion of these are
but rude and of faint outlines ; but others of them give
evidence of a skilful and accurate draughtsman, with an
eye for proportions, with correct perspective and a cun-
ning hand. There are caricature sketches of human
physiognomy and forms, men and women, young and
* The book belongs to Joseph B. Walker, Esq., of Concord, N. H., a descendant
of the father of Count Rumford's first wife. I am indebted to Mr. Walker's courtesy
for the privilege of using the book, as for other valued favors.
Life of Coitnt Rumford.
27
old, grave and gay ; a full figure, with laughing coun-
tenance, strongly marked, and outstretched arm, entitled
" My Dear Democritus " ; the figure of a wigged and
spectacled preacher, which, it is to be feared, represents,
not reverently, the Rev. Mr. Sherman of Woburn, in
whose meeting-house, it will appear, he paid the hire of
a seat ; an old-fashioned gentleman in grotesque courtly
costume, with cane, tie wig, and plumed hat, entitled
" Harry Modiste," pointed at frcm behind by a railing
jester, asking, " Ha ! you red nose, how will you sell
your wig? by the Cord ? " a winged cherub; a female
form with an ass's head, holding an open hymn-book,
singing; a swordsman, and two fencers in attitude.
There is a sketch of an old-fashioned corner dwelling-
house, with a shop under it, which may be that of
Mr. Appleton in Salem, or of Mr. Capen in Boston.
There is an etching of a group, called " A Council of
State," including a jackass and twelve human heads,
28 Life of Count Rumford.
with a variety of most expressive caricature features.
In this sketch the roguish artist seems to have antici-
pated an innovation of our own times, as he has intro-
duced both a young and an old woman into this Coun-
cil, with two other faces that may belong to either sex.
There is an admirably drawn psalm-book, open and
showing the notes of a tune, and a well-shaded scroll.
There are boats and ships, a table with bottles and
glasses, pistols, Indian tomahawks, and human bones.
Here is indeed a boyish medley, but indicating a
wonderful versatility.
The earliest entry of a more serious character is
without date, and contains a recipe for making rock-
ets, &c., giving the proportions of powder, sulphur,
saltpetre, and charcoal for rockets of different .sizes,
with the following directions, accompanied by ink-
drawn sketches :
u The Composition for middle-size Rockets, may serve for
Serpents and for Raining Fire. Composition for Stars 4 oz.
Saltpetre, 2 oz. Brimstone, 2 oz. Powder, ground fine and made
into a paste, and rolled into little balls, and then on dry gun-
powder dust, then dry them. The Tail of the Rocket should be
seven times as long as the Rocket itself.
" A Compound Rocket has a head filled with Serpents,
Crackers, Stars, &c., or fire-balls, or any combustibles, having
a piece of leather covered over the top of the Rocket, with
small holes burnt through the middle of it, to let the fire
through to the Crackers, &c., having some dry ground powder
in the head.
" A double Rocket is one placed above another, with goose
quill placed from the lower to the bottom of the upper one.
"To make a Report: When you have filled the Rocket
within about two inches of the top, thrust down a piece of
leather about the bigness of the hole of the Rocket, and punch
Life of Count Rumford. 29
it full of holes in the middle with a bodkin, then strew a little
dust of powder ground fine, and fill the rest up with unground
powder, and stop up the remaining part with leather or paper,
and stop it up."
The recipe closes with the somewhat irrelevant reflec-
tion: " Love is a Noble Passion of the Mind. LOVE."
The first entry in the book that bears a date is as
follows: " Boston, October 27th, 1769. This evening
entered French School to Learn the French Language, at
six pounds, fifteen shillings, Old Tenor, per Quarter
Anni, to go every evening except Sunday; deducting the
time I am absent." This is followed by a table of dates
reaching through November, and showing ten occasions
of absence to eighteen of attendance. Thompson was
then in his seventeenth year, and an apprentice to
Hopestill Capen in the dry-goods trade in Boston.
He records the purchase, on December 21, 1769, of
two and a half yards of black cloth, and his indebtedness
to Hiram Thompson, his uncle, for rent of a part of a
pew from August i, 1770. He had a settlement with
this kinsman on November 11, 1771, offsetting pew-
rent and the use of a horse to Reading and Boston by
charges against Hiram for cutting and carting fire-wood.
He had similar transactions in fuel with his step-father,
Josiah Pierce, and with James Snow. His loads were
generally small ones, seldom more than half a cord each,
showing that while he needed thus to earn money, he
did not like any long job of the kind. He received
a pound, old tenor, per cord. On April 6, 1771, he
made a contract with Abraham Alexander to cut and cord
for him seven or eight cords at nine shillings per cord.
These economical entries are very pleasantly diversified
by the following " Directions for the Back Sword " : -
30 Life of Count Rumford.
" I. To put yourself in a proper posture of Defence, viz*
hold your Sword firm in your Right hand, with your point
elevated as high as your Antagonist's head, and your hilt a
little depressed, bringing your sword to range with your Antago-
nist's body and with his eyes: then step forward with your
right foot about a foot, forming a square with your two feet :
then stand upright and take your distance, just so as to touch
your Antagonist's breast : then bend your left knee, which will
bring your body in a proper Posture of Defence." (From Mr.
McAlpine).
This is illustrated by a sketch in ink of two fashion-
able combatants engaged in the exercise.
The following entry carries much interest with it :
An Account of what Expence I have been at towards getting an
Electrical Machine.
s. d.
1771. July. J pd. brass wyer 050
I yd. iron wyer i 3
i pd. 7 oz. Pewter to make bullets, &c.
pd. Cowdry for 3 bells i 10 o
Aug 8t To Baldwin's Horse to Reading,
" 1 2 To Cash paid for old Brass, 9 3
To i Book Brass Leaf 026
" 1 6 To Cash paid for i yd Brass wyer 026
do I book Leaf Brass 026
do 2 Oil Bottles 5 3
do pd. Copper Fileings 026
do oz. Silver Brons 090
do i oz. Shell Lac 076
Life of Count Rumford. 31
s. d.
1771. Aug 5 * 1 6 To Cash gill Laquer 050
do i Varnishing Brush 030
do 3 oz? Aqua Fortis 076
To 2 phials, i for Laquer, the other for
Aqua Fortis 026
" 23 Paid for Mr. R. Baldwin's horse to go to
Cowdry for Brass Work 046
To Stuff to make a Wheel,
p<? LOAMMI BALDWIN."
Young Thompson at this time began the study of
medicine with Dr. Hay.
A debit and credit account is then opened with Dr.
John Hay, of Woburn, beginning in February, 1771.
Young Thompson credits the Doctor for a pair of
leather gloves, for Mrs. Hay's knitting him a pair of
stockings, for a small quantity of gum benzoine, and
"By my Board, from Dec 1 : ifth, 1770,^0 June
1 5th, 1772, at 40 Shillings, Old Tenor, per Week,
being 78 Weeks, 156 o. o." This indebtedness
of the young medical pupil is offset to the amount of
<io8 by as promiscuous and miscellaneous a list of
materials in payment as ever found entry on the ledger
of a country variety-store, or in barter traffic. Small
sums of cash, in eight payments, not amounting in the
aggregate to two pounds, are interspersed with con-
siderations of this sort, leading us to marvel over the
ingenuity of young Thompson in gathering resources :
"To Ivory for Smoke Machine: parcels of Butter, Coffee,
Sugar and Tea ; parcels of various drugs, camphor, contryerva,
gum benzoine, arsenic, calomel and rhubarb : one half a white
sheep skin : leather : brass wire : white oak timber : to sundry
lots of wood ; to other lots ' delivered while I was at Wilming-
ton, and left by me when I was at Wilmington the last time ' :
4 to a Blue Huzza Cloak bought of Zebediah Wyman, and paid
32 Life of Count Rumford.
for by fifteen and a half cords of wood' : a pair of knee buckles :
a Chirurgical Knife : c to a Cittern (a Musical Instrument),'
and ' to the Time I have been absent from your house, nineteen
weeks at Forty Shillings : and to the time my Mother washed
forme.'"
Two periods of absence were doubtless those in which
the youth was replenishing his funds by keeping school
at Wilmington and Bradford, as appears by the fol-
lowing entry on another page.
" Time of my Absence from Board at Dr. Hays.
" From June the I2th, 1771 To whilest I was at Cam-
bridge attending Mr. Winthrop's Lectures. From DecC the Qth,
1771, to Feby the 5th, 1772, keeping School at Wilmington.
From March the , 1772, to April , J 7?2, six weeks and
three days, keeping School. On a Journey to Pepperell, three
days. On a Journey to Bradford, June the 2d, 1772, absent from
Monday morning, before Breakfast, to Friday Night after Supper."
These entries indicate the frugality and the rigid con-
ditions of scrupulous economy and careful calculation
by which the youth in the period of his pupilage was
compelled to adjust his expenses to his means, while he
was dependent upon his own earnings.
Another entry, without date, acquaints us with the
exertion and effort on his own part, added to the outlay
for materials above transcribed, which he devoted to the
construction of his electrical machine.
" An Account of what Work I have done towards Getting an
Electrical Machine.
" Two or three days work making Wheele.
" One half days work making pattern for Small Conductor,
" Making pattern for Electrometer.
" One half day and a horse from hence to B. Tays, then to
W. Youngs, from thence to Ich* Richardsons, to try to get
Machine made.
Life of Count Ritmford. 33
" Four Journeys down to Ich* Richardsons Shop.
a Three Journeys to Cowdreys.
"One Journey to Boston, Aug 5 .' i6th, as I think."
A heading is made over a column for the entry of the
pecuniary estimate of these specifications, but no sums
are set down. It would have interested us to be told
what valuation he fixed for a day of his own time.
But young Thompson was at this time a student of
medicine and anatomy. The article devoted to him as
Count Rum ford, in the Nouvelle Biographic Generale,
very properly describes him before he left this country
as " Chimiste et Physicien [Physicist] Americain." The
memorandum-book has its full share of entries recogniz-
ing his interest and his devotion to the professional stud-
ies for which he was making his home with Dr. Hay.
Besides a few entries in cipher which may be regarded
as containing professional secrets, there are medical
recipes, in the approved cabalistic style, for the com-
position of doses, pills, and clysters. The ingredients
of a special preparation are set down as " for Phillis
Walker," in which assafoetida enters alike at the begin-
ning and at the end. As these recipes have doubtless
been very much improved upon, it is hardly advisable
to copy them here. The pupil's interest and skill in
anatomy are attested by an all too faithful drawing of
'the body of a malformed and monstrous infant, with
a whole page of minute description "of the following
Cut," dated April i6th, 1771, "a Club-foot," "a
Compleat hare-lip," and " toes growing in pairs," being
the least revolting among the aberrations noted.
An undated entry gives the following arrangement for
the disposal of his time during each period of twenty-
four hours. Beginning at eleven o'clock at night,
3
34 Life of Count Rumford.
u From eleven to six, Sleep. Get up at Six o'clock and wash
my hands and face. From Six to eight, exercise one half and
study one half. From eight till ten, Breakfast, Attend Prayers,
&c. From ten to twelve, Study all the time. From twelve
to one, Dine, &c. From one to four, study constantly. From
four to five, Relieve my mind by some Diversion or Exercise.
From five till Bedtime, follow what my inclination leads me
to ; whether it be to go abroad, or stay at home and read either
Anatomy, Physic, or Chemistry, or any other book I want to
Peruse."
This is followed by the ensuing account of his occu-
pations on each week-day for two weeks.
" Monday and Tuesday, Anatomy. Wednesday, Institutes
of Physic. Thursday, Surgery. Friday, Chemistry, with the
Materia Medica. Saturday, Physic one half, and Surgery one
half.
" Monday, Anatomy. Tuesday, Anatomy one half, and
Surgery one half. Wednesday, Surgery. Thursday, Institutes
of Physic. Friday, Physic. Saturday, Chemistry with the
Materia Medica."
When any man, young or old, thus methodically dis-
poses the days of the week and the hours of each day
with reference to systematic study and culture in pur-
suing various branches of knowledge, not neglectful of
the laws of health and the necessity of relaxation, we
may be sure that he will make, if he be not already, a
true philosopher. The fact, also, that Thompson had
to teach while he was himself learning, would make it
certain that he would do both to better purpose. In
boarding around for short periods with successive fami-
lies in many country towns, the fashion for the dis-
trict schoolmaster of those times, he largely increased
his knowledge of men and things.
The Hon. C. W. Upham, of Salem, informs me,
Life of Co^mt Rumford. 35
that when in 1818-19, as a c ^ e g e student, he taught
school in a district of Wilmington, following Thomp-
son at a distance of forty-seven or forty-eight years,
the oldest people there very well remembered their
distinguished and eccentric master of the former age.
Strange stories were told of certain athletic and gymnastic
performances and feats, not to say tricks, in which he
sometimes exercised himself and his scholars, within the
walls as well as outside. In the winter of 1770, Thomp-
son was confined five weeks with a fever.
Going back a little from some of the later contents
of these memoranda, particular reference must be made
to the envied privilege which young Thompson enjoyed
in attending some of the scientific lectures at Harvard
College. He refers to his temporary absence from Dr.
Hay's as beginning June 12, 1771, on occasion of
such attendance, and he seems to imply that he lived,
during the interval, at Cambridge. He may have found
lodging and board there for a short time. But it has
always been affirmed that so ardent was his desire thus
to gratify his scientific passion, that, while compelled to
make his visits to Cambridge consistent with duties in
Woburn, he walked, with his friend Baldwin, over the
distance, some eight miles or more. Some time be-
fore this, Mr. Baldwin, not being a student at the
College, had sought, and through the interest of a
friend in Boston had obtained, the privilege of attend-
ing upon Professor Winthrop's lectures there. He
secured the same privilege for his younger friend. We
may be sure that among those whose names were on the
class-lists there were none who more valued this rich
opportunity, or turned it to better account, than these
3 6 Life of Co^lnt Ritmford.
volunteers. It was in summer weather, and the walk,
if a long one, was agreeable, by shady roads and green
fields, and easy hills and pleasant ponds. When the
friends returned home, they were in the habit of repeat-
ing the experiments which they had witnessed, and of
trying others, with rude apparatus of their own con-
trivance. It was as a grateful return for the favors
he had thus enjoyed at the College that Count Rum--
ford gave to it the endowment which founded the Pro-
fessorship that bears his name, to be fitly mentioned in
its proper place.
Pictet must have again misapprehended his friend as
mentioning " Dr. Williams " as preceding Professor
Winthrop at Cambridge. Thompson could not have
heard the former as a lecturer in the College. The
Rev. Samuel Williams, to whom probably the reference
is made, succeeded Winthrop in the Professorship in
1780, when Thompson was not in the country. He
was called to that position from the pastorship of the
Church in Bradford. As Thompson had taught school
in that town, he may have there received instruction
from the scientific minister.
The following letter must interpret itself to the
reader. I can throw no light upon the occasion
of it.
" WOBURN, May 4, .1770.
" SIR, I just received your letter dated this day, the sequel
of which signifies your uneasiness with my conduct together
with a number of other persons concerned with me in rehears-
ing part of a play. I am not sensible we have transgressed the
laws of this Province. I have heard an argument related for
and against the thing by persons well acquainted with Law : the
person for it (as I was informed) brought his antagonist to
acknowledge that there was such a hole in that law, that any
Life of Count Rumford. 37
moderate performer of plays might easily creep through, and
that it is only meant (he supposed) to prevent extravagances,
such as public Theatres erected, stage-players and actors main-
tained, and frequent performances of plays, and the like. How
far he was right I can't say. For my share, I was not con-
scious that I had violated the law, or have done anything in the
affair that tends to corrupt the good morals of the people. And
as that was a real affair that happened between a king and his
subjects that we repeated, which our present times resemble so
much, we thought our time well spent in representing to a few
people the bad consequences attending a misled king.
" And men of the most refined sense and learning look upon
well-wrote plays to be very improving. Our present Majesty,
George the third, together with his Brother, Prince Edward, and
two sisters, Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth, have acted upon
the Stage, where his Majesty, in a prologue, spoke thus :
" ' Wise Authours say, let youth in earliest age,
Rehearse the poet's labours on the Stage ;
Teach our young hearts with generous fire to burn,
And feel the virtuous sentiments we learn,' &c.
" It seems he justifies and highly approves of them by his
large Donations and frequent attendance, &c. '
" I have not had opportunity to communicate the contents
of your letter to those of the Society, but shall embrace the
first opportunity proper for such an affair. And it is probable
that you will hear something from us as a Society yet, and there
is not a doubt with me but it will be to your entire satisfaction.
Meanwhile, I believe you may rest assured that there will not
be any further performances at present, by this Society.
u As I suppose you do not mean to seek an occasion against
us, but only to act faithfully in your office, as I hope I have not
given you reason to do it out of ill-will to me, nor would I be-
lieve you would do it on such principles, so, hoping that what's
past will not destroy the understanding between us,
" I remain your well-wisher, friend, and humble servant,
L. BALDWIN"
38 Life of Count Rumford.
Most friendships among young persons of either sex
are subjected to occasional disturbances of feeling arising
from misunderstanding or the crossing of plans. They
generally are of a trifling character, and are most apt to
originate in connection with pleasure-parties. The fol-
lowing correspondence seems to cover an incident of
this sort, in a fishing-excursion at Nahant.
MR. BALDWIN, " WoBURN > J une 4th ' I77 '
" SIR, Having received your favour of this afternoon, I find
a Question proposed to me, in answer to which I say first I
acted wrong in leaving Mr. Johnson's house before you were
ready. But as to slighting your company or friendship, I can
truly say I never meant it, and had I not expected you would
have overtaken us, I never would nor should have left the house
without you. But you may say I had no reason to expect you
to overtake me. In answer to that, I say, I knew nothing of
your affairs in the boat, among the fish, but what I gathered
from Mr. A. Thompson's talk when he came up. He said he
would eat his dinner and tackle the horses in the carriage and go
along. Dr. Hay said he would eat his dinner with him and go
along slowly, for his horse was very dull. He said you would
overtake him before he got to Lynn town, as you would have
nothing to do but to eat your dinner and set out after.
" I considered no more of the matter, but ate my dinner with
him, went and got the horses, brought yours to the door and
paid part for his keeping, and left word with Mrs. Johnson to
receive the rest, and set out, not doubting but you would over-
take me.
" I see no reason why you was so much more affronted with
me than with Dr. Hay, except the trouble you took to procure
me a horse (which I own was very kind). But you was at
much trouble, I should think, in taking care of the Doctor's
fish, in gutting and cleaning them, wetting and nastying yourself
with them. Be that as it may but to return.
" As to my talk after our return from Nahant, you must
Life of Count Rumford. 39
judge of it as of a person in anger, as I suppose we both were,
and I believe no person on earth can answer for all they say
when in anger. I believe if I had been in your place I should
have been angry ; but this I must affirm, that what reason I
have given you to be affronted with me, it was not through any
dislike to your company, or in any way wilfully to affront you,
but entirely through inadvertence and unthoughtfulness. For if
I had thought a moment it would have been just as well to have
stopped till you was ready, and then both of us have overtaken
the Doctor. But as I did not do it, 'tis impossible to do it now.
" And thus I think I have answered your question to me ;
and if you think me worth your further notice, I shall be very
glad to hear further from you, as soon as shall suit your con-
venience. And I shall conclude with subscribing myself,
Sir, your friend and humble servant,
BENJ* THOMPSON.
cc MR. THOMPSON,
" SIR, I have just received your letter, by hand of your
little Brother [Josiah Pierce, 3d]. The sequel of which (if
sincerely, sentimentally wrote, and not from some private view
dormant to me) is almost to my entire satisfaction. And had
it been offered the day after we were at Nahant, it had pre-
vented anything further than a reprimand, which my then pres-
ent exasperated state must have discharged. You quere why
you are so much more to blame than the Doctor. I consider that
I did not expect that you were going to make up with me on
the Doctor's account, but only on your own. So I understood
only with you. But the Doctor must think differently from
what he said the other day, before I shall think of him as I did
before. And if he catches me so again before he has made me
some satisfaction for what is past I '11 not blame him. But not
to detain you with my intentions with regard to the Doctor, I
shall proceed to inform you, if my company is agreeable to you,
you are welcome, and any apartment in my house at present
You may wonder at this last expression. But I expect to have an
apartment that I can't admit my brother into, at certain times,
before long.
40 Life of Count Rumford.
" But not forgetting the first proposed question, I answer that
I arn ready to join in such a Society with you, and shall attend
upon it as far as my business will permit which calls for me
now. So I must conclude, acknowledging myself your recon-
ciled friend, and
" Humble servant,
"L. BALDWIN.
" WOBURN, June 5, 1770."
The letter which succeeds is without date, but must
have been written before the preceding had been re-
ceived. The variance between the friends could not
have been a very deep, nor a permanent one.
u MR. BALDWIN,
" SIR, Some time before our unhappy difference we talked
of forming a Society amongst us, for propagating learning and
useful knowledge by means of questions to be proposed to a
certain number of persons, and each person to bring his answer
to said question proposed.
"And I don't doubt but by this means we might render our-
selves very useful to one another, and I see no just cause why
our late difference should be any impediment to this affair.
But if my being one in said Society be the reason for your not
joining, I shall be very sorry to be the cause of depriving you
of so much pleasure as will naturally accrue to one of your
genius.
u Sir, I should be extremely glad if you would favor me with
a line or two (since I am denied talking with you) with your
sentiments on the affair, and your answer to this. In so doing
you will oblige,
"Your most humble servant,
"BEN]*. THOMPSON.
"P. S. I have made the book to enter the questions and
answers in.
" Yours, &c., B. T.
" To him I thought once I might call
" my friend, MR. L. BALDWIN."
Life of Count Rumford. 41
The place, unnamed, where Thompson, in his memo-
randa, records that he taught school " six weeks and
three days," was doubtless the pleasant town of Brad-
ford, on the Merrimack. Here he was so well esteemed
for faithful services that he was sent for to Concord,
New Hampshire, higher up the same river, by Colonel
Timothy Walker, and offered a situation in a school
of a higher grade, which would secure him a permanent
position. Concord, under its Indian name of Pena-
cook, had been claimed on its settlement by the Eng-
lish as being within the bounds and jurisdiction of
Massachusetts. As such it had been incorporated, in
1733 34, as a town in Essex County, Massachusetts,
under the name of Rumford, probably from a town
of that name, generally called Romford, about twelve
miles from London, whence some of the original set-
tlers in the New England wilderness had emigrated.
The name has interest for us, as it was chosen by
Benjamin Thompson for a title when he was made a
" Count of the Holy Roman Empire." The name
of the town was changed to Concord, to mark the
restoration of harmony after a long period of agita-
tion as to its provincial jurisdiction and its relations
with its neighbors. It was gratitude which prompted
Thompson to ma^e the name of Rumford titular,
and, as we have seen, he expressed most tenderly and
reverently his sense of obligation to the venerated
minister of the place, his patron, guide, and father-
in-law.
Thompson had reason for this gratitude and sense
of obligation. Had he fallen upon peaceful times,
and made his native country his home for life, the
propitious start which he received in Concord and the
42 Life of Coitnt Rumford.
friends which there made his family circle would have
secured his high position and success.
The Rev. Timothy Walker, the first minister of
Concord, New Hampshire, himself a native of Wo-
burn, and connected already with the Thompson family,
had joined the fortunes of the early settlers in 1730 as
their spiritual guide, and continued in their service as
such till his death, September 2, 1782, after a minis-
try of fifty-two years. He was one of that class of
ministers, characteristic of New England from its colo-
nization down nearly to our own times, who, while
holding a position and authority officially and conven-
tionally supreme among the people of a settlement,
proved worthy of esteem, and used their influence for
unqualified good. Mr. Walker was the most honored
citizen of Concord, as well as its beloved minister, and
he has been honored in the line of his descendants.
He had been thrice sent on missions to England on
business connected with the disputes about the juris-
diction of the town and province, and had there im-
pressed the legal counsel which he employed, and the
tribunal before which he was heard, in a manner that
insured his success. He also used his opportunities
abroad for observation and acquisition, so as to enhance
his influence at home. His son, Colonel Timothy
Walker, a lawyer, was also a man of talent and po-
sition.
But next to the minister, just previous to Thomp-
son's visit to Concord, Colonel Benjamin Rolfe held
place and power in the village. He was the squire,
was rich and public-spirited. He is distinguished as
having been the first owner and driver of a curricle and
a pair of horses in New Hampshire, always excepting
Life of Count Rumford. 43
the Governor's at Portsmouth. Colonel Rolfe having
lived as a bachelor till he was about sixty years old, then
married Sarah, the daughter of the Rev. Timothy
Walker, she being at the time about thirty. Un-
fortunately, some of the interleaved almanacs in which
the good minister was in the habit of entering his official
acts and matters of church record have been lost, and
thus we are left in ignorance of some dates which would
interest us. The Concord town records say that Sarah
Walker was born October 6, 1739. She was marr i e d
to Colonel Rolfe in 1769. They had one son, after-
wards Colonel Paul Rolfe. The father died Decem-
ber 21, 1771, in his sixty-second year, leaving to his
widow and son a large estate. He built a fine house
at the so-called " Eleven Lots," since known as the
Rolfe House. It was here that his widow, as the wife
of Count Rumford, lived, and on the I9th of January,
1792, died at the age of fifty-two.
When Benjamin Thompson went to Concord as a
teacher he was in the glory of his youth, not having
yet reached manhood. His friend Baldwin describes
him as of a fine manly make and figure, nearly six feet
in height, of handsome features, bright blue eyes, and
dark auburn hair. He had the manners and polish
of a gentleman, with fascinating ways, and an ability
to make himself agreeable. So diligently, too, had he
used his opportunities of culture and reading that he
might well have shined even in a circle socially more ex-
acting than that to which he was now introduced. We
may anticipate here the conclusion to which the review
of his whole career will lead us, that, as boy or man,
he was never one to allow an opportunity of advance-
ment to escape him. He seems to have given satisfac-
44 Life of Count Rumford.
tion as a teacher. The traditions that linger in the
older homes at Concord, like those at Wilmington,
include a large element of reminiscences of certain ac-
complishments and activities of the young teacher which
were not of a strictly official character. He was skilled
in vaulting and other athletic feats, and he won very
early in his life the repute of gallantry.
When Count Rumford, looking back from the
achievements and honors of his foreign career, told
his friend Pictet of his deep indebtedness to the Rev.
Mr. Walker for kindly oversight and counsel, for
fostering patronage, and for fatherly love, his thoughts
must have turned into feelings as he tenderly recalled
some happy scenes and hours in that country parson-
age. There, and to the house of the younger Walker,
Thompson often went to give account of his peda-
gogueship and to enjoy social pleasures. There, too,
and at other places, he would meet the daughter and
sister in her early widowhood. He told Pictet that
she married him, rather than he her. The tradition
is that she facilitated what is often to the young man
the difficult crisis in a relation which is easy before and
after that crisis is past. An engagement was speedily
effected between the parties with the entire approbation
of the reverend father.
The before-mentioned curricle, left among the effects
of Colonel Rolfe, was now put to service. The lady
invited the young teacher, who was no longer to preside
over a school, to accompany her on an excursion to
Boston, a drive of over sixty miles, she having friends
on the way whose hospitality was sure. She took care,
with his own efficient co-operation, to have him fur-
nished in Boston with all that was requisite at that
Life of Count Rumford. 45
time for fashionable array, including the offices of tailor
and hair-dresser. Of course the color of his garments
was his own favorite scarlet, ominous of the ill esteem
into which he was soon to fall as too friendly to those
whose military garb was of that hue. Tradition re-
ports, that as the pair, not yet married, were on their
homeward way, the lady ordered the curricle to stop
at the door of Mrs. Pierce's house, the mother of her
companion. That mother, being as yet ignorant of the
change that had come over the fortunes of her son, was
amazed at the apparition at her humble doorway, and
especially at the gorgeous and extravagant array of her
son, the village schoolmaster, and the not idle, but
unprofitably busy experimenter. She is reported to
have given vent to her surprise in the rebuking ques-
tion, "Why, Ben! my son, how could you go and
lay out all your winter's earnings in finery ? " The
tradition continues that the mother, hesitating some-
what about the character of her son's female com-
panion and the explanation given by her, was finally,
through the intervention of Dr. Hay, made to under-
stand the circumstances of the case. She still wished
time to think upon it, but on the next day gave her
consent. (See Appendix.)
Thompson said that he was married " at the age of
nineteen." Here, again, the loss of the minister's
almanac leaves us in ignorance of a date. Benjamin
Thompson and Mrs. Sarah Walker Rolfe were mar-
ried previously to January 18, 1773. Their daughter,
and only child, Sarah, late Countess of Rumford, was
born October 18, 1774, in the Rolfe mansion. I have
found one date given for the marriage as " about No-
vember, 1772," and it probably did take place then, or
46 Life of Count Rumford.
nearer the close of that year. At that time Thompson
would have been but four or five months short of
twenty years of age, while his wife would have been
thirty-three. This disproportion of years might have
proved infelicitous in itself, had not a more serious
misfortune soon resulted in a separation between them.
Whether we are to recognize in this disparity of the
parties one reason for the seeming indifference of the
husband when in exile to the wife whom he had left
at home, must be referred to the judgment of the reader.
Mrs. Thompson, through her former husband, had
made acquaintance at Portsmouth with Governor Went-
worth and others in prominent society there. Thither
she took her new husband on their marriage tour, and
he soon became known to the Governor. The proba-
ble date of this bridal tour furnishes another reason for
believing that the marriage of Mr. Thompson took
place in November, 1772. On the i3th of the
month there was a grand military muster and review
at Dover, ten miles from Portsmouth, of the officers
and soldiers of the Second Provincial Regiment of New
Hampshire. Governor Wentworth and some of his
Council, with many gentlemen and ladies from Ports-
mouth, attended it with considerable display and cere-
mony. The Rev. Dr. Belknap, the admirable historian
of New Hampshire, and then the minister of Dover,
preached on the occasion a sermon which was thought
by the officers worthy of the press, and it was published
at their request. The festivities, which began in Dover,
were transferred for their continuance to Portsmouth.
The tradition has always been that Mr. Thompson here
attracted the attention of the Governor at the review,
was introduced to him, and was on the day following a
Life of Count Rumford. 47
guest at his table. For the good fortune, if such it
really were, which thus secured to him a questionable
honor, he was indebted, as we shall find that he also
was eleven years afterwards on the continent of Europe,
to his fine appearance as he rode on horseback, as a
spectator of a military review. Portsmouth was then
the centre of much wealth and refinement. It had a
mercantile class engaged in extensive business. Its
crown officers, with others in government employ, and
their associates in the administration of local affairs,
made an aristocracy of influence and fashion. It was
a time of growing alienations and fermenting discords,
and the more prominent or influential the position of
any individual, the more necessary was it for him to com-
mit himself to a side, and, having done so, to act and
speak as no longer neutral. Governor Wentworth rec-
ognized in young Thompson, not only the representa-
tive of a family already prominent in the public and
social life of his Province, but also a man of unmis-
takable promise, and of qualities that would be likely
to work vigorously for any interests which he should
espouse, especially if they were identified with his own.
He determined, therefore, to make him an object of
marked favoritism. A vacancy having occurred in a
majorship in the Second Provincial Regiment of New
Hampshire, Governor Wentworth at once commis-
sioned Thompson to fill it. It was only as a matter
of patronage from the royal Governor that the receipt
of such a commission might be supposed to cool the
spirit of patriotism in the young officer. It was not
the place, but the source and manner of his elevation
to it, that made it embarrassing to its possessor in his
subsequent course. His fellow-officers found no diffi-
48 Life of Count Rumford.
culty, when the time of trial came, in deciding whether
they were to engage for or against the liberty of their
native land.
But this sudden elevation of Thompson, without
military knowledge or experience, without even any
personal claim, over men in the line of fair promotion
who had seen actual service and had won their position,
was a piece of simple folly on the part of the Governor; ,
and it was an act of weakness, if not of pure vanity,
in Thompson to accept it, though it is affirmed that he
had not asked it. He had himself not yet come of legal
age, and he was lifted over veterans, the military men
with well-known titles, as lieutenants and captains, in
different country towns, when those titles were N some-
thing more than tavern or roadside compliments. The
young officer became the subject of jealous feeling and
of hostile criticism. Every subordinate, as well as many
of his superiors, were soon found to be his effective
enemies.
He made frequent calls upon the Governor, and it is
evident that he appreciated and improved his oppor-
tunities. The following letter to his friend the Rev.
Mr. Williams, of Bradford, afterwards Professor at the
College, indicates the high spirits in which Thompson
returned from one of his visits to Portsmouth.
"CONCORD, Monday, Jan'y i8th, 1773.
" DEAR SIR, Last Friday I had the honour to wait upon his
Excellency, Governour Wentworth, at Portsmouth, where I was
very politely and agreeably entertained for the space of an hour
and a half. I had not been in his company long before I pro-
ceeded upon business, viz. to ask his Excellency whether
ever the White Mountains had been surveyed. He answering
me in the negative, I proceeded to acquaint him that there was
Life of Count Rumford. 49
a number of persons who had thought of making an expedition
that way next summer, and asked him whether it would be
agreeable to his Excellency. He said it would be extremely
agreeable, seemed excessively pleased with the plan, promised
to do all that lay in his power to forward it, said that he had
a number of Mathematical instruments (such as two or three
telescopes, Barometer, Thermometer, Compass, &c.) at Went-
worth House (at Wolfeborough, only about 30 miles from
the mountains), all which, together with his library, should be
at our service. That he should be extremely glad to wait on
us, and to crown all he promised, if there were no public busi-
ness which rendered his presence at Portsmouth absolutely neces-
sary, that he would take his tent equipage and go with us to
the mountain and tarry with us, and assist us till our survey,
which he said he supposed would take about 12 or 14
days !!! !! !!!!!
" My dear Mr. Williams, is not this a sweet gentleman ?
one exactly suited to our taste, how charming ! how con-
descending ! how easy and pleasant in conversation ! But you
can form no adequate idea of him till you have been in his
company. But to proceed. His Excellency asked me what
gentlemen I thought would be likely to go. I told him I had
mentioned it to several, but more especially to Mr. Williams
of Bradford, who was a gentleman famous for bis Mathematical
Genius, &c., &c., &c., &c. His Excellency answered that he had
no particular acquaintance with you, but that he had heard of
you as being a great Mathematician ! and Philosopher ! and should
be extremely glad of your company and assistance in the affair.
And further ! he desired me to give his compliments to you,
and desire you to attend.
" But stop ! I will not tell you any more till you come and
see me as you promised ; then we will lay the whole plan of
operation, and I will tell you a charming secret, something
you would give the world to know. 'T is nothing about
Magnetism, nor Electricity, nor Optics, nor Evaporation, nor
Flatulances, nor Earthquakes. No, but 't is something twice
as pretty ! something entirely new ; but it can't be revealed
4
50 Life of Count Rumford.
except in the town of Concord. And I do solemnly protest
by the third joint of St. Peter's great toe, that unless you come
and see me this winter, you shall never know this grand
Arcanum.
"There will be an ordination at Hopkinton next week on
Wednesday, and 't is only six miles from our house. Pray,
try and come, so as to attend, if possible. If not, come as soon
as you can, for 't is charming sleighing as ever was known.
" Mrs. Thompson's Compliments to you and your lady, and
begs you would give us the Pleasure of waiting on you both at
Concord very soon.
" Interim, we both remain Yours and Your Lady's most
Obedient
" Humble Servt 8 ,
"BENJA THOMPSON."*
One might imagine the something "new" and " so
pretty " here referred to was a fathers proud trophy
of a babe. But this could not be.
We may suppose that Major Thompson, with his
versatility of talent, would not neglect any means of
qualifying himself in knowledge and practice for a mili-
tary career. As we shall see, when on his way ten-years
afterwards to offer his services as a soldier to the Aus-
trians, he confesses to having been passionately engaged
with ardor for martial work. I am inclined to think
that the entry in his memorandum-book, already copied,
of " Directions for the Back Sword," is a memorial of
his purpose and effort to train himself in the use of
weapons as became a field-officer. He may have taken
lessons from the Mr. McAlpine to whom he credits
those directions, as I find the advertisements of that
teacher in the New Hampshire Gazette of the dates
* Copy of a letter of Benj. Thompson to Rev. Samuel Williams, LL. D., then
at Meredith, N. H. I am indebted for this letter to Mr. Jos. B. Walker of Concord.
Life of Count Riimford. 51
corresponding to Major Thompson's commission. Mr.
Donald McAlpine appears to have been an itinerant
practitioner, having pupils at Portsmouth, Newbury-
port, and several other places.
In his essay on his Experiments in Gunpowder, made
in England in 1778 and 1779, Thompson speaks of
himself as having been cc for many years " engaged in
practical investigations of that subject. It would ap-
pear that this was his first really scientific labor. The
knowledge and skill which he professed when he first
experimented abroad are evidences of. what he had al-
ready done here at Salem, Woburn, and Concord, and
afterwards, for a short time, in the camp of the New
England forces at Cambridge.
For a brief interval Thompson comes before us as a
gentleman farmer, with a zeal exceeding that of the
husbandmen around him who were content to culti-
vate native crops. He had broad acres to till, and
employed many laborers, among them some deserters
from the British regiments in Boston.
Here we have Thompson as a farmer.
"CONCORD, July 1 7 th, 1773.
" MR. L. BALDWIN,
" SIR, As I am engaged in husbandry I have a mind to try
some experiments in that way, and as my Mother informs me
you are about to send to England for some Garden-seeds,
against the spring, I should be extremely obliged if you would
send the enclosed memorandum (or, rather, a copy of it) to Lon-
don, so that I may have the seeds mentioned therein (or as
many of them as can be had) as early in the spring as possi-
ble. You may depend upon the cash for them as soon as they
arrive, together with an ample reward for your trouble and ex-
penses.
u Please to write for them to come as soon as possible, for I
52 Life of Count Rumford.
have 1 8 or 20 acres of land to lay down to grass in the spring,
and shall want the grass-seed very much and very early.
" Last evening I had the pleasure to receive a letter from his
Excellency Governor Wentworth, in which, among others, is
the following Paragraph, vi7,. c The many unexpected affairs
of business that have hitherto employed me has consumed so
much of my time this summer, that I am compelled to give up
my proposed tour to the White Hills for this year. But I shall
be very glad to see you at Wolfboro' at any time it may suit
your convenience, as I hope to get my family there by the last
week of August,' &c.
u Thus you see we are disappointed this year ; perhaps next
may prove more favorable.
" I received your letters per Mr. Sables, but had not oppor-
tunity to write by him.
" Mrs. Thompson sends compliments (and we trust by this
time congratulations would not be improper) to you and your
Lady. [They were just in season for a child born June 22d.]
" Have nothing new so must conclude with telling you the
old story over again viz*, that I am with great truth and
esteem
"Your real friend a"- 1 Humble Servant,
"BEN]* THOMPSON.
" To MR. BALDWIN, Merchant in Woburn."
" CONCORD, August 21, 1774.
" DEAR SIR, I have been extremely busy this Summer, or
I should have given myself the pleasure of coming to see you,
but have not been able to get away as yet.
" The seeds which you were so kind as to send to England
for on my behalf, I will come or send for as soon as I can
conveniently, when I will pay you, together with ample satis-
faction for my not sending for them sooner. I should have sent
a hand on purpose for them, but the season of their usefulness
was past for this year before I received advice of their arrival.
" I know you must be extremely altered, or a Philosophical
and Mathematical Correspondence would be very agreeable to
Life of Co^lnt Rumford. 53
you. I have, therefore, taken the liberty to propose the follow-
ing Problem, which I send you not so much for the difficulty as
the oddness of the Solution.
" A certain Cistern has three Brass-Cocks : one of which will
empty it in 15 minutes, one in 30 minutes, and the other in
60 minutes. Qu ? How long would it take to empty the Cis-
tern if all three of the Cocks were to be opened at once ?
" If you are fond of a correspondence of this kind, and will
favour me with an easy question, Arithmetical or Algebraical, I
will endeavour to give as good an account of it as possible. If
you find out an answer to the above immediately, I hope you
will not take it as an affront, my proposing anything which you
may think so easy, for I must confess I scarce ever met with
any little notion that puzzled me so much in my life.
" You must give me leave to complain a little of your un-
kindness in not letting me have so much as one line by so good
an opportunity as Mr. Richardson. You used to profess friend-
ship for me, I really thought it was not mere profession only.
And I cannot but have charity for you yet. I suppose business
the cares of the world prevented. Pray, don't fail to let
me hear from you as often as possible. And believe me Really
to be your Sincere friend, and
" Humble Servant,
"BENJf THOMPSON.
" P. S.* Please to make mine and Mrs. Thompson's com-
pliments to your Parents and Lady.
" To MR. LOAMMI BALDWIN, Merchant in Woburn."
It would have been natural, and according to the
common precedents of the time and of the community
in which he lived, for this promising and well-supported
young man to have looked for civil office, first as a
representative of Concord in the Provincial Assembly
of New Hampshire, and then as one of the Governor's
Council. But he would have needed what he seems
not to have secured or enjoyed, the hearty confidence
54 Life of Count Rumford.
and attachment of the common people, to have obtained
any office in their gift. The time was near at hand
when he found that patronage from any other quarter
than that of the people was at least a disadvantage, not
only as a bar to popular favor, but also as a reasonable
ground of suspicion.
It is pleasant, however, to close this chapter of the
biography of Benjamin Thompson, leaving him at the
first stage of success in a course which was to be splen-
didly illustrated by distinctions and titular honors. As
to the shadows which we are now to trace as gath-
ering around his opening manhood, we may study them
either in their own disagreeable aspects, or as subse-
quent incidents and acts tend to drive them, if not into
oblivion, at least into a considerate and softened esti-
mate of their relatively unimportant character.
CHAPTER II.
Revolutionary Portents. Division of Parties. Governor
Wentworth. Thompson 's Visits to Portsmouth. Mili-
tary Review. Intimacy and Favor with the Gov-
ernor. Commissioned Major. Jealousies and Enmi-
ties. Accused of Toryism. Meditated Outrage.
Flight from Concord. Refuge in Woburn, Charlestown,
and Boston. His Petition and Examination. Letters
to Mr. Walker. Visits the Camp. Seeks Employ-
ment. Departure. Newport. Secret Residence in
Boston. Sent to England. Confiscation of his Prop-
erty. Proscribed.
THE genius of which young Thompson had given
such early ' and marked tokens might possibly
have found at the time a sphere for its development
and culture in his native country, either in peace or in
war. The revolutionary struggle which began with his
opening manhood, continuing for seven years, and clos-
ing with heavy exactions upon all men of mental vigor
and executive faculties in the arduous work of organ-
izing an infant republic, would certainly have afforded
for him a field in which he would as certainly have en-
gaged his eminent abilities and won high distinction.
It seemed as if accident, or rather the influence of cir-
cumstances independent of, and even in opposition to,
his own avowed inclinations, decided for him the issue
whether he should side with his native country or
56 Life of Count Rumford.
against it in its war of freedom. Happily for him,
however, and for us, the great work of his life and
his Cervices to humanity lead us away from battle-
fields, and from the limitations of what is called pa-
triotism.
It is probable, on the other hand, that the bent of
Thompson's genius, and the qualities of his natural
character and temperament, needed a foreign field for
their most favorable and congenial exercise. Like
Franklin, he knew that he would meet with a. fuller
appreciation, and find a stimulus and an efficient patron-
age, only in the fellowship of men who had talent,
means, and leisure for scientific inquiries and pursuits.
It becomes necessary now to set down a matter-of-
fact statement of the circumstances which led Thomp-
son to abandon his home, leaving behind him his wife,
to whom he owed so much, and whom he was never
to see again, and his infant child; deserting, likewise,
the cause of his native country, though with no pur-
pose at. the time, as it would appear, of taking part
against it. I shall content myself with a relation of
those circumstances, not interposing any judgment of
my own as a plea in his defence or as a verdict of con-
demnation. The circumstances will have interest in
themselves, illustrating very pointedly, in the case of
an individual, an episode of history which bore with
great severity upon the fortunes of large numbers.
Young Thompson was essentially a courtier. He
manifested in early manhood the tastes, aptitudes, and
cravings which prompt their possessor, however hum-
bly born, and under whatever repression from sur-
rounding influences, to push his way in the world by
seeking the acquaintance and winning the patronage
Life of Count Rumford. 57
of his social superiors, who have favors and distinctions
to bestow. Conscious of possessing talents and capaci-
ties which would make the labors of a country farmer,
or even of a pedagogue, distasteful, as well as inadequate
for him, he would hardly be a congenial companion for
those around him. The facility with which he adapted
himself to court-life in Europe, to intimacies with
nobles, to the ways of fashion, and to the culture of the
intellectual classes, reflects back upon his early years
the certainty that he could not have been popular with
his townsfolk and neighbors, or even a sociable com-
panion with his own kin. He was regarded from his
boyhood as being above his position ; and while his
inconstancy of Occupation gave him the repute of an
idler and a dreamer, his dabblings with science were
not interpreted as promises of a fruitful and serviceable
life. He had also a noble and imposing figure, with
great personal beauty, and with those whose acquaint-
ance he cultivated he was most affable and winning
in his manners. He had never been really indolent,
but was ever seeking to rise. Doubtless, in the rustic
labor which in his boyhood took him by himself into
the forest to chop a load of wood and to team it to the
market, to meet the frugal expenses of his livelihood,
he kept his mind engaged upon the philosophy of
even that work. We may be sure that he learned to
wield the axe with scientific skill, and to economize his
blows, while all the facilities of sledding, and logging,
and adjusting a load would be acquired by experiment.
The traditions already referred to of his extraneous
performances in gymnastics while a school-teacher, fail
to report to us what we may reasonably imagine,
that he was the most diligent and acquisitive pupil in
58 Life of Coimt Rumford.
his own school, and that there was no instructive book
in the village, or in the not scanty library of his father-
in-law, who had thrice been a sojourner in England,
whose contents had not attracted him.
His marriage, enabling him to give over the necessity
of school-keeping, furnished him the leisure and the
means for making excursions at his pleasure. Besides
his acquaintance with Governor Wentworth at Ports-
mouth, he had also, on visits with his wife to Boston,
been introduced to Governor Gage, and several of the
British officers, and had partaken of their hospitalities.
Two soldiers who had deserted from the army in Bos-
ton, finding their way to Concord, had been employed
by him upon his farm. Thinking they would do better
to return to their ranks and their comrades, they had
sought for the intervention of their employer to secure
them immunity from punishment. Thompson ad-
dressed a few lines for this purpose to General Gage,
asking, at the same time, that his own agency in their
behalf should not be disclosed.
I can find no positive and direct evidence of any
unfriendly or unpatriotic act done by Mr. Thompson,
or even of any speech of such a character attributed to
him. None such is upon record. His friend, Colonel
Baldwin, stood by him, as would appear, confidently
and heartily. But his brother-in-law, the Hon. Tim-
othy Walker, next to his father the most influential
man in Concord, with other friends, by advising his
leaving that town, help us to conjecture what may have
been the facts of the case, though no witness ever ap-
peared to testify against him when opportunity was
given. Besides his acquaintance with the royal gov-
ernors, the patronage he had received from one of them,
Life of Count Rumford. 59
the intimacy in which he was supposed to stand with
the other, the return of the deserters, and any degree
of unpopularity which he may have had with his towns-
men, Thompson had probably spoken his mind with
some freedom, in a way to check the rising spirit of
the people, in palliation of the measures of the King
and ministry, and in distrust of the ability and success
of the resistance which was to be made. This, I am
inclined to think, was the extent of his " Toryism,"
aggravated by his youth, and perhaps not relieved by
any modesty of utterance, caution, or deference. There
were inflammable materials around him. There were
very many older and far more conspicuous men than
himself who, in the earliest stage of the revolutionary
struggle, were forced against their own inclinations to
take side with the royalist party, because they had
spoken some hasty or deliberate words of hesitancy,
and had been roughly treated for them.
The actual rupture into hostilities against the British
authority and arms had come suddenly, especially in
New Hampshire, where, notwithstanding, it was de-
cisive. Governor Wentworth had himself been quite
popular in his Province. Before he had succeeded his
uncle in his office, he had been strongly opposed to
every measure of Great Britain which was regarded as
encroaching upon our liberties. He had even been
sent to England as the agent of the Assembly to pro-
cure the repeal of the Stamp Act ; and he had shown
a great deal of public spirit in his efforts and measures
to improve the Province by opening and settling its
interior and fostering its rising college. Mr. Thompson
might well allege, as he did, the fact that Governor
Wentworth, when he made him his friend, was warmly
60 Life of Count Rumford.
esteemed. But he was nevertheless faithful to his
official trust when the royal authority was defied, though
he acted most Unwisely and blindly.
Yet some of the foremost men in all the Colonies
men of intelligence, rectitude, high character, and un-
questionable patriotism hesitated as to the rightfulness
or the policy of the first measures which initiated the
Revolution. Some such honestly doubted whether the
colonists had real, substantial grievances, and if, having
such, they ought not to seek quite different means of
redress. We can afford in these days, and in the calm-
ness of our retrospect, to distinguish between the facts
of history and the rhetoric of demonstrative orators.
We certainly must distinguish between the grounds for
hesitancy and mistrust which influenced wise and honest
men who were obliged to take a side before actual hos-
tilities opened, and the character of the struggle as it
went on. The exasperation of feeling which followed
upon the successive measures and acts of the British
government and forces, in burning our towns and sea-
ports, and employing mercenary troops, and in other
outrages, doubtless made many of the " Tories " regret
their loyalty, while at the same time it intensified the
popular acrimony against them.
Ten years before the outbreak of hostilities there had
been even an era of good feeling, in the New England
Colonies especially, towards the British monarchy and
ministry. The Indian and French War, in which
Thompson's own kin had many of them done good
service, had happily freed the frontier towns of all the
apprehensions and horrors of savage inroads, and the
treasuries of the other settlements from the exactions
of a military force for their defence. Though the
Life of Count Rumford. 61
Colonies themselves had contributed men and money
to this tedious and costly warfare, yet the exchequer
and the soldiery of England had furnished the forces
without which we should have been powerless. When
the Prime Minister, Grenville, in 1764, called the agents
of our Colonies together in England, he said to them
that the burden left by the French war was a debt of
seventy-three millions sterling. The protection we had
received, of course, excited a feeling of gratitude among
our people, and the more loyal among them thought
that their share in the cost of government was light,
and that it was compensated. In 1763, Mr. James
Otis, afterwards to be known as the leading patriot,
in his address as Moderator of the first town meeting
held in Boston, after the peace, said : " No other con-
stitution of civil government has ever yet appeared in
the world so admirably adapted to the preservation of
the great purposes of liberty and knowledge as that
of Great Britain. Every person in America is, of com-
mon right, by acts of Parliament and the laws of God,
entitled to all the essential privileges of Britons. The
true interests of Great Britain and her Colonies are
mutual ; and what God in his providence has united,
let no man dare attempt to pull asunder." Duties had
been reduced, and now the odious Stamp Act had been
repealed, and the colonists had assurance that their last
and fundamental grievance, of taxation without repre-
sentation, would be redressed.
Our candor, therefore, in these days, must persuade
us to allow that there were reasons, or, at least, preju-
dices and apprehensions, which might lead honest and
right-hearted men, lovers and friends of their birth-
land, to oppose the rising spirit of independence as
_
62 Life of Count Riimford.
inflamed by demagogues, and as foreboding discomfiture
and mischief. They feared that we should suffer the
worst of the strife, and that the sort of government we
should be likely to have as the alternative of a mon-
archy would probably make us largely the losers. Yet
the utterance of such views, if only as misgivings, might
in many places be equally impolitic and dangerous.
As has been already said, there is no record, or even
tradition, of unwise or unfriendly expressions dropped
by Mr. Thompson which could be used against him
even when he challenged proof of his alleged disaffec-
tion to the cause of his country. However, he was
young, and he had an independent spirit. His military
promotion by pure favoritism, and, what he insisted was
simply an act of humanity, his seeking immunity for
two returning deserters, were enough in themselves to
assure him jealous enemies. But silence and neutrality
were then as hazardous as speech or opposition di-
rected against the popular enthusiasm. He therefore
became a suspected person in Concord, where there
were watching enemies and tale-bearers, as well as jeal-
ous Committees, who soon brought their functions to
bear in a most searching and offensive way against all
who did not attend the popular assemblies. It was as
well known as it was observable that Thompson took
no part in these. What more he did or said, or failed
of doing or saying, must be left, as before remarked, to
conjecture. Yet it must have been something which
irritated or displeased, something which could be turned
into the material for exciting a mob, with the risk of
rude, if not violent, treatment, exhibited at the time in
the favorite process of tarring and feathering a politi-
cally obnoxious person. Thompson's family connec-
Life of Count Rumford. 63
tions, beginning with the minister and the squire of the
town, were, of course, the most powerful set among
the inhabitants ; and if they were unable to vindicate
him and protect him from outrage, and if even his
brother-in-law and other friends advised him to quit
the place, though he did not seek counsel from his
venerated father-in-law, we may well infer that his
apprehensions were not vain, whatever his own con-
sciousness of rectitude.
There was something exceedingly humiliating and
degrading to a man of an independent and self-respect-
ing spirit in the conditions imposed at times by the
" Sons of Liberty," in the process of clearing himself
from the taint of Toryism. The Committees of Corre-
spondence and of Safety, whose services stand glorified
to us through their most efficient agency in a successful
struggle, delegated their authority to every witness or
agent who might be a self-constituted guardian of patri-
otic interests, or a spy or an eaves-dropper, to catch
reports of suspected persons. A case transpired in Mr.
Thompson's neighborhood of which he doubtless had
knowledge. The British troops in Boston being with-
out barracks, and the carpenters of that and the sur-
rounding towns being -unwilling to build them, Gov-
ernor Gage had applied to Governor Wentworth to
send him workmen from New Hampshire for that
service. The latter engaged secret agents to execute
this commission. But the story leaked out, and the
Committee of Ways and Means at Portsmouth took
up the matter vigorously, and so thoroughly searched it
as to discover one of the Governor's secret agents in
this business, Nicholas Austin. The " Sons of Lib-
erty " summoned the delinquent before them on the
64 Life of Count' Rumf or d.
8th of November, 1774, and compelled him to make',
on Jiis knees, the following confession :
" Before this company I confess I have been aiding and
assisting in sending men to Boston to build Barracks for the
soldiers to live in, at which you have reason justly to be of-
fended, which I am sorry for, and humbly ask your forgivness ;
and I do affirm, that for the future I never will be acting or
assisting in any wise whatever, in Act or Deed, contrary to the
Constitution of the Country ; as witness my hand.
" NICHOLAS AUSTIN." *
Benjamin Thompson was not the man to subject
himself to any such humiliating treatment. He, how-
ever, knew very well, that the military commission which
he had received though, it is said, without his having
asked for it from the partiality of Governor Went-
worth, while it had provoked the enmity of older men
who had real claims for military promotion, had also
led him to be classed with the partisans of that magis-
trate just as the popular feeling was most inflamed
against him. He had occasion to fear any indignity
which an excited and reckless country mob, directed by
a secret instigation, might see fit to inflict upon him,
whether it were by arraying him in tar and feathers, or
by riding him upon a rail to be jeered at by his former
school-pupils. The actual and visible agents in inflict-
ing such degrading insults were not generally the neigh-
bors and former companions of an obnoxious person,
but were such volunteers, whether in their own proper
garb or disguised as Indians, as were easily rallied
from adjoining towns. If % ill-usage stopped short of
these extremes, the condition of escape and security
was, as has been given in the case of Austin, a public
* New Hampshire Gazette, Portsmouth, November II, 1774.
Life of Count Rumford. 65
recantation, unequivocally and strongly expressed, in-
volving a confession of some act or word in opposition
to the will of the popular party, and a solemn pledge
of future uncompromising fidelity to it. Major Thomp-
son insisted from the first, and steadfastly to the close
of his life affirmed, that he was friendly to the patriot
cause, and had never done or said anything which could
be truthfully alleged as hostile to it. He demanded,
first in private, and then in public, that his enemies
should confront him with any charges which they could
bring against him, and he promised to meet them, while
he also offered to render any service for which he was fit-
ted in the popular interest. He resolved, however, that
he would not plead except against explicit charges, nor
invite indignity by self-humiliation. We must draw
our own inferences here, whether by convincing our-
selves that the popular distrust of him was unerring in
its discernment and surmise, and had good reason on
its side, or that he was the innocent sufferer from un-
toward circumstances. If the people of Concord and
the jealous regimental officers of New Hampshire were
responsible for depriving the patriot cause of an effec-
tive military or executive servant, they may claim
credit for furnishing Europe with a very eminent and
practically useful philosopher.
Major Thompson was summoned before a Committee
of the people in Concord, in the summer of 1774, to
answer to the suspicion of "being unfriendly to the
cause of Liberty." He positively denied the charge,
and boldly challenged proof. The evidence, if any
such was offered, and no trace of testimony, or even
of imputation, of that kind is on record, was not of a
sort to warrant any proceeding, against him, and he was
5
66 Life of Count Rtimford.
discharged. This discharge, however, though nominally
an acquittal, was not. effective in relieving him from
popular distrust and in assuring for him confidence.
Probably his own backwardness to avow sympathy and
make professions in accordance with the wishes of his
enemies left him still under a cloud. A measure less
formal and more threatening than the examination be-
fore a self-constituted tribunal was, as a matter of
course, secretly planned by the excited people. This
was a visit to his comfortable home, the most con-
spicuous residence in the village. It was carried into
effect in November, 1774. A mob gathered, at the
time agreed on, around this dwelling, and after a sere-
nade of hisses, hootings, and groans, demanded that
Major Thompson should come out before them. The
feeling must have been intense, and was of a nature to
feed its own flame. Had Thompson been within, he
would inevitably have met with foul handling. The
suspicion that he was hiding there would have led to
the sacking of his dwelling and the destruction of his
goods, though the daughter of their venerated minister
was its mistress, and she was the mother, not only of
Thompson's infant, but of the only child of their
former most distinguished townsman, Colonel Benjamin
Rolfe. Mrs. Thompson and her brother, Colonel
Walker, came forth, and with their assurance that her
husband was not in the town, the mob quietly dispersed.
Having received a friendly warning that this assault
was to be made upon him in the shape of an inquisi-
torial .visit at his house, and taking the advice to which
reference has been made, Mr. Thompson had secretly
left Concord just before. He thought it was to be only
a temporary separation from the place, from all his
Life of Count Rumford. 67
friends there, from his wife and his infant child. He
was never to see that pleasant home again, nor any one of
those whom he left there, except that he had a brief and
troubled visit from his wife and infant, and met the latter
again only after an interval of twenty-two years. He was
himself, when he fled, midway in his twenty-second year.
He had made a hasty effort to collect some dues which
belonged strictly to himself, but he scrupulously avoided
taking with him anything that belonged to others, or
even to his wife. What of his own he left there we shall
see was soon subjected to the process of confiscation.
Thompson at first sought refuge in his former home
at Woburn, with his mother, in the house to which she
had moved with her second husband, opposite the Bald-
win Mansion, a security to which, as we shall find, he
was to be indebted for another release from the dealing
of a mob. Here, for a short time, he sought to occupy
himself in quiet retirement with his favorite pursuits of
philosophical study and experiment, especially on the
properties of gunpowder. But popular suspicion found
means to visit its odium upon him here, and he was
kept in a continual state of anxiety. Seeking a new
place of refuge, he found temporary shelter in Charles^
town, with a friend, nine miles from Woburn and one
from Boston, divided from the latter place, with which
he could easily hold intercourse, only by a river. This
position, when it became known, was not likely to
reassure confidence in him. (See Appendix.)
While in Charlestown, Major Thompson addressed
the following letter to his father-in-law, at Concord.
" December 24th, 1774.
"REVEREND SIR, The time and circumstances of my leav-
ing the town of Concord have, no doubt, given you great un-
I
68 Life of Count R&mford.
easiness, for which I am extremely sorry. Nothing short of the
most threatening danger could have induced me to leave my
friends and family ; but when I learned from persons of un-
doubted veracity, and those whose friendship I could not sus-
pect, that my situation was reduced to this dreadful extremity,
'I thought it absolutely necessary to abscond for a while, and
seek a friendly asylum in some distant part.
" Fear of miscarriage prevents my giving a more particular
account of this affair ; but this you may rely and depend upon,
that I never did, nor (let my treatment be what it will) ever will
do, any action that may have the most distant tendency to injure
the true interest of this my native country.
" I most humbly beg your kind care of my distressed family ;
and I hope you will take an opportunity to alleviate their trouble
by assuring them that I am in a place of safety, and hope
shortly to have the pleasure of seeing them. I also most hum-
bly beseech your prayers for me, that under all my difficulties
and troubles I may behave in such a manner as to approve
myself a true servant of God and a sincere friend of my
country.
" To have tarried at Concord and have stood another trial at
the bar of the populace would doubtless have been attended with
unhappy consequences, as my innocence would have stood me
in no stead against the prejudices of an enraged, infatuated
multitude, and much less against the determined villany of
my inveterate enemies, who strive to raise their popularity on
the ruins of my character. My friends would have been deemed
unfriendly to the cause of Liberty, and my defence would have
been treated with contempt and disdain. It would have been
vain for me' to have pretended to curb the fury or calm the
rage of this popular whirlwind ; but I must have been cast, and
condemned to suffer punishments equal to the blackness of my
supposed transgressions.
" The plan against me was deeply laid, and the people of
Concord were not the only ones that were engaged in it. But
others to the distance of twenty miles were extremely officious
on this occasion. My persecution was determined on, and
Life of Count Rumford. 69
my flight unavoidable. And had I not taken the opportunity to
leave the town the moment I did, another morning had effectu-
ally cut off my retreat."
There' is a tradition, which I have not been able to
authenticate, that either at this time or nearly a year
afterwards, while Thompson was concealed in some
friendly refuge in Boston, he received a visit from his
father-in-law, who urgently appealed to him to return
to his home. There is no evidence within my reach
that the two ever met again. But on the ^th of Janu-
ary following the date of the above letter, the Rev. Mr.
Walker addressed him a reply, the tenor of which we
know only from the response which it drew from his
son-in-law. The relations of the latter were becoming
more and more embarrassing, on account of his visits to
Boston and the intimacy which he appeared to seek
with the British officers ; though, as there had not yet
been any decisive outbreak, he might have expected
that the rupture would be averted. Mr. Walker had
urged his return to Concord, and had coupled with the
appeal a suggestion that he should be prepared, in doing
so, to make some sort of recognition of the grounds
under which his patriotism had been doubted and his
conduct brought under suspicion. We may infer from
this advice, that the wise and esteemed minister had mis-
givings, at least, about the discretion of his son-in-law ;
and from the answer written by the latter we may also
infer, that, regarding the advice as proposing a confes-
sion or recantation, he was determined to stand on his
dignity or his sense of perfect innocence, and refuse to
make it. He might have shrunk from the full de-
mands of truth, or he might have feared the risk of
hypocrisy. His answer was as follows:
7o Life of Count Rumford.
"BOSTON, Jan'y nth, 1775.
" HON? SIR, Last evening I had the pleasure to receive
your kind Letter of the Qth instant, for which I return many
thanks.
" As to my return to Concord, it is what I most ardently
desire and wish for, could I do it with safety. But in the pres-
ent distracted state of affairs, I fear I could have no security
that might be depended on, especially if things should proceed
to such extremities as they at present bid fair to do. And as to
any concessions that I could make, I fear it would be of no
consequence, for I cannot, possibly, with a clear conscience,
confess myself Guilty of doing anything to the disadvantage of
this Country, but quite the reverse.
" As to Mrs. Thompson's coming to live with me, I appre-
hend that it will be so far from embarrassing my affairs, that it
will lessen my expenses, as Mrs. Clark will let us have house-
room sufficient for our small family for a very trifle, and we can
live upon our own provisions, which can easily be brought from
Concord in a sled ; and as to wood, I have enough of that en
land of my own, which my Father Pierce will transport for me
on easy terms.
" And .as Mrs. Thompson's Company is almost the only
thing that can be any alleviation of my present troubles, and as
my being absent from her is the greatest unhappiness of my
present situation, I hope I shall be so happy as to obtain your
consent for her leaving Concord."
In compliance with this earnest appeal, his wife, with
her infant, joined him at his mother's home in Woburn,
though it required of them a ride of more than fifty
miles in midwinter. They remained with him till the
last of May, 1775, after which he never again saw his
wife. My friend, Mr. George Rumford Baldwin, the
only surviving son of Colonel Baldwin, informs me that
he has been told that, at the time, Major Thompson
was mostly with the army at Cambridge, though I
Life of Count Rumford. 71
think it must have been at an earlier time, probably
in March, 1775, while he was at his mother Pierce's
house in New Bridge Village, Woburn, a military com-
pany, perhaps a body of practising min,ute-men, came
to arrest him when he was temporarily confined by
illness. His friend, Colonel Baldwin, whose mansion
was opposite, seeing the men halt, at once suspected
their object, and determined to try to protect Thomp-
son. He made a speech to the company, saying that
he well knew his friend's principles and feelings, and
that he was not inimical to the American cause, but
might have appeared so in consequence of having been
disappointed of the promotion he desired. After plead-
ing in behalf of Thompson to the extent of his ability,
he remarked to the men that they must be greatly
fatigued by their march, and that he would be much
gratified if they would cross over to his barn, (which
was the nearest building, and opposite the Pierce
house), and that he would then bring out what he
might have for their refreshment. They accepted the
invitation, and were so generously treated with food and
liquor that their errand was overlooked, and they re-
turned without molesting Thompson, though they had
previously twice sent in their summons that he should
present himself, whether sick or well.
Whether this incident transpired at the earlier or the
later date, it shows that Major Thompson had not
overcome the animosity against him. While his wife
and child were with him the skirmishes at Concord,
Massachusetts, and Lexington occurred, in which it
has been said, on what authority I cannot learn, that
Thompson bore arms with the Massachusetts yeomen
in resisting the British inroad.
72 Life of Count Rumford*
We have another letter which was sent to the Rev.
Mr. Walker while his daughter was still with her hus-
band.
" WOBURN, May nth, 1775.
"REV? SIR, Since Mrs. Thompson has been at Woburn
she has been very unwell, which has prevented her coming to
Concord this week as was proposed. But as soon as she gets
well enough she will set out. As to my returning to Concord,
it is what I have most earnestly desired ever since I left home,
and nothing but a sense of danger has prevented my doing it
long ago. And now the advice I receive from different people,
who appear equally to be my friends, relative to my going back,
is so intirely different that I scarcely know what to do or what
course to take. If I can be assured of safety and restored to
that friendship and esteem of my fellow Countrymen which I
trust no action of mine has ever forfeited, I will, with the great-
est pleasure and alacrity, return to Concord ; and the good Peo-
ple of that Town in particular, and of the Country in general,
may rely on my best endeavours to serve them. And if ever I
have done anything which in the event has turned out to the
damage of this Country, I am sincerely and heartily sorry there-
for. But as to confessing myself guilty of doing anything with
a design to injure them, it is what I can never do without doing
violence to my Conscience and committing a crime in reality
which I do not choose to be guilty of.
" I have not a single doubt of your sincere friendship and
affection for me, and believe you would not on any account
advise me to anything contrary to my safety and interest. Bi;t
many Persons from Concord tell me that neither you nor ycur
son are so well acquainted with the minds of the People respect-
ing myself as many others, and advise me by no means to re-
turn at present. Among these are Col. Stickney and Cap*.
Chandler.
" To return to Concord and be kept a Prisoner in the Town,
or to be treated with coldness and indifference for crimes which
I feel myself intirely innocent of, would be to me even worse
Life of Count Rumford. 73
than my present situation. But if the People of Concord will
be so kind as to assure " [The rest is wanting.]
Soon after writing this letter. Major Thompson was
arrested and confined in Woburn. It has been said
that he himself courted this proceeding as the only
means likely to result in securing him a fair decision of
his case.
There appears among Colonel Baldwin's papers a
document which is here copied.
" WOBURN, May i6th, 1775.
" GENTLEMEN, Major Benjamin Thompson of Concord,
in the Province of New Hampshire, having been taken up and
confined in the Town upon suspicion of being inimical to the
liberties of this Country, and his Excellency General Ward
having ordered, agreeable to advice of Congress, that the Com-
mittee of Correspondence for this Town be a Court to inquire
into that Matter :
" This is therefore to desire that all persons under your com-
mand, or otherwise belonging to the Province of New Hamp-
shire, or elsewhere, that can give evidence in this affair, may
appear at the Meeting-house in the first Parish in Woburn, on
Thursday, the i8th inst. May, at Two o'clock, P. M., and
they shall be heard.
" We are, Gentlemen, Your Humble Servants,
" To COL. JOHN STARK, SAMUEL WYMAN,
LT. COL. WYMAN, ROBERT DOUGLAS,
MAJOR ANDREW McCLARY, DR. SAMUEL BLOGGET,
CAPT. ABBOT HUTCHINS, LOAMMI BALDWIN,
CHANDLER BALDWIN, TIMOTHY WINN.
GERRISH AND CLOUGH,
of New Hampshire.
The above-named " Committee of Correspondence "
had been chosen at a town meeting, February i, 1773.
At a meeting on January 4, 1775, twenty-one men had
been chosen as a "Committee of Inspection," and on
Com ttee
of
Corre-
spon."
74 Life of Count Rumford.
April 17, 1775, a bdy f ^% " minute-men " had
been provided for. Thus watchful was the oversight
of suspected persons and the cause of Liberty.
It seemed as if the worried man were now in a fair
way to obtain a hearing.
In Colonel Baldwin's Diary, under date of May 18,
1775, ' 1S tne following entry :
" Thursday in afternoon went to Woburn to sit as one of a
Committee of Correspondence upon Major Thompson, who
was taken up as a Tory, but, finding nothing against him, ad-
journed till next Monday."
And the following occurs in another place, which seems
to refer to the same occasion as it is of the same date :
" At a Court of Inquiry into the conduct of Major Thomp-
son of Concord, New Hampshire, convened at the Meeting-
House of the First Parish in Woburn, on Thursday, the i8th
of May, 1775, at 2 o'clock, by the Committee of Correspond-
ence of said Town."
Until after the affair at Concord and Lexington,
while it was evident that matters were coming to a
crisis, intercourse between Boston and the adjoining
country was substantially open, though the capital was
under military rule, and the yeomen of the neighboring
towns, organized as minute-men, were on the watch
night and day for alarms. But after the British troops
had returned from their inroad, entrance to Boston or
exit from it was attended with difficulty. General Gage,
who had himself married an American lady, and was the
owner of land here, appears to have thought, till he was
recalled to England, that the quarrel between the colo-
nies and the mother country might yet be adjusted;
and it seems plain that Major Thompson, on his visits
to Boston, felt the influence of the General upon him-
Life of Count Riimford. 75
self. But with predilections, as he still insisted, for the
cause of his native country, he determined to make an
effort to obtain a hearing before the Committee of the
Provincial Congress then sitting at Watertown, which
exercised the functions of government. He therefore
addressed the following letter to his friend Baldwin.
"WOBURN, 1 9th May, 1775.
"DEAR SIR, The enclosed Petition I beg you would do
me the honour to present to the Committee of Safety, and ac-
company it with your influence. As my only design is to con-
vince the world of my innocence, and silence the clamours of
my enemies, and as I know this method is agreeable to your
mind, I doubt not but the prayer of the Petition will be granted.
But if the Committee of Safety will not have anything to do in
the affair, but insist upon it that the Committee of Correspond-
ence for the Town of Woburn shall make an end of the mat-
ter, yet I would most earnestly beg to have Concord and the
adjacent Towns have notice of the time and place of the fur-
ther examination, in order that this may be a final settlement.
And if the Committee of Safety, or, otherwise, the Committee
of Correspondence, will make out a proper notification for that
purpose, I will at my own expense immediately forward it to
Concord.
" You cannot be insensible that my present confinement is
very disagreeable, therefore I hope you will endeavour that the
day of Trial may be appointed as soon as may be consistent
with giving my accusers sufficient notice to appear. I am, Dear
Sir, Your real friend and Humble Servant,
"BENJJ- THOMPSON.
"P. S. The Bearer, Mr. Thomas, comes to Cambridge on
purpose to deliver this, and I beg he may return as soon as
possible.
" To MAJOR LOAMMI BALDWIN, Head Quarters, Cambridge."
The petition enclosed to Mr. Baldwin was as fol-
lows :
7 6 Life of Count Rumford.
" To the Honourable the Committee of Safety for the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay.
" The Petition of Benjamin Thompson, Esq., of Concord, in
the Province of New Hampshire, humbly sheweth :
" That on Monday, the I5th inst., your petitioner was taken
up and confined in this Town, upon suspicion of being inimical
to the liberties of this Country ; and that in consequence of his
being taken up, the Committee of Correspondence for the
Town, after having given public notice of the time and place
of hearing, and desired all persons that could give evidence to
attend, proceeded to an examination of the affair, agreeable to
the recommendation of the Honourable Provincial Congress.
But as no person appeared to lay anything of consequence to
his charge ; and as the Committee were not pleased either to
acquit or condemn him ; and as his own personal safety, as well
as the quiet and satisfaction of the public, but more especially
of the people of New Hampshire, depends on his having an
acquittance after the most public, thorough, and impartial
examination, your petitioner humbly prays that the Committee
of Safety would be pleased to take the matter into consideration,
and examine the same ; and that they would be pleased to give
notice of the time and place of hearing, not only to the people
of New Hampshire, and others that are in the Army at Cam-
bridge, or elsewhere, but also that the public in general, and
the inhabitants of the Town of Concord, in the Province of
New Hampshire, and the adjacent Towns in particular, be de-
sired to attend or send in depositions of what they know relative
to the affair.
" And your petitioner, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, &c.
"BENJ. THOMPSON.
" WOBURN, May 19, 1775."*
May 20, 1775, Colonel Baldwin makes the follow-
ing entry :
" Saturday, I presented a Petition to the Committee of Safety,
sent me by Major Thompson, and brought by Alexander
* Force's American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. II. pp. 647, 648.
Life of Count Rumford. 77
Thomas, which Petition the Committee referred to the Con-
gress, where we went and sent it in to them sitting at Water-
town Meeting-house. We dined at Leonard's; so the matter
was deferred for the present."
We must remind ourselves that this was at one of
the most critical and anxious stages in the course of
events which resulted in opening the Revolutionary War.
Large bodies of minute-men and soldiers from all the
New England Provinces were gathered in Cambridge,
and on the hills in its neighborhood, under the com-
mand of General Ward. The Provincial Congress was in
session, overwhelmed with business, as it had assumed
full legislative functions independently of the control
of the royal Governor or his subordinates. The people
had in their town meetings resolved to recognize the
authority of this Congress ancl to pay their taxes to the
treasurer appointed by it, while they helped by other
popular measures to confirm and increase that authority.
The object was to confine the British forces to the
peninsula of Boston, leaving them no exit but by the
sea, and, if possible, to embarrass that. This made it
necessary to guard and fortify nearly a whole circle of
territory, extending round from the heights of Dorches-
ter to those of Chelsea. Aspirants for commissions in
the American army were numerous and in warm rivalry.
If Major Thompson were, as he affirmed, impatient to
assume his military office, or to secure a higher one, we
can well imagine how he must have fretted under the
confinement which not only restrained his liberty and
subjected him to indignity, but also threatened to be an
insuperable obstacle to his attainment of his object. If
his after course was largely decided by resentment and
the sense of having been outraged, we must look for the
7 8 Life of Coztnt Riimford.
occasion of it now and here. He thus conveys his
thanks to his friend.
" WOBURN, May 22,d, 1775.
" DEAR SIR, I am to return you many thanks for your
kindness in presenting my petition to the Committee of Safety,
and your further care and trouble in laying it before the Con-
gress. I must intreat your further assistance in this affair, and
hope that it will one time or other be in my power to make a
suitable return for all your kindness.
" Mr. Thomas .now waits upon you to know what the Con-
gress are determined to do respecting me ; and I shall wait with
impatience for his return.
" I would beg leave to congratulate you upon your promotion
in the Army, and I would at the same time congratulate the
Public upon the same ocqasion.
"I am, Sir, with real Regard and Esteem,
" Your friend and Humble Servant,
"BENJ^ THOMPSON.
"To COLONEL BALDWIN, Head Quarters, Cambridge."
Either from pressure of business, or under the per-
suasion that Woburn was the proper place for a hearing
of the cause, the Committee of the Provincial Congress
did not see fit to entertain Major Thompson's petition.
He had further reason for resentment and chagrin, when,
after subjecting himself to the trouble and expense of
summoning any witnesses who might see fit to appear
against him, and after securing a hearing of the case in
his native town, the result was as dilatory and as un-
decisive as the documents next given will show.
u VFoburn {Massachusetts) Committee.
'' Whereas the Committee of Correspondence for the Town
of Woburn, authorised by the honourable Provincial Congress
to examine into the principles and conduct of any person sus-
Life of Count Rumford. 79
pected of being inimical to the liberties of this Country, have
examined Major Benjamin Thompson, of Concord, in the
Province of New Hampshire, being brought before them, sus-
pected of being thus inimical. And whereas the said Com-
mittee have summoned certain evidences, who they supposed
could give light into the matter, to attend, which evidences
failed of so doing : This is therefore to inform all persons who
are knowing to the said Major Thompson's conduct, that the
Committee have adjourned to Monday the 2Qth day of May
next, at three o'clock, afternoon, at the meeting-house, where
said evidences are desired to attend, as the Committee think
themselves bound to dismiss and recommend the said Thomp-
son, unless something more appears against him than what they
have heard.
" SAMUEL WYMAN, Chairman.
"May 24, 1775."*
"Massachusetts Provincial Congress, May 25, 1775.
" The Petition of Benjamin Thompson to the Committee of
Safety was read, and ordered to subside." f
The action in the town of Woburn on the hearing of
the case, as preserved in a record in Colonel Baldwin's
papers, is thus related :
" Major Benjamin Thompson of Concord, in the Province
of New Hampshire, having been taken up and confined in this
Town upon suspicion of being inimical to the liberties of this
Country : And we, the Committee of Correspondence for the
Town of Woburn, (being duly authorised by a vote of the Hon.
Provincial Congress to hear and Determine upon this matter,)
after having given public notice of the time and place of ex r
amination, and desired all persons that could give evidence
respecting that affair to attend ; and after having strictly and
impartially examined into the affair, do not find that said Thomp-
son in .any one instance has shown a Disposition unfriendly to
American Liberty : But that his general behaviour has evinced
* Force's American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. II. p. 701. f Idem, p. 815.
8o Life of Count Rumford*
the direct contrary : And as he has now given us the strongest
assurances of his good intentions, we recommend him to the
Friendship, Confidence, and Protection of all good People in
this and the neighboring Provinces Colonies.
" WOBURN, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, zgth May, 1775."
The meeting-house was crowded on the occasion, and
the accused pleaded his own cause and managed his own
defence. There does not appear to have been any
examination of witnesses. Such reports, surmises, or
charges as any one present chose to repeat or suggest
personally or through hints to the Committee were
met by Thompson, and by him ascribed to envy or
jealousy. It has been said by one who has argued in his
cause,* that, though the Committee reached this favora-
ble decision, they refused to secure him a public acquit-
tal, the reason assigned being, that if they gave a copy
of their proceedings to Thompson for publication, it
would offend his opponents, as seeming to condemn
them. He adds that Thompson's feelings were greatly
exasperated at this injustice.
The statement hardly seems probable. A result
reached and announced in a thronged meeting in a
village church, after such a deliberate hearing, could
hardly be prevented from becoming matter of notoriety.
Yet Thompson himself complains, as we shall see in
another letter to Mr. Walker, of injustice from the
Committee. The inference drawn by Mr. Johnston is,
that the above vindication of Thompson was written by
one of the Committee, but was not allowed, as the
accused desired, to be communicated to the public
He says that as a postscript to the original report of
the Committee of Vigilance is added what follows :
* John Johnston. See note on p. n.
Life of Co^mt Rumford. 81
" This may certify that when Major Thompson was examined
before the Committee of Correspondence for the town of Wo-
burn, (being brought before them on suspicion of being inimical
to American liberties,) the affair of the return of four deserters
from Concord, in New Hampshire, to Boston, in which said
Thompson was supposed to be instrumental, and also his con-
duct relative to the Concord donation, sending a load of peas
to Boston, and an undue connection or correspondence with
Gov. Wentworth, were matters which were laid to his charge
against him, which were thoroughly examined into, and in every
particular the Committee received full satisfaction from said
Thompson."
If this favorable but suppressed judgment on his
case was indeed only the unsuccessful verdict of a friend
present at the examination, we may well conclude that
that friend was "Baldwin. Himself a man of thorough
sincerity and rectitude and a warm patriot, his cham-
pionship is Thompson's best vindication.
The sense of a wrong which was becoming too aggra-
vating for longer patient endurance expresses itself in
this request of Thompson to his friend.
"CAMBRIDGE, May 30, 1775.
" SIR, I should take it as a great favour if you would apply
to the Honourable Provincial Congress, and withdraw a Petition
which I preferred to the Hon b ! e the Committee of Safety, on
the iQth of May inst., through your hands.
BENJ^ THOMPSON.
" MAJOR LOAMMI BALDWIN."
Major Thompson was after this released from con-
finement, and of course left free to go where he would,
at the risk, of meeting still unappeased enemies, and
suffering such treatment as any combination of them
might visit upon him. That he did not return to
Concord, New Hampshire, and with such credentials
82 Life of Count Rumford,
as he could present for his security, and a reasonable
degree of reliance upon the support of his friends,
attempt resolutely to face down his calumniators, is to
be referred to the one or the other of these two reasons.
Either he felt that there was no reasonable hope that he
should succeed in this courageous attempt, and that
if he were allowed to remain at home it would be as
a suspected person smarting under a sense of wrong, to
lead an aimless and miserable life ; or else he really
desired and expected that he might yet obtain a place
of honor and service in the patriot army. He lingered
about the camp. He devoted himself zealously to the
study of military tactics. He continued his experi-
ments on gunpowder. He strolled between Woburn,
Medford, Cambridge, and Charlestown, learning what-
ever his inquisitive and observing mind could appro-
priate. But there was one set of men whom he never
could conciliate, who mistrusted his purposes and cast
upon him lowering looks as they met him about the
camp. These were the general and field officers from
New Hampshire, who looked upon him as a dandy
and an upstart at least, if not also as at heart a traitor.
They would not associate with him, still less confide in
him.
Major Baldwin records under date of June 4, 1775 :
" Sunday, A. M., went to Meeting : after Meeting at noon
went down to see the Men-of-War fire, &c. to Lechmere Point,
and viewed Boston, &c. Major Thompson and Lieut. Reed
was my company."
"June 13. Tuesday, A Manifesto came out from General
Gage. We are in expectation that the Troops will be out soon.
I am poorly with a cold. Major Thompson went to Woburn."
It was to avert and oppose that expected sortie of the
Life of Count Rumford. 83
British troops from Boston, that on the following Satur-
day, June 17, the fortifications were thrown up on the
heights of Charlestown by a detachment of New Eng-
land soldiers, sent from Cambridge by General Ward,
just before midnight on Friday, resulting in the Battle
of Bunker Hill, of which it has been generally believed
that Major Thompson was at least a spectator.
As the College buildings at Cambridge were now
used as barracks, Colonel Baldwin records on the I5th,
"They are beginning to remove the Library/' The
books were transported to Concord, Massachusetts,
some eighteen miles into the country. Major Thomp-
son assisted in this labor, glad thus to recognize his ob-
ligations to the College.
Mr. Johnston, above quoted, as writing from infor-
mation communicated to him by the son of Thomp-
son's eldest step-brother, says that, after the t>attle at
Charlestown, Thompson was favorably introduced by
some officers at Cambridge to General Washington,
who had just assumed the command; and that, had it
not been for the opposition of some of the New Hamp-
shire officers, he would have had the place in the Ameri-
can artillery corps which was given to Colonel Gridley.
The following letter of Thompson's was found in a
file of Colonel Baldwin's papers. Its probable date was
August, 1775.
" DEAR SIR, I observed in the General Orders of Sunday
last that each Sargent and Corporal in the Army was to wear
an Epaulet to distinguish them from the Commissioned Officers
and from the private soldiers. I herewith send you samples of
some which I apprehend will answer the end, and if you will be
so kind as to get them approved of by the General, and engage
any considerable number for me, you may depend on having
84 Life of Count Rumford.
them done in the best manner and with the utmost despatch,
as there is a considerable number of Women here who will
immediately go to work upon them. Whether it is proper or
not to shew them to General Washington, I leave to your
judgement. I apprehend the price ought to be somewhere about
I5/, or perhaps as low as 13/6, if a large number were engaged.
" If it shall be thought proper for the Sargent Majors to wear
one or two red Silk Epaulets, instead of a worsted one, I can
easily supply them.
" Please to give my compliments to Col. Gerrish, and present
him with one of the red cockades which the bearer will give
you as a present from his and your much
Obliged and most Obedient Servant,
"BENJAMIN THOMPSON.
" Wednesday Morning.
" To COL. BALDWIN, Camp before Boston."
Only one other letter written on this side of the ocean
remains to be given from the pen of Benjamin Thomp-
son. It is impossible to read it without emotion. The
writer was twenty-two years of age, but the letter has
the vigor of the maturest manliness. Its firm and bold
chirography is in keeping with its sentiments and with
the forcible language in which they are expressed. It is
addressed to his father-in-law. '
"WOBURN, August I4th, 1775.
" HON? SIR, I have your favours of the 16 and 29 May,
which I should have answered long since, but have waited for
an opportunity of conversing with you Verbally. But as I see
no prospect of having such a long-wish'd-for interview, I shall
trouble you with one more of my Letters.
" I am not so thoroughly convinc'd that my leaving th?
Town of Concord was wrong (considering the circumstances at
that time) as I am that it was wrong in me to do it without
your knowledge or advice. This, Sir, is a step which I always
Life of Count Rumford. 85
have repented, and for which I am now sincerely ana heartily
sorry, and ask your forgiveness. What infatuation could induce
me to take a step of so much importance without previously
consulting you upon the affair, I am at a loss to imagine. But
be assured, Sir, that tho' you was not privy to my going off,
yet I did not do it without the knowledge and advice of many
others whom I really thought my friends, and among the rest
you will give me leave to name your Son as the chief, who not
only gave it as his opinion that it was for the best, but also fur-
nished me with a Horse to make my escape, and money to the
amount of 20 Dollars to bear my expenses, and promised to take
care of my affairs in my absence. Into his hands I committed
all my Notes and papers of consequence ; saving only a few
Notes to the amount of about ^300, which I left with Mrs.
Thompson, the chief of which, I am informed, he has since
gotten into his possession.
" My situation at that time was peculiarly critical. I knew I
had a number of enemies in the Town whose Personal and
inveterate malice nothing would satisfy, and found by fatal
experience that they had it in their power to raise the cry of
the populace against me : and to persuade them that what
they laid to my charge (Viz 4 - being instrumental in procuring a
pardon for some Deserters) was not only in itself a crime of the
blackest dye, but that I did it with an express design to injure
the Country, and assist in enslaving it ; in fine, that I was an
enemy to the cause of America, and deserved the severest pun-
ishments. ' Tis true all did not coincide in this opinion, and I
was peculiarly happy in having my Brother Walker's approba-
tion of my conduct. But notwithstanding he thought me inno-
cent, yet he dared not appear in my behalf ; he saw the current
was against me, and was afraid to interfere.
" When I was brought to trial, my friends (knowing in what
a light my crime was look'd upon by the populace) advised me
to plead not guilty. I did so, but found, instead of quieting the
disturbances, it only served to heighten the clamours against
me, 'till at length I found it absolutely necessary that some-
thing should be done for my personal security. My friends ad-
86 Life of Count Rumford.
vised me to leave the Town 'till the storm should be abated,
which they doubted not would be in a short time. I neither
doubted the abilities nor scrupled the sincerity of my friends,
and accordingly followed their advice. But the event has not
proved equal to my expectations, for the storm, instead of sub-
siding, has increased, and the popular disturbances have grown
into such a flame as I fear nothing but my blood will extin-
guish.
."Had the People of Concord looked upon Banishment as a
punishment equal to my crimes, they would not surely have
refused my very reasonable request for Liberty to pass to that
Town and to repass to Cambridge unmolested, if affairs could
not be amicably settled so that I might live at home in peace
and safety. I did not claim any merit from any examination I
had passed through here. I did not attempt in the least to
palliate those offences I am charg'd with by mine enemies, but
only wished to meet my accusers on equal ground. And I
think their refusal of this request not only affords a melancholy
presage of what I am to expect from them, but will clearly
demonstrate to the World upon what principles these men act
who, under pretence of 'defending their Liberties and priviledges,
and asserting the rights of mankind,' are depriving individuals of
every idea of freedom, and are exercising a Tyranny which an
Eastern Despot would blush to be Guilty of.
u As to my being instrumental in the return of some De-
serters, by procuring them a pardon, I freely acknowledge that I
was. But you will give me leave to say that what I did was
done from principles the most unexceptionable the most dis-
interested a sincere desire to serve my King and Country, and
from motives of Pity to those unfortunate Wretches who had
deserted the service to which they had voluntarily and so
solemnly tyed themselves, and to which they were desirous of
returning. If the designed ends were not answered by what I
did, I am sincerely and heartily sorry. But if it is a Crime to
act from principles like these, I glory in being a Criminal.
u But as to the other ' Known ' and c Obnoxious facts ' which
you mention, Viz 1 . c maintaining a long and expensive corre-
Life of Count Rumford. 87
spondence with G r W th,' or c a suspicious correspond-
ence, to say the least, with G rs W th and G e,'
I would beg leave to observe, That at the time that Governor
Wentworth first honored me with his notice, it was at a time
when he was as high in the esteem of his people in general as
ever was any Governor in America, at a time whea even Mr.
Sullivan himself was proud to be thought his friend. And as
from the first commencement of our acquaintance 'till I left
Concord he never did anything (to my knowledge) whereby he
forfeited the affection and confidence of the Public, I cannot
see why a correspondence with him should be obnoxious ; or
that the length or expensiveness of it should be thought an object
of public attention, that merited Public Censure. 'T is true,
Sir, I always thought myself honored by his friendship, and was
ever fond of a correspondence with him, a correspondence
which was purely private and friendly, and not Political, and for
which I cannot find in my Heart either to express my sorrow
or ask forgiveness of the Public.
"As to my maintaining a correspondence with -Governor
Gage, this part of the charge is intirely without foundation, as I
never received a Letter from him in my life ; nor did I ever
write him one, except about half a dozen lines which I sent
him just before I left Concord may be calPd a Letter, and
which contained no intelligence, nor anything of a public nature,
but was only to desire that the Soldiers who returned from Con-
cord might be Ordered not to inform any person by whose inter-
cession their pardon was granted them.
" But this is not the only groundless charge that has been
brought against me. Many other crimes which you do not
mention have been laid to my charge, for which I have had
to answer both publicly and privately. Mine enemies are inde-
fatigable in their indeavours to distress me, and I find to my
sorrow that they are but too successful. I have been driven
from the Camp by the clamours of the New Hampshire People,
and am again threatened in this place. But I hope soon to be
out of the reach of my Cruel Persecutors, for I am determined
to seek for that Peace and Protection in foreign Lands and among
8b Life of Count Ritmford.
strangers which is deny'd me in my native country. I cannot
any longer bear the insults that are daily offered me. I cannot
bear to be looked upon and treated as the Achan of Society. I
have done nothing that can deserve this cruel usage. I have
done nothing with any design to injure my countrymen, and
cannot any longer bear to be treated in this barbarous manner
by them.
" And notwithstanding I have the tenderest regard for my
Wife and family, and really believe I have an equal return of
Love and affection from them ; though I feel the keenest dis-
tress at the thoughts of what Mrs. Thompson and my Parents
and friends will suffer on my account, and though I foresee and
realize the distress, poverty, and wretchedness that must una-
voidably attend my Pilgrimage in unknown lands, destitute of
fortune, friends, and acquaintance, yet all these Evils appear to
me more tolerable than the treatment which I meet with from
the hands of mine ungrateful countrymen.
ct This step, I am sensible, is violent, but my case is desperate.
I have nothing to expect from mine Enemies, and my friends
are afraid to appear for me. And I see no prospect of being
able either to return to Concord, or even to stay here much
longer in peace and safety. A reconciliation upon honorable
terms is of all others the thing most to be desired. But you
must allow me to say, that my present situation, notwithstand-
ing it is thus dreadful, is to be preferred to a reconciliation (sup-
posing it possible) upon the terms of my making an acknowl-
edgement. The crime which is alleged against me (Viz 1 - being
an enemy to my Country) is a crime of the blackest dye, a
crime which must, if proved against me, inevitably entail per-
petual infamy and disgrace upon my name. If I confess myself
Guilty, will mine Enemies, will the World, think me inno-
cent ? or will even the Charity of my very friends attempt to
exculpate me when I accuse myself?
" Whatever prudence may dictate, yet Conscience and
Honor, God and Religion, forbid that my Mouth should speak
what my Heart disclaims. I cannot profess my sorrow for an
action which I am conscious was done from the best of motives.
Life of Count Rumford. 89
If the event has proved contrary to my expectations, or if I can
be persuaded that I have acted upon mistaken principles, I am
ready not only to Express my sorrow, but to do it in the most
open and public manner. But 'till this can be the case, 'till I
can be fully persuaded that I have really done wrong, I cannot
be persuaded to acknowledge that I have done so.
u I am extremely unhappy to differ from you in opinion in
anything, but more especially in an affair of so much conse-
quence as the propriety of my returning to Concord upon the
terms mentioned in your Letter. But I hope that the reasons
which I have now given, added to the inimical disposition which
the Committee have lately shown towards me, will serve in
some measure as an excuse for my not following your advice in
this affair.
" Believe me, Sir, I always have had, and still retain, the
highest veneration for your judgement, and the most sincere and
dutiful affection for your Person ; and hope that the unhappi-
ness of my present deplorable situation will not be increased by
incurring your displeasure. Be assured, Sir, I mean riot to of-
fend, and hope that no offence will be taken.
" I am too well acquainted with your Paternal affection for
your Children to doubt of your kind care over them. But you
will excuse me if I trouble you with my most earnest desires and
intreaties for your peculiar care of my family, whose distressed
circumstances call for every indulgence and alleviation you can
afford them.
" I must also beg a continuance of your Prayers for me, that
my present afflictions may have a suitable impression on my
mind, and that in due time I may be extricated out of all my
troubles. That this may be the case, that the happy time
may soon come when I may return to my family in peace and
safety, and when every individual in America may sit down under his
own vine, and under his own Fig-tree, and have none to make him
afraid is the constant and devout wish of
" Your dutiful and Affectionate Son,
"BEN]* THOMPSON.
" REV? TIM? WALKER."
90 Life of Count Rumford.
Major Thompson was not the only person in those
troubled times that had occasion to charge upon those
espousing the championship of public liberty a tyran-
nical treatment of individuals who did not accord with
their schemes or views. Probably in our late war of
Rebellion his case was paralleled by those of hundreds
in both sections of our country, who with halting and
divided minds or unsatisfied judgments were arrested in
the process of decision by treatment from others which
put them under the lead of passion. The choice of a
great many loyalists in our Revolution would have been
wiser and more satisfactory to themselves had they been
allowed to make it deliberately, an impossibility un-
der the circumstances. So far as I have means of know-
ing, this letter was the last communication which
Thompson ever made to his father-in-law or to his
wife, directly or indirectly. This statement, however,
and the inferences which might be drawn from it, are
to be accepted only as negative evidence, for letters
may have been written and received of which there is
no record or tradition, and letters may have been writ-
ten which were never received by the parties to whom
they were respectively addressed. It was comparatively
easy, during the war, for persons in England and in this
country who belonged to the same side in interest and
sympathy to correspond with each other, taking the
risks of the sea, of privateering, and of capture. But
for those who belonged to the contending parties, sepa-
rated by the ocean, correspondence was more em-
barrassed.
Certainly all the claims and promptings of natural
love are fully and tenderly indulged in that heart-
written letter. Filial gratitude and veneration, and a
Life of Count Rumford. 91
young husband and father's yearnings struggle in it with
the alternate expression of a deep and harrowing sense
of unjust treatment and unmerited obloquy. One can
hardly suppress the wish that the good old minister
might have survived to know the philanthropic labors
and the peaceful honors of his son-in-law. It is to be
feared, however, that he to whom Thompson owed so
much, and for whom he dropped a tear and yielded to
deep emotion when speaking confidentially to Pictet
about his obligations, went to his honored grave with-
out any further word from his son-in-law, though he
probably had tidings of him.
Thompson was preparing to do effective service in
the British army in this country at the very time when
the aged minister sunk peacefully to rest in his parson-
age at Concord, September 2, 1782.
From the facts and documents which have been thus
presented at length, a reader who cares to make a moral
estimate of the course pursued up to this stage by
Major Thompson, and of his subsequent action, must
form his judgment. Candor will make an allowance
on the score of his youth and the influence of the cir-
cumstances amid which he was compelled to reach a
decision. It is remarkable that his two most intimate
friends in later life have given us, seemingly as deduc-
tions from his own confidential statements, reasons for
inferring that his heart was from the first on the side
of the royalist party. The following is a translation
from the narrative of Pictet, in continuation of that
already given :
" At the commencement of the troubles in America which
preceded' and brought about the war of Independence, Thomp-
92 Life of Count Rumford.
son, then twenty years old, was bound in friendship with the
Governor of the Province, who was his compatriot and a
supporter of the government. The civil and military trusts
with which, while still so young, he had already been invested,
continued to attach him to the royalist party by duty and grati-
tude. When the party in opposition had sway in his Province,
he was compelled to abandon his home and to seek an asylum
in Boston, then occupied by the English troops Thomp-
son was received with distinction by the British commander,
and called to raise a regiment for the King's service. But the
course of the war having brought about the evacuation of Boston
in the spring of 1776, he went then to England, and was made
bearer of important despatches for the government."
Cuvier's report, in his Eloge, is to this effect : After
having referred to the incident by which "at the age of
nineteen, the hand of a rich widow had made the poor
scholar, at the moment when he least expected it, one of
the most considerable men in the colony," Cuvier adds :
" Having taken side with the royalist party during the troubles
in America, the populace of Concord were so enraged against
him that he found it requisite to take refuge in Boston, leaving
his wife behind him pregnant of a daughter. The former he
never saw again; the latter joined him for the first time when
twenty years of age.
u One of the first triumphs of Washington was to compel
the British troops to evacuate Boston on the 24th of March,
1776, and Mr. Thompson was the 'official bearer of this dis-
astrous intelligence to London."
Now it is hardly probable that the then Count Rum-
ford in confidential narration to his friends intended to,
or did, disclose a secret which he had up to that time
kept to himself, that he had from the first been a
royalist. He knew too well what he had left in writing
on this side of the water, and remembered too well the
Life of Count Ritmford. 93
confidence and friendship reposed in him by Mr. Bald-
win, to make such statements concerning that period
of his life before he left Concord. I have found no
reason for doubting that, if Thompson had been treated
in a conciliatory manner after his examination, and
had been gratified in his desire to have a position
in the American army, he would have faithfully served
his native country. Nor do I imagine that under any
circumstances he would have proved an Arnold. That
he was deeply wounded in spirit and irritated in tem-
per when he formed his plan of exile either to some
distant part of this country or abroad is very evident.
But that this sense of wrong, or irritation, excited in
him a vengeful purpose, is not shown by anything
known to have been said by him, nor is it necessarily
indicated by what he did. Neither is there any evi-
dence that when Major Thompson left Woburn, ac-
cording to the intention which he frankly communicated
to his father-in-law, he had resolved to join the ranks
of the enemy, or even to seek their civil protection.
Pictet, in a paragraph which I have omitted from the
above quotation, says that Thompson left his home in
November, 1773, and Cuvier says that his daughter
was not born till after his departure. These errors as
to matters of fact may persuade us that both Pictet
and Cuvier erred also in matters of inference as to the
early predilections of Thompson for the royalist cause.
Probably circumstances and the opening of opportuni-
ties, more than any settled purpose, decided the course
of this forlorn and ill-treated young husband and fa-
ther, adrift on the world, when he found himself, loosed
from all home ties, beginning to wander in distracted
times.
94 Life of Count Rumford.
There was really nothing secret or disguised in the
plans which he formed for seeking " in a foreign land
and among strangers/' at the risk of homelessness and
poverty, the peace and protection which he could not
find in his own dwelling. He did not privately steal
away. He remained in and about Woburn two months
after writing his last letter to Mr. Walker, in which he
so deliberately avowed his intentions. He settled his
affairs with his neighbors, collecting dues and paying
debts, well assured that his wife and child would lack
none of the means of a comfortable support. Having
thus made all his preparations, he started from Woburn,
October 13, 1775, in a country vehicle, accompanied by
his step-brother, Josiah Pierce, who drove him near to
the bounds of the Province, on the shore of Narragan-
sett Bay, whence young Pierce returned. Thompson
was taken by a boat on board the Scarborough, British
frigate, in the harbor of Newport. (See Appendix.)
What Major Thompson said or did to secure him-
self a favorable reception from the commander of the
vessel, whether he sought refuge as a persecuted suf-
ferer, or proffered service as a new-won friend, there are
no means at this time for knowing. The vessel itself
very soon came round to Boston, and he came in her
in some capacity. Here he remained 6 till the evacua-
tion of the town by the British forces, of which event
he was undoubtedly the bearer of tidings to England,
in despatches from General Howe. Here the work
of conversion, slow or protracted, was completed ; and
henceforward we are to know Benjamin Thompson, till
the close of the war, as in council and in arms an op-
ponent of the cause of liberty for his native land. He
must have done appreciable service in the four or five
Life of Count Rumford. 95
months of his new apprenticeship in Boston, in order
to have won so soon the place of an official in the Brit-
ish government
It has come down distinctly in the family of the Rev.
William Walter, D. D., as I learn from a granddaugh-
ter, that during Thompson's stay in Boston he was a
somewhat secret inmate of that clergyman's family in
their house in South Street. Dr. then Mr. Walter,
a graduate of Harvard College in 1756, was Rector of
Trinity Church in Boston, having been ordained by
the Bishop of London. There is a vague tradition
that the Rev. Mr. Walker contrived to have an inter-
view quite an unsatisfactory one with his son-in-
law while he was thus a guest of Mr. Walter. It may
have been so. But the jealousy of any intercourse be-
tween the town and the suburbs when occupied respec-
tively by the hostile armies, and the difficulties thrown
in the way of such intercourse, render this alleged inter-
view doubtful, and, unless sought by both parties,
improbable. I am inclined to believe that Mr. Walter
and Thompson were fellow-passengers to England.
They were thenceforward intimate friends. At the
peace, Mr. Walter came to Sherburne, Nova Scotia,
as a Doctor of Divinity, and there exercised his clerical
functions, having received a large grant of land from
the crown. He returned to Boston in 1791, and was
chosen Rector of Christ Church. I find mention of
him till his death, in 1800, in letters of Count Rum-
ford, as a confidential friend with whom he corre-
sponded. Unfortunately, the Count's numerous letters
to him have not been preserved.
Of course there was much interest and curiosity
among the friends and relatives of Major Thompson,
96 Life of Count Riimford.
to learn his whereabouts after his departure. They
could hear only rumors like the following.
Mrs. Baldwin wrote to her husband at the camp at
Cambridge, under date from Woburn, January 15,
1776:
" Mrs. Pierce [mother of Thompson] has heard that you
said you knew that Major Thompson was in Boston. She
gives her compliments, and begs that if you know anything
where he is, be so kind as to let her know ; she is in pain to
hear."
And again,
" WOBURN, Feb. 7, 1776. I must inform you that Brother
Cyrus saw Mr. Parkman, informs him that our famous Major
Thompson is in Boston, a clerk for a Major [name illegi-
ble). Mrs. Thompson is in Woburn."
After the army had gone with General Washington
to New York, Colonel Baldwin, who was on duty there,
wrote to Mrs. Baldwin from the
" Camp at Mile Square, about five miles north of King's
Bridge, and near General Lee's Head-quarters, October 22d,
1776. I have had no opportunity to find out whether Major
Thompson is with the enemy or not."
The first trustworthy information received about
Major Thompson by his friends was that communi-
cated in letters from London by American refugees
there resident. These letters made known his rapid
advancement in a career in which we must soon trace
him.
Mr. George R. Baldwin copied, in 1858, the follow-
ing papers, which he obtained at that time from Cyrus
Thompson, Esq., grandson of Justice Samuel Thomp-
son, named in them. They have an historical and per-
sonal interest.
of Count Rumford. 97
" Confiscation Papers of Benj? Thompson, Absentee. Common-
wealth of Massachusetts, Middlesex, ss.
"To MESSRS. BARTHOLOMEW RICHARDSON, JR., NOAH EATON,
and ABIJAH THOMPSON, all of Woburn, in the County of
Middlesex aforesaid, Greeting :
" Whereas it has been represented that Benjamin Thompson,
late of Woburn, Physician, now an Absentee, hath fled from
his habitation to the Enemies of the United States for protec-
tion, leaving behind him real and personal Estate of more than
Twenty Pounds in value, and that he hath been absent from his
usual place of abode more than three months :
" Pursuant, therefore, to a Law of this State in such cases
provided, and the authority to me therein given, I do hereby
authorise and empower you, the above-named three Persons,
a Committee to receive and examine the claims of the several
Creditors to the Estate of the said Absentee ; and you are hereby
allowed three months' time from the date hereof, in which
time to transact the said business. You are in all cases to
proceed by the same rules as are by law prescribed for insolvent
Estates, and to report to me your doings at the end of the said
three months, and in all things deal impartially as you are
sworn, and you are to notify W Hunt, Esq., to contest the
claims before you.
" Given under my hand and seal of office, this fifth day of
September, A. D. 1781.
" OLIVER PRESCOTT, Prob.
EARTH. RICHARDSON, -\ _ _
_. / Sworn before me, SAM*- THOMP-
"Dec' 4. NOAH EATON, V ,
(SON, Justice of the Peace"
ABIJAH THOMPSON. )
" A List of the Claims exhibited and allowed agst. the Estate of
Benjamin Thompson, late of Woburn, Absentee.
" To Hannah Flagg, by Legacy
Principal 26 13 4
Interest due on the Same 35 8 62 i 4
This Legacy was ordered to be paid to the said
Hannah Flagg in the Testament of Capt. Eben-
7
98 Life of Count Rumford.
ezer Thompson, deceased, Grandfather to said
Absentee.
To Mary Carter's Account 012 o
To Loammi Baldwin on Note and Ace* 4 13 6
To Timothy Walker, Jr., note dated Aug. i6 th ,
1774, with interest for the same 127 16 o
To Timothy Walker, Jr., other note, dated Dec^ 14 th ,
1774, with interest for the same 867
To Timothy Walker, Jr., another note dated Nov. 2 d ,
1774, with interest 2 210
Cost of Advertising 012 o
Time expended by the Commissioners 4 10 o
To Jonathan Randall for expense at Sundry times,
when examining the claims 012 o
To Samuel Thompson for Journey in part to Cam-
bridge for Commissioners 4/, Fees \j 080
Swearing the Commissioners and lodging the return 060
Fees paid 3 3
212 3 3
" WOBURN, 4 th Detf 1781.
" BARTH^ RICHARDSON,
NOAH EATON, ' \- Commissioners"
ABIJAH THOMPSON,
iON, \
f, )
"MIDDLESEX, 12 Dec. 1781. Exhibited upon oath by Samuel
Thompson, Esq., Attorney to one of the principal Creditors,
who likewise attested that the claims were contested by Wil-
liam Hunt, Esq., Attorney for the Commonwealth, and I have
examined the same and do allow thereof.
OLIVER PRESCOTT, J. Prob."
" The account of the Committee of Correspondence and Safety, &c.
for the Town of Wilmington for the year 1779.
" The Committee aforesaid charge themselves* with the Rent of
Land of Benj. Thompson, an Absentee, for the year aforesaid, amount-
ing to 38 o o
Said Com ttee crave an allowance for their cost and trouble 800
Balance in favour of the Estate, 30 o o
Life of Count Rumford. 99
tc Account as above for the year 1780.
" The Committee aforesaid charge themselves with the Rent of
Lands which did belong to Benjamin Thompson, an Absentee, for
the year 1780, said Land lying in Wilmington aforesaid, amount-
ing to 13500
Said Com ttee crave an allowance in their discharge
as follows : viz.
For Advertisement i8/, Expenses at Vendue 12 18 13 16 o
Committee' Time, and Leases, 1212 o
Journey to Cambridge and Expenses to Boston to pay
Balance to the Treasurer, 12 o o
Probate fees, 412 o
43 oo
" MIDDLESEX, 3d May, 1780. Having examined this account
and sworn Deacon Benjamin Jaquith, Chairman of the Com-
mittee, I allow thereof.
" OLIVER PRESCOTT, J. Prob."
Major Thompson had been named among the pro-
scribed in the Alienation Act passed by the State of
New Hampshire in 1778.
CHAPTE R III.
Major Thompson s Mission to Lord G. Germaine. His Ser-
vices to the Ministry. Made Secretary of Georgia.
Explores London. Objects of his Interest. Experi-
ments. Visit to Bath. Guest of Lord Germaine.
Fire- Arms and Gunpowder. Sir Joseph Banks. Na-
val Service, and Experiments. Made Under-Secretary
of State. Loyalists in England. Judge Curwen.
Dr. Gardiner. President Laurens. Disastrous In-
telligence. Thompson commissioned as Lieutenant- Colo-
nel for Service in America. Arrival in Charles-
ton^ S. C. In Action there. Arrival in New Tork.
His Command. Recruiting. - Presentation of Col-
ors. Severe Charges against Thompson. Colonel Sim-
' coe s Reflections. Returns to England. Promotion.
On Half-Pay for Life. Agency for Loyalists.
IN one of his letters to his father-in-law, on a pre-
vious page, Benjamin Thompson had written, " I
never did, nor (let my treatment be what it will) ever
will do, any action that may have the most distant
tendency to injure the true interests of this my native
country." Any one who should assume as I do
not to maintain the consistency between this solemn
pledge and the agency to which Major Thompson
immediately and zealously committed himself on his
arrival in England would have to fashion for him an
argument which, however plausible, would be subtle
Life of Count Rumford. 101
and casuistical. He would need to undertake to prove
that Mr. Thompson had persuaded himself that " the
true interests of his native country " were not to be
secured by resisting British authority and achieving
its political independence, but would be realized by
allowing that authority, with whatever limitations and
conditions, graciously defined after submission had
been exacted, to be permanently restored over the
revolting Provinces. It might be a part of this plea
to show that, when he left America, Major Thompson
had become satisfied that the resources of this country
were unequal to success in the struggle ; and that when
he reached England he was so impressed by the tokens
of the royal and ministerial ability to subdue a rebel-
lion, that he was willing to help bring about what was
seemingly inevitable.
As I would not offer such a plea for the subject of this
memoir, neither will I disguise or palliate the fact that
he threw his whole efficiency doubtless also his pride
and ambition into the service of the British ministry.
He must have said or done something at once to secure
his ready welcome, and must have so improved upon
the opportunity which that afforded him as to win
confidence and to secure position and influence. The
smart of indignation at the injustice which he conceived
he had borne, and the contempt exhibited by the patriots
in rejecting his proffered services, might either have
combined with or yielded to the lures of patronage
and distinction. Thenceforward the rustic youth be-
came the companion of gentlemen of wealth and cul-
ture, of scientific philosophers, of the nobility, and of
princes. The kind of influence which he at once began
to exert, and the promotions which he so soon received
IO2 Life of Count Rumford.
in England, answer to a class of services rendered by
him of a nature not to be misconceived.
Pictet, proceeding with his report of the confidential
disclosures of his friend from the point at which we
left them, wrote the following:
" They had not in England at that time much exact informa-
tion about the state of the country, all whose ties to the mother
land had been ruptured for many years. Thompson thoroughly
understood the matter. He could give trustworthy intelligence
about the topography, and about the events of the war in which
he had played a part. He was not slow in winning the confi-
dence of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Some time after
his arrival in London he was appointed Secretary of the Prov-
ince of Georgia, an office, however, which he never filled.
He remained in London attached to the Colonial Office."
When, soon after the peace, the members of the
successive administrations and parliaments of Great
Britain looked back over the long series of mortifying
blunders, mishaps, and discomfitures connected with the
management of the war, there was one conviction which,
as an explanation or a palliation, offered them chief
relief, though in itself hardly a consolation, namely,
that they had all along been working in the dark. They
were made aware of the entire ignorance, and of the
wholly misleading knowledge, so called, of this country,
its geography, its people, their feelings, purposes, and
resources, under which the war had been conducted.
This ignorance was felt in itself to have been culpable,
though the reason of it had been mainly indifference,
if not arrogant contempt. Means of information had
been within the reach of the government. Franklin
and other provincial agents had offered to enlighten the
ministry. Whole drawers of despatches and other
Life of Count Rutnford. 103
important papers relating to the American Colonies
had lain unopened in government offices. Indeed,
the first knowledge which some of the custodians of
those papers and many more recent historical and
political essayists obtained about important documents
hid away in those offices came to them through the
requests sent in for the privilege of examining them by
investigators like Mr. Sparks, who crossed the ocean for
that purpose.
The receipt in England of the intelligence that the
British army, after having been cooped up in Boston
for nine months, had been compelled by Washington
to evacuate it by their ships, and that a whole fleet of
store-vessels and transports on their way to Boston to
relieve the army were likely, one by one, to fall into
the hands of the Yankees, furnishing them with just the
munitions and goods which they most needed, caused
an intense excitement and dismay. The intelligence of
the evacuation was made public in the London Gazette
of May 3, 1776, though, during the storm which the
announcement raised in Parliament, suspicions were
thrown out that the ministry had had earlier knowl-
edge of the mortifying fact which they had concealed.
It would be pleasant to think that Major Thompson
bore the tidings of that significant prognostication of
the course of the war. That, however, could hardly
be regarded as the reason for his welcome from Lord
George Germaine, to whom he would have carried the
despatch, nor for his immediate admission to a desk
in the Colonial Office. He, of course, proffered, and
showed he could impart, "information," as Pictet
learned from himself. That a youth of twenty-three
years should thus at once be relied upon and rewarded
1O4 L,ife of Count Rumford.
for service of that kind was in perfect consistency with
the mode in which affairs were then managed. No
doubt c< topography " was the matter of his first con-
versation with Lord George and the youth had only
to fall back upon his school lessons.
The head of the Department himself was wholly in-
competent for the place, and was but a blunderer. It
was in keeping with either the comic or the tragic ele-
ment in his management that he should have accepted
so young an adviser, and have extended to him so large
a confidence, so well rewarded. Lord George had
been received into office as a prominent and effective
agent in the subjugation of the American Colonies,
having been made Secretary on November 10, 1775.
He was desirous, by complete subserviency to the
schemes of the King and ministry, of retrieving his own
previously damaged reputation as a soldier. And we
may reasonably infer, that, as a condition of securing
his patronage and confidence, Thompson must have
shown that the information he could impart and the
counsels he should suggest would lie midway between
those given by such advisers as had previously been
listened to or set aside by the ministry. There were
honest, wise, and every way competent men, Americans
and Englishmen, within easy reach of the administra-
tion, and indeed proffering their counsels and warnings,
who knew much more, and saw far more keenly into
the horoscope of probable events, than did Thompson.
But their advice, so far as it involved forebodings, or
even deliberation and caution, was rejected by the
ministry as unwelcome, because given in the interest
of the rebellion. Others 'there were, like the refugee
officers of the crown and other loyalists, who had been
Life of Count Rumford. 105
driven hence by an angry populace. These were ready
to sustain the contemptuous opinions of a few members
of the Parliament on the side of the ministry, that
resolute measures on the part of the King, and a few
regiments of British soldiers, would soon extinguish the
threatening flame. The advice of the former class was
rejected in scorn ; that of the latter class had been
found misleading, and dangerously falsified by the at-
tempts to follow it. Thompson must have found his
cue in substantially pursuing a midway course. Cu-
vier, referring to his first presenting himself before the
Minister with his despatches, says : " On this occasion,
by the clearness of his details and the gracefulness of
his manners he insinuated himself so far into the
graces of Lord George Germaine that he took him
into his employment." An intelligent and observing
witness on the spot, who had known Thompson as an
apprentice-boy in Salem, and who is by and by to be
quoted, tells us that the young man soon became such
a favorite with Lord George that he was daily in the
habit of breakfasting, dining, and supping with him at
his lodgings ; while it soon came to be known among
the American refugees in England, that rills from the
fountain of favor and patronage flowed through Thomp-
son, and that he himself was becoming rich and conse-
quential. There is but one fair construction to be put
on these facts. In accordance with the strain of what
has previously been said about Thompson's espousal
of the unpatriotic side in our war, if it were a matter
of importance to ascertain how and in what way he
committed himself to the King's service, and what was
the nature of the information or advice imparted by
him, we should have in the main to depend wholly
io6 Life oj Count Rumford.
upon inferences. With his great natural abilities and
his spirit of observation, not forgetting his own appreci-
ation of himself, he might have been a really valuable
counsellor to those who rejected such as were more
wise and such as were more reckless. He may have
satisfied himself that the rebellion would, in any event,
stop short of securing the independence of the Colonies,
and have looked upon himself as a mediator on the side
of the stronger party, aiming in a friendly antagonism
to secure the real interests of the weaker party. Besides
his clerkship, his first civil appointment, as he informed
Pictet, appears to have been as Secretary of the Prov-
ince of Georgia, in which position, however, he would
seem to have done nothing, simply because there was
nothing to be done in it. The British authority was
nominally restored in that Province by the return of
the Governor, Sir James Wright, July 20, 1779.
But it was a short and barren restoration. The loyal-
ists there, who had been beguiled by the royal proclama-
tion into a belief that an end had come to their troubles,
had occasion soon after to rue their confidence, when
orders came from England, in 1782, that the royal
authority should be abandoned there, orders which
included, of course, an abandonment of the loyalists
themselves, and a surrender of their property to con-
fiscation. In vain did they offer to the King's general
the assurance that they would still hold the Province for
him if he would give them a single regiment of foot to
assist the Georgia Rangers. We may be sure that
Thompson's secretaryship, if rewarded, was ineffective.
We may be sure, too, that the first occupation of
Thompson, apart from the discharge of his duties as a
private secretary and a subordinate official in his De-
Life of Count RumforcL 107
partment, would be to make the most and the best of
his opportunities in acquainting himself with the British
metropolis and in seeking introductions alike to men
in public station and to those engaged in scientific pur-
suits. Nothing of interest would escape his keen ob-
servation, and no means of personal improvement or
acquisition, through men or things, would fail to yield
him advancement. It was a place for the country youth
to indulge his genius, and for the aspirant for thrift and
fame to gratify his ambition. He. happened, as did
Franklin a little earlier, upon a time and stage of de-
velopment when science and philosophy were making a
marked transition in their methods, from the specula-
tive to the experimental process. Thompson's genius
was eminently practical and experimental, and he showed
a most cautious painstaking in the most minute processes
and conditions with which he applied the tests of experi-
ment. After he had given some considerable time to
peering round and through the metropolis, as his posi-
tion naturally prompted him he turned his attention
to certain improvements in economy, utility, and effi-
ciency in connection with military details. He was so
situated that his suggestions would readily obtain a
hearing and attention. He advised and procured the
adoption of bayonets for the fusees of the Horse-
Guards, to be used in fighting on foot. He continued
his experiments on gunpowder, with greater facilities at
his command for extending them and making them
yield to the severest tests of science. The range and
character of his social intimacies formed within the
next year or two show how diligently and successfully
he cultivated the acquaintance of men of station and
distinction. His manners with such were always fasci-
io8 Life of Co^mt Rinnford.
nating and ingratiating. In the autumn of the year
T 777> on Account of his sufferings from impaired health,
Mr. Thompson went to .Bath, where he spent some
time in using the waters. Here he resumed and con-
tinued his favorite scientific experiments, especially a
series of them to test the cohesive force of different
bodies. In July, 1778, he was the guest of Lord
George Germaine at his country-seat at Stoneland
Lodge. Here, with the assistance, as he tells us, of
the Rev. Mr. Ball, Rector of Withyham, he under-
took experiments " to determine the most advan-
tageous situation for the vent in fire-arms, and to
measure the velocities of bullets and the recoil under
various circumstances. I had hopes, also, of being
able to find out the velocity of the inflammation of
gunpowder, and to measure its force more accurately
than had hitherto been done/' *
On Thompson's return to London from Bath, he
communicated the results of his investigations into
the cohesion of bodies to Sir Joseph Banks, President
of the Royal Society. Being thus self-introduced as a
scientific inquirer to that eminent man, he was soon on
most intimate terms with him, and became one of his
nearest circle of friends. It was not in 1778, as stated
by his biographers, but in 1779, that Thompson .was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His certificate
for election describes him "as a gentleman well versed
in natural knowledge and many branches of polite
learning." f
He very soon became one of the most active and hon-
* An Account of some Experiments upon Gunpowder, &c.
f History of the Royal Society &c. By Charles Richard Weld, Esq. Vol. II.
p. 212.
Life of Count Rumford. 109
ored members of the Society, always attending its meet-
ings when he was in London. In order that he might
pursue his experiments on gunpowder with great guns,
he sought, and readily obtained, the most favorable
opportunity with extraordinary facilities for so doing.
In the Essay already quoted he thus refers to an occasion
which also enabled him to engage in sea-service :
" During a cruise which I made, as a volunteer, in the Vic-
tory, with the British fleet, under the command of my late
worthy friend Sir Charles Hardy, in the year 1779, I had many
opportunities of attending to the firing of heavy cannon ; for
though we were not fortunate enough to come to a general
action with the enemy, as is well known, yet, as the men were
frequently exercised at the great guns and in firing at marks,
and as some of my friends in the fleet, then captains (since made
admirals), as the Honourable Keith Stewart, who commanded
the Berwick of 74 guns, Sir Charles Douglas, who com-
manded the Duke of 98 guns, and Admiral Macbride, who
was then captain of the Bienfaisant of 64 guns, were kind
enough, at my request, to make a number of experiments, and
particularly by firing a greater number of bullets at once from
their heavy guns than ever had been done before, and observing
the distances at which they fell in the sea, I had opportunities
of making several very interesting observations, which gave me
much new light relative to the action of fired gunpowder."
He also made a study of the principles of naval
artillery, which he contributed as a chapter to Stal-
kartt's Treatise on Naval Architecture, published in
1781. He likewise devised a new cx>de of marine
signals which has not been made public. The period
and the state of things in which he thus devoted his
genius to practical science were peculiarly suited to
procure him a full appreciation.
The Annual Register, in its chronicre of promotions
i io Life of Count Rumford.
for the year 1780, records that in September, " B.
Thompson, Esq., was made Under-Secretary of State
for the Northern Department." The oversight of all
the practical details for recruiting, equipping, trans-
porting, and victualling the British forces, and of many
other incidental arrangements, was thus committed to
him. Though he discharged the duties of this office in
person but little more than one year, his influence
would naturally be felt while the administration of
which he was a subordinate remained in power. The
tenor of his counsels has not transpired, nor are we
sufficiently well informed about the matter to say
whether he had any special theory, plan, or policy;
whether he was a prime originator, or only a subservient
agent, of measures the results of which could have
afforded but little satisfaction to those who were re-
sponsible for them. If he often attended the debates
in Parliament, as doubtless he did, he had full oppor-
tunities of watching how the tide turned to ebb at the
very moment before it seemed to have reached a full
flood ; and if he was discerning in the interpretation of
signs, he must have known that his official service
would be brief. As we shall see, he availed himself
of a graceful occasion for resignation, most probably in
full foresight of an alternative method of release. The
exercise of his genius and the way in which he could
best serve his fellow-men that being afterwards the
great aim of his life lay in a direction quite different
from his present employments. No one, therefore,
biographer or critic, need be concerned to plead for him
in an office where success would have been worse than
failure. He first signed official papers October 27, 1780.
Thompson has left an interesting token of his of-
Life of Count Ritmford. in
ficiousness in the service of King George III. in one
of the manuscript volumes in the British Museum in
London. That king showed a most commendable zeal
in collecting a library of all the books and papers which
came from, or which would throw light upon, the Ameri-
can Colonies from their first planting to his own time.
A large portion of this collection came through the
hands of George IV. into the national repository. In it
is a small quarto volume containing a series of letters
from' Dr. Franklin to the Rev. Dr. Cooper, an eminent
minister in Boston, upon American politics, from 1769
to 1774, with Dr. Cooper's answers; and also some let-
ters from Governor Pownall to Dr. Cooper. There is
added " a short history of those letters, or an account
of the manner in which they happened to fall into the
hands of the present proprietor of them," Mr. Thomp-
son.
From this "account" it appears that when Dr.
Cooper left Boston, after the battle of Bunker Hill,
to find refuge in the country, as his effects, which he
took with him, would be subject to search, he committed
these valuable papers to the care of his friend, Mr.
Jeffries, one of the selectmen of the town, who was
then confined by sickness. Mr. Jeffries consigned them
to a trunk containing things of his own. When he too
left Boston, forgetting what had thus been intrusted to
him, he left the trunk in charge of his son, Dr. Jeffries,
who, remaining in the town, was in sympathy with the
royalist party. At the evacuation of Boston he took
the papers with him to Halifax. " From Halifax he
brought them with him to London in January last
[1777], and made a present of them to Mr. Thomp-
son, who now presumes most humbly to lay them at
H2 Life of Count Rumford.
his Majesty's feet [George III.] as a literary as well as
apolitical curiosity."
While the war was in progress, Mr. Thompson
was brought into constant and intimate relations with
the refugees or loyalists who had sought in England
for protection against popular indignation and violence
in this country, which steadily increased with the ex-
asperation excited by every new measure of hostility
adopted by the mother country. Being himself so well
provided for, and in a situation of influence, where his
patronage was effective, he undoubtedly found his posi-
tion in this respect one of embarrassment and annoy-
ance. There were several centres in England where
these refugees gathered for companionship and mutual
comfort. Bristol sheltered very many of them, but
London was the place of their thickest concourse. The
condition of most of the exiles was deplorable in the
extreme, and many of the more magnanimous of them
learned abroad a true love for their native country by
suffering for it, if in another way, hardly any less in
feeling than they would have suffered had they re-
mained exposed to the dislike and gibes of their own
fellow-citizens. Such of these refugees as had no means
of their own and no wealthy friends the case with all
but a very few of them beset the home government
with their piteous appeals for aid, and the overburdened
treasury was drawn upon for pensions and gratuities to
keep them from starvation. Every one of them who
could establish a claim for any loss incurred by his
loyalty on this side of the water was eager to press
his demands. In one year the grants made to them
amounted to some < 80,000. At the close of the war,
* Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society, 3d Series, Vol. VIII. pp. 278, 279.
Life of Count Rumford. 113
under the constraints of ministerial reform and economy,
this sum had shrunk to 38,000, and many of the
exiles were compelled to face the alternative of returning
to America to meet the humor of their now independent
countrymen, or of remaining under humiliating circum-
stances amid equally unsympathizing people in Eng-
land. So far as the relations between these refugees
and Mr. Thompson can be traced, I find no evi-
dence that he failed to do, in any case, what duty and
friendliness required of him. If' there was a "seeming
exception to this in a case now to be mentioned, it is
very easy to relieve the imputation.
One of the most forlorn and disconsolate of these
exiles was Samuel Curwen, of Salem, Massachusetts,
who had been a Deputy Judge of Admiralty and Pro-
vincial Impost Officer in the service of the crown, as
well as a county magistrate for thirty years. He had
abundant property, but, being obnoxious for lack of
spirit or confidence, on the breaking out of hostilities
he had fled to Philadelphia, and from thence had sailed
to England, remaining there through the war, but re-
turning here unmolested at its close. He was a refined
and sensitive man, desponding over his separation from
wife and home and his fear of want, as he had reached
the borders of old age. He received a gratuity of a
hundred pounds, and was put on the Treasury list for an
annual pension of the same amount.
The following extracts from Judge Curwen's journal
have an interest in themselves in connection with Mr.
Thompson.* Having chosen his residence in London,'
where he was intent to hear all the feverish rumors of
* The Journal and Letters of Samuel Curwen, &c. By George Atkinson Ward.
4th edition. Boston, 1864.
8
H4 Life of Count Riimford.
each day on the war, he writes under date of November
14, 1780:
" Arriving at home, William Cabot drank tea with me, S.
Sparhawk came in afterwards, and abode two hours ; from whom
I heard the first account of Arnold's intentional withdrawing
himself and four or five thousand troops under his command
from Congressional service to the Royal standard at New
York, the failure of this scheme of treachery, and his lucky
escape from his enemies' hands. From him also the relation of
the seizure of Mr. Laurens's papers, late President of the Con-
gress, and now a prisoner in the Tower ; giving an account of
the desperate situation of their affairs, with complaints of failure
of their resources, and their inability to support the war any longer
without loans from Holland, France, or Spain. The above
comes from Benjamin Thompson, a native o-f Massachusetts,
(formerly an apprentice to my next-door neighbor in Salem,
Mr. John Appleton, an importer of British goods,) now Under-
secretary in the American Department."
Curwen records next year, April 19, an unsuccessful
attempt to call on Mr. Thompson at his lodgings, Pall
Mall. On May 23 he writes :
"On returning home, found a letter from Arthur Savage,
informing me of Mr. Thompson's compliments and wish to see
me at eleven o'clock to-morrow at his lodgings.
"May 24 [1781]. Went early, in order to be at Mr. Benja-
min Thompson's in time, and being a little before, heard he was
not returned from Lord George Germaine's, where he always
breakfasts, dines, and sups, so great a favorite is he. To kill
half an hour, I loitered to the Park through the Palace, and on
second return found him at his lodgings ; he received me in a
friendly manner, taking me by the hand, talked with great free-
dom, and promised to remember and serve me in the way I
proposed to him [probably the securing the continuance of
his allowance unreduced]. Promises are easily made, and
genteel delusive encouragement, the staple article of trade, be-
Life of Count Rumford. 115
longing to the courtier's profession. I put no hopes on the
fair appearances of outward behavior, though it is uncandid to
suppose all mean to deceive. Some wish to do a service who
have it not in their power ; all wish to be thought of importance
and significancy, and this often leads to deceit. This young
man, when a shop-lad to my next neighbor, ever appeared
active, good-natured, and sensible ; by a strange concurrence of
events, he is now Under-Secretary to the American Secretary
of State, Lord George Germaine, a Secretary to Georgia, in-
spector of all the clothing sent to America, and Lieutenant-Colo-
nel Commandant of horse dragoons at New York ; his income
arising from these sources is, I have been told, near seven
thousand a year,* a sum infinitely beyond his most sanguine
expectations. He is, besides, a member of the Royal Society.
It is said he is of an ingenious turn, an inventive imagination,
and, by being on one cruise in Channel Service with Sir Charles
Hardy, has formed a more regular and better-digested system
for signals than that heretofore used. He seems to be of a
happy, even temper in general deportment, and reported of an
excellent heart ; peculiarly respectful to Americans that fall in
his way."
On July 27, and on August 3 and 4, Judge Curwen
was disappointed in his attempts to find Mr. Thomp-
son, either at his lodgings or at the Treasury. But the
following entry in the journal, under August n, indi-
cates even a more grievous disappointment when he did
find him :
"After one hour's waiting, admitted to Mr. Thompson in
the Plantation Office ; he seemed inclined to shorten the inter-
view, received me with a courtier's smile, rather uncommunica-
tive and dry. This reception has damped my ill-grounded
hopes, derived from former seeming friendly intentions to pro-
* It is hardly probable that Major Thompson received anything like the sum
above named as his annual emolument. Evidence enough will appear from his own
pen and those of others, in the following pages, that he was neither mercenary nor
avaricious. He never was lavish in expenditure for himself.
n6 Life of Count Rumford.
mote my views ; this, my first, will be my last attempt to gain
advantages from a courtier of whom I never entertained favor-
able impressions."
The Judge, in a letter to a friend, dated November
25, 1781, writes: " Our townsman, Mr. Fisher, holds
a quartered precarious office, at, I fancy, less than half
its real income, under, and returnable to, Mr. Thomp-
son, when he shall come back, which I doubt not will
be in the spring or summer following." The absence
of Mr. Thompson here alluded to was doubtless on
occasion of his military errand to America, soon to be
related. Had Judge Curwen been the only applicant
for such intercessory help as his favored young country-
man was known to be able to extend^ no doubt he would
have left this " courtier " in better humor. But the
Under-Secretary was so often called upon for similar
favors that he learned to put his handsome features in
fitting expression, and to frame avowals and promises
which had their fullest meaning for the eye and the ear.
It was, however, a trying experience for the venerable
Salem magistrate thus to stand before the " shop-lad "
of whom he may once have purchased soap or shoe-
buckles.
Another of the more distinguished refugees in Lon-
don who was very intimate with Mr. Thompson was
Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, of Boston. Having studied
medicine in London and Paris, he was established here
before the war as a physician and druggist. He had
acquired immense wealth, and was honored as a noble,
public-spirited, and popular man. As one of the part-'
ners in the " Plymouth Purchase," so called, on the
Kennebec, he owned one twelfth of the property, and
had been assiduous and enterprising in improving and
Life of Count Rumford. . 117
settling it. He is said to have owned a hundred thou-
sand acres in Maine. Being in close social intimacy
with the royal party in Boston at the opening of hos-
tilities, he was regarded as unfriendly to the cause of
liberty. Still he wished to remain here and share the for-
tunes of his countrymen. He would have done so, had
not a young wife persuaded him, at nearly the age of
.seventy, to go off with the British forces to Halifax at
the evacuation. This was, of course, the ruin of his
fortunes by confiscation. When he came back to Bos-
ton, in 1785, to try to reclaim something from the
wreck by a petition to the Legislature, he alleged that
on his forsaking the town he had intentionally left for
the benefit of his countrymen in their need a very full
storehouse of drugs and medicines. These Washing-
ton had tried to appropriate for the army, but the sheriff
of Suffolk got the start of him.
Doubtless Dr. Gardiner and Mr. Thompson had
been acquainted with edch other here. In the following
reply which the Under-Secretary of State addressed to
this impoverished refugee, the "plan" referred to 'may
concern either some suggestion for the conduct of the
war, or for providing for the clamorous demands of
the loyalists, who had to take the Secretary's office on
their way to the Treasury.
"PALL MALL COURT, Feby. 24, 1780.
"DEAR SIR, I return you many thanks for the excellent plan
you have been so good as to send me. I have shown it to my
Lord George Germaine, who approves of it very much. And I
am directed by his Lordship to return you his thanks for the
trouble you have had in preparing it. He is fully convinced of
its utility, and would be very glad to see it carried into execu-
tion.
1 1 8 Life of Count Rumford.
" I am sorry to inform you that nothing has yet been done at
the Treasury respecting your Petition. I have often inquired
after it, and I shall continue to do everything in my power to
forward it. But just at this moment their Lordships are so
extremely busy with Parliamentary matters that it is next to
impossible to get them to attend to anything else. But as soon
as the present hurry is a little over, I would hope they will take
the Petitions of the American sufferers into consideration; and
you may rest assured that your Petition will be among the very
first that are laid before them.
" I am, Dear Sir, with great regard and respect,
" Your most Obedient,
"And most faithful, humble Servant,
"B. THOMPSON.
" DOCTOR GARDINER."
It is suggestive to think of Mr. Thompson as hav-
ing in hand, and inquisitively scanning, the official pa-
pers seized with Henry Laurens, the late President of
our Congress, when he was captured, in the summer
of 1780, by a British frigate near Newfoundland, on
his 'way to Holland as our Minister Plenipotentiary.
Laurens was then in the Tower, and his papers, which
he had thrown overboard on his capture, but which
were fished up by a seaman, made piteous exposure of
the needs of his countrymen. Thompson, it seerns,
divulged their secrets. He was soon after to have a
meeting with Laurens under other circumstances. There
were many curious surprises in those days, which re-
quired that Americans meeting in Europe should keep
full command of courteous manners.
It is probably safe to accept the reason and motive
assigned by Cuvier as the promptings which induced
Mr. Thompson to seek active military service in the
royal army, and in that capacity to return to his native
Life of Count Rumford. 119
country to fight, as he had already counselled, against
her cause of independence. He might have felt the
impulse, whether of conviction, self-respect, or the plea
of consistency, to show the sincerity of the course he
had been pursuing in the quiet of his official bureau
by exposing his life for the same object, and thus prov-
ing that he was a loyal and grateful subject of his King.
There is this, however, to be said on the side of the pos-
sible magnanimity of his conduct, that he formed the
purpose of coming here in command as an officer of
the British army at the very darkest and most hopeless
stage of the war as regarded the prospects of the royal
cause. The King and the administration had been
thwarted. The majority in Parliament was shifting
against them. England found herself involved by sea
and land with our French allies. The surrender of
Burgoyne, to be soon followed by the capitulation of
Cornwallis, had discomfited even the most arrogant
and contemptuous enemies of the Colonies. Exhaustive
levies and reckless appropriations had dispirited the
people, and held up to them the prospective burdens
of overwhelming debt and. excessive taxes. The subju-
gation of America had to be recognized as delusive,
as, in fact, an impossibility. Whether disappointment,
stung into vengeance, might yet inflict a few more
heavy blows against the opening life of a new nation,
or whether discord might be introduced among its con-
stituent parts, or, finally, whether more or less of the
territory of North America should still be held by the
crown, were as yet contingent. Thompson's political
prospects were for the time, at least identified with
those of his head and patron, Lord G. Germaine. The
latter felt that the last hope of subjugating the Colonies
I2O Life of Count Rumford*
hung upon the fate of Cornwallis. Sir M. W. Wraxall *
has given a striking sketch of the incident when the
news of the Earl's capitulation on October 19 was
brought to the Secretary, with whom he dined on the
day mentioned.
u On Sunday the 25th [November], about noon, official
intelligence of the surrender of the British forces at Yorktown
arrived from Falmouth at Lord George Germaine's house in
Pall Mall. Lord Walshingham, who had been Under-Secre-
tary of State in that Department, happened to be there. With-
out communicating it to any other person, Lord George, for
the purpose of despatch, immediately got with him into a
hackney coach, and drove to Lord Stormont's residence in
Portland Place. Having imparted to him the disastrous infor-
mation, and taken him into the carriage, they instantly pro-
ceeded to the Chancellor's, and, on consultation, determined to
lay it before Lord North. The First Minister's firmness, and
even his presence of mind, gave way for a short time under
this awful disaster. I asked Lord George afterwards how he
took the communication. c As he would have taken a ball in
his breast,' replied Lord George. c For he opened his arms, ex-
claiming wildly, as he paced up and down the apartment dur-
ing a few minutes, O God ! it is all over ! ' :
Doubtless Thompson had formed strong personal rela-
tions with Lord George, from such close intimacy with
him, not only in the office, but at his house in Pall
Mall, and in frequent visits to him at his seat at Dray-
ton. Perhaps Thompson foresaw, even more clearly
than many others, what was to be the probable issue of
the struggle in America, and provided for himself the
alternative which, poor as it proved, we are soon to find
him accepting. He was on this side of the ocean when,
in February, 1782, the forced resignation of his patron
* Historical Memoirs of my own Time. Vol. II. p. 99, &c.
Life of Coimt Rumford. 121
was accepted, as a temporary dalliance of Lord North
with his own fate, which was to be a little longer de-
ferred.
The humiliations which successively were visited on
the schemes and enterprises of the ministry reflected
reproaches upon themselves which they sought to shift
upon secretaries and subordinates, as having been in-
competent blunderers. Cuvier says and Mr. Thomp-
son alone could have been a qualified informant that,
as Under-Secretary of State for thirteen months, " he
had been disgusted by the want of talent displayed by
his principal, for which he had himself not unfrequently
been made responsible." It was too much to expect
that the ministry and their secretaries, who had con-
ducted the war, should be the agents for devising and
ratifying terms of peace. Interest, therefore, was con-
centrated upon the Cabinet, with the knowledge that a
rupture there could alone bring the problem to a solu-
tion. When the mortifying intelligence of what had
occurred at Yorktown and Gloucester reached England,
king and ministry still stood by each other, and the
majority in Parliament still confirmed their policy,
though with a halting decision. But the opposition in
Parliament made Lord George the target of their
assaults, as it was within his Department that the meas-
ures which had proved so impotent in the direction of
Colonial affairs had been administered. The Premier,
Lord North, abandoned him, and he resigned, receiv-
ing, however, some special marks of the King's favor in
pensions and a peerage. Viscount Sackville, as he was
now entitled, had, in his turn, in foresight of his resig-
nation, an opportunity to reward so faithful a friend
as he had found in his Under-Secretary. Accordingly
122 Life of Count Rumford.
Major Thompson, who had always clung to that title,
though its provincial commission gave him no rank in
the regular army, was now honored with the commis-
sion, in the British army, of a Lieutenant-Colonel. It
was to forces already organized, or in fragmentary
bodies supposed to admit of being rallied into new
vigor, in America, that Thompson's commission ap-
plied. His pay was 24 s. 6d. per diem.
But the officer, though at the age of twenty-eight
not yet a veteran, wished for, and meant to do, full
military duty. He needed a command. Where should
he find a regiment ? He provided for himself, and
resolved to secure a following from those who, in his
native land, had willingly espoused the cause of the
King against their own country. They called them-
selves loyal Americans. For the most part they were a
sorry company, the most desperate and hated in their
mode of warfare and in their subserviency, and the
bitterest sufferers in the wreck of the cause to which,
in principle or in malignity, as the case may have been,
they had given themselves. The ranks of the " Loyal
American Regiments," gathered in full or only in a
skeleton form in New York and in the Southern Prov-
inces, were held to the royal side by a very slender
allegiance, influenced in part by fear, and in part by
the stronger attraction of pay in English coin above
that of a paper currency. They, however, found it
very easy to shift to the American side; and perhaps a
majority of them had been so impartial as to serve in
the course of the war with equal merit, principle, and
efficiency in both armies.
Yet it was not so easy for the officers of these regi-
ments of loyalists to pass from one side to the other.
Life of Count Rumford. 123
For them consistency and notoriety were pledges that
they might perform acceptable service. Their self-
committal gave them a claim to royal gratitude to be
met only by exchanging their provincial commissions
for others which should raise them to and confirm them
in honorable positions in the regular army of Great
Britain, with opportunities for promotion, pay, half-
pay, and pensions accordingly.
Thompson himself said that he "went out to America
to command a regiment of cavalry which he had raised
in that country for the King's service." But little
could be done in England for that enterprise, except
the procuring of commissions and funds. The work
was to be accomplished here, and Thompson essayed it.
True to his devotion to scientific experiment in the
subject which he had investigated from his boyhood,
Thompson so far redeemed what in our eyes must be
regarded as the inglorious purpose of his sea voyage.
He says :
" His Majesty having been graciously pleased to permit me
to take out with me from England four pieces of light artillery,
constructed under the direction of the late Lieutenant-General
Desaguliers, with a large proportion of ammunition, I made a
great number of interesting experiments with these guns, and
also with the ship's guns on board the ships of war in which I
made my passage to and from America." |
Pictet gives us the following account from his friend's
confidential communication of this incident in his life:
" The regiment of cavalry called the King's American Dra-
goons was raised at this time in his native country by his
friends and agents, and he was then commissioned as its Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Commandant. This circumstance led him to
* Essay on Gunpowder. f Ibid.
124 Life of Count Rumford.
leave England for a return to America to serve with his regi-
ment. He had intended to land at New York, but contrary
winds compelled him to disembark at Charleston [South Carolina].
Obliged to pass the winter there, he was made commander of
the remains of the cavalry in the royal army which was then
under the orders of Lieutenant-General Leslie. This corps
was broken up, and he promptly restored it and won the
confidence and attachment of the commander. He led them
often against the enemy, and was always successful in his
enterprises.
" That which is called good fortune and success in war is
achieved amid many scenes deeply saddening for a kind heart.
The sort of engagements to which he was drawn multiplied
these harrowing scenes. It was a war of posts and a civil war
at the same time. So there was much of danger and fatigue
with little glory, and the spectacle of a people reduced to
desolation and despair. Such was his position at that time. I
have seen his eyes filled with tears when he told me certain
anecdotes relating to those times and to his military career. A
German painter has undertaken to represent one of these scenes,
which makes one shudder, and which I have not now heart or
time to describe to you."
Pictet would seem in this last sentence to refer to
some picture shown him by his friend, then Count
Rumford, drawn by description and narrative furnished
by the latter to some German artist. I have been the
more ready to quote the sentiment which the Swiss
friend connects with his statement of facts, because,
though it may be a little overstrained, I should be glad
to believe that the larger part of it was to be credited
to Pictet's informant. There were indeed some pe-
culiarly sad and harrowing circumstances connected with
the desultory warfare in our Southern Provinces; but
I have not been able to identify Colonel Thompson as
an actor -in, or even as a spectator of, many of them.
Life of Count Rinnford. 125
Neither have I succeeded further than in approxi-
mating to the dates at which Thompson sailed from
England and arrived at Charleston. It was undoubtedly
stress of weather which carried him thither, rather than
to Long Island, New York, where the remnant of the
corps of dragoons which he was to command was quar-
tered. Curwen, as we have seen, writes of having had
an interview with Thompson in London, August n,
1781, and then writes of him as absent under date
of November 25, 1781. Between these dates, proba-
bly about October 4, Thompson, who had before re-
ceived his commission, had left England. He was in
Charleston early in January, 1782. He has left, how-
ever, but faint traces of his visit there, and but one
signal event of the many which Pictet reports is at-
tached to his name.
The following brief extracts from American papers
of the time, published on the royal side, help us to a
few facts relating to Colonel Thompson : *
Rivington's New York Gazette, January 5, 1782.
" The British fleet of forty-odd sail, under convoy of the Rotter-
dam, of 50 guns, Astrea, 32, and Duke de Chartres, 16, with
Lord Dunmore, destined for this port, was safe arrived at
Charleston."
January 9. " The Quebec [which left Cork, the great
depot for provisions, October 29] a convoy has anchored
in New York Harbor. They left the Rotterdam and Astrea's
fleet of victuallers and store-ships, &c. at Charleston, where
they arrived from Cork ten days before the Quebec convoy got
thither."
New York Mercury, January 16, 1782." "The fleet which
sailed from this port for South Carolina, 25th ult., was seen on
* I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Henry Onderdonk, Jr., of Jamaica, L. I.,
in communicating to me these extracts.
126 Life of Count R^lmford.
the 4th inst., by his Majesty's frigate Blond, since arrived '
here, off Cape Fear, with a favorable wind for Charleston.
" On Sunday last arrived his Majesty's Ship Rotterdam,
James Knowles, Esq., commander, which sailed from Charles-
ton the same day the Blond left it. Colonel Thompson, of the
King's American Dragoons, late Under-Secretary of State for
the American Department, and a number of gentlemen of rank,
who came passengers in the above-mentioned ship, remain at
Charleston."
Rivington, January 19, 1782. " We are informed that
Lord Dunmore had a grand reception at Charleston, on his
arrival there."
Supposing Thompson to have arrived in Charleston
on or before January i, we might infer that he did not
leave England until after the news had arrived there
of Cornwallis's surrender, if Curwen had not written of
him as absent on the same date referred to in the extract
given above from Wraxall. At any rate, Thompson
must have learned at once, as he landed on this conti-
nent, that the war waging here by Great Britain was
rather a defensive than an offensive one.
Tarleton, in his History of the Campaigns of 1780
and 1781 in the Southern Provinces, does not come far
enough down to cover his presence. In the autumn of
1781 the remnant of the British army in the South had
been driven by Greene into Charleston, South Carolina.
There, and at Savannah and on John's Island, the only
places in the region left in their possession, and these
too held by the aid of vessels, the British forces were
hemmed in and found it difficult to hold their ground.
Their discomfiture had rallied the hopes of the patriots.
Hundreds of halting, time-serving waiters on the for-
tunes of the war, within the former British lines, now
put themselves under the protection of the Legislature
Life of Count Rumford. 127
which was convened at Jacksonborough by Governor
Rutledge. This was watched over by Greene's advance.
General Leslie, the British commander at Charleston,
baffled in all his enterprises, was at his wits' end, and
had reason to apprehend starvation, the main security
against which was to be found in successful inroads into
the country. In vain did he issue his proclamations to
rally Tories and provisions. He must have welcomed
the weather-bound new-comer who told Pictet that he
made himself so serviceable. By a bold movement in
January, 1782, Major Craig, who with a small British
force was in command on John's Island, was driven
into Charleston by a body of Greene's army, with the
loss of a few prisoners and stores. Becoming desperate
in their need of supplies, in a skirmish on one of their
sorties they had been repulsed by Marion's Brigade
near Monk's Corner. Marion, soon after filling his
seat in the Legislature, left his brigade in command of
Colonel Horrey. An attack was made upon htm by a
larger force under Colonel Thompson, near the Santee,
and though Marion came in season to take part in the
action, he had the mortification of witnessing the dis-
comfiture of his little band with the loss of men and
munitions. This is the only conspicuous action which
our own historian has credited to Thompson while at
the South. *
A few other brief extracts from Rivington, contain-
ing information collected from ports below New York,
contain for us hints of Thompson's activity.
Under date February 18 : "A detachment of the royal Ameri-
cans went on service, supposed against Greene."
* Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States. By
Henry Lee. Washington, 1827. p. 397.
128 Life of Count Rumford..
Richmond, March 9. "A person who left the Southern
army, February 13, says Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson has
taken command of the British cavalry under Colonel Leslie."
Philadelphia, March 27. " A considerable force of cav-
alry and infantry, commanded by Colonel Thompson, sallied out
from Charleston on the side opposite the American camp, and
surprised and dispersed a party of militia on Feb. 24 and
25. The British retreated before Greene could send re-
inforcements."
Charleston, March 2. " Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson moved
on Sunday, Feb. 24, from Daniel's Island, with the cavalry, Cun-
ningham's and Young's troops of mounted militia, Yagers, and
volunteers of Ireland, with one three-pounder, and a detach-
ment of the Thirtieth Regiment. By the spirited exertions of
his troops, and by the Colonel's mounting the infantry occasion-
ally on the dragoon horses, he carried his corps thirty-six miles
without halting. [Having secured the American scouts to pre-
vent information being given.] He drove in Horrey's regiment.
They were pursued by Major Doyle with mounted militia. On
seeing the enemy, Colonel T sounded a charge and dashed
forwards. Marion's marque and men refreshed our soldiers.
Colonel T marched back, driving the cattle, &c. The ad-
mirable conduct of the officer who commanded can only be
equalled by the spirit with which his orders were executed."
(Rivington, April 17.)
" This series of actions took place at Warnham Bridge, and
at Tydeman's house."
In the war of posts, of desultory skirmishes, and of
inroads into the farming regions for plunder, to which
the struggle at the South was reduced, there was indeed
little opportunity for Thompson to win laurels. He
undoubtedly made use of his energetic and methodical
skill in doing what he could to organize and discipline
such unpromising materials as he had before him. It
is to be remembered that he was only accidentally on
the spot, and had no permanent command there. The
Life of Count Rumford. 129
dragoons at the head of which he intended to place him-
self, or rather that remnant of the corps which escaped
coming under the full terms of the capitulation at York-
town, were on Long Island, New York, awaiting his
coming. As to the pathetic scenes which Thompson
was called to witness, and at the narration of which, in
the Frenchman's rehearsal, he wept, he might have
seen similar ones at the beginning of the war, before he
left his native country. No doubt there were enough
of them, and they were harrowing enough to distress
one of a philanthropic heart. But without meaning to
intimate that there was any exaggeration in the reference
to so many peculiarly distressing incidents, I feel re-
lieved in avowing that in faithfully searching after the
real occurrences which they imply I have been unsuc-
cessful in finding them.
Charleston was evacuated December 14, lylte, but
before that event had taken place, and in the middle of
the spring of that year, Thompson had sailed for New
York. What Pictet received from his own lips is to be
inferred from the following report of it: *
" Honored with the esteem of the army, and with the most
flattering recommendations from General Leslie for the Com-
mander-in-Chief, Thompson started in the spring of 1782 for
New York, where he took the command of his regiment. Prince
William Henry, Duke of Clarence, third son of the King, who
reviewed his corps, committed the colors to him with his own
hand. General Clinton was succeeded towards autumn by
Carlton, who also extended to Thompson his friendship and
confidence. He gathered into his corps the feeble remains of
two regiments which had been engaged through the war, and
was sent to Huntington, an advanced post of the army on Long
Island, where he passed the winter."
* Bibliotheque Britannique. Vol. XX.
9
130 Life of Count Rumford.
I am able to fill up with some interesting details what
M. Pictet presents in this condensed form. Doubtless
Thompson showed to his friend the commendatory
document from General Leslie, as he did the originals
of other papers. The order issued from Leslie's head-
quarters, as given in Rivington's Gazette, is as follows :
" DAVIS HOUSE, March i, 1782.
" Lieutenant-General Leslie desires Lieutenant-Colonel
Thompson and the officers and soldiers of the cavalry and
infantry who served under his command will accept his best
thanks for the services performed by them on the late expedition.
The Lieutenant-General cannot too truly express to the army
the opinion he entertains of the merit of Lieutenant-Colonel
Thompson's conduct upon the occasion, and of the spirited
behavior of the troops. The constancy with which they
supported the fatigues of a long and very rapid march claims
his approbation, no less than their exertions in presence of the
enemy."
Under date of April 13, 1782, Rivington announces :
" New York. On Thursday arrived from South Carolina,
the Earl of Dunmore, Colonel Thompson, who lately effected a
successful attack upon the Rebels in South Carolina, and many
other officers of the army arrived in town from thence on Tues-
day evening and yesterday."
The New York Mercury of April 16 gives this an-
nouncement :
" Thursday last, arrived at Sandy Hook, in ten days from
Charleston, South Carolina, a fleet of forty-five sail, of navy and
army victuallers (most of which arrived at that place last fall from
Europe), under convoy of his Majesty's ships Carysfort, Duke de
Chartres, Astrea, Charlestown, and Grana. When the fleet left
Charleston, the garrison was very healthy and well supplied
with all sorts of provisions. General Greene, with an army of
about two thousand men, being at thirty miles' distance. In the
Life of Count Rumford. 131
fleet came passengers, his Excellency the Earl of Dunmore,
Governor of Virginia, Colonels Small and Thompson, and sev-
eral other gentlemen of high rank."
It would be agreeable to be able to recognize here
any effort made by Colonel Thompson to communicate
with the members of his own family, or even with his
friend Baldwin, in New Hampshire or Massachusetts,
now that he was again so near them. I cannot say that
he did not make such an effort, but I have been unable
to find any trace or token of it. The attempt would
have been attended with difficulties, though these were
by no means insurmountable. Constant intercourse
was kept up across Long Island Sound between the
British troops in New York, and neutrals, loyalist sym-
pathizers, and time-servers in Connecticut, and con-
trivance and money would have effected the object had
it been one of strong desire. I am forced to the conclu-
sion that Thompson was either indifferent to or alien-
ated from his family. But of this something more will
be said in another connection.
It is somewhat derogatory to the fair fame of Thomp-
son, to have to connect him with the following recruit-
ing bulletin for filling up the thinned ranks of his com-
mand.
In Rivington's Royal Gazette, for July 24, 1782, we
find this tempting advertisement for attracting recruits
for the cc King's American Dragoons."
" Any likely and spirited young lads who are desirous of dis-
tinguishing themselves by serving their King and country, and
who prefer riding on horseback to going on foot, have an oppor-
tunity of gratifying their inclinations : ten guineas to volunteers,
or five to any one who brings a recruit, and five to the recruit.
For the convenience of those who may come from the continent
132 Life of Count Rumford.
by the way of Lloyd's Neck, an officer will constantly remain
at that post."
The particulars which fidelity to the truth of history
now requires to be set forth as they appear in our 'local
annals, though they do not add to, but must be re-
garded as detracting from, the repute of our distin-
guished countryman, may still be found to possess an
interest in themselves. Pictet's gush of sentiment,
original or sympathetic, can hardly be considered as
giving them any dignity. Colonel Thompson, how-
ever, is entitled to the benefit of the suggestion already
intimated, that the military operations of Great Britain
in this country at the time were continued certainly
without any hope of, and possibly without much reference
to, the subjugation of the Colonies. Through her war
against us England had become involved in hostilities
with the Continental powers of Europe, which made the
ocean perilous for her naval armaments and transports,
and threatened her other colonial possessions. It is there-
fore possible that Colonel Thompson may at this period
have felt that he was serving his King and government
in a cause which did not necessarily involve further dis-
tress for his native country.
Mr. Henry Onderdonk, Jr., in his laborious and
miscellaneous gatherings for illustrating historical inci-
dents connected with the war on Long Island, gives me
valuable aid in tracing Colonel Thompson in this part
of his inglorious campaign.*
* Documents and Letters intended to illustrate the Revolutionary Incidents of
Queen's County ; with connecting Narratives, explanatory Notes and Additions. By
Henry Onderdonk, Jr. New York, 1846. Also, Revolutionary Incidents of
Suffolk and Kings' Counties ; with an Account of the Battle of Long Island, &c.
By Henry Onderdonk, Jr. New York, 1849. These are volumes of great value
and interest to the historical student. The quotations in the text are made from
pp. 149, 150, of the former book, and from pp. 107, 261 - 264 of the latter.
Life of Count Rumford. 133
\
Mr. Onderdonk makes the following extract from
Rivington's Royal Gazette, of August 7, 1782, a
journal printed in New York while it was occupied by
the British army :
" Presentation of colors, Thursday, August I, to the King's
American Dragoons, under Colonel Benjamin Thompson, at
camp, about three miles east of Flushing, consisting of four
complete troops mounted, and two dismounted. The regiment
was formed on advantageous ground in front of the encamp-
ment, having a gentle declivity to the south, with two pieces of
light artillery on the right. About sixty yards in front of the
regiment was a canopy twenty feet high, supported by ten pil-
lars. East of which was a semicircular bower for the accom-
modation of spectators. The standards were planted under the
canopy.
" At one o'clock the Prince, with Admiral Digby, General
Birch, Hon. Lieutenant-Colonel Fox, of 38th, and Lieutenant-
Colonel Small of 84th, and other officers of distinction, came
on the ground, and received the usual salutes (the trumpets
sounding and the music playing 'God save the King!'), and
posted themselves in the canopy. The regiment passed in
review before the Prince, performing marching salutes. They
then returned, dismounted, and formed in a semicircle in front
of the canopy. Their chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Odell, delivered
an appropriate address. After which the whole regiment, offi-
cers and men, kneeled and laid their helmets and arms on the
ground, held up their right hands, and took a most solemn oath
of allegiance to their sovereign and fidelity to their standard, the
whole repeating the oath together. The chaplain then pro-
nounced a solemn benediction. The regiment rose, and returned
to their ground, and fired a royal salute. They then mounted,
and saluted the standard together. As soon as the consecrating
and saluting the standard was over, the Prince came forward to
the centre of the regiment, received the colors from Admiral
Digby, and presented them with his own hand to Lieutenant-
Colonel Thompson, who delivered them to the eldest cornets.
134- Life of Count Rumfjrd.
On a given signal the whole regiment, with all the numerous
spectators, gave three shouts, the music played ' God save the
King ! ' the artillery fired a royal salute, and the ceremony was
ended."
The scion of royalty who officiated on this rather de-
monstrative than brilliant occasion was his Royal High-
ness Prince William Henry, the King's third son, aged
nearly seventeen, afterwards King William IV. He
had sailed on board the Prince George, under Admiral
Digby, to qualify himself for rank in the Royal Navy.
An ox was roasted whole, to grace this occasion.
fc He was spitted on a hickory sapling, twelve feet long,
supported on crotches, and turned by handspikes. An
attendant dipped a swab in a tub of salt and water to
baste the ox and moderate the fire." Each soldier then
sliced off for himself a piece of the ill-cooked beef.
The same local annals contain several specifications
of grievances, which may be set forth in the terms that
the writers have chosen for expressing them.
The first printed charge and complaint brought
against the conduct of Colonel Thompson while in
command at Huntington are found as given by Hon.
Silas Wood, the first historian of Long Island.*
Mr. Wood lived in Huntington, and represented
the temper and the remembered grievances of the in-
habitants. His account, which is interesting, as well
as sharply pointed, is as follows :
"From 1776 to 1783 the island was occupied by British
troops. They traversed it from one end to the other, and were
stationed at different places during the war.
* A Sketch of the First Settlement of the Several Towns on Long Island ; with
their Political Condition to the End of the American Revolution. By Silas Wood.
Revised Edition. Brooklyn, N. Y., 1826. pp. 85-90.
Life of Count Rumford. 135
" The whole country within the British lines was subject to
martial law ; the administration of justice was suspended ; the
army was a sanctuary for crimes and robbery, and the grossest
offences were atoned by enlistment. Many of those who had
served as officers in the militia, or as members of the town and
county committees, fled into the American lines for safety.
Some of the most active of those who remained at home were
taken to New York, and suffered a long and tedious imprison-
ment ; others were harassed and plundered of their property ;
and the inhabitants generally were subject to the orders, and
their property to the disposal, of the British officers. They
compelled the inhabitants to do all kinds of personal services,
to work at their forts, to go with their teams on foraging par-
ties, and to transport their cannon, ammunition, provisions, and
baggage from place to place, as they changed their quarters,
and to go and come on the order of every petty officer who had
the charge of the most trifling business.
" In April, 1783, Sir Guy Carlton instituted a Board of Com-
missioners for the purpose of adjusting such demands against the
British army as had not been settled. The accounts of the
people of the town of Huntington alone for property taken from
them for the use of the army, which were supported by receipts
of British officers, or by other evidence, which were prepared to
be laid before the Board, amounted to ,7,249 9*. 6^/., and these
. accounts were not supposed to comprise one fourth part of the
property which was taken from them without compensation.
These accounts were sent to New York to be laid before the
Board of Commissioners, but they sailed for England without
attending to them, and the people from whom the property was
taken were left, like their neighbors who had no receipts, with-
out redress. During the whole war the inhabitants of the isl-
and, especially those of Suffolk County [in which was Hunting-
ton], were perpetually exposed to the grossest insult and abuse.
They had no property of a movable nature that they could,
properly speaking, call their own ; they were oftentimes deprived
of the stock necessary to the management of their farms, and
were deterred from endeavoring to produce more than a bare
136 Life of Count Riimford.
subsistence by the apprehension that a surplus would be wrested
from them, either by the military authority of the purveyor or
by the ruffian hand of the plunderer.
" Besides these violations of the rights of person and property,
the British officers did many acts of barbarity for which there
could be no apology. They made garrisons, storehouses, or
stables of the houses of public worship in several towns, and
particularly of such as belonged to the Presbyterians. In the
fall of 1782, at the conclusion of the war, about the time the
provisional articles of the treaty of peace were signed in Europe,
Colonel Thompson (since said to be Count Rumford), who
commanded the troops then stationed at Huntington, without
any assignable purpose except that of filling his own pockets, by
its furnishing him with a pretended claim on the British treasury
for the expense, caused a fort to be erected in Huntington, and
without any possible motive, except to gratify a malignant dis-
position by vexing the people of Huntington, he placed it in
the centre of the public burying-ground, in defiance of a re-
monstrance of the trustees of the town against the sacrilege of
disturbing the ashes and destroying the monuments of the dead."
The historian proceeds to show how much more of
" cruelty and oppression " the people of the island,
after the peace, had to suffer from their own Legisla-
ture, by legal inflictions and fines, and the denial of
their claims for damages, for what they had done
through compulsion of the British military force, in-
cluding the imposition upon them of a tax of 37,000
" for not having been in a condition to take an active
part in the war against the enemy ! " These latter
charges, however, are aside from our present purpose,
except as they illustrate the miseries of war, and show,
as the historian pleads, " that an abuse of power was
not peculiar to the British Parliament/*
The next historical annalist of Long Island, bearing
a name very nearly the same as that of the subject of
Life of Count Rumford. 137
his severity, Benjamin F. Thompson, Esq.,* repeats
the substance of the above charge against Colonel
Thompson, as made by Wood, and adds that, instead
of listening to the entreaties and remonstrances of the
inhabitants, " he compelled them to assist in pulling
down the Presbyterian Church to furnish materials for
the building of the fort."
This namesake of the Colonel brings the further alle-
gation against him, that on his return to England
" he received the enormous sum of ^30,000 sterling
for his military services, and was also knighted by the
King/' I may as well make an exhaustive exhibition
of the reproach heaped upon Colonel Thompson by
those who have had occasion to chronicle the matter ;
so I will quote a third repetition of the censure, with
aggravations, from a later historian of Long Island,
Mr. Nathaniel S. Prime.f
After copying in an early part of his volume what
has been above transcribed from Wood, and affirming
that no town on the island suffered so much as Hun-
tington from the insolence and outrages and oppression
of the Tories and the British soldiers, Mr. Prime
continues :
<c The seats in the house of God were torn up, and the
building converted into a military depot. The bell was taken
away, and though afterwards restored, it was .so injured as to
be useless. Subsequently (1782) when the contest was virtually
ended, the church was entirely pulled down, and the timber used
to erect blockhouses and barracks for the troops. And to
wound the feelings of the inhabitants most deeply, these struct-
ures were erected in the centre of the burying-ground, the
* The History of Long Island, from its Discovery and Settlement, &c. By Ben-
jamin F. Thompson. Second Edition. 1843. Vol. I. pp. an, 478.
f A History of Long Island, from its first Settlement by Europeans to the year
1845, &c. By Nathaniel S. Prime. New York, 1845. PP- 6 5> 66 > 2 5 r -
138 Life of Count Rumford.
graves levelled, and the tombstones used for building their fire-
places and ovens. The writer has often heard old men testify,
from the evidence of their own senses, that they had seen the
loaves of bread drawn out of these ovens with the reversed
inscription of the tombstones of their friends on the lower
crust.
" The redoubtable commander in these sacrilegious proceed-
ings was Colonel Benjamin Thompson, a native of Massachu-
setts, and the same man that was afterwards created by the
Duke of Bavaria and known to the world as Count Rumford.
But his acts in this place have given him an immortality which
all his military exploits, his philosophical disquisitions, and scien-
tific discoveries, will never secure to him among the descendants
of this outraged community. "
Mr. Prime says that his grandfather, cc the aged pastor
of the congregation," was peculiarly obnoxious to the
British as an " old rebel," and that when the soldiers
first came to the place they treated him with special
indignity, littering the stable with valuable books from
his library. Some of these books were lying before the
historian as he wrote, "with the impress of the same
savage hands." The Rev. Ebenezer Prime, the min-
ister here referred to, died in 1779, so that Colonel
Thompson was not a party to this offence.
I have not assumed the championship of Colonel
Thompson as a soldier, even independently of his
espousal of the side in which he appears against his
native country. He may have been responsible for all
that is here charged against him as a matter of fact, but
there are no adequate grounds for ascribing to him
malignity of motive in the acts done under his com-
mand. The people of Long Island suffered especial
hardships and exactions during the Revolutionary strug-
gle. After the disastrous affair to our forces which
Life of Count Rumford. 1 39
occurred there so early in the war, the Island, like
New York, remained in the possession of the British
forces, naval and military, till the peace. Part of the
inhabitants of the Island had begun very vigorously on
the popular side, and many of the real patriots had fled
to the main. Those who were compelled to remain under
a sincere or a forced and unwelcome allegiance to the
crown had to meet the usual conditions of the occu-
pancy of a spot which was substantially a station and
centre of hostile military operations. The Island was
the resting-place for the British regiments when not on
active duty. They were quartered there for the very
great convenience of embarking, when needed, on any
expedition, south or north. Colonel Thompson does
not appear to have had any special duty assigned to
him on the Island, but was merely quartered there from
having nothing to do elsewhere. In the wniter the
troops gave over campaign work, came into winter-
quarters on the Island, and built huts and barracks,
and excavated the' side-hills to get comfortable shelter
and sleeping-places. The town of Huntington runs
through nearly the centre of the Island^ from the sea-
coast to opposite the town of Norwalk, Connecticut,
on the Sound. At Lloyd's Neck, near Huntington,
was a fort to protect the British wood-cutters against
the whale-boatmen from the mainland, who came out at
night to strip the country. Firewood and boards for
huts were very scarce and difficult to obtain. There
was constant depredating from across the Sound, and
also sharp smuggling between wily Yankees, the sol-
diers, and the disaffected islanders.
The fort that Colonel Thompson built was doubt-
less intended chiefly as a winter shelter for his troops ;
140 Life of Count Rum ford.
and the meeting-house not by any means the only
one destroyed by the British troops for fuel was
stripped from necessity. There was a similar fort built
on a similar rise of ground at Oyster Bay for the like
twofold purposes of shelter and protection against
Yankees.
Mr. Onderdonk writes me that he has "seen the
elevated conical hill in Huntington, around the base
of which the road winds. It was just the place for a
fort. It strikes the eye of the stranger at once, as he is
about entering the town. When I saw it, about 1842,
it was filled with tombstones. Many of those dis-
turbed by military necessity were doubtless what we
call field-stones, with the initials and the year of death
rudely cut on them."
Colonel Thompson's presence is noted again in a
piece of news which reached Fishkill from Long Island
on December 5, 1782. " The enemy are fortifying
Huntington. They have pitched on a burying-ground,
and have dug up graves and gravestones, to the great
grief of the people there, who, when they remonstrated
against the proceeding, received nothing but abuse."
As we have seen, Colonel Thompson is made to bear
the reproach of this outrage, aggravated by the charge
that he compelled the remonstrating people themselves
to assist in demolishing their church, in order to fur-
nish materials for his fort.
On December 1 8, 1782, Thompson's corps " the
remains of the Queen's Rangers, and Tarlton's Legion
(five or six hundred)" were reported as being "at
Huntington to protect the trade with the mainland."
His force is afterwards stated as " five hundred and
eighty effectives."
Life of Count Rumford. 141
An inhabitant of Stamford, Connecticut, reported
that
c< On December I he was at Huntington, passing for an
inhabitant, and passed within four rods of the front of the fort
which faces the north. It is about five rods in front, with a
gate in the middle ; it extends a considerable distance north and
south : the works were altogether of earth, about six feet high,
no pickets or any other obstruction of the works, except a sort
of ditch which was very inconsiderable, some brush-like small
trees fixed on the top of the works in a perpendicular form ;
he was told it encompassed near two acres of ground. It is
built on a rising ground, and takes in the burying-ground ; the
meeting house they have pulled down. The troops consist of
Thompson's regiment, the remains of the Queen's Rangers, and
the Legion, being five hundred and fifty effectives. They are
quartered as compact as possible in the inhabitants' houses and
barns, and some hutted along the sides of the fort, which makes
one side of the hut. The inhabitants of Huntington do suffer
exceedingly from the treatment they receive from the troops,
who say the inhabitants of that county are all rebels, and there-
fore they care not how they suffer."
There is one other sharp historical criticism in our
Revolutionary literature relating to Colonel Thompson,
a reference to which will close our account with him in
his military career against his native country.
It will have been observed in the extracts made above,
that the corps commanded by him is described as made
up in part of " the remains of the Queen's Rangers."
The corps of Hussars known under that name through
the war was at first wholly composed of American
loyalists, raised mostly in Connecticut and the neigh-
borhood of New York, and was especially odious to
the patriots. Its largest force, at its most flourish-
ing fortunes, was about four hundred men. Captain
142 Life of Count Rumford.
John Graves Simcoe had been, in October, 1777, com-
missioned to the command of the Rangers by Sir
William Howe, with the provincial rank of Major.
He rose in that command to the rank of Lieutenant-
Colonel, attaining by real service the military grade
which, as he knew, Thompson had got by favoritism.
The corps had been diminished by dissension and de-
sertion, while it had been from time to time replenished
by heavy bounties and by disaffected and mercenary
men who proved disheartened or faithless in the patriot
cause. A portion of the corps was at Yorktown to
share in the mortification of the surrender there. When
it became known that Cornwallis had proposed a cessa-
tion of hostilities, in order to arrange terms for giving
up the posts of York and Gloucester, with his whole
army, Simcoe, knowing well what treatment would
await the deserters and the miscreants in his own corps
from the rank and file of the patriot forces, and from
the rage of the populace, sought permission from the
British commander, if the treaty were not finally signed,
to allow his Rangers to try to escape in some of the
boats which the traitor Arnold had built. Simcoe
hoped that a great part of the remnant of his corps
might thus cross the Chesapeake, land in Maryland,
and make their way to New York. Earl Cornwallis
approved the scheme as ingenious and desirable, but
could not himself sanction its being carried into effect,
as the whole army must share one fate. The meas-
ure, however, was effected under a deception. The
Earl in his capitulation had reserved a vessel, the
Bonetta, for taking his sick to New York. Simcoe
proving to be " in a dangerous state of health," making
<c a sea voyage the only chance by which he could save
Life of Count Rumford. 143
his life/* went off in this vessel, with as many of the Ran-
gers and of deserters in other corps as she would hold.
They were to be exchanged, on their convalescence, as
prisoners of war. Sir Henry Clinton allowed Simcoe
to sail immediately for England on his arrival at New
York, and there in December, 1781, the King gave him
the same rank in the regular army which he had held
as a provincial. Captain Saunders, soon arriving from
Charleston, took command of that portion of the corps
which reached New York in the Bonetta.
It was this precious constituency once, as Simcoe
insists, constituting the forlorn hope of the British
army that formed a part of Colonel Thompson's
command. Simcoe' s disgust is unconcealed at " the
severe mortifications which Captain Saunders and the
officers who were with him had to experience " when
the following order from the Adjutant-General's of-
fice was received. It was reported to Simcoe, with
the comments which follow, while he was in Eng-
land.
"ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE, March 31, 1783.
" SIR, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson having received or-
ders to complete the regiment under his command by volunteers
from the different provincial corps, and to raise in like manner
four additional companies of light infantry for a particular ser-
vice, the Commander-in-Chief desires you would give all pos-
sible assistance to Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson and those
concerned with him in the execution of this business by en-
couraging the men belonging to the corps under your command to
engage in this service ; and his Excellency directs me to assure
you that neither the officers nor others who may remain with
you in the corps shall suffer any loss or any injury to their
pretensions by the diminution of your numbers arising from the
volunteers who may join the corps under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson. It is to be understood, that,
144 Life of Count Rztmford.
though the men wanted for this service are to engage as soon as
possible, yet they are not to quit the regiments to which they at
present belong till further orders.
" OL. DELANCY, &c."
(Addressed to Captain Saunders.)
Simcoe, in his chagrin at this transfer to Thompson
of a corps which his own self-esteem put at so conspicuous
an estimate for service, ascribes the outrage to the fact
that Sir Henry Clinton, the late Commander-in-Chief,
who well knew the merits of the Rangers, had recently
been recalled to England, and been succeeded by Sir
Guy Carlton, who had not learned to regard them so
highly.
The "particular service" for which Thompson's
command was probably intended, I infer to have been
a projected enterprise for the defence of Jamaica, which,
it was understood, was about to be threatened by an
expedition under D'Estaing. The announcement of
the treaty of peace, which was soon made, rendered
the intended enterprise unnecessary, and, as we shall
see, put an end to Thompson's career here. But the
comment with which, as Simcoe says, the order of the
Adjutant-General was reported to him in England con-
veys a sting, the bitterness of which we can account for
only by inference. It was as follows :
" I will only say that though as military men they could not
publicly reprobate and counteract this unjust, humiliating, and
disgraceful order, yet, conscious of their superiority both in rank
in life and in military service to the person whom it was
meant to aggrandize, they could not but sensibly feel it. I am
sorry to say that some of the Rangers, being made drunk, were
induced to volunteer it. The arrival of the last packet, as it
took away the pretence of their being for * some particular ser-
vice/ has put a total stop to this business. The warrant, I am
Life of Count Rumford. 145
told, specified that when this corps was completed and em-
barked, they were from that time to be on the British establish-
ment." *
Governor Carlton issued, on August 17, 1783, the
following disbanding order, which shows incidentally
the provision made for the purpose of removing the
most odious of those who had served in the British
ranks from the retribution so much dreaded by them
if they should be left to the mercy of the Legislature
and the people of the nation that had achieved its inde-
pendence.
"King's American Rangers, Queen's Rangers, [with ten
other provincial regiments named,] and all men who wish 'to
be discharged in America, are to hold themselves in readiness
O *
to embark for Nova Scotia, where they will be disbanded, unless
they prefer being disbanded in New York. A non-commis-
* " A Journal of the Operations of the Queen's Rangers, from the End of the Year
1777 to the Conclusion of the late American War." By Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe.
This journal, privately printed by the author in 1787, was published in a new edi-
tion by Messrs. Bartlett and Welford, New York, in 1844. The -extracts above are
from this reprint, pp. 255-57. Personal vanity and superciliousness characterize this
egotistical journal. " Mr. Washington," as the conceited writer chooses always to call
the American commander, was the especial object of his petty spite, and chiefly for
his course in the case of Major Andre. Let the following specimen suffice. " In
the length of the war, for what one generous action has Mr. Washington been
celebrated ? What honorable sentiment ever fell from his lips which can invalidate
the belief, that, surrounded with difficulties and ignorant in whom to confide, he
meanly sheltered himself under the opinions of his officers and the Congress in per-
petrating his own previous determination? And, in perfect conformity to his in-
terested ambition, which, crowned with success beyond human calculation in 1783, to
use his own expression, 'bid a last farewell to the cares of office, and all the employ-
ments of public life,' to resume them at this moment (1787) as President of the
American Convention ? " &c. As I transcribe these sentences, I happen to sit where,
on raising my eyes, I see at a few rods' distance the majestic work of Ball, the
equestrian statue of Washington, in the Public Garden. A small cur-dog is looking
up at it, though I cannot hear that he barks. It should be added that Simcoe, when
he was afterwards Governor of Canada, exhibited more of courtesy to the representa-
tives of the nation which with his light corps of depredators he had sought to
vanquish.
10
146 Life of Count Rumford.
sioned officer will have two hundred acres of land, and a private
one hundred acres, in Nova Scotia. The soldiers can go to
England or stay in America.
" The King's American Dragoons, Colonel Thompson, have
permanent rank in America."
Colonel Thompson, by leave of absence dated April
ii, returned direct to England, ready for any further
military service which might be required of him, and
indeed earnestly bent upon engaging in it ; as we learn,
from an avowal made by him soon afterwards, that
he had now conceived a passion for it. He at once
solicited to be employed with his regiment in the
East Indies, but the peace dispensed with the ne-
cessity. Either his actual services in command, or the
incidental influence and value of his extraordinary or-
ganizing and executive abilities in military affairs, helped
by the personal charm which always advanced him, had
won for him the highest esteem and favor of General
Carlton. The General having made distinguished men-
tion of him" in his despatches tothe King, his Majesty,
on this recommendation, advanced him to a colonelcy,
though he had held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel
but two years. He was thus secured half-pay on the
British establishment for the remainder of his life.
The following is given by Pictet as the letter from
the British Secretary of State to General Carlton, au-
thorizing the promotion of Thompson, copied from
the original, as shown by the last-named to his friend.
" Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson having been particularly dis-
tinguished by you in the appointment to the command of the
corps of provincial troops intended to be sent upon service in
the West Indies, (which corps, had it embarked, would, agreea-
bly to the King's commands signified by the late Secretary of
Life of Count Rumford. 147
State in his letter of the 3d of January last, have been placed
upon the British establishment,) and as it appears by your letter
of the J5th of June that his conduct has met with your full
approbation, and that you consider him to be an officer possess-
ing an uncommon share of merit in his profession, the King,
for these reasons, has consented to his being appointed, by com-
mission from you, Colonel of the King's American Dragoons
upon the American provincial establishment."
" WHITEHALL, 8th August, 1783.
Pictet informs us again, of course, receiving his
information directly from Thompson that the first
solicitude of the latter on his arrival in England was
to respond to the confidence which the American officers
had reposed in him that he would be the most effective
agent for securing to them compensation for the sacri-
fices which they had incurred in their loyalty to the
mother country. Thompson had peculiar influence and
facilities for pressing these claims. Yet the responsi-
bility which he had assumed was in many respects em-
barrassing and irksome. The fifth article of the Treaty
of Peace was < generally regarded as meanly sacrificing
the interests of the loyalists, as it covenanted only that
the American Congress, which declared itself to be power-
less in the case except in the way of advice, should pro-
pose to the States a relaxation of the severities and a
relieving of some of the penalties against that odious
class of exiles. The advice, of course, was mainly in-
effective.
Failing of adequate redress through the provision in
the Treaty, the loyalists importuned Parliament with
their piteous complaints and demands.
As to the compensation of 30,000 received by
Colonel Thompson, as alleged by the indignant annal-
148 Life of Count Riunford.
ist of Long Island, the assertion is simply preposterous.
There was an army of suppliants and mendicants for
whom the justice and mercy of Parliament were be-
sieged, not without strong opposition, through many of
its sessions. Benjamin West's allegorical picture of
the reception of the American refugees in England had
in it many elements of the purely ideal. Before Thomp-
son had reached England on his return, a Parliamentary
commission had already been revising the list of pension-
ers and their allowances ; and by their award in June,
1783, a sum of less than fifty thousand pounds had
been distributed among nearly seven hundred loyalists.
The claimants and their urgency so increased as to
engage a permanent commission for seven successive
years. That Thompson should have received the lion's
share to such an exorbitant excess in this distribution
would have been altogether unlikely, even if he had had
pre-eminent claims for losses incurred, or for great
services performed. He had really left but very little
of his own behind when he first abandoned his birth-
place. He had had a lucrative post ia England, and
his military services, here were abundantly remunerated
by promotion and a permanent position on the British
establishment. The whole tenor of his life, his gen-
erosity, and his public and private munificence, secure
him against the imputation either of greed in getting
or of selfishness in hoarding money. Cuvier said of
him most truly, that he lavished his own money to
teach others how to save theirs.
I am glad to be able to close at this point the refer-
ence which I have had to make to the influence and
efforts exerted by Major Thompson, both in a civil
and a military capacity, adverse to the' cause of Amer-
Life of Count Rumford. 149
ican independence. I have allowed myself to use some
harsh and deprecatory terms concerning this period in
his career, and concerning the policy and measures of
the British government to which he seems so strenu-
ously to have committed himself. Personal and gen-
eral considerations have alike induced me to write as
I have done. It is to be remembered that Thompson,
up to the time when he finally left Woburn, had steadily
and positively affirmed his attachment to the cause in
whose behalf his friends, neighbors, and fellow-country-
men were putting themselves in armed opposition to
the British power. We have not only his disclaimer
of any act or word at variance with the popular en-
thusiasm, but his reiterated professions of full sym-
pathy with it. Add to this, also, the well-established
fact, that he had through his friend Baldwin, and by
his own direct appeals, sought a command in the Amer-
ican army while in camp in and around Cambridge, I
have not authenticated a traditional report that he
petitioned Washington himself to that effect. Nor
can I certify to though I think very probable the
statement made by the late Colonel Samuel Swett, in
his pamphlet on the Bunker Hill battle, to the effect
that Thompson was chagrined at his disappointment
in not obtaining the place given to Gridley in the
artillery 'Service. It is enough for us to know, as we
do, that some of those, apparently well-informed per-
sons, who had heard Major Thompson on his trial and
on other public occasions, as well as in private, use the
strongest language in asserting his patriotism, very soon
after heard of him as on familiar and confidential terms
with the British officers in Boston, and as making him-
self of use to them. If, too, as there is reason to be-
150 Life of Count Rumford.
lieve, he was lurking in secrecy for many months in that
town between his coming to it from Newport and its
evacuation, rumors and hints of what could not be re-
garded otherwise than as dishonorable in his course
could hardly fail to reach his old acquaintances. His
readiness to act as bearer of despatches, and then to be
the servant and adviser of the British War-Minister, and
soon his colleague in office, and then to enlist and com-
mand a most odious class of troops in the service of
what was regarded as tyranny, complete the grounds on
which his countrymen at the time would condemn him,
those grounds being furnished entirely by himself.
The constancy of Baldwin's friendship accrues to the
credit of Baldwin himself. Till Thompson had won
a name of honor and renown in other ranges of his
genius, and indeed even after his benevolent projects had
done so much to offset reproach, there were many in
this neighborhood who spoke of him with indignation
and scorn. Nor can the plea advanced for him of
having been driven by unjust suspicion and ill-usage,
and by the withholding from him of a coveted promo-
tion, to turn against an imperilled cause which he had
professed in his heart to love, be of much weight in
his defence. (See Appendix.)
Having thus pronounced upon him as in opposition
in act to himself and his convictions, I may add to
such praise as is due to him as a good soldier, quick
and true and bold in action, and faithful to the govern-
ment which he. served, the higher tribute, that from
the hour when the war closed he became, and ever con-
tinued to be, the constant friend and generous benefactor
of his native country. The engraving on the opposite
page is from a painting of Thompson as a British
officer, taken at this time.
COL. BENJAMIN THOMPSON AS A BRITISH OFFICER.
1788. AGED 3o.
CHAPTER IV.
Thompson receives Permission to travel on the Continent.
Gibbon and Laurens. Meeting with Maximilian de
Deux Fonts. Intercourse with French Officers. Vis-
its Munich. Goes to Vienna. Returns, by Invitation
of the Elector y to Munich. In England. Knighted.
Permitted to enter the Service of the Elector. His
Career and Services in Bavaria. Offices and Honors.
Schemes. Essays. Tears of Preparation. Work-
Houses at Mannheim and Munich. Military Reforms.
. Soldiers Gardens. Mendicancy : its Abuses, Meas-
ures for its Removal. Wise and Efficient Plans. Seiz-
ure of Beggars. Experiments on Food. Minor Schemes
of Reforms. Sickness. Travels in Italy and Switzer-
land. Visits to Hospitals and Poor-Houses. Returns
to Munich. Convalescence. Writes his Essays.
Goes to England. Economical Schemes there. Pub-
lishes his Essays. Visits Ireland. Sends for his
Daughter.
AS a commissioned officer of high rank in the Brit-
ish army, now on half-pay, though without an
occasion for his active services, Colonel Thompson,
of course, needed a special permission to enable him
to leave the kingdom, if only for travel, and still more
if he had any purpose of seeking military employment
under another power. He readily obtained leave of
the King to visit the Continent. He had two leading
152 Life of Count Riimford.
objects in view. One was of pure curiosity, connected
with a search for means of self-improvement and oppor-
tunities of advancing the general welfare of his fellow-
men. His other aim was the gratification of a military
ambition, a temporary passion, it would seem, caught
from his recent occupations in the Bureau and in the
camp. Looking out for an opportunity of exercising
this ambition, he hoped to find a chance to serve as a
volunteer in the Austrian army against the Turks.
He left England in September, 1783, with no anti-
cipation of the ultimate result of what was to him in
intent mainly a trial of fortune. On his passage across
the channel for Calais, chance seems to have given
him two fellow-voyagers who might well occupy his
curiosity and interest either on a long or a short
transit. One of these was Henry Laurens, a former
President of the American Congress, recently released
from the Tower of London, after more than a year's
confinement, as a sort of exchange for the paroled Gen-
eral Burgoyne. Reference has already been made to
Colonel Thompson's official knowledge and his free
disclosure of the contents of the papers which had been
taken from the person of this state prisoner on his
capture. There may have been no lack of courtesy
between these two representatives of a pacified strife,
and there was much matter of large interest that might
well engage them in animated conversation. Yet there
could have been but little of cordiality or sympathy
between them.
The other fellow-voyager was the historian Gibbon,
who had just lost his place at the Board of Trade.
Thompson was transporting with him some fine Eng-
lish horses. These, it seems, by their restlessness and
Life of Count Rumford. 153
stamping, excited the anxiety and dread of Gibbon lest
they might cause the vessel to founder. Pictet says
that Thompson informed him that Gibbon had con-
fessed his fright on this occasion in a letter to Lord
Sheffield, found in the published correspondence. Pic-
tet adds, on the same alleged authority, that Gibbon
signified to his Lordship the profound impression made
upon him by Thompson in their brief intercourse,
describing him by three epithets, as "the Soldier, the
Philosopher, and the Statesman, Thompson/' It is to
be hoped, as a cover for Thompson's modesty, that,
happening to have the interesting volume at hand, he
playfully referred to it in conversation with his guest,
and left him to copy the reference instead of repeating
the compliment himself. But if so, Pictet must have
copied carelessly. As there is a vivacity in the letter
of Gibbon here quoted, I will transfer to my pages that
portion of it which has interest for us. It is dated
Dover, September 17, 1783.
" Last night the wind was so high that the vessel could not
stir from the harbor ; this day it is brisk and fair. We are
flattered with the hope of making Calais Harbor by the same
tide in three hours and a half; but any delay will leave the
disagreeable option of a tottering boat or a tossing night. What
a cursed thing to live in an island ! this step is more awkward
than the whole journey. The triumvirate of this memorable
embarkation will consist of the grand Gibbon, Henry Laurens,
Esq., President of Congress, and Mr. Secretary, Colonel, Ad-
miral, Philosopher Thompson, attended by three horses, who
are not the most agreeable fellow-passengers. If we survive, I
will finish and seal my letter at Calais. Our salvation shall be
ascribed to the prayers of my lady and aunt, for I do belie /e
they both pray
" Boulogne, next day. Instead of Calais, the wind has
154 Life of Count R^Mnford.
driven us to Boulogne, where we landed in the evening, without
much noise and difficulty Laurens has read the pam-
phlet, and thinks it has done much mischief. A good sign ! " *
The pamphlet here referred to was Lord Sheffield's
Observations on the Commerce of the American States.
Pictet continues to report from his own notes of con-
versations with his friend, and in what follows is proba-
bly almost literally correct.
" Here begins a new epoch in the career of my illustrious
friend, and a purely accidental circumstance had a decisive influ-
ence over his destiny. He arrived at Strasburg, where the
Prince, Maximilian of Deux Fonts, now [1801] Elector of
Bavaria, then Field-Marshal in the service of France, was in
garrison. This prince, commanding on parade, sees among the
spectators an officer in a foreign uniform, mounted on a fine
English, horse, whom he addresses. Thompson informs him
that he comes from serving in the American war. The Prince,
in pointing out to him many officers who surround him, says,
' These gentlemen were in the same war, but against you !
They belonged to the Royal Regiment of Deux Ponts, that acted
in America under the orders of Count Rochambeau.'
" They engaged in conversation which became very animated.
Colonel Thompson, being invited to dine with the Prince, met
at the table a number of French officers whom he had encoun-
tered on the field in America. They talked at length of the
events of this war. The Colonel produced his portfolio, which
contained exact plans of the principal engagements, the forts,
the sieges, and an excellent collection of maps. One and
another recognized the place or the interesting incident which
was recalled to him. They conversed a long while, and sepa-
rated promising to meet again. The Prince was passionately
devoted to his profession and intensely eager for information.
He invited the Colonel for the next day. They resumed with
* The Autobiography and Correspondence of Edward Gibbon, the Historian. Re-
print of the original edition. London: Alexander Murray and Son. 1869. pp. 301, 302.
Life of Count Rumford. 155
the same zest the conversation of yesterday. When at last the
traveller took leave, the Prince engaged him to pass through
Munich, and gave him a friendly letter to the Elector of Ba-
varia, his uncle.
" The season was advanced, and he was in haste to reach
Vienna. He had purposed to stop at Munich two or three
days at most ; but he passed there five days, and then did not
leave but with regret a city where the tokens of the regard of
the Sovereign and the attentions of different classes of society
were extended to him with that frank cordiality which so emi-
nently distinguishes the Bavarian nation. He received equally
at Vienna the most flattering welcome, and was presented at
court, and mingled in the first society. There he passed a
part of the winter, and, learning that the war against the Turks
was not to be carried on, he yielded to the attractive memories
of Munich, and, passing through Venice, where he stopped some
weeks, and by the Tyrol, he returned to Brompton by the end
of the winter of 1784."
There is an ingredient from the imagination, or from
a confused memory, or, it may be, from the conviviality
of a banquet in the quarters of military officers, in a
part of the relation thus made by Pictet. That any
of the French or Bavarian officers whom Colonel
Thompson met at Strasburg had been directly op-
posed to him in any of the same actions in our Revo-
lutionary War, is an assumption for which I can find no
grounds in matters of fact. There is some confusion
likewise in such documentary and historical references
as we have to the individual whose attention on parade
is said to have been first drawn to Colonel Thompson.
Dr. Samuel Abbot Green, of Boston, while walking
upon a quay in Paris, in 1867, noticed in a second-
hand book-stall a manuscript journal purporting to
have been written by " Comte G. de Deux Ponts." It
had been well preserved and handsomely ornamented,
156 Life of Count Rumford.
and covered a hundred and fifty-two pages. The jour-
nal and three letters following it related to a military
campaign in America. On returning to Boston, Dr.
Green translated and carefully annotated this manu-
script, and published it with an Introduction, in 1868,
under the title of " My Campaigns in America. A
Journal kept by Count William de Deux Fonts,
1780-81. Translated from the French Manuscript."*
This journal, the careful editor thinks, was written by
one of two brothers Christian the Colonel, and
William the Lieutenant-Colonel, of the Royal Regi-
ment Deux-Ponts who were among our French allies
in the siege of York. He regards them as illegitimate
sons by a French mother, once a danseuse^ afterwards
Baroness von Forbach of Christian, Count Palatine,
and Duke of D'eux-Ponts-Birkenfield. At his death
his dukedom passed successively to his two nephews,
Charles Augustus and Maximilian, the latter of
whom became in 1799 Elector, and in 1805 King,
of Bavaria. It was this Maximilian whose interest
was attracted to Colonel Thompson as a British officer
at Strasburg, and who was the medium of introducing
the latter to his uncle, then Elector. He had not
been in the American campaigns, and therefore was not
the writer of the journal. He was, however, the prince
referred to by Pictet who made known to the French
officers, among whom probably was the diarist, an
officer who had served in the British army in our war.
They might well have with them, if Thompson had
not, the field-plans and maps of several sites and ac-
* Dr. Green, having been for more than three years the surgeon of the Twenty-
Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers in the war of the Rebellion, was able
most felicitously to inscribe his publication to the officers and men who were in
service in some of the places mentioned in its pages.
Life of Count Rumford. 157
tions; and of these Thompson would have perfect
knowledge officially, if not from personal observation.
It would be very agreeable for those who had come out
sound in limb from the recent struggles to recount the
incidents of them at hospitable tables. The French
officers could not have found a better-informed or a
more communicative companion to tell them whatever
might gratify their curiosity.
M. Pictet does not inform us where the following
incident of sentiment and moralizing, which he relates,
occurred. It is reported as taken down from his friend's
lips.
" I owe it," said he to me, one day, " to a beneficent Deity,
that I was cured in season of this martial folly. I met, at the
house of the Prince de Kaunitz, a lady, aged seventy years, of
infinite spirit and full of information. She was the wife of
General Bourghausen. The Emperor, Joseph II., came often
to pass the evening with her. This excellent person conceived
a regard for me ; she gave me the wisest advice, made my ideas
take a new direction, and opened my eyes to other kinds of
glory than that of victory in battle."
It was well, therefore, that he could not fight against
the Turks. Colonel Thompson had received from the
Elector an earnest invitation to enter into his service in
a joint military and civil capacity. It was the very year
in which Bavaria was a prize in contest between the
imperial Continental powers, Austria, Prussia, and
Russia, with France in abeyance only to wait a later
opportunity, intriguing and bargaining for a territory
which, under changing dynasties and disputed succes-
sions of dukedoms and palatinates, could hardly be said
to be either independent or in vassalage. The Elector,
Charles Theodore, whom we are henceforward to regard
158 Life of Count Rumford.
till his death, in February 16, 1799, as the confidential
friend and the ardently grateful patron of Thompson,
committed himself to the protection of Prussia. He
sent his contingent to the army of the empire in the
French Revolution, and being a prince whose aims were
high, and whose interest in the welfare of his subjects
was sincere, as he foresaw the troublous times of that
mighty convulsion, he seems to have desired to set his
own dominions in order by removing abuses and intro-
ducing various economical improvements.
The discerning mind of the Elector had detected in
his few days' interviews with his mercurial guest the
versatility and the ability which were so marked in him,
and appreciated the training of his thirty years of life
in the workshop, the Cabinet, and the field. Pictet says
that he also corresponded with Thompson during his
stay at Vienna. The pressing request of the Elector
was undoubtedly welcome to Thompson, but he would
need to have the permission of the King of England
before he could entertain it. He therefore returned to
London to seek for that permission. The King not
only granted Thompson the favor for which he applied,
but also conferred on him the honor of knighthood on
February 23, 1784.* I copy here the Grant of Arms
to Sir Benjamin, before referred to, as the best token of
the position to which he had now attained.f
" To all and singular to whom these Presents shall come,
Isaac Heard, Esquire, Garter Principal King of Arms ; and
Thomas Lock, Esquire, Clarenceux King of Arms of the
* Annual Register for the Year, p. 114.
f The original parchment, perfect and unsullied, with all its seals, is in the pos-
session of Mrs. James F. Baldwin of Boston, widow of the executor of Countess Sarah
Rumford.
Life of Count Rumford. 159
South, East, and West Parts of England, from the River Trent
Southwards, send Greeting : Whereas it appears by a Memorial
recorded in the College of Arms, that Sir Benjamin Thompson
of St. James's, Westminster, Knight, Colonel of the King's
American Regiment of Light Dragoons, and Fellow of the
Royal Society of London, late Under-Secretary of State of the
Province of Georgia, and Colonel of a Regiment of Militia in
the Province of New Hampshire, in North America, Son of
Benjamin Thompson, late of the Province of Massachusetts
Bay, in New England, Gent., deceased, is of one of the most
antient Families in North America ; that an Island which be-
longed to his Ancestors, at the Entrance of Boston Harbour,
near where the first New England Settlement was made, still
bears his Name ; that his Ancestors have ever lived in reputable
Situations in that Country where he was born, and have hitherto
used the Arms of the antient and respectable Family of Thomp-
son of the County of York, from a constant Tradition that
they derived their Descent from that Source. Arid Whereas,
at a very early Period of the late Troubles in North America,
the said Sir Benjamin Thompson having engaged warmly in
support of the British Government in that Country, and in the
course of the War been distinguished for his good Conduct and
Bravery in the Line of his Profession, and recently received a
very honorable Mark of His Majesty's Approbation and Fa-
vor, the Most Honorable Charles Howard, Esquire, commonly
called Earl of Surrey, Deputy, with the Royal Approbation to
his Father, the Most Noble Charles, Duke of Norfolk, Earl
Marshal and hereditary Marshal of England, hath been pleased
by Warrant under his Hand and Seal, bearing date the twenty-
third Day of April last, to authorise and direct Us to grant and
confirm to the said Sir Benjamin Thompson such Variations in
the Armorial Bearings of Thompson as may distinguish him and
his Descendants from all others of the Name. Know ye,
therefore, that We the said Garter and Clarenceux, in pur-
suance of his Lordship's Consent, and by Virtue of the Letters
Patent of our several Offices, to each of Us respectively
granted under the Great Seal of Great Britain, do by these
160 Life of Cotmt Rumford.
Presents grant and confirm to the said Sir Benjamin Thompson,
in testimony of his Merits and Services, the Arms distinguished
as follows ; that is to say : Per P^ess Argent and Sable, a
Fess embattled, counter-embattled, counter-changed between
two Falcons, in chief of the second beaked, membered, and
belled Or, and a Horse passant in base of the first. And for
Crest on a Wreath of the Colours, A Mural Crown Or, thereon
a Mullet of six points Azure, and between the Battlements four
Pine Buds Vert as the same are in the Margin hereof more
plainly depicted, to be borne and used forever hereafter by him,
the said Sir Benjamin Thompson, Knight, and his Descendants,
with due and proper Differences according to the Laws of Arms,
without Let or Interruption of any Person or Persons whatso-
ever. In Witness whereof We, the said Garter and Claren-
ceux Kings of Arms, have to these Presents subscribed our
Names and affixed the seals of our several Offices, this thirty-
first Day of May, in the twenty-fourth Year of the Reign of
our Sovereign Lord George the Third, by the Grace of God
King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the
Faith, &c., and in the Year of our Lord One thousand seven
hundred and eighty-four."
With a continuance of his half-pay as a British offi-
cer, and with a title of honor, both of which would be
sure to win him consideration on the Continent of
Europe, this soldier of fortune entered, at Munich, in
the spring of 1784, on the service of the Elector. In
the vigor of his manhood, and now with a trained arn-
^bition, perhaps quickened by the splendid career of his
countryman Franklin, he had great opportunities and
abilities to improve and increase them.
We derive the best and most authentic account of the
many and various and most remarkable labors to which
Sir Benjamin Thompson devoted himself so assiduously
and continuously in the service of the Elector from his
own incidental references to them, as well as from the
Life of Count Rumford. 161
results of them as given in his Essays. These labors
ranged from subjects of the homeliest nature in their
bearings upon the thrift, economy, and comfort of life
for the poorest classes, through enterprises of wide-
extended and radical reform and comprehensive be-
nevolence, up to the severest tests and experiments in
the interests of practical science. Eleven years were to
pass before he returned to England, then, too, only for
a visit, for the purpose of publishing the rich results of
all his devoted and multiplied efforts. He was most
favorably situated, alike amid circumstances calling for
and admitting of his wonderful reformatory and benevo-
lent zeal, and with just such patronage and sympathy
from the head of the government as would secure for
his schemes the means for giving them full and favora-
ble trial. The Elector was from first to last his con-
stant friend, never thwarting him, never holding back
his aid ; but, on the contrary, ready always to advance
every plan of his, and to espouse his views when ques-
tioned or opposed by other counsellors.
When, on the ist of July, 1796, Sir Benjamin signed
the Dedication of his Essays for publication in London,
that Dedication, of course, being by permission,
"To His Most Serene Highness The Elector Palatine,
Reigning Duke of Bavaria, &c., &c., &c," he gratefully
acknowledges his obligations thus :
" In requesting permission to dedicate to your most Serene
Electoral Highness these Essays, I had several important ob-
jects in view. I was desirous of showing to the world that I
had not presumed to publish an account of public measures and
institutions, planned and executed in your Electoral Highness'
dominions, by your orders and under your immediate au-
thority and protection, without your leave and approbation,
ii
1 62 Life of Count Rumford.
I was also desirous of availing myself of the illustrious name of a
Sovereign eminently distinguished by his munificence in pro-
moting useful knowledge, and by his solicitude for the happiness
and prosperity of his subjects, to recommend the important ob-
jects I have undertaken to investigate to the attention of the
Great, the Wise, and the Benevolent. And lastly, I was
anxious to have an opportunity of testifying, in a public manner,
my gratitude to your most Serene Electoral Highness for all
your kindness to me ; and more especially for the distinguished
honour you have done me by selecting and employing me as an
instrument in your hands of doing good."
I have thus anticipated the felicitous consummation
of great labors and enterprises of benevolence, and of
a devoted friendship founded .upon the relations of
patron and agent in the doing of them, as a proper pref-
ace to a brief account of those labors in detail.
On the arrival of Sir Benjamin, the Elector appointed
him colonel of a regiment of cavalry, and General Aide-
de-Camp, in order that he might be in immediate con-
tact with himself. A palatial edifice was furnished for
his residence in Munich, shared between himself and
the Russian Ambassador, with a military staff and a
proper corps of servants. Sir Benjamin especially
prided himself upon the blood horses which he had
brought with him from England. His fine appearance
when mounted on parade is frequently noticed. His
imposing figure, his manly and handsome countenance,
his dignity of bearing, and his courteous manners, not
only to the great, but equally to subordinates and
inferiors, made him exceedingly popular. This finished
courtier and favored child of fortune favored both by
native gifts and by opportunities needed no trans-
formation within or without to adapt himself to cir-
cumstances. He had not exactly, as Cuvier says of
Life of Count Rumford. 163
him at this critical stage in his life, "just issued from
the forests of the New World." He had passed his
thirtieth year, having spent nearly one decade of his
life amid scenes, objects, and companionships advanced
by a considerable grade in civilization, culture, and
refinement above those with which he was now to be
conversant. Nor, indeed, had his American home been
in a wilderness. He had known men and women in
Salem, Cambridge, and Boston who would not have
appeared to disadvantage in any European society.
His position, surroundings, and duties, as well as his
official and personal relations, differed much from those
of Franklin, about the same time at the court of France.
But the elder philosopher accomplished his great work no
more successfully than did Sir Benjamin his, nor would
the former more patiently or more effectively have per-
fected than did the latter the details and enterprises of
so many by no means inviting but most beneficent
schemes.
Sir Benjamin very rapidly acquired a mastery of the
German and French languages. Like a true practical
philosopher, also, he gave the whole force of his in-
quisitive and comprehensive mind to the preliminary
work of informing himself generally, and in minute
particulars, about everything that concerned the do-
minions of the Elector. The relations of the Elector-
ate to other powers, within and outside of the empire;
its population and their employments ; its resources
and the means of their development; the abuses and
evils which admitted of remedies, and the method of
applying them, all found in him as curious and intelli-\
gent an investigator as could have been chosen among
the select few most concerned to examine them. If, as
164 Life of Count Rumford.
a military man, he might have been prompted to excite
and guide in his sovereign any ambitious schemes for
extending his domains or securing a fuller indepen-
dence of control by the great powers, he would have
been precluded from everything of this sort by the then
established order of affairs, which left Bavaria only a
chance to lose, with no prospect of gain from any con-
ceivable change. Sir Benjamin very soon learned that
the development of resources and the reform of abuses
were the emergent needs of the Electorate, and would
furnish an abundant and rewarding field for his special
abilities. The Bavarian princes ever since the Refor-
mation had found their apparent security and prosperity
to be identified with allegiance and devotion to the
Roman Church and Catholicism. The Electorate was
under the oppressive influence of a priesthood, and
the people, submitting to their dictation, acquiesced in
the thriftlessness and the burdens thus imposed upon
them. The very name of Munich or Munchen, derived
from Monks, carries with it an historical fact which had
made a mark deep and permanent in the capital of the
Electorate. As Cuvier says, " Its sovereigns had en-
couraged devotion and made no stipulation in favor of
industry. There were more convents than manufac-
tories in their States ; their army was almost a shadow,
while ignorance and idleness were conspicuous in every
class of society." There was no State in Christendom
at the time which offered a fairer field for the economi-
cal and reformatory enterprise of a man with the genius
and proclivities of Sir Benjamin Thompson, with a
training in the frugal and thrifty ways of New -.England
during the second stage of its own development.
He never seems to have become involved, either in
Life of Count Riimford. 165
his private relations or in the most radical and revo-
lutionizing of his schemes, with any religious animosi-
ties. Besides his frequent avowals of a religious faith,
and his- devout references to God in connection with
his scientific and benevolent pursuits, he often speaks
of himself as an avowed Protestant, and as finding no
opposition or loss of regard on that score.
It may be as well to mention here the titular, mili-
tary, civil, and academic honors which so rapidly and
lavishly were bestowed upon Sir Benjamin while residing
in Bavaria. By request of the Elector, the King of
Poland, in 1786, conferred on him the Order of Saint
Stanislaus, the statutes of Bavaria not then allowing
of his receiving the Bavarian orders. In a journey
to Prussia, in 1787, he was made a member of the
Academy of Berlin. He was also admitted to the
Academies of Science at Munich and Mannheim. In
1788 the Elector made him Major-General of cavalry
and Privy Councillor of State. He was also put
at the head of the War Department, with powers and
directions from the Elector to carry into effect the
schemes which he had been maturing for the reform
of the army and the removal of mendicity. In the
interval between the death of the Emperor Joseph and
the coronation of Leopold II., the Elector profited by
the right going with his functions as Vicar of the Em-
pire to raise Sir Benjamin, in 1791, to the dignity of a
Count of the Holy Roman Empire, with the Order of
the White Eagle.' That he should have selected as his
title marking this distinction the former name of the
New England village in which he had first enjoyed the
favors of fortune, shows that he was not alienated in
heart from his native land, and that he gladly associated
1 66 Life of Count Rumford.
the memory of it with his own personal advancement.
There were many to say of him, during the remainder
of his life, that he was even vainly fond of his titles,,
and claimed the social position which his services se-
cured to him as at least an equivalent for the noble
birth and the inheritance of land which ordinarily carry
with them titular honors independently of character or
achievement. This is true. He prized the mark of
dignity which was attached to his name, and was grati-
fied that he could transmit it to his daughter. The
inheritors of such shadowy titles should be the first to
manifest their approbation that a substance is occasion-
ally secured to them as being won by merit.
With the united offices of Minister of War, and
Minister or Superintendent of Police, and Chamber-
lain of the Elector, Sir Benjamin combined adminis-
trative and executive functions which substantially cov-
ered every department of public service. Some tra-
ditionary or conventional prejudices or proprieties
withheld the Elector from seeking or accepting such
advice from his own Council as he felt more free to
ask and receive from a foreigner who had won his title
to consideration. It might, of course, be foreseen that
such privileges as were granted to Thompson, how-
ever judiciously and unselfishly improved to public
ends of beneficence, would excite against him jealousies,
if not opposition, from some on whose supposed pre-
rogatives he might infringe. Though later in his career
in Germany, and under a change in the headship of the
government, he did not, as we shall see, escape his
share in a common experience of this kind, he seems to
have encountered the very least of it at the time when it
would have been most disagreeable and embarrassing to
Life of Count Rumford. 167
him. Rather did he find sympathy and aid, and that
to a somewhat remarkable degree, in the officials and
subordinates, civil and military, and even ecclesiastical,
in his very radical dealing with abuses.
The richly embellished city of Munich, on which,
with its tripled population, dating after the middle of
this century, the munificent King Louis lavished his
patronage of art, is a very different place from what it
was in the last quarter of the last century, when Thomp-
son was its most distinguished and influential citizen.
The curse of all the States of the Continent at that
time, as it has since been, was the standing army with
its incessant recruiting by conscription. The rural
population, which should have tilled the fields and
pursued the manifold labors of domestic and mechani-
cal industry, was drained of its element of vigor, and
then demoralized, by the return into it from time to
time of its furloughed or relieved bands of lazy loiter-
ers, incapacitated for, while they despised, work.
Thompson soon found that the root of all the diffi-
culties which he aimed to reach and remove lay in
this matter of the army. But he had to proceed with
caution, as he already had knowledge that the worst
abuses have always the most unprincipled and malig-
nant supporters interested in their undisturbed allow-
ance. In none of the incidents of his remarkably
diversified life, and in none of his vast, comprehen-
sive, and benevolent undertakings, does the character
of Thompson show itself to higher advantage, on the
score of wisdom, patient effort, and magnanimity, than
in the course which he pursued in Bavaria, dealing with
enormous evils in the spirit of prudence and mildness,
while still with a thoroughness of remedy. He spent
1 68 Life of Count Rumford.
four full years at Munich before he ventured to put on
trial either of the great reforms, or to initiate either of
the great institutions, which he had been quietly plan-
ning. The pay of the soldiers being but threepence
a day, their arms, clothing, and quarters being of the
meanest sort, yet involving wasteful expense, and the
system of tactics and discipline being unnecessarily
burdensome, as well as inefficient, he made reform in
these matters the object of his most earnest efforts.
The officers, who regarded themselves as the owners of
the common soldiers, as if themselves masters of slaves,
were likely to withstand all innovations. Thompson
showed a marvellous tact in winning some of the least
indifferent of these officers to co-operate with him in a
way which seemed to indicate that they themselves were
instigating a reform. There was a foundry for cannon
at Mannheim, and here Thompson made some of his
first experiments on heat. He built another foundry
at Munich, with greatly improved machinery.
We are to remember, while recognizing the subjects
and the methods of his economical reforms, that, when
pursuing them, he never failed to aid them, all by his
severest scientific experiments.
Though, when we come shortly to sketch some of the
more remarkable results of these four years of prepara-
tion in the Institutions established by him in Bavaria,
we might suppose that the work had been necessarily so
absorbing that Thompson must have given over his
favorite philosophical pursuits, we must set this infer-
ence aside. Science and philosophy, in his view, lay at
the foundation of all reformatory, economical, and
benevolent enterprises, however homely the matters
which they concerned. In all the Institutions which he
Life of Count Rumford. 169
successfully planned, he introduced, indeed he depended
mainly upon, some facilities of process, or means of
diminishing expense, which he had mastered by his own
severely scientific investigations. In 'the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, published periodi-
cally in England, during his first eleven years' absence
on the Continent, are found papers of his, for the
most part addressed to his friend, Sir Joseph Banks,
the President. They record Thompson's Experiments
on Heat; Experiments on the Production of Dephlo-
gisticated Air from Water, with various Substances ;
Experiments made to determine the Positive and Rela-
tive Quantities of Moisture absorbed from the Atmos-
phere by Various Substances under Similar Circum-
stances; Further Experiments on Heat; An Account
of a Method of measuring the Comparative Intensities
of the Light emitted by Luminous Bodies ; and An
Account of some Experiments on Colored Shadows.
These had appeared in print before his return to Eng-
land. His membership of the Scientific and Literary
Academies of Berlin, Munich, and Mannheim also
required of him to keep himself in communication with
their officers or members. Indeed, he was attaining his
high repute as a philosopher while he was most en-
grossed in seemingly inconsistent labors. Thompson's
first experimental Institution was the Military Work-
house at Mannheim. This he undertook and estab-
lished under some peculiar difficulties and obstacles,
additional to those for which he was prepared. He
regarded it as only partially successful, and he improved
upon it greatly in the one at Munich. The marshes
cf Mulhau, near Mannheim, which till then had been
only unwholesome bogs, worthless for culture and
170 Life of Count Rumford.
ruinous to the health of the inhabitants of the city,
were connected by embankments, surrounded by a
mole, and transformed into a fertile garden, devoted
to the industry of the garrison. The corresponding
Military Academy at Munich was founded in 1789.
A military cordon was formed, as is soon to be more
particularly stated, in order to free the country from
vagabonds.
In his first and most elaborate economical Essay,
which gives an account of his Establishment for the
Poor at Munich, " together with a detail of various
public measures connected with that Institution, which
have been adopted and carried into effect for putting an
end to mendicity, and introducing order and useful
industry among the more indigent of the inhabitants
of Bavaria," Sir Benjamin recognizes very pleasantly
and gratefully, and not without a degree of compla-
cency, his confidential relations with the Elector. We
must allow, however, for the eleven years of severe
disciplinary work which had passed, up to the date of
the publication of his Essays, 'in order to justify his
tone, like that of a well-worn veteran, if not a mentor.
He begins thus:
" Among the vicissitudes of a life chequered by a great variety
of incidents, and in which I have been called upon to act in
many interesting scenes, I have had an opportunity of employ-
ing my attention upon a subject of great importance, a subject
intimately and inseparably connected with the happiness and
well-being of all civil societies, and which, from its nature, can-
not fail to interest every benevolent mind, it is the providing
for the wants of the Poor, and securing their happiness and com-
fort by the introduction of order and industry among them."
Sir Benjamin recognizes, as so many philanthropists
Life of Count Rzmford. 171
and statesmen have done since, and never with more
perplexity and baffled wisdom are doing now, the terri-
ble problems presented by pauperism in every state,
however otherwise flourishing. In his time he might
well say that the subject had not been investigated with
any just degree of interest or success. To him belongs
the high honor of a leader in gaining a direct and most
practical mastery of its painful and often revolting de-
tails, and in devising as efficient a system for preven-
tion, abatement, and remedy of its evils as has ever
been proposed and put on trial. The prevalence of
indolence, misery, and beggary in almost all the coun-
tries of Europe at that time was painfully realized and
mourned over by all who gave the subject but a super-
ficial consideration. Yet there was no harmony of
opinion, and very little co-operation in effort for the
removal of these evils, even among those who most
lamented them. Within a short time after Sir Benja-
min had left England for Munich, a society was formed
in London for bettering the condition of the poor.
One, if not more, of his most intimate friends, Thomas
Bernard, Esq., was the leading spirit of this enterprise.
He corresponded with Thompson while he was in Ba-
varia, and, as we shall afterwards have occasion to note,
this friendly intercourse in one good cause guided and
facilitated another and most signal undertaking of
Thompson's in England.
He was able to say that what he had to offer on the
subject of pauperism was not speculation, but the genu-
ine result of actual experiments made on a very large
scale, and under peculiarly interesting circumstances.
He thinks that the account which he offers will furnish
amusement, as well as useful information. Not for-
172 Life of Count Rumford*
getting that he was a military man, he feels bound to
explain the way and the motives which engaged him in
an object seemingly foreign to his profession. This
explanation is found in the connection which proved
to exist between the many different measures for the
promotion of the public welfare which had occupied
him.
He says that, among the various public services which
the Elector asked of him, he was particularly charged
with the arrangement of his military affairs in intro-
ducing a new system of order, discipline, and economy
among his troops. Knowing very well the injury to
the population, morals, manufactures., and agriculture
of a country which accrued from the maintenance of a
standing military force, he divined that the most
practicable mode of relief from, or of a limitation of,
this mischief, would be found "in making soldiers citi-
zens, and citizens soldiers." The situation of the sol-
dier was to be made as easy, agreeable, and eligible as
possible ; his pay was to be increased, he was to be
comfortably and even elegantly clothed, allowed all
liberty consistent with order and subordination, with
simpler military instruction, and to be relieved of all
obsolete and useless customs. His quarters and bar-
racks were to be made neat and clean within, and
attractive on the outside. Schools were to be estab-
lished, in all the regiments, for teaching reading, writing,
and arithmetic. And not only the oldiers, but their
children, and the children of the neighboring peasants,
were to be taught here gratuitously ; school-books,
paper, pens, and ink being furnished by the Sovereign.
With true Franklinian economy, Thompson adds that
the paper which had thus served one use would really
Life of Count Rumford. 173
come free of cost for such use to the government, as it
might serve afterwards for making cartridges.
Regarding habitual idleness, especially that of sol-
diers in their quarters, as most fatal to morals, Thomp-
son's scheme comprised not only schools of instruction,
but also houses of industry. The soldiers and their
children were to have the raw material for various kinds
of work furnished them, when off duty, .and they were
to dispose of the results of their labor without account-
ing to anybody. Besides being allowed to retain their
old uniforms, they were supplied gratis with working-
suits of strong canvas. It was found that they could
earn by their industry between three and four times as
much as their pay. The soldiers were put to employ-
ment as laborers in all public works, like making and
repairing roads, draining marshes, and repairing the banks
of rivers ; while a band of music would often be pro-
vided to inspirit their work, and sports, games, and
various amusements were encouraged for their holidays.
Paid officers were sent to oversee them when detached
in working parties. A large number of the soldiers in
garrison were allowed to be absent in rotation at their
country homes for ten and a half months in each year,
where they might mingle with the peasantry, help re-
cruiting, and apply themselves to agriculture and manu-
factures. The regimental garrisons were made perma-
nent, that soldiers might be near their homes, a
measure that was very advantageous on account of the
scarcity of husbandmen. It was through the soldiers
trained in the garrisons to industry and skill that
Thompson expected to extend useful improvements
over the whole country. Though in some parts of the
Elector's domains agriculture was carried to great per-
174 Life of Count Rumford.
fection at that time, yet it was very backward in Ba-
varia, very many improvements not having been intro-
duced, many profitable plants being unknown, the
potato, clover, and turnip being scarcely to be seen,
and the rotation of crops neglected.
Thompson planned a military garden in connection
with each garrison for the special purpose of intro-
ducing the culture of potatoes. These were exclusively
appropriated to the non-commissioned officers and pri-
vates, each one having a bed of three hundred and
sixty-five square feet, which was his, and the produce
of which he could dispose of, so long as he would till it.
Neatly gravelled alleys between these cultivated plots
made them pleasant places of resort. The agreeable
and beneficent results of these arrangements were realized
sooner, and even more widely, than the planner of them
could have hoped. Indolent soldiers became model
laborers, proud of their task and its fruits. They were
seen collecting manure in the streets, besides using what
was furnished them. Little gardens fashioned by the
soldiers on their furloughs sprang up all over the
country, as each one carried home with him garden-
seeds and potatoes. The use of the latter, as of many
other vegetables for food, became universal. The
officers, meanwhile, were ordered to give the soldiers
every facility, and never to exact any emolument from
them.
Besides the direct objects of improving the condi-
tion and raising the character of the soldiers which
were effected by the measures thus described, Sir Benja-
min had in view a further purpose, in securing a very
potent agency for advancing the most difficult and com-
prehensive of all his benevolent schemes. He intended
Life of Count Riimford. 175
to make use of these reformed soldiers in grappling
with and suppressing the enormous evils connected
with mendicity in Bavaria. This was, at the time, a
stupendous and organized system of abuses, which,
gradually growing upon the tolerance of the govern-
ment and the people, had reached such proportions, and
had established itself with such a vigorous power of
mischief, as to be acquiesced in as irremediable. There
were, indeed, laws in each community which provided
for the support of the poor, but they were utterly in-
effective. Beggars and vagabonds, the larger part of
whom were also thieves, swarmed all over the country,
especially in the cities. These were not only natives,
but foreigners. They were of both sexes and all ages.
They strolled in all directions, lining the highways,
levying contributions with clamorous demands, enter-
ing houses, stores, and workshops to rob, interrupting
the devotions of the churches with their exactions, and
extorting everywhere through fear what they failed to
get by importunity. These swarms of mendicants and
freebooters were in the main composed of stout, -strong,
healthy, and able-bodied persons, who preferred an easy
life of indolence to any kind of industry. They had
become the terror and the scourge of the country.
" These detestable vermin had recourse to the most
diabolical arts and the most horrid crimes in the prose-
cution of their infamous trade." They would steal,
maim, and expose little children, and compel them to
extort by their piteous appeals a fixed sum for a day's
gatherings, with the threat of an inhuman punishment
if they failed. Every attempt to suppress this system
of outrages having been thwarted, the community had
learned to submit and conform to it as admitting of no
176 Life of Co^tnt Rumford.
relief; and this wretched tolerance seemed to double the
number of these vagabonds, while it raised beggary into
a profession. Even herdsmen and shepherds, tending
their flocks by the wayside, were in the habit of levying
contributions on passers-by, and their opportunity to
do this was had in view in fixing the rate of their wages
from their employers. Farm children, too young to
labor, were improved as mendicants, and a traveller
seemed to have his road lined with outstretched hands.
The beggars formed a caste in the cities, with pro-
fessional rules, assigning to them beats and districts,
which were disposed of by regulations in case of the
death, promotion, or removal of the proprietors.
Sometimes a fight decided the contested right to a
district. Even matrimonial alliances between the men-
dicants, and the entail of the privileges of the profes-
sion on the children born of these bargains, were a
recognized usage. Thompson observed that the pro-
fession of a beggar was a training for thievery, and that
there was really no difference between the ways used for
extorting gifts and the being subjected to actual plun-
dering. He tells us that after the measures which are
to be described as instituted by him had taken effect,
out of the population of Munich, then about sixty
thousand, as many as two thousand six hundred beg-
gars were seized in a single week.
These measures were deliberate, wise, thorough, and
effective. They were admirably planned and carried
into the most minute details. Four regiments of cav-
alry were cantoned in Bavaria and the adjoining prov-
inces, so that even every village had a patrol party of
three, four, or five mounted soldiers daily coursing
from one station to another. They were forbidden to
Life of Count Rumford. 177
stop at any peasant's house for victuals, or to demand
forage. Officers and subalterns stationed at centres in
the cantonments were so distributed that they could
inspect these patrolmen, and a general officer, after
visiting all the cantonments, was to have his head-
quarters at Munich. Printed instructions requiring
regular returns from the lowest up to the highest of the
ranks and the staff were furnished, and extreme care was
taken to prevent any collision or conflict between the
civil authorities and the military. The soldiers were
also to convey government messages, to guard the fron-
tiers, to prevent smuggling, to assist at conflagrations,
and to pursue and apprehend all malefactors. The in-
habitants of each district were to be at the expense of
providing simple quarters for the soldiers, but the cost
was so carefully restricted that the whole charge for the
whole country for one year was but 2 y jlj.
This cantonment of the cavalry was but one pre-
paratory measure planned for effecting what had been
resolved cm, a general and simultaneous seizure of all
the beggars in the capital, to begin with. A distinc-
tion was to be made, from the first, between the dis-
posal and treatment of aged and infirm mendicants
and the restraints designed for the sturdy and able-
bodied beggars. Contributions of money voluntarily
made by the inhabitants were essential, to obtain which
they must be drawn to approve the plan and to trust
in its success. This condition it was not easy to se-
cure ; for though the inhabitants, tormented by men-
dicity, would most readily help any measure promising
to remove it surely, they had been over and over again
disappointed by fruitless essays to that end. Thomp-
son determined to carry out his scheme before asking
12
178 Life of Coimt Rumford.
general pecuniary aid for it, and also to enlist in it
people of the highest rank. He organized a most
efficient bureau as a police over the poor, in order to
provide relief for the necessitous and the opportunities
of profitable industry for the well and strong. His
committee was constituted of the respective presidents
of the Council of War, the Council of the Supreme
Regency, the Ecclesiastical Council, and the Chamber
of Finances. To these was added one additional coun-
cillor from each of these departments, and offices were
provided for meetings, with a secretary, accountant,
and clerk, and the police guards were under the direc-
tion of the committee. The members were all without
pay, and the employees were remunerated from the
Treasury, so as not to draw upon the Poor Fund,
which was intrusted to a public banker of the city,
Monsieur Dallarmi.
The city was divided into sixteen districts, in which
every dwelling, palace or hovel, was numbered ; and a
committee of charity was appointed for each, 'headed by
a respectable citizen, assisted by a priest, a physician, a
surgeon, and an apothecary, all serving without pay, to
look after the worthy poor. A connection was estab-
lished by rotation between these district committees
and the central committee. There were many vested
funds, grants, and bequests which had for years been
nominally consecrated to charity, but as most of these
had been reduced, wasted, or misapplied, Thompson
determined wisely not to excite the opposition or
odium which he might incur by claiming them. He
looked for support from the Sovereign, from the Treas-
ury, from subscriptions, legacies, and small revenues.
To provide raw material, help, oversight, interest,
Life of Count Rumford. 179
and stimulus for engaging common beggars seized in
the streets and highways in the pursuits of useful
industry, was a formidable task, next in order, to exer-
cise Sir Benjamin's resources. How could persons
bred up in lazy and dissolute habits, regardless of de-
cency, and callous to any sense of shame, be turned into
happy and thrifty workers ? Precepts and punishments
would be sure to fail, but they might be taught habits.
Thompson ventured to reverse the maxim that people
must be virtuous if they would be happy, and he
essayed to make his wretched beggars happy as a step
towards making them virtuous. He therefore devised
for them comforts and appliances to soften their hearts
and make them docile and grateful. His experience
led him to write down the ejaculation, "Would to God
that my success might encourage others to follow my
example ! If it were generally known how little trouble,
and how little expence, are required to do much good,
c the heartfelt satisfaction ' which arises from relieving
the wants and promoting the happiness of our fellow-
creatures is so great that I am persuaded acts of the
most essential charity would be much more frequent,
and the mass of misery among mankind would conse-
quently be much lessened."
Thompson says he had learned from the brute crea-
tion, from beasts and birds, that cleanliness is the
first condition of comfort. He had noticed, also, that
all the great lawgivers and founders of religions had had
regard to the influence of cleanliness on the moral
nature of man, thinking the soul defiled and depraved
by everything unclean. He adds, cc Virtue never
dwelt long with filth and nastiness ; nor do I believe
there ever was a person scrupulously attentive to
180 Life of Count Rutnford.
cleanliness who was a consummate villain." He had
now to deal with men and women who had become
habituated to being covered with filth and vermin, and
who had slept in their rags in the streets and hedges.
They should have a neat and commodious building,
well warmed and lighted, with healthful and palatable
food and good beds. Teachers, materials, and utensils
should enable them to work, and the pay for it should
be their own. There should be no harsh language, no ill-
usage. The founder was able to say, after a five years'
operation of his scheme, that not a blow had been given
even to a child, while thrift had so abundantly followed
from it, that even extra rewards had been granted to the
deserving.
Consulting economy in every stage of his enterprise,
Thompson avoided, what to most schemers in similar
undertakings would have seemed essential, the build-
ing of an edifice, at considerable cost, with reference to
the improvements and conveniences which he desired.
In one of the suburbs of Munich, on the other side of
the Iser, called Au, was a deserted structure, once a
manufactory, then falling into decay. He caused this
to be thoroughly repaired and enlarged, adding to it a
kitchen, refectory, and bakehouse, with workshops for
carpenters, smiths, turners, and other mechanics needed
for making and repairing all the tools and machinery
which would be requisite in the establishment. Large
halls were provided for spinners of flax, hemp, cotton,
wool, and worsted, with an office attached to each for a
clerk or overseer of the department. Through a win-
dow connecting each hall with its office, raw materials,
finished work, and accounts for labor done, were given
to and received from each workman. Another series
Life of Count Ruinford. 181
of halls was fitted up for weavers in all the depart-
ments, and for clothiers, cloth-shearers, dyers, saddlers,
wool-sorters, carders, combers, knitters, seamstresses,
&c., as also dwelling-rooms, magazines, store-rooms for
all assorted materials and goods, and rooms for the offi-
cers. There was likewise a spacious drying-hall, where
eight pieces of cloth might be stretched at once. A run-
ning stream was availed of for a fulling-mill, a dyer's
shop, and a wash-house. The building, which was
square, enclosing a paved court, was carefully and even
elegantly painted, and arranged, without and within, to
make it attractive. Over the principal gate was an
inscription denoting the purpose of the establishment,
and over the passage into the court letters of gold on a
black ground proclaimed the warning, " No alms will
be received here." Over the doors of the various
apartments were inscribed their uses.
The building being prepared with tools, materials,
and utensils for work, Sir Benjamin proceeds to tell
us how he got his inmates. New Year's Day had from
time immemorial been the beggars' holiday in Bavaria.
They were out in full force to receive and to exact alms.
Their philanthropic patron and reformer chose that day
for inaugurating his own establishment. It was the ist
of January, 1790. We cannot but be very forcibly im-
pressed by the amount and kind of influence and
authority which Sir Benjamin had personally secured
to himself, when we reflect upon the resoluteness, the
almost arbitrary and autocratical character of his way of
proceeding in this matter, and consider, too, that every
one concerned, from the Sovereign down to the beggars
themselves, so far from thwarting him, appeared to fall
under his lead. Here was a foreign resident in a
1 82 Life of Count Riimford.
strange country, of a language not his own, himself
not yet thirty-seven years of age, who had spent but
little more than four years of his residence to such
purpose as to be able to bring the whole military and
civil powers of the government, at his own dictation,
to grapple effectively with the most gigantic of the evils
of a demoralized community. No Eastern monarch
ever had a vizier to represent his delegated despotism
for effecting results that would compare in amount or
extent with the beneficence of the measures which found
their agent in the Elector's American counsellor.
On the morning of New Year's Day, then, the offi-
cers and non-commissioned officers of the three regi-
ments of infantry in garrison were directed to station
themselves at appointed posts in the streets, and to wait
for further orders. To relieve his bold undertaking
of the odium it might have risked if carried through
wholly by the military power, Thompson had at the
same time assembled at his lodgings the field-officers
and all the chief-magistrates of Munich, and begged
them to accompany him with their full sympathy and
aid, as he proceeded that morning to execute his plan
of seizing upon every beggar in the town, that the
strong among them might be put to work, the help-
less provided for, and the city be thoroughly relieved
of its worst nuisance. All whom he thus appealed to
heartily consented to attend him and aid him. He
himself was paired off with the chief-magistrate, and
each field-officer with an inferior magistrate. The
moment they had got into the streets a beggar ex-
tended his hand and asked alms. Thompson, setting
an example which he desired all his companions to
imitate, laid his own hand gently upon the shoulder
Life of Count Rumford. 183
of this first vagabond, and told him that from that
day begging would no longer be permitted in the
streets of Munich. The mendicant was committed to
a sergeant with orders to take him to the Town Hall,
where he was told that he would be provided for in one
way if he was really helpless, and in another way if he
was not. To his own act Thompson added some
rallying words to his associates to overcome their re-
luctance to what -might seem a derogatory proceeding
to any of them, and assured them that there could be
no disgrace in assisting " in so useful and laudable an
undertaking." With such alacrity and thoroughness
was the work accomplished, that the magistrates and
soldiers had seized upon every beggar, - not a single
one remaining at large.
When the motley mass of mendicants had been gath-
ered in the Town Hall, their names were taken down
on prepared lists, and they were sent off for a time to
their own private haunts, with instructions to present
themselves on the next day at the c< Military Work-
house " already provided in the Au. They were
promised there comfortable, warm rooms, a warm din-
ner daily, and remunerative work if they would labor.
They were likewise assured that a committee would
inquire into the condition, wants, and ability of each of
them, with a view to granting them permanently all
needful aid. The same measures were then followed
up in the suburbs by patrols of soldiers and police.
Thompson was greatly aided in his work by the
circulation all over the city of an address and appeal to
the inhabitants, prepared by his hearty coadjutor, Pro-
fessor Babo, a distinguished literary man in Munich.
Many of these circulars were carried by Thompson
184 Life of Count Rumford.
himself to the doors of the principal citizens, with
printed blanks containing the forms for an elaborate
system of regular voluntary subscriptions. The city
was again districted for this purpose, and the plan was
so thoroughly contrived that pledges by name or anony-
mous gifts acknowledged in the Munich Gazette, or
the contents of alms-boxes, all under the oversight
of the committees, seemed to engage the generosity of
all citizens. The reasonable motive was urged, that
systematic benevolence, besides being alone effective,
was also much cheaper than enforced and desultory
almsgiving.
Provision had to be made for some embarrassments
attendant upon the comprehensiveness of this system.
Several public establishments in Munich, like the
schools for poor students, orders of Sisters of Charity,
the Hospital for Lepers, and others, had been long privi-
leged to make periodical appeals from house to house.
To avoid collision and jealousy, an equivalent to these
former resources of such institutions was provided from
the public treasury. Then, too, the vested rights of
German apprentices to beg on their travels a custom
attended with many abuses had to be restrained and
regulated, as did also the privilege granted to sufferers
from fire to go about with a government license asking
for aid. In fact, the oversight and removal of men-
dicity required safeguards in every direction. When the
wretched objects of Thompson's resolute measures, de-
prived of their former range and liberty of mendicancy,
were thus gathered into a central asylum, he had an
administrative and executive task to accomplish to
which only his own v^onderful powers and skill would
have been equal. He was to provide profitable work for
Life of Count Rwnford. 185
them. He was to change all their habits of life. He
was to bring under rules of cleanliness, thrift, and
order the most unpromising subjects .of such dis-
cipline. Yet he accomplished all he undertook, and he
did it with signal success. All through his life and in
all his private and public relations Order was with
him almost a deified principle. He carried order into
everything. He exacted order of everybody. He did
make his pauper asylum a workhouse of remunerative
industry, the inmates of which were really happy.
For a series of years the institution was so successful
that besides producing all the clothing needed for the
Bavarian troops a large supply from it was sold to the
public, and even to other countries. At one period
there accrued from it to the Electorate a profit of ten
thousand florins in a year. Though at first some of
the inmates felt the constraint and restlessness of their
new condition, there never was any mutinous conduct
among them. Cheap materials which they could not
waste hemp, flax, and wool first engaged their un-
skilled hands. A system almost like mechanism was
introduced into all the details of the establishment.
True to his leading aim of economy, Thompson con-
structed and arranged the kitchen, which daily pro-
vided a warm and nutritive dinner for from a thou-
sand to fifteen hundred persons. So highly did Sir
Benjamin pride himself on this special accomplish-
ment of his, which he brought to bear in sundry cu-
linary feats in many southern cities of the Continent,
and in Great Britain and Ireland, that he procured
certificates from great functionaries testifying to the
incredibly small amount of fuel used in his apparatus.
Four and a half pennies' worth of fuel cooked a dinner
1 86 Life of Count Rumford.
for a thousand persons. Thompson pledged himself
to prove that he carried economy even further in a
kitchen which he had made in a hospital at Verona.
Many out-patients, as we now call them, many poor
persons who received work from the establishment
without being inmates of it, were regularly provided
with food from it. As the meat-shops of the city had
long been laid under exacting contributions by the
mendicants, Thompson found their now relieved trades-
men gladly ready, at his suggestion, to keep tubs la-
belled " For the Poor," in which they would daily de-
posit scraps suitable for soups. The bakers also made
a similar composition for their own relief.
Apologizing for a lack of orderly arrangement in the
matter of his Essay, though to general readers it seems
to be wonderfully methodical, Thompson proceeds to
describe in particulars the whole organization, routine,
and discipline of his establishment. He yields often
to an overflow of sentiment, proving that he mingled
in his martinet-like stiffness of regulation much of very
tender and considerate feeling. He tells us how he
encouraged a spirit of industry, pride, self-respect, and
emulation, finding help even in some trifling distinc-
tions in apparel. Some children who were too young
to be trusted with any material for mechanical work
were placed on benches around the hall where older
children were at labor, till, in the irksomeness of the
position, they cried to be allowed to do something, if
it were only to turn a wheel by foot or hand. Some
trifling reward encouraged them on from step to step
in their progress.
Here, then, Thompson had in successful operation
two economical and benevolent institutions. The first,
Life of Count R^tmford. 187
initiated in 1789 as the Military Workhouse, not
dependent upon charity, but substantially self-support-
ing as a manufactory for clothing the army ; and the
Institution for the Poor, occupied in 1790, and draw-
ing its resources from the benevolent that its profits
might accrue to the relief of the poor and the protec-
tion and education of their children.
The spinning and weaving of wool, linen, and cot-
ton were carried on with great, systematic, and profita-
ble enterprise in the Military Workhouse at Munich,
which furnished the clothing for fifteen Bavarian regi-
ments. Its profits for six years exceeded a hundred
thousand florins. The troops of the Palatinate, and
those of the Duchies of Juliers and Bergen, were fur-
nished from a similar establishment at Mannheim. This
had been in operation some months before its corre-
sponding institution had been opened at Munich, and,
being Thompson's first experiment, he improved much
upon it in the second. When he came to publish a
second edition of his first Essay, he was compelled to
announce that his Military Workhouse at Mannheim
had been set on fire and totally destroyed during the
siege of that city by the Austrian troops.
None of our numerous ethical essays contain more
healthful, just, or fitly expressed reflections upon the
exercise of the benevolent feelings and the pure happi-
ness which comes from doing good to others, than does
the closing part of Thompson's sketch of his establish-
ment for the poor. He was the daily witness of its
benefits, and the daily recipient of the gratitude of its
inmates, beggars raised to self-respecting industry,
abandoned women reformed to an enjoyment of a pure
life, little children shedding tears of joy to welcome their
1 88 Life of Count Rinnford.
benefactor. Thompson says that the fear of being re-
proached for personal vanity shall not withhold him
from mentioning some of the marks of public gratitude,
esteem, and consideration which he received. On one
occasion, when he was dangerously ill, the poor of
Munich went publicly in a body, in procession, to the
cathedral, and put up public prayers for his recovery.
And again, when four years afterwards they learned
that he was in a similar condition at Naples, they, of
their own accord, set apart an hour each evening, after
they had finished their work in the Military Work-
house, to pray for him. On his return, after an
absence of fifteen months, the subjects of his benevo-
lence gave him a most affecting reception. He, in
response, provided for them a fete in the English
Garden, where eighteen hundred poor people of all
ages enjoyed themselves, in presence of above eighty
thousand visitors. Thompson asks his reader n,ot to
be impatient with him for thus expressing his feelings.
He says :
"Let him figure to himself, if he can, my situation, sick in
bed, worn out by intense application, and dying, as everybody
thought, a martyr in the cause to which I had devoted myself;
let him imagine, I say, my feelings, upon hearing the confused
noise of the prayers of a multitude of people who were passing
by in the streets, upon being told that it was the Poor of Mu-
nich, many hundreds in number, who were going in procession
to the church to put up public prayers for me ; public prayers
for me ! for a private person ! a stranger ! a Protestant !
I believe it is the first instance of the kind that ever hap-
pened ; and I dare venture to affirm that no proof could well be
stronger than this, that the measures adopted for making these
poor people happy were really successful. And let it be re-
membered that this fact is what I am most anxious to make
appear in the clearest and most satisfactory manner."
Life of Count Rumford. 189
It will be understood that while actual beggars were
thus provided for in the House of Industry, the zeal of
their benefactor took in also all the indigent in Munich,
who, though they had never begged, needed aid, food,
and care. Measures were instituted which wisely and
effectively ministered to them. Thompson expresses
his warm thanks to the clergy who had so heartily
co-operated with him, though a Protestant, in all his
measures of reform and benevolence. Of course, efforts
were made by him, and plans were matured, for securing
that what he had been doing for Munich should serve
as an impulse and a guide for like measures and institu-
tions over the whole country. He himself made many
excursions and journeys with these objects in view; and
in all his travels, wherever his route took him, he inter-
ested himself in introducing social, economical, and me-
chanical improvements.
Having met with such marked success in the hard and
exacting work of practical reform, Thompson felt him-
self warranted in devoting his next Essay to dealing
with the " Fundamental Principles on which General
Establishments for the Relief of the Poor may be
formed in all Countries." There is an admirable me-
dium kept in this Essay between the sentimental vein,
which engages the feelings, and the strain of experi-
mental wisdom, which would guide the judgment to
directly beneficent results. The suggestions which it
presents, and the methods and rules which it proposes,
might be adopted this year, after all the gatherings of
experience, as promising a satisfactory solution if
such is possible to the problem offered to the civi-
lized world in pauperism.
The author engages with that sad and hopeless kind
190 Life of Count Rumford.
of poverty exhibited by those who are positively in-
capable of self-support, and which requires continuous
charitable assistance and relief. The aid which such
indigent persons need from others cannot be provided
by compulsory legal exactions ; it must be contributed
by benevolent and humane promptings. This volun-
tary provision will require organizations to gather and
administer it. Persons of the highest social rank must
put themselves foremost, and must combine with those
who belong to the middle classes, to institute an elabo-
rate system of oversight and relief. The objection
likely to arise from the enormous expense which may
be supposed to be involved in such a scheme must be
met by the bold and easily demonstrable statement, that
the cost of such a well-devised system will always be
much less than that visited on a community by beg-
gary, with its concomitant of thieving. The system
will require the districting of a town, and the number-
ing of the houses, with a careful examination into the
condition and circumstances of every indigent person.
Thompson here plants himself, as he always did in
every great or little matter that interested him, upon
his divine principle of Order. Arrangement, method,
provision for the minutest details, subordination, co-
operation, and a careful system of statistics will facili-
tate and make effective any undertaking, however
burdensome or comprehensive. Humanity, kindness,
and wisdom are capable of dealing with the huge evils
of pauperism. The objects of this benevolence when
thus cared for must be made, skilfully and resolutely,
to contribute as far as possible to the efforts made for
their own relief. They must be set to industrious oc-
cupations. To make the burdens of providing for
Life of Count Ritmford. 191
them as tolerable as they may be, all the best scientific
and mechanical improvements must be introduced in
workshops and kitchens, in the selection and cooking
of food, and in all the economy of administration. He
would rely largely upon the donations and bequests of
the rich, and would maintain that the endowment of
well-ordered institutions would prove more effectual
than the forms of private charity.
As each of Thompson's benevolent schemes involved
this great object of economy, he was led to find the
next subject of his investigations in the selection and
preparation of Food, especially for the poor. When he
came to publish his Essay on that subject in London,
in 1796, it was a time of general scarcity, and conse-
quently of anxiety and alarm. The House of Com-
mons and the Board of Agriculture were earnestly
engaged with measures for relieving distress and avert-
ing an apprehended famine. He begins his Essay, as
usual, with the easy and obvious practical philosophy
of his subject. He refers us to the principles and
method by which animals and plants are nourished.
The newly discovered fact that water, instead of being
a simple substance, might be decomposed, is turned to
instruction on this point. He enlarges upon the pleas-
ant maxim that the food which is most palatable is
likely to be also the most nutritious. He proves that
very little solid food is essential or healthful, even to
the most laborious persons, and shows how vegetables,
skilfully cooked, may be alike nutritious and palatable.
He deals most judiciously with what we may call his
new vegetable, the potato. He gives rules for the
construction of public kitchens, and very methodical
recipes, tables, and statistics of the most economical
1 92 Life of Count Riimford.
and agreeable food for the diet of soldiers. The nutri-
tive qualities of different kinds of food and of vegeta-
ble soups are elaborately investigated and tabulated.
The courtly Count seems almost to show himself to us
in the apparel and with the apron of an artist in one of
his own kitchens, when he deals with the matter of Ind-
ian meal, and pleads for cakes, dumplings, bread, and
especially " Hasty-Pudding," to be made from it.
Memories of his boyhood's home in Woburn, of the
yellow maize of autumn, of husking-parties, and of his
mother's substantial provisions for a youthful appetite,
must have come tenderly over him as he fondly argued
for this staple of the white and the red men of America.
An exiled loyalist. Sir William Pepperell, then living in
London, was an intimate friend of Thompson's, and
this friend had an American countrywoman in his
kitchen. The philosopher, not satisfied, it would seem,
to trust wholly to her native skill, gave her some direc-
tions and oversight of his own for preparing an cc Ind-
ian pudding" as a treat for his "friends. He adds
much useful information about macaroni, barley, and
rye-bread. I have noticed in various Parliamentary
documents and public journals of the time how highly
his advice and efforts were appreciated in that time of
scarcity and apprehension.
Thompson made up another Essay by gathering
together sketches of four of his subordinate schemes
which he devised as incidental to the larger ones.
These were, first, a military academy, in which a thor-
ough practical education should be furnished, not ex-
clusively, but mainly for youths designed for soldiers.
It was planned for one hundred and eighty efeves,
distributed in three classes. The first of these was
Life of Count Rumford. 193
to be composed of thirty orphans, or children of in-
ferior civil and military officers, from eleven to thir-
teen years of age, remaining, free of cost, for four
years. The second class was to include sixty sons of
the poorer nobility, from eleven to fifteen years of
age, at a small monthly charge. The third class re-
ceived ninety pupils, gratuitously, as able and prom-
ising children, showing uncommon abilities, from the
lowest ranks of society. The rules of admission and
discipline were rigid, and the administration was to be
economical.
The second scheme had in view the improvement of
the breed of horses and horned cattle in Bavaria and
the Palatinate. This was in the interest of his military
and agricultural reforms. He imported some fine
stock to be gratuitously distributed over the country ;
but he tells us that the success of the enterprise did not
meet his expectations.
The third scheme aimed to resist an enormous abuse,
by which poor functionaries, supernumerary clerks, and
others on small pay, which from their poverty they
had to anticipate, were subjected by Jewish usurers to
an exaction of five per cent per month as interest on
an advance. Thompson brought about an arrange-
ment at the Military Pay Office by which the advance
was made at five per cent a year.
The fourth of these incidental schemes, which, as
subsidiary to one of his larger establishments, he was
obliged to advance only as such subordination would
allow, might of itself have been a leading enterprise with
him. In making his arrangements for a military cor-
don, extending over the country, as a measure essential
to his plan for seizing upon all vagabonds and mendi-
13
194 Life of Count Rumford.
cants, he had recognized the advantage to be gained by
giving permanency to some temporary provisions which
he had then felt to be necessary. He formed and ma-
tured a plan to facilitate a military patrol of the whole
country. This required permanent stations for sol-
diers, and, in order that the soldiers should not be
idle, he proposed to keep them employed on the repair
of roads and highways, and also to provide for them
comfortable tenements at their stations, so that they
need not levy contributions of food and forage upon
the inhabitants. This scheme, as its author devised it,
included the opening and improving of military roads,
with distances carefully marked by milestones, and the
planting of trees on the sides. Very little was done
towards carrying out this proposition.
Leaving out of view the philosophical science which
undoubtedly, like a conscious or unconscious subsid-
iary motive, excited and aided the Count in all these
comprehensive plans of beneficence, we must certainly
regard them in their sum and effect as equalling the
results accomplished by any other single benefactor of
mankind. It is indeed hard to believe of him, as not
only Cuvier but others have said, that he really did not
love his fellow-men. Cuvier, in recognizing the scien-
tific passion and the social distinction which aided and
rewarded the benevolent and economical labors of Count
Rumford, applies to him in pleasantry what Fontenelle
said of Dodard, who, in his rigid observance of the
fasts of the church, turned the process into a means of
scientific experiment on the effects of abstinence and
asceticism on himself, that he was the first man who
took the same path for getting into heaven and into
the French Academy.
Life cf Count Rumford. 195
Till within the last two years there has been but one
monumental memorial in Munich, which, by bearing
the name of Rumford, associates him in this way with
the city of which he was so conspicuous a benefactor.
Even this inscribed memorial would not indicate to an
American visitor that it was a tribute to one of his own
countrymen. I refer to the monument erected during
his life by some of the principal citizens of Munich, in
the so-called " English Garden," as an expression of
public gratitude to the Count for his suggestion and
supervision of that admirable design. This work of his
was undertaken in 1790. In the northeasterly environs
of Munich was a wild and neglected region of forest
and valley, which had formerly been a hunting-ground
of the Elector, but at the time was unsightly and dreary.
Sir Benjamin conceived the project of converting this
region, with the permission of the Elector, into pleas-
ure-grounds, a park, and fields for making improving
experiments in agriculture. He surrounded it with a
road or drive of a circuit of six miles, on which, at
proper intervals, were erected cottages and farm-houses
for laborers employed on the grounds. Walks, prome-
nades, grottos, a race-course, and other attractions,
diversified the extensive stretch of territory. With
the earth scooped out in preparing a small lake, he
built up an elevated mound. A refreshment saloon,
handsomely furnished, and a Chinese pagoda, were
among the conveniences and adornments; and Sir Ben-
jamin exercised all his ingenuity in perfecting the
details of his plan so as to render the Garden attrac-
tive as a place of resort to the higher classes, and a
place of carefully guarded amusement to the common
people.
196 Life of Count Rumfjrd.
While he was absent in England in the autumn of
1795, and without his knowledge, the memorial tribute
just referred to was prepared and set up.
It stands within the Garden, and is composed of
Bavarian freestone and marble. It is quadrangular,
its two opposite fronts being ornamented with basso-
rilievos and bearing inscriptions. The side fronting
the principal roadway shows two figures, representing
the Genius of Plenty leading Bavaria and strewing her
path with flowers. Under these is a block of polished
marble with this German inscription, now nearly ob-
literated :
LUSTWANDLER, STEH !
DANK STAERKET DEN GENUSS :
EIN SCHOEPFERISCHER WINK KARL THEODOR's
VOM MENSCHENFREUND RUMFORD
MIT GEIST GEFUEHL UND LIEB GEFASST,
HAT DIESE EHEMALS OEDE GEGEND
IN DAS WAS DU NUN UM DICH SIEHEST
VEREDELT.
The above may be paraphrased [not translated] as
follows :
" Pause, saunterer ! The enjoyment [which this place affords]
is heightened by gratitude. A suggestive hint of Charles Theo-
dore, seized on with genius, taste, and love by Rumford, the
friend of mankind, has transformed this once waste spot into
what thou now seest about thee."
On the opposite side of the memorial is a bust of
Count Rumford, in Bavarian alabaster, which, at the
time, was thought to be a good likeness ; and under
this another block of polished marble bears the follow-
ing inscription :
g
2
3
a
o
_z
!? m
Life of Count Rumford. 197
IHM
DER DAS SCHMAHLICHSTE OFFENTLICHE UEBEL,
DEN MUSSIGGANG UND BETTEL TILGTE,
DER ARMUTH HULF' ERWERB UND SITTEN,
DER VATERLANDSCHEN JUGEND
SO MANCHE BILDUNGSANSTALT GAB.
LUSTWANDLER GEH,
UND SINNE NACH IHM GLEICH ZU SEYN
AN GEIST UND THAT
UND UNS
AN DANK.
Which may be rendered :
To him who rooted out the most disgraceful public evils,
Idleness and Mendicity : who gave to the Poor, relief, occupa-
tion, and good morals, and to the Youth of the Fatherland so
many schools of Instruction. Go, Saunterer ! and strive to
equal him in Spirit and Deed, and us in Gratitude.
The Institutions which the Count had established,
and which, after 1791, were in full experimental trial,
were of a kind to make him alike assiduous in their
management and anxious lest, from any oversight of
his own, they should meet with embarrassment or fail-
ure. Of course, as a very wise and discerning man, he
had expected to meet opposition, alike from ignorance,
jealousy, and envy. This he now began to encounter.
He showed great discretion and magnanimity in dealing
with it. But care and perplexity from so many exacting
labors began to wear upon his health. He did not
spare himself either mental or physical exertion, but he
was always thoughtful about preserving his constitution
unimpaired, and he applied rigidly to himself his rules
of dietetics. He habitually abstained from wines and
spirituous liquors, drinking only water, and was re-
garded as whimsical about his food.
198 Life of Count Rum ford.
The dangerous illness to which reference has already*
been made in connection with his own account of the
manifestation of sympathy in his behalf by his bene-
ficiaries compelled him at length to seek relief and
change of place. 1 he Elector granted him leave to
travel for some time, according to his inclination, upon
the Continent. But before leaving Munich, doubt-
ful if he might live to return, the Count rendered in
to the ^lector an exact account of the principal results
of the four years of his administration, compared with
the four years preceding his entrance into office. He
left Munich in the spring of 1793, and, being absent
sixteen months, returned there in August, 1794, having
in the interval suffered another serious illness at Naples.
He planned kitchens for economy of food and fuel in
Verona and many cities, superintended their construc-
tion, and provided for gathering statistics of the saving
effected. He seems to have been heartily welcomed,
and allowed full scope and tolerance for his schemes, by
the ecclesiastical and other authorities having those
institutions in charge. It is somewhat noteworthy to
mark how acquiescingly, and even deferentially, those
who are generally so jealous of their own prerogatives,
and especially of the abuses to which they are accus-
tomed, conformed themselves to the Count's experi-
mental projects. Throughout his published writings
are very many references to the sympathy and courtesy
on which he thus drew, while high officials gladly sup-
plied him with their affidavits as to the incredible saving
effected in fuel, and the nutritive and palatable qualities
of some rather feebly organized soups.
In November, 1793, while stopping at Florence, he
made some of his long-continued and varied experi-
Life of Count Runiford. 199
ments on heat in presence of Lord Palmerston, who
was then in that city. He was at Naples in the begin-
ning of the next year.
He returned to Munich in a state of slow conva-
lescence. Being unable to resume the management in
detail of all the affairs of his various Institutions, as
well as of his military 'department, he was obliged to
content himself with exercising a general superintend-
ence. He was constantly watchful to conciliate to
his undertakings all opponents who were simply igno-
rant or prejudiced. Hoping, as it proved with good
reason, that the manifest results of his reformatory
efforts wholly to suppress public mendicity and to make
the poor in a measure self-supporting by organized
industry would certify to his unselfishness and his
practical wisdom, he never, so far as I can discover,
offered a plea on his own behalf, or vindicated his
motives. From first to last the Elector advanced all
his schemes, admiring his philosophical genius and
grateful for his administrative aid. Spending the year
after his return from his travels in Munich in this
comparative quiet, he worked diligently in his study
upon those literary productions the subject-matter of
some of which has been above presented. I have al-
ready spoken of his admirable style, his simple, direct,
and forcible way of expressing himself. Without the
ornaments of rhetoric his Essays have many graces, and
are well freighted with important truths fittingly set
forth. When, soon after their publication and very
extensive circulation, they were remarked upon in the
ephemeral journals of Great Britain, I have noticed, in
several instances, that they were criticised as often pro-
lix and abounding in repetitions. Lord Brougham, in
2OO Life of Count Rumford.
an article on Popular Science, in the London Quarterly
Review for April, 1849, comments with sharpness upon
the different faults of some philosophers and some com-
mentators in respectively failing to clear up the ob-
scurities in their subjects, or in over-explaining and
tediously illustrating easy texts. He commends Frank-
lin and Cobbett as admirable* examples, in that, re-
membering the toil and difficulty with which they had
overcome the embarrassments attending their unaided
investigation of abstruse subjects, they had taken spe-
cial pains to make those subjects easy and plain to their
readers. At the same time his Lordship thus finds
matter of ridicule in the Essays of Rumford :
"The scientific works of Count Rumford abound in
examples of the ludicrous extent to which sensible men
will sometimes carry their exposition of matters known
to everybody. In one of his economic treatises he
gives a receipt for a pudding, and then a page of de-
scription how to eat it. The concluding sentence will
serve for a specimen : f The pudding is to be eaten
with a knife and fork, beginning at the circumference
of the slice [in a cavity of the centre of which he had
directed that a piece of butter be left to melt] and
approaching regularly towards the centre, each piece
of pudding being taken up with the fork and dipped
into the butter, or dipped into it in part only, as is
commonly the case, before it is carried to the mouth.' '
This does indeed seem trifling, as his Lordship asserts ;
but the Count's whole minute description is pertinent,
as it really makes a difference how the " Indian Pud-
ding" is eaten. The Count himself apologizes for his
details, alleging " the importance of giving the most
minute and circumstantial information respecting the
Life of Count Rumf^rd. 201
manner of performing any operation, however simple it
may be, to which people have not been accustomecL"
This was incident to the writer's purpose, to make
himself intelligible and to communicate his views, when
they were far from being the commonplaces of knowl-
edge, to persons of ordinary capacity. These Essays,
which have strangely dropped out of common apprecia-
tion during the last two generations, are to be regarded
as the fruits of the author's period of rest after ten years
of arduous and manifold labor in Bavaria and the Pa-
latinate. The first five of them were written out in
Munich, in the main as they were first published in
London, some additional notes and tables being added
in subsequent editions.
Rumford left Munich on his return to London, after
an absence of eleven years, in September, 1795. The
principal object of his visit was, as has been said, that
he might publish his Essays. But he had another
leading end in view. He had many warm friends and
admirers as well as scientific correspondents in England,
with whom he had kept up constant intercourse, com-
municating his experiments, as we have seen, to the
Royal Society, his membership of which always en-
listed his pride and obligation of constant service.
Undoubtedly, too, could he have had equal considera-
tion in England, and- have felt that he was as highly
appreciated there for official dignity, if not with social
rank, he would have preferred a residence in it. He
sought, in this visit, to draw the attention of the Eng-
lish nation to the measures of public and domestic
economy which he had conceived and realized in Ger-
many. Unfortunately, on his arrival he was the victim
of an outrage which, besides the grievous loss that it
2O2 Life of Count Rumford.
entailed, seems to have caused him some bitterness of
feeling, from a suspicion which it roused in him. He
thus refers to this painful experience. In his account
of his Experiments on Gunpowder, he had promised at
some time to give to the public the results of some
other experiments which he had been making for several
years upon the strength of various bodies. But he was
obliged to add in a note :
" Since writing the above, I have met with a misfortune
which has put it out of my power to fulfil this promise On
my return to England from Germany, in October, 1795, after an
absence of eleven years, I was stopped in my post-chaise, in St.
Paul's Churchyard, in London, at six o'clock in the evening, and
robbed of a trunk which was behind my carriage, containing
all my private papers, and my original notes and observations
on philosophical subjects. By this cruel robbery I have been
deprived of the fruits of the labours of my whole life, and have
lost all that I held most valuable. This most severe blow has
left an impression on my mind which I feel that nothing will
ever be able entirely to remove. It is the more painful to me,
as it has clouded my mind with suspicions that never can be
cleared up."
Rumford's friend, Colonel Baldwin, writing before he
had knowledge of this misfortune, says that the Count
"has prepared, for his own amusement, a short sketch
c of the vicissitudes of a life checkered by a great
variety of incidents.' " * As this sketch, which would
have had a profound interest, has never appeared, and
is not now known to be in existence, we may infer that
it was with the other private papers, the loss of which
the Count thus deplores. We can only conjecture the
nature of his suspicions which aggravated that loss as
possibly referring to the jealousy of some rival, or the
* Literary Miscellany, Vol. II. p 33.
Life of Count Rumford. 203
pique of some enemy ready to do the Count a wrong in
his repute or in his feelings. He refers to the same
misfortune again in his Essay on the Management of
Fire. The register of his experiments on this subject
was so voluminous that he had left it at Munich, other-
wise it would have shared the fate of his other papers.
To the statement of this fact he subjoins the remark:
" I have many reasons to think that these papers are
still in being. What an everlasting obligation should
I be under to the person who would cause them to be
returned to me ! "
On his arrival in England, Lord Pelham, his very
warm friend, then Secretary for Ireland, gave Rum-
ford a pressing invitation to visit that Island. The
Count willingly responded, and went there in the
spring of 1796, spending there two months. He at
once employed himself in introducing into the hospitals
and workhouses of Dublin many important improve-
ments, and in heating a church by steam. He left there
a collection of models for a number of useful mechan-
ical inventions. His friend Pictet, who followed in his
track some four years afterwards, says that these inter-
esting objects were the first to engage his attention in
his visit to the Dublin Society, and he furnishes an
account of them for the BibliotKeque Britannique.
Very marked attentions and honors were lavished upon
Count Rumford in Ireland. The Royal Academy there,
and the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and
Manufactures, elected him an honorary member. After
he had left the country he received an address of
thanks from the Grand Jury of Dublin, an official letter
from the Lord Mayor of the city, and one from the
Viceroy of Ireland. These documents, which I have
204 Life of Count Rumford.
not been able to recover, Rumford showed to Pictet,
who describes them as rilled with the most flattering
expressions of esteem and gratitude. On his return to
London the Count superintended the changes which he
had before advised in the arrangements and kitchen
economy of the Foundling Hospital in London, and
deposited in the Bureau of Agriculture many ingenious
models of useful machines. The Annual Register for
1798* thought of importance enough for insertion in
its pages " An Account of the Kitchen fitted up at
the Foundling Hospital under the Direction of his
Excellency Count Rumford."
In connection with the visit he was making in Eng-
land, the Count had sent for his daughter to come from
America and meet him there.
* Page 397.
CHAPTER V.
Count Rumford' s Family in America. Correspondence with
Baldwin resumed. He sends for his Daughter. . Cor-
respondence of Sally Thompson. Friendship of President
Willard of Harvard College. Thompson s Provision for
his Mother. Sends over his Essays. Intention to visit
America. Autobiography of his Daughter. Extracts.
Her Voyage. Her Life in London. Reception of
his Essays. His Employments in England. Improved
Fireplaces. Popularity of his Plans. Rumford Roast-
ers. Endowment of Royal Society and American Acad-
emy. Correspondence with Sir Joseph Banks. Awards
of Rumford Medal by the Royal Society. Correspondence
with American Academy. Recognition by the Academy.
The Rumford Fund. Action of the Legislature ', and
of the Supreme Court in Equity upon the Fund, and its
Application. Awards of the Rumford Medal by the
Academy.
IT is pleasant to be able, at this point, to introduce
an episode in this narrative directly connecting the
now famous Count Rumford with the country of his
birth, where he had "been known as Benjamin Thomp-
son, and with those who survived here of his kindred
and early friends. I have been fortunate in the collec-
tion, from various sources, of materials to illustrate and
to give even a lively interest to this portion of the
narrative. The labors to which Rumford had devoted
2o6 Life of Count Rumford.
himself in Germany had been so engrossing that his
whole mind and thought must have been concentrated
upon them. It would hardly surprise us, therefore, if
we were left to infer that he had been comparatively
uninformed about many important events transpiring in
his native country at the most critical periods of its
constitutional development. But he seems not to have
been in ignorance of its public affairs nor of its dis-
tinguished men in politics or science. On the other
hand, though reports of the eminence to which he had
attained and of the philosophical genius to which fie
had given exercise were, of course, current in America,
it was not till the publication of his Essays that his
real achievements were known.
When Benjamin Thompson sailed from this country,
he left behind him, as we have seen, his wife and infant
daughter. The latter having been born October 18,
1774, was thus by absence deprived of a father's care
at about the same age as that in which he himself had
been bereft by the death of his own father. It has been
affirmed in more than one sketch of Count Rumford's
life, that his family heard and knew nothing of him till
the close of the Revolutionary War. Even if there be no
positive evidence in refutation of this statement, and in
the want or loss of writings covering that period of time
I am not able to produce such evidence, the assertion
would in itself seem a preposterous one. The public
services upon which Mr. Thompson entered at once on
his arrival in England ; the constant intercourse which
he had with a great many refugees from Boston and
Salem and other places, with several of whom he must
have had a previous acquaintance at home ; and his
own official duties which required him to be a party to a
Life of Count Ruinford. 207
correspondence with military men and royalists on this
side of the water, must certainly have kept his rela-
tives and old neighbors perfectly informed about himself.
How far and in what way he may have kept himself ac-
quainted, by exchange of messages or letters, with those
naturally most dear to him, and with their fortunes
during the war, there is now extant no sufficient means
for deciding. Communications of that kind were diffi-
cult and embarrassing. Perhaps the severance of his
domestic and civil ties was attended for a short time
with soreness of feeling and apparent alienation. The
embitterment of the strife as the war advanced, caused
by the prostration of this country, the havoc and ruin
which were so wide-spread, the contemptuous spirit and
the ruthless animosity which dictated the successive
hostile measures of Great Britain, and the employment
of foreign mercenaries against us, made the progress of
the conflict more and more effective in destroying or in
impeding the expression of anything like kindly senti-
ments between the parties.
I have deferred the introduction of the following let-
ter which, as its date will show, was written between
two and three years before the Count left Munich for
his visit to England because it seems to be in itself but
a fragment of a correspondence which was apparently
resumed by Colonel Baldwin shortly before. This
reply, as well as the reference made in it to the letter
that called it forth, would lead us to infer that it was
a resumption of the friendly intercourse between the
parties, which, beginning in childhood, was interrupted
by the exile of Thompson. From some memoranda of
Colonel Baldwin's I infer, also, that his friend had
made pecuniary remittances to his mother and daughter
208 Life of Count Rumford.
annually, through some mercantile acquaintance in Bos-
ton, before Baldwin himself became the medium for their
transmission, as I find by an entry in his diary, dated
October 7, 1793, that he then was. The letter from
Baldwin which called forth the ensuing reply was dated
November 10, 1792, and, as I have said, would indi-
cate that it was the reopening, on his own .part, of the
suspended correspondence. cc As to the main business
of Mr. Stacey's journey," to which the Count refers, he
having been the bearer of both the letters, the natural
inference which we should draw would be, that that
gentleman was a suitor for the hand of the daughter.
She had many such, but I can learn nothing further of
the matter, if Mr. Stacey were one of them. The reader
will be struck alike by the earnestness with which the
Count, longing to revisit his native country, asks if he
may safely do so, knowing, as he well did, how bitter
had been the feeling against many returning refugees,
and by the strong terms of endearment and veneration
with which he speaks of his mother.
" MUNICH, i8th January, 1793.
DEAR SIR, I received by the hands of Mr. Stacey your
letter of the loth November, for which I beg you would accept
my best thanks. It gave me very sincere pleasure to hear from
you, and to learn from Mr. Stacey that you were in good health
when he left America, and surrounded by all the enjoyments of
domestic happiness, and distinguished by the Esteem and Re-
spect of your fellow-citizens. Neither time nor distance, nor
change of habits and circumstances, have in the least abated
that affectionate regard which I conceived for you at a very
early period of my life, and I shall ever feel myself peculiarly
interested in everything which relates to your prosperity, and
shall be much gratified by every proof of your friendly recollec-
tion. I am very much obliged to you for your kind attentions to
Life of Coitnt Rumford. 209
my Daughter. I hope she will ever conduct herself in such a
manner as to merit your esteem, and to justify the good opinion
you have expressed of her.
"As to the main business of Mr. Stacey's journey, I must
refer you to my Daughter, to whom I have written fully upon
the subject. As I have no wish but for her happiness, I think
she must be satisfied with the advice I have given her, and I
have no doubt but she will receive it as it is meant, and cheer-
fully follow it.
" As to my situation in this country, I must refer you to Mr.
Stacey, who can give you the fullest information in respect to it.
He will tell you how sick I am of the bustle of Public affairs,
and how earnestly I long and hope for deliverance.
u You could hardly conceive the heart-felt satisfaction it
would give me to pay a visit to my native country. Should I
be kindly received ? Are the remains of Party spirit and politi-
cal persecutions done away ? Would it be necessary to ask
leave of the State ?
" It is possible you may see me at Woburn before you are
aware of it. I wish exceedingly to be personally acquainted with
my Daughter. I wish to know her real character, and how I
must go to work to lay a solid foundation for her future happi-
ness. I wish once more to have the satisfaction of seeing my
most kind and affectionate mother. I wish to prove to her how
dear she is to me, and how grateful I am for all her goodness to
me. My dear, beloved Parent ! What would I give to see
her, were it but for one hour ! I should be much obliged to
you for any accounts you may from time to time send me of her
situation, and of others, my friends, in your neighborhood.
Desiring to be remembered to all those of my old acquaint-
ance who interest themselves in my welfare, I am, my dear Sir,
with unfeigned Regard, and much Esteem,
u Yours, most affectionately,
"B. THOMPSON.
" To COL. LOAMMI BALDWIN, &c., &c.
Woburn, near Boston, N. America.
By Mr. Stacey."
14
2io Life of Couni Rumford.
Thus the tone and language in which Count Rum-
ford is found whether to continue or to renew his
intercourse with his family and friends here, in the first
of his communications after the war which has been
preserved, would not indicate even that the intercourse
had been indifferently or passionately suspended ; for
they are characterized by affection, and imply a full
knowledge of matters which might be expected to in-
terest him. He seems to take up again with the
strongest natural feeling the relationships of son and
father, as will abundantly appear.
The Count's honored and revered father-in-law, the
Rev. Timothy Walker, had, as we have seen, received
from him, in tender terms, the charge of wife and infant
when the young parent hurriedly and secretly went from
his home to go he hardly knew whither nor for how
long an absence. That venerable clergyman, the chief
man in patriotism and in common esteem in Concord,
died, as I have said, after a ministry of fifty-two years,
on September 2, 1782. His daughter, the wife of
Count Rumford, lived to know of her husband's great
fame and advancement, and died January 19, 1792,
aged fifty-two years. Her abundant property and her
continuance in her own comfortable home secured her
every worldly advantage. Frequent entries in Colonel
Baldwin's diary refer to visits at his home in Woburn,
made for months at a time, by Sally Thompson, as
the daughter was familiarly called, and to the payment
to her of the proceeds of bills of exchange for con-
siderable amounts sent to her by her father. In the
diary, under date of January 29, 1796, is the follow-
ing : cc Friday, ten o'clock, Sally Thompson, daughter
of Sir Benjamin Thompson, sailed from Boston in
Life of Count Rumford. 211
the ....,* Captain Oliver, for London, to see her fa-
ther, who has come from Munich to meet his daughter
in London." She was then in her twenty-second year.
She took with her the following letter from Colonel
Baldwin :
" WOBURN, 26th of January, 1796.
" DEAR SIR BENJAMIN, When I received your much
esteemed favor of the i8th of January, 1793, by the hand
of Mr. Stacey, I expected ere this to have seen you in Amer-
ica, and participated in the pleasure which must have arisen on
meeting your friends and recognizing in person your amiable
daughter. I have often anticipated such an event with -real
pleasure, but I find it is like to happen otherwise. Your
daughter informs me that she has your permission to visit you
in London, and shall take passage in the . . . . , Captain Oliver,
who will sail in a day or two. Her sudden departure, and
business of pressing importance which calls me from home,
afford me time only to say that it is with a mixture of pleasure
and concern that we part with Sally at this time. So long a
voyage through this northern region during the sun's retreat
must be unpleasant. But the object of the journey is the first
and greatest that can exist ; it certainly justifies the undertaking,
which God grant may be prospered. The companions on
board are strangers, but appear friendly, and the circumstance
of there being one passenger of her own sex makes it much
more agreeable. Mr. Fraizer is very obliging, and gives up his
state-room for Sally's accommodation, and has been pleased to
say to me that he will afford her every assistance in his power
during the voyage, and on their arrival will take her to his own
house until her father provides otherwise for her.
" I know Sally will render suitable returns for all favors,
and (sickness excepted) make herself agreeable to her fellow-
passengers, as she always conducts with the greatest propriety,
and has the esteem of all her acquaintance. She has been at-
tentive to your mother, who expresses much affection for Sally,
* The vessel was named the Charlestown.
212 Life of Count Rumford.
and has assisted in her education ; and your daughter has im-
proved greatly on the opportunities she has had. She possesses
a noble mind, and wants nothing but the aid of her father to
make her accomplished I am sure .you will not hesitate at
bestowing upon her every blessing a parent can impart. Your
daughter will be the bearer of this, and will sail to-morrow
(weather permitting). The season is advanced, but the weather
easy and fine. I shall feel anxious until I hear of her arrival.
Pray, write me by the very first opportunity.
" In answer to your inquiry, I can say that it is my opinion
that you can freely return to America, either with or without
official leave from the State, as you may choose ; and that you
would realize a hearty welcome from all your old friends and
citizens in general. I can say for one, that there is not a per-
son on earth that I should rejoice so much to see Sally
will be able to inform you particularly what your mother's situa-
tion is, and that of many other of your friends ; but I trust you
will yet return. Pray, come and see your kind mother. Make
us a visit, if you do no more.
"I am, dear Sir Benjamin, with much respect and esteem,
" Your most obedient servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
"SiR BENJAMIN THOMPSON, KNT."
The Count returned the following in reply :
"LONDON, 26th March, 1796.
"Mv DEAR SIR, I return you many thanks for your
friendly letters which I received by my Daughter, and I beg
you would accept my warmest acknowledgments for all the
kindness you have shown to my Daughter for the many years
she has been known to you.
" Her gratitude to you is without bounds, and she says noth-
ing on earth will ever make her forget your goodness to her. I
do not despair of being able, at some future period, to express to
you in person, by word of mouth, the sense I entertain of your
kindness to my dear Child. You will not expect that I should
attempt to describe the pleasure I felt at seeing my dear Girl,
Life of Count Rumford. 213
after an absence of twenty years ! Such interesting events may
be conceived, but cannot be described. No language could
paint the agitation of my mind upon seeing before me a being
whose existence had always appeared to me like the vision of a
dream.
" As Sally means to write to you herself, I shall leave it to
her to inform you of the courageous resolution she has taken,
to go with me to Bavaria. God grant she may be happy there !
She will likewise tell you whether she likes me as well as she
expected, and whether I am kind to her. As to myself, all I
can say is, that I like her very much indeed. She is just what
I wished to find her, an unaffected, cheerful, pleasing, amiable,
Good Girl.
" We shall probably stay in England about two months
longer, and shall then set off for Munich, from which place you
shall hear from me. In the mean time, accept my best wishes
for your health and prosperity.
" I am, Dear Sir, with unfeigned Regard and Esteem,
" Yours, most affectionately,
RUMFORD.
" To COLONEL LOAMMI BALDWIN,
Woburn, near Boston, Massachusetts."
This letter may properly come in the order of its
principal topic.
" WOBURN, z8th June, 1796.
" MY DEAR COUNT, It has given me inexpressible satisfac-
tion, on reading your kind letter of the 26th of March last, to
find that your daughter is safe arrived ; so much natural affec-
tion and love are met. It must be gratifying in the highest
degree to meet your dear and only child, whom you had seen
but for a moment in the first stage of her existence ; and al-
though she might have seen her father, yet her organs were too
tender and undefined to retain the least idea of him, more
than twenty-one years have passed since you thus met before.
Scenes tender like this are not for the pen to describe, they
214 Life of Count Rumford.
dissolve the soul into liquid joy, and mingle a divine affinity.
I participate most feelingly in the joy of this event. God grant
you both a long and happy existence ! I know you will con-
tinue to be pleased with your amiable daughter. She is really a
fine girl. She was beloved by everybody when she was here,
and I only regret, and this I do sincerely, that it was not in my
power to pay more attention to her education and happiness
than I did. Her enterprising disposition made up for part of
my neglect, but she is now in the immediate care of one who
will do everything for her. She acknowledges in expressions
of tenderness how affectionately you received and loved her.
"We are not disappointed in hearing that your daughter has
resolved to accompany you to Bavaria. We have only to con-
sider whose daughter she is, and everything good and great are
the ideas that succeed. I long for the period to arrive when
you shall make a visit to your native country. Thousands are
ardently desirous of seeing you here.
" Mrs. Baldwin, although unknown, desires to be named to
you in terms expressive of the happiness she feels on the kind
reception you gave her dear friend, Miss Thompson, whose
welfare is ever near her heart. Give our best love to Sally,
and tell her that we all think and speak of her often, and hope
erelong to see her again in this countrv.
" I wish for an opportunity to acquaint you with the many
enterprises and various improvements going forward in this
country, but time will not permit.
<c 1 am, with much respect and esteem,
" My dear Count, your most affectionate friend,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
"SiR BENJAMIN THOMPSON,
Count of Rumfbrd."
It would seem, from the above, that it had been
intended that the daughter should merely make a visit
to her father while he was superintending the publica-
tion of his Essays in England, and that her going to
reside with him for a time in Bavaria was an after-
Life of Count Rumford. 215
thought. She was abroad a little more than three years
and a half.* Mr. Baldwin enters her re-arrival in Bos-
ton in his diary under date of October 10, 1799, and
refers to her return in a letter to her father of Novem-
ber 4, to be copied in another connection.
The following letter from Miss Sally to Mrs. Bald-
win, announcing her arrival in England, must be errone-
ously dated, according to her statement of a six weeks'
passage.
"LONDON, March 3, 1796.
" DEAR MRS. BALDWIN, I improve the first opportunity to
acquaint you of my safe arrival, and kind reception by my father.
We had a tedious passage of six weeks. I began to fancy the
hand of Providence against me. But all fatigue and anxiety are
now at an end, since my dear father is well, and loves me. Till
I see you I shall think very often upon you and the Colonel,
whose kindness to me I shall ever remember with gratitude. I
have a thousand things to say. I have only time to tell you
how sincerely I want to see you. I often reflect with much
pleasure upon the happy days and months I have spent in your
family. Neither time, nor absence, nor any situation of life,
ever so exalted, will make me forget my good friends in Amer-
ica ; and be assured there is none I esteem more highly
than you. I will thank you to give my respects to the Colo-
nel, &c.
" I am your affectionate
"SARAH THOMPSON.
" MRS. BALDWIN, Woburn."
In 1793 or 1794, Miss Thompson was introduced, by
a daughter of the Revolutionary patriot, Robert Treat
Paine, to the family of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Willard,
President of Harvard College, in Cambridge. She
made a most agreeable impression on them, and became
thenceforward a most welcome guest on long and fre-
216 Life of Count Rumford.
A
quent visits. Before joining her father in England,
as well as after her arrival, she had informed him of her
obligations to this excellent family, which doubtless
prompted him to write the following letter to President
Willard.
"LONDON, 25th March, 1796.
"REVEREND SIR, The affectionate manner in which my
daughter speaks of you, and of your kindness to her, has shown
me how good you have been to her ; and though I have not the
pleasure of being personally known to you, I cannot help taking
the liberty of writing to you, to express the obligations I feel
myself under to you for your friendly attentions to my child.
Though I have not the honor of being personally acquainted
with you, I am no stranger to the respectable character you
bear ; and nothing could have been more pleasing to me than to
find that my daughter had found means to attract your notice,
and to merit your approbation and friendship.
" Excuse the liberty I take in troubling you with this letter,
and do me the justice to believe that it is with much esteem and
regard. I have the honor to be, Sir, your much obliged and most
obedient servant,
"RUMFORD."*
Here is another letter from Miss Sally, as, for a
reason to be soon given, she is daily in expectation
of leaving England, with her father, for Germany.
"LONDON, June 13, 1796.
" MY DEAR MRS. BALDWIN, I cannot quit England with-
out writing once more to my dear friend, although I have not
yet received letters from you in return to the ones I wrote you
upon my first arrival here. I do not believe you think of me so
often as I do of you, for I am sure there is not a day, nor hardly
an hour, that I do not think of you. I hope by this time, my
dear Mrs. Baldwin, that your canal-hurry is 3 little over. But
* Memories of Youth and Manhood. By Sydney Willard. Cambridge. 1855.
Vol. I. p. 156.
Life of Count Rumford. 217
I fear it is not, for it is such an immense undertaking that it is
impossible it should be already finished. I am very happy, I
should think it very strange if I was not. For I have one of
the best of fathers, that seems desirous to do everything that
will contribute to my happiness. We shall set off for Germany
in a few days, and after I arrive there I shall write you again, to
tell you how I like, and by that time I hope to receive letters
from you and Colonel Baldwin.
u We should have been gone long before this time to Ger-
many if some business had not called my father to Ireland.
" I enjoy very good health, and am very happy. I should
think it strange if I was not to be. I am indulged in every-
thing I wish, and I am under the protection of a parent that I
have not only reason to love, but to be proud of. On his ac-
count I receive every polite attention that I could wish, and
had I his merit, I should feel that I deserved it. But this you
know, my dear Mrs. Baldwin, that good-nature is the chief I
have to recommend me, and which, to do myself justice does
not fail to secure me friends wherever I go.
" Believe me to be your affectionate
"SARAH THOMPSON.
" To MRS. MARGERY BALDWIN."
It will be noticed by the following letter of the
Count's to Colonel Baldwin, mainly on business, that
the writer's kind intentions included his mother's other
children.
"LONDON, aoth July, 1796.
" MY DEAR SIR, As I am informed by my Daughter that
you have hitherto been so good as to assist me in making my
little remittances to America, by drawing her Bills, &c., I take
the liberty to request you would give your assistance to my dear
Mother, in procuring and sending to her the annual allowance
of thirty Pounds sterling, which for several years past I have
given her, and which she has received through the hands of my
Daughter. I therefore request you would, upon the receipt of
218 Life of Count Rumford.
this letter, draw a set of Bills of Exchange In your own name, on
the house of Sir Robert Herries & Co., Bankers, St. James
St., London, for Thirty Pounds sterling, at thirty days sight,
taking care to date this set of Bills the 26th of March, 1796
(my Birth Day).
u I also request you would draw on the said Sir Robert
Herries & Co. (who are my agents in London, and who have
my directions to accept and pay these Bills) every succeeding
year, on the 26th of March, for the like sum of Thirty Pounds
sterling, for the same purpose, and apply it in the same manner*
that is to say, that you would pay it into the hands of my
dear Mother, which I desire she would receive as a small
token of my filial affection, and of my gratitude for all her
goodness to me.
" In case of my Mother's death, it is my request that
the annual amount of this allowance may be equally divided
among my Mother's four children by her husband, Mr. Josiah
Pierce.
" Begging you would excuse the liberty which I take with
you, and assuring you of my most sincere regard and esteem, I
remain, with unalterable affection,
"Dear Sir, Yours most Sincerely,
" RUMFORD.
" During my stay in England, I have published a volume of
Essays, which I have sent to you under cover to my friend,
Doctor Walter, of Boston. I wish they may meet with your
approbation. I do nbt despair of seeing you in America in the
course of a year or two. My Daughter, who is very well,
desires her best compliments to you and to Mrs. Baldwin. She
is just setting out with me for Germany. She does not seem
disposed to leave me, and I am delighted to have her with
me.
" The HoN ble - COL. BALDWIN, Member of the Senate, &c.
Woburn, near Boston, Massachusetts."
I am able to give Colonel Baldwin's reply.
Life of Count Rumford. 219
" WOBURN, December 26, 1796.
ct MY DEAR COUNT, I have received your favor of the
20th of July last, wherein provision is made for furnishing
your kind mother with a gratuity of .30 sterling, a year.
I shall cheerfully undertake to perform the part which you have
requested of me, in order to effect your benevolent purpose ;
and in pursuance thereof I have made your honored mother
acquainted with the arrangements, and agreeably to your instruc-
tions have drawn the first set of exchange for 30 sterling on
your new agents, Sir Robert Herries & Co., dated 26th March,
1796, and have delivered the same to Jonathan Porter (in whose
favor the draft is made) in lieu thereof, and to replace the draft
your daughter made in my favor for the same on your late
agent, Richard Armstrong, Esq., dated 23d of October, 1795,
who refused payment thereof, as appears by my letter of the
5th instant, with the protest and papers accompanying it.
However, I do not mean that this shall operate to the injury
of your mother.
" Please to accept my sincere thanks for the volume of your
Essays which I have received through the hands of our good
friend, Doctor Walter. I consider it a work of inestimable
merit. It is very much admired by all who have had oppor-
tunity to peruse the few copies which have arrived in this coun-
try. The author is more frequently spoken of than ever, and
daily inquiry is made, when he will return to or visit his native
country.
" Permit me again, with the most cordial affection, to invite
your attention to an object in which the wishes of so many
unite. Mrs. Baldwin desires to be remembered with particular
affection to your daughter.
"With much esteem, I have the honor to be, my dear Count,
" Your most sincere friend, and humble servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" SIR BENJAMIN, Count of Rumford."
"The above letter was forwarded by Dr. Welsh's son of
Boston, going to Berlin, in Prussia."
22O Life of Count Rumford.
I have already had occasion to mention the late
James F. Baldwin, of Boston, one of the sons of
Count Rumford's friend, who, inheriting the scientific
genius and taste of his honored father, employed his
engineering skill in the introduction of the Cochituate
water into this city. Holding the most intimate rela-
tions with Sarah Thompson all through her life, having
her frequently as a guest in his family, managing her
affairs and acting as her executor, I find from the corre-
spondence which passed between them, and which I have
before me, that he had for her a high regard. He was,
of course, aware of her marked peculiarities of charac-
ter, and as a man of excellent discernment could hard-
ly have expected that she should have been without
them, or have viewed and treated them otherwise than
he did, considering what had been her experiences and
fortunes from her infancy to old age. Towards the
close of her life she wrote a sketch of a considerable
portion of its most interesting period for the wife of
Mr. Baldwin, also her warmly attached friend. I am
allowed to have, and to use according to my own judg-
ment, this piece of autobiography. I may not, per-
haps, use it wisely in making such large extracts from
it in the ensuing pages. But as there is no one among
the living who will be troubled by its disclosures, except,
it may be, by some of its incongruities with Philosophy,
I venture to print much of its contents, as illustrating
one of the ever varied and ever interesting exhibitions
of human nature under peculiar circumstances of oppor-
tunity and experience. I may say in explanation of its
style and matter, that though there had been an intention
and effort to secure to Sally the best education which
could then be obtained by one situated as she was,
Life of Count Rumford. 221
there was something so fragmentary and desultory in
her school training as to secure to her from it very
imperfect results. She had now for two or three years
been in correspondence with her father, and her letters
had been of such a character as to have raised his expec-
tation of her accomplishments higher than were realized
when they met. It was said that her teacher, Mrs.
Snow, helped her in the composition of these letters.
The manuscript has a wrapper inscribed, " The his-
tory of my life: begun at Paris, in, possibly, 1842, and
ended in May, 1845." It is entitled, "Memoirs of a
Lady, written by herself." Indulging in the senti-
mental vein common in her girlhood among female
writers and correspondents, she takes the name of
" Serafena," and addresses herself to Mrs. Baldwin,
by whose request she was induced to give this account
of some particulars of her life. Her experience, she
says, had led her through so many strange scenes, with
rapid changes, beginning when she was four years old,
that she might easily refer it to supernatural agency.
The absence of her father, and her mother's illness, led
to her being sent away from Concord, at the age just
mentioned, to the care of an aunt. She was put in
charge of a female slave, to whom she was much at-
tached, who left her at her relative's, the indulgent
mother of " many young children badly brought up "
Her little companions engaged her in rude and danger-
ous plays ; in one of which, having been severely
burned, she was taken back to her mother. On ac-
count of that mother's long invalidism the child was
left very much to herself, and her early education was
defective, the effects of which she felt through life.
She gives an account of her grandfather Walker, and of
222 Life of Count Rum ford.
the peculiarities of his substantial parsonage, which was
a garrison house. This leads her to refer to those rem-
nants of the Indian tribes which occasionally made
troublesome visits to the place in her childhood, though
they were so wisely and kindly treated by the minister
and his wife that some of them once rescued him from
extreme peril. From his three voyages to England on
business of the town, the minister was careful to bring
home attractive presents for the red men and their
squaws. Sarah yields to a touch of romance in de-
scribing her rides upon a pony, and her lonely medita-
tions in pleasant woods.
The young lady had much of her father's skill in
etching and drawing. Three of her sketches are found
on the pages of the manuscript before me. I have
caused them to be copied as accurately as possible from
the original, without any additional touches from the
artist. Indeed, the copies hardly do justice to the
spirit and vigor of the originals. On one of her
visits to her aunt with the " naughty children," an
incident occurred which she describes as " very danger-
ous to our morals, getting us into the way of telling
stories." They had partaken of a surreptitious repast
in the dairy, and happening to go in to the aunt and
mother with the tokens of it around their mouths,
were accosted thus : " ( My little dears, I think you
have been at the cream ! ' c No ! ' exclaimed one,
echoed by all. < But look ye in the glass/ said my
aunt."
On the next page is Sally's representation of the scene.
The writer, however, bears testimony to the fact
that when her young companions grew up they were
very excellent persons.
Life of Count Rumford.
223
During her childhood her mother's invalidism made
her familiar with the sick-chamber, and there is really
an exquisite delicacy of drawing in Sally's delineation of
this scene.
She was sent, for two or three seasons, to Mrs.
Snow's boarding-school in Boston, that she might be
taught dancing and other accomplishments, and she
made many agreeable acquaintances in the town. Her
mother, with recovered health and with tender kind-
ness, during the long winter evenings would read and
tell stories to her and her half-brother, Paul Rolfe. It
would hardly be fair to the daughter to suppress the
224 Life of Coitnt Rumford.
following passages, though the admission of tnem seems
to be at the expense of the father.
" Peace, liberty, independence, are proclaimed throughout
the United States of America, enlivening the spirits and glad-
dening to all hearts. Alas ! those forsaking their country, de-
serting its divine cause, are now excluded this joy and blessing."
" It is true, we read thus in the papers : c His Majesty,
George III., King of Great Britain, has conferred on Colonel
Benjamin Thompson the order of Knighthood, for services
rendered his country.' '
" Vain honors ! Is that a sufficient recompense for a separa-
tion from friends, from all that is dear on earth ? Ask these
favored ones who received like honors, if they can ever after
look into their hearts and pronounce themselves perfectly
happy ! "
Sarah represents herself as living under the most
happy circumstances of a country life till the death of
her fond mother committed her to the care of strangers,
and a severe sickness prostrated her. Her memory was
at fault when she represents her age at fourteen at her
mother's death; and the winter ride on horseback, which
took her out of her native State to dwell with stran-
gers, was doubtless, for a time at least, to the friendly
home of the Baldwins in Woburn. She describes her
voyage across the ocean with skill and feeling. She
not only had the incidents of " dreadful winds followed
by calms," but the disturbance of a love-passage, in
which, however, by her own account, she did not par-
ticipate. She <c was enticed into the gambling game of
loo "; was exposed to the addresses of a young cap-
tain, " who, as the word goes, fell in love with me, or,
probably, at sea, having few adventures, took a fancy
for a flirtation, fortunately, in no way or shape re-
turned."
Life of Count Rumford. 225
ct Though destitute of proper earthly protection I seemed
favored by a divine Providence, in the midst of temptations
remaining unshaken. Playing this horrible game of loo, and
always winning it, gave me not the least inclination to continue
it. Thus, I say, with all our troubles, there is a kind Provi-
dence, and ways pointed out to us if we will but pursue them."
She was wind-bound for three weeks off the Scilly
Isles.
" My protectors were a Captain and Mrs. Bennet, and a
Mr. Frasier of London : on arriving, I was to go to his house,
where I was to meet my father, Baron Thompson. The
Bennets were of Boston. Mrs. Bennet and I walked all around
the Island of St. Mary's, picking up pebble-stones on the sea-
shore ; but we had to have recourse to our old method of
passing time, that of playing cards. The captain coming from
his ship, the commandant (so-called) of the place, besides an
officer, joining us, the only people we saw, as may be said,
companionable in the place, we would be set down daily at
some round gambling game. It is said of people beginning to
play, that they are generally lucky. Undoubtedly it is the case,
tempted by his satanic Majesty. For myself, I won all the time;
winning at least the cost of my passage twice over of the cap-
tain. But when we got to London my father would not let
me take any of the money ; yet he or I must have paid it had I
lost."
The party landed at Portsmouth, and took post
chaises for London.
" Count Rumford, my father, having passed several preced^
ing years at Munich, in Bavaria, had come to England to have
published some of his Essays. He took the opportunity to send
for me, my mother being dead, and I requiring protection.
Many were the scenes he had' passed through after leaving me
as an infant, and erroneous were the ideas I had formed of him,
particularly of his appearance ; we having had only a small pro-
file of him in shade, giving ever an imperfect idea of the person.
15
226 Life of Count Rumford*
Indeed, so different from what I had thought were his looks,
that I could hardly fancy him the person I sought after, would
willingly have run from him, and ended in a violent fit of cry-
ing, which he did not consider as a compliment, asking me
afterwards what I meant by it. To secure love to my father
was the playfulness of his character (at times), witness his
laughter, quite from the heart, nothing made up about it; the
expression of his mouth, ornamented with the most finished
pearls, was sweetness itself. But to see him accidentally, he
did not strike one as handsome, or very agreeable, though not
exactly to the contrary. At the time I met him, having been
ill, he was very thin and pale, again a reason of my disappoint-
ment. My opinion of 'him was naturally romantic, perhaps, as
young people's often are. I had heard him spoken of as an
officer. I had attached to this an idea of the warrior, with the
martial look, possibly the sword, if not the gun, by his side.
His profile being in black, made me suppose him dark in com-
plexion, possibly sunburnt ; in short, in stature, size, and looks
the perfect warrior. Yet my mother often spoke of him as
carroty, his hair being red ; but later not so, a very pretty
color. My father pretended I looked better than he expected
to find me. It is true he had had a most unfavorable like-
ness of me in a small miniature.
" Though it was a trying scene to meet, yet it was nothing to
finding out each other's disposition in the end, and my father
began with being much alarmed about me. He himself resided
in a large hotel in Pall Mall, but could not have me with him,
putting me to board not far off, at a Mrs. Lackington's. He
had brought his valet, Aichner, with him, and for me a maid, by
the name of Anymeetle, both Germans. I was to be presented
to Lord and Lady Palmerston, Sir Charles Blagden, Sir William
Pepperell and family (Americans), and other of his friends.
My dress, it was thought, required looking into, and I was sent
with my maid for purchases. Cloaks being fashionable, mate-
rials were bought for one. It being to be trimmed with lace,
I returned to my father with some of the most elegant London
afforded, we having by chance gone to a very dear, fashionable
Life of Count Rumford. 227
shop. Nothing could equal my father's surprise but mine at
his. I had never the care of my own things, my mother doing
all that ; nor had I the least real knowledge of the value of
money. The lace was bought because I thought it was hand-
some, and it pleased me. To make matters worse, before* he
had got over his surprise about the lace, I showed him at least
half a dozen of beautiful new pairs of shoes I had bought,
besides several other things. My father, without having a par-
ticle of avarice in his character (he never laid up money, or
anything of that sort), had order in the extreme, and these pur-
chases of mine looked much like disorder and extravagance,
not the case, however, inexperience only. It would be diffi-
cult to imagine the effect it had on my father, he viewing me,
undoubtedly, as lost forever if a stop was not put to it, if not
himself ruined.*'
" This was nothing to my having made a courtesy out of place
to a housekeeper. The circumstance was as follows, but. must
be somewhat explained.
" Different customs, though trifling, excite interest. An
American miss of certain pretensions, approaching or accosting
a superior, places the feet in position, and, drawing them back,
makes a low courtesy. The English custom is, to draw one foot
carelessly back, making a courtesy, not near so low a dip (so
called), not going back far enough to lose hold of hands
mutually given for the celebrated shake. Nor with real fash-
ionables is there any dip at all, going bolt upright, giving the
hand, sparing even the epithets, Madam, Sir, or Miss, and with
answers, to inquiries of health, of Yes or No. In France the
young person approaches slowly, with apparent diffidence,
with a slight motion of the head, looking steadfastly with a
smile at the person they are to meet ; and when the other with
open arms comes forward, as when receiving a child first run-
ning alone, and much in the same manner, bestows caresses,
with the difference of a degree more ceremony towards the
miss than the child it being thought indecorous to express the
same warmth of feeling. The forehead of the young lady is
destined to receive the caress. In these trifles are to be seen
228 Life of Count Rnmford.
the characteristics of the three nations, the humility of the
Americans, the dignity of the English, and the graceful good-
humor of the French.
"I could make one of the humble courtesies, and was thought
to acquit myself well. My father having taken me with him in
going to pay a visit to a lady, a particular friend of his, not find-
ing her at home, inquires for the housekeeper, having a mes-
sage to leave. Whether it was that I did not rightly com-
prehend the word housekeeper, we having few people of that de-
scription in the New England States, people of first fortune
and family performing that office for themselves, or whether,
from inattention, I did not hear the word, I cannot say, but
on entering, disengaging my arm from that of my father, placing
my feet in position and drawing back to allow myself a com-
fortable sweep, I made one of my very best, lowest courtesies.
And this to a housekeeper ! Than this, the affair of the lace,
most likely, was not more cutting to my father's feelings.
" Poor man ! he had occasion to tremble for another circum-
stance. I, having been promised to go with htm to the Italian
Opera, was, unfortunately, to be with a party of high fashionables.
After, I suppose, weighing matters well, instead of retracting his
promise, he concludes to lecture me. Whatever my impressions
of the music, I was to make no observations ; preferring, it
seems, insipidity to an improper remark. This music being
an acquired taste, and I having had the advantage of only that
which was most simple and natural, it is true I was not en-
chanted. I much preferred within myself, of course old
Black Prince's fiddle, of Concord ; particularly when a rosy lad,
leading to the floor of the dance his still more rosy partner, look-
ing sternly, said peremptorily, ' Make your fiddle speak, Prince.'
"In consequence of the Baron's taking a trip to Ireland, I
was put to a boarding-school at Barnes's Terrace, kept by the
Marquise of Chabann. She, her husband and family, were
French emigrants. My stay was much shorter there than I
could have wished, I being very happy, three months only,
my father then returning from Ireland and making preparations
to go to Bavaria, obliging me to quit. Madame de Chabann
Life of Count R^tmford. 229
give us a holiday for amusement before separating. Those
with whom I was the most intimate wrote me letters not to
be read before arriving at Munich. There were only twelve
young ladies taken, most of them noble. Miss Byron was my
particular favorite and friend. There were peculiarities of
parentage in common to us both, but I was not unfortunate
and disgraced like herself. She had a father she never saw,
her mother she saw seldom, and her grandfather, the Duke of
Leeds, who supported her, would not see her. I have since
heard of this young lady, and learned she had been properly
established in life, though I never again met her. Thus, from
my roving life, if I had friends I was deprived of them. A
very beloved one I had in Mrs. Snow's school in Boston, Miss
Porter, after our separation there I never met again. These
are only a few of the many I could mention. The Marquis
and Marchioness of Chabann and family I met again in Paris,
restored to their fortune and consequence.
" The fine appearance of English ladies on horseback, Ger-
man ladies riding differently, induced my father to buy a couple
of English side-saddles, designing one for the Countess of
Nogarola, a particular friend of his, the other for me, in hopes
of putting the English method of riding in fashion in Munich.
I was sent to Ashley's riding-school to take lessons. I was
surprised at it, thinking myself all-sufficient in the art, yet
I found there was much to be learnt. The mounting, dis-
mounting, manner of sitting, holding the reins, the whip even,
walking the horse, putting him on the gallop, the trot. Yet
with all due deference to Baron Thompson's opinion and taste
for riding, joined with many others, I beg leave to differ,- not
approving of ladies' riding. While graceful, it is dangerous.
" My father's friend, Lady Palmerston, observed to him one
day, in my hearing, that I did not appear to be struck with their
fine edifices or architecture in general. This was turned into a
joke by him, saying, it was a characteristic of savages ; that
they did not or appeared not to take notice of things. I,
bridling up, told her Ladyship that I had seen beautiful paint-
ings and drawings in America of buildings in England and in
230 Life of Count Rumfjrd.
London, but I had found nothing like them here, all being
covered with smoke, and that was why I admired nothing. I
secretly applauded myself for having given so sharp an answer.
People of any character after a while get conformed to circum-
stances. My father observing one day, to friends present, that I
was extremely docile and obedient to him, I burst into a laugh,
saying, he was not to imagine it was all free-will and pleasure.
My father was fond of having his own way, even, as I fancied,
to despite me ; but, as an excuse for him, he had led the life of
a bachelor ever after twenty.
" It is well known to be a disadvantage, in many respects, for
males and females to have little or no control. His wish for
implicit obedience from me, and my early indulgence, as I may
say, from a mother, made us at times not get on so well, at all
events rendering me extremely unhappy. My stay in London
at this time was not of long duration, but from the novelty of
scenes and the multiplicity of ideas seemed to be so. Our
society being the first, my advantages were great, and might
lead to happiness if always to be continued ; much the con-
trary, if otherwise. The first society has a charm which leaves
a void difficult to be filled up when deprived of it.
" My father was often at the Royal Society, and intimate
with its President, Sir Joseph Banks. I would be invited to the
dinners Sir Joseph gave to the select ones of his royal learned
Society. Through the kindness and civility of Lady and Miss
Banks, his wife and sister, I several times found myself one of
their party. Lady Banks was so kind, and most likely out of
civility to my father she would allow me to be with her for
days together, taking me about with her, letting me see things,
in short, trying to amuse me. I recollect she took me to a
Lord Mayor's ball, where I saw the princes and royal family for
the first time. As may be supposed, the select dinners of the
Royal Society were highly interesting, and where, I think,
ladies were seldom or never admitted. I was allowed to accom-
pany Lady and Miss Banks as a mere nobody ; but this did not
prevent my making observations which never have been and
never will be forgotten. The idea of very learned people
Life of Count Rumford. 231
suggests that of pedantry. At these dinners there was nothing
of the kind, differing only from other refined societies when
remarks were made to convey perhaps new ideas, discoveries,
or highly entertaining instruction, sometimes there being no
such talk at all. In our every-day companies we consider talk-
ing (incessantly) of the greatest consequence, and lucky if all da
not talk together and no one is heard."
I must here interrupt the gossip in the pleasant nar-
rative of the daughter to recognize the graver occupa-
tions of her father. It would seem that he had fixed no
particular limit for his stay in England, and that, as we
shall have to notice soon, an emergent necessity called
him hurriedly back to Bavaria before he had completed
the work he had in view. Of the Count's writings, which
are called by him Essays, there are, in all, eighteen.
The publication of these extended through many years,
the last of them having appeared in 1812^ But the
beginning of the series properly dates its publication in
July, 1796. The following proud array of titular hon-
ors appears attached to his name on his first title-
page:
" Benjamin Count of Rumford, Knight of the Orders
of the White Eagle and St. Stanislaus : Chamberlain,
Privy Counsellor of State, and Lieutenant-General in
the service of his Most Serene Highness the Elector
Palatine, Reigning Duke of Bavaria; Colonel of his
Regiment of Artillery, and Commander-in-Chief of the
General Staff of his Army; F. R. S. Acad. R. Hiber.
Berol. Elec. Boicoe, Palat. and Amer. Soc." He lived
to win and display many more scientific and academic
honors. The third London edition of his first Essays
was published in 1798. An American edition appeared
in Boston, in three volumes, in 1798. and 1799.
232 Life of Count Rumford.
Count himself sent several copies to his friends in this
country. A fifth edition of three volumes appeared in
London in 1800. In 1802 a fourth volume was added,
containing many of Rumford's Philosophical Papers,
and this was issued again the next year. His Essays
on the Treatment of Pauperism were published sepa-
rately in London in 1851, and again in 1855. His
works were at once translated into German and French.
During this period of his stay in England, making
excursions to Ireland and Scotland, as we learn from his
daughter's narrative, the Count was in the full enjoy-
ment of his social and scientific distinction. Un-
doubtedly this was to himself the most satisfactory
period of his life. His fame was now established on
claims and services which partook equally of scientific
and philanthropic contributions to the welfare of hu-
manity. Farther on in his career we shall find that an
element of embitterment and antagonism entered into
his experience and his relations with some of his con-
temporaries and scientific associates, and led him to nar-
row the range of his intercourse, even to a degree of
isolation and self-seclusion. But while in England on
this visit, and on the even more important one which he
made two years afterwards, he seems to have found an
unqualified pleasure in his work in -the appreciation of
it by the public, and in the respect and attentions ex-
hibited towards him by very many persons of the highest
social rank. He certainly was fond of such attentions.
He was deferential to rank and station, and craved inter-
course on confidential terms with many of the nobility,
no doubt persuaded that his talents and the uses for
which he employed them made him a peer of those
wnom birth, fortune, or circumstances had lifted in the
Life of Count Rumford. 233
social scale. Franklin to outward seeming, at least
wns more indifferent than was Rumford to the prestige
and assumptions of the aristocracy. Yet we should give
to the latter the benefit of judging him by a principle of
his own, which, in his following of it, may have fur-
nished him with a disinterested motive. That prince
pie was that all reforms and improvements must be
directed with an aim to relieve and help the common
people, and that a prime condition for a successful
application of them was to engage for them the sym-
pathetic interest of the privileged, the nobility, and the
wealthy.
Incident to his very laborious and ardent efforts for
cheapening the production and preparation of nutritive
food, and indeed as the essential condition for success
in those efforts, the Count devoted himself most zeal-
ously to the study and the mechanical improvement of
all the apparatus connected with fireplaces and chimney-
flues. When he first published his Essay on " Chim-
ney Fire-places, with Proposals for improving them to
save Fuel; to render Dwelling-houses more Comforta-
ble and Salubrious, and effectually to prevent Chimneys
from Smoking," the Count was able to say that he
" had not had less than five hundred smoking chimneys
under his hands." Of course the announcement was
an advertisement of himself as an expert in a rather
uninviting occupation. But he was so zealous and
unwearied a worker in such economical reforms that
he never refused to give his services, whether in palace,
poor house, or farmer's cottage. His first experiment
in London was tried in Lord Palmerston's house, in
Hanover Square. Then he took in hand the chimneys
of the house where the Board of Agriculture held its
234 Life of Count Riunford.
meetings, and which, being frequented by people from
all parts of Great Britain, he hoped would be another
advertisement of his improvement. He did the same
for the chimneys of Devonshire House, and for the
dwellings of Sir Joseph Banks, the Earl of Besborough,
the Countess-Dowager Spencer, Melbourne House,
Lady Templeton's, Mrs. Montague's, Lord Sudley's,
the Marquis of Salisbury's, and a hundred and fifty
others in London. He instructed a firm of bricklayers
in his method so as to give them constant employment.
He found that the saving of fuel which he effected,
while gaining increased warmth, amounted to, from one
half to two thirds. He made use of his own room in
the Royal Hotel, Pall Mall, for trying experiments in
the construction of fireplaces and chimney-flues ; and he
enlisted the co-operation of Mrs. Hempel, the owner
of a large pottery in Chelsea, for manufacturing the
parts of new materials in her line, and of Mr. Hopkins,
the King's ironmonger, for materials in his line, to aid
in carrying out his own designs. Giving very simple
and intelligible information about the philosophical
principles of combustion, ventilation, and draughts, he
prepared careful diagrams to show the proper measure-
ments, disposal, and arrangements of all the parts of a
fireplace and a flue, at the same time announcing that
he had no purpose to take out a patent for any of his
inventions or improvements, but left them wholly free
to the public. The cure of smoking chimneys and the
economy of heat were found to depend upon much the
same improvements applied to the construction of fire-
places. He noticed that, in most of those which he
examined, the heat which was radiated so as to warm an
apartment was scarcely a fifth part of what was gen-
Life of Count Rumford. 235
crated by the fuel, all the rest passing off by the chim-
ney. He fixed upon an angle of one hundred and thirty-
five degrees as the one that ought to be formed between
the sides of the fireplace and the back of it, and decided
that the back should be one third of the breadth of the
front opening, and be carried up perpendicularly till it
joins the breast, and leave the throat of the chimney
about four inches wide. The historian of the Royal
Society, its assistant secretary and librarian, writing in
1848, says in a note:* "One of the earliest of Rum-
ford's stoves, or fireplaces, is that set up under the
Count's immediate superintendence in my office in
the Royal Society. It is by far the best fireplace which
I have seen." The Count did not neglect the interests
and comfort of the sooty chimney-sweepers, so impor-
tant a class in the London of those days.
In a poem entitled "The Pursuits of Literature,"
by Thomas James Mathias, (erroneously ascribed in
Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica to William Gifford) the
first part of which was published in May, 1794, and
which, in spite of its prosiness and its dull satire, was so
popular as to have reached the seventh edition of all its
four parts in London in 1798, and to have been re-
printed in Philadelphia two years afterwards, occurs the
following tribute to Rumford, perhaps the best thing
in the whole work :
" Yet all shall read, and all that page approve,
When public spirit meets with public love.
Thus late, where poverty with rapine dwelt,
Rumford's kind genius the Bavarian felt,
Not by romantic charities beguiled,
But calm in project, and in mercy mild;
Where'er his wisdom guided, none withstood,
Content with peace and practicable good;
* Weld's History, &c. Vol. II. p. 213.
236 Life of Count Rumford.
Round him the laborers throng, the nobles wait,
Friend of the poor and guardian of the State."
The poet, referring in a note to the then recently
published Essays, says : " I hope the directors of the
interior government of this country will have the sense
and wisdom to profit from this most valuable and im-
portant work, whose truly philosophic and benevolent
author must feel a joy and self-satisfaction far superior
to any praise which man can bestow." In another note,
on the word " mercy " in his text, the poet says that
grace is "a distinguishing feature in all the Count's
plans for the relief of the poor, the idle, the abandoned,
and the wretched. The mode of conferring mercy and
apparent kindness is not always mild and merciful."
The poet's high encomiums on Count Rumford are
the more observable, as in his numerous and elaborate
notes, covering more than half his pages, he delights
to launch his satires against the Royal Society and its
members, especially the Count's intimate friend, Sir
Charles Blagden. In another of his Poems, ' c The
Shade of Alexander Pope," Mathias, in a complimen-
tary allusion, makes a reference to the figure of the
Count which indicates the effect of labor and illness
on his health and former robustness.
" Through air, fire, earth, how unconfined we range !
What veil has Nature ? and what works are strange ?
All mark each varied mode of heat and light,
From the spare Rumford to the pallid Knight." f
As the Count returned to London from his frequent
long or short journeys, taken in behalf of his friends or
for the introduction and supervision of his own con-
trivances, his attention was always curiously and anx-
iously engaged by the clouds of smoke which hung over
* Pursuits of Literature, Philadelphia Ed., p. 192. f Ib. p. 34.
Life of Count Rumford. 237
the metropolis, and which covered all its prominent
edifices with a dingy and sooty mantle. He saw in
that smoke the unused material which was turned
equally to waste and a means of annoyance and in-
salubrity. He said, playfully, yet in the sincerity of a
true economical philosophy, that he would bind himself,
if the opportunity were allowed him, to prove to the
citizens, that from the heat and the material of heat
which were thus wasted he would agree to cook all
the food used in the city, warm every apartment, and
perform all the mechanical work done by means of fire.
There have been many wise and skilful experiments
since his day, and many scientific papers have been pre-
pared on the loss and the nuisance represented by that
same smoky atmosphere of London. But probably no
one has intermeddled with it more effectually than did
he who first turned full attention to the philosophy of
light and heat.
"The Rumford Roasters," so called, came into
extensive use in Great Britain, and were imported into
this country, very many of them being set up in Bos-
ton and the neighboring towns in the best houses.
The Roaster, if not the first, was the most scientific,
ingenious, and effective apparatus of the kind which, by
its arrangement of flues for conveying hot air around
the food in the oven, as well as by economizing fuel,
allowed of the preparation of many articles by one fire,
and greatly facilitated the labors and added to the com-
fort of the cook. The families which practised a gen-
erous hospitality found it to be a most welcome addition
to their culinary arrangements. There was at one time,
so to speak, an enthusiasm and an epidemic excitement
about it. Count Rumford's Essays on Food and its
238 Life of Coimt Rumford.
Preparation, and on Fuel, were widely circulated here,
both in copies of the English edition, which he sent to
his many friends, and in the Boston reprint. The sim-
plicity, homeliness, and experimental good sense of the
subject-matter of their text, and the admirable diagrams
and the plates which illustrated them, made them in-
telligible to all readers, and prompted a general desire
to put his improvements under practical trial. They
were especially popular in Salem, where many of the
flourishing citizens had occasion to recall over their
dinners the apprentice-boy in Mr. Appleton's store.
The distinguished minister of the First Church in that
town, Dr. Prince, the successor to young Thompson's
friend Barnard, himself a most successful cultivator of
experimental science, is said to have set up the* first
Rumford Roaster in his own house, at the beginning
of the century; it remained in constant use there till
within ten years, when the house was sold.
A curious anecdote is told in connection with the
" Roaster," in a charming biography of one of the emi-
nent men of Massachusetts of the last age, that of
Chief-Justice Theophilus Parsons, by his son, the Law
Professor of the same name. The biographer says that
his father had imported, in or about 1807, a complete set
of the apparatus, and having had it placed in his upper
kitchen, was very proud of it. He found that from its
novelty and the ignorance of his cook it required for a
time his own oversight, when at last, by his patient in-
struction of his servant, everything went well. On the
strength of the new cooking apparatus he had invited a
large dinner-party, and the Roaster proved equal to the
occasion. Judge and Mrs. Sever, of Kingston, excel-
lent people of the old school, were among his guests,
Lifi of Count Rumford. 239
she being stiff and precise in formality and brocade.
The water through the aqueduct from Jamaica Plain,
another improvement, had also been recently introduced
into the Chief-Justice's house, and on the day of the
dinner-party, owing to some derangement, had required
his attention. He had come from court with his mind
engaged by an interesting insurance case, which he had
been trying, about a schooner. The Chief-Justice had
a marked peculiarity of memory. His hold on mere
names seemed to be as weak as his grasp of everything
else was strong, and sometimes, in moments of abstrac-
tion, he would make strange mistakes. On this oc-
casion, the company being seated, after grace was said,
as he took the carving-knife in hand, he addressed the
stately Mrs. Sever across the length of the table, with
this remarkable announcement, " Mrs. Schooner, all
the food on this table was cooked in the aqueduct."
His wife, dropping from her hand the fish-knife, cried
out in consternation, " Lord's sake, Mr. Parsons, what
do you mean ? "
In casting my eyes over the last importation of a
batch of books from London, for one of our public
libraries, after writing the preceding pages, I was struck
with an inscription on the cover of one of them as
follows : " Fuel in Cooking." On opening to the
title-page, I read, cc On the Extravagant Use of Fuel
in Cooking Operations, together with a short account
of Benjamin, Count of Rumford, and his economical
systems, and numerous practical suggestions adapted
for domestic use. By Frederick Edwards, Jr. Lon-
don : Longman, Green, & Co., 1869." It is the third
* Memoirs of Theophilus Parsons, Chief-Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts, &c., pp. 261, 262.
240 Life of Count Rumford.
publication of the author on the same subject. He
recognizes the valuable services rendered by Count
Rumford at the beginning of this century, the im-
portant improvements which he introduced, and the
enthusiasm and gratitude which he called forth so
widely over the kingdom in great houses and in hum-
ble homes. He regrets that indifference, carelessness,
and wastefulness, have allowed his valuable, salutary
and economical inventions and arrangements to fall
into disuse and oblivion, and zealously pleads for their
revival. The book is illustrated by plates and "direc-
tions which would almost lead one who was resting for
an hour from recording the life of Count Rumford to
imagine that his fading memory Was being revived by
one who shared his interest in culinary economy. I
also see, almost daily, passing through our streets, an
express wagon which bears the inscription, " Rumford
Food Laboratory." It is in the service of an estab-
lishment in the main thoroughfare of this city, which
announces in its advertisements that it will furnish
cooked provisions daily, nutritive, hot, and cheap, to
lonely lodgers, or to families without cook or kitchen.
During this transient residence of less than one year
in England, busily occupied as he was in a variety of
interesting and important occupations, scientific and
economical, Count Rumford, by what was for the time
a most munificent endowment, provided in both hemi-
spheres for the incidental connection of his own name,
perpetually, with the progressive pursuit of his own
favorite study in the philosophy of light and heat.
If we look to the lines of the sightless Milton for the
most exquisite and touching utterances of poetry on
the " co-eternal " element of light, we must assign to
Life of Count Rumford. 241
Rumford an unrivalled honor for his prose treatment
of the created element. There is almost a soaring into
the realm of poetry in his references to it. He re-
garded it as one of the subjects most engaging for
human thought, and in connection with the study of
optics, and in applications to artificial inventions for
the household, as well as for advancing astronomical sci-
ence, as promising steady revelations to reward the
search of the philosopher. There was something al-
most of an over-trustful confidence in his belief, as-
sured to us by the terms of his endowments, that some
discovery or improvement would be made in the sub-
jects of Light and Heat as often as once in each period
of two years for an indefinite future, and that, too, on
either hemisphere of the earth, of a nature to justify
the award of a valuable gold medal to a long series of
prospective benefactors of mankind. Of course his
object was to engage special study, and to turn investi-
gation and experiment towards those subjects. The
medal was to be an honorary recognition, not a pecu-
niary reward of success in those branches of science.
Yet while Rumford did not forbid that a mere theorizer
upon them should be a candidate for his prize, he had
in view, as always, what would best "promote the good
of mankind."
His correspondence on his endowments, and a sketch
of the administration of them, may properly be intro-
duced by the following letter :
"To SIR JOSEPH BANKS, Bart., K. B., P. R. S., &c., &c., &c.
"LONDON, I2th July, 1796.
u SIR, Desirous of contributing efficaciously to the advance-
ment of a branch of science which has long employed my at-
tention, and which appears to be of the highest imp3rtance to
16
242 Life of Coimt Rumford.
mankind, and wishing at the same time to leave a lasting testi-
mony of my respect for the Royal Society of London, I take
the liberty to request that the Royal Society would do me the
honour to accept of one thousand pounds stock in the funds of
this country, which I have actually purchased, and which I beg
leave to transfer to the President, Council, and Fellows of the
Royal Society, to the end that the interest of the same may be,
by them and by their successors, received from time to time for
ever, and the amount of the same applied and given once every
second year as a premium to the author of the most important
discovery, or useful improvement, which shall be made or pub-
lished by printing, or in any way made known to the publick, in
any part of Europe during the preceding two years, on Heat or
on Light ; the preference always being given to such discov-
eries as shall, in the opinion of the President and Council, tend
most to promote the good of mankind.
" With regard to the formalities to be observed by the Presi-
dent and Council in their decisions upon the comparative merits
of those discoveries which, in the opinion of the President and
Council, may entitle their authors to be considered as competi-
tors for this biennial premium, the President and Council of the
Royal Society will be pleased to adopt such regulations as they
in their wisdom may judge to be proper and necessary.
" But in regard to the form in which this premium is con-
ferred, I take the liberty to request that it may always be given
in two' medals, struck in the same die, the one of gold and the
other of silver, and of such dimensions that both of them to-
gether may be just equal in intrinsic value to the amount of the
interest of the aforesaid one thousand pounds stock during two
years ; that is to say, that they may together be of the value of
Sixty Pounds Sterling.
"The President and Council of the Royal Society will be
pleased to order such device or inscription to be engraved on the
die that they shall cause to be prepared for striking these med-
als, as they may judge proper.
" If, during any term of years, reckoning from the last ad-
judication, or from the last period for the adjudication of this
Life of Count Ritmford. 243
Premium by the President and Council of the Royal Society, no
new discovery or improvement should be made in any part of
Europe relative to either of the subjects in question (Heat or
Light) which in the opinion of the President and Council shall
be of sufficient importance to deserve this premium, in that case
it is my desire that the premium may not be given, but that the
value of it may be reserved, and, being laid out in the purchase
of additional stock in the English funds, may be employed to
augment the capital of this premium." And that the interest of
the same, by which the capital may from time to time be so
augmented, may regularly be given in money, with the two
medals, and as an addition to the original premium at each
such succeeding adjudication of it. And it is further my par-
ticular request, that those additions to the value of the premium
arising from its occasional non-adjudication may be suffered to
increase without limitation.
" With the highest respect for the Royal Society, of London,
and the most earnest wishes for their success in their labours for
the good of mankind,
"lam, &c.,
" RUMFORD."
Undoubtedly the founder of this premium was in-
fluenced, at least in his selection of the method of it, by
the fact that the Royal Society already had in trust a
fund of one hundred pounds bequeathed by Sir Godfrey
Copley, in 1709, " to be laid out in experiments or
otherwise." The Society voted, in 1736, " To strike a
gold medal of the value of 5, to bear the arms of
the Society, as an honorary favor for the best experi-
ment produced within the year."
The Copley medal had been awarded to Benjamin
Franklin in 1753, for "Curious Experiments and Ob-
servations on Electricity." Rumford himself received
the same medal in 1792, for " Various Papers on the
Properties and Communication of Heat."
244 Life of Count Rumford.
In accepting the munificent endowment of the Count,
the Society, through the Council, requested the Presi-
dent to return their sincere thanks to the donor; and
at the same time, as some range of uncertainty was
left in the interpretation of terms, and questions
might arise as to restriction or comprehension of sub-
jects to be recognized in the award, he was instructed
to inquire how far improvements or discoveries in
optics and chemistry might come under the Count's
views.
This request drew from Rumford the following com-
munication he having in the interval returned to Ba-
varia :
"MUNICH, April 26, 1797.
" MY DEAR SIR, In your last letter, you expressed a wish
that I would write to inform you how far, in my opinion, dis-
coveries in Optics, and improvements in Chemistry by the
agency of fire, ought to be considered as being so connected
with light or heat as to be taken into consideration in the
adjudication of the premium I have founded for encouraging the
investigation of those branches of philosophical enquiry, and
improving the useful arts which depend on them. Though I
am quite willing to leave this question to the decision of the
Royal Society, and shall certainly be perfectly satisfied with
whatever they may determine respecting it, either as a general
regulation, or in any particular case which may occur j yet, as
you have done me the honour to call on me for my opinion, I
think it my duty to comply with your request by communi-
cating to you my ideas on the subject.
" I think that the premium should be limited to new dis-
coveries tending to improve the theories of Fire, of Heat, of
Light, and of Colours, and to new inventions and contrivances
by which the generation and preservation and management of
heat and of light may be facilitated. In as far, therefore, as
chemical discoveries or improvements in optics answer any of
fi
W
J
i
UJ
I
h
LL
J
UJ
Life of Count R^lnlford. 245
those conditions, they may, I think, fairly be considered as
being within the limits assigned to the operation of the premium.
The objects, however, which I had more particularly in view to
encourage, are such practical improvements in the generation
and management of heat and of light as to tend directly and
powerfully to increase the enjoyments and comforts of life,
especially in the lower and more numerous classes of society.
" I am, &c.,
"RUMFORD."
Before this letter had been penned, a committee of
the Council of the Society, consisting of Sir Charles
Blagden, Mr. Joseph Planta, and Dr. Combe, had been
appointed, " to consider and report upon a design for a
medal." Subsequently, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Gray
(Secretary), and Count Rumford, who had been chosen
into the Council, were added to the Committee, who,
on the 4th of April, 1799, delivered in a Report with
the following Resolution :
" Resolved^ That the device on the obverse be a tripod with
a flame upon it. And that the inscription round the same be part
of the 773d verse of the Vth Book of Lucretius (De Rerum Na-
turd) :
' Noscere qu*e vis et causa?
" That the inscription on the reverse be as follows :
' Premium optime merenti ex instituto Benj. a Rumford, S. R. L.
Comitis : adjudicatum a Reg. Soc. Lond?
"That the diameter of the Medal do not exceed three inches.
That Mr. Milton be employed in sinking the dies of the said
Medal." *
The Report of the Committee was accepted by the
Council, and the Resolution was approved, to be carried
into immediate execution. But from some unexplained
* The device on the obverse was suggested by Mr. Smirke.
246 Life of Coitnt Rumford.
delay it was not until the 2d of April, 1802, nearly
six years after Rumford had made his gift, that the
Council received the impressions from the dies ordered
from Mr. Milton. These " were approved, and orders
were given for striking one gold and one silver medal
from the same, according to the regulations prescribed
by the Council." The cost of sinking the dies was
105, which sum was paid out of the funds of the
Society. The engraving which I have procured of this
first style of the Rumford Medal is copied from that in
Weld's History.
It was with a most graceful courtesy, as well as in
conformity with the strictest construction of the terms
of the premium, that the first award of it was made to
its founder. The minutes of the Council of the Society
state, that on the nth November, 1802, " the allotment
of the gold and silver medals on Count Rumford's
foundation was taken into consideration, and the letter
respecting his donation was read, and it appearing that
no discovery lately published, on the subjects to which
they are limited, is of equal merit with those of the
Count himselfj it was unanimously resolved, by ballot,
that the said medals be given to Benjamin, Count Rum-
ford, for his various discoveries on the subject of heat
and light."
The next who received the medals was John Leslie,
in 1804, f r "Experiments on Heat." The premium
was awarded in 1806, 1810, 1814, 1816, 1818, 1824,
l8 34> ^3 8, 1840, 1842, and 1846, and thenceforward
regularly in alternate years.
Up to 1846, several biennial periods having elapsed
in which no award was made, the Rumford fund,
through the accruing dividends, had increased from
Life of Count Rnmford. 247
1,000 to 2,430. At that date, therefore, the re-
ceiver of the prize, in accordance with the terms of
the trust, obtained a gold medal of the value of 60,
one of silver, of the value of 4, and a money balance
of about 80.*
It will not be inappropriate for me to copy here a
list of the awards of this medal which I have gathered
from the journals of the Royal Society.
Date of Award.
1802. Benjamin Rumford. For his various Discoveries re-
specting Light and Heat. (Phil. Trans. 1803.)
1804. John Leslie. Experiments on Heat.
1806. William Murdock. Publication of the Employment
of Gas from Coal for the Purpose of Illumination.
(Phil. Trans. 1809.)
1810. Etienne-Louis Malus. Discovery of Certain Proper-
ties of Reflected Light.
1814. William Charles Wells. Essay on Dew.
1816. Humphry Davy. Papers on Combustion and Flame.
(Phil. Trans. 1817, 1818.)
iSi8. David Brewster. Discoveries relating to the Polar-
ization of Light. (Phil. Trans. 1819.) ,
1824. Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Development of the Undu-
latory Theory, as applied to the Phenomena of
Polarized Light : and for his various Important
Discoveries in Physical Optics.
1834. Macedonio Melloni. Discoveries relative to Radiant.
Heat.
1838. James David Forbes. Experiments on the Polari-
zation of Heat.
1840. Jean Baptiste Biot. Researches in and connected
with the Circular Polarization of Light.
* For all the above particulars relating to the Rumford fund and medal, at the
disposal of the Royal Society, I am indebted to the admirable history of that venera-
ble institution, by Charles Richard Weld, E^q. London. 1848.
248 Life of Count Rumford.
Date of Award.
1842. Henry Fox Talbot. Discoveries and Improvements
in Photography.
1846. Michael Faraday. Discovery of the Optical Phe-
nomena developed by the Action of Magnets and
Electric Currents in certain Transparent Media.
(Phil. Trans. 1846.)
1848. M. Regnault. Experiments on Expansion and Den-
sity of Air, different Gases, and Mercury.
1850. F. J. D. Arago. Experimental Investigation on
Polarized Light.
1852. Geo. G. Stokes. On the Change of Refrangibility
of Light.
1854. Dr. Neil Arnott. A new Smoke-Consuming and
Fuel-Saving Plreplace.
1856. M. Pasteur. Discovery of the Nature of Racemic
Acid, and its Relations to Polarized Light.
1858. M. Jamin. Various Experimental Researches on
Light.
1860. Prof. James Clark Maxwell. Researches on the
Composition of Colors, and other Optical Papers.
1862. Prof. Kirchhoff. Researches on the Fixed Lines of
the Solar Spectrum, &c.
1864. Prof. John Tyndall. Researches on the Absorption
and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapors.
1866. M. Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau. Optical Re-
searches and Investigations into the Effect of Heat
on the Refractive Power of Transparent Bodies.
1868. Mr. Balfour Stewart. Researches on the Qualitative
as well as Quantitative Relations between the
Powers of Emission and Absorption of Bodies for
Heat and Light.
Count Rumford was probably well aware of the conten-
tion and ill-feeling that had arisen in the Royal Society,
some years before, because those who administered the
trust for the Copley Medal considered foreigners equally
Life of Count Rumford. 249
entitled with Englishmen to be candidates for its award.
Sir Gilbert had neither restricted nor expressly extended
the terms of his bequest in that regard. Rumford,
in emphatic language, made the whole of Europe,
continent and islands, the field for such stimulation
of rivalry, and such recognition of desert, as might
attach to his premium of tenfold intrinsic value. It
will be seen from the list that has been given, that
ten of the twenty-four distinguished men who have
received his award from the Royal Society have been
foreigners, Mr. Wells being of America. The fact
has a significance when taken in connection with the
well-known effort which is required of Englishmen,
whether men of science, or statesmen, or private per-
sons, to extend their impartiality beyond their own
country.
It is remarkable that the Count, after having liber-
ally provided funds for medals in the award of two
learned bodies, should a few years afterwards, when
drawing his plan and publishing his proposals for his
own Royal Institution, have introduced into them an
express prohibition of all premiums and rewards.
A new die for the Rumford Medal of the Royal
Society has since been adopted, from which Dr. H.
Bence Jones has kindly sent me a copy, as shown in the
engraving. The head of Rumford which is engraved
upon it is copied from a portrait of him painted in
Munich, which hung in the Count's house at Bromp-
ton, and which was presented to the Society by his
daughter, in December, .1831.
The Count's correspondence with reference to his
endowment in this country begins with the following
letter :
250 Life of Count R^tmford.
"LONDON, July 12, 1796.
" To the HON. JOHN ADAMS, President of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
SIR, Desirous of contributing efficaciously to the ad-
vancement of a branch of science which has long employed my
attention, and which appears to me to be of the highest impor-
tance to mankind, and wishing at the same time to leave a last-
ing testimony of my respect for the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, I take the liberty to request that the Academy
would do me the honour to accept of Five Thousand Dollars,
three per cent stock in the funds of the United States of North
America, which Stock I have actually purchased, and which I
beg leave to transfer to the Fellows of the Academy, to the end
that the interest of the same may be by them, and by their
successors, received from time to time, forever, and the amount
of the same applied and given once every second year, as a
premium, to the author of the most important discovery or use-
ful improvement, which shall be made and published by printing,
or in any way made known to the publick, in any part of the
Continent of America, or in any of the American Islands, dur-
ing the preceding two years, on Heat, or on Light ; the prefer-
ence always being given to such discoveries as shall, in the
opinion of the Academy, tend most to promote the good of
mankind.
" With regard to the formalities to be observed by the Acad-
emy in their decisions upon the comparative merits of those
discoveries which in the opinion of the Academy may entitle
their Authors to be considered as competitors for this bien-
nial premium, the Academy will be pleased to adopt such
regulations as they in their wisdom may judge to be proper
and necessary.
" But in regard to the form in which this Premium is con-
ferred, I take the liberty to request that it may always be given
in two medals, struck in the same die, the one of gold and the
other of silver, and of such dimensions that both of them
together may be just equal in intrinsic value to the amount of
interest of the aforesaid Five Thousand Dollars stock during
Life of Count Rumford. 251
two years : that is to say, that they may together be of the
value of Three Hundred Dollars.
" The Academy will be pleased to order such device or
inscription to be engraved on the die they shall cause to be
prepared for striking these medals, as they may judge proper.
" If during any term of two years, reckoning from the last
adjudication, or from the last period for the adjudication of this
Premium by the Academy, no new discovery or improvement
should be made in any part of America, relative to either of the
subjects in question (Heat or Light), which, in the opinion of
the Academy shall be of sufficient importance to deserve this
Premium, in that case, it is my desire that the Premium may
not be given, but that the value of it may be reserved, and by
laying out in the purchase of additional stock in the American
funds, may be applied to augment the capital of this Premium ;
and that the interest of the sums by which the capital may,
from time to time, be so augmented, may regularly be given in
money with the two medals, and as an addition to the original
Premium at each succeeding adjudication of it. And it is
further my particular request, that those additions to the value
of the Premium arising from its occasional non-adjudication
may be suffered to increase without limitation.
" With the highest respect for the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, and the most earnest wishes for their success
in their labours for the good of mankind,
" I have the honour to be, with much Esteem and Regard, Sir,
Your most Obedient, Humble Servant,
RUMFORD."
His intended donation was first announced by this
letter from Count Rumford read at a meeting of the
Academy, November 9, 1796, accompanied by the gift
of a volume of his Essays, and of what is described in
the records as his " bust," though it was a small bass-
relief profile. The delay in the receipt of the proper
papers, and in the negotiation connected with the trans-
252 Life of Count Rumford.
fer of the funds, caused chiefly by the capture of a
vessel on board of which were the necessary legal docu-
ments, of course deferred the proper and decisive action
of the Academy in recognizing, as they appreciated,
Count Rumford's noble endowment. Compared with
the gifts which previously to that time had been made
by individuals to Harvard College, and by Dr. Frank-
lin to provide medals for scholars in our public schools,
and a loan fund for the encouragement of worthy me-
chanics, which latter provision remains still accumu-
lating to be appropriated, as it never yet has been,
according to the wishes of the donor, Count Rum-
ford's donation had a character of munificence. The
members of the Academy regarded it as the most
helpful and encouraging recognition which their Insti-
tution had received during the sixteen years of its ex-
istence. The correspondence of our few learned and
scientific men, who were then pursuing their high aims
under great disadvantages, recognizes with enthusiasm
and congratulation this auspicious incident, and finds
in it an impulse and a motive for activity and zeal
in its work.
The Academy had been instituted and incorporated
in the year 1780, midway in the war of our Revolution,
amid all the distractions and exactions of that trying
period. While the whole community was burdened by
taxation and the exorbitant prices of the articles of
prime necessity, and while it might seem that the
thoughts and time of all intelligent men would have
been engrossed by giving to public affairs all the interest
they could spare from their private concerns, a few
men of cultivated and generous minds devised the plan
of this Institution. It is a very singular fact, that all
Life of Count Rumford. 253
the most distinguished of the now existing and flourish-
ing learned bodies of Christendom originated and were
organized under similar circumstances, in periods of
distraction and strife. The Royal Society of London
was an incorporation, in 1661, of a society of gentlemen
interested in scientific objects, who had been meeting for
many previous years to encourage and help one another
in their pursuits. It was amid the heated and alienat-
ing strifes of political and religious animosity inflaming
all classes of the people, that those who loved science
and high culture, and were within easy reach of inter-
course, gathered in a little coterie in London. They
realized that, if they would mutually tolerate and enjoy
each other's presence and sympathy in their professed
objects, they must carefully exclude all recognition of the
distractions outside of their fellowship. As one of the
foremost of them, Dr. Wallis, writing of the year 1645,
quaintly says of their coming together, "when (to avoid
diversion to other discourses, and for some other rea-
sons) we barred all discourses of divinity, state affairs,
and of news, other than what concerned our business of
Philosophy." The French National Institute, estab-
lished in 1796, offered a similar refuge from the embit-
terments of revolutionary times for those who could
subordinate their party or polemical divisions to a zeal
for researches and labors which would accrue to the
welfare of a common humanity.
Count Rumford had been elected a Foreign Honor-
ary Member of the Academy on May 29, 1789.
The first recognition which the Academy made to
Count Rumford of his purposed benefaction was through
the following letter, which I copy from the original on
the files.
254 Life of Count Rumford.
" SIR, At a meeting of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, the Qth instant, were communicated by the Presi-
dent your very acceptable favors of the I2th July. In reply to
which, permit me the honor to request your acceptance of the
thanks of the Academy for your very polite and obliging present
of the first volume of your ingenious and useful Essays, and for
the pleasing and elegant profile of their Author. I am also
charged by the Academy to give you every possible assurance,
not only of the lively emotions of gratitude inspired by your
generous ^nd truly noble proposal of transferring to the Acad-
emy, for the important purposes expressed in your letter, five
thousand dollars of the three per cent stock of the United
States, but likewise of their conscious obligation and cheerful
readiness sacredly to apply the interest of the same as directed
by the munificent donor. Excuse my adding, that the Academy
is sensibly affected, not only by the liberality of this appropria-
tion, but by the delicate manner in which it is made.
" Supposing it possible, though not probable, that you might
be unacquainted with the method of transferring American
stocks, the President suggested the expediency of enclosing an
abstract of the mode of making transfers at our offices. Ac-
cordingly, I waited on Mr. Appleton, the Loan Officer in this
State, and from his letter have transcribed the enclosed extract.
" Agreeably to Mr. Appleton's ideas I have also taken the
liberty of naming two gentlemen in the vicinity of Boston who
will be happy to execute your orders, if empowered to transfer
the stock aforesaid to the c American Academy of Arts and
Sciences,' either jointly or severally, as you may think proper,
viz., the Rev. Joseph Willard, D. D., of Cambridge, and the
Hon. Loammi Baldwin, Esq., of Woburn, both in the county
of Middlesex. These gentlemen, or either of them, would, I
doubt not, faithfully and cheerfully discharge the trust, whether
the stock were issued from the office in Boston or from any
other office in the United States. But if some other gentle-
man will be more agreeable to you, sir, he will be so to the
Academy. I have, however, to ask your pardon of this free-
dom, as my only object is to facilitate the business.
Life of Count Rumford. 255
u I ought not to trespass further on your patience. But I
knew not how to close without acknowledging the obligations
imposed on me, and I think on the world, by your late publica-
tions. Some of your former ingenious and philosophical com-
munications to the Royal Society I read with great delight.
But your Essays have filled me with transport. Such phi-
lanthropy, so well directed zeal, and such unwearied diligence
in promoting the common good of mankind, more especially of
the indigent and helpless, bespeak a godlike mind, and command
the warmest gratitude and most sincere respect of every benevo-
lent mind. It is, a happiness, a great happiness, even to, th' .k
that there is on earth a man who can and will interest himself
so efficaciously, and in so great a variety of ways, for the good
of the human species. Your unprecedented success also inspires
new and pleasing hopes concerning the most miserable of our
race, and calls into doubt the. common doctrine of habits.
When such numbers, so long accustomed to idleness and vice,
are reclaimed to industry and order, we are led to expect that
the Ethiopian will erelong change his skin, and the leopard his
spots. But I forbear. Accept the well-meant tribute of my
thanks, and permit me to join the poor of Munich and many
other cities, and with all the friends of humanity, in fervent sup-
plication to the Author of all good for the preservation of your
life, and for the confirmation of your health, and for increased
and extensive success to your multiplied labors and Institutions
for the good of mankind.
u With these wishes, and with sentiments of unfeigned re-
spect, I am, sir,
" Your much obliged, and most humble servant,
"ELIPHALET PEARSON, Corresponding Secretary.
"CAMBRIDG?, I4th November, 1796.
COUNT RUMFORD."
Count Rumford made the following reply to Pro-
fessor Pearson, which also I copy from the original on
file:
256 Life of Count Rum ford.
"MUNICH, I4th February, 1797.
" SIR, I have received your very obliging letter of the I4th
November, 1796. The honor which the worthy President and
the Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
have conferred on me by accepting the proposals I took the
liberty of making to them in my letter to the President, of the
1 2th July, 1796, has given me the highest satisfaction; and I
beg, Sir, that you would express to them my warmest thanks,
and assure them that it will be the study of my life to deserve
this flattering proof of their esteem and regard.
" I am much obliged to you, Sir, for the pains you have
taken to make me so completely acquainted with everything I
could wish to know respecting the business of transferring
American Stock. Enclosed I send you a power authorizing
the two Gentlemen you proposed and two Gentlemen more
agreeable to me could not have been found to transfer 'to
the Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,'
Five Thousand Dollars, assured debt, entered to my credit in
the Books, of the Treasury of the United States, for which a
certificate numbered 2633 was issued in my name on the
Fourth day of March, 1796. That this stock actually stands
in my name in the Books of the Treasury of the United States,
I am assured by a notarial Declaration of Peter Lohra, Notary
Public for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, residing in the
City of Philadelphia, dated the 27th October, 1796, a copy of
which is inclosed. But, very unfortunately, the vessel in which
the original certificate (with two others of equal amount) was
sent to Europe was lost on her passage. How long this acci-
dent will delay the completion of the business in question I
know not, but nothing in my power shall be left undone to fin-
ish it as soon as possible. In the mean time I have taken the
most effectual measures I could devise to secure to the Acad-
emy the property they have done me the honor to accept, and
have given directions that the Interest of the Five Thousand
Dollars three per cent Stock in question should be paid regularly
to the Treasurer of the Academy from the first of January,
1797, till the transfer of the Capital can be made. In short, I
Life of Count Rumford. 257
consider this Property as being no longer mine, and I have ex-
erted myself to the utmost of my abilities in the enclosed dec-
laration which I hope may pass for a Deed of gift, however it
may be defective in point of form to put it legally out of my
power. In all events, however, even should there be a flaw in
this Instrument, and should I die before the transfer of the
Stock could be made, as in my last Will and Testament which
is lodged in the hands of Sir Joseph Banks, Baronet, of Soho
Square, London, President of the Royal Society, I have be-
queathed Five Thousand Dollars three per cent American Stock
to the Academy for the purposes mentioned in my letter to the
President of the Academy, of the I2th July last, no accident
that can possibly happen can prevent the accomplishment of my
wishes with respect to this business.
" Inclosed is a letter from me to the Directors of the Bank
of the United States, which I beg you would close with a seal
and forward, when you shall have perused it and taken a copy
of it for the information of the Academy, who will be pleased
to take such measures in regard to the business in question as
they may think proper. It will give me great pleasure to learn
that Dr. Willard, and my friend, Colonel Baldwin, have found
means to complete this business by making the transfer of the
Stock, but if anything more should be necessary to be done by
me to enable them to finish the transaction, you or they will be
pleased to acquaint me with what I can do farther to expedite
and facilitate the business.
" Begging you would assure the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences of my best respects, and of my unfeigned gratitude
for the distinguished honor they have conferred on me, I am,
Sir, with great regard and esteem,
" Your most obedient humble Servant,
"RUMFORD.
" MR. PEARSON, Secretary, c."
The paper, duly signed and witnessed, by which the
transfer of stocks was made to the Academy, is preserved
in duplicate in our archives. The two bearing the seal
17
258 Life of Count Rumford.
of Count Rumford, partially defaced in each, furnish
together the means by which the engraver has prepared
the copy attached to the autograph signature of our bene-
factor.
The portion of the instrument presented on the plate
upon* the opposite page is not a very fair specimen of the
handwriting of the author, being coarser and more ir-
regular. The signatures of his friend, the Countess of
Nogarola, and of his daughter, witnessing the instru-
ment, are its proper accompaniments.
The inner legend of the seal is Pro Fide, Rege, et Lege.
The lower one is Dulce est meminisse laborum.
At a meeting of the Academy, Jan. 31, 1798, it was
" Voted, That the thanks of the Academy be presented to Count
Rumford for his very generous donation for the use of this
Institution, and that a committee be now appointed to draught a
vote for that purpose, to be reported to the Council, or, accord-
ing to circumstances, to the Academy at their meeting, as soon
as it shall appear that a legal transfer of the property shall have
been made, and that it be immediately after transmitted to that
liberal benefactor of mankind.
" Voted, That the committee for the above purpose be John
Davis, Esq., Mr. Professor Pearson, and Dr. Warren.
" Voted, That a committee be appointed to take up the sub-
ject of Count Rumford's donation, and report at the next
meeting of the Academy their opinion of the best method of
carrying his generous design into execution, as expressed in
his letter to the President of the Aca.demy.
tc That the Committee for the above purpose be, President
Willard, Hon. Judge Paine, Mr. Professor Pearson, Mr. Gan-
nett, and the Hon. Judge Winthrop.
At a meeting of the Academy, May 29, 1798, the
Report of the first Committee, which was as follows, was
accepted :
Life of Cotint Rumford. 259
tc Whereas Benjamin, Count of Rumford, of Munich, in
Bavaria, has presented to this Institution the sum of Five
Thousand Dollars in three per cent stock of the United States,
the interest of which, by the terms of the donation as expressed
in his letter of July 12, 1796, to the President of the Academy,
is to be 'applied and given .... Heat or Light,' which dona-
tion has been accepted by the Academy, and by proper certifi-
cates, which accident only has delayed, has now become the
property of the Academy.
" Voted, That the thanks of the Academy be presented to
Count Rumford for this his very generous donation, and that
they experience the highest satisfaction in receiving this ad-
ditional and very liberal aid for the encouragement and exten-
sion of those branches of science which he has so successfully
cultivated. That they entertain a high sense of the sentiments
and views, so becoming to a Philosopher, which have prompted
him to this distinguished act of liberality ; and in the execution
of the grateful office which they have undertaken of awarding
and distributing the premiums which Count Rumford has thus
appropriated they will sacredly comply with the conditions of
the donation, indulging the hope that he will meet his reward
in learning that many in his native country are thereby excited
to emulate his labors and to promote the accomplishment of
his beneficent wishes for the advancement of science and the
augmentation of human happiness.
" Voted, That the Corresponding Secretary be requested to
transmit a copy of the preceding vote to Count Rumford by the
earlie'st opportunity."
At a meeting on May 28, 1799? probably by sug-
gestion of the second committee above appointed, it was
" Voted, That the Secretary of the Academy cause the
terms of Count Rumford's donation to be published in the
several capitals of the different States, and in some of the Amer-
ican Islands, and information that the Academy are ready to
adjudge the premium, provided for by Count Rumford, to the
person or persons who shall appear to be entitled to the same."
260 Life of Coimt Rumford.
Among the same files from which the above docu-
ments are copied, are papers relating to several applica-
tions made by themselves, or by friends in behalf of
those who either sought aid from the fund in pursuing
their experiments, or advanced a claim for discoveries
or improvements of a sort to entitle them to the award
of the medal. And here, departing from the order of
time as regards events in the life of Count Rumford, it
may be allowable, as it is convenient, to trace the his-
tory of the administration of the trust for the premium
or medal by the Academy. While the Royal Society
had the whole Continent and all the Islands of Europe
as a field for selecting the recipients of its biennial
award of the Rumford medals from among those numer-
ous savans who by their researches and discoveries
should reach results entitling them to the honor, the
Academy, with larger space, indeed, for its oversight,
was at a manifest disadvantage as regarded the likeli-
hood of finding once in each period of two years a
subject of the same award. At first thought it may
seem to one who has not thoroughly and with broad
and full information considered the facts of the case,
that the Academy has been too exacting in the condi-
tions which it has set and applied in administering its
trust, and that it has had in view a requisition of Scien-
tific discoveries in reference to heat and light of such
signal and conspicuous character as can but very rarely
reveal themselves, even in the steadily progressive course
of experimental philosophy. And then, having before
us in contrast the eminently practical and economical,
we may even say thrifty and homely, nature and utility
of Count Rumford' s own inventions, methods, and
appliances, another suggestion might naturally present
Life of Count Rumford. 261
itself. We have had to bring him before us as actually
engaged with his own hands in constructing chimney-
flues, kitchens, and cooking-utensils, and have yet to
speak and read of him as introducing improvements in
common household lamps. If now any one should
have visited and examined the kitchens and the sitting-
rooms of New England during the last fifty years, or
read the advertisements in the newspapers and the shop-
cards so freely distributed, announcing' wonderful im-
provements in stoves, furnaces, and lamps, or .gas-
burners, and have added to these observations a walk
through the departments of the Patent Office at Wash-
ington assigned to such apparatus, he would be most
likely to infer that the Academy could have been at no
loss to find a proper recipient of the Rumford Medal
once in each two years. But it has proved to be
otherwise. The Academy promised sacredly to dis-
charge its trust. The homeliness or economical char-
acter of an invention or a discovery would never have
offended its dignity if a just claim had been based upon
it. The Academy, as we have seen, took measures to
circulate through the public prints the knowledge that it
had an honorable award at its disposal for all who were
entitled to receive it. The correspondence and applica-
tions on its -files, and the numerous reports of its in-
vestigating committees, prove that there has been no
lack of notoriety as to the facts and objects of its trus-
teeship, nor of a disposition to do full justice to all
who sought a hearing from it. But until the year 1839
the Academy, in the exercise of its best discretion and
under the guidance of its common conscience, had not
once made the award of the Rumford Medal.
Meanwhile the fund had accumulated by its own
262 Life of Count Rumford.
interest so as to present in itself a matter of embarrass-
ment. A committee of the Academy chosen for the
purpose, consisting of the eminent Dr. Nathaniel Bow-
ditch, President Josiah Quincy of Harvard College,
and the Hon. Francis C. Gray, made a Report at
the end of December, 1829, which resulted in legisla-
tive and judicial measures for relieving this embarass-
ment.
The Academy had given its pledge, while Count
Rurnford still lived, that it would " sacredly comply
with the conditions of the donation." These condi-
tions were mainly two, one of them, however, being
limited by the other. The Academy was to have in
view the award of its medal once in two years, but it
was to be given only to the author of the most im-
portant discovery or useful improvement made in the
two preceding years on heat or on light, on the Amer-
ican Continent or any of its Islands. To refuse to
award the medal to one who had a right to it, or to
bestow it on a claimant who had no sufficient merit, or
upon a favored experimenter, for the sake of not allow-
ing the biennial award to fail, would have equally
thwarted the intent of the donor. A discovery or an
improvement of a sort to satisfy the terms which Count
Rumford could define only relatively, because not admit-
ting of an arbitrary or of an absolute measurement, was
the requisite fact to engage the attention of the Acad-
emy. As such discovery or improvement was to have
been made a matter of public notoriety by printing "or
otherwise," and as the Academy had taken measures for
giving the widest circulation to the terms of the trust
which they held, it was not likely that ignorance on the
side of either party concerned would deprive any one who
Life of Count Riimford. 263
might justly be entitled to the premium of the honor
which it would confer. The committee above named
say in their Report, that the premium had not up to
that date been awarded, " none of the discoveries or
improvements for which it has been claimed being
deemed by the Academy of sufficient importance to
deserve it." The Report continues:
" By constant accumulation the fund has now increased to
the sum of nearly $20,000. The history of science in other
countries unites with our own experience to convince us that
Count Rumford's plan, contemplating the assignment of a
biennial premium for important discoveries or useful improve-
ments on light and heat first made public within two years pre-
ceding, and interrupted only by c occasional non-adjudications,'
is absolutely impracticable. Such discoveries and improvements
are not often made, and many of those which are made require
more than two years to test their merit. It is perfectly mani-
fest that the non-adjudication must be the regular and usual
'course, and that the assignments of the premium must be
occasional, and even rare. The very increase of the fund con-
stantly increases the difficulty of bestowing the premium ; for
the Academy are expressly directed to award it only to improve-
ments or discoveries of sufficient importance in their opinion to
deserve it, and an invention may merit a premium of $ 300,
which is altogether unworthy of one of $2,000. A strict com-
pliance with the incidental request that the fund should increase
indefinitely may therefore prevent the assignment of any pre-
mium at all, and thus entirely defeat the great object of the
foundation, and render it totally useless. To permit such a
result is not a faithful fulfilment of the intentions of the
donor.
" If it be found, by long experience, that a rigid adherence to
particular limitations, not essential to the main object of the
Institution, tends to defeat that object, it must .be presumed that
the founder would wish those limitations modified, and it is the
bounden duty of the Academy, and of all who have an interest
264 Life of Count Rumford..
in his property, to endeavor to have them so modified as to pro-
mote the attainment of the end which he proposed."
The committee add, as another important considera-
tion, that in providing that the additional income of the
fund accruing from an occasional non-adjudication of
the premium should be given to its next recipient,
Rumford could hardly have foreseen that the accessory
would ever so far exceed the principal. The income of
the fund for two years being at the time two thousand
dollars, and steadily increasing, it would be extravagant
to award it as a premium. cc It must lose the char-
acter of a prize, and be sought with mercenary views,
rather than as an honorable distinction."
The Report closed with "a plan for facilitating the
awarding of the premium and applying the surplus
income," as the best they could " devise to execute in
practice the intent and promote the general object of
the donor." The scheme suggested was substantially
that which was adopted by the Supreme Judicial Court
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in its decree in
Chancery.
The Academy first applied to this court for legal
relief, but the bill was dismissed, as the equitable juris-
diction of the court over trusts was limited to "cases
of trust arising under deeds, wills, or in the settlement
of estates." The Academy then had recourse to the
Legislature of the State, which passed the following
special Act, approved by the Governor, March 16,
1831:
"An Act authorizing the Supreme Judicial Court to hear and
determine in equity all matters relating to the donation of Ben-
jamin Count Rumford to the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
Life of Count Riimford. 265
" Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the
same, That the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court be, and
they hereby are, authorized and empowered to hear and deter-
mine in equity any and all matters relating to the donation of
Benjamin Count Rumford to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and to make all necessary or proper orders and
decrees touching the same."
Count Rumford by his last will, made in Paris, had
bequeathed the residue of his estate to Harvard College,
for the purpose of founding a Professorship to teach by
lectures and experiments the utility of the physical and
mathematical sciences for the improvement of the useful
arts and the industry and well-being of society. The
College, therefore, became a party to the hearing of
this case in equity, and as defendants withstood the
prayer of the Academy for a legal liberty to depart from
the conditions attached to Count Rumford's donation.
The College claimed that the objects which he had in
view in his fund for a premium intrusted to the
Academy were substantially included in and covered
by the objects assigned for the Rumford Professorship,
and insisted, cc that if the said fund and the accumula-
tion thereof, or any part thereof, cannot be appropri-
ated and applied in the hands of the said plaintiffs to
the execution of the general intent of said donor in
making his said donation to the said plaintiffs, the
same, or so much thereof as canaot be so applied, ought
to be decreed to be paid over to these defendants, as
residuary legatees of said Count Rumford, for the use
of the said Rumford Professorship.'*
The case was fully heard with arguments of counsel,
and an application by the court of those principles of
equity which allow a modification of the conditions
266 Life of Count Rumford.
attached to a trust fund when circumstances prevent
the strict fulfilment of the terms set by the donor, and
which admit of a re-direction of the proceeds of the
fund in a way to approximate towards the ends he had
in view. The matter was then referred to a Master
in Chancery "to report a scheme for carrying into effect
the general charitable intent and purpose of the donor
conformably to the prayer of the plaintiffs' bill." His
scheme having been submitted, it was,
" By the court ordered, adjudged, and decreed, for the
reasons set forth in the bill, that the plaintiffs be, and they are
by the authority of this court, empowered to make from the
income of said fund, as it now exists, at any annual meeting of
the Academy, instead of biennially, as directed by said Benja-
min Count Rumford, award of a gold and silver medal, being
together of the intrinsic value of three hundred dollars, as a
premium to the author of any important discovery or useful
improvement on heat or on light which shall have been made
and published by printing, or in any way made known to the
public, in any part of the Continent of America, or any of the
American Islands, preference being always given to such dis-
coveries as shall in the opinion of the Academy, tend most to
promote the good of mankind ; and to add to such medals as a
further reward and premium for such discovery or improvement,
if the plaintiffs see fit so to do, a sum of money not exceeding
three hundred dollars.
" And it is further ordered, adjudged, and decreed, that the
plaintiffs may appropriate from time to time, as the same can
advantageously be done, the residue of the income of said fund
hereafter to be received, and not so as aforesaid awarded in
premiums, to the purchase of such books and papers and philo-
sophical apparatus (to be the property of said Academy), and in
making such publications or procuring such lectures, experi-
ments, or investigations, as shall in their opinion best facilitate
and encourage the making of discoveries and improvements
which may merit the premiums so as aforesaid to be by them
Life of Count Riimford. 267
awarded. And that the books, papers, and apparatus so pur-
chased shall be used, and such lectures, experiments, and in-
vestigations be delivered and made, either in the said Academy
or elsewhere, as the plaintiffs shall think best adapted to promote
such discoveries and improvements as aforesaid, and either by
the Rumford Professor of Harvard University or by any other
person or persons, as to the plaintiffs shall from time to time
seem best."
The court also authorized the investment of the
fund, or any part of it, in other first-class securities than
government bonds. 1 *
It is easy to express the obvious suggestion, that the
enlargement and direction thus allowed by judicial de-
cision to the use of the trust fund committed by Count
Rumford to the Academy, for one specified and well-
defined object, exceed any possible construction that
can be put upon the liberal terms of his deed of gift.
But it is just as easy to meet the suggestion by affirm-
ing that the judicial decree has in view, and aims, it
may even be said, most conscientiously to fulfil, the
intent of the donor. Under its decision the Academy
may make the munificence of Count Rumford most
serviceable at the fountain-head and sources of that
scientific development which alone can secure biennially,
or at longer or shorter intervals, a signal result mark-
ing a point in the flow of the stream. Books and
lectures presenting the last discoveries, or methods for
discovery, in the Count's favorite subjects of experi-
ment, may be regarded as even something better than
an alternative in the improvement of his fund, to the
use of it for a medal or premium under the pressure of
a supposed obligation to bestow it with chief reference
to the lapse of two years.
* Gray's Reports. Vol. XII. pp. 582- 602.
268 Life of Co^lnt Rumford.
In view of all the circumstances and of the difficulties
which the case presented, one may reasonably affirm
that when the honored and venerated chief-justice
gave validity to the decree of the court, he might have
felt the full assurance that Count Rumford himself
would have dictated its' terms.
In the year 1839 the Academy gave, from the inter-
est of the Rumford Fund, the sum of six hundred dol-
lars to Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, in consideration of
his invention of the compound ,blow-pipe and his
improvements in galvanic apparatus.
The Rumford Medal was awarded by the Academy,
in 1862, to John B. Ericsson for his caloric engine.*
In 1865 the Medal was awarded to Daniel Treadwell,
former Rumford Professor in Harvard College, for
improvements in the management of heat.*}" On Feb-
ruary 26, 1867, the Medal was presented to Alvan
Clark for improvement in the lens of the refracting
telescope.
On January n, 1870, the Medal was presented to
George H. Corliss for improvements in the steam-
engine.
The Rumford Fund, in 1870, exceeded thirty-seven
thousand dollars.
A committee of the Academy, called the Rumford
Committee, is chosen annually, who report upon the
fund and recommend appropriations from it for pur-
poses conformed to the decree of the court.
* See Proceedings of the Academy, Vol. VI. p. 26.
f Ibid., Vol. VI. pp. 495, 497, 5'6.
CHAPTER VI.
Count Rumford and his Daughter leave England for Munich.
Circuitous Route on Account of the War. The Jour-
ney and its Incidents. Sarah Thompson s Diary. Ar-
rival in Munich. Neutrality of Bavaria. Munich
threatened by Austrian and French Armies. Flight of
the Elector. Rumford on the Council of the Regency ',
and at the Head of the Electoral Army. His Signal
Services and Success. His Scientific Feeding of the
Q J
Troops. Gratitude of the Elector on his Return. Cor-
respondence with Sir John Sinclair. Letters to Colonel
Baldwin and President Willard. Private Affairs of the
Count in America. Projected Institution in Concord.
Correspondence concerning it. The Countess s Court and
Domestic Life. Excursions. Festivals. Commemo-
ration of the Count's Birthday. Love Passages. Va-
riances. Excursions. The Count appointed Ambassa-
dor to England^ returns there. 'Not received as such.
Correspondence. Honors from America. Massa-
chusetts Historical Society. Invitation from the United
States Government. Correspondence. The Countess re-
turns to America. Her Narrative. Correspondence.
IN this chapter, which will cover two more years of
Count RumforcTs residence in Germany, I shall
draw largely from the autobiographic sketch of his
daughter, because it is full of interesting information
concerning his domestic and private life, of which we
know but little from any other sources. We must
270 Life of Count Ritmford.
reconcile as we may the ardent expressions of the
father's affection for his daughter in his letters with
her own disclosures of the occasional severity of his
discipline.
It was in very hot weather, probably in the last of
July or early in August, 1796, that they left England,
compelled to make a circuitous course to enter Ger-
many.
The daughter describes the leave-taking from friends
on the eve of quitting London. The carriage which
the Count had brought with him from Munich being
too small for the party, he was obliged to procure a
second one. This, having belonged to a duke, still
bore his arms, and there was no time to allow for re-
painting. The party arrived at Hamburg on the third
day, after a boisterous passage, being obliged to take
that route on account of the war.
The armorial bearings on one of their carriages
proved to be a great annoyance to them, as visiting
upon them the tax of greatness. The Count wished
but five post-horses to be attached to the carriage. The
post-master insisted upon his starting with eight ; and
the same number used in starting would be required at
every change and relay along the route. The parties
were equally obstinate ; the official removed the five
horses, and the Count and his valet went to seek
others, or redress. Pending the issue, the daughter was
left in one of the carnages, and her maid in the other,
in one of the most crowded streets of Hamburg. The
Continent being then ablaze with war, this bustling
city was neutral. The young lady and her maid,
Wearied, sea-worn, and craving rest and refreshment,
which could not easily be found where all houses of
Life of Count Rumford. 271
entertainment were thronged, would really have suffered
had it not been for an adventure, which the daughter
relates so naively with an intimation that it might
have resulted in furnishing her with a step-mother
that it must be given in her own words.
" A lady, before whose door stood one of our carriages, took
pity on us, coming kindly to invite us in, and, my father being
returned at the time, we gladly accepted. We were shown
into cool, delightfully clean rooms, a little darkened (it being
in the month of August the heat was intense), and where we
found sofas, easy-chairs, and plenty of places to lounge in. So
great was the change from what we had before experienced, it
could be compared to nothing but heaven upon earth. After
being somewhat rested and recovered, then came refreshments
of everything proper, good, and enough of it. Aichner and
my maid had likewise all things of a nature to comfort them,
and when nothing else remained to be done we were requested
to take repose ; but as our horses, to the number of five, con-
trary to the post-master's wishes, were to be at the door at a
certain time we could not comply. My father introduced him-
self to the lady, and the lady herself to him. She, it seemed,
was the widow of a German officer, whom, by reputation, my
father knew well, and this leading to conversation, they got
on charmingly. Both were well looking, of proper ages, she
the younger, he not old. Any one in the habit of match-
making, so called, would have declared them made for each
other. Understanding I was my father's daughter, she made
much of me ; and I, far from having forgotten my poor mother,
seeing her kindly affected to me, and drawing myself nearer
and nearer to her, seemed to be in her arms before we were
either of us aware of it, both of us shedding tears plentifully.
It came out that she, about a year before, had lost an only
daughter, whom she thought about my age. She was the per-
fect mother. My father began to make a motion to go ; was,
perhaps, not satisfied ; would have preferred seeing the lady
looking out for a second husband. When we took leave my
272 Life of Count Rumford.
father told her that should he find himself again in Hamburg,
and I to have learned German, I should call and thank her for
her kindness in her own language. We were both there again,
but had forgotten both the lady's name and address. Truly
unfortunate !
" Three weeks' constant travel, circuitous routes to avoid
troops, bad roads, still worse accommodations, passing nights in
the carriages for the want of an inn, scantiness of provisions,
joined with great fatigue, rendered our journey by no means
agreeable. The Fair at Leipsic, as we came along and passed a
day there, not being able to proceed for the want of horses on
account of it, was amusing. I bought many little objects of
curiosity, which I kept a long time in remembrance of it.
" The beautiful, luxuriant fields of rye and wheat in the two
Saxonies, then in perfection, a short time before the reaping, to
any one accustomed only to enclosed countries, were striking,
and gave an idea of great richness. With hardly sufficient room
for the wheels of the carriage, not a fence, seldom a tree, still
less meeting man or beast, gave a look to the country of real
enchantment, resembling more the never-ending waves of the
sea than cultivated land. It is true, after a while you* come to
a mean, dirty-looking village, of a nature to destroy fine illusions,
but where, however, are to be seen pretty blue-eyed, light-
haired, white-faced women and children. In the Saxonies the
German language is said to be the most purely spoken. In the
mouth of a Saxon lady it is said to be really soft, a character in
the general way it does not sustain.
" Our arrival at Munich was a joyful event, an end to the
tediousness of the journey, besides being cheered by the hand-
some, pleasant appearance of the city. My father's habitation
merits and must have a particular description, as will from
thence be dated, for some time to come, most that relates either to
him or myself; and because the building was really magnificent
and equally so in its furniture, it may not be amiss to mention
by what good fortune he became the occupant, for own it he did
not.
cc
It was an elegant palace, furnished sumptuously some years
Life of Count Rumford. 273
before for a person of distinction, who dying, it was shut up.
Afterwards my father persuaded the then reigning Elector,
Charles Theodore, to have it opened and let the Russian Am-
bassador take the first and my father the second floor. Through
the porte-cochere passed all vehicles, foot-passengers, &c., by the
width, possibly, of two rooms, those making part of the first
floor, into an open court enclosed by the building. The prin-
cipal staircase there being others commenced between the
entrance and the court, wide enough for four abreast, with oak
or mahogany stairs waxed and rubbed, looking like plate-glass.
As an inhabitant of this place, where my father spent many of
the most useful years of his life, I propose to mention it without
going into more particulars."
The course of Miss Sally's narrative must here be
interrupted, first to introduce another letter from her to
her friend, Mrs. Baldwin, and then to recognize her
father's valuable service in the responsible work for
which the Elector had summoned him back to Munich.
" MUNICH, October 16, 1796.
lt Mv DEAR MRS. BALDWIN, Though this is the third
letter that I have written you since I left America, and I
have never received a line from you, yet I cannot refuse
myself the pleasure of writing you a few lines to tell you
I am well and happy, and that I often think of you. I
arrived here with my father after a pleasant journey of three
weeks and two days from London. My reception here was
highly flattering, and I have every reason to be pleased and happy
with my new situation. This country is much more like America
than England, and the climate is exactly like that I have ever been
used to in America, so that I sometimes almost fancy myself there.
The town of Munich is large, clean, and well built, and it affords
every public amusement that is to be found in any city of Europe.
Be so good as to give my respects to your husband, and love to
the children. I am, with real esteem and friendship,
" Affectionately yours,
"SARAH RUMFORD.' r
18
274 Life of Count Rumford.
Had the daughter written the pages which have been
copied at the date of the incidents related in them, she
would doubtless have had much more to tell us about
the distractions arid anxieties of the time and place on
her arrival in Munich. Her father was for a few weeks
engrossed and heavily burdened by the responsibilities
laid upon him in the turmoil which then convulsed the
continent of Europe. Bavaria sought to maintain a
rigid neutrality between the contending powers of the
great revolutionary upheaval, and was therefore, of
course, in imminent risk of being scourged by either or
both of them. The immunity with which, for a time,
she escaped was secured to her by the wisdom and skill
of Count Rumford, whose services in the emergency
were most gratefully appreciated. His military talent
was again called into exercise to meet a threatening
emergency. General Moreau, after having crossed the
Rhine, and by a series of successes beaten the various
corps which had disputed his passage and his onward
march, made an advance towards Bavaria. Count Rum-
ford arrived at Munich eight days before the Elector
was compelled to quit his residence and to take refuge
in Saxony. Rumford remained in the city with full
delegated authority, and with instructions from the
Elector to watch the course of events, and to act accord-
ing to the exigency of circumstances. These were not slow
in requiring his intervention. After the battle of Fried-
burg the Austrians, repulsed by the French, withdrew
to Munich. The gates of the city were shut against
them. They then made a circuit, passed the Iser by
the bridge, and established themselves on the other side
of the river on a height which commanded the bridge
and the city. There they planted batteries, and anx-
Life of Count Rumford. 275
iously awaited the coming up of the French forces. In
this situation some incautious proceedings which took
place in Munich were interpreted by the Austrian gen-
eral as an insult aimed at himself, and he demanded the
reason of the Council of the Regency, at the head of which
was Rumford. He also gave the menace of an imme-
diate attack upon the city if a single Frenchman should
be allowed to enter it.
At this critical moment Rumford availed himself of
the ultimate orders of the Elector to take the chief com-
mand of the Bavarian forces. His firmness and pres-
ence of mind impressed both parties. Neither the French
nor the Austrians entered Munich, and that city, escap-
ing the direful calamities which had been so imminent,
was soon' after delivered from the presence of the hostile
forces. But before, and while the danger lasted, Munich
was full of Bavarian troops, and the Count did not for-
get his philosophical and economical v experiments, for
which he had new and emergent occasions and oppor-
tunities. The care of sheltering and feeding this large
body of Electoral forces came upon him, and he turned
the task to the account of science. He tells us in his
Essays how he plied his ingenuity in the processes of
cooking, and in his improvements in boilers and in the
saving of fuel, to.make the soldiers more comfortable than
ever they had been before, and at much less expense.
On the return of the Elector he made the warmest
recognition of the value of Rumford' s services, which
exceeded his ability to reward them. The Count was
then placed at the head of the Department of General
Police in Bavaria. The services which he rendered in
this position, though less brilliant than his military re-
forms, were neither less valuable nor less signal. While
276 Life of Count Riimford.
we resume again the light relations given to us by the
American girl about her court life, and her frequent
misunderstandings with her father, we must think of him
as weighed down by many heavy cares which might at
times make him irritable and unsympathetic with a
country maiden's fancies. The Count also at this
period encountered much opposition in the exercise of
his office, and began to feel with some severity the force
of the jealousy turned against him as a foreigner invested
with so many intermeddling functions. The excursions
which were to his daughter but the pleasurable incidents
and interchanges of an unemployed life were sought for
by him as means and intervals of relief from over-work,
which, while engaging his zeal and activity, made serious
breaches upon his health, and more than once threatened
him with fatal disease.
We have a pleasing reference to the intimacy which
existed between Count Rumford and that complacent
Scotch cosmopolite, Sir John Sinclair, in the published
correspondence of the latter. He introduces a letter
which he received from Rumford, written just after the
temporary subsidence of this war alarm, with the follow-
ing comment :
" From similarity of pursuits I had contracted [in London] a
cordial friendship with Count Rumford, a well-known native of
America. He was a man of an ardent mind, which enabled him
to conquer many difficulties ; and by his inquiries regarding the
proper application of heat he introduced many useful discoveries
which will find their way to many countries, even where the
name of the inventor may remain unknown.
" Among a number of communications the following is one
of the most important, as it exhibits the distinguished philosopher
placed at the head of an army in a foreign country, yet anxious
to withdraw from active life, and to resume the more pleasing
employment of scientific investigation:
Life of Count Rumford. 277
"MUNICH, 1 6th October, 1756.
" I thank you, my dear Sir John, for your friendly letter,
which I have just received. I am glad your new kitchen [one
of which the Count had had the supervision] answers your ex-
pectations, and hope it will be imitated. I ought to have begun
my letter by acquainting you that immediately on my arrival
here from England I delivered to the Elector the diploma you
sent him [of membership of an agricultural society], and that I
had it in charge from his most Serene Highness to express to you
his thanks for your attentions to him. He appeared to me to be
much pleased at being chosen a member of your Board, and will,
I am confident, have great satisfaction in contributing as much
as possible to the success of your laudable undertakings. I have
projected several new experiments, from the results of which I
hope to get some new light with respect to vegetation and nutri-
tion ; but I am at present so much employed with business of a
very different kind (the command of the Bavarian army), that I
have no leisure to give to my favourite pursuits. But as the
alarms which were the occasion of my being called upon to take
the command in chief of the Bavarian troops have subsided since
the French armies have left our neighbourhood, I hope soon to be
able to put up my sword and resume the more pleasing occupa-
tions of science and philosophical experiment.
" Wishing you much success in your endeavours to promote
the prosperity of mankind, by the introduction of useful improve-
ments, I am, my dear Sir John, with unfeigned regard and
esteem,
" Your affectionate and most obedient Servant,
"RUMFORD.
" P. S. I am very sorry indeed to hear you have withdrawn
ydurself from the c Great Council of the Nation.' Pray don't
let yourself be disgusted or discouraged. The cause is good,
and perseverance will in the end command success."
It is probable that if Count Rumford, remaining in
* The Correspondence of the Right Hon. Sir John Sinclair, Bart., &c. London.
1831. Vol. II. pp. 57-59.
278 Life of Count Rumford.
England, and closing his relations with Bavaria, had
sought political position and influence, he might have
found a seat in the House of Commons, or even a subor-
dinate office in the Cabinet. His foreign duties and his
obligations to the Elector debarred him, however, from
many positions of trust and honor in England, while,
as we shall soon see, the fact of his being a British-born
subject was a constitutional or conventional obstacle in
the way of his exercising a very high diplomatic office
which the Elector had assigned him.
The following letter of Colonel Baldwin to Josiah
Pierce, half-brother of Count Rumford, concerns the
latter' s kind care for their mother:
" WOBURN, November 12, 1796.
"DEAR SIR, I have received several letters from your
brother, Count Rumford, and his daughter Sally, all dated at
London. As one of the Count's letters relates principally to
your mother's concerns, I have transcribed it and enclose a copy
thereof for her perusal [referring to the letter dated July, 1796],
which you will please to deliver to her. Consult and determine
in what mode you would wish to have the business negotiated.
If you were coming here on business, you might bring an order
from your mother, drawn agreeably to your brother's plan, which
you will see in the copy of the letter herewith transmitted. You
might also take her power of attorney, which would enable you
to conform to any unforeseen circumstances. If you have no
business, or it should be inconvenient for you to come up, it
may be negotiated without your coming at present. My atten-
tion is fully occupied, but I shall not hesitate to devote sufficient
time to effect this benevolent design.
" I do not know whether Sally has written to any of your family,
but she is very full in her apologies for not writing to more of
her friends, and wishes us to communicate her grateful remem-
brance and love to her relations and friends. There seems an
Life of Count Rumford. 279
unbounded love and affection between her and her father j they
are delighted with each other. I participate in their happi-
ness.
cc
I wish to inquire whether it would be agreeable to you
to close the business in which we have been partners, and
what your expectations are, and the proposition you would wish
to make for a settlement. And I also wish for your opin-
ion whether I could settle a son in your neighborhood upon
a plan that would be flattering ; and if it is not too much
trouble, that you would state the objects proper to direct our
attention to, and any circumstances that might operate against
them.
" Mr. Ingals, the bearer, is waiting. I have no time to enlarge.
I am pleased to see him so well. Mrs. Baldwin joins with me
in respects to your father and mother, and love to Mrs. Pierce,
and compliments to Dr. Thompson and lady, and all inquiring
friends; and am, with much esteem, dear Sir,
u Your obedient Servant,
" LOAMMl BALDWIN.
"JosiAH PIERCE, Esq." [Then residing in Flintstown, Me.]
Mr. Baldwin, who was a scrupulously exact man of
business, found it necessary to be very careful in the
friendly agency which he sustained between the Count
and those with whom he had pecuniary transactions.
From a copy of a letter addressed by him to Mrs. Ruth
Pierce at Flintstown, which I hav-e before me, dated
February 2, 1797, I observe that he asked her to re-
quest her sons, Josiah and John, to pay her the value
of the draft out of some funds of his own in their pos-
session. The reason he gives for the request is, that,
having advanced money to Sally when she sailed for
London, he had sold the draft on London which she had
given him in payment, and that this had come back pro-
tested, putting him to charges for that and the loss of
280 Life of Count Rumford.
interest. The purchaser had proposed to be lenient in
his exactions if he could have as a substitute the new
draft in favor of the Count's mother, to replace that of
her granddaughter.
One of Mrs. Pierce's orders upon Mr. Baldwin is as
follows :
" FLINTSTOWN, June 6, 1797.
"SiR, If you will deliver Mr. Barnard Douglass the bill of
exchange which my son, Count Rumford, requested you to draw
in my favor for the year 1797, or, if the bill is sold, the pro-
ceeds of it, you will greatly oblige her who is, with the great-
est esteem and respect,
" Yours,
"RUTH PIERCE."
An indorsement on the above reads :
"BOSTON, June 17, 1797. Received of Loammi Baldwin
a set of bills of exchange, drawn by him in my favor, on Sir
Robert Herries & Co., Bankers, St. James Street, London, dated
March 26, 1797, for the sum of Thirty Pounds sterling, which
bills I promise to sell for the most they will sell for, and deliver
the proceeds of sale thereof to Mrs. Ruth Pierce, agreeably to
the within order.
BARNARD DOUGLASS."
" Attest, BENJ. F. BALDWIN."
Here is a letter from the Count to his friend Bald-
win, of a most pleasing tenor. It again refers to the
wish of the writer at least to make a visit to his native
country, and it relates the grateful circumstances under
which his daughter received her title as Countess, and
her pension, both of which she enjoyed to the close of
her life.
Life of Count Rumford. 281
"MUNICH, 1 5th Feb., 1797.
" DEAR SIR, I have this day sent under cover to Mr.
Pearson, Secretary to the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, a power of Attorney, authorising you and Dr. Wil-
lard to transfer 5000 Dollars American 3 per cent Stock, which
now stands in my name in the Books of the Treasury of the
United States, to the Fellows of the said Academy. The loss
of the original Certificate which was issued for this Stock may
perhaps occasion some delay in the completion of this business,
but I hope you will find means to finish it without much trouble
to yourselves.
" As soon as this is done, I shall request your assistance in
transferring an equal sum to my much-loved Mother, to whom
I am desirous of giving a small token of my filial affection, and
of my sincere gratitude for all her kindness to me in the early
part of my life.
" My Daughter, who is with me, and who is the comfort of
my life, desires her most particular compliments to you and to
your Lady. She often mentions your goodness to her, and
looks forward with impatience to the time when she hopes to
pay you a visit accompanied by her Father.
" Nothing could afford me so much heartfelt pleasure as to
be able to gratify these her most earnest wishes, which are so
natural, and which I feel perhaps still stronger than she does.
She is a very good Girl, and is much loved here by everybody
who knows her.
" The Elector has lately made me very happy by permitting
me to resign to her one half of a Pension I enjoyed, which was
granted to me several years ago as a reward for my public ser-
vices. Two Thousand Florins a year (equal to about two hun-
dred pounds sterling) are secured during her life to my Daugh-
ter (who has been received at Court as a Countess of the
Empire). And this grant is accompanied by a circumstance
which renders it peculiarly agreeable to her and to me, which is
that she may enjoy her Pension in any country in which she
may choose to reside.
u She is now above want, and her happiness in life will de-
282 Life of Count Rumford.
pend on herself. The best advice I can give her she will not
fail to receive.
" I was happy to learn that you are so busily employed in
schemes of public utility. Our juvenile pursuits and our amuse-
ments were always the same, and we have neither of us any
reason to complain of the frowns of fortune.
" I am, my Dear Sir, with unalterable Esteem,
" Yours Affectionately,
" RUMFORD.
" The Hon b ! e LOAMMI BALDWIN,
Woburn, near Boston."
(" Received at Boston Post- Office, June 10, 1797.")
The above indorsement on this letter, indicating the
lapse of nearly four months between its date and its
receipt, is an indication of the difficulties and delays
attending transatlantic correspondence when the ocean
and the land were the scenes of revolutionary struggles.
Under the same date the Count addressed the follow-
ing letter to President Willard, of Harvard College.
"MUNICH, 1 5th February, 1797.
" Being charged by my daughter to forward to you the en-
closed letter, I cannot help adding a line, to return you my
sincere thanks for your very friendly letter. I ought, perhaps,
at the same time to ask your pardon for the liberty I have
taken in sending, under cover to Mr. Pearson [Prof. Pearson
was then Corresponding Secretary of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences], a power of attorney to you and my friend
Col. Baldwin, authorising you to make a transfer for me of
five thousand dollars . American three per cent Stock to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
" I feel myself highly flattered by the approbation you are
pleased to express of my Essays. .It has ever been my most
ardent wish to be of some use to jnankind, to be able to flatter
Life of Count Riimford. 283
myself when I am going out of the world that I have lived to
some useful purpose. And I feel very grateful to Providence
for the many opportunities I have had of pursuing with effect
my favorite object. There are few persons, I believe, who
have passed through a greater variety of interesting scenes than
myself, and no one surely can feel more deeply, more intensely,
everything that is interesting and affecting in the occurrences of
life.
" My daughter, who will never forget your kindness to her,
desires me to present her best respects. Permit me to join with
her in thanks, and to assure you that I shall never cease to be,
with unfeigned regard and esteem, my dear Sir,
" Yours, most sincerely,
"RUMFORD."*
The following long letter of the Count to Baldwin
will be found referring to many matters of interest,
especially to some relating to the private affairs of the
writer, and to certain annoying and perplexing transac-
tions with which he seems to have been embarrassed by
relatives of his wife and daughter in America.
"MUNICH, 1 7th Dec r ., 1797-
" MY DEAR SIR, I am still in a state of uncertainty re-
specting the fate of a number of letters on matters of importance
to me, which I wrote to several of my friends in America, and
among others to yourself, in February last. I have, however,
some reason to think that they arrived safe, and that the an-
swers to them were lost between England and Hamburgh, in
their way to Germany, in June last. An English packet-boat
on which I know there were letters for me which had come
from America, addressed to the care of my Banker in London,
was taken by the French at that time, and I think it more than
probable that these were answers to my letters of February last,
* Memorials of Youth and Manhood. By Sydney Willard.
284 Life of Count Rumford.
above mentioned. As soon as I was acquainted with the loss
of these Letters, I immediately wrote to my friends in America
to acquaint them with that accident, and to request them to
send me duplicates of their last letters ; but since that time
I have received no news whatever from your side of the
Atlantic.
" My letters of February last related chiefly to arrangements
which were necessary to complete the business relative to my
donation to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in
which business I had requested and duly impowered you to take
a principal part. And I trust you will have found means to
complete those arrangements in a manner satisfactory to the
Academy. Should anything more be necessary to be done by
me, you will be so good as to indicate to me what is farther
necessary, and I shall lose no time in doing it.
" I have now, my Dear Sir, to request your friendly assist-
ance in a matter of a more private and confidential nature, and
which I have much at heart to have properly arranged. Many
years ago I wrote to a man in America, whose name I cannot
pronounce without indignation, to desire that he would take the
care, &c., &c.
u There is another affair of a very interesting nature, at least
very interesting to my feelings, in which it is in your power to
render me a very important service. My Daughter (who
charges me with her best compliments for you and your Lady)
never ceases her solicitations to engage me to pay a visit to my
friends in America. And her wishes are so powerfully sec-
onded by my own feelings and longing desires to breathe once
more my native air, that I have come to a resolution to make
the journey as soon as the restoration of Peace and the arrange-
ment of my concerns in this country will permit it. If the
public affairs of Europe and of America take the turn I ex-
pect, and if no unforeseen event should happen to prevent my
carrying my Schemes into execution, I think you will see
us in America in 15 or 16 Months from this time. In the
meantime, there are several private family concerns which I
could much wish might be arranged and settled before my
Life of Count Rumford. 285
arrival in America ; and you will oblige me very much by lend-
ing me your friendly assistance in that business.
" Either myself or my Daughter must have an undoubted
legal claim to the Personal Estate left by my late wife at her
death. But as, since my seperation from my family in the year
1774, I have, by my own exertions, acquired a sufficiency, not
only for my own comfortable support during my life, but also to
enable me to make a handsome provision for my Daughter, and
even to give her something to dispose of by will to any of her
friends to whom she may wish to leave tokens of her affection,
I have no wish to bring forward any claims, either for myself or
for my Daughter, relative to her Mother's fortune, or to call
those to any account who are in possession of it; and for their
quiet and security I am willing to renounce in the most formal
manner all claims on that account, and to engage my Daughter
to do so. also: provided, however, and this is a condition on
which I shall insist, that receipts and general charges are signed
on both sides.
" This proposition was made, by my direction, by my Daugh-
ter soon after my arrival in England, in a letter to her brother,
Mr. Rolfe. But as no answer has yet been made to it, I am
apprehensive that my Daughter's letter miscarried, or (what I
should be very sorry to be forced to believe) that Mr. Rolfe
does not chuse to be satisfied with this proposal. As the final
and irrevocable settlement of this business is a matter I have
much at heart, I wish you would undertake to settle it, and I
hereby authorise you to do so in mine and my Daughter's names,
and to sign in our behalf whatever may be necessary to put
the matter beyond all possibility of farther litigation or dispute.
Should it be necessary for you to take a journey to Concord to
do this, I should be much obliged to you if you would do so,
on condition, however, that you make the journey entirely
at my expense.
" Should any attempt be made by Mr. Rolfe to bring forward
any demands for maintenance, sV., you will, I trust, without
much difficulty, be able to make him feel how very unjust and
improper such pretensions would be under any imaginable cir:um-
286 Life of Count Rumford.
stances, but especially after the very generous offers that have
been made to him. Should, however, such demands be not
only made, but insisted on, you will please to declare in my
name, not only that they will never be admitted, but also that
the offer already made will be revoked, and other measures pur-
sued. You may also, in that case, give Mr. Rolfe to under-
stand, at parting, that I shall take care that his Sister, in the
Will I have enabled her to make, shall not forget his usage of
her. Should he behave handsomely in this business, you will,
of course, avoid saying anything to him that would wound his
feelings. I should never have had any suspicions of his be-
having otherwise than handsomely, had it not been for a speci-
men of his manner of making up accounts which I saw among
the papers my Daughter brought with her from America, and
from the circumstance of his never having answered any of her
letters. Though my Daughter is quite willing to renounce all
pretensions to her mother's fortune, yet she is naturally desirous
to have something that belonged to her to keep in remembrance
of her, a string of beads, a ring, or something of that kind,
and she desires that you and her Brother would select some
article of this sort for this purpose.
" There is another concern which my Daughter requests that
you would settle for her at Concord. Her Grandfather Walker
left her a legacy in his Will which has not yet been paid. She
desires you would apply to her Uncle, the Hon. Judge Walker,
from whom she is to receive this Legacy, for his note of hand,
on interest for the amount of it ; and for the interest upon it
since it became due, from the i8th October, 1792, when she
compleated her eighteenth year. You may at the same time
acquaint Judge Walker, that, in case of my Daughter's death,
this money will (according to the dispositions of her last Will
and Testament) return to the family from which she received
it. In the meantime, she very naturally wishes that this prop-
erty might be properly secured to her, and that it might be on
interest.
" There is another pecuniary affair which I should be
obliged to you if you would settle for myself with Mr.
Life of Count Rumford. 287
Walker. He has, for these last twenty years at least, paid
the Taxes, on my behalf, for four shares (or perhaps they
may be six) which belong to me in a new Township, called
Pennicook, lying somewhere near Saco river. Will you be
so good as to repay him these advances, with the inter-
est, &c.
" I wish you would also make inquiries respecting the quan-
tity, quality, situation, and value of these lands, and let me
know whether it would be most advisable for me to keep them
or to part with them. ,
u There is still one more commission with which we are
desirous of troubling you ; and though it is rather of an un-
common nature, and may be attended with some embarrass-
ment, we cannot help flattering ourselves that you will under-
take it. I must introduce it by an account of a little event
which gave rise to the idea of the undertaking, in the execution
of which we shall request your assistance. .
" In March last my Daughter, desirous of celebrating my
birth-day in a manner which she thought would be pleasing to
me, went privately to the House of Industry, and, choosing out
half a dozen of the most industrious of the little Boys of 8
and 10 years of age, and as many Girls, dressed them new,
from hand to foot, in the uniform of that public Establishment
at her own expence, and, dressing herself in white, early in the
morning of my birth-day, led them into my room and presented
them to me when I was at breakfast.
" I was so much affected by this proof of her affection for
me, and by the lively pleasure that she enjoyed in it, that I
resolved that it should not be forgotten ; and immediately
formed a scheme for perpetuating the remembrance of it, and
often renewing the pleasure the recollection of it must afford
her. I made her a present of 2000 Dollars American three
per cent Stock, on the express condition that she should appro-
priate it In her Will, as a capital for clothing every year, forever,
on her birth-day, twelve poor and industrious Children, namely,
6 Girls, and 6 Boys, each of them to be furnished with a com-
plete suit of new clothing, of the value of five Dollars, made
288 Life of Count Rumford.
up in the same form and colours as the uniforms of the poor
children she clothed on my birthday.
" To complete this arrangement it was necessary to deter-
mine who should be the objects of this charitable foundation,
and it gave me much satisfaction to find that my Daughter did
not hesitate a moment in making her option. She immediately
expressed her wishes that it might be the poor children of the
Town where she was born, a spot which will ever be very
dear to her, and where she is anxious to be remembered with
kindness and affection.
" Though the inhabitants of the Town of Concord are too
rich, and have, fortunately, too small a number of objects of
charity, to stand in need of such a donation as that which my
Daughter is desirous of their accepting at her hands, yet, as
the object she has principally in view the encouragement qf
Industry among the children of the most indigent classes of
society must meet the approbation of all good and wise men,
she cannot help flattering herself that the Town of Concord
will do her the favour and the honour to accept of this donation
for the purpose stipulated, and that either the Selectman of the
Town, or the Overseers of the Poor, for the time being, will
take the trouble annually, of seeing that the conditions of it are
fulfilled.
" What I have to request of you, my Dear Sir, is, that you
would mention this matter to some of the principal Inhabitants
of Concord, and endeavour to obtain their approbation of the
scheme and a promise of their support of it, and their assistance
in carrying it into execution. As soon as I shall be informed
by you that our Plan meets with their approbation, my Daugh-
ter will make an application to them in a more direct and formal
manner ; and I hereby engage to be her surety for the punctual
performance of all that she may promise in the progress of this
business.
" I shall hasten to conclude this long epistle by requesting
that you would excuse the liberty I take in giving you so much
trouble with my affairs, and that you would rest assured that I
shall not fail to embrace with eagerness every opportunity that
Life of Count Rumford. 289
shall offer of giving you the most convincing proofs of my grati-
tude, as well as of the unfeigned regard and esteem with which
I am, my dear Friend,
" Most affectionately Yours,
"RUMFORD.
" The Hon b ! e Col. LOAMMI BALDWIN.
("Received April 21, 1798.")
This " long epistle," as the Count well describes it,
can hardly have failed to engage the attention of the
reader as giving hints and intimations of some of those
traits in the writer which express his real character. He
evidently cherished a serious intention of at least mak-
ing a visit with his daughter to his native country, if
not also of taking up his permanent residence here.
His fame was now well established in America, and
many friends and correspondents whom he had here
were prepared to welcome him with pride and gratitude.
I have come upon many contemporary evidences that
several of these friends were engaged in selecting for
him a desirable estate, which he might purchase and
improve, and had written to him very freely upon the
subject. It was just at a period when some of the
most extensive private domains were purchased at small
cost by gentlemen rich for those days, who built upon
them substantial mansion-houses, and introduced some
of the earlier improvements of agriculture. Count
Rumford would have been a conspicuous example
among this class, and would surely have signalized
his renewed citizenship in Massachusetts by building a
stately mansion, adorning pleasure-grounds, and man-
aging a farm. It would seem as if the region which
drew the preferences of his friends and advisers was in
the neighborhood lying between what are now known
as North Cambridge and Belmont.
19
290 Life of Count Rumford.
But before finally committing himself even to a tem-
porary visit to the scenes and companions of his early
years, Count Rumford, with that deliberate and cau-
tious wisdom of providing conveniences and safeguards
for his plans which was habitual with him, determined
to have all seeming difficulties and embarrassments re-
moved or disposed of. He was still a proscribed and
outlawed exile, alike by the laws of Massachusetts and
of New Hampshire ; and the general government had
no power to remove these disabilities, even had it
sought to do so. His return and residence here could
only have been by sufferance, but his eminence attained
abroad would be expected to secure him immunity
from slight or insult. The inhabitants of Woburn,
not to be behind the State or any of its municipalities,
had voted in town meeting, May 12, 1783, "that the
absentees and conspirators, or refugees, ought never
to be suffered to return, but be excluded from having
lot or portion among us." Nor could he legally, as
an alien, hold real estate within our territory. As we
have already seen, he had previously inquired of his
friend Baldwin whether he might safely venture to
return, and whether " party spirit " was at all abated.
He would have found at work here at that time a
party spirit of the most intense and virulent character,
though it concerned other issues than those in which he
had been involved.
The same local legislation which outlawed him had
also deprived him of all property rights and claims on
this soil. His references to such claims as still valid
must be interpreted accordingly. The patriotic posi-
tion which the members of his family and that of his
* Sewall's History.
Life of Count Rumford. 291
wife had taken and maintained when he fled the coun-
try secured to them, of course, the property in which
he otherwise would have had an interest. At no sub-
sequent period could he have interfered in its manage-
ment, or disposed of, or advised the disposal of, any
part of it, except by the same sufferance from those
immediately concerned, who would have winked at his
presence in this country. The property of his deceased
wife, having come for the most part from her former
husband, Colonel Rolfe, would mainly go to her son
by him, Paul Rolfe. A portion of the widow's dower,
which she had enjoyed as Mrs. Thompson, would
legally descend to the Count's daughter by her. But
it would seem that while her inheritance of this was in
some way impeded, the Count had reason to apprehend
that he might be made independently answerable for the
charges of his daughter's maintenance and education
during the years in which her father had apparently
left her to the care of others. The disrepute attached
to his own name in Concord till he had won for it
eminent distinction, would allow of irregularity and
even of injustice in the transactions of administrators
and guardians. As to the cc man in America " whose
name, as the Count wrote to Colonel Baldwin, he
"could not pronounce without indignation," it is
hardly worth our while to inquire. Yet I think I
might name him, though I should be unwilling to
justify any charge thus implied against him. It is
interesting to note the Count's incidental assertion that
he had written to this man cc many years ago." The
period designated is indefinite, but it must suggest a
date of the Count's intercourse by correspondence with
some one near his early home previous to any letter
292 Life of Count Rumford.
which I have been able to obtain. The Count shows
his willingness to renounce, even on his daughter's be-
half, all claims which she or he might have upon the
estate of his deceased wife, and he assumes the whole
responsibility of her maintenance henceforward, and of
provision for her survival ; covenanting, however, as a
condition, that no charges for the past should be set up
against him or her. This requisition he enforces with
a threat concerning last wills and testaments to be
insured by a foreign sanction. Miss Sarah's Grand-
father Walker had left her a legacy of 140 when she
should be married, or be eighteen years of age. On
this the Count had computed interest from the com-
pletion of her eighteenth year up to the time of his
writing. This he required for her, with a generous
stipulation that it should revert at her decease to the
Walker family. He tenderly demands for her also
some keepsake of affection, if it be but " a string of
beads," of the lonely mother whom she had loved.
I am inclined to think that the parties concerned
made no serious effort in reference to the Count's in-
validated rights to the shares in some wild land in
Maine.
A lively account will be found further on, from the
daughter's pen, of the celebration of her father's birth-
day which suggested to him the proposition submitted
to the selectmen of Concord. The Count did not ex-
ercise his usual discretion, and seems to have become
wellnigh oblivious of the characteristics of his native
land, when he suggested the introduction here of one
of the most odious customs of the Old World, in associ-
ating a grotesque pauper uniform with a beneficiary
institution. Children so disfigured in their array would
Life of Count Rumford. 293
have been a ridiculous spectacle in a New England
country town, and their garb, which would have made
them a jeer, would have been a severer infliction than
their poverty.
The matters referred to in the long epistle are recog-
nized in the correspondence which follows.
"WOBURN, March 26, 1798.
" MY DEAR COUNT, I have been waiting in expectation,
from time to time, that I should soon have it in my power to
announce to you the full and complete negotiation of your most
liberal donation to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
which has been delayed the longer as we did not very readily
find the precise mode of making the transfer where the original
certificates (as in this case) were lost. However, the business
is finally completed, and the Academy is in the full possession of
your generous donation of five thousand dollars, three per cent
Stock of the United States, a donation the most liberal and im-
portant of any that this Society has ever realized. And notwith-
standing you may not have heard (as you might justly expect)
much from us during the transfer, yet I do assure you that this
event has not been marked with silence here.
" There is a committee of the Academy appointed to address
you upon this pleasing occasion, and I hope erelong we shall
have the renewed pleasure of transmitting to you some fruits
of your solicitous endeavors to investigate a subject so difficult,
and, at the same time, so important to mankind. It rather
seems a mystery that the philosophy of Fire and Light, the
most effulgent agents in nature, should be the most difficult to
see into and investigate.
" Your much esteemed Essays are now republishing by Mr.
David West, of Boston. This book, besides the great utility
of the various subjects it treats of, is highly valued for the style
in which it is written, and has been recommended by some of
our professors in languages as the best sample for imitation of
any extant.
294 Life of Count Rumford.
" I have now only to add my love to your daughter, the
Countess, to whom Mrs. Baldwin has just written, and close
at this time with that sentiment I have so often expressed, with-
out which I don't know that I shall ever conclude another letter
until the object (which is to see you once more in your native
country) is obtained.
" I have the honor to be, with great respect, my dear Count,
" Your obedient and very humble servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
"SiR BENJAMIN, Count of Rumford."
"The above letter to be forwarded by Dr. Welsh's son,
of Boston, who is going to Berlin, as Secretary to Mr. Adams,
the American Minister at that Court.
("Sealed up, July 30, 1798.")
Considering the punctilious character, especially in
all business affairs, both of Count Rumford and of
Colonel Baldwin, it must have been a grievous vexa-
tion to them that, besides the delays connected with the
transmission of letters, there should have happened a
protest of a note drawn by the Countess for the benefit
of his mother, as this letter indicates.
"MUNICH, yth January, 1798.
" DEAR SIR, By some unaccountable delay, your letter of
the 5th Dec!, 1796, did not reach me till a few days ago. My
Bankers in London, Sir Robert Herries & Co., of St. James'
St., have directed their Correspondent in Boston (whose name
you will be made acquainted with) to pay you the amount of
the Bill of Exchange drawn by my Daughter on my late Agent
in London, Capt. Armstrong, for 30 sterling, dated Boston,
October 23 d , 1795, together with the Costs arising from the
protest of that Bill, Interest, &c., which altogether amounted
to 32. 5. 9. sterling, according to the account you have trans-
Life of Count Rumford. 295
mitted to me in your letter above mentioned, of the 5 th Deer,
1798, which, together with the interest on the same since that
time, you will now receive.
a I am, Sir, Your most Obedient Servant,
"RUMFORD. -
" The Hon b ! e LOAMMI BALDWIN,
u Senator, &c. Woburn, near Boston,
Massachusetts.
" North America."
It must have been with some misgivings of his own
that Colonel Baldwin, in the following letter, commu-
nicated to the Selectmen of Concord, N. H., the prop-
osition concerning a charitable institution.
" WOBURN, 24th September, 1798.
" GENTLEMEN, Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count of Rum-
ford, and his daughter, the Countess of Rumford, now at
Munich in Bavaria, have made provision for establishing a fund
of two thousand dollars, three per cent Stock of the United
States, the income whereof is to be appropriated to clothe annu-
ally in the uniform of the House of Industry at Munich, on the
23d of October, forever, twelve poor and industrious children
of the town of Concord, being the place of his daughter's birth,
a spot dear to her, and where she is anxious to be remembered
with kindness and affection.
" The Count seems well apprised of the flourishing state of
your town, that it is above the need of his assistance. Yet, as
the encouragement of industry seems a principal object with
him, they hope that the scheme will meet your approbation,
In a letter which I received from the Count, dated the i;th
December, 1797, wherein this plan of the institution was pro-
posed, is a paragraph to the following effect :
"' Though the inhabitants .... of it are fulfilled/
"There is also in the same letter a closing paragraph, which
is as follows, namely :
" ' What I have to request .... this business.'
296 Life of Count Rumford.
" I hope the foregoing sketches will be sufficient to give you
the outlines of this plan. I have had conversation with several
gentlemen of the town of Concord upon the same business, who
will perhaps be able to give further information respecting the
matter; particularly I beg leave to refer you to the Hon. Judge
Walker, to whom I have communicated the contents of the
letter which I have received upon this subject from the Count.
"When I contemplate the many, the very many, important
improvements, institutions, and establishments the Count has
made, which go directly to meliorate the condition of mankind,
I am led, with grateful pleasure, to bless his name, and glory in
our country which gave him birth. And I should rest in full
confidence that your proceedings and report in this concern will
be such as will aid his usefulness and extend his benevolence in
the world.
" I have all along intended to wait on you in person with the
Count's proposals, but have hitherto been disappointed, and now
despair of having that pleasure this season ; and so much time
has elapsed since I received them that I have now only to re-
quest that your consideration and decision in the premises may
be as speedy as their nature and your convenience will admit,
and shall wait your advice.
" I am, with the greatest consideration and respect, gentlemen,
" Your most obedient servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" THE GENTLEMEN, SELECTMEN OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD,
N. Hampshire."
The occasion which prompted this intended pro-
vision for some poor children in Concord, and the
form which was proposed for it, will be found, as before
intimated, to be explained by and by in the daughter's
autobiography. The true spirit of New England inde-
pendence and pride, still with an eye open to worldly
thrift, and a consciousness that money received in one
way or for one object which would be objectionable
Life of Count Rumford. 297
may still be made available in another way and for
another object, is to be observed in the following reply
of the selectmen to Count Rumford, through Colonel
Baldwin. They will be very glad to receive the money
proffered by him and his daughter, and though they
dislike the conditions prescribed for the gift, and freely
express their objections, they will manage in some
manner to accept them, rather than lose the money,
offering, meanwhile, an opportunity for the modification
of the terms.
"CONCORD, N. H., Nov. 17, 1798.
" DEAR SIR, In your obliging letter of the 24th Sept.,
which we had the honor to receive, we find stated a plan of
an Institution, proposed by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count
of Rumford, and his daughter, the Countess of Rumford, for
establishing a fund of two thousand dollars, 3 per cent stock of
the United States, the income of which is to be appropriated to
clothe, annually, in the uniform of the House of Industry at
Munich, twelve poor, industrious children of the town of
Concord, and the same to continue in perpetuam.
"Having attentively considered the* proposals of the Count
and his daughter, we, as a committee, in behalf of the town
of Concord, request the favor of you, sir, to communicate to
them the following, viz. :
" That the object under consideration, to wit, the encourage-
ment to industry, appears to us important, and meets the appro-
bation of every good and enlightened citizen ; but that the
means proposed to be used for the accomplishment of that
object will have the desired effect is with us a doubt.
Whether the clothing of these twelve children, which to
them will be temporary, or minds well informed in useful
knowledge, which will be durable, and of which none can
deprive them, will be most likely to effectuate so noble and
benevolent a design, are questions which we beg leave to submit
to their judicious consideration.
298 Life of Count Rumford.
u That although a spirit of industry may be excited in children
by holding up to them the idea of clothing, and that from that
clothing a temporary comfort will indeed arise, yet we humbly
conceive that by furnishing them with the means of acquiring
moral and political knowledge they might be equally excited,
and, should their proficiency be good, which, from observing
the general desire after knowledge among our youth, we do not
doubt, it would not only afford them present comfort, but will
directly tend to meliorate their several conditions in this life,
will prepare them more fully to enjoy the blessings of civil and
religious liberty, and induce them, as they rise into active life,
more cordially to bless the memory of their munificent bene-
factress.
" Whichsoever may appear most effectual in bringing about
the object of the Institution, we beg leave of you, sir, to
inform Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count of Rumford, and his
daughter, the Countess of Rumford, that we will, with grateful
hearts, accept the donation for the stipulated design, and that
we shall with the greatest pleasure exert our united influence
to aid them in the accomplishment of so important and benevo-
lent a purpose,
" We are, sir, most respectfully yours,
"JOHN ODLIN, | Selectme "
RICHARD AYER, } r c
' Concord.
" HON. LOAMMI BALDWIN, Woburn, Mass."
No further steps were taken during the lifetime of
the Count in reference to this proposition. His daugh-
ter cherished through her life the purpose of sub-
stantially carrying into effect the original design of her
father, or of establishing some equivalent substitute for
it. She accordingly made a provision in her will, very
generous in its terms, though it still waits for full
realization in a philanthropic institution. Mention
will be made of this in its proper place. I now re-
sume her narrative.
Life of Count Rumford. 299
tc The amusements were refined, from their being at court.
The Elector, at the age of seventy-one, having married an
Italian princess of seventeen, it gave rise to a joke that it was
only the numbers reversed. Unfortunately it proved more than
simply a reversement of numbers. The Electrice, besides being
accomplished and handsome, intense in her love for and inde-
fatigable in the pursuit of amusement, contrasted greatly with
the Elector's years, his want of rest and quiet. But on account
of the beautiful, spirited princess, all was gayety. Bails suc-
ceeding balls ; drawing-rooms, concerts, the same. The splen-
did palace of Nymphenbourg, the summer court residence, be-
came the seat of hilarity, fashion, and elegance. The young
Electrice figured at the head of it, singing agreeably, often
performing in public, and dancing well, though a little lame.
It was amusing to bystanders to be witnesses to the conjugal
struggles ; the Elector looking steadfastly to the door, impatient
for the moment to arrive to retire, and she, in the supplicating,
artful manner of youth, saying, c One dance more ! One dance
more ! '
" The German ladies, in general, are accomplished and
charming, vying with Parisieners, yet less celebrated ; possess-
ing the more substantial qualities of the English, those of sin-
cerity. The German gentlemen are profound in knowledge,
strict in probity, with not a shadow of conceit or foppery, with
perfect high-breeding. Undoubtedly this is why their seminaries
of learning are so esteemed and sought after. It is not in these
schools that a child would be taught duplicity, or independent
rudeness of manners, as in many others. But at this moment
the word was Reform. The effects of the French Revolution,
the great upsetter of everything, were then felt, though now,
fortunately, it is at an end, and the scales of justice, wisdom,
and good order have resumed their activity.
" I do not wish to cast blame on my father, persuaded that
in what he did, it being according to the customs of the times,
he considered it doing right. He was besides upheld by the
kindness of the Elector, as well as allowed by him the means
He seemed to be a real favorite of the Elector's, and on his side
300 Life of Count Rumford.
he was unfeignedly attached to him. Indeed, I presume the
Elector was a really good, excellent character. An anecdote is
related of him in connection with my father, which shows him
to be such, besides indulgent. In some transaction, my father
being blamed, the Elector took his part. My father afterwards,
finding that he had really been to blame, went not only to thank
the Elector, but to own his fault. The Elector replied, 'If
you had been in the wrong ten times, I would have insisted on
the contrary ! '
" From a change of times and politics, the poorhouse, with
some other institutions, I presume, have not been kept up.
But the Duke of Deux Fonts, successor to the Elector, he
who afterwards, much against his inclinations, esteeming much
more the title of Elector, was made King by Bonaparte,
was so kind as not to suffer my father's English Garden, or,
rather, the one built under his care, to fall into dilapidation.
This garden, about seven and a half miles in circumference, has
two branches of the Iser running through it, over which are
some fancifully constructed bridges. The walks and drives are
serpentine, in the English style. A Chinese tower, a cafe,
with other edifices, were placed to afford entertainment. At
the entrance a monument was erected to my father, with a
pretty inscription, before his death. English ladies' riding was
to be introduced, a reform, so-called, of high importance. Not
but what the German method for ladies was infinitely safer.
The two side-saddles brought from England by my father were
now to be put to use, in an exhibition of the English manner of
riding.
" It was the month of September, as is well known in most
northern latitudes, a fine month. The sun had lost his fiery
hue, was shining with the mild, pale lustre of declining life, or,
in other words, as denotes a change from the brilliant, capti-
vating season of the year, where smiling nature affords pleasure
with utility, instead of calm resignation. There was visible in
the court a clump of horses, with three of General Thompson's
people to tend them, the groom, the huntsman, and the
ostler ; but the huntsman, possibly, as called in German, the
Life of Count Rumford. 301
yager, is an essential personage in all military honors. He
wears a high, upright feather in a three-cornered hat, with
different livery, more distinguished than that of the other ser-
vants. There were several horses. Some appeared warm and
fatigued, as if the mounters had just quitted them, which was
the case, they being those of the General's two aides-de-camp,
Lieutenant Spreti and Captain Count Taxis, with one or two
others who had come to join their General in a riding-party,
or, as he was generally called, his Excellency. As thnee of the
horses had principal parts to act, a description of them will here
be given. They bore the names of Tancred, Fawn, and
Lambkin. The last was destined for a lady not used to riding,
requiring a gentle horse, as was Lambkin particularly so, as
the name bespoke. This lady was the Countess of Nogarola,
a particular friend of the Baron's, familiarly called by him
Mary. Tancred was for another lady, in fact, the Count's
daughter, called die Frau freilln Sally (Miss Sally), or die freilin
Gre'fin (Miss Countess). The daughter was about sixteen [and
nearly half as much more], and the friend twenty-five or
twenty-six. Tancred was nothing remarkable, but would go
very well with the free use of the whip ; but Fawn was the
personage, like the yager, the General's right-hand man and
favorite. How can such perfect beauty and excellence be de-
scribed ? Nothing short of a jockey could do justice. He was
of proper height and size, 'round, plump, had a little head, small
features, legs and feet, a sharp, knowing eye, and the color of
the most beautiful fawn. Of course, his hair was made to
shine like satin. He had a way, when standing any time, of
turning his head almost quite round, as if looking for some one
(his master fancied it was for him), and if nothing came of it he
would begin pawing and jumping. His back was hollow and
neck curving."
The young lady introduces at this point in her nar-
rative a spirited drawing of horse and groom, not
saying, however, of which of the three animals it is
a sketch.
3 02
Life of Count Rumford.
"After much bustle all was stillness as the word went forth
the General and his suit descend, then a rustling on the
magnificent looking-glass staircase, nearly multiplying objects
into innumerability. And what objects ! The Baron, a hand-
some man, about forty, decorated with honors, star and garter,
appeared accompanied by his ladies, one under each arm, beauti-
fully dressed in the English style, excepting more richly, in
scarlet with feathers and ermine. One of the ladies was sixteen
[better, twenty-two] ; the other, twenty-six. Lambkin being
brought forward for the elder of the ladies, and it requiring
some time to get her mounted, on account of her being no
horsewoman, the younger lady became impatient, and very
much so, being fond of the amusement, giving one of the
grooms a look, had the horse destined for her brought forward,
skipped on with trifling assistance, and almost immediately
disappeared ; not going far, however, for when the party passed
the porte-cochere, she and her Tancred were found perched at one
side of it. This appeared amusing to the company, occasioning
a general laugh. But not so to the Baron. He frowned, and
particularly so when he perceived the young lady's whip
dropped, and the young aid, Count Taxis, dismount to pick
it up.
" This accident was followed by a detention from this young
Life of Count Rumford. 303
lady's shaking about her saddle, declaring it would turn, desir-
ing it to be fixed differently. This being complied with, the
cavalcade began its march, the Baron on the splendid Fawn, a
lady on each side of him, the aids and others behind ; and novel
was the sight, the ladies being dressed and seated nearly as the
English. The ' English Garden ' was the place destined for
the ride ; but to reach it a part of the streets of the town
were to be passed through, and many were the curious ones at
the windows to see the sight. All things went on well thus
far, and would have without doubt continued so, had not the
younger of the ladies, without due consideration, giving a whip
to her horse, set out, soon losing sight of the company, the
timidity of the other lady rendering it impossible for them to
follow. The Baron much frightened at seeing this young per-
son go off alone in unknown roads and winding paths, looked to
his aid Spreti to tell him to follow her ; but before the words
could be got out of his mouth the other one, Taxis, was on the
gallop. On arriving home in safety, relieved of our riding-
habits, we assembled as usual at the supper-table of my father
to take each of us a basin of chocolate. I made bad dinners,
not being fond of foreign cookery ; was fond of chocolate, but
never had half enough of it. Our respectable, charming guest
was the Countess of Nogarola, who will be often mentioned in
this narrative.
"The Palace, my father's lodgings, was a building three
stories high, sixty or sixty-five feet in front, running back
possibly three times that distance, with an open space enclosed,
already mentioned, called the court. The second floor, my fa-
ther's habitation, was composed of two halls, one front and the
other back; the one with windows on the street and also on
the court extending the width of the front part of the palace ; the
back premises, with windows on the rear; and on the court
were the rooms my father particularly occupied. There were
three staircases, a gallery, and eight rooms ; the gallery, uniting
the two halls, consequently gave a passage throughout the
house, and gave the whole a handsome appearance. The floors
were of different-colored marble, or of smooth stone, resembling
304 Life of Count Rumford.
it, inlaid ; the windows five in number, with five of plate glass
opposite ; an arched painted ceiling representing, as large as life,
and well executed, heathen gods and goddesses, instructive as
well as amusing. The second floor was handsome, conven-
iently furnished, in fact, might be considered elegant, yet was
nothing in comparison with the first floor. That was a display
of luxury and elegance fatiguing even to look at, to say nothing
of the effect of a daily, hourly occupation. But the Russians
are fond of pomp and show.
" The Elector did not in the general way dress with half the
elegance and study of the Ambassador, whose household was
composed of servants unlike all others, from their extraordinary
height, and elegance of dress ; and as to their number, it was
so great as never to come within my knowledge. The Ambas-
sador had no lady ; yet, to a great dinner that he gave, my
father being invited, I was permitted to go to be a witness to
novel scenes, to do justice to which would be long and difficult.
I will only mention that it was as magnificent as can be sup-
posed, given by a person of his high calling and his apparent
love of show. In short, there was a profusion of everything
that could tempt the appetite or delight the eye, joined to com-
pany of the first class.
" My father had some peculiarities of character, and also of
domestic arrangements, besides having odd things befall him.
One of these was his having a monument erected to him, with
an inscription, long before he died ! He kept through the year
a box at the opera, without going, perhaps, three times himself.
A doctor, by the name of Haubenal, he hired by the year ! He
made me a singular present ; indeed, it may be said five, there
being five things. The circumstances were these.
" As I was sitting one day quietly in my room, meditating,
not having much to do, my door, being shut, suddenly opened,
and in skipped a little white, shaggy dog, as white as snow,
excepting black eyes, ears, and nose. This was one of the pres-
ents from my father. I was pleased with her and kept her a
long time. She was named by my father ' Cora.' * But
* This little dog must have become quite a pet of her mistress, for I find the fol-
Life of Coiint Rumford. 305
while I was caressing her the door opened again, three people
entering, a woman with two men. The woman spoke first,
addressing me in French, saying her name was Veratzy, and that
she was sent by my father to offer her services as a teacher in
French and music. Making a low courtesy, she stood back to
let the others speak. They did so, and it was the same story.
They had come, by my father's desire, as teachers. One, by
the name of Dillis, a Catholic priest, was a professor of draw-
ing. It was not uncommon with that class of people, their
salaries being small, to have professions. This Dillis, for in-
stance, was one of the best men in the world, worthy his call-
ing as a minister, supporting by his industry, joined to his trifling
salary, two aged parents, and bringing up three brothers. These
priests cannot marry. The other professor was for Italian, Al-
berte, or Alberty, as I shall call him, sent also by my father to
offer his services as teacher in the Italian language. The
Signer Alberte, as he was called, was most judiciously chosen,
an antidote, in appearance, to the softer passions supposed to
be so easily inspired by the people of his nation. His portrait
merits a description, particularly as he was sent by my father to
teach me the lovely, harmonious language of Italy. His stature
was under the common size, but to appearance greater, from a
great prominency of back and shoulders, so as nearly to hide all
signs of a neck. His voice was not more fortunate, being
harsh. His head corresponded with the prominency of his
back ; his nose the same, with sharp, fierce-looking eyes. Yet
he was a very good-humored, good kind of a man, and master
lowing reference to Cora in a letter written by Sarah to a female friend, December 16,
1799, while she was on a visit at President Willard's, in Cambridge.
"I arrived here safe the evening I left you, and had the satisfaction of find-
ing the President's family all well, excepting himself. I went to meeting yester-
day all day, and I found Cora was likely to be so unhappy to be left at home among
strangers, I carried her with me in my muff. She began to breathe very hard and to
cough a little before meeting was done, but upon the whole she behaved very well."
Whether the excellent pastor of the Cambridge congregation, the Rev. Dr.
Holmes, knew of this arrangement, it would be difficult to decide ; but we may be
sure that some of the College students, who then attended the parish meeting-house,
and whose eyes must have turned with interest to a Countess in the President's
pew, must have been privy to the fact.
20
306 Life of Count Ritmford.
of his profession. Ignorant of the different merits of these
people at the time, and that I was doomed to similar visits, my
surprise was great, and not greater than my disgust at the one
just described. But summoning all possible fortitude, I dis-
missed them with saying I would think of it ; well determined
to have nothing to do with them. But these making only four
of my father's donations, another remains to be mentioned. It
was another visitor. I had heard of Dr. Haubenal, but had not
seen him. He now entering, as did the others, from my father,
if was by his announcing himself and offering his services that I
knew him. Of the two I was the more surprised and shocked
at a doctor's offering his services before wanted than I had
been even at the sight of the Italian. I began immediately to
cough before he got out of my room. It seemed as if it was
owing to this untimely visit of the doctor, though the fact was,
I had been several days threatened with a cough.
" Said I to myself, Surrounded by people who speak French,
and all genteel people speak it at Munich, and knowing
considerable of the language already, where is the use of my fa-
tiguing myself with masters? Music the same. I knew some-
thing of it, did not wish to trouble myself any farther, and thought
it hard there should be a question of it. As to Italian, I had no
wish to know it, being persuaded I should not have occasion to
go to Italy, and as to reading, there was surely enough to read
in my own language. In the like manner I went on, believing
myself in the right and my father in the wrong, till I fell into a
copious flood of tears. At this moment precisely my father
enters my room, and with a countenance so joyful that necessity
compelled me to quit my troubles in contemplation of his ap-
parent self-satisfaction. It appeared it was a question of trav-
elling some way with a very old, beloved friend of his, and who,
in short, was no other personage than a princess, the Princess
deL .
" I was not to be of the party, but to go to the Countess in
the mean time. He said, ' You know she is an angel of a
woman, and, without doubt, will make you very happy/ Good
as she was, however, the first thought struck me, How horrible
Life of Count Rumford. 307
to be left behind as I still deemed it among strangers ; and
I inquired very pitifully if my teachers were to accompany me.
Nothing of the kind, no question about it, was the reply.
Amusement was the object of the day ; so I began to be tolera-
bly reconciled.
" Such was my father's satisfaction at the prospect of taking
this journey with his beloved princess, that not till just going
out of the door did he remark my troubled looks, and that I had
been crying. Mistaking the cause, he said in an affectionate
manner, 'Do not grieve, my dear, I shall soon be back.' Of a
childish nature as was my grief, so was now my merriment at
the mistake. He had almost persuaded me I was glad he was
going ; thought, at least, I should have my liberty, which I
viewed not to be the case as I then was. But I was unjust
toward my father, while he was as kind as fathers in general.
I took everything amiss, as, for instance, my having these
different masters. The fact was, I was unhappy everywhere,
viewed Germany a great way off, as I called it. I was what
we call homesick, a disagreeable complaint, for a time in-
curable.
" The Countess, in her evenings with us previous to this
contemplated journey, held out pleasing ideas of things to take
place when I should be with her. We were to go to a ball at
court (all genteel amusements at Munich being at court).
Count Nogarola (husband to the Countess) not keeping his
carriage at the time, my father was to lend us his, since he would
not need it, as he was to take the journey with the Princess in
her carriage. So we had planned many and various amuse-
ments. But for all that, when I saw my father make prepara-
tions for his journey, I would be crying, but with no one to
witness my tears but little Cora.
" My father, being high in military station, could not go
away at a minute's warning, as at this moment he was in com-
mand of the Bavarian troops, and there was war on all sides.
The French and Austrians both attempted to enter the city, but
were prevented. The time for the journey having come, the
Countess arrived to escort me to her house, and the Princess
308 Life of Count Rumford.
L was actually in her carriage at the door. My father, in
the general way a slave to order, from imperious necessity had
been now faulty, not being ready at the time agreed upon
between him and the Princess, which was the more distressing
as she declined to enter. This occasioned my father great
bustle and confusion, so much so that, when he came to go,
such was his absence of mind, that, though passing near, he did
not s.eem to see and took no notice of the Countess or myself.
I having equipped myself to accompany the Countess, my maid
standing by with my packet of things, only waiting to receive
my father's last kind look, and to hear his last words of fare-
well, to have him depart in this strange manner, not having
the least idea of the cause, was astonishing. The Countess
was surprised, and I broken-hearted. Off went my bonnet,
declaring, if I must be miserable, it should be at home. I made
sure he was gone to be married, fancying I saw some white
round Aichner's hat (the white cockade on a servant's hat
denoting marriage). I recited to the Countess the old adage,
' The mother 's a mother all the days of her life ;
The father 's a father till he gets a new wife.'
The Countess, after reflecting some time on what I said, with
seeming difficulty to preserve her seriousness, informed me that
at least this time my father had not gone to be married, for that
the Princess was a married lady, and the Prince, her husband,
was to be of the party. A servant was rung for to know the
particulars, when we were informed of what has been already
mentioned. c Oh ! ' I exclaimed, ' it is put off, that is all \ the
time will come, I shall sooner or later have it to experience.'
'So long as it is not to be for the present,' replied the Countess,
' put on your things again, and come along. Let us see what
rational amusement will be found in my quarter.' I went, and
was as happy during the ten days of my father's absence as
could be expected ; never losing sight of the idea that I was
among strangers, alone in the world !
" Our excellent friend, the Countess, in trying to render me
happy, did not forget the Baron, whom, after the Count Noga-
Life of Count Rimiford. 309
rola her husband, and two darling children, a girl and a boy,
Therese and Andrew, there was no one she so much loved and
respected. With regard to myself, as was before mentioned
was the intention, I accompanied the Countess to a drawing-
room. After this there were parties at home, or going out.
A fashionable place of resort was at what was called the Haus-
meister's, in the English Garden. After some turns round the
Garden we would go there, taking refreshments. In the man-
ner in which my father was travelling he had no need of his
aids, which left them at leisure to amuse themselves. In our
different excursions it was seldom that Count Taxis did not
either go with us or meet us. The. Countess seemed intimate
with his family, and to have a good opinion of him, and her
conversation with me concerning him was of a nature to make
me think well of him. This was not. the case with my father,
which I had remarked, but did not know the cause. Among
other things, the Countess informed me that this gentleman, a
short time previous, had publicly declared his intention of not
marrying a noble young lady of Munich, whom I knew, but
whose name I have no call to mention, a match made up by
his and her family. He had taken a sudden fancy to learn
English, and often called to speak it with the Countess and
myself, she speaking English uncommonly well. The Count-
ess conducted me one day a few miles out of town to see a
beautiful view. After looking at it some time, she, taking
paper and pencil, began sketching. She invited me to do the
same, saying it was not difficult, and that she would assist me.
I accepted, and we finished the sketch together. When we
returned home Dillis was sent for and desired to put the sketch
in a state that I, with his assistance, could finish it. He did so,
and I afterwards became his pupil. In the like manner, enticed
on by the Countess, I became accomplished in matters in which
my father had failed to help me through rougher measures.
"The next concern was music. I well understood my fa-
ther's wish for me to cultivate it, and as decidedly so my own
not to comply. If I was pleased with the measures taken by
the Countess about drawing, in those respecting music I was
310 Life of Count Rumford.
charmed by a performance of this lady's on the piano, assem-
bling her two cherubs, Therese, about six, and Andrew, about
eight, to assist, as she pretended, in singing. The performance
of the children was novel and pleasing, inspiring me with a wish,
as was intended, to unite my weak assistance, the Countess
knowing I understood music a little. In short, the plan took.
I told the Countess, if she would allow me, I would play and
sing a little song of which I knew the first verse.
* Tell me, babbling echo, why
You return me sigh for sigh ?
When I of slighted love complain,
Thou delight'st to mock my pain.'
After which I played 'God save the King ' in character, that is
to say, in a thumping manner, and attempted c Washington's
March, but failed, my sum total in music. I was praised
beyond measure, and, thus encouraged, decided to take Miss
Veratzy as teacher.
" Twenty-four hours had elapsed before either the Countess
or myself were informed of the arrival of my father. His trav-
elling companions making a little stop to pay him a visit, we
were not sought after. The system of the great world seeming
to be ' not to let the right hand know what the left hand
doeth/ perhaps that was the reason. In the less cultivated
climes of America, in case of visits of the great and respectable
the whole neighborhood even would have been summoned to
help out in making things agreeable. The Countess and I were,
however, invited on the evening of the second day to partake
of the usual supper of chocolate. We were both thankful and
glad to see my father again, the Countess, from an angelic
temper of forgiveness ; and I, from the natural love of a child
to a parent. After the most prominent incidents of the journey,
such as my father thought proper to communicate, the conver-
sation turned on my consenting to take teachers, on my intro-
duction to Dillis, and my thinking of turning my attention to
music, in short, my receiving lessons from the said Miss Veratzy.
In order to profit as much as possible from this unusual docility,
my father began talking about the beauties of the Italian Ian-
Life of Count Rumford. 311
guage, and what a pity it was I should not know something of
it for knowing music. In short, it was decided that I should
take the Italian master. I looking rather serious, the cause was
inquired of it. I answered, that it struck me that a person
would make more progress, and for a certainty it would be
much more agreeable, to have a master not such a lump of de-
formity as was this Signer Alberty. My father replied, that the
Italians, being considered a very gallant, captivating people, it
was not considered prudent to have them as teachers with
marked personal attractions. The observation reminded the
Countess of an anecdote in circulation of a lady of distinction
having fallen violently in love with her music-master, or rather
the person who often accompanied her in her music, she being
herself a fine musician. My father seemed much surprised and
very sorry at the news, for the lady was in high place, and even
an heir to the crown might have been derived from her. Still
on the subject of teachers, my father asked the Countess
how a little girl, about eight, named Sophy Baumgarten, niece
to the Countess got on. The mother, the Countess of Baum-
garten, was the Countess's only sister. The answer was, that
Sophy did not get on so well, owing to the peculiarly light,
trifling character of her mother.
u It would be difficult to find two characters less resembling
each other than these two sisters, the Countess of Nogarola,
with a first-rate understanding, a model of virtue, not plain, but
not handsome ; the other, a few years before, a celebrated
beauty. She was so much admired and celebrated in the world
that even crowned heads confessed her charms. All gentlemen
were in love with her. Alas, poor lady ! she ended in not
sufficiently respecting herself. A few days after this found me
established with the whole catalogue of teachers, Alberty at the
head of them. My studies went on like clock-work ; my fa-
ther had a great deal of order. A hairdresser came daily to dress
my hair. Good Animeetle was exchanged for Cecilia Dumesnil,
a French girl, on account of the language. Parents do wrong
to push their children. Application is not for all. Better let
them remain a little ignorant, than lose, perhaps, their lives.
312 Life of Count Rumford.
u The time arrived for me to be plunged in study, surrounded
by my teachers, Signer Alberty, with his four feet in stature,
his great nose and tremendous prominency of back, at the head
of them. It was, nevertheless, in Italian that I made the most
progress. Not that I neglected any of my studies. I succeeded
in giving such satisfaction that my father in great affection
called me bis own child, a little vanity in the expression which
must be excused. Alas ! frail nature admits of no control. In
vain would vanity and ambition take the lead. My health
began to decline. My flesh left me as if it had wings to fly
away. I became ailing, and this ended in the whooping-cough.
As already mentioned, the house, or rather the palace, we occu-
pied was large; my father living at one extremity, and I at the
other. All who have had the whooping-cough must know how
troublesome it is, and that a person is everything but interesting
when in a fit of it. My father had never exactly seen me at
one of these moments, till going in haste into his apartment set
me out coughing with the whoop. After looking at me with
something bordering on a frown, he told me to ring a bell. I did
so. He sat writing, and, looking up, said it was not the right
one, it must be another. My father had great order in every-
thing. If, for instance, a particular servant was wanted, there
would be a particular bell to give him notice. Two servants
now came, I having rung two bells ; the valet, being one, was
kept, and the other sent away. My father said to him, 'Macht
der Haubenel hier kommen ! ' I did not know German, but
understood enough of this to conclude that it summoned the
doctor, and began retreating. My father called me back, ask-
ing me if I was afraid of a doctor ; adding, that he understood
I had not treated him civilly some time before. I was informed
that in all probability the doctor would soon be with me ; as it
happened, nearly as soon as I had got into my own room. I
was to show the doctor politeness. Very well ! That was not
difficult. But to be dosed, I muttered to myself, for so sim-
ple a thing as the whooping-cough, I never heard of such a
thing.
" A word of explanation for this apparent obstinacy may not
Life of Count Rumford. 313
be amiss. I think I must have implied more than once that I
had a great love and veneration for my mother. It was very
natural. She had taken care of me in my infancy and child-
hood, and brought me up. I recollected often hearing her dis-
approve the habit many have on the slightest indisposition of
seeking medical assistance. Yet, poor woman ! I best recollect
her as on her sick-bed, with the doctor by her side, for she
never had even tolerable health. Children hear and reflect
more than is always imagined.. I remembered her telling a little
story of my father, that, if anything ailed even a ringer, the
whole house must be put in an uproar about it. So that, in the
present instance, if I say the physician arriving left me an
emetic, which I put aside and would not take, I only followed
the precepts of my mother instead of those of my father. I was
perfectly freed of the disorder in a short time without the least
medicine.
a In one of our horseback excursions we had the usual party,
except that the Countess was kept back by a previous engage-
ment. It proved fortunate, for our horses were restive and
troublesome, so much so that, when we arrived at the Garden,
as usual, our destination, my father told one of his aids
Spreti to go with him, and the other to stay with me ; and
the same to the grooms. He wished to let Fawn have his run
out. We were jogging along when Tancred started and like
to have thrown me. Count Taxis, frightened, said to me in
English (which I did not suppose he knew much of, we never
speaking the language, and which, therefore, surprised me)
c Take care, my dear ! ' From my looking down and making
no reply, he thought I was offended. He drew his horse near to
mine, and, looking me archly in the face, asked me if I did not
think that in learning English he learned pretty things. I told
him it depended on the sincerity of them. I spoke without
reflection, but think he construed them into more seriousness
than I really meant, by his dwelling some time on assurances
of the sincerity of his words and thoughts towards me.
" By an unforeseen accident, if these assertions were true, he
was called upon to feel and express more forcibly than by simple
314 Life of Count Rumford.
words. I had been indisposed for several days, but said nothing
about it, from the childish, foolish idea that I should be, as I
termed it, dosed. From the same childishness, because I was
fond of going on horseback, I came out when I ought to have
stayed at home ; and from being in a restrained posture and
among strangers, it naturally made me worse. In short, I grew
so bad I thought I was dying, and told the Count I wished to
get off the horse. While he was dismounting and making
signs to the groom to approach, without his perceiving it I
slipped my foot out of the stirrup, and took hold of the saddle
to let myself down, but before I, could do it my senses had left
me ; so that when Taxis turned his head, it was not to see me
on the seat, but prostrate on the ground. There was the
greater cause for alarm from his supposing I had fallen, instead
of letting myself down, and that my fainting was owing, most
likely, to some hurt. The first thing I realized, on coming to
my senses, was Taxis and the groom exceedingly frightened,
lifting me about, not knowing what to do with me. It would
be difficult to describe the expression of their faces when they
found me alive instead of dead, as they owned they much
feared ; supposing me to have received some great, and perhaps
fatal, blow from the fall. They were likewise much rejoiced
on my giving particulars, and assuring them I was not in the
least hurt. The groom thought he should never dare to see
my father again, had anything terrible happened to his daughter
while in part under his care. The expressions of Count Taxis
were more refined, as may be imagined. He showed such feel-
ing and friendship on the occasion, I own it impressed me with
the most lively gratitude and friendship for him. He thought
best to let the groom go in search of my father, who soon
joined us, when we all returned safely together.
" As under absolute governments distinction of classes is
observed, so that between the General and his aids is not
forgotten. My father, in coming to the door after our ride,
with a familiar nod of the head, without asking them to enter,
dismissed his aids. But Taxis, as it appeared, went straight to
the Countess, giving her information of the bad success of our
Life of Count Rumford. 315
party on horseback, for almost as soon as ourselves she had
mounted to our apartment. Seeing her reminded me of a ball
to take place at the court the following evening, where she was
to go, and I to accompany her. She presumed I would not go ;
and neither my feelings nor propriety could authorize the act.
But a foolish, wild thought having crossed my mind, decided
me on going, and I went. On entering the spacious, splendid
halls, the first duty was to pay court to crowned heads, those
in question, the Elector and Electrice, which ceremony passed,
we seated ourselves. Count Taxis, as one of the young persons
generally present at court balls, perceiving us, came up to speak
to us. In looking at me with considerable attention, as he
inquired after my health, particularly to know how I found
myself after the ill turn in the Garden, he suddenly turned
away his head with a singular expression, beginning at the same
time an animated conversation with the Countess.
cc Without exactly hearing what was said, I had reason to
think myself not foreign from the subject, they frequently
casting on me their eyes. In this supposition I was soon con-
firmed, the Countess going to take leave of the Electrice, then
coming and saying to me that we were to return home, I being
too ill to be out. * Yes,' replied Count Taxis, being still near
us, 'you ought not to have come.' 'What,' I said, looking
him in the face, c when I came on purpose to thank you for
your kindness of yesterday, are you not glad to see me ? ' He
making me no reply, I consoled myself with fancying he looked
affected. We soon found our carriage and reached home.
" The ball-dress quitted, and I a little rested, I was tempted
to follow my two friends, my father and the Countess, she
being still with us, to the tete-a-tete supper-table. I went, but
neither partook nor stayed long, quitting them without giving a
reason, leaving them to think, if they might, that it was with
an intention to return. On the contrary, I went to my room,
summoned my maid, desired her to prepare my bed, and assist
me in getting into it, I being so violently seized with a fit of
ague as to be nearly unable to help myself. The girl, having
executed my orders, was for running to inform my father and
316 Life .of Count Rumford. .
the Countess, but I stopped her, forbidding it ; and not till an
equally violent fever fit succeeded, the maid much frightened,
contrary to my orders, going to give them notice, all hands
arrived soon, followed by the doctor. My father had offended
me a few days previous by saying I was always ailing, and I
had not forgiven him. So I had two motives in going off in
that clandestine manner, one, because my father had affronted
me ; and another, the dread of the doctor's prescriptions. And
now they began. An emetic was proposed. I refused it, say-
ing that, so far from requiring it, I was then hungry. It was
urged, even insisted on. I declared if they approached me I
would dash the cup which contained it from their hands It
was given me, without my knowing it, in some herb tea.
" On experiencing the sickness, and presuming from what
cause, I cried bitterly, and said they had deceived me. This
was the last trouble they had with me of this nature. I was
soon so ill as not to know or care what took place. I was con-
fined six weeks to my bed with a fever, part of the time be-
tween life and death.
"My next appearance was in the banqueting-hall, celebrating
my father's birthday [in March, 1797], at my expense (my
father allowing me pocket-money), but planned and principally
executed by the Countess, on the sly, to occasion a surprise.
The preparations of this festival were various, requiring three
weeks' time to execute. I had little to do in them excepting
being enjoined to keep the secret from my father. I was,
besides, convalescent only, unable to lend much assistance.
" The first concern was to have a bust made of my father.
For the want of the original to copy, a portrait was made use
of, which answered, they having got a very tolerable likeness.
A short time before the occasion arrived, having procured a
profusion of artificial flowers, this bust was ornamented, as
likewise some of the rooms, to the number of five, one of
which was an immense hall allowed for my use, my father hav-
ing no use for them. All of these being handsomely, some
even elegantly, furnished, and being reached by the splendid
staircase of looking-glass, rendered a festival easy to give, and
Life of Count Rumford. 317
elegant in its effects. Besides which nothing was spared to
render ours conformable to the elegance of the apartments.
" Refreshments in great plenty, proper for the occasion ; a
society as select as it was numerous ; the rooms illuminated
to speak largely to vie with the noonday sun! the music,
both vocal and instrumental, the best that Munich afforded,
perhaps none better in the world. More attention was paid
to this particular, my father being extravagantly fond of music.
And from a very pretty manner they had of ornamenting with
flowers, that of twisting them into letters and then to words,
expressing verse, prose, &c., my father had many pretty com-
pliments paid him, particularly in the ornamenting of the bust.
Around this bust was a group which drew upon us all much
praise and many compliments, the Countess, her two children
allowed to be present, Sophy Baumgarten, about eight years
old, daughter of the Countess Baumgarten, sister to the
Countess Nogarola; myself; six children (little girls) from my
father's poorhouse, prettily dressed at my expense, in white,
as were we all. For the more elderly part of our guests cards
were prepared ; music for the dance, vocal and instrumental
music for the ear, which made three distinct amusements
without counting that of not doing anything at all.
" My father's two aids, Lieutenant Spreti, and Captain Count
Taxis, were not forgotten in the number to be invited, and who
accepted and were present. Neither of them had I seen during
or after my illness. Of course the latter was the only one
interesting to me. With Lieutenant Spreti I had barely ever
exchanged a word. The festival began, we all at our places,
the lights glittering, the company arrived, the music struck up a
divine piece, vocal and instrumental, in which all who could
sing joined in a chorus, when my father was ushered in. A
considerable difficulty had arisen to get him dressed without his
knowing for what purpose, and to prevent his seeing the lights
of my highly illuminated rooms, some being on the opposite
side of the court facing his. All, however, was happily accom-
plished, and he arrived utterly astonished, as much so as the
guests, who were curious to see the effect all this might have
^i 8 Life of Coitnt Rnmford.
on him. I, very naturally, was not one of the least curious to
a point, I must say it in justice to myself. I quite forgot my-
self, forgot I had a part of no little importance, that of being
the ostensible mistress of the house. But I thought nothing of
it. My father behaved charmingly. After the first surprise,
which was great, he went about bowing and smiling, showing
his white teeth, of which he was very proud, thanking people for
the trouble, as he termed it, of coming to see him.
" The music was not spared, several fine pieces were per-
formed, but we all of us had something to do. The Countess
had a simple song enabling her little children with their juvenile
voices and talents to join her, having a pretty effect, as likewise
a piece of music of a superior quality on the piano, (she being a
fine musician,) accompanied by the other musicians. I had a
letter of compliment in Italian to present my father, he not
knowing me so far advanced in the language. The poorhouse
children presented written expressions of their gratitude and
respect. The little Miss Sophy Baumgarten, above mentioned,
had a more dignified part to act than any of us, being signalized
out by my father (while the Countess, her children, and myself,
were barely noticed) as the object of great attention. So pointed
was it as to attract the notice of all present. At all events,
such undoubtedly was the intent ; for if it was to cross the
room this child was led by the hand, and, if seated, placed by
his side.
" Contemplating some time this singular sight, I applied to
the Countess to know what it meant. She, not giving me a
positive answer, smiling, said I was to take notice that her
sister, the Countess of Baumgarten, was not present ; which, in
the crowd, I had not before observed. This adding still to the
mystery in which before the matter was enveloped, I returned
with eagerness to my business of watching, and in consequence
of it the truth was revealed to me, either by my good or bad
genius, I think it was the latter, as I had better not have
known it. The striking resemblance that existed between my
father and the said Sophy put it beyond a doubt that I was no
longer to consider myself an only child, which was the case
Life of Count Riwnford. 319
before. Be it from jealousy, or from what other cause, the
thought made me miserable. In cases of great trouble and per-
plexity, often great resolutions, even unnatural energies, come
to our aid. My surprise and vexation were great. Had I been
alone, most likely vent would have been given by a few tears.
But in a mixed, great society like that, how would it be possi-
ble ? Then a thought struck me, which, as I observed before,
either my good or my evil genius pointed out, and this time I
will give no opinion as to which I think it was. But the
thought was retaliation, or, in other less soft words, revenge."
It will be a satisfaction to the reader to be informed
that, so far as is known, the Countess never put her
resolve into execution.
tc I had been given to understand, that, as head or mistress
of the festival, or dancing part of the, amusement, I was not to
dance ; as, since it would be impossible to dance with all, to
dance with some would give offence. Consequently I had
refused my friend Taxis, who had not only invited, me, but
who had several times repeated the invitation to dance with
him, and who was seldom far from me, and was lavish of kind
looks. I now, in return, showed a disposition to be friendly,
sought him with my eyes, and, slighting consequences liable to
ensue, danced with him. As we disappeared in the dance and
the crowd, I took care to look to see if my father perceived us,
and fancied he did.
" We all separated at a proper time, apparently well pleased
with each other, and the company the same with the entertain-
ment. I, in part forgetting my little or great vexation, as any
one may think it, was very happy. All had been kind and civil
to me. I having been so ill, some, those with whom I was
most acquainted, seemed to express a joy to find me alive
again ; and all told me they had sent repeatedly, which I already
knew, to inquire after me. In short, all' this made me very
happy, and I began to form dreams of happiness.
" The morning after the party my father sent for me to come
and breakfast with him, a favor seldom allowed. It is true, he
320 Life of Count Rum ford.
had generally at that hour gentlemen around him, rendering it
improper. But I was much flattered by this invitation, draw-
ing from it favorable conclusions, that he had been pleased with
the fine banquet made in honor of him ; in short, that he had
no objection, as I was dying to do, to talk over the occurrences,
in calling to mind the features of it the most prominent and
agreeable. By all those in the habit of frequenting such oc-
casions, this is an absolute want, the pleasure equalling nearly,
if not quite, the first enjoyment. When girls get together for
this discussion, it is, ' How pretty he was ! ' and ' How ugly she
was ! ' While at my toilet, arranging myself, never with more
care, what with reflections on the preceding evening and the
anticipated pleasure of the breakfast, there became riveted on
my countenance a smile, like distorted muscles after an inordi-
nate laugh, difficult to change ; so that on arriving at my fa-
ther's, which had been by a jump and a bounce, that enchanting
complacency, so great, seemed for a moment to disconcert him.
But a general is not easily turned from his plans. It is for us,
poor, weak females, to be overcome by circumstances. Obey !
is the order with them ; no reasoning.
" Without endeavoring to give a darker coloring to the pic-
ture than what is due, or to cast blame illy becoming a child,
let us rather attribute things to the casualty of human nature ;
at the same time, receive them as a warning and check to too
elevated ideas of happiness seldom or never realized. This was
my situation ; this check I had. When quitting my father's
apartment, it was with totally different feelings and expectations
than when I went. It was now, without doubt, to see life un-
adorned by youthful imagination. In short, my troubles came
from exaggerated or real faults which I had committed. It
was thought improper that I should keep a secret from my
father, he my best friend, it being the case in the affair of the
banquet ; surprises, requiring to be carried on by the sly, led to
deception, a vile trait of character, and, if necessary, to false-
hoods. In short, my conduct to Count Taxis was alluded to
and disapproved. So that here, with one blow, were demolished
all my fine castles in the air.
Life of Count Rumford. 321
" I was, as in times before, to spend my time in tears and
study. I received my admonition in silence, without making a
reply, I will not say from what motive, but fear it was more
independent than wise. I did not say, as I could have done,
that the Countess, all but an angel, from the purest and best of
motives, was the beginner and ender of the banquet ; that I, in
revealing the secret to my father, must have betrayed her ; and,
to sum up the whole, if he expected me to be so perfect in my
conduct towards Count Taxis, why was he not more so in that
with his beautiful illegitimate ? "
The young lady goes on to describe her sufferings
from continued ill-health, from her sensitiveness, from
her father's disapproval of her innocent attentions to
Count Taxis, and from the rigidness of the diet to
which she was subjected. She grieved also at a pro-
spective separation from the Countess Nogarola, whose
husband, obliged to go to Italy on business, thought .of
taking his family with him. Dr. Haubenel proposed a
journey for her health, in which the Countess and her
father should be her companions. Accordingly, in a
pleasant season, they left Munich, in her father's car-
riage, with a maid and valet, and, driving a day's journey
to a beautiful seat of the Elector's, at Ammerland See,
they sent back their vehicle and servants, that they
might be more free in their movements. They had
the Elector's permission to make a temporary home
at this princely residence, where they had attendance,
with sumptuous fare, and fine scenery, and mountain
views. Miss Sarah writes that she exceedingly enjoyed
the change to freedom and nature, after eighteen months
of confinement to the artificial life of the city and the
lassitude of illness. The lake afforded them fine fish
for their table, and in an elegant pleasure-boat manned
21
o
22 Lift of Count Rumford.
with able rowers they enjoyed excursions and an-
gling upon it, while at evening, the maid attending
Sarah and the Countess, they would bathe in the soft
waters.
This repose was to be followed by a journey, the
route of which her father kept secret, that mystery
might add to the enjoyment. " My father had ap-
peared to try to see how agreeable he could make him-
self; as if wishing to wear off by it some of the disa-
greeable impressions of his late conduct, in drawing so
many tears from my poor eyes. And he was ingenious
in it. He could do one way or the other. And it was
invariably the case, that when quiet and happy himself,
he was like others, or, in other words, agreeable; but
when perplexed with cares or business, or much occu-
pied, there was no living with him."
This sharpness of a daughter's judgment of her fa-
ther must be regarded as lying rather in the force of
its expression than in any real severity of feeling. The
amount and variety of work performed by Count Rum-
ford, the multiplicity of the details which engaged his
attention, and the large number of agents and subordi-
nates whom he had to direct, as well as his almost
mechanical observance of order and system, might
naturally engross his mind in his hours of business.
That he was affable and genial when he had intervals
of leisure and repose might well relieve him from all
reproach for austerity at other times. Nor is it to be
forgotten, that, having to act in a full parental capacity
to a motherless and evidently somewhat volatile and
self-willed young woman, he might have had a judgment
of his own, had he chosen to express it, to offset that
of his daughter on himself.
Life of Count Riwnford. 323
The l mystery " of the movements of the Count was
not a very deep one. The party set out on foot, tak-
ing a guide with them, through fields and by-roads, and
after three or four hours' travel they came to what
seemed to the young lady an immense chateau, so large
that the whole of it could not be seen, and surrounded
by water, so as to be accessible only by a drawbridge.
Her father seemed to be familiar with the spot, and,
pulling at a cord, caused a very heavy-toned bell to
sound its echoes loudly, when two well-dressed men
appeared, with whom he had some secret whispering.
The consequence was that the great doors opened as if
by enchantment. The party were shown into elegant
apartments, were most hospitably entertained,, and
yielded to urgent solicitations to pass the night within
its walls. Though Miss Sarah was soon impressed by
the fact that not a female was to be seen about the
establishment, and that their entertainers were all gen-
tlemen " of breeding," it was not till the next morn-
ing that she knew the establishment to be what she
calls a convent.
They visited another like institution the next day.
The young lady relates at some length their experiences
in the ascent of a mountain, which they made at night
on account of the heat of the weather. It was a rugged
task for the ladies, especially for the delicately nurtured
and fragile Countess Nogarola. They experienced the
embarrassments arising from the ordinary female cos-
tume for such a tramp, and the Count's practical wis-
dom seems to have suggested to them such an approxi-
mation of the arrangement of their apparel to circum-
stances as anticipated the style of some of the more
independent of their sex in our times. The poor
324 Life of Count Rumford.
Countess, as she went half-way up the mountain, "try-
ing to make herself a little more comfortable, put her
stockings (horribly wet, as were mine, with all the rest of
our things) on a bush to dry. A mischievous cow ran
away with one, champing it to pieces ; so that when
we came down from the summit we found the poor
Countess with but one stocking, mourning the loss of
the other. My father's man, taking off one of his,
supplied the place of it, but not without difficulty to
make it fit in her much smaller, more delicate shoe."
The Count himself, who had made the ascent before,
did not escape without a fall and a roll over the rocks,
which afforded amusement to his daughter. They had
a pretty adventure at their resting-place in being enter-
tained by two peasant-girls, who, having two chalets
half-way up the mountain, were sent there to watch the
cows that were pastured there in midsummer. '
The party returned pleased and renovated to Mu-
nich; the American girl growing more reconciled to
her lot, and anticipating with more relish the court
routine of another winter. But her trials were not
over. Her friend the Countess was accustomed to
dine once a week with her mother, the Countess of
Lerchenfeld. Miss Sarah being now for the first time
invited to join her friend, obtaining the consent of her
father, went, and unexpectedly, as she implies, found
Count Taxis of the party. She represents her father as
habitually afraid or suspicious of the intrigues of ladies,
and that he was thus prompted on the next day to
make a visit to the Countess of Lerchenfeld, where he
learned who had been his daughter's companion at
dinner. He chose to regard the affair as a female
conspiracy, and the following day brought him to the
Life of Count JRumford. 325
apartments of his daughter with lowering looks, and
even more incensed than he had been at the secrecy with
which she had planned the birthday banquet.
" I feeling myself innocent, as I was (it being as much a
surprise to me as to my father that the invitation to the dinner
was to meet Count Taxis, that being the subject of the diffi-
culty), I at first only stared. After which, on knowing what it
meant, like many young people who laugh when there is noth-
ing to laugh at, an irresistible inclination seized me to laugh ;
which I having for some time suppressed only burst forth with
the greater violence, and it ended in my father's boxing my
ears. Little expecting such an indignity, I quitted t'he room
without making an observation, or trying to appease him by
saying I was innocent. Nor did he ever know, as I believe,
but what I had given rendezvous to Count Taxis, and met him
from a spirit of intrigue. Much the contrary, the Countess
knowing very well I should not have gone, had I known for
what purpose. Besides, she was too just and delicate to place
me in such a situation."
We must infer, therefore, that Count Taxis came in
by chance to the dinner. Our sympathies are engaged
for the girl in the following like episode.
" I must be allowed here to take a step of retrogression.
When I was a little girl of four or five years old, I had two
playmates about my own age, by name William and Elenora
Green ; and we were very fond of each other. We were sent
to day-schools together in the neighborhood, and were so much
together that we were called the inseparables. We grew up in
this manner in real love and friendship. We knew no differ-
ence from brother and sisters, excepting I might have been a
little more civil than the sister. For William was exceedingly
pretty and engaging, and his mother, doatingly fond of him, led
him to exact more from us than he otherwise might have done.
Mrs. Green, the mother, was rather romantic in her character,
and dressed her son fantastically, keeping his hair (beautiful
326 Life of Count Rumford.
golden locks) always in ringlets, with belts of curious construc-
tion round his waist confining beautiful dresses, a jockey cap
with feathers on his head ; and, more than all the rest, she
bought him a fife, and had him instructed to play on it several
little tunes. It was this fife particularly which I was obliged to
hear, for Elenora would not. As may be supposed, the music
of such a child was not the most agreeable. Even while I
would be listening to the little Apollo, my eyes would wistfully
be turned towards Elenora, much preferring some other amuse-
ment. But William was not ungrateful. Taken away, at a
later period, to other schools, he never forgot us, or, in plain
words, myself; seeking all the means proper in his power to
give me testimonies of his friendship. His mother knowing
this, as I have observed, being .a little romantic, made proposals
to my mother that at a future period we should be married.
My mother, thinking well of the lad, liking the family, and
having my happiness at heart, gave consent at once. The same
thing happened to me here. Count Taxis, through the Countess,
asking me of my father, I got my ears boxed, and Count Taxis
with his regiment was sent into the country ! One actuated by
the feelings of a mother, the other by those of an ambitious
father ! "
The young lady, drawing a parallel between her con-
dition and that of Job, when the messengers of woe
came to him in succession with ill tidings, proceeds
thus :
" The Countess called one morning (thinking, perhaps, I had
better know the truth of things) and said: 'The negotiation with
your father has not succeeded. To end further importunities,
the Captain and his regiment quit Munich this morning, to
have their residence in the country. And I only am left to tell
you/
" While she was yet speaking, there came a messenger from
Count Nogarola, and said: 'From letters just received, he finds
it necessary to set out for Italy to-night or to-morrow morning,
and you have only time to return to make preparations."
Life of Count Rumford. 327
" While the messenger was still speaking, there came also
another, and said : ' The Baron sends you a paper.' It being
in English, I cast my eyes on an article bearing the date of New
York : ' Lost, being killed in a duel, Captain William Green^
one of our most promising and beloved naval officers, barely
attaining the age of eighteen. A duel said to be undertaken to
vindicate the honor of a beloved sister. The sister is said to
have had her mind deranged by grief at the death of her brother.'
Knowing that the fond mother of William, after his finishing
his studies, put him into the navy, there could be no doubt who
this officer was, or of the identity of the sister. I had heard,
too, that Elenora, when quite a child, had been pushed on, from
ambition, to marry one gentleman while she was particularly
attached to another. Relating this attachment was the cause of
the duel, as I afterwards learned.
" I was not, like Job under accumulated afflictions, all hu-
mility and submission ; nor, like his wife, with profligate re-
monstrances j but rather listened within myself to the precept
of Solomon, that ' all is vanity and vexation of spirit.'
" Having given one parable, I shall give another. A gentle-
man of my acquaintance, I will say, a friend, having had and
lost two beloved wives, in the height of his grief at last declared
he would go and live in the burying-ground with them. Being
asked with which of them, he was embarrassed for an answer."
Miss Sarah adds that she cannot say over which of
her four lost friends including Elenora she grieved
the most, but proceeds to describe the sorrows of the
day following, which was begun by leave-taking with
the Countess. She was wrought almost to madness,
and, seated alone on her sofa, her little dog Cora near to
her, yielded to such passionate outcries as to lead her
maid to summon her father into her room.
" He came in with his stately military march, and seated
himself. I rose from my posture, taking Cora in my arms, and
considerably abating in my great grief, or, rather, in the expres-
328 Life of Count RumforcL
sion of it. He said to me, c You seem very unhappy ! ' For
some time I remained quiet, then, thinking I had hit on a good
answer, replied, looking at Cora, c You gave me this little beast.
Is it your intention to take her away from me again ? ' My
father rose, and, in quitting me, said, ' I am not the cause of
your losing the Countess.' '
The Count, to divert the mind of his daughter, ar-
ranged another trip with her which showed his real
interest in her happiness and improvement, and also
afforded her enjoyment. He had invited temporarily
into his family, M. Quintin, one of the French nobles
driven away from France in the Revolution. "He
had resided in England and been naturalized, having
there taken the name above given ; otherwise he was
the Marquis of Chersena [?], a respectable character; at
this time not at his ease in point of property, but some
years after, at the Restoration, returning to France, he
was -made Governor of the Tuileries, as his father had
been before him."
M. Quintin was about to go to Vienna. He pro-
posed to descend the Iser as far as Passau on one of
the rafts by which the country people carried their
wood to market in Vienna. Little huts or shelters
were constructed on these rafts and made very con-
venient for travellers. The daughter was taken by
surprise, one morning, by finding herself with her father,
M. Quintin, and servants, on one of these rafts, on
which a hut had been constructed for her, floating down
the river. They carried also a curiously constructed
Russian carriage belonging to the Count. They de-
scended the Iser to its confluence with the Inn and the
Danube ; and there, bidding adieu to their friend,
they took post-horses on their way to Salzburg to see
Life of Count R^^ l nfard. 329
the famous salt-mines, which her father had never visited.
They entered the mines, and examined the processes of
digging, manufacture, caving, or bracing the passages,
and purifying the air. They also visited Berchtes-
garden to see what was then- the most famous toy-
manufactory.
On her father's appointment as Minister Plenipo-
tentiary from Bavaria to the Court of Great Britain,
in which office he thought he should be received, he
quitted Munich, taking her with him. She paid her
last respects to the Elector and Electrice, and to her
father's and her own many friends. Of two of her
friends, she says, she had already taken a long farewell
in her heart. The Countess Nogarola she never saw
again, though she continued to correspond with her till
the death of that lady, not many years after. As to
Count Taxis, we must have her own words.
u On our second day's journey, we having stopped at an inn,
as we were getting into the carriage to pursue our way, Count
Taxis came up post-haste on horseback to meet us. Two
minutes later, and we should have been gone. The Count bid
us both farewell, but in different ways. With my father a
respectful bow and shake of the hand ; with me, a paper left
in my hand. It was a great event ; for never had I before the
honor of receiving a line from him or from any one else, for a
certainty, of that nature. As I already had had my ears boxed on
account of this gentleman, I took care not to expose the letter.
But how to wait till night before reading it ? For we were to
make no other stop during the day. I was compelled thus to
do, and had all the time, in consequence, to ruminate on the
subject of the letter.
" Taking leave of friends being of a melancholy nature, I
took it for granted the tenor of this letter would wear that im-
pression. I was several times nearly affected to tears, to think
330 Life of Count JRumfard.
what must have been the Count's feelings. ' I only flattered
myself that he attributed things to their right causes, and did
not blame me. But the moment at length arrived for me to
read the letter, and what was my surprise, on reading it, to find
only a few gay farewell lines, with neither regrets nor melan-
choly ! Had he not himself given me the letter, I should not
have believed he wrote it. The only thing bordering on civility
was, that the Countess told him to cherish the hope of my
return, and which method he had adopted.
" In order not to make Count Taxis appear unfriendly or
deceiving, as I do not think him so, I must observe that several
times, through the Countess, with whom I was in constant
correspondence, I had little messages to convince me I was not
forgotten. As I shall not again have occasion to speak of this
gentleman, I will here mention his unfortunate, untimely end.
Both he and Lieutenant Spreti, my father's other aide-de-camp^
lost their lives in Bonaparte's campaigns in Russia. The Ba-
varians at that time lost thirty thousand men."
Taking the route through Hamburg, for the same
reason which had led them to enter Germany by that
way, the party had a most disagreeable, and even perilous
journey. The distractions of a state of war had de-
moralized even the quiet and honest peasantry, multi-
plying freebooters, and exposing travellers on neglected
and dangerous highways and byways to great risks of
violence. Robberies and murders were frequent on all
sides. The inns and public-houses were wretched and
unsafe. The Count, his daughter, and servants were
often obliged to sleep in their carriages, in which they
met with two accidents that caused them much alarm.
On one occasion, passing a bridge without a parapet,
the horses, seized with a fit of backing, came near pre-
cipitating them over a frightful precipice. While the
Count put his head out on one side to warn the coach-
Life of Count Rum ford. 331
man, Miss Sarah jumped out safely on the other side.
She says her father used often to describe the incident
to his friends, as proof that she knew how to take care
of herself. As the cost of exchange on London would
have caused a heavy loss on paper money, the Count
was obliged to take with him a bag of coin so heavy as
to require aid from others to lift it. This was a source
of constant anxiety, whether in the carriage, by day or
night, or when taken into a room at an inn.
They passed safely through all their perils, and to
the delight of the young lady, who, though she had
enjoyed much in Germany, was a dear lover of Eng-
land, they reached London. The father, on finding that
as a born British subject he could not be received
in a diplomatic capacity, decided not to return to Ba-
varia, where war and distraction were so unfavorable to
the pursuits which now chiefly engaged him. Not
being in good health, he purchased a villa at Brompton
Row, Knightsbridge, near London, because of its salu-
brious situation, and here his daughter lived with him
quite happily for a year. While the Count was busy-
ing himself with the plan and initiation of the Royal
Institution, and in all the intercourse, social and scien-
tific, with the most distinguished men in and around
the capital which was so freely open to him, his
daughter had her own resources. She describes with
great animation her delight in English comforts, re-
finements, and festivities. Especially is she ardent and
eloquent in her tribute to Lady Palmerston as a lovely
woman, a faithful mother, and a notable housekeeper.
Miss Sarah was cordially received at the three resi-
dences of Lord Palmerston, Hanover Square, Broad-
lands, and Sheene. At Broadlands, during the Christ-
332 Life of Count Rumford.
mas festivities, she says that she " met some of the first
people in the world," and the only language which she
can find adequate for describing the way in which Lady
Palmerston did the honors is by saying " that in all
probability there was nothing else to be found to match
it in the whole world."
But the daughter's troubles in affairs of the heart
seem to have in some degree qualified her enjoyment
in England likewise, as she and her father were not in
accord about any tentative suitors. The following ac-
count has an air of candor, and engages a degree of
sympathy for Miss Sarah, now in her twenty-fifth year.
" When my father was engaged in dining out where he could
not take me, Sir Charles Blagden, one of his most intimate
associates, would be invited to dine with me, en tete-a-tete, i. e.
in friendly chat. Sir Charles was a bachelor, not so old as
my father, but not young. After we went to Germany, he
wrote to my father to say that he liked me well enough to make
a wife of me, requesting that favor.
" My father was ingenious. He did not wish it, yet how
affront such a friend? His proceedings were thus: He would
often turn the conversation on this gentleman, relating anec-
dotes not of a nature to enchant a young person, without saying
that he had written about me. After which, the truth coming
out, I was desired to give my decision. I, of course, was
shocked that the thing should be mentioned. This did not
prevent all three of us being excellent friends when we met
again. Sir Charles told me one day he liked me better than
he did my father, which I thought a great compliment. My
father was not a bit jealous. He would say we were just alike.
We were all happy, had we but have known it. But we were
to separate, I returning to America ; my father going to
France, where he married Madame Lavoisier, who did not
wish a daughter-in-law, which kept me in America."
Life of Count Rumford. 333
Before she left her father she describes him as suffer-
ing much from ill health. He put himself under the
care of the celebrated Dr. Ash, and had recourse to the
waters of various mineral springs. He altered and
fitted up his house at Brompton in such an ingenious
way, and with such contrivances and arrangements, as
to make it an attraction for many curious persons to
visit. The daughter's return to America at this time
was not caused, as the last extract would seem to imply,
by her father's second marriage, which did not take
place till some years subsequently. He was offered a
very honorable position and employment in England,
but felt bound, after this residence there of a year, to
return to Germany.
The appointment of Envoy Extraordinary and Min-
ister Plenipotentiary from Bavaria to the Court of Lon-
don, which Count Rumford had received from the
Elector, was an honor conferred upon him for several
reasons. The zeal and activity with which the Count
had devoted himself to so many forms of public service
had again seriously overtasked him, and had greatly
impaired his health. He had also encountered much
and very disagreeable opposition from jealous or inter-
ested parties, the effects of which began to tell painfully
on his temper and cheerfulness of spirits. It is notice-
able, however, as a marked and praiseworthy quality in
his character, that he made but infrequent, and then
always guarded and dignified, reference to the public or
private enmities excited against him by the splendid
success of his career and the efficient wording of his
schemes. When thwarted in one of them, he makes
this general reference to such opposition, in speaking
of " the malicious insinuations of persons who, from
334 Life of Count Rumford.
motives too obvious, took great pains to render abor-
tive every public undertaking in which I have been
engaged." But the confidence, esteem, and gratitude
of the Elector never failed him. While desirous that
he should not succumb under such severe work, nor be
crossed and irritated by opposition, the Elector was
intent upon securing for him the rest and relief of which
he had need without depriving himself entirely of the
Count's services. The latter, as we have seen, taking
his daughter with him, went to England, arriving in
London near the end of September, 1798, in the full
belief that he would be received in his high diplomatic
office. But the fact of his birth as a British subject,
which had heretofore been so signal a condition of his
advancement, now withstood the gratification of his am-
bition. Usage did not permit that a native subject of
the king of England should be accredited as a foreign
minister.
It had proved a severe trial of English magnanimity
to accept that arch-rebel John Adams in his diplomatic
capacity from the new American people. But the
inevitable condition was that the United States could
have no representative at the British Court, at least for
a generation to come, unless the mother country would
receive as such a born subject of the realm.
It would have presented a yet more curious problem
for the British government, if Rumford, on a tempo-
rary visit to his native country, had been recognized as
a citizen, and then sent in a diplomatic capacity to the
Court of St. James.
As this diplomatic appointment was of itself a proud
distinction, and one of the most interesting incidents in
Count Rumford's singularly eminent career; and as the
Life of Co^lnt Rumford. 335
honor of the office, with the prospective social position
which it would secure him, was evidently highly prized
by him, as also the discomfiture which he experienced
in his disappointment was equally great, I am glad
to be able to give an authentic statement of particulars
concerning it.*
The Elector of Bavaria had offered the position of
Minister at the English court to Count Rumford as
the successor of Count Haslang, who had retired after
having held the office very many years. The appoint-
ment of Rumford being known in England before his
arrival, Lord Grenville, on the I4th of September,
1798, sent a despatch to the Hon. Arthur Paget, the
English Minister at Munich, as follows :
"DOWNING STREET, Sept r 14, 1798.
" HoN b ! e ARTHUR PAGET.
" SIR, His Majesty has seen, with some surprise, in the
late dispatches from M r Shepherd, which I have had the hon-
our to lay before him, that the Elector of Bavaria has nomi-
nated Count Rumford to succeed Count Haslang as His Elec-
toral Highness's Minister at this Court. It is, I apprehend, a
thing if not wholly unprecedented, at least extremely unusual,
to appoint a subject of the Country to reside at the Court of his
natural Sovereign in the character of Minister from a Foreign
Prince. And I am to direct you to lose no time in apprizing
the Ministers'of his Electoral Highness that such an appoint-
ment, in the person of Count Rumford, would be by no means
agreeable to His Majesty, and that His Majesty relies, therefore,
on the friendship and good understanding which has always
hitherto subsisted between Himself and the Elector of Bavaria,
that His Highness will have no hesitation in withdrawing it, arid
* I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. H. Bence Jones in procuring for me from
the late Lord Clarendon, but a few days before his decease, copies of papers from the
Foreign Office relating to this incident.
336 Life of Count Rumford.
nominating as His Minister some Person to whom the objection
here stated does not apply.
" There cannot be the least doubt but that the Elector will
consent to this request the moment that it is suggested, and
that the reasons upon which it is founded are pointed out to his
observation. But should there unexpectedly arise any difficulty
about a compliance with a Request which His Majesty is so
clearly warranted in making, I am to direct you, in the last
Resort, to state in distinct terms that His Majesty will by no
means consent to receive Count Rumford in the character
which has been assigned to him.
" Should anything be said of the Harshness of requiring the
recall of a Minister already appointed, and actually set-out (as
Count Rumford is understood to be) for the place of his desti-
nation, you will not fail to answer, that, had the usual notifica-
tion of an Intention to appoint a new Minister to this Court
been previously made here, and the name of the person destined
to his Employment mentioned to His Majesty (an attention which
might reasonably have been Expected upon an appointment so
unusual in its circumstances) His Majesty would then have been
able to state his objection without risking any Eclat, or appearing
to compromise the personal character of the Gentleman whom
His Majesty declines receiving.
" Instructions are sent (by the Same Post with this letter) to
Sir James Craufurd at Hamburgh to communicate privately
to Count Rumford, on his arrival at that place, the nature of
the Representation which you are directed to make at Munich,
and to dissuade him from prosecuting his journey to England.
" In addition to the general arguments against this appoint-
ment, as applying to any Person, a subject of His Majesty, you
will observe that the circumstances of Count Rumford's having
heretofore filled a confidential Situation (that of Under-Secretary
of State in the American Department) under His Majesty's
Gov 1 makes the appointment in his Person peculiarly improper
and objectionable."
The next day Lord Grenville addressed to Count
Life of Count Riimford. 337
Haslang, late Bavarian Minister, a note in French,
of which the following is a translation :
"DOWNING STREET, I5th September, 1798.
"Lord Grenville presents his compliments to Count Haslang,
and has the honour to assure him of the pleasure with which he
learns that the matter in question, referred to in the note of the
Count, has been disposed of to his satisfaction.
u Lord Grenville desires, likewise, to express to the Count his
regrets at having been deprived of the opportunity of communi-
cating with him on affairs of the court. By the note which, on
account of the absence of the Count, Lord Grenville sent to
his house, he had invited him to call upon him in order that
Lord Grenville might impart to him the decision of his Majesty
on the subject of the nomination of Count Rumford. But,
Count Haslang being absent, the same communication has
been made directly to Count Rumford."
[Count Rumford to Lord Grenville.]
" MY LORD, Notwithstanding the .information and the
intimation your Lordship has caused to be communicated to
me by Mr. Canning, Under-Secretary of State in the Depart-
ment of Foreign Affairs, I conceive it to be my duty formally
to notify to your Lordship that His most Serene Electoral
Highness, the Elector Palatine, Reigning Duke of Bavaria, my
most gracious Master, having been pleased to appoint me to be
His Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the
Court of His Majesty the King of Great Britain, I have come
to England in consequence of that appointment, and of the
Orders and Instructions of His most Serene Electoral Highness;
and am charged with a Letter from His most Serene Elec-
toral Highness to the King ; which Letter, agreeably to the
Instructions I have received, I ought to endeavour to obtain
permission to deliver to His Majesty with my own hands.
"Being thus circumstanced, your Lordship will, no doubt, see
22
238 Life of Co^lnt Rumford.
the propriety and the necessity of my asking an Audience or
personal interview with your Lordship, which I now do, in
order that I may have an Opportunity of stating to your Lord-
ship more fully the objects of the Mission with which I am
charged, and of receiving from your Lordship such information
on that subject as may enable me to give a clear, authentic, and
satisfactory account of the success of that Mission to the
Sovereign who has deigned to entrust me with the management
of his Affairs at this Court.
" Requesting that your Lordship would be pleased to inform
me when and where I may have the honour of waiting on you,
" I have the honour, &c.
[Signed] RUMFORD.
"LONDON, igth September, 1798.
[Copy.-]
[Lord Grenville to Count Rumford.]
"DOWNING STREET, Sept r 2ist, 1798.
" COUNT RUMFORD.
" SIR, In conformity to the Communication which Mr.
Canning has already made to you, I have now the honour to
enclose an extract of the Instruction which, by His Majesty's
command, I transmitted to Mr. Paget .immediately on His Maj-
esty's receiving the Information of your nomination to succeed
Count Haslang.
u You will not fail to observe that the Representation which
Mr. Paget was directed to make on this Subject rested wholly
on the circumstance, of the decisive objection which His Majesty
feels against receiving as a public Minister accredited from An-
other Sovereign, a Person who is not only a subject of His Maj-
esty, but has actually been employed in a Confidential situation
under His Majesty's Governm*. His Majesty had graciously
been pleased to express His wish that this Intimation should
reach you before you set out for England, in order to avoid the
Inconvenience to which you might otherwise be exposed. With
this View the Instruction sent to Mr. Paget was accompanied by
a Despatch transmitted by the same post to Hamburgh, in which
Life of Count Rumford. 339
His Majesty's Minister at that place was directed to communi-
cate to you privately, on your arrival there, the nature of the
Representation to be made by Mr. Paget.
" As this course has been precluded by your actual arrival in
London, and as you have been apprized here of the circum-
stance in question, I conceive it will be more agreeable to you
that the substance of the Representation with which Mr. Paget
was charged, should be transmitted by you to the Elector,
rather than thro' any other channel. With this view I shall
acquaint Mr. Paget, that he may forbear to execute his In-
structions, except in so far as relates to the assurances to be
given to H. E. H. of His Majesty's constant and Invariable
Friendship, & of His Willingness to receive as His Electoral
Highness's Minister any Person whose nomination is not liable
to objections as strong as those which I have already stated."
" DOWNING STREET, Sept r ai, 1798.
" HoN ble ARTHUR PAGET.
" SIR, Count Rumford being arrived in London and hav-
ing been apprized of the objections which His Majesty had
stated to receiving him in the Character of Minister from the
o
Elector of Bavaria; and having undertaken to transmit to His
Electoral Highness a statement of the grounds upon which
these objections are founded, I have written to him a letter, a
copy of which I herewith Inclose, and in conformity to which
you will be pleased to regulate ygur conduct on the subject of
the Instructions contained in my Dispatch of the I4th Instant.
Count Rumford was then forty-five years old. A
portrait in oil, now in the possession of Joseph B.
Walker, of Concord, N. H., had been taken of him
at or about that time. It presents a man of fine appear-
ance, with imposing presence and beautiful features.
An engraving from it serves as the frontispiece to this
volume.
Of course, therefore, the Count never exercised the
34 Life of Count Rumford.
diplomatic office, but lived as a private person. He
acted, however, as the agent of Charles Theodore, the
Elector, and when another minister was appointed
was on most intimate terms with him. The Bavarian
army, then in the interest of Austria, was in the pay
of England. I shall have occasion by and by to quote
the statement of the daughter that her father felt deeply
chagrined at the foiling of his passion for official dis-
tinction experienced in his respectful rejection as the
Bavarian ambassador. That he soon found full occupa-
tion in an enterprise which, if for the time it attached
to him less of personal distinction, was to insure a
permanent honor to his name, may have decided him
to remain in England and bear his disappointment.
Probably he learned even before his arrival that there
was an obstacle to his reception in the character in
which he came, for, as will appear from a letter of his,
soon to be given, he proposed at this time to make
another effort to visit America.
The following letters were addressed to him by Colo-
nel Baldwin on dates previous to his leaving Munich.
" WOBURN, July 31, 1798.
" MY DEAR COUNT, Mr. Welsh, a son of Dr. Welsh of
Boston, sets out to-morrow morning for Newburyport, from
whence he expects to embark for , in order to proceed
to Berlin, the capital of the Prussian dominions, where he is
to officiate as secretary to the Hon. Mr. Adams, the American
Minister at that court.
" The young gentleman is of a very respectable family and
sustains an exceedingly good character. He will be the bearer
of a number of letters to you and the Countess, your daughter,
to whose attention I beg leave to recommend him, and any
civility with which you may please to notice him will add to the
Life of Count Rumford. 341
numerous favors which I have already received. I am, with the
greatest respect and esteem,
" Your most obedient and very humble servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" SIR BENJAMIN, Count of Rumford."
" WOBURN, July 31, 1798.
" MY DEAR COUNT, I have time by Mr. Welsh just to
acknowledge the receipt of your favors of the jyth of Decem-
ber and the yth of January last. Mr. Welsh, whom I have
taken the liberty to recommend to your notice, will be the
bearer of this and a number of other letters which should have
been forwarded long ago, but I must beg you to excuse it. For
reasons which I shall give you at another time, they have been
delayed.
" I have, agreeably to your desire, attended to the various
objects you have mentioned in your letter of the lyth of De-
cember last, and have them all in train, and hope soon to effect
them agreeably to your wishes. I happened to see Mr. Rolfe
as he was on a journey, and had a pretty full conversation with
him. He seems desirous of meeting you on the terms proposed,
and acknowledged them generous, yet seemed to hesitate a little
on account of some administration accounts with Judge Walker.
However, he concluded to take a little more time to consider
and write me, but has not done it yet.
"I have seen Judge Walker since. He tells me that the
accounts referred to above will be closed the beginning of. Au-
gust next. He is very willing to do everything you wish on his
part, but thinks your daughter should give him some kind of a
discharge when the business is closed.
" I have no doubt, from what I learn from those gentlemen of
Concord whom I have conversed with on the subject of the
Countess of Rumford's benevolent donation, but that it will
be most cordially received. The Mrs. Nowell whom you
mention is dead. Your dear mother was with us here last
week, in fine health for a lady of her years, and looks just as
she used to do. She desires to be remembered to you and your
daughter. Friends in general well.
34 2 Life of Count Rumford.
" I shall write you more fully, and I hope more satisfactorily,
in a few days. Give my love to the Countess, and tell her that
I thank her most sincerely for her successful endeavor in per-
suading her dear father to make a visit to his native country.
We long for the time to come that we may see him here. We
rejoice to hear the resolution you have taken, and sincerely hope
no event will happen to prevent it.
" I am, with much respect, my dear Count,
" Your most obedient and very humble servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" SIR BENJAMIN, Count Rumford."
Colonel Baldwin, in a business letter, communicated
to Count Rumford' s mother, now advanced far in
years, the prospect of seeing her son in his native coun-
try. She was then residing with her husband, in Flints-
town, Me.
"WOBURN, AugUSt 23, 1798.
" DEAR MADAM, I have just received instructions from
your son, the Count of Rumford, to draw on his agents, Sir
Robert Herries & Co., in London, for =30 sterling, it being
for the amount of his daughter Sarah's draft on Edward Arm-
strong, Esq., his former agent, dated October 23, 1795, that
was protested, &c. Which bills, or the money therefor, to-
gether with another set, dated the 26th day of March last of
the same amount, are now ready to be delivered to you or your
order, agreeably to the provision your son has made. I hope
you will soon have a convenient opportunity to send for it, as I
know of none at present by which I can send to you.
"I have lately received communications dated the lyth De-
cember, 1797, from the Count, upon various subjects, one of
which is respecting a visit to America that he with his daugh-
ter proposes to make in about fifteen or sixteen months from
the date of his letter, if peace shall be restored and the state of
affairs in Europe will admit of it, which he expects to be the
case. I pray God to grant it may be so.
Life of Count Rumford. 343
" Mrs. Baldwin joins with me in love and respects to you
and Mr. Pierce, and all your children.
" I am, dear madam,
" Your obedient, and very humble servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" MRS. RUTH PIERCE."
At the time of writing the following letter, it would
seem that Count Rumford, though he had been in
England but a week, must have been made aware that
the objections to his reception as the Bavarian Am-
bassador could not be removed ; for he could hardly
have contemplated even a visit to America, unless he
had looked for but a brief tenure of office, if allowed to
hold it.
"LONDON, 2,8th Sept., 1798.
" MY DEAR SIR, I arrived in this City last week from
Germany, and I expect to be able to remain here several
months. I have, indeed, some hopes of being able to pay you a
visit in America in the Spring. But these hopes, though ap-
parently well founded, may easily be disappointed, for there are
several events, none of which are very improbable, that would
render it impossible for me to be absent from Europe next year.
It is, however, my fixed intention to pay a visit to my friends in
America as soon as ever it shall be in my power, which most
probably will be in the course of a year or two. I have even a
scheme of forming for myself a little quiet retreat in that coun-
try, to which I can retire at some future period, and spend the
evening of my life. Perhaps you may be so good as to assist
me in carrying this plan into execution. As I am not wealthy,
and prefer comfort to splendour, I shall not want anything
magnificent. From forty to one hundred Acres of good land,
with wood and water belonging to it, if possible in a retired
situation, from one to four miles from Cambridge, with or
without a neat, comfortable house upon it, would satisfy all my
wishes.
344 Life of Count Rumford.
" Do you know of anything of this description that is to be
bought ? And how much would it cost ? I should want noth-
ing from the land but pleasure-grounds, and grass for my cows
and horses, and extensive kitchen garden and fruit garden. I
should wish much for a few acres of wood, and also for a stream
of fresh water, or for a large Pond, or the neighbourhood of one,
for without shady trees and water there can be no rural beauty.
What is land an Acre in the situation above mentioned ? What
near the road ? What at the distance of half a mile from it ?
What are the taxes I should pay in your country ? Could I, as
a stranger, purchase and hold an Estate ? I should be much
obliged to you, my Dear Sir, if you would give me information
and advice on these various subjects. I need not tell you how
much it would tend to increase my enjoyments to live in your
neighbourhood. My Daughter is quite enchanted with the
scheme, and never ceases to urge me to execute it as soon as
possible, and on her account I am anxious to engage in it. I
wish to leave her a home, something immoveable that she may
call her own, as well as the means of subsistence, at my death.
And I am not surprised nor displeased to find that she prefers
her native country to every other.
" To own the truth, I am quite of her opinion on that sub-
ject. She desires her best compliments to you and to your
Lady. She is very grateful to you for all your goodness to her.
It is now a great while indeed since I heard from you. Pray
write me soon, and believe me, ever,
" Yours most affectionately,
RUMFORD.
" To the Hon b ! e LOAMMI BALDWIN,
u When you write to me, please to address your Letters
thus:
" Count Rumford, to the Care of Messrs.
Herries, Farquhar, & Co., Bankers, St. James St., London."
(" Received at Woburn, by hand of Dr. Walter.") * .
A letter written by Miss Sarah at this time shows
Life of Coiint Riunford.
her keenness of discernment, and her frankness in ex-
pressing the results of it.
" LONDON, 24th October, 1798.
Brompton Row.
" MY DEAR MRS. BALDWIN, Though I was very sorry
and much disappointed at no.t hearing from you sooner, yet your
letter, when it did arrive, gave me much pleasure. I am even
disposed to make every apology for your long silence you could
wish. Indeed, I think the situation in which you are, and the
variety of domestic affairs which you have to take up your time
and attention, is a sufficient excuse for not writing sooner.
I am glad, however, to hear that your health is good, as like-
wise the health of that said friend of yours, who is very
naughty to be absent so much, and leave all the cares of the
family to you. Oh ! those gentlemen of business seem odd
things to us who have no further ideas of riches and honor and
glory than a decent comfortable living and a good reputation.
" But I should not venture to write in this manner to you
did I not perfectly remember that we used to be just of the
same opinion upon these subjects. I do not know what you
have done, but I have not yet found reason to alter my opinion ;
and, to let you into a secret, I have since learned to know more
about the consequences of living with a man of business. I
have found a very good father, but who is likewise prodigiously
occupied in public affairs. Had I acquired his fortune and half
his renown (for between you and me, let me tell you that
neither Colonel Baldwin nor my father is an enemy to a little
well-deserved ren.own), I should think myself happy, and should
go and settle down in some little corner of the world, and
endeavor to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
" Believe me your most affectionate and sincere friend,
"S. RUMFORD.
" MRS. BALDWIN, care of LOAMMI BALDWIN, ESQ/'
The revival and circulation in America of the report
that Count Rumford, supposed to have finally left the
service of Bavaria, intended to return to his native
346 Life of Count Rtmford.
country, met here a hearty interest with his many
friends. He had already begun to receive in America
marks of public regard. Judge Tudor, one of the
founders of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the
oldest in the country, having nominated Count Rum-
ford as a corresponding member, he was elected as such
at a meeting of the Society on January 30, 1798. The
following cordial letter was received 1 from him in re-
sponse, and having been read at a meeting of the So-
ciety on July 19, 1798, by the Corresponding Secretary,
it was voted that it be published in one of the Boston
papers, and that a set of the Collections of the Soci-
ety, handsomely bound in four volumes, be sent to the
Count. Of this correspondence the admiring Pictet
writes: "The Historical Society of Massachusetts, in
choosing the Count to membership, expressed to him,
through its President, their unanimous desire to see
him return to his own country and settle among them.
His answer, which may be read in the American papers
of the time, was much admired. I regret that I cannot
transcribe it."
I am glad that I can transcribe the letter from the
files of the Society as follows :
" REVEREND SIR, I have had the pleasure to receive your
letter of the 3ist January, in which you inform me of my hav-
ing been elected a Member of the Massachusetts Historical
Society. I request, Sir, that you would present my best thanks
to that respectable body for the honor they have done me, and
at the same time assure them that I feel myself highly flattered
by this distinguished mark of their regard and esteem.
" Though my present situation and connections must for the
present, and may perhaps for ever, prevent my having the satis-
faction of co-operating with the Society in the furtherance of
their interesting and useful researches, yet I shall have much
Life of Count Rumford. 347
pleasure in contemplating, even at this great distance, the fruits
of their meritorious exertions ; and shall feel no small degree of
pride in seeing myself enrolled in the same list with those gen-
erous benefactors of future generations whose names will go down
to posterity with the treasures they are collecting.
" There are few things that could afford me so much heart-
felt satisfaction as to be able to avail myself of the kind invita-
tion of the Society to come and take my place among them. I
have ever -loved my native country with the fondest affection ;
and the liberality I have experienced from my Countrymen
their moderation in success, and their consummate prudence in
the use of their Independence, have attached me to them by all
the ties of Gratitude, Esteem, and Admiration.
" Requesting that you, Sir, would accept my thanks for the
flattering manner in which you have conveyed to me the Reso-
lution of the Society, I have the honor to be, with sincere
Regard and Esteem,
" Your much obliged and most obedient Servant,
RUMFORD.
"MUNICH, 22 April, 1798.
" The REV. JEREMY BELKNAP, D.D., Secretary to
the Massachusetts Historical Society."
Another yet more gratifying recognition of the fact
that whatever of reproach had rested on his name in
his native country was now removed, was received by
Count Rumford at this time. The representation
generally made in the various biographical sketches of
him following the statement first put in print by
Pictet is that he was solicited by the government
of the United States to return here, and that the re-
quest was accompanied by the offer of a place in its pay
and service. Thus Pictet, whom we must regard as
relating the communication made to him by his friend,
says :
348 Life of Count Rumford.
cc Meanwhile the report was circulated in America
that he had finally left Bavaria, and the government
of the United States, through the American Envoy at
London, addressed to him a formal and official invita-
tion to return to his native country, where an honora-
ble establishment would be provided for him. The
offer was accompanied by the most flattering assurances
of consideration and confidence."
It is only after considerable inquiry and search given
to the investigation of the facts connected with this
interesting subject that I have succeeded in reaching
an authentic and clear account of them from original,
unprinted documents. I had thought it quite unlikely
tha.t the initiative step was taken by the government
of the United States in inviting the return of Count
Rumford to America, and in connecting with the
invitation the proffer of a place in the public service.
True, the great and well-deserved fame which the
Count had attained in Europe, and which was not
diminished, however it may have been qualified, as it
reached America, might have seemed to justify the
general government in overriding State enactments by
inviting home a proscribed citizen. But it was none
the less a fact that Count Rumford was under a legal
disability. He had been proscribed as having been
hostile to the American cause when he left the country,
and he had added to his original offence the graver
one of having guided the counsels and commanded
the forces of the enemy. The treaty of peace between
Great Britain and America pledged the general gov-
ernment to appeal to the State governments for a
degree of leniency toward the outlawed Tories ; but
this condition fell short of restoring citizenship, or a
Life of Count Rumford. 349
right to return here to the proscribed. We have seen,
too, that the Count, in a letter to Colonel Baldwin, had
not forgotten the disability under which he lay. The
natural inference, therefore, was that whatever action
was had by the government of the United States in
the case of the Count was prompted by some expression
or proposition of his own.
The Hon. Charles Sumner, Senator of Massachu-
setts, and Chairman of the Senate Committee on For-
eign Affairs, was kind enough, at my request, to insti-
tute a search in the records of the State Department at
Washington, for the purpose of finding, if there were
such, any official documents of the tenor above de-
scribed. He informs me that no such documents ap-
pear. But inquiry in* another direction, suggested by
the statement of Pictet, that the alleged invitation was
made to Rumford through the American Envoy at
London, has enabled me to give a full account of the
matter.
Count Rumford, as I have said, became, after the
close of the war of the Revolution, a most warm and faith-
ful friend of his native country, holding correspondence
with many of its citizens, to whom he communicated
his plans, and sent his works, and generously dividing
among its literary and scientific institutions his benev-
olent endowments. He also, when in England, and
afterwards when in France, maintained the closest
social relations with Americans resident in those coun-
tries either as officials of our government or in pri-
vate life. Among his most intimate friends in Lon-
don at this time were the Hon. Rufus King and the
Hon. Christopher Gore. The former was the Ameri-
can Ambassador. Mr. Gore, afterwards Governor of
35O Life of Count Rumford.
Massachusetts, had been commissioned in 1796, with
Pinckney and Trumbull to represent American claims
for British spoliations on our commerce. For this
purpose he was abroad eight years, being the confiden-
tial friend of Mr. King, who left him as American
Charge d* Affaires in London, on his return home
in 1803. The Count's intercourse with these two
gentlemen led to the results which are stated with
substantial correctness by Pictet. No publication has
yet been made of the official papers of the Hon.
Rufus King, though his son, the late much-honored
President of Columbia College, New York, was
pledged to the undertaking. To my application to
a grandson of the ambassador, Mr. Charles R. King,
of Andalusia, Buck's County, Pennsylvania, I re-
ceived a most satisfactory reply, the tenor of which
is indicated by the following extract from his letter
to me:
" The search among my grandfather's papers for correspond-
ence with Count Rumford has proved more successful than
at one time I supposed would be the case. Enclosed with this
you will find copies of letters referring to the interesting facts
respecting which you desired information, and which I think
have never been published.
"The letter of Rufus King to Colonel Pickering, of the 8th
December, 1798, shows clearly the reasons which moved Count
Rumford to desire to leave England and to return to this coun-
try ; and the suggestion that he should be cordially welcomed
here drew from James McHenry, the Secretary at War, an
answer of the 3d July, 1799 (which I am sorry to say, I cannot
find), containing, as permitted by President Adams, the offer to
the Count of the Superintendence of the Military Academy and
of Inspector-General of Artillery. The letters of King and
Rumford show clearly the deep regard and friendship they had
Life of Count Rumford. 351
for each other, and the earnest desire of both to advance the
welfare of their native country, &c., &c."
The following correspondence, copied from the origi-
nals, is of great interest :
[Copy.-]
"LONDON, December 8, 1798.
" DEAR SIR, Count Rumford, late Sir Benjamin Thomp-
son, whose name and history are probably known to you, and
whose talents and services have procured the most beneficial
Establishments and reforms in Bavaria, was lately named by
the Elector to be his Minister at this Court. On his arrival
he has been informed, that, being a British Subject, it was con-
trary to usage to receive him, and that therefore he could
not be acknowledged. The intrigues and opposition against
which he had for some years made head in Bavaria proba-
bly made him desire the mission to England. The refusal
that he has here met with has decided him to return and settle
himself in America. He proposes to establish himself at or
near Cambridge, to live there in the character of a German
Count, to renounce all political Expectations, and devote him-
self to literary pursuits, His connections in this country are
strictly literary, and his knowledge, particularly in the Mili-
tary Department, may be of great use to us. The Count is
well acquainted with and has had much experience in the
establishment of Cannon Foundries; that which he established
in Bavaria is spoken of in very high terms, as well as certain
improvements that he has introduced in the mounting of flying
Artillery.
He possesses an extensive Military Library, and assures me
that he wishes nothing more than to be useful to our Country.
I make this Communication by his desire, and my wish is that
he may be well received, as I s*n persuaded that his Principles
are good, and his talents and information uncommonly extensive.
It is possible that attempts may be made to misrepresent his
political opinions ; from the enquiry that I have made on
352 Life of Count Rumford.
this head, I am convinced that his political sentiments are
correct.
"Be good enough to communicate this letter to the Presi-
dent.
" With great respect and esteem, I have the honor to be,
dear sir,
" Yours faithfully,
"RUFUS KING.
" COLONEL PICKERING." [Secretary of State.]
"LONDON, March 10, 1799.
" DEAR SIR, I annex a copy of a letter from Count Rum-
ford, formerly Sir Benjamin Thompson, to me upon a subject
somewhat interesting. I am persuaded that the establishment
of an American Military Academy is an object of the first im-
portance to us. Count Rumford has founded one in Bavaria
that enjoys a very high reputation, and I have reason to believe
that he would receive very great pleasure in communicating to
us the results of his Experience on this subject. I have not
seen his Military Books, Drawings, &c., but am informed that
that they are inestimable. The cannon he proposes to make a
present of to the United States is a perfect Model, and will
serve to assist us in the casting and mounting of our Field
Artillery. I have sent a copy of the Count's letter likewise
to Col. Pickering, and must wait for the President's instruc-
tions through him or you in what manner I shall answer it.
Count Rumford proposes to return with the view of residing
part of his time in his native Country. On this subject I take
the Liberty to refer you to a letter from me to Col. Picker-
ing, and will only add, that it would undoubtedly be encour-
aging and grateful to him to receive an assurance from the
President through me, or in any other way, that he will be
received in a kind and friendly manner
" With sincere ^teem and respect,
"RUFUS KING.
" JAMES McHzNRY, ESQ/'
Life of Count Rumford* 353
"DEAR SIR, I send you herewith a small Pamphlet which
will explain to you the Causes which have rendered it impossible
for me to go to America this Spring as I had intended. I have
not, however, given over all ideas of visiting that Country at
some future period ; very far from it, I really hope and expect
to be able to go there next Spring, and will most certainly do
so, if it should be possible, provided you should continue to ad-
vise it, and to encourage me with the hopes of a kind reception.
" I beg you would do me the honor to present one of the
enclosed Pamphlets to his Excellency the President of the
United States, and accompany it with my best Respects and
most cordial wishes for his health and happiness and for the
prosperity of the United States.
u The .Model of a Field-Piece on a new, and I believe on
an improved construction, which I have destined as a Present to
the United States, I shall pack up and send to you in order to its
being shipped for America as soon as I shall get it from His Royal
Highness the Duke of York, who has desired to have a copy of it.
" You will recollect that in a conversation we had at your
house on the great importance to the United States of the
speedy Establishment of a Military School or academy, I took
the liberty to say that to assist in the establishment of so useful
an Institution I should be happy to be permitted to make
a present to the Academy, of my collection of Military Books,
Plans, Drawings, and Models. I now repeat this offer, and
with a request to you that you would make it known to the
Executive Government of the United States, and that you
would let me know as soon as may be convenient whether this
offer will be accepted.
" I have the honor to be, with the most sincere regard and
esteem, Dear Sir,
" Your most obedient and most faithful servant,
"RUMFORD.
"BROMPTON Row, 13 March, 1799.
" His Excellency RUFUS KING, Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, &c."
23
354 Life of Count Rimiford.
"LONDON, Sept. 8, 1799.
" DEAR SIR, I have more than once expressed to you a
wish that you might find leisure, as well as inclination, to revisit
your native Country, where, I have been persuaded, you would
meet with a friendly and cordial reception, and by your presence
and advice might be of great advantage to our public institu-
tions, the establishment of which, upon approved principles, is
an object of the highest consequence. I am happy that I have
it in my power to assure you that I have not been mistaken in
these sentiments, and it affords me peculiar satisfaction to
execute the order that I have lately received from my Gov-
ernment to invite you in its name to return and reside among
us, and to propose to you to enter into the American Service.
"In the course of the last year we have made provision for the
institution of a Military Academy, and we wish to commit its for-
mation to your experience, and its future government to your care.
It is not necessary on this occasion to send you a detailed account
of our Military establishment, which indeed would be best ex-
plained by a reference to the Laws upon which it depends; these
are in my possession, and shall be put into your hands if you desire
it. In addition to the Superintendence of the Military Academy,
I am authorized to offer to you the appointment of Inspector-Gen-
eral of the Artillery of the United States, and we shall, moreover,
be disposed to give to you such rank and emoluments, consistent
with existing provisions, and with what has already been settled
upon the former of these heads, as would be likely to afford you
satisfaction, and to secure to us the advantages of your service.
" If your engagements will allow of your entering into our
service, which I sincerely hope may be the case, I will ask the
favor of you to take an early opportunity of signifying the same
to me, in order that we may proceed to fufther and more par-
ticular explanations upon the subject.
"With the greatest consideration and esteem, I have the
honor to be, Dear Sir,
" Your obedient and faithful servant,
[Signed] "RUFUS KING.
" COUNT RUMFORD, &c., &c., &c."
Life of Count Rumford. 355
[Count Rumford's reply.]
" BROMPTON, 12 Sept. 1799.
" DEAR SIR, I am to acknowledge the receipt of your
Excellency's most flattering letter of the 8th inst., the perusal
of which has filled my mind with sentiments much more easy to
be conceived than expressed.
" I am deeply sensible of the honor that has been conferred
upon me by the Government of the United States, by the kind
invitation they have sent me to come and reside in my native
Country, and also by the other distinguished and most flattering
proofs of their confidence and esteem with which that invitation
has been accompanied.
" Nothing could have afforded me so much satisfaction as
to have had it in my power to have given to my liberal and
generous countrymen such proof of my sentiments as would
in the most public and ostensible manner have evinced, not
only my gratitude for the kind attentions I have received from
them, but also the ardent desire I feel to assist in promoting
the prosperity of my native Country. But engagements which
great obligations have rendered sacred and inviolable put it
out of my power to dispose of my time and services with
that unreserved freedom which would be necessary in order
to enable me to accept of those generous offers which the
Executive Government of the United States has been pleased
to propose to me. But although it is not in my power to
dissolve those ties by which I am bound, yet I have no
doubt of being able to obtain permission to visit America,
and should that permission (which I shall certainly solicit)
be granted, I shall take an early opportunity of crossing
the Atlantic in order to pay my personal respects to the
President of the United States, and to return him my thanks
for the distinguished honor he has been pleased to confer
on me.
" I cannot finish this letter without requesting that you, Sir,
would accept my best acknowledgments for the many civilities
i have received from you, and more especially for the very
polite manner in which you have been so good as to communi-
356 Life of Count Rumford.
cate to me the favorable sentiments of the Government of the
United States with respect to me.
u With the most sincere wishes for the Prpsperity of the
United States, I have the honor to be, Sir,
" Your Excellency's most obedient Humble Servant,
"RUMFORD.
" His Excellency RUFUS KING, Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary of the. United States
at the Court of London."
"LONDON, Sep. 7, 1799.
"DEAR SIR, I have duly received your Letter of the 3d
of July, respecting Count Rumford. We have had some
conversation upon the subject, which will be resumed. I, how-
ever, conclude from what has already passed, that, though much
gratified with the offer, he will wisely decline accepting it. I
shall hereafter send you a more exact report upon this subject.
" The Count's Letter to you accompanying the Models of
the Field-Piece and ammunition-waggon was written and sent
to me before he had any knowledge of the subject of your letter
of the 3d of July. I hope we shall not be disappointed in send-
ing you the Boxes which contain these Models by the General
Washington, a stout ship now ready to sail for Philadelphia.
" With sincere respect and Esteem, I have the honor to be,
Dear Sir,
" Your most obedient servant,
[Signed] "RUFUS KING.
" JAMES McHENRY, Esq."
" DEAR SIR, At length they have returned the Model of my
Field-Piece, though not till after I had repeatedly made applica-
tion for it. I have repacked it and its Ammunition- Waggon in
their deal boxes, and if you will give me leave I will send these
two boxes to your house, in order to their being sent by you to
America.
" Enclosed is the draft of a letter which I send to you for
Life of Count Rumford. 357
your opinion of it, requesting that you would make such altera-
tions in it as you may judge to be proper.
u If you think my letter ought to be addressed to any other
Person than the Person proposed, you will tell me so. You
will likewise be so kind as to point out the Person or Persons
to whom the models ought to be presented.
" I was yesterday at Gravesend, and saw my Daughter into
the Boat that carried her on board the Minerva. She has left
England deeply impressed with a sense of the kindness she
experienced from you and from your Lady. Her father joins
her in thanks for these kind attentions, and will ever remain,
my dear Sir,
" Your much obliged and most obedient servant,
" RUMFORD.
" BROMPTON, Monday morning, 26th August, 1799."
" His Excellency RUFUS KING, &c., &c."
'* BRIGHTON, August 28, 1799.
" DEAR SIR, I have duly received your obliging letter of
the 26th, and herewith return the Draft of a letter that you
propose should accompany the models of the field-piece, &c. I
see nothing to add or alter excepting in the address, which
should be to the Secretary at War, instead of the Sec'y of
State. I have taken the liberty, as you will observe, to make
this alteration with a pencil.
" The models should also be addressed to the Secretary at
War. As we are now shipping a number of articles to Phila-
delphia, I have desired my Secretary to take measures to remove
the boxes directly from your house to our Agent's in the City, as
soon as he learns by a note from you that they are ready.
" I have lately received a Dispatch from my Government,
the contents of which will not fail to increase those favorable
sentiments you so naturally feel concerning your Native Coun-
try, and I permit myself to hope will prove an additional motive
to the execution of your intentions soon to revisit it.
" As I shall be in town in the course of the next week, where
358 Life of Count Rumford.
I expect the pleasure of meeting you, we will then enter more
particularly upon this agreeable subject. In the mean time I
have the honor to be, &c., &c.
"RUFUS KING.
" COUNT RUMFORD, &c., &c."
On the 9th of March, 1800, Count Rumford having
asked of Mr. King cc a list of all the Universities,
Academies, Colleges, and other scientific bodies of note
and respectability in the United States, together with
the names of their Presidents," desiring to send them
" our Prospectus," that is, of the Royal Institution
of Great Britain (and having received from Mr. King
a list of eleven), wrote to Mr. King as follows:
" DEAR SIR, In consequence of the permission you gave
me, I send you herewith Eleven packages, containing each a
Copy of the Prospectus, Charter, Ordinances, Bye-Laws and
Regulations, of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, accom-
panied by a letter written by myself, at the desire and in the
names of the Managers of the Institution, expressing to the
different learned Societies in the United States the wish of the
Managers to communicate with them in all things that may tend
to the advancement of useful Knowledge.
" It will give me great satisfaction to hear of the safe arrival
of these packages at the places of their destination, but still
greater to hear that the new establishment for diffusing the
knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of new and
useful improvements which I have been instrumental in found-
ing in this Metropolis should be thought worthy of imitation in
my native Country.
"With my best wishes for the Prosperity of that Country, and
with much esteem and regard for its worthy Representative in this,
" I am, my dear Sir, yours most faithfully,
"RUMFORD.
" ROYAL INSTITUTION, ist June, 1800.
" RUFUS KING, Esc^, &c., &c., &c."
Life of Count Rumford. 359
It thus appears that the proposition for his return to
America originated with Count Rumford himself and
was warmly seconded by his friends. No doubt he
would have accepted the honorable trusts thus proffered
to him had he not found himself most laboriously and
hopefully employed in the founding of that now venera-
ble and honored Institution in London whose origin we
are soon to trace.
In addition to the letters given above I copy another,
which is the only one known to me referring to this
matter, already in print. It was the reply of President
John Adams to Secretary McHenry.
" QUINCY, 24th June, 1799.
" SIR, I have received your letter of the i8th, and have
read Count Rumford's letter to Mr. King.
" For five or six years past I have been attentive to the char-
acter of this gentleman, and have read some of his Essays.
From these I have formed an esteem for his genius, talents,
enterprise, and benevolence, which will secure him from me,
in case of his return to his native country, a reception as kind
and civil as it may be in my power to give htm. But you know
the difficulties those gentlemen have who left the country as he
did, either to give or receive entire satisfaction. I should not
scruple, however, to give him any of the appointments you
mention, and leave it with you to make such proposals to him
through Mr. King, within the limits you have drawn in your
letter, as you should think fit. I return Mr. King's letter, and
enclose one from Mr. William Williams, a very respectable
personage, recommending Rufus Tyler to be an officer in the
army."
The Count, not having asked for an office, had one
in this circuitous way proffered to him, which, of
course, he was under no obligation to accept. Pictet
* Works of President John Adams, Vol. VIII. pp. 660, 661.
360 Life of Count Rumford.
follows the assertion quoted above, as to the solicitation
made to the Count to return to America and accept an
" establishment " by adding this :
" The Count replied, testifying his profound appre-
ciation of this mark of regard, that engagements ren-
dered sacred and inviolable by great obligations would
not allow him to dispose of himself in a way to enable
him to accept the offer which had been made to him.
Certainly there is no trace of animosity in these com-
munications."
In his Essay on Gunpowder,* the Count says that he
had sent to the United States government, as a present,
a model field-piece of his own construction. I have
sought information from the War Department at Wash-
ington as to any record concerning the receipt or
acknowledgment of this gift, or of the military library,
drawings, &c. which he proposed to send hither. The
Inspector-General, in behalf of the Secretary of War,
writes me in reply, that a search has shown $c that the
records of the Department afford no intelligence con-
cerning Count Rumford. If any papers relating to the
subject were ever filed in the War Department, they
were no doubt involved in the destruction of the War
Office by fire, in the year 1800."
The well-authenticated facts which have thus been
laid before the reader concerning an incident in Count
Rumford's personal history which had heretofore been
so positively stated, but yet so vaguely related, and
without proper vouchers, are equally honorable to him-
self and to those who held high trusts under the Ameri-
can government.
The noble undertaking to which Count Rumford
* Academy's Edition, Vol. I. p. 177.
Life of Count Rumford. 361
committed himself with such devotion and ztal, to be
fully described in the next chapter, is assigned in the
following letter as the cause of his postponing his visit
to America.
"LONDON, I4th March, 1799
" MY DEAR FRIEND, I will not attempt to describe the
painful disappointment I feel at being obliged to give up all
hopes of seeing you, and the rest of my dear friends in America,
this year. A small pamphlet which you will receive with this
letter [containing the proposals for the -Royal Institution]
will acquaint you with the reasons that have induced me to
postpone my intended voyage ; and you will, I am confident,
agree with me in opinion, that I have done right in sacri-
ficing the pleasure that voyage would have afforded me to
the most important objects to which my attention has been
called.
" I beg you would be so kind as to give my dear Mother the
earliest notice of this change in my plans, and that you would
at the same time endeavour to give her just ideas of the very
great importance of the undertaking in which I have been called
upon to give my assistance ; and show her how impossible it
was for me to refuse that assistance, especially as it was asked
in a manner so honourable to myself. And as the success of
the undertaking will be productive of so much good, and will
place me in so distinguished a situation in the eyes of the world,
and of Posterity, you will, I am persuaded, find little difficulty
in persuading her that I have done perfectly right, and in
reconciling her to the disappointment she will naturally feel at
not seeing me arrive in America at the time appointed.
" You must give me leave to complain of you, my good
friend, for your silence. Several vessels have lately arrived
from Boston and have brought letters both for myself and for
Sally. But there were none among them from you. Why
should you not embrace the opportunity when you will be sure
to find me and my Daughter in London, to take a trip across
the Atlantic to see Great Britain ? You shall find a home and
362 Life of Count Rumford.
a hearty welcome in my house as long as it may be convenient
to you to stay with us.
" By the by, I much wish you could contrive to bring
P , &c., &c.
" I am, ever, Yours most Sincerely,
"RUMFORD.
" The Hon b . le COLONEL BALDWIN, Woburn, &c."
("Rec d Aug. 27, 1799.")
The following letter from the mother of Count Rum-
ford to Colonel Baldwin, like those of her son relating
to herself and her husband, his step-father, gives full
evidence of the affectionate regards of the parties
concerned.
" FLINTSTOWN, July 1 8, 1799.
"DEAR SIR, I have waited a long time in anxious ex-
pectation of seeing my son, but I fear that I shall be disap-
pointed. I have not called for my bill of exchange, for I
thought if my son was coming to America as early in the year
as he was expected, I would wait until his arrival. I am now
in want of some money. When I was at Boston last, Mr.
Samuel Clapp told me that if I would get my bills drawn in his
name, or in his favor, I have forgot which, but it was to be in
such a way as that it would be proper for him to indorse them,
that he would take them and indorse them, and sell them,
and forward the money for me to Portland. If you would be so
kind as to draw my bills in such a way as that it will be proper
for Mr. Clapp to indorse them, and put them into his hands, it
will do me a great favor.
" I have had thoughts of coming to Boston this season, but
my health is so poor that I do not feel able to perform the
journey. My husband is very weak and infirm. If you should
get any intelligence of my son, I desire that you would inform
me of it as soon as possible, for I feel a great anxiety to hear
from him. I fear that something extraordinary is the matter,
that I do not hear from him. Please to give my love and
Life of Count Rumford* 363
regards to your family and inquiring friends. Your compliance
with my request in this letter will be a great favor that will be
acknowledged with gratitude by
u Your obliged friend,
"RUTH PIERCE.
" HON. LOAMMI BALDWIN, ESQ^, Woburn.*"
Pictet says in reference to the daughter's return to
America at this time : (C The contrast between the
pleasant and quiet ways of her own country and the
hubbub of the court of Bavaria, where her father re-
sided, was too severe for her to reconcile and con-
form herself to it. Her health suffered ; she could
breathe only the air of America, and she returned thither.
She kept up with her father a constant and most inter-
esting correspondence, to judge of it by the fragments
which he has allowed me to read."
Sarah took with her the following pleasant letter to
Colonel Baldwin:
"BROMPTON, near London, 24th Aug., 1799.
" MY DEAR FRIEND, I cannot permit my Daughter to
return to America without charging her with a few lines for
my oldest friend and school-fellow, the companion of my earliest
youth. In straining my recollection as much as possible, in
order to look back into that dark cloud that covers the early
period of life, I can remember no person distinctly longer than
yourself, except it be my mother. I must therefore consider
you as one of my oldest acquaintances, and I have never ceased
to regard you and to love you as one of my best friends. A
few months ago I flattered myself with the hope of soon seeing
you, but events happened to frustrate those hopes. But though
my voyage to America is postponed, it is by no means abandoned.
On the contrary, I really think it very likely that I shall pay
you a visit next Spring.
" My Daughter will explain to you all the various reasons
364 Life of Count Rumford.
that conspired to prevent my accompanying her to America
this year. She will likewise tell you how happy you will make
me if you would embrace the opportunity now, while I am on
the spot, of visiting England. I can offer you a comfortable
room in a small but neat house in the suburbs of London, and
you need not doubt of finding a most hearty welcome. If you
come this winter, it is very possible that I may return with you
next Spring, for it is my intention to pay a visit to America
next year.
" I need not recommend my Daughter to you, for she is
already assured of your friendship. I hope you will not find
her altered for the worse in consequence of her visit to Europe,
I mean mentally. For, with regard to her looks, it was not
to be expected that four years at her time of life should pass
away without leaving some traces behind them.
u As to her health, it is, Thank God, now tolerably good,
but the climate of Europe certainly has not agreed with her.
She was at one time dangerously ill at Munich, and never was
quite well during the two years she resided in Germany.
" My Daughter will tell you what I am doing in this coun-
try, and will acquaint you with my plans and wishes respecting
her establishment in America. If you can further the execu-
tion of my schemes, I have no 'doubt but you will do it.
There is nothing I have so much at heart as to make my dear
Mother perfectly comfortable and happy during .the remainder
of her life.
" Pray advise and assist my Daughter in the accomplishment
of my wishes in this respect. There is no way in which you
can so essentially oblige me. Pray write to me now and then,
for it always gives me much pleasure to hear from you.
" Wishing your health and all happiness and prosperity, I am,
my Dear Friend,
" Yours most affectionately,
"RUMFORD.
" The Hon b . le COL. BALDWIN."
The Countess makes the following record :
Life of Count Rumford. 365
" 1799. Brompton Row, No. 45, 25th August. The
Count takes his daughter and only child in a coach and four
to Gravesend, to embark for America, in ship Minerva, Cap-
tain Turner, under protection of a Mr. and Mrs. Gushing."
Near the day upon which the Count parted with his
daughter in England, Colonel Baldwin addressed the
following letter to her grandmother :
"WOBURN, August 29, 1799.
" DEAR MADAM, I have received your letter of the
1 8th ult., but the distressing sickness which has for so long
time grievously afflicted my late dear companion in life, and
which ended in her dissolution the 8th inst., has prevented my
answering it until this time. However, the bills have been
ready for your order ever since the period for drawing them
commenced. In addition to all my troubles I have to lament
with you that we are not to see that man favored above all
men, your dear son., and his daughter, in this country, the pres-
ent season. For by two letters from the Countess to Mrs.
Baldwin, one dated the i6th day of March, and the other the
6th April last, which we received a little before Mrs. Bald-
win's death, we were first made acquainted with this disappoint-
ment. Sally was very well at the date of both these letters,
and desired to be remembered to all her relations and friends."
" I have this day received a letter from your son, the Count,
dated I4th March last, with a paragraph in it which seems to
belong to you as well as to myself, and notwithstanding there is
too much in it that will excite our regret, yet there is something
also to elevate and add satisfaction to the mind. [The para-
graph is as follows : (see letter on page 361.) The portion
quoted is ' I will not attempt .... the time appointed.']
" I think, madam, that after this elegant and reasonable
apology, nothing that I can say will do any good. The pamph-
let which the Count alludes to is the plan of a new institution
for founding a society in the capital of the British dominions,
the principal management of which, I understand, is intrusted
to his care. There is another consolation for us, that although
366 Life of Count Rumford.
we do not see him this year, his visit is only postponed ; for by a
paragraph in a letter he wrote to Dr. Walter, I find that he has
not given up the design, but means to come out next spring.
"[Sept. 8, 1799.] I have asked Mr. Samuel Clapp if he will be
kind enough to take bills and dispose of them, and send you the
proceeds, &c., agreeably to your desire, and he says that he will,
but advises by all means not to dispose of them just at this
time, if you can do without, for bills are now selling at ten
per cent or more under par. He thinks they will be higher in a
little time. I wish you would let your son Josiah know that
his mother Thompson is very desirous of seeing him at Woburn
as soon as possible. Please to remember me to your good hus-
band [he had been a partner in trade with Colonel Baldwin],
your sons and daughters, and all inquiring friends. I am, with
much esteem and respect,
" Your friend and humble servant,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" MRS. RUTH PIERCE."
The receipts are copied as signed by Mrs. Pierce and
her son Josiah, on the sale of bills, with charges for
protest and interest.
The young lady, for her homeward passage, was com-
mitted, as we have seen, to the care of a gentleman and
lady bound for Boston, who faithfully discharged their
trust. Her father parted with her at Gravesend, the
place of her embarkation. It was then his intention to
follow her to America in a few months, for, at least, a
visit to this country. But circumstances which he
thought imperative prevented him. The separation
between father and daughter, though not final, proved
a long one. She reached this port on October 10,
1799, being then just twenty-five years of age. Colo-
nel Baldwin went to Boston to receive her and to take
her to his own home.
Life of Count Rumford. 367
On the New Year's day after her arrival, Colonel
Baldwin and others of her own and her father's friends
gave a ball in Woburn in honor of her return. cc The
Countess appeared on the occasion in one of her court
dresses, of blue satin/'
She goes on with her personal narrative here by say-
ing that it was thought best on her return that she
should go to board with her old schoolmistress, Mrs.
Snow, who still continued, esteemed and active, in her
employment, having a select establishment with heavy
charges and consequently but few pupils. She pre-
viously made visits to her father's honored friend and
correspondent, Colonel Loammi Baldwin, at Woburn,
to her aunt Reed's, and to Concord. Colonel Baldwin
records taking her from her uncle Reed's to Boston,
on December 11, 1799, an< ^ a ^ so a payment for tickets
to the theatre some time after with her, and a pay-
ment on June 14, 1802, to Jephthah Richardson for
housekeeping, &c. for himself and " the Countess."
Though I thus anticipate the course of the narrative
of Count Rumford's career, it may be as well to follow
the brief remainder of the daughter's manuscript to its
close as it concerns herself.
She speaks kindly and gratefully of Mrs. Snow, who
received her cordially, and says she was as happy in
finding herself at her old school "as was consistent
with falling from heaven to earth." She proceeds in
her narrative as follows :
" No other term can express it. Going to my father
young, my character was formed by him, and I was
accustomed to the society he frequented. I presume
that of Munich and London, his chief places of resi-
dence, may be called the best in the world. To tell the
368 Life of Count Rumford.
truth, I view my life as pretty much ended, in all that is
worth possessing, when I quitted my father at Bromp-
ton. Nor was his very different after quitting Munich,
particularly after his unfortunate marriage, for cer-
tainly marriages like his cannot be termed otherwise
than unfortunate."
The Countess to give the young lady the title that
properly came to her found her situation in society
somewhat embarrassing, even though she was a school
pupil. She says she received much attention, not only
from her fellow-pupils, but from many prominent peo-
ple. She was looked to as an oracle, and exp'ected to
be very communicative and interesting as to the scenes
and experiences of her foreign life. While abroad she
had been disciplined to deferential silence and atten-
tion; but the tables were now turned upon her, and she
was expected to contribute to the entertainment of others.
She tried to perfect herself in music, though "thumping
and rattling the keys of the piano," was evidently not
music to her heart. She made up her mind that this,
being the sixth or the seventh, should be the last, of
her schools, as she painfully reminded herself that she
had been set to the tasks of pupilage in every place of
her residence. She resolved to correct her faults and
to increase her stock of knowledge. One of these faults
was a dislike of her needle. She had actually given
away a pretty dress to avoid the trouble of embroider-
ing it. She resolved to retrieve her character in that
respect, and in -a short time wrought and sent to her
father an embroidered waistcoat. She also drew cc a pic-
ture of a shepherd boy, about half a yard high, with a
very beautiful expression of countenance." Remember-
ing her former heart-trials, the Countess adds :
Life of Count Rumford. 369
" This picture I did not send to my father, but only-
told him about it, not omitting a circumstance which
was true, that the picture in which I had succeeded
pretty well, as all said, resembled much a young teacher
we had in the school. My father did not approve of
captivating male teachers for misses' instructors. He
was so used to the great world ; I suppose in those
places it was not thought best. I am sure the good old
hump-backed, long-featured, great-nosed Alberti he
gave me for Italian must have had great success among
mothers for their daughters, under like prudent pre-
cautions.'*
This "handsome teacher," whose name was Gurley,
she thinks would have made great havoc in the school
if one of the little flock had not got the start of the rest
by running away with him to New Orleans, where both
of them soon after died. This information the Count-
ess wisely withheld from her father. She also had a
Spanish teacher, and seems to have really devoted her-
self to hard work for self-improvement and culture,
alike for the purpose of turning to account the advan-
tages she enjoyed as to please her father. She says that
the reason her father alleged for not recalling her to
Europe on his marriage to Madame Lavoisier was that
his lady did not wish to have with her a daughter-in-
law. She herself, however, was persuaded that her
father did not think her fitted in manners and acquire-
ments to shine in the circles which he and his mil-
lionnaire wife frequented. The refinements of French
ways impressed the daughter, but she could not easily
assume or conform to them. She says that Madame de
Rumford was truly a brilliant character, and it seemed
at first as if the Count had renewed his youth. He
24
370 Life of Coimt Rumford.
was very attentive in writing to his daughter, and she
counts one hundred and four letters as received from
him between her leaving him and her rejoining him,
an interval of eleven years.
She acquiesces in the wisdom of his judgment that
she was better fitted to live in this country, but adds
that the contrast between her situation and his pre-
vented her making the most of herself here. By invita-
tion of a very rich lady, a friend of hers, whose daugh-
ters were all married at a distance, she became to her a
favored companion, and travelled with her to New
York and Philadelphia, and in the British Dominions.
She also made short visits to the few relatives who
offered her their hospitalities ; but she acknowledges
that she was discontented everywhere.
The following long letter from Baldwin, though it
unduly lengthens this chapter, may properly close it, as
it belongs to the period before us, and is a reply to the
similar extended letter of the Count.
" WOBURN, November 4, 1799.
'" MY DEAR COUNT, I am happy in having an opportunity
of congratulating you on the safe arrival of your amiable daugh-
ter in her native country again, where she is most cordially
received by strangers as well as friends. But one of the num-
ber of her dear and most affectionate friends is fled. [The
writer then gives a very touching account of the death of his
wife on the 8th of August preceding, after a distressing illness
of more than seven months, and proceeds.] I trust that this
sketch will serve to show that I have something whereon to
found an apology for not writing you before.
" I have received your much esteemed favor of 24th August
last by the hand of your daughter. I most sensibly feel the
sentiments you have therein so tenderly expressed, and notwith-
standing all the regret and mortification which I suffer in conse-
Life of Count Rumford. 371
quence of the disappointment in not seeing you this year, I still
anticipate with pleasure the next period which you have fixed
upon to make us the visit, the postponement will seem some-
thing like Jacob's second service for Rachel. I recollect with
the purity of youthful fondness the many pleasant hours spent
when you were here, and seem ready rashly to decide on the
visit which you have with so much affection and friendship
invited me to make. But when I consider the many important
engagements I have on hand, it would certainly be considered
the height of imprudence in me at this time to break off and
abandon them all. But, however, I can accept your own
proposition to postpone and not give over the design. For
though I may have passed the meridian of life, I am at present,
thank God, in perfect health, and in the enjoyment of a good
constitution, which, I trust, has never been impaired by ex-
cesses.
" However, I have been recently admonished not to place too
much dependence on this. In the instance of Mrs. Baldwin,
who (the very evening that she was seized with that distressing,
deadly sickness which chained her down to misery for near
eight months, and then ended in death), of her own accord, in
the most agreeable manner, with seeming caution and modesty,
observed to me while alone with her at supper, being Sunday
evening, how perfectly she enjoyed her health, her first friend,
the family, and life in general, not three hours passed thereafter
before she was arrested, and Death seemed to lay his cold hand
and summoned her hence. Her physician pretty soon gave her
over and resigned her to that king of terrors. Not so her hus-
band, more reluctant still. He supported a ray of hope, that
with all that source of youthful strength and vigor which she
had before in so high a -degree possessed, she might possibly
outlive her disorders, and have perhaps just life enough to build
a recovery upon ; and every means in my power was used to
that end. Sometimes I was flattered, at other times discouraged,
and thus was agitated until the 8th day of August, when her
dissolution happened, and put an end to ajl exertions and all
hope.
372 Life of Count Riimford.
" But, notwithstanding this, I feel as great a desire of seeing
my best surviving friend, and the companion of my youth and
early part of my life, as ever. And when I add to this that
long-established desire, that ardent wish, which I feel for seeing
England and feasting on the improvements of that country, I
still think that I shall visit the seat of science.
" In the arrangement of my pursuits, when the power is in
me to choose, I have deviated perhaps from the general run of
mankind, for I would wish to apply the last day of my labors to
plan and execute a canal, or plant out an orchard, or something
that would result in some permanent benefit for posterity.
" We have had the pleasure of your daughter's company a
few days, and the inexpressible satisfaction of hearing from her
mouth the circumstances of the first interview with her father,
and how deeply you are engaged in philanthropic pursuits, also
some of the interesting events that have happened during her
absence from America, and are exceedingly pleased with the
improvement of her mind.
" I have received three letters from you since I wrote you
last by Mr. Welsh the 3ist of July, 1798. The first of these
letters was dated September 28, 1798, another March 14,
1799, and the last by your daughter, of 24th August, 1799,
with the plan of your new Institution, for which I beg you to
accept of my sincere thanks, and I wish you Divine success in
that undertaking. I have a disciple for you now in his last year
at Harvard College, reading with love for the arts.
" I am conscious of my neglect in not writing to you as I
ought to have done. I was about closing a letter to you last
January, to be accompanied by the answer from the inhabitants
of the town of Concord to the proposal made by your daughter
establishing a fund for clothing twelve industrious children of
the poorer class of citizens, &c. But Dr. Walter happened to
make me a visit just at that time, and brought me your favor of
the 28th September, 1798, and at the same time read me a
paragraph of one of your letters to him that expressed so fully
your determination to make us a visit in the spring that I pro-
ceeded no further in the business, and you cannot readily con-
Life of Count Rumford. 373
ceive how much we were disappointed when we came to find
out that neither you nor your daughter were coming over this
season.
" However, I now enclose you a copy of the answer which
the committee of Concord have returned to me on the subject
of your daughter's donation; and as they seem to have a dis-
position to vary the plan, I have also prepared you a copy of the
letter which I addressed to them on the subject, that you may
see the whole transaction.
" I saw Judge Walker and Mr. Rolfe last winter again, both
of them in one day, but not together. I was flattered with their
conversation upon the old subject, and was led to believe that a
settlement such as you wish would have been effected before
this time, and was surprised to find by your letter of the I4th
of March last, that Mr. Rolfe had forwarded any such thing as
a demand, especially after what had passed between him and
myself, which was, in my view of the matter, tantamount to a
promise to close with your proposition. However, I cannot
say but what there appeared a kind of reserve in him. 1 have
seen him since your daughter has returned, and had a more
serious conversation than ever. I urged the matter home. He
told me that he believed you misunderstood his meaning in send-
ing you the statement he did. He spoke respectfully of you,
and was very sorry if you had misconceived his intention. He
expressed himself in terms purporting the strongest friendship
for you and his sister.
" I suspect that he does not feel perfectly satisfied with his
uncle Walker's statement respecting some debts which have
been rendered desperate, and wishes to bring his uncle to com-
pound with him, and give up a balance due his uncle on the
settlement of his guardian accounts. However that may be,
Sally has set out this day from my house for Concord, with this
advice from me, to push with manly firmness the settlement
with her uncle and brother as far as her influence will go, and
then, if she cannot effect it, to write me word, and I will (sick-
ness or death only excepted) go immediately up and assist her.
" I have already been pretty serious with Rolfe in preparing
374 Life of Coimt Rumford.
the way ; and notwithstanding there appears in him a strange
kind of evasion, yet I still think that we shall succeed in mak-
ing the settlement.
" I have with particular pleasure attended to your proposition
of forming for yourself a little quiet retreat in America, and
made your proposed scheme known to a few of our best friends,
who have most cheerfully afforded me their aid in search of a
spot worthy your attention. There are several in the neighbor-
hood of Cambridge that have been mentioned ; some of the
most eligible I fear are not just at present come-at-able. How-
ever, we can raise a most powerful influence when it comes to
the case in hand. Meantime I shall continue upon the look
out.
" Your dear mother is again a widow. Her late husband,
Mr. Pierce, died on or about the i8th of August last, at Flints
town, on Saco River, where they have lived for a number of
years past. Josiah Pierce, Esq., their oldest son, who is now
with me here on a visit from Flintstown, informs me that your
mother is not in quite so good health as she has been for some
years past, but is at Portland with her youngest daughter, Han-
nah Douglass, who is much out of health at this time, but not
considered immediately dangerous.
" I have drawn a set of exchange for your mother on your
bankers in London for 30 sterling, dated the 26th of March
last, as usual, and delivered them to Josiah Pierce, Esq., agree-
ably to your mother's request. I suppose that your daughter
will draw for her in future. However, in this or in any and
every thing else, as far as lies in my power, I shall cheerfully
contribute to her comfort, nor shall I fail to assist Sally in car-
rying her plans for an establishment into effect agreeably to your
wishes.
" I have a favor to ask of you, my dear sir, and I feel confi-
dent that you will indulge me in the request I am about to make.
I have already told you that I have a son at College whose genius
inclines him strongly to cultivate the arts, and I think it rather
doubtful whether he will apply his studies to either of the three
learned professions with that success as to become eminent. I
Life of Count Rumford. 375
have, therefore, thought whether it would not be best to en-
deavor to provide him a place for a year or two with some
gentleman in the mathematical line of business in Europe, who
is actually in the occupation of making and vending mathe-
matical and optical instruments in an eminent degree ; perhaps
a character something similar to what the late Mr. George
Adams of London was, might suit. It may be that you know
of some good place. In this I wish for your good assistance so
far as to make inquiry whether he 'could get admitted, what the
terms would be, what kind of rank he would be considered to
have in such a place, where he might work at some branches of
the business as well as attend on customers; in short, I wish to
know all about it. Perhaps he may settle a profitable corre-
spondence in trade with the same gentleman when he comes to
return to this country again. He is very lively, ready, and
enterprising, and has ever sustained a good character. I have
raised expectations of his usefulness, if I can but hit his prevail-
ing genius.
u I have'also one favor more to ask, which is to request your
attention to the little memorandum that I have taken the liberty
to enclose, for a number of articles which I cannot readily pro-
cure here, and the amount of the bill I will pay to your mother
or your daughter, or remit it to yourself, as you may please to
order.
" In the cask of fruit which your daughter and Mr. Rolfe
have sent you, there is half a dozen apples of the growth of my
farm, wrapped up in papers with the name of Baldwin apples
written upon them. If those apples should continue in a state
of preservation until you receive them, and you happen to be in
company with any good connoisseurs in the distinguishing char-
acter of that kind of fruit, it would gratify me much to know
the true English name of it. However, I rather doubt whether
the nice characters of this apple will answer exactly to any par-
ticular species of English fruit, as it is (I believe) a spontane-
ous production of this country, that is, it was not originally
engrafted fruit.
" I have made an apology for not writing you so much, and
376 Life of Coiint Rumford.
now I must make one for writing more than I ought. But I
feel confident that your goodness will excuse both. I entreat
of you to write me at all opportunities, and tell me how you
progress in your new Institution.
"Judge" Blodget of Goffstown, N. H., whom you know,
and Dr. Hay, have both desired me to present their respects to
you.
" I am, with the most unfeigned affection and esteem, my
dear Count, \
14 Yours sincerely,
LOAMMI BALDWIN.
" BENJAMIN, Count of Rumford."
" Memorandum for London, to the care of Count Rumford.
"4 thermometers exactly corresponding with each other
through all the degrees of graduation, plainly mounted in
manner suited to endure in experiments where a pretty severe
heat is required ; the other two a little in the elegant style.
" I mercurial barometer.
u i ream of pretty large size lawn paper, thin and light, but
of a strong and compact fabric, suitable to make a balloon for
experiments in natural electricity.
" Two or three crowns' worth of fine gold or silver wire for
to entwine about the flying line of an electrical kite or balloon ;
perhaps gold thread wire before it be flattened might answer.
" Some of the best transparent liquor varnish for preserving
the brightness or polish of brass work, with directions for using
it ; say, to the amount in value of three or four crowns.
" i good collar-mandrel for a turning-lathe, provided with
spiral threads or screws on the spindle of the whirl, for the
purpose of cutting screws in the lathe, of different combs, or
threads ; also the tools to be used in working the lathe for cut-
ting screws.
" i boiler of the most improved kind for cooking, of about
thirty gallons' capacity.
" i boiler of abour ten or fifteen gallons, upon the Rumford
plan.
Life of Count Rumford. 377
" 2 nice measuring tapes, of two poles or fifty links of the
chain in length ; enclosed in cases, &c.
u A magnet, natural or artificial, highly affected, suitable for
impregnating the needles of the compass.
" i set of glasses for a lucernal microscope.
" I have an 1 8-inch reflecting telescope, the tube of which
is about 2| inches' diameter, but the reflector and speculum in
both a little sullied or tarnished. I wish to know whether
they can be repolished and put in order without the whole in-
strument being sent with them, and what the expense would
be of doing it.
" Yours,
"L. BALDWIN.
" The above letter sent by the Minerva."
There is an interesting story connected with the
" Baldwin apples " referred to in the preceding let-
ter. The tree from which came the scions that have
now so widely propagated that very popular apple
grew on a hillside in Medford near the Woburn line.
The trunk of the tree having been drilled by wood-
peckers, the fruit was known as the " Woodpecker
apple," soon shortened into " Peckers." The tra-
dition is, that Baldwin and Thompson first learned
the excellent quality of the fruit on one of their walks
to Professor Winthrop's lectures. If this be true,
it is strange that Baldwin made no reference to the
incident when sending the apples to Rumford. . The
Colonel had given some scions of the tree to a nursery-
gardener, who named the fruit from the donor. The
old tree fell in the September gale of 1815.*
# Brooks's History of Medford, pp. 19, 20.
CHAPTER VII.
Count Rumford as Founder of the Royal Institution of Great
Britain. His Plan and Proposals. Correspondence
with Thomas Bernard. Sketch of the Objects and
Principles of the Institution. Government to be in-
formed of the Design. Meetings of Managers. Char-
ter and Organization. Generous Patronage by the
Nobility. Prospectus. Building provided for the In-
stitution. Rumford *s Generous Gifts. -*- He resides in
the Institution. His Illness. - Dr. Young appointed
Professor^ Editor of Journal, and Superintendent.
Rumford visits Harrowgate. His Essay on Warm
Bathing. Correspondence. Colonel Baldwin. Presi-
dent John Adams. President TVillard. The Count's
Letter to Sir H. Davy, inviting him to the Royal In-
stitution. Faraday s Professorship and Directorship.
Pictef s Visit to Rumford^ and Description of the House
at Brompton. The Bibliothfyue Britannique on the Royal
Institution. Alleged Variances among the Managers.
Dr. Young. Progress and Course of the Institution.
THE reasons assigned by Count Rumford in the
correspondence with his friends in America,
given in the last chapter, for not at this time re-
visiting his native country, v/ere principally two, his
still existing obligations to the Bavarian government,
and the absorbing interest with which he was engaging
in the establishment of a new Institution in London.
The conception and plan of this Institution are to be
Life of Count Rumford. 379
regarded as exclusively his own. His, too, was the
organizing mind, nor can I discover any evidence that
he was induced, or felt it desirable, to modify his origi-
nal idea of it, or to change the details of his plan by
suggestions from any of the wise and earnest advisers
and helpers whom he engaged in it. While "he was
himself one of the most zealous and laborious Fellows
of the Royal Society, he saw that without trespassing at
all upon the range, wide as it was, that was recognized
by his associates, there was room for an Institution
whose aims should be more practical and popular, com-
ing into direct contact with the agricultural, the me-
chanical, and 'the domestic life of the people. To
Rumford, then, belongs the signal honor of creating an
Institution which has a most creditable history, and
which has been the medium for bringing forward,
through the opportunities there afforded them, many
men who have won the highest distinctions in practical
science.
Count Rumford's spirit and activity had at this
period of his life become restless, and perhaps slightly
morbid. He had been for many years so busily en-
gaged in most exacting labors, in which he had em-
ployed a large number of assistants and subordinates,
that he, beyond most men even of marked ability and
influential position, needed to have some conspicuous
and comprehensive scheme to engross his mind and to
task his energies. For reasons soon to be mentioned
he had grounds for believing that his official position
and his high functions in Bavaria would no longer
secure him such opportunities for civil and military
administration or high influence as he had so long en-
joyed. Failing, to his great chagrin, of reception in
380 Life of Coitnt Rumford.
his diplomatic functions in England, it would seem
that his disappointment affected his spirits. He did
not relax in any degree his benevolent efforts, and he
resolutely maintained and pursued the leading object
of his whole eminently beneficent career, namely, the
making of all the inquiries and discoveries of science
available for the direct relief, service, and comfort of
the common people. It will be observed that the
Count refers to a publication of his in 1796, as -con-
taining a suggestion of his first idea of his Institution.
As we come to read his own account of it, and follow
it out in its details of objects and methods, we shall be
satisfied that it was no extemporized scheme which was
hastily devised, but that it had been long and carefully
elaborated by a patient development of an idea which
he had cherished in his own mind for several years.
We may well share the surprise which he himself ex-
pressed, that an Institution answering, in some general
way, at least, to that which he proposed, had not already
been initiated either on the Continent or in England,
and that it had been left to him to set forth the need
and scope for it, and to win the high honor of securing
for it an existence and full success.
Count Rumford had taken special pains, as indicated
by his letter to Mr. King, to have copies of his Pro-
posals for the Institution reach this country, hoping
that a similar plan would find its advocates here. I
have one of them before me. It is a pamphlet of fifty
pages, bearing the following title : * " Proposals for
forming by Subscription, in the Metropolis of the
British Empire, a Public Institution for diffusing the
Knowledge and facilitating the general Introduction of
* It is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Life of Count Rumford. 381
useful Mechanical Inventions and Improvements, and
for teaching, by courses of Philosophical Lectures and
Experiments, the Application of Science to the Common
Purposes of Life." This copy, bearing the autograph
of Count Rumford, was presented by him " To his
Excellency John Adams," as from " one of the Man-
agers of the Institution," and was printed in London
in 1799.* The Introduction, signed by Rumford, is
dated from Brompton Row, 4th March, in that year,
and makes nearly half of the pamphlet, giving a very
admirable account of the origin of the Institution. Dr.
Franklin himself never wrote an essay indicating a more
practical sagacity, or expressed in a more direct and
forcible style of lucid composition, than characterize
this piece of Rumford's. His aim, he says, is to bring
about a cordial embrace between science and art, by
enlightening and removing prejudice against changes,
inventions, and improvements, and by establishing re-
lations of helpful intercourse between philosophers and
practical workmen. He would engage their united
efforts for the improvement of agriculture, manufac-
tures, and commerce, and for the increase of domestic
comfort. He says: " The pre eminence of any people
is, and ought ever to be, estimated by the state of taste,
industry, and mechanical improvement among them."
" The vivifying rays of science, when properly directed,
* Dr. H. Bence Jones, the Secretary of the Royal Institution, has kindly sent
me a copy of the reprint of these " Proposals, &c." which was published in May,
1870.
He introduces this reprint with the following prefatory note :
" No copy of this Prospectus, printed in 1799, exists in the Library of the Royal
Institution. Happily two copies have been preserved, the one at Althorp, and the
other at the British Museum."
" Through the kindness of Earl Spencer, the Managers have been able to order this
very early Record of the Institution to be reprinted."
382 Life of Count Rumford.
tend to excite the activity and increase the energy of an
enlightened nation." " It will not escape observation
that I have placed the management of fire among the very
first subjects of useful improvement, and it is possible
that I may be accused of partiality in placing the object
of my favorite pursuits in that cpnspicuous situation.
But how could I have done otherwise ? . I have always
considered it as being a subject very interesting to man-
kind ; and it was on that account principally, that, at a
very early period of my life, I enga'ged in its investiga-
tion ; and the more I have examined it and meditated
upon it, the more I have been impressed with its im-
portance." One is pleased with the wisdom of his
homely earnestness, in the fact that he could then offer
as novelties such suggestions as these : that arts and
manufactures of every kind depend, directly or indi-
rectly, on operations in which fire is employed ; that
the comforts and conveniences of human ingenuity are
obtained through its assistance ; that fuel costs the
kingdom more than ten millions sterling annually, and
that much more than half the fuel that is consumed
might be saved.
The writer adds a brief account of the history of
these " Proposals," and of the causes which gave rise
to them. He avows that he had long been in the habit
of regarding all useful improvements as dependent
upon mechanical agencies and the perfection of ma-
chinery, with skill in the management of it, and of
considering that the profit to be thus gained was the
chief incitement to industry. The plan which he now
offers to the public is the. result of his own meditations
as to the means that might most wisely be employed to "
facilitate the general introduction of such improvements.
Life of Count Rumford. 383
cc In the beginning of the year 1796 I gave a faint
sketch of this plan in my second Essay ; but being
under the necessity of returning soon to Germany, I
had not leisure to pursue it farther at that time; and I
was obliged to content myself with having merely
thrown out a loose idea, as it were by accident, which
I thought might possibly attract attention. After rriy
return to Munich, I opened myself more fully on the
subject in my correspondence with my friends in this
country [England], and particularly in my letters to
Thomas Bernard, Esq., who, as is well known, is one
of the founders and most active members of the So-
ciety for bettering the Condition and increasing the Com-
forts of the Poor."*
The Count subjoins, in a note, three letters of his to
Mr. Bernard, dated at Munich, 28th April, 1797, ijth
May, 1798, and 8th June, 1798. The first of these
letters returns the writer's grateful acknowledgments
for the honor done him by his election as a member of
the Society for bettering the condition of the poor. It
closes with a characteristic suggestion that visible ex-
amples, "by models," will advance its objects better
than will anything that can be said or written. The
third letter emphasizes a well-pointed hint, that indolent,
selfish, and luxurious persons " must either be allured
* In the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXXXVIII., for 1818, p. 82, there is an
obituary notice of Sir Thomas Bernard, third son of Sir Francis, Royal Governor of
Massachusetts, from which the following is an extract : "In 1799, on the suggestion
of Count Rumford, he set on foot the plan of the Royal Institution ; for which the
King's Charter was obtained on the I3th of January, 1800, which has been of emi-
nent service in affording a school for useful knowledge to the young people of the
metropolis, and in bringing forward to public notice many learned and able men in
the capacity of lecturers; and most of all, in its laboratory being the cradle of the
transcendent discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy, which have benefited and enlightened
Europe and the whole world."
384 Life of Count RumforcL
or shamed into action, 1 ' and that it is very desirable
"to make benevolence fashionable." The writer also
expresses his interest in his correspondent's "plan with
regard to Bridewell. A well-arranged House of In-
dustry is much wanted in London." He closes by
asking Mr. Bernard " to read once more the Proposals
published in my second Essay. I really think that a
public establishment like that there described might
easily be formed in London, and that it would produce
infinite good. I will come to London to assist you in
its execution whenever you will in good earnest under-
take it."
Returning to England in September, 1798, the Count
says he found Mr. Bernard very solicitous for an at-
tempt for the immediate execution of the plan. "After
several consultations that were held in Mr. Bernard's
apartments in the Foundling Hospital, and at the house
of the Lord Bishop of Durham, at which several gentle-
men assisted who are well known as zealous promoters
of useful improvements, it was agreed that Mr. Ber-
nard should report to the Committee of the Society for
bettering the Condition of the Poor the general result
of these consultations, and the unanimous desire of the
gentlemen who assisted at them that means might be
devised for making an attempt to carry the scheme
proposed into execution."
As the Count had thus, for convenience* sake, availed
himself of the interest which had already drawn together
in associated action a body of gentlemen organized into
a benevolent society, and as the report on his new
project was to be made by a committee of that society,
he was at once concerned to secure from the start the
independent existence, activity, and membership of the
Life of Count Rumford. 385
proposed Institution. The committee agreed with him,
that the objects of the Institution were too interesting
and important to allow of its being made "an appendix
to any other existing establishment," and, therefore,
that it ought to stand alone, on its own proper basis.
Eight members of the above-named society were ap-
pointed to confer with him on his plan.* Meeting
with this committee on the 3ist of January, 1799, the
Count presented them with an elaborate and complete
working plan for an Institution, which they unani-
mously approved. It was thought, however, that
the plan .entered too much into details for submission
to the public in the existing stage of the enterprise, and
therefore the Count revised and modified it, sending a
corrected copy of it to each member of the committee,
accompanied by a letter as follows :
"GENTLEMEN, Inclosed I have the honour to send you a
corrected copy of the Proposals I took the liberty of laying be-
fore you on Thursday last, for forming in this capital, 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 Ex-
periments, the application 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 tendency of the proposed Institution to excite a spirit
of inquiry and of improvement amongst all ranks of society,
and to afford the most effectual assistance to those who are
engaged in the various pursuits of useful industry, did not escape
your observation ; and it is, I am persuaded, from a conviction
* These gentlemen were, the Earl of Winchilsea, Mr. Wilberforce, the Rev. Dr.
Ghsse, Mr. Sulivan, Mr. Richard Sullivan, Mr. Colquhoun, Mr. Parry, and Mr.
Bernard.
25
386 Life of Count Rumford.
of the utility of the plan, or its tendency to increase the com-
forts and enjoyments of individuals, and at the same time to
piomote the public prosperity, that you have been induced to
take it into your serious consideration. I shall be much flat-
tered if it should meet with your approbation and with your
support.
" Though I am perfectly ready to take any share in the
business of carrying the scheme into execution, in case it
should be adopted, that can be required, yet there is one pre-
liminary request which I am desirous may be granted me ; and
that is, that Government may be previously made acquainted
with the scheme before any steps are taken towards carrying it
into execution ; and also that his Majesty's ministers may be
informed that it is the contemplation of the Founders of the
Institution to accept of my services in the arrangement and
management of it.
u The peculiar situation' in which I stand in this country, as
a subject of his Majesty, and being at the same time, by his
Majesty's special permission, granted under his royal sign-
manual, engaged in the service of a Foreign Prince, this cir-
cumstance renders it improper for me to engage myself in this
important business, notwithstanding that it might, perhaps, be
considered merely as a private concern, without the knowledge
and the approbation of Government.
u I am quite certain that my engaging in this, or in any other
business in which there is any prospect of my being of any pub-
lic use in this country, will meet with the most cordial appro-
bation of his Most Serene Highness, the Elector Palatine, in
whose service I am, for I know his sentiments on that subject ;
and although I do not imagine that his Majesty, or his Maj-
esty's ministers, would disapprove of my giving my assistance in
carrying this scheme into execution, yet I feel it to be necessary
that their approbation should be asked and obtained ; and, if I
might be allowed to express my sentiments on another matter,
which, no doubt, has already occurred to every one of the
Gentlemen to whom I now address myself, I should say that,
in my opinion, it" would not only be proper, but even ne-
Life of Coitnt Rumford. 387
ccssary, to inform Government of the nature of the scheme
that is proposed, and of every circumstance relative to it, and
at the same time to ask their countenance and support in carry-
ing it into execution ; for although it may be allowable in this
free country for individuals to unite in forming and executing
extensive plans for diffusing useful knowledge, and promoting
the public good, yet it appears to. me that no such establish-
ment should ever be formed in any country without the knowl-
edge and approbation of the Executive Government.
" Trusting that you will be so good as to excuse the liberty
I take in making this observation, and that you will consider my
doing it as being intended rather to justify myself by explaining
my principles than from any idea of its being necessary on any
othei account, I have the honour to be, with much respect,
Gentlemen,
u Your most obedient and Most humble Servant,
"RUMFORD.
" BROMPTON Row, 7* February, 1799.
[Addressed] " To the Gentlemen named by the Committee
of the Society for bettering the condition of the Poor, to confer
with Count Rumford on his scheme for forming a new Estab-
lishment in London for diffusing the Knowledge of useful Me-
chanical Improvements, &c."
The committee above named had in the mean while
held a meeting on the ist of February, the Bishop of
Durham in the chair, and, after reporting their confer-
ence with the Count, gave their full approbation to the
proposed project. In order to provide funds for initi-
ating the society, it was proposed that subscribers of
fifty guineas each should be the perpetual proprietors
of the Institution, and be entitled to perpetual trans-
ferable tickets for the lectures, and for admission to the
apartments of the Institution ; and that as soon as
thirty such subscribers should be obtained a meeting of
them should be called for the consideration of a plan,
388 Life of Count Rumford.
and for the election of managers. The report of the
committee was approved, and they were requested to
take measures for carrying its suggestions into effect, as
well as to draw the outlines of a plan for the Institution.
This preliminary work being accomplished, the com-
mittee circulated among their friends and others whom
they thought likely to favor the scheme, a paper of
proposals soliciting subscriptions, and requested them
to reply by letters addressed "To Thomas Bernard/Esq.,
at the Foundling."
Fifty-eight most respectable names had been sent in
before arrangements could be made for a meeting of the
subscribers ; and this hearty response induced some
change in the plan in respect to the first choice of
managers, and in regard to an application for a char-
ter before any further organization.
Count Rumford, at this stage of the business, and
before a meeting of the subscribers had been held, ad-
dressed to them a pamphlet containing all the matters
that have been thus summarized. It was dated from
Brompton Row, 4th March, 1799, and was intended
to prepare them for the meeting soon to follow. He
expressed his readiness to take any part that might
be desired.
<c The Proposals, &c.," evidently from the pen of
the Count, are then set forth in the pamphlet, and con-
tain a complete plan for the organization, administra-
tion, and support of the Institution, with minute speci-
fications of its objects, when carried into details.
Those objects, first stated comprehensively, are " the
speedy and general diffusion of the knowledge of all
new and useful improvements, in whateVer quarter of
the world they may originate ; and teachmgXthe ap-
Life of Count Rumford. 389
plication of scientific discoveries to the improvement
of arts and manufactures in this country, and to the
increase of domestic comfort and convenience." Efforts
were to be made to confine the Institution to its proper
limits, to give it a solid foundation, and to make it an
ornament to the capital and an honor to the nation.
Spacious and airy rooms were to be provided for re-
ceiving and exhibiting such new mechanical inventions
and improvements, especially such contrivances for
increasing conveniences and comforts, for promoting
domestic economy, for improving taste, and for ad-
vancing useful industry, as should be thought worthy
of public notice.
Perfect and full-sized models of all such mechanical
inventions and improvements as would serve these
ends were to be provided and placed in a repository.
The following are the specifications : Cottage fireplaces
and kitchen utensils for cottagers ; a farm-house
kitchen, with its furnishings ; a complete kitchen,
with utensils, for the house of a gentleman of fortune ;
a laundry, including boilers, washing, ironing, and
drying rooms, for a gentleman's house, or for a public
hospital ; the most approved German, Swedish, and
Russian stoves for heating rooms and passages. In
order that visitors might receive the utmost practical
benefit from seeing these models, the peculiar merit in
each of them should, as far as was possible, be exhibited
in action. Open chimney fireplaces, with ornamental and
economical grates, and ornamental stoves, made to rep-
resent elegant chimney-pieces, for halls and for drawing
and eating rooms, were to be exhibited, with fires in
them. It was proposed, likewise, to exhibit " working
models, on a reduced scale, of that most curious and
390 Life of Count Rumford.
most useful machine, the steam-engine"; also, of
brewers' boilers, with improved fireplaces ; of distillers'
coppers, with improved condensers ; of. large boilers
for the kitchens of hospitals ; and of ships' coppers,
with improved fireplaces. Models also were to illus-
trate and to suggest improvements in ventilating appa-
ratus ; in hot-houses, lime-kilns and steam-boilers for
preparing food for stall-fed cattle ; in the planning
of cottages, spinning-wheels, and looms " adapted to
the circumstances of the poor " ; models of newly in-
vented machines and implements of husbandry; models
of bridges of various constructions ; and, comprehen-
sively, " models of all such other machines and useful
instruments as the managers of the Institution shall
deem worthy of the public notice."
In glancing the eye over this summary it seems as if
we were reading backwards the history of human in-
genuity in thousands of cases of successful effort, and
in innumerable instances of baffled and disappointed,
though ingenious and devoted, scheming for facilitating,
simplifying, and economizing toil, saving resources,
and multiplying the comforts and conveniences of hu-
man life. We 'have in Rumford's schedule an in-
ventory of the contents of a national patent-office,
and a condensed catalogue, in prospect, of the contriv-
ances of skill and genius displayed in the halls of fairs,
bazaars, and agricultural and mechanical expositions.*
Each article exhibited was to be accompanied by a de-
* In reading the inventory of the truly scientific and uWuL-artkles which Count
Rumford proposed to receive into his repository, it is interesting to note the progress
which had been made in England in such matters in less than a century and a quar-
ter by comparison with some of the contents of another collection. In 1681, Dr.
Grew, a Fellow of the Royal Society, published under its patronage, with the aid of
Daniel Colwall, Esq., who was at the charge of the illustrative engravings, a folio
Life of Count Rumford. 391
tailed account or description of it, illustrated by correct
drawings, with the name and residence of the maker, and
the price at which he would furnish it.
The second great object of the Institution, namely,
"teaching the application of science to the useful pur-
poses of life," was to be secured by fitting up a lecture-
room for philosophical lectures and experiments with a
complete laboratory and philosophical apparatus, and
all necessary instruments for chemical and other experi-
ments. This lecture-room is to be used for no other
purposes but those of natural philosophy and philo-
sophical chemistry, and it is to be made comfortable
and salubrious for subscribers. The most eminent and
distinguished expounders of science are to be exclusively
engaged, and the managers are to be strictly responsible
for their rigid restriction of their discourses to the sub-
jects committed to them. If there is spare room, non-
subscribers may be admitted for a small fee.
The subjects proposed for the lectures include the
following: Heat and its application; the economizing
of heat from the combustion of inflammable bodies used
as fuel; the principles of warmth in clothing; the effects
of heat and cold on the human body in sickness and in
volume of 4-? 5 pages, and 31 engraved sheets, with the following title: " Mttsatum
Regalis Societatis ; or, A Catalogue and Description of the Natural and Artificial
Raritys belonging to the Royal Society, and preserved at Gresham College; where-
unto is subjoined the Comparative Anatomy of the Stomach and Guts." The next
year it was ordered that the Doctor assume the charge of the repository, under the title
of Prafectus Musei, &c., and " make a short Catalogue of the Raritys," &c. The
Doctor's books are among the curiosities of literature. Here are some of the
" Raritys " watched over by the Royal Society :
" The sceptre of an Indian king, a dog without a mouth, a Pegue hat and
organ, a Bird of Paradise, a Jewish phylactery, a model of the Temple of Jeru-
salem, three landskips and a catcoptrick painting given by Bishop Wilkins, a gun
which discharges seven times, a pair of Iceland gloves, .a pot of Macassar poison,
the tail of an Indian cow worshipped on the Ganges, a tuft of coralline," &c., &c.
39 2 Life of Count Rumford.
health ; the effects of breathing bad air ; the means for
making dwelling-houses comfortable and healthful; the
construction of ice-houses and the procuring and pre-
serving ice ; means for preserving food in different
seasons and climates, and of cooling liquors without the
aid of ice ; the art of producing, composing, and adapt-
ing manures for vegetation for different soils ; the
changes produced in various substances used as food
in the processes of cookery; the. changes wrought in
food by its digestion ; the chemical principles in the
process of tanning leather, with improvements in that
art ; the chemical principles in the arts of making soap,
of bleaching and of dyeing, "and, in general, of all the
mechanical arts, as they apply to the various branches
of manufacture."
It was proposed to raise the funds for the support of
the Institution by a subscription of fifty guineas from
each of the proprietors and founders, a contribution of
ten guineas from each subscriber for life and of two
guineas from annual subscribers, by donations and lega-
cies that might reasonably be expected, and by fees from
visitors and attendants on the lectures.
The original subscribers, or proprietors, before being
called upon for payment, were to be secured against any
further demands for contributions, and from all legal
obligations for debts that might afterwards be incurred
by the managers, through the terms of a charter pro-
viding them that security. These proprietors were
not to be compelled to serve as v -rrran x agers or visitors
against their consent or inclinations. Half of the sums
subscribed by them was to be permanently invested in
the public funds, or in freehold property, that the
income might meet the expenses of the Institution.
Life of Count Rumford. 393
Each proprietor was to be "an hereditary governor
of the Institution," holding a perpetually transferable
share in its property, having a voice in the election of
its managers and visitors, and receiving two transfera-
ble tickets admitting to every part of the establishment
and to all the lectures and experiments. The consent of
the managers, though not necessary to the holding and
use of the privileges of proprietorship when transferred
by inheritance to a new possessor, should nevertheless be
requisite when the transfer is made by sale or donation.
The recommendations of proprietors should be sufficient
for securing admission, when there is room, for all or-
derly persons who may wish to attend the Institution.
Each subscriber for life should receive one ticket, not
transferable, securing free admission to every part of
the establishment and to all lectures and experiments.
An annual subscriber should have the same privileges
for a single year, and might at any time become a sub-
scriber for life by paying eight additional guineas.
Proprietors and subscribers of all classes were to be
equally entitled to have drawings or copies made at
their own expense, for themselves or for their friends,
of -all models in the repository, and workmen and
workshops were to be provided, under the direction of
the managers, to execute such orders properly and
reasonably ; the copies thus made of all machines,
models, and plans to be authenticated by the seal or
stamp of the Institution. Workmen employed on
these orders were to have free access to their models,
and, with the approval of the managers, might commit to
the repository any specimen article of their own manu-
facture, with their address, price, &c.
The Institution was to be governed by nine man-
394 Life of Count Ruinford.
agers, chosen by and from the proprietors by sealed bal-
lots sent in previously to the annual meetings. These
managers were to be distributed in three classes of three
each, for terms respectively of one, two, and three years,
and were to be re-eligible without limitation. Fourteen
days before the annual meeting the managers for the
time being were to send to each proprietor a printed
list, authenticated, of such proprietors as had offered or
consented to be candidates for the vacancies to be rilled
in the management. The proprietor was to designate
by marking on the list the names of those whom he
approved, and then to seal, without his signature, and
send the slip to the managers under an additional cover,
which he was to sign with his name; this additional cover
being torn off, the lists, still sealed, were to be mixed
unopened in an urn. By this arrangement only pro-
prietors could send in ballots, and their individual
ballots would be secret. The managers were to serve
without pay or any pecuniary advantage, and were to
be held solemnly pledged to the faithful discharge of
their duties, and to a strict adherence to the principles
of the Institution. They were to keep the property
insured, to examine all accounts and disbursements,- to
keep minutes of their doings, and to practise a rigid
economy. They were to give no premiums or rewards
of any kind from the funds. Ordinary meetings were to
be held weekly, and extraordinary ones when necessary,
three of the managers makmg-a, quorum for business.
The presence of six of the managers, however, should
be requisite in the making of all rules, regulations, and
standing orders, which should have force after having
been made known to all the proprietors. There was to
be also a committee of visitors, in number the same as
Life of Count Rumford. 395
that of the managers, and chosen for the same terms
of years, who should annually make a thorough ex-
amination of every part of the Institution, audit its
accounts, criticise its efficiency, and send in a printed
report to the proprietors. No one could be eligible
as both manager and visitor.
The managers were charged to procure models of all
inventions and improvements in mechanical arts made
in any country. These were to be the permanent prop-
erty of the Institution, whose surplus funds were to be
used for purchasing them. Special efforts and inqui-
ries were to be made to obtain from over the British
Empire and from foreign countries all such new and
useful improvements; and a room in the Institution,
open only to proprietors and subscribers, should be
appropriated for the record of all such information. So
deliberately and judiciously were all the arrangements
and details for the organization and conduct of the
Institution devised in the orderly mind of Rumford,
that it seemed as if it were already in working order
while still it existed only on paper. It would appear
that its originator was guided by his own strong con-
viction that a well-devised plan, carefully elaborated in
its most minute principles, would avert the necessity of
that preliminary and incidental discussion which so
often checks the enthusiasm needed to secure the first
success of such an undertaking. It was well understood
from the first that Rumford was the leading and guid-
ing spirit of the Institution. There is no trace of any
jealousy or disaffection, or even of any personal vari-
ance, excited towards him by his somewhat authoritative
leadership. The hearty response and co-operation of
all the prominent persons whom he sought to engage,
396 Life of Count Rumford.
and the pecuniary contributions so readily gathered, are
evidences of the confidence reposed in him.
After the first printing and distribution of these
cc Proposals," and before the Institution had received
its charter-title, a general meeting of the proprietors
was held at the house of Sir Joseph Banks, in Soho
Square, on March 7, 1799, the host occupying the
chair. It was then found that fifty-eight persons had
made themselves proprietors by the contribution of fifty
guineas each. The list contains many distinguished
names of scientific men, gentlemen, members of Parlia-
ment and of the nobility, including one bishop, some
of whom were more than simply Maecenases.
It was then decided at once to choose the committee
of managers, who should be instructed to apply to his
Majesty for a charter for the Institution, to lay an out-
line of its plan before the Right Honorable Mr. Pitt
and his Grace the Duke of Portland, to send it forth
to the public, and to publish the proceedings in the
newspapers. The thanks of the meeting were given to
the presiding officer. The following information is
added to the published record :
" N. B. Count Rumford's original- Proposals for
forming the Institution may be had of Messrs. Cadell
and Davies in the Strand."
At the first meeting of the managers before the char-
ter was received, held at\he_ house of Sir Joseph Banks,
March 9, 1799, " ^ n a motion \nade by Count Rumford,
it was
" Resolved, That Sir Joseph Banks be requested to
take the chair, and that he do continue to preside at all
future meetings of the managers, until a charter shall have
been obtained from his Majesty for the Institution."
Life of Count Rumford. 397
Other resolutions were passed for effecting a pre-
liminary organization. Thomas Bernard, Esq., was
chosen Secretary. The Proposals for forming the In-
stitution, as published by Count Rumford, were ap-
proved and adopted by the managers, " subject, how-
ever, to such partial modifications as shall be by them
found to be necessary or useful." Count Rumford and
Mr. Bernard were appointed to prepare a draught of a
charter.* Earls Morton and Spencer, Sir Joseph
Banks, and Mr. Pelham, were -requested to lay the
Proposals before his Majesty, the Royal Family, the
Ministers, the great officers of State, the members
of both Houses of Parliament and of the Privy Coun-
cil, and before the twelve Judges. Thanks were also
voted to the above-named booksellers for their gen-
erosity in offering to print gratuitously five hundred
copies of the "Proposals."
Count Rumford, with dignified modesty, yet with
due urgency, attaches a fly-leaf to his pamphlet, with
a printed form for subscriptions and donations.
We turn now to another contemporary publication
which presents "to us the organized completion of the
establishment in the conception and initiation of which.
Count Rumford had exercised such ingenuity and prac-
tical wisdom, and in whose service he had been so
zealously engaged. It is a publication in quarto form,
of ninety-two pages, bearing the following title : " The
Prospectus, Charter, Ordinances, and By-Laws of the
Royal Institution of Great Britain. Together with
* Sir John Sinclair, in his " Correspondence, &c., Vol. I. p. 28 (London, 1831),"
says of the Institution, that it "was placed on a permanent footing by an act which
I was the means of carrying through Parliament."
398 Lifj of Count Rumford.
Lists of the Proprietors and Subscribers ; and an Ap-
pendix. London. Printed for the Royal Institution.
1800.'* It bears a vignette of the corporate seal of the
Institution, which is a flourishing and fruit-bearing tree
sprouting out of a mural crown, the circle being sur-
mounted by the royal crown of Britain. The King
appears as Patron, the officers of the Institution were
appointed by him at its formation, the Earl of Win-
chilsea and Nottingham being President ; the Earls of
Morton and of Egremont, and Sir Joseph Banks, Vice-
Presidents ; the Earls of Bessborough, Egremont, and
of Morton, being respectively the first-named on each
of the three classes of Managers, on the first of which,
to serve for three years, is Count Rumford. The
Duke of Bridgewater, Viscount Palmerston, and Earl
Spencer, lead each of the three classes of Visitors. The
whole list proves with what a power of patronage, as
well as with what popularity and enthusiasm, the enter-
prise was initiated. Dr. Thomas Garnett was made
Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry, and
Thomas Bernard, Esq., Treasurer. A Home and For-
eign Secretary, Legal Council, a Solicitor, and a Clerk,
complete the list.
Then follows the Prospectus, which is evidently
from the pen of Count Rumford, as it exhibits his
direct and earnest style of presenting and emphasizing,
as of the highest practicaLinterest for civilized' society,
all those multiplied, homely, and economical objects
of inquiry and improvement which tend to promote
the welfare and increase the conveniences of human life.
The word INSTITUTION, the writer says, was chosen
after mature deliberation, as having been least appro-
priated by previous establishments, and as best adapted
Life of Cotont Rumford. 399
to the comprehensive designs of the new society. He
urges, at the start, the forcible truth, that it has been
by the aid of machinery in procuring the necessaries,
the comforts, and the elegances of life that all the
successive improvements have been made in the con-
dition of man, from a state of ignorance and barbarism
up to that of the highest cultivation and refinement,
and that the stage of civilization is relatively to be
judged by the state of industry and mechanical im-
provements among a people. In illustration of this
truth, he refers to the experience of all ages and places,
and to the differences observable in various nations,
provinces, towns, and even villages, as flourishing and
populous according to the measure of the activity of
their industry. Exertion quickens the spirit of inven-
tion, makes science flourish, and increases the moral
and physical powers of man. Thus the printing-press,
the art of navigation, cc the astonishing effects of gun-
powder," and the steam-engine, have changed the course
of human affairs, and wrought influences the effects of
which are incalculable for the future, though willing
ignorance would have derided these inventions as .im-
possible, or rejected them as unnecessary. In proceed-
ing to point out the causes which impede progress, and
to invite the public to engage in efforts to advance it,
he enlarges upon some of the views already presented in
the Proposals. He refers to the causes of the slowness,
indifference, and jealousy under which improvements
makt their way, and specifies the influence of habit,
ignorance, prejudice, suspicion, dislike of change, and
the narrowing effect of the subdivision of work into
many petty occupations. The scorn of improvement,
the greed for wealth, the spirit of monopoly and of
400 Life of Count Rumford.
secret intrigue, are exhibited even among manufacturers.
Between workmen and merchants comes in a class of
men who have a great and essential task to per-
form.
"These men are Philosophers, who have devoted
themselves to the labor of observing, comparing, an-
alyzing, inventing. The movements of the universe,
the relations and habitudes of men and of things,
causes and effects, motives and consequences, are the
powers on which they meditate for the development
of truth, by those remote analogies which escape the
vulgar mind. It is the business of these Philosophers
to examine every operation of n'ature or of art, and to
establish general theories for the direction and con-
ducting of future processes. Invention seems to be
peculiarly the province of the man of science ; his
ardour in the pursuit of truth is unremitted; discovery
is his harvest ; utility is his reward."
Yet even these philosophers may become merely
abstract and contemplative dreamers, detached from
the ordinary pursuits of life, and unwilling to descend
from the sublimities of science to the details of common
occupations. They need the stimulus of interest and
of the capital of the manufacturer, who, in his turn,
needs the information and the accurate reasoning of the
man of science. There are three direct methods for
removing these difficulties. One of these is to give
premiums or prizes to iWentors, which is secured
through "The Society for/the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufactures, and Commerce/' instituted in 1753.
The second method is by granting temporary monopo-
lies, which is provided for the patent and other laws.
The third is that the agency of which is secured by
Life of Count Rum ford. 401
the new Institution, for diffusing the knowledge and
facilitating the introduction of useful mechanical inven-
tions and improvements.
"In the execution of their plan the Managers have
purchased a commodious house in Albemarle Street
for the reception and exhibition of models of all con-
trivances and improvements worthy of public notice.
Instead of descriptions, it will furnish a repository of
things visible and tangible. Manufacturers and con-
sumers may here meet for mutual advantage. There
will also be a library of all the best treatises devoted to
the objects of the Institution. A lecture-room will be
provided, thoroughly fitted with laboratory and ap-
paratus, for philosophical lectures and experiments by
men of the first eminence in science."
Words which include sciences define the specific sub-
jects for attention, food, clothing, houses, towns, for-
tresses, roads, canals, carriages, ships, tools, weapons,
&c., &c. The science of chemistry will be brought to
bear on the nature of soils ; on tillage and manures ; on
the making of bread, beer, wine, spirits, starch, sugar,
butter, and cheese ; and in the processes of dyeing,
calico-printing, bleaching, painting, varnishing, &c. ; on
the smelting of ores, the compounding of metals, mor-
tar and cements, bricks, pottery, glass, and enamel.
The making of roads and of vehicles, canals and ves-
sels and engines ; the improvement of rivers, harbors,
and coasts, and of the art of war, will have large at-
tention. Above all, "the phenomena of light and heat
those great powers which give life and energy to the
universe powers which, by the wonderful process of
combustion, are placed under the command of human
beings will engage a profound interest.
26
402 Life of Count Rumford.
Infinite public advantages for the learned and the
ignorant, the rich and the poor, may be made sure by
the diffusion of the spirit to be promoted by this In-
stitution. Good taste, good morals, rational economy,
industry, and ingenuity will be secured by its progress,
"and the pursuits of all the various classes of society
will then tend to promote the public prosperity." Had
Rumford done nothing but write the Prospectus, that
alone would prove him the philosopher and philanthro-
pist.
The charter of the Institution passed the royal
seals on the ijth of January, 1800. The twenty-fifth
day of the coming March was appointed for organi-
zation under it. Count Rumford is named among
the grantees, and its provisions conform substantially
to his own well-wrought plan already described. The
ordinances, by-laws, and regulations of the Institu-
tion, which are likewise for the most part adjusted to
that plan, and provide for carrying it into details of
efficiency and practical benefit, indicate the agency of
the master-spirit of the whole enterprise. Precautions
are taken to guard against the influences of jealousy
and favoritism in its membership and administration,
and to hold it strictly and generously to its prime pur-
poses of benefiting tli^public by research, the diffusion
of scientific knowledge, ^nd the service of the most
homely and economical interests of humanity. The
managers are to furnish the laboratory, the workshop,
and the repository of the establishment in the most
complete manner, and to provide an able chemist as a
teaching and demonstrating professor, and also to en-
gage other professors and lecturers in experimental
and mechanical philosophy. No political subject is
Life of Count Rumford. 403
to be even mentioned, and no themes are to be intro-
duced but such as are connected with the objects of the
Institution. The payment for proprietorship from
May i, 1800, to May i, 1801, was fixed at sixty guin-
eas, and ten guineas were to be added each year for all
newly elected proprietors, up to the ist of May, 1804,
when the fee, then one hundred guineas, should be the
qualification for admission till further order.
Only foreigners were to be eligible as honorary mem-
bers of the Institution, and they only when distin-
guished for knowledge in science or in some useful
art. This rule was subject to exceptions for members
of the Royal Family, foreign sovereign princes, and
resident ambassadors. Ladies were admissible as life
or as annual subscribers. Any subscriber might, for
cause, be ejected, and then should be forever after
ineligible. Occasional scientific and experimental lec-
tures might be given through permission of the mana-
gers by qualified men of eminence. Any number of
committees might be appointed for specific scientific
and experimental investigation.
The funds were to be disposed of as provided for in
the plan. No presents, or occasional or special re-
wards or gratuities, were allowed, either to inventors
and discoverers or to the salaried employes of the
Institution.
The list of proprietors, which steadily lengthened
with each progressive step for initiating and organ-
izing the Institution, bears "the names of the highest
of the nobility, of many of the prelates, members of
Parliament, scientific men, and distinguished common-
ers, in number, two hundred and eighty- one. There
were two hundred and sixty-seven life subscribers, two
404 Life of Count Rumford.
of whom were ladies ; and four hundred and thirteen
annual subscribers, one hundred and three of whom
were ladies ; the fee being raised to three guineas.
At a meeting of the managers, held in the first
month of the charter organization, some of the detailed
subjects of inquiry and improvements which were speci-
fied in Count Rumford's schedule already given, and a
few others, were assigned to committees for investiga-
tion, beginning with the processes for "making bread,"
and ending with those "for procuring iron from its ores/'
At the same meeting Count Rumford was requested
to take measures for, and to superintend, the publication
of the journals of the Institution, employing such assist-
ance as he might need. No private advertisements
were to be published with the journals, and a printing-
press was to be established as soon as possible in the
Institution. The first number of the journals appeared
April 5, 1800. They were to be published, if possi-
ble, at intervals of two weeks, and were to be adapted
to a wide circulation, at a cost, when of eight pages, of
threepence, and when of sixteen pages sixpence, a part.
The preface of the first bound volume, completed in
1802, informs us that the first three sheets of it were
published under "Count Rumford's direction. They
contain reports of theflnefctings of the managers of the
Institution, providing fotr committees and professors,
assigning subjects for scientific investigation, the art
of making bread being the first of them, an account
of the edifice and its arrangements then in progress, and
a report made to the managers, May 25, 1801, by
Rumford, on the progress and hopeful prospects of the
Institution. The arrangements, conveniences, and con-
trivances described in this report all indicate the in-
Life of Count Rumford. 405
genious painstaking of the master-hand which was at
work upon them, and the beginnings of a rich library
of scientific journals and books gathered from Europe
and America. Count Rumford also contributed to the
pages two essays: On the Means of Increasing the Heat
obtained in the Combustion of Fuel, and On the Use
of Steam as a Vehicle for Conveying Heat.
Of a list of four hundred and thirty-eight donations
of books, articles of furniture, and instruments made
in the first year to the Institution, most of them singly,
by individuals, no less than one hundred and seventy-
five are credited to Count Rumford, including a Lon-
don edition, in two volumes, of Franklin's Life and
Works. He had, at this time, accumulated a very
large and valuable collection of apparatus and philo-
sophical instruments, many of them the work of his
own hands as well as the contrivances of his own in-
genuity, provided in pursuing his varied experiments.
These, in large part, the Count most generously gave
to the Institution, which he also supplied according to
the general rule that he had been so careful to introduce
as of comprehensive application in its plan with well-
constructed models of all his own inventions. The
repository very soon became a centre of attraction for
visitors as well as for residents in the metropolis.
A contemporaneous account of the opening of the
Institution is given in the Gentleman's Magazine for
1800,* as follows:
" Tuesday, March n. A society under the title
of 'The Royal Institution of Great Britain/ and under
the patronage of his Majesty, commenced its sittings
for the first time this day. Its professed object is to
* Vol. LXX. Part I. p. 382.
406 Life of Count Rumford.
direct the public attention to the arts, by an establish-
ment for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the
general introduction of useful mechanical inventions
and improvements."
Count Rumford took a most active part in all the
meetings of the managers up to that of September 14,
1799, after which he was absent until the jd of Febru-
ary, 1800; and as there is a record of the unfortunate
illness and long confinement of one of the managers
whose zeal had been so conspicuous in the formation
and success of the Institution, he was probably ill
during that interval.
On the loth of March, 1800, the Count was residing
in the house of the Institution, and he was requested,
as long as he did so, to superintend all the works, the
servants, and the workmen. In August he was at Har-
rowgate, and on October 20 in Scotland. He con-
tinued in the house probably until about the 6th of
July, 1801, as it was then
"ResafoeJ, That Count Rumford be requested to con-
tinue his general superintendence of the works going on
at the house of the Institution, agreeably to the several
resolutions of the managers in that respect, in the same
manner as if he hadNjontinued to reside in the house."
Count Rumford reported, that, at the recommenda-
tion of Sir Joseph Banks, he had had a conversation with
Dr. Young respecting his engagement as Professor of
Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution and editor
of the journals, together with a general superintendence
of the house. And " it appearing from the report of
Count Rumford that Dr. Young is a man of abilities
equal to these undertakings, it was
"Resolved, That Count Rumford be authorized to
Life of Count Rnmford. 407
engage Dr. Young in the aforesaid capacities, at a
salary of <joo per annum."
The Count's visit to Harrowgate, in Yorkshire, in
July, 1800, was with a view to the recovery of his
health. References have more than -once been made
in the previous pages to the prostration and suffering
which were visited upon him while performing his most
arduous labors, and, as he seems to have thought, in
consequence of the exertions and self-sacrifices which
they required of him. There are hints dropped in
some contemporary notices of him which imply that
he practised some unwise or fanciful experiments on
himself in the matters of diet and exercise, and that his
originality or ingenuity in this direction may have
enfeebled him. There are no apparent grounds for
these reflections save the facts that he was frequently ill,
and that he was somewhat notional as regards his food. v
He certainly was not a hypochondriac, though he was
probably a dyspeptic. His associate, Dr. Young, de-
scribes his peculiarities of physical habit, and the regi-
men to which he had recourse, as being adopted in
obedience to his medical advisers, rather than as fancies
of his own. The Count's daughter makes many refer-
ences to her father's frequent weakness and illness, and
we have seen that he himself mentions his own troubles
of this sort as compelling him to intermit his labors in
Munich for the sake of rest and travel, and that he was
not able to resume them all on his return.
The more, therefore, must we appreciate his never
intermitted industry, and constant devotion of time and
thought in efforts and ingenious schemes for the good of
others. If many of these labors were devised and car-
ried out, as in all probability they were, while he was
408 Life of Count Rumford.
himself often disabled and dispirited, they certainly in-
crease his claims upon our respect and gratitude. He
even tried to make his own experiences as an invalid,
and the methods by which he sought health, the indirect
occasions for furnishing materials for his Essays. Thus
in this visit of two months to the waters at Harrowgate
he contrived by his experiments on himself to gather
information and to enlighten others on the salubrious
effects of warm bathing, which he made the subject
of a publication, his thirteenth Essay. He began by
conforming himself to the advice of his physician, in
accordance with the professional theory at the time, of
taking his warm bath on the evening of each third day,
and going immediately to his bed, which had been
warmed in order that he might not be exposed to a
chill. But he found that, so far from experiencing any
benefit from this practice, the nights after he had taken
his baths were the most restless and feverish, showing
that in his case, at least, the prescription was unsatis-
factory. Acting on the advice of a fellow-lodger at the
Ganby Inn, he took his bath at midday, two hours
before dining, employing the interval in his usual work.
He also took his bath on alternate days, and finally, as
he was stronger artdjiad a better appetite, in spite of
the remonstrance of his medical adviser, he bathed daily.
He satisfied himself that 7 in his own case, contrary to
established opinion, a warm bath was not relaxing or
enfeebling, but really had an invigorating effect, while
he believed that a cold bath gave the system a severe
shock which only those of a rugged constitution could
bear. He says that he was restored to better health
than he had enjoyed for seven or eight years, having
never till then recovered from his dangerous illness in
Life of Count Rumford. 409
Bavaria. He adds some directions as to the mode in
which baths should be constructed, and recommends
them further as a means of harmless and useful luxury.
To increase the pleasure of a warm bath, he suggests
the burning of sweet-scented woods and aromatic gums
and resins in small chafing-dishes in the bathing-rooms,
by which the air will be perfumed with the most pleasant
odors. He adds :
" Those who are disposed to smile at this display of Eastern
luxury would do well to reflect on the sums they expend on
what they consider as luxuries, and then compare the real and
harmless enjoyments derived from them with the rational and
innocent pleasures here recommended. I would ask them if a
statesman or a soldier going from the refreshing enjoyment of a
bath, such as I have described, to the senate or to the field,
would, in their opinion, be less likely to do his duty than a
person whose head is filled and whose faculties are deranged
by the use of wine ?
" Effeminacy is no doubt very despicable, especially in a
person who aspires to the character and virtues of a man. But
I see no cause for calling anything effeminate which has no
tendency to diminish either the strength of the body, the
dignity of the sentiments, or the energy of the mind. I see no
good reason for considering those grateful aromatic perfumes,
which in all ages have been held in such high estimation, as a
less elegant or less rational luxury than smoking tobacco or
stuffing the nose with snufF."
He pleads for the reconstruction in England of the
baths which the old Romans once established there,
and is enthusiastic in describing and commending the
vapor baths of the poor Russian peasants.
Letters of the Count to friends in America, writ-
ten at .this time, give evidence alike of his interest in
their personal service and of his desire to keep them
4io Life of Count Ritmfjrd.
informed about himself. The following, to Colonel
Baldwin, is in answer to one already given.
" BROMPTON, I st Febry. 1800.
" MY DEAR SIR, I arrived here from the country last
evening, and as I hear that there is an American Ship just upon
the point of sailing from the Downs for Boston, I shall, if
possible, get this letter put on board her. Your letter of No-
vember last reached me about ten days ago. But being then
at a considerable distance from London, I could do nothing
towards executing any of your commissions. I have this day
entered on' that business by consulting with Mr. Fraser of
New Bond St., Mathematical Instrument Maker to his Maj-
esty, and a very old acquaintance of mine, respecting the best
means of forwarding your views regarding your son. From
Mr. Fraser I learn that the Instrument-making business is
divided into two distinct branches in ^London, namely, working
Instrument-Makers and Shopkeepers ; and that though some
few of the great Shopkeepers such, for instance, as Ramsden,
Dolland, Adams, Fraser & Co. have workshops in their
houses, and employ some workmen, yet that by far the greater
part of the articles in which they deal are made by manufac-
turers who live in their own private houses and keep no open
shops. Working Instrument-makers take apprentices who are
always bound for seven years, and with them they commonly
receive a premium-df abo^t 50 or <6o sterling.
"The great dealers in Mathematical Instruments also take
apprentices, but they have seldom opportunities of much prac
tice in making instruments. They learn to know the construe
tion of them and to judge of their merit of work, and of the
defects and perfection of the instruments in which they deal ;
and they likewise learn to take Instruments to pieces, to clean
them, and to examine their accuracy. But no Instrument-
Maker or dealer in Instruments would, without a very large
premium, undertake to instruct a young gentleman in the course
of two or three years, and make him perfect in both branches
of the trade.
Life of Count Rumford. 411
c< Mr. Fraser thinks that it would not be possible to get your
son into one of the shops of London for a term of from two to
four years for a less premium than from <6o to < 100 sterling :
your son to be boarded in the house free of cost to him or to
you during that period. I shall make further inquiries, and
shall take an early opportunity of acquainting you with the
result of them. As I have not a moment to lose, the Ship
being on the point of sailing, I shall add nothing more to this
letter than merely my best thanks for all your kindness to
my Daughter, whose gratitude is equal to my own.
" I am Yours most faithfully,
" RUMFORD.
" I shall, as soon as possible, set about executing your other
commissions. I am embarrassed about your Thermometers, as
you do not mention the extent of their scales.
" My Daughter writes me that you are very kind to her, and
have expressed to her your readiness to afford her assistance in
the accomplishment of her schemes. I beg you would always
give her your advice on all occasions, and I shall be extremely
grateful to you for all the assistance you may afford in making
the situation of my dear Mother as comfortable as possible. I
long very much indeed to see my beloved Parent.
[Superscription.]
"If the Ship Thomas Russel should be gone from the Downs,
where she now is, this letter is to be returned to Count Rum-
ford at Brompton.
" The Hon b ! e COLONEL BALDWIN, Woburn.
" To the Care of Mr. Cashing, Merchant, Boston, State of Massa-
chusetts.
"By the American Ship, Thomas Russel, Capt. Jackson."
The following letter to President John Adams was
designed to open a correspondence between the Ameri-
can Academy and the Royal Institution :
412 Life of Count Rumford.
u SIR, The Managers of the Royal Institution of Great
Britain have directed me to transmit to the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences the enclosed Prospectus. I have there-
fore the honour to forward the same to your Excellency, and
to request that you would lay it, or cause it to be laid, before
that learned and respectable body.
" I have likewise the honour, in conformity to the Instruc-
tions I have received, to request that the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences may be assured of the sincere desire of the
Managers of the Royal Institution of Great Britain to cultivate
a friendly Correspondence with them, and to co-operate with
them in all things that may contribute to the advancement of
Science and to the general Diffusion of the Knowledge of all
such new and useful Discoveries and mechanical Improvements
as may tend to increase the enjoyments and promote the Indus-
try, Happiness, and Prosperity of Mankind.
" I have the honour to be with great Respect,
" Your Excellency's most Obedient and most Humble Ser-
vant,
"RUMFORD.
" ROYAL INSTITUTION, Albemarle St., London, i? June, 1800.
"His Excellency JOHN ADAMS, President of the United States
and President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences."
With asimifar ihteiit the Count addressed the follow-
ing letter to the President of Harvard College :
" ROYAL INSTITUTION, Albemarle St., London, I s * June, 1800.
" SIR, By direction of the Managers of the Royal Institu-
tion of Great Britain, I have the honour to transmit to the
President of Harvard University the inclosed publication, in
which an account is given of an establishment lately formed in
this metropolis for promoting useful knowledge.
" I have likewise the honour, in conformity to the instruc-
tions I have received, to request that the heads of the University
may be assured of the sincere desire of the Managers of the
Royal Institution of Great Britain to cultivate a friendly corre-
Life of Count Rumford. 413
spondence with them, and to co-operate with them in all things
that may contribute to the advancement of Science, and to the
general Diffusion of the Knowledge of all such new and useful
Discoveries and mechanical Improvements as may tend to in-
crease the enjoyments and promote the Industry, Happiness,
and Prosperity of Mankind.
u I have the honour to be, with much respect, Sir,
" Your most obedient humble servant,
"RUMFORD.
"To the REV. DR. WILLARD, President of
Harvard University, Massachusetts."*
Domestic and scientific concerns are happily com-
bined in the following letter to Colonel Baldwin, writ-
ten from the Count's lodgings in the Institution in
Albemarle Street:
" ROYAL INSTITUTION, 9 l . h June, 1800.
" MY DEAR SIR, I cannot neglect so good an opportunity
of writing to you as the return of Mr. Higginson to Amer-
ica now offers. And I must begin my letter with a subject
which is ever uppermost in my mind. My Daughter and my
dear Mother will probably be in your neighbourhood when this
letter reaches you. I most earnestly recommend them both to
your kind attentions. I have one wish, and one only, respect-
ing them, which is, that they may be as happy as possible. As
I am at so great a distance from them, I am but ill qualified
to judge of their wants and their wishes. Pray assist them
in every way in which your friendly assistance can be of use
to them or make them comfortable and contented. I once
imagined that my Mother might perhaps be disposed to prefer
Woburn to every other situation for the place of her residence,
and I have long wished to see her and my Daughter comforta-
bly settled under the same roof. What can be done to unite
them cordially in the same scheme and mode of life ?
" If this can be done, I should prefer it to any other plan.
* Memories of Youth and Manhood. By Sydney Willard. Vol. I. p. 159.
414 Life of Count Rumford.
But if it cannot well be arranged to the entire satisfaction and
comfort of both, I shall always be perfectly satisfied if I know
that they are both pleased and contented. I always was of
opinion that people should be left to act freely and make them-
selves comfortable and happy in their own way. It is very
possible that my Mother may have good reasons for preferring
a place of residence and mode of life very different from that
which I, at this great distance, might think would please her
most. I wish I knew what she wishes. I should then have no
doubts how to act and what to propose. Perhaps my Daugh-
ter may marry (which she has my leave to do whenever she
pleases, and with whom she pleases). This may greatly alter
her relative situation with me and with my Mother. She may
perhaps wish at some future period to make me another visit in
Europe, and even in this scheme I shall not oppose her inclina-
tions, if her heart should be set on the gratification of them. I
do not mean to be an indulgent father in theory only.
" Pray let me know what you think on these subjects, and
tell me how I must act to make two Persons. who are very dear
to me as happy as possible.
"I ought to take shame to myself for giving you so much
trouble, when you may think I have paid little attention to your
requests. The.-enclosed account of Mr. Eraser will acquaint
you witnllTe r particu]ars of those articles which you will now
receive by Mr. Higginson.
" The Lathe, Mandrel, &c., which are ordered from the very
best workman in that line in Great Britain, will be forwarded
when finished, as will be also the Lucernal Glasses^ which are
never found ready made. If you wish to have two equal mer-
curial Thermometers of the greatest possible Range of Scale,
viz. from freezing to boiling mercury, or from 40 below
Nothing to about 600 above Nothing of Fahrenheit's Scale,
I will order them for you. They will cost about 2^ Guineas
each. Give me your orders.
" My Daughter will acquaint you with the brilliant Success
of our new Institution. The Subscriptions have amounted this
year to above 24,000 Sterling. And as little of the Institu-
Life of Count Rumford. 415
tion has yet been seen except upon paper, and in the form of Pro-
posals and descriptions of what it is intended to establish, I
consider this unexampled support as a flattering testimony of
the public opinion entertained of the talents and probity of the
founders of the Institution. You will naturally perceive how
strongly these proofs of the public esteem and regar.d must bind
me to the Institution, and render it my duty to watch over
it, and do everything in my power to make it perfect and dura-
ble. I wish you would come and see it this autumn. I can
offer you a very comfortable house while you stay in England,
and if you should want a travelling companion, I believe you
could find one without going very far to look after him. It is
highly probable that I should be able to return with, you to
America in the month of March, or I would wait till May or
June, if a wish to examine the Canals in England should render
you desirous of staying a few months longer in this country.
" I am ever, my Dear Sir,
" Yours, Most Affectionately,
" RUMFORD.
" Count Rumrord, for Colonel Baldwin,
"Bought of WM FRASER, Mathematical Instrument Maker to his
Majesty and Optician to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
No. 3 Bond Street.
. s d.
A Portable Barometer, with Rack work and a packing case 313 6
A Pair of 8 inch Magnetic Bars in a Mah n . y Box I I o
A Thermometer on a Metal Scale, in a Case I 5 ^o
A do. on an Ivory Scale, in a Glass tube and a case I I o
2 Two Pole Tapes in Boxes 1 5
A Pint & a Gill of Pure Brass varnish, brushes, &c. oio 6
A ream of the best Lawn Paper 012 6
J oz. of Silver wire 4/9, and 4 oz. of Plated do. 5/6 o 10 3
9 8 9
SIR, Not being certain as to what degree of heat the Ther-
mometers were to be used in, I have only sent two Boiling-
water Thermometers. If they are required to endure a greater
416 Life of Count Riimford.
heat they must be made on purpose. The Collar and man-
drel, &c is in hand, but there being but one workman in
London whose Lathes I could recommend, and his being so
much employed, renders it impossible to get it finished in less
than three weeks or a month. The set of Glasses for the
Lucernal Microscope must also be made on purpose, which will
take nearly two weeks. The collar and mandrel, with screw-
tools complete, will come to 5. 15. o, and the set of Glasses
for a Lucernal Microscope will be 3. 3. o.
" P. S. It will be of no use to send the Speculums of the
Reflecting Telescope without the brass work, as the goodness
of the Telescope principally depends upon their being properly
adjusted.
"The cleaning of the Speculum would cost about 25/f.
"W* FRASER.
" In Varnishing any Brass- Work, the Brass is first to be
warmed just sufficient to evaporate the Spirits and leave the
Wax or Gum on the Brass. It is to be put on as lightly as
possible, so as to be all covered.
. (" Received Aug*. 6, 1 800.")
It would have been a most gratifying and delightful
incident4n^the^rfeof Count Rumford, if, in fulfilment
of the terms of his own cordial invitation, his friend
Colonel Baldwin had had leisure at the time to indulge
his own earnest wishes by joining the Count in Lon-
don, to revive the pleasant memories of their youth,
and to enjoy the privilege of such a companionship
for introduction to eminent scientific men and for
travel in England or on the Continent. But Colonel
Baldwin was, in a more limited sphere, serving his na-
tive State as faithfully as was the Count in his larger
opportunities advancing the interests of practical science
for the civilized world. In the mean while Colonel
Baldwin was faithful to the highest obligations of re-
Life of Count Ritmford. 417
spect and admiration for his friend by preparing him-
self for writing and publishing during the Count's life-
time the best accounts of him and of his great undertak-
ings which had appeared in print. They are found in
that series of articles in two volumes -of the " Literary
Miscellany," published in Cambridge, which have been
already referred to and quoted.
Dr. John Davy, in his memoirs of the life of his
brother, Sir Humphry, gives a sketch of his connec-
tion with the Royal Institution as assistant lecturer on
chemistry and director of the laboratory, this being a
temporary arrangement till he should be qualified for
the professorship of chemistry. While recognizing very
fully and adequately the hopeful and promising inaugu-
ration of the new Institution, and the signal services
which have been performed through it, this biographer
hardly does justice to the claims of Count Rumford as
its master-spirit, or to his agency in bringing Sir Hum-
phry upon the scene where he won his first eminent
distinctions. Dr. Davy very justly says that the In-
stitution was a new experiment, engaging the zeal and
active co-operation of people of rank and fortune, and
opening a most auspicious era for general science, espe-
cially for chemistry, in the expansion and extension of
its relations. The Continent was then closed by war.
A large number of influential persons in society were
induced to enlist in the high and profitable pursuits
which the Institution opened to them, and they found
alike amusement, gratification, and practical profit by
attendance upon its lectures and experiments and by
visiting its repository of models and inventions. Dr.
Davy gives an excellent description of the laboratory
of the Institution, which was for that time very com-
27
418 Life of Count Rumford.
pletely and even lavishly furnished. The founder had
from the first resolved that all the apparatus of science
which skill and money could then secure should be pro-
vided for lecturers and experimenters.
A more full recognition of Count Rumford.'s agency
in securing the services of Davy than that which is given
in the memoir by his brother may be found in the
earlier biography of him by Dr. John Ayrton Paris.*"
Dr. Paris quotes a letter addressed to himself (p. 76)
by Mr. J. R. Underwood, one of Rumford's most
intimate friends and associates in the Institution, to the
effect that he and Mr. James Thompson had made
known to the Count Davy's talents and eminent quali-
ties for a lecturer. Davy had been pursuing some in-
vestigations on heat, probably instigated and guided by
Rumford's publication of his own experiments. There
will be occasion by and by to make a passing refer-
ence to an absurd allegation that Davy had anticipated
the discoveries of Rumford on his great subject. The
attention of the Count having thus been called to this
promising^^u^h^Rv m ^ orc i at once wrote to Davy, who
came, at his summons, to London, and after several
interviews with him accepted, at Rumford's instance,
the invitation of the managers to become Director of
the laboratory and Assistant Professor of Chemistry,
February 16, 1801. Though Davy in a letter re-
ports that the Count was most liberal and polite in be-
havior towards him, it is a curious fact that the Count
at first received a highly unfavorable impression from
Davy's personal appearance (pp. 79, 80). This the
Count expressed in a letter to Mr. Underwood, nor
would he allow Davy to lecture in the theatre of the
* London, 1831.
Life of Count Rumford. 419
Institution till he had himself had trial of him in the
smaller room. His first lecture, however, removed the
misgiving, and Rumford heartily said, " Let him com-
mand any arrangements which the Institution can af-
ford." Davy was uncouth in appearance and address,
and he had to bear many mortifications in his first
mingling with society in London. Rumford was at
one of Davy's lectures as late as May 25, 1802, hav-
ing in the autumn of the previous year been absent in
Paris. Perhaps it was well that these two eminent men
of science, with their marked peculiarities of character
and temper, were not long kept in intimate intercourse.
They would hardly have been personal friends, as they
shared some of the same weaknesses of sensitiveness and
irritability.
I am indebted to Dr. H. Bence Jones, the Secretary
of the Royal Institution, and the author of the admira-
ble memoir of Faraday, for his kindness in copying and
transmitting to me the following letter of Count Rum-
ford to Davy :
" ROYAL INSTITUTION, i6 l . h Feb. 1801.
"DEAR SIR, In consequence of the conversations I have
had with you respecting your engaging in the service of the
Royal Institution of Great Britain, I this day laid the matter
before the Managers of the Institution, at their Meeting :
(Present, Sir Joseph Banks, Earl of Morton, Count Rum-
ford, and Richard Clark, Esq.,) and I have the pleasure to
acquaint you that th-e Proposal I made to them was approved, and
the following Resolution unanimously taken by them : ' Re-
solved, That Mr. Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of
the Royal Institution in the capacity of Assistant Lecturer in
Chemistry, Director of the Chemical Laboratory, and assistant
Editor of the Journals of the Institution ; and that he be al-
lowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with
420 Life of Count Rumford.
coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of one hundred
guineas per annum?
" On this occasion I did not neglect to give an account to
the Managers of the whole of what passed between us respect-
ing the situation it was intended you should fill in the Institu-
tion on your engaging in its service, and the prospects that
could with propriety be held out to you of future advantages;
and the Managers agreed with me in thinking that as you had
expressed your willingness to devote yourself entirely and per-
manently to the Institution, it would be right and proper to hold
out to you the prospect of becoming in the course of two or
three years Professor of Chemistry in the Institution, with a
Salary of three hundred pounds per annum, provided that within
that period you shall have given proofs of your fitness to hold
that distinguished situation. Although you must ever consider
the duties of the office you may hold under the Institution as
the primary objects of your care and attention, yet the Man-
agers are far from being desirous that you should relinquish
those private philosophical investigations in which you have
hitherto been engaged, and by which you have so honorably
distinguished yourself and attracted their attention. It will
afford them the sincerest pleasure to encourage and assist you
in these laudable pursuits, and give you every facility which the
Philosophical^apparatus^ at the Institution can afford to make
new and interesting experiments.
" You will naturally consider the Journals of the Institution
as the most proper vehicle for communicating to the public,
from time to time, short accounts of the progress you may
make in your investigations ; this will, however, by no means
be considered as precluding you in any degree from presenting
to the Royal Society of London, or any other learned body,
Philosophical papers, or Memoirs on such scientific subjects as
may engage your attention, or from publishing in any other
manner the results of your researches.
" As you are fully informed with respect to the nature and
objects of the Royal Institution, and are acquainted with the
respectable characters of those distinguished persons with whom
Life of Count Rumford. 421
I have the honour to act in the management of its concerns,
you cannot, I think, entertain the smallest doubt of their con-
stant protection, and of their readiness on all occasions to do
full justice to the zeal and abilities you may display in the
situation in which they have placed you.
" It is with much esteem and a sincere desire that the talents
which at so early a period of life you discovered may be culti-
vated with care and always employed with success, that I am,
Dear Sir,
" Your Most Obedient Servant,
" RUMFORD."
I am also indebted to Dr. Jones for his kindness
in copying for me the following extracts from the man-
agers' minutes :
"March 1 6, 1 80 1. Count Rumford reported that Mr.
Davy arrived at the Institution on Wednesday, the nth of
March, 1801, and took possession of his situation.
" In consequence of the verbal directions which Count Rum-
ford had received from the managers to prepare a room in the
house of the Institution for Mr. Davy, namely, that adjoining
the room now occupied by Dr. Garnett, and to refund to the
Doctor the expenses he had been at in furnishing the said room,
the Count reported that the committee of expenditure had
paid to Dr. Garnett 20 2 3 for a new Brussels carpet, and
17 6 o for twelve chairs, making in the whole the sum of
37 8 3, and that the said carpet and chairs have been em-
ployed in furnishing the room occupied by the managers.
" Count Rumford reported further that he had purchased a
cheaper second-hand carpet for Mr. Davy's room, together
with such other articles as appeared to him necessary to render
the room habitable, and among the rest a new sofa-bed, which,
in order that it may serve as a model for imitation, has been
made complete in all its parts."
Faraday also was largely indebted to the opportuni-
ties and facilities furnished by the Royal Institution
422 Life of Count Rumford.
in fostering his early ardor for science. During his
apprenticeship as a newspaper-boy and a bookbinder,
and just as he was reaching manhood, a customer of his
master, who was a member of the Institution, gave him
tickets to four of the lectures which Davy delivered
there early in 1812. Faraday wrote out these lectures
from notes which he made of them, illustrated them by
drawings of his own, and sent his manuscript to Davy
with a letter expressing his desire to escape from trade
and engage in scientific pursuits. Davy promptly re-
sponded to hrs confidence, and though he detected signs
of fitness for such pursuits in his correspondent advised
him not to abandon his trade, as science was a poor
paymaster, while at the same time he promised the
youth his patronage, and offered to secure to him the
bookbinding of the Institution and of his friends.
Davy soon after invited Faraday to an interview, at
which he offered him the place of assistant in the labora-
tory on a salary of twenty-five shillings a week, with
two attic rooms. This was in the early part of March,
1813. Faraday a^once occupied his lodgings in the
building, andr^ngaged with devoted industry and zeal in
chemical manipulation in the laboratory. He lectured
before the Institution for the long period of thirty-
eight years, and having, in 1825, been made its Di-
rector, is thought by his biographer to have averted its
decline or secured its continued existence. It furnished
him a home and a sphere for eminent service during
more than half a century.* I am not aware that Fara-
day ever met with Count Rumford, but think it not at
all unlikely that he did so while spending three months
* Dr. H. Bence Jones, in his "Life and Letters of Faraday" (London, 1870),
gives much interesting information about the Institution. '
Life of Count Rumford. 423
in Paris in the autumn and winter of 1813 as the com-
panion of Davy.
Considering that there was then in London no other
well-furnished laboratory, and indeed no other estab-
lishment with an endowment and an organization for
securing the best opportunities for experimental re-
search with the facilities and the patronage of an appre-
ciative audience in attendance upon lectures, we may
well claim for the Royal Institution the honor of
adopting Faraday perhaps the most distinguished
man in the whole of his own field which the world has
produced as its most accomplished alumnus. In
those qualities of character which made him so lov-
able, for magnanimity, simplicity, ingenuousness, and
modesty, as well as for his single-hearted devotion to
science, he stands without a rival at the head of the roll
of fame. The foibles of vanity, self-assertion, and arro-
gance which we have to lament on his own account
in Davy show no traces of their presence or influence
in Faraday. It would have been pleasant to trace, if
facts would have enabled us to do so, any tokens of an
acquaintance, which we may be sure would have been
a friendship, between him and Rumford ; for we may
say of the latter, with full confidence, that he was
free from jealousy, and that, whatever foibles he may
have exhibited, he would have found in Faraday one
whom he would have most cordially appreciated and
admired, and one whom he would have delighted to
extol.
M. Pictet would appear to have been the most ad-
miring, constant, and enthusiastic among the many
devoted friends of Count Rumford. He was himself
highly cultivated and passionately fond of scientific pur-
424 Life of Count Rumford.
suits, with strong religious feelings, and of an ardent
temperament. In his first letter to his fellow-editors,
written in London, June 21, 1801,* he says that the
principal motive which induced him, in such distract-
ing times of war, to undertake his tour, was his admi-
ration of Count Rumford and his desire to visit the
land where he dwelt. The Count had long before prof-
fered him his hospitalities at his own home at Bromp-
ton, though until his arrival at the house they had
never seen each other. The Count insisted that a
friend of Pictet's, who had come with him from Paris,
though a perfect stranger, should likewise be his guest.
The host took them both, on the day of their arrival, to
the Royal Institution. This was the admiration of
Pictet, who proceeds to translate for his Bibliotfoque
the report of the Institution published in the second
number of its journal. In one of his notes to this
report the correspondent describes the lecture-rooms or
amphitheatres as disposed and contrived by the Count
with wonderful adaptation to their purposes. In an-
other note^thex^^enchman proves how soon he had
learned in England jthe cant meaning of the word job,
which, however, he spells with two b's, and does not
attempt to turn into a French equivalent. He says the
Count was so determined to exclude all speculation and
all chance for private individual thrift or gain from the
Institution, that even in the saloon, or restaurant, viands,
tea, and coffee were furnished at prime cost to all
attending the establishment who needed refreshment,
precluding "what is known so well in England sous le
nom de jobb"
Delighted with his inspection of the Institution,
* Bibliotheque Britannique, Science et ^rts, Vol. XVII.
Life of Count Riimford. 425
Pictet expressed to the Count his surprise that in so
enlightened and advanced a country as England it had
not before occurred to some man of genius to anticipate
the plan. He reports the reply of the Count.
"No doubt others before myself had anticipated the benefits
which an association of men might draw from uniting their
efforts for a common good. But sad experience has generally
proved that enterprises designed for this apparent or real end
are not slow in degenerating and being perverted to the private
interests of a few individuals, so that most of the members have
been duped. The result has been such as to warrant distrust
grounded on facts very mischievous in their consequences. I
have sought to make sure of the good without leaving the door
open to abuses. That is the spirit and the whole tendency of our
Institution, as our rules manifest. If I succeed, as I am really
bound to hope, this auspicious enterprise in winning confidence
will increase my means and opportunities, and the Establish-
ment will acquire a consistency proportioned to its real utility."
Pictet witnessed in the Institution the experiments
of Dr. Wollaston in galvanism, and the decomposi-
tion of water by two processes. It was during this
visit of his as an honored guest of Rumford's at his
famous model house at Brompton, that Pictet, making
use of his fair opportunities, held those confidential
interviews with his host, information obtained from
which was quoted on an early page of this memoir.
It is reasonable to infer that the Count was aware of his
friend's purpose to make him so prominent a subject of
the contributions made by him during his tour to the
excellent Geneva journal, of which he was, as has been
said, one of the originators and editors, the Biblio-
theque Britannique. It is here that we find a full de-
scription of the Count at home, or, rather, of his home.
I translate the following from his ninth letter (Vol.
426 Life of Coiint Rumford.
XIX. Science et Arts, January, 1802, v. s.). It is dated
London, August 15, 1801.
"I have been living for the last eight days at the Elyssium,
which belongs to Count Rumford, and I lead there the most
pleasant life which it is possible to imagine. It is the fitting
time for attempting to describe to you this agreeable and in-
genious structure. The house forms a part of a long range of
edifices, Brompton Row, about a mile from London, which
lines the great road that conducts to the bridges of Fulham and
Battersea. Between the dwellings and the carriage-road is a
space planted with trees and sown with grass, an arrangement
generally adopted in the environs of the capital, and which
agreeably combines for the view many advantages. The win-
dows have a double glazing, and the exterior makes a three-
sided projection, in which are placed vases of flowers and
odorous shrubs, which you may have at your pleasure within or
outside of the apartment, according as you open or close the in-
ner sash. The table on which these vases stand is perforated, in
order to furnish the plants of a hot-house character on it with
the air necessary for vegetation, and the side sashes of the ex-
terior windows open as they are needed.
u The^JiojtfSeSias five stories, including the offices, which in
this country are always set under the level of the earth. The
arrangement is the same in all the stories, two apartments and a
staircase. On the ground-floor is the parlor, where morning
visitors are received, and the dining-room. On the first flight
is a bedchamber, and a saloon for company ; on the second, the
same arrangement ; on the third, a bedchamber and a work-
room for the occupant of the dwelling. In this room, which
has a view of the country, the light comes in through a set of
adjoining windows arranged in an arc of a circle, through which
even in the middle of the apartment you may see a quarter of
the horizon. Their sills are arrayed with flowers and shrubs,
and the eye, looking over the trees and the neighboring fields,
seeing nothing intervening, the illusion is complete ; you sup-
pose yourself to be in the country close to a garden bordered by
Life of Count Rumford. 427
a park. Back of the main house is a structure of outbuildings
a which enclose a stable and coach-house, a chemical laboratory,
room for a valet, one for a carpenter, &c. The two buildings are
separated by a small garden, but there is a communication be-
tween them by a covered gallery, which is warmed in the win-
ter by pipes of hot air.
" The agreeable and the useful have been combined in this
abode with much ingenuity and success. You divine at once
that everything that concerns the use of fuel, whether for the
kitchen or for warmth, has been carried to the highest degree
of economy and perfection. The mantel-piece in the rooms
makes no projection, and masked as it is in the summer by a
border of painted canvas, you confound it with one of the
panels of the wainscoting. These panels at the right and
the left of the fireplace are hung on sunken hinges, and you
raise one or the other of these, in the style of a table, when you
wish to write or read near the fire. The same arrangement is
adapted to the piers which separate the windows, and you can
at your will produce either a table or a simple panel, when you
allow it to fall back again. The wainscoting coming out flush
with the front of the throat of the chimney, it makes no farther
projection, and this arrangement furnishes in depth the neces-
sary place for setting closets, where clothing, books, and every-
thing which you wish to keep safe from dampness and dust, is
protected and disposed of invisibly.
" The bedchambers are disguised in the same way, that is to
say, the bed is concealed under the form of an elegant sofa, of
which the seat is formed by one of the mattresses, and the
other is constructed in a way to fold up as with a hinge through
the length of the back part, and then contracts the bed by its
doubled thickness to the ordinary size of an ottoman. Two
cushions ornament the ends. Under the sofa are two large and
deep drawers which contain the bedding, coverlet, and night-
gear, and which are hidden by a fringed valance. In a few
minutes the sofa is converted at night into an excellent bed, and
in the morning the bed becomes for the day an ornamental
piece of furniture.
428 Life of Count Rumford.
" The most elegant simplicity is observable in all the furni-
ture, which is different on each story; and even in the choice of
the colors you see that the taste of the owner has been aided by
those natural rules for the blending of tints which, as he himself
has discovered, always harmonize for the eye when they are re-
spectively the complement of the colors which the whole prismatic
spectrum presents. You see that these discoveries of Newton
can be applied to the choice of a ribbon as well as to a cosmos.
" I forgot to tell you of the ingenious and convenient arrange-
ment of the dining-room. Its area is changeable by means of a
partition of window-sashes with large panes, forming a very
large double door, which opens on the side of the casements for
the sunlight, and by which also the heat escapes in the winter.
When the folding doors are open at right angles they correspond
with the windows, and the room is to that extent enlarged ; the
same doors form then two side recesses which answer for two
sideboards, communicating within and outside the room, by
which the service of the table is performed without the servants
having to come in. If you wish to contract the room and to
preserve its warmth by the effective agency of double windows,
you can close the folding doors, and, without depriving yourself
of ligh^J2* oFlhe charming view of the shrubbery with which all
the windows are decked, you are completely protected from all
chills.
" I occupy by myself half of this charming dwelling. On
the ground-floor is my working-room, and on the first story my
bedchamber and parlor. The house is equipped with the most
perfect simplicity and the most complete order, and a person
could not conceive a more pleasant life, nor one more comfortable
(why do we not adopt that word which we need in our lan-
guage ?) than that which is led here. Perfect freedom is given
and enjoyed. Our first tete-a-tete takes place at breakfast, and
I never leave it without having learned something new, interest-
ing, or useful. I try always to arrange my day's work with
reference to engaging my friend in some object of research
which is common to us ; and if I do not always succeed in it,
I have at least the assurance of rejoining him in the evening,
Life of Count Rumford. 429
and then for two hours we chat a-bout matters which interest
us alike, and I cannot describe the charm which I find in these
conversations. I make notes of them immediately afterwards,
for, if possible, I would not lose a word of them. And what a
life is his ! His memory retraces faithfully all the principal
facts, and even all the anecdotes, of his early years. I press him
every day to commit these things to writing. He objects, and his
other engrossing occupations, which are excessive, leave him no
time for it. And who knows if he will ever find the time ? I
believe it is my duty, as a friend, to profit by the opportunity
which has brought me near to him to try to draw out in our
intercourse all the marked incidents of his life, and to send to
you in confidence these biographical particulars which you may
keep in your portfolio. I am favored by being able to gather as
from the lips of two of his oldest and 'most intimate friends,
whom I frequently see, Sir Ch. B[lagden] and Mr. De P ,
the Bavarian Envoy, many of those facts which .his modesty
conceals. In combining all these means I shall thus have
something more complete and more authentic than we read about
him in the English journals, and which sometimes make him
laugh. And to trust as little as I can to chance in carrying out
this purpose, I will profit by what remains of my letter to copy
what I have already gathered. I will complete it, if I can, in
my next, and will follow, so far as my notes will allow, the order
of time." [Here is added the memoir given on previous pages.]
In this attempt to describe with such minuteness
the novel and convenient devices which Count Rum-
ford had introduced into his house at Brompton, Pictet
was simply endeavoring to convey to readers on the
Continent, by this method, something of the privilege
which residents in and near London enjoyed of satisfy-
ing their curiosity by observation. The ingenious and
tasteful arrangements in that house made it for several
years one of the most attractive objects for curious
sight-seers ; and the Count's gratification, and perhaps
43O Life of Count Rumford.
his love of appreciation, was ministered to in having
the edifice freely exhibited to visitors from all classes of
society who thronged to examine it. Of one of the novel
contrivances in that edifice, on which the Count greatly
prided himself, Pictet was strangely unobservant. It
was what the Count called a concealed kitchen, recom-
mended and described by him in his Tenth Essay.
Two of these, very complete, had been fitted up by him
in the Royal Institution as models, one in the house-
keeper's room, the other in the great kitchen. He
writes : " There are also two kitchens of this kind in
my house at Brompton in two adjoining rooms, which
have been fitted up principally with a view to showing
that all the different processes of cookery may be car-
ried on in a room which, on entering it, nobody would
suspect to be a kitchen."
And he proceeds to describe the contrivance at length,
with diagrams.*
T^transtating for their own pages Count Rumford's
Prospectus of the Royal Institution, the editors of the
Bibliotheque Britanniquef introduce it with the follow-
ing prefatory remarks, commencing with an extract
from Madame de Stael's essay on Literature consid-
ered in its Relations to Social Institutions.
" ' Nothing so animates and tones the spirit as the hope of
rendering useful service to the human race. When the thought
proves the immediate precursor of action, when the happy pur-
pose can at once be transformed into a benevolent institution,
what interest will a man not find in the development of his
intelligence ! '
" These reflections of a celebrated woman apply with full
justice to all the enterprises of a philanthropist whom we have
* Tenth Essay, Chap. XIV. f Science et Arts, Vol. XIV.
Life of Count Rumford. 431
distinguished among the first, Count Rumford, whose name
now resounds through Europe. Yes, without doubt, after the
spectacle of a man nobly struggling against adversity, this, of a
man of genius incessantly engaged in promoting the welfare of
his fellow-men, is the noblest which can be offered to the con-
templation of generous souls, and to the imitation of those who,
animated by the same spirit, and strong in the same purpose,
can be drawn on by the influence of the example to the noble
career of benevolence.
" And if one considers that genius recognizes in the sciences
and arts its implements of work, its most energetic resources,
one is penetrated by a most profound and just regard for objects
of pursuit so fertile in grand results. One realizes the whole
truth of this reflection, expressed in a sentiment of the writer
just quoted : ' In examining,' she says, ' the actual state of our
enlightenment, we see at a glance that our true riches are the
sciences.' This avowal, dropped in a work consecrated to and
inspired by an enthusiasm for literature, says a great deal.
But the labors of Count Rumford surpass it. He has suc-
ceeded in consummating a magnificent enterprise conceived and
executed in less than one year. He has aimed to increase the
points of contact between the sciences and the arts, to vivify
the one by the other, and to apply them together to the needs of
humanity and to the perfecting of social blessings. The value
of the paper which presents his Proposals and the description of
his Institution is doubled by the fact, that in another point of
view it may be regarded as an eloquent discourse upon the ad-
vantage and the means of making the sciences and the arts re-
ciprocally helpful to their own perfection. In this point of
view it may claim the attention of all those among our readers
who are interested in the progress of this class of human attain-
ments. We proceed to translate nearly the whole of it."
Then follows the substance of the Proposals and
Prospectus, translated into French.
It would have been exceptional to all human experi-
ence, alike in the organization and administration of
432 Life of Count Rumford.
scientific and benevolent schemes, as well as of institu-
tions which are supposed to be more likely to engage the
jealousies or rivalries of men, had no private or public
variance arisen in connection with the early history of
the Royal Institution. There are traces of some per-
sonal alienations as having occurred in the first year of
its existence, and the compass or the cumbersomeness
of its plans, notwithstanding its seemingly large re-
sources, required some modification.
I will offer as full and intelligible an account of these
matters of variance as I have been able to verify from
the means within my reach. Dean Peacock, in his
Life of Dr. Thomas Young,* contents himself with
the following curt narration :
" In the year 1801, Young accepted the office of Professor
of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, which had been
established in the year preceding, chiefly by the exertions of
the well^kfiown Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. It
walTdesigned Vs a great metropolitan school of science, where
lectures should be given, models of useful instruments exhibited,
and collections of books on science and of chemical and philo-
sophical apparatus formed on the most magnificent scale. Its
founder, if such he may be termed, had further views also, of
making it subsidiary to the promotion of many useful projects
and inquiries which he had recently proposed in his Essays,
which enjoyed an extraordinary popularity. After managing
the affairs of the Institution for a few months, and commencing
the editing of its journal, he quarrelled with some of the direc-
tors and abandoned the scheme altogether. The conducting of
the journal was thenceforward intrusted to the joint care of Dr.
Young and his colleague Mr. Davy, at that time Professor of
Chemistry, &c."
Having found no reference made by Count Rumford
* London, John Murray, 1855, p. 134.
Life of Count Rum ford. 433
himself, in any printed or manuscript papers from his
pen which have come to my hands, to any " quarrel "
of his with the directors of the Royal Institution, or
even to any modification of his original plan found to
be necessary in its practical work, I drew upon the
kindness of its present Secretary, Dr. H. Bence Jones,
for such information as he might be able and disposed
to give me, if possible from the records. He has
most courteously responded by acquainting me with
what he knows or can surmise about the matter. He
writes to me that " unluckily no one took any care of
the original documents of the Royal Institution. The
digested minutes of the business are all that remain.
All the living letters that would have told their own
history are lost.'* Being himself engaged at present in
writing a sketch of the early history of the Institution,
he intends to show
u How we departed from Count Rumford's scheme, and by the
genius of Davy became the place for scientific research. You
asked me about the laboratory. Essentially, Davy's and Fara-
day's laboratory was that which Rumford built. But the room
that Rumford built was not the room he originally intended for
the laboratory. Workshops and mo'del rooms for physical
things for the benefit of the poor and sick were more in accord-
ance with his ideas than a chemical laboratory. Even the
kitchen was far more to him than analytical investigation.
True, his idea of a laboratory was a kitchen and a chemist. Mr.
Hatchett saw that the dark room would not do, and got another
room built with four skylights, before the model and lecture
rooms over the dark room were finished. In September, 1799?
Rumford was authorized to engage Dr. Garnett, the first Pro-
fessor of Chemistry and Physics. He came on the 23d of
December. Before February, 1801, there was war between
Garnett and Rumford. It broke out regarding Garnett's lec-
28
434 Life of Count Rumford.
tures. Garnett published two syllabusses, which the managers
objected to. On the i6th of February Rumford engaged Davy.
On March u Davy came. On the I5th of June the resigna-
tion of Garnett was accepted. On July 6, Rumford was au-
thorized to engage Dr. Young.
" It is very clear to me that Count Rumford fell out with
Mr. Bernard, and with Sir John Hippesley. The fact was that
Rumford's idea of workshops and kitchen, industrial school,
mechanics' institution, model exhibition, social club-house, and
scientific committees to do everything, &c., &c., was much ^oo
big and unworkable for a private body, and was fitted only for
an absolute wealthy government, and was going rapidly into
difficulties which, in 1803, led to the proposal to shut up the
affair and sell it ofF. Rumford, seeing he could not have his
way, went to Paris. Mr. Bernard and Sir John Hippesley
again took up the Institution, and by Davy's help carried it on,
without any workshops, or mechanics' institute, or kitchen, or
model exhibition, but with experimental researches, libraries,
and a mineralogical collection, which were, according to Rum-
ferj's ideas^ for the benefit of the rich, and by no means capa-
ble of doing any good to the poor, the object he had in view
in his society for the diffusion of useful knowledge."
I shall not venture to question either the facts or the
opinions drawn from them in Dr. Jones's letter to me,
and shall wait with interest, as will so many others, for
his promised volume. Indeed, I have some indepen-
dent grounds to sustain his views. It may be men-
tioned here, however, that, as will soon be related,
Count Rumford left England, as it proved for the last
time, in May, 1802, his purpose and desire to return
there having been impeded by obstacles of war and
other circumstances. For at least a year, then, previous
to the time at which there seems to have been a pros-
pect of the failure of the Institution, his presence and
influence had been withdrawn.
Life of Count Rumford. 435
Some light though, it must be confessed, not to the
extent of imparting full information, may be thrown
upon this incidental but interesting point in the history
of the Royal Institution by a contemporaneous pub-
lication, reference to which has thus far been deferred
in these pages as it contains matter that may most fitly
be quoted here.
Just at the close of the last century and the beginning
of this there was published in London a series of five
volumes of contemporary biography, entitled " Pub-
lic Characters." In the volume published in October,
1802, appears a short biographical sketch of Count
Rumford, which bears date 1801-2, and which must
undoubtedly have passed under his own eye, at least in
print. I have not ascertained by whom it was written,
but the writer of it affirms that he received information
from some of Rumford's American countrymen. After
a statement, in the main correct, of the more important
incidents in his career, the writer proceeds -as follows:
" It was also owing to his exertions that the Royal Institute
[sic] was first established, and should any beneficial advantages
arise from it hereafter, he, and he alone, ought undoubtedly to
have the whole and sole merit. But candor will not allow us
to conceal that the effects likely to be derived from a new
society of this kind are net such as could have been either
wished or expected. In the establishment of her National
Institute, France exhibited a gigantic superiority in respect to
human intellect, and by concentrating in one common focus
everything respectable, either in the sciences or belles lettres,
exhibited such a blaze of genius as had never been beheld before
in Europe."
The writer of the biography says here in a note :
" As a proof of this, the old members of the Academy of
436 Life of Coimt Rumford.
Sciences, esteemed the first in Europe during the monarchy,
constitute only Class I of the National Institute."
He then proceeds :
" We appear to be successful in mimicking the name alone,
for to have rivalled the establishment (if it were possible for us
to rival it ! ) it would have been necessary to have called forth
the exertions of every man among us conspicuously eminent in
the mathematics, practical astronomy, oratory, natural and
civil history, painting, poetry, music, &c., &c. To have re-
warded these, Parliament should have provided ample salaries ;
and to have prevented the whole from dwindling into a minis-
terial job, the members ought to have been elected by ballot.
Instead of this a puny imitation was adopted, and one professor
only appointed. True it is, there are few men in the kingdom
who could have been selected perhaps with greater propriety,
or who possess more various powers, than the gentleman in
question, Dr. Garnett, a man of considerable eminence in the
philosophical and literary world ; it is the inefficacy and nullity
"o^the pla\i only that is here arraigned, without intending to
throw the slightest blame on the original projector, who was
perhaps cramped in his views and impeded in his exertions."
In a note to this last paragraph the writer communi-
cates the information, such as it is, which must relate to
the cc quarrel," previously referred to.
u Since writing the above, the editor has learned that many
disputes have taken place relative to the management of the
Royal Institution, in consequence of which Dr. Garnett has
found himself reduced to the necessity of resigning his situation.
He also hears with great sorrow that a breach has taken place
in the friendship that subsisted between the Count of Rumford
and Dr. Garnett ; but, as he is unacquainted with the particu-
lars, he will not presume to censure either of the parties in
question." *
* An American editor selected from the five volumes of the London edition of
" Public Characters" materials enough to fill a single volume, the contents of which
Life of Count Rumford. 437
As to the matter of alleged variances between Count
Rumford and the managers of the Royal Institution,
I can say little more than that I have met with no in-
formation which would warrant even the inference that
he, in any case or to any extent, was at issue with them
as a body, or that they as such were upon any subject
in opposition to him. With individuals once sharing
friendly and very cordial relations with him, Rumford
did undoubtedly cease to hold such relations, whether
because he alienated them wilfully, or because they
found him personally or' officially disagreeable to them.
In another connection I shall have occasion to quote
the repeated assertions of his once very intimate com-
panion and associate, Sir Charles Blagden, that he had
parted friendship with the Count and should no longer
correspond with him. This variance, however, was
strictly personal, having apparently no connection with
the affairs or the management of the Royal Institution.
Dr. Young would seem to have had no quarrel with
Rumford. Of this eminent philosopher, Dr. Jones
very justly says, in a letter now before me: "Young
was never out of scientific war, and never got the honor
he deserved. His is a strange history. He ought to
he thought would be generally interesting to the people of the United States. This
volume, published in Baltimore in 1803, is the one from which the above extracts are
made (pp. 377, 378).
Though aside from the point now engaging us, I am prompted to quote the next
paragraph of this biographical sketch, as follows :
*< Count Rumford is allowed to be a man of profound research, close application,
and extensive science. His house at Brompton is well calculated to give an idea of
the owner. The uppermost story is converted into a laboratory for chemical experi-
ments. His chimneys are contrived so as to economize fuel, prevent smoke, and pro-
duce heat 5 while his double windows, constructed in imitation of those of Germany,
Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, exclude the frost during the winter, and serve as so
many conservatories for such plants as are incapable of being inured to bear the rigors
of our climate."
438 Life of Coiint Rumford.
have been the great man of England. He should have
given himself entirely to science. What an unfortunate
man he was in the number and size of his disputes !
Whatever he touched led to a fight. And yet he was a
gentleman and a Quaker by birth."
Dr. Young speaks in high terms of the character of
Rumford's Experiments on Heat.* As Corresponding
Secretary of the Royal Society, it was Young's official
duty to transmit to Malus and Fresnel the Rumford
Medals, as awarded to them. Writing to the latter in
1827, he accompanies the medals, and a draft for
,55 i6j., the accumulated surplus income of the fund,
with a letter containing these sentences: "At last,
then, I trust you will no longer have to complain of
the neglect which your experiments have for a time
undergone in this country. I should also claim some
Bright tcrparticipate in the compliment which is tacitly
palcf to myself in common with you by this adjudica-
tion, but, considering that more than a quarter of a
century is past since my principal experiments > were
made, I can only feel it a sort of anticipation of posthu-
mous fame, which I have never particularly coveted. "f
It would seem to be only through the strange chances
by which allotments of honor and glory are dropped or
withheld, that Young himself should never have re-
ceived the Rumford prize.
The sharp and sweeping assertion of Dean Peacock,
that Rumford "abandoned the scheme of the Institu-
tion altogether," is not sustained by facts. The friends
and coadjutors whom he had drawn in to his design,
and who undertook with him its early management and
* Miscellaneous Works, edited by Dean Peacock. Vol. I. pp. 83, 1 68.
f Miscellaneous Works, Vol. I. p. 409.
Life of Count Rumford. 439
contributed their services, may have found practical
difficulties in its administration. The economical and
utilitarian objects of the widest popular interest and
activity, which were always so prominent in the schemes
of Count Rumford, may have involved a too compli-
cated or diffusive responsibility. Possibly, one or
more of the men who were ready to work for the In-
stitution in its higher scientific directions, might have
been disposed to subordinate or slight the purposes
which the founder regarded as primary and most ser-
viceable. That he had variances with one or many of
his associates would by no means prove an error of
judgment or a fault of temper on his part, if there
were not other indications of a morbid sensitiveness
and irritability that had come over him at this period
of his life. It is certain, however, that the aim and the
work of the Institution were modified some time after
the Count was in circumstances either to approve of
and help in, or to oppose, the change.
Dr. Jones writes to me as follows :
"In 1810, March 3, Davy gave a lecture 'on the plan which
it is proposed to adopt for improving the Royal Institution, and
rendering it permanent/ This gives a general view of the
change which took place in Rumford's plan, but it gives no
names I have as yet got nothing more definite except
a statement, which I cannot find to quote, on the number of
enemies that Rumford made before he left in 1802. But of
indefinite corroborating facts there are many. The greatest is
that his relationship with Mr. Bernard and the other managers,
excepting Sir Joseph Banks, ceased entirely. He wrote to the
clerk of the Institution that c he wished to hear how things went
on, for he had no one to tell him.' The day almost that he
left, his arrangements were changed, regarding the terms of
admission. The thing was done hastily. The great object he
440 Life of Count Rum ford.
had in view of a mechanics' school, workshop, &c. was imme-
diately stopped. The favorable report he made of the success
of his work a xeport read after he had almost started was
discredited by Mr. Bernard, and I am much mistaken if the
managers did not suspect the accounts 'had been cooked,' so
to say, for they called in an accountant. Mr. Bernard says,
4 Upon the whole the visitors have the pleasure of stating to the
annual meeting, that they conceive there is nothing that merits
censure, and much that deserves approbation/ But not a bit
of approbation do they give, that I can see. Count Rumford's
name never occurs in the minutes of the managers, and they
ought to have given him the highest praise, at least for his ideas
in forming ' the Rumford Institution,' as I shall call it. The
Bernard Institution, which came after it for seven years, was
nothing but giving c fashion to science,' instead of ' usefulness
of science to poor and rich,' which is my motto for Rumford's
Institution. But his idea was utterly beyond a private society.
It included everything, the industrial exhibition, the me-
chanics' school and institute, the association for scientific in-
e club with a school of cookery, the Society for
of Useful Knowledge, lectures and journals, &c.
All were to be in one building under Rumford's dictatorship ; and
if he had had money and support enough, in three more years he
would have done the work. But his lieutenant, Webster, Assist-
ant Professor of Geology at the London University and Assistant
Secretary of the Geological Society, was deposed, and fashion-
able science began in 1803, and has gone on up to this day.
The support of the laboratory, and the proud deeds of Davy
and Faraday have saved us from being a lecture-shop for c a num-
ber of silly women and dilettanti philosophers,' which was the
character given of us when Thomas Young was lecturing.
When Rumford left England, in May, 1802, he certainly in-
tended to return. But he never says a word about coming back
to his Institution. He keeps up no relations with the managers,
nor corresponded with any one of them that I can find. For in
1804 he sends a sort of message through the clerk to the
managers, about a bill. He sends his regards to Davy and
Life of Count Rumford. 441
Young, but little more. I had some hopes of getting some cor-
respondence of Sir J. Hippesley, who, next to B-ernard, took the
most active part in the Institution, but am disappointed."
The Royal Institution has had an honorable history,
and for the most part one singularly free from acrimo-
nious contentions, personal variances, and dividing
issues about elections to membership or the choice of
officers. In this peaceful and quiet course it has been
favorably distinguished above even the Royal Society,
which has passed through many severe agitations and
many critical periods. The courses of lectures given
successively before the Institution by Drs. Young and
Dalton, by Sydney Smith, Faraday, and Tyndal, have
kept it before the public as acting with fresh vigor
among the higher agencies alike for engaging the high-
est professional talent and for advancing and popular-
izing science among the masses. Undoubtedly it has
yielded to some modifications of the original design and
intent of its founder ; not more so, however, than to
admit of the adaptations which time requires of all
organized bodies and of all institutions working by a
code of rules which, because they are admirably adapted
to the exigencies first served by them, would become
antiquated if they did not yield to, and in fact assimi-
late, the new elements of progress. Yet, as we read over
the pamphlet prepared by Count Rumford nearly three
quarters of a century ago, and note how comprehensive
and elastic was the scheme proposed by him, and how
directly and enthusiastically it assumed the office of
working in every way for the good of common people,
we can hardly apply the terms " modification " or
"change" to its adoption of any means which would serve
its great end. Perhaps if we could imagine the Count
442 Life of Count Riunford.
himself as being an unseen auditor of all the lecturers
who have occupied the platform in Albemarle Street,
we might expect it would have been with a degree of
surprise that he would have listened to the wit and
humor of Sydney Smith as he there discoursed upon
moral philosophy. Was it in compHment to the Count,
or as a piece of his raillery, that the jesting divine, in
his third lecture, described what Priestley did for Hart-
ley's system as " Rumfordizing" it?*
Sir James Mackintosh, writing from Bombay in 1806,
to his friend Richard Sharp, Esq., London, announces
his desire to return to England in 1809, and his wish
to lecture in London for eight or nine years on moral
philosophy. He adds: "Your account of the Lon-
don Institution has delighted and tantalized me. I
wish I were a professor ! But the printed paper is too
general to admit of any discussion. You do not say
Jjgvv Inany and who are to be professors. It may
surely be) a little more solid than the fashionable nerves
of Albemarle Street could endure, without ceasing to be
popular." }
Dr. Jones, in the letter of his last quoted, refers to
the raillery of which the Institution had been the sub-
ject in the attempt to make science fashionable. But
the jeers and ridicule which it encountered from this
* Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy delivered at the Royal Institution.
By the late Rev. Sydney Smith. London, 1850, p. 49.
A very interesting sketch of the origin and history of the Royal Institution is given
by Mons. Ed. Mailly, in his " Essai sur les Institutions Scientifiques de la Grande
Bretagne et de 1'Irlande " (Bruxelles, 1867), though the writer perpetuates some of
the common errors in the short biographical account of Rumford which precedes it.
A translation of this sketch, the errors just mentioned being left without correction,
is given in the collections published by the Smithsonian Institution for 1867.
f Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh. By his Son.
London, 1836. Vol. I. p. 290.
Life of Count Riimford. 443
comparatively venial weakness, in turning social caprices
to the service of science, was but a slight trial for the
dignity of the Institution to bear, in comparison with
the flood of sarcasm, contempt, and misrepresentation
which had been visited upon the Royal Society. That
satirical preacher, Dr. South, in his oration at the
opening of the theatre at Oxford, had spoken of the
worthies whom the second Charles had endowed with
Charter and Mace, as admiring nothing save pulices,
pediculos, et se ipsos. Butler, in his " Elephant in the
Moon/ had made sharp fun of their' subjects and
methods of investigation. The witty Dr. King thought
it worth his while to gather and publish a burlesque
collection of "Useful Transactions in Philosophy and
other Sorts of Learning," for the purpose of present-
ing a roguish parallel with the veritable treatises and
essays of the Royal Society. The excellent Wot-
ton, in his "Reflections upon Ancient and Modern
Learning," seems to have quailed under this bantering
spirit as turned against science and philosophy. He
seems even to have thought that knowledge had seen
its best days for his generation. "The humor of the
age," he writes, c< is visibly altered from what it had
been thirty years ago. Though the Royal Society has
weathered the rude attacks of Stubbe, yet the sly in-
sinuations of the men of wit, with the public ridiculing
of all who spend their time and fortunes in scientific or
curious researches, have so taken off the edge of those
who have opulent fortunes and a love to learning, that
these studies begin to be contracted amongst physicians
and mechanics."
In three very caustic articles contributed by Lord
Brougham to the Edinburgh Review, exhibiting his flip-
444 Life of Count Rumford.
pancy as a writer at that time in its intensest form,* on
Dr. Young's Bakerian Lecture on Light and Colors,
and his paper on " Colors not before described," the
critic, going, as it proved, beyond his depth, exposed
himself, rather than his subject, to ridicule. Dr.
Young, who in the productions thus contemptuously
assailed is said, by his biographer, to have established
the bases of the most important advancement which the
science of physical optics had made since the time of
Newton, published a masterly "Reply/' in 1804, of
which, however, the author reports that only a single
copy was sold. Mention is here made of the matter,
simply because in this reply Dr. Young introduced the
following reference to his connection with the Royal
Institution :
\s
otrj
The reviewer has thought proper to unite, in several in-
stance^ with his invectives against me some ridicule of the
objects of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, an Institu-
tion in which its managers have studied to concentrate all that
is useful in science or elegant in literature. This connection
appears to him to add so much weight to his arguments that he
has chosen, without further provocation, to insinuate its ex-
istence more than a year after it has been dissolved. I accepted
the appointment of Professor of Natural Philosophy in the
Royal Institution as an occupation which would fill up agree-
ably and advantageously such leisure hours as a young prac-
titioner of physic must expect to be left free from professional
cares. I was led to hope that I should be able to impress an
audience, formed of the most respectable inhabitants of the
metropolis,, with such a partiality as the moderately well-in-
formed are inclined to entertain for those who appear to know
even a little more than themselves of matters of science.
While I held the situation, I wished to make my lectures as
* Edinburgh Review, Nos. II. and IX., 1803, 1804.
Life of Coiint Rumford. 445
intelligible as the nature of the subjects permitted ; but I must
confess that it was not my ambition to render them a substitute
for those of any superficial experimenter that was in the habit
of delivering courses of natural philosophy for the amusement
of boarding-schools. Whatever may have been the imperfec-
tions of my lectures, it cannot be asserted, except perhaps in
the Edinburgh Review, that they were fit for audiences of ladies
of fashion only. After fulfilling for two years the duties of
the Professorship, I found them so incompatible with the pur-
suits of a practical physician, that, in compliance with the
advice of my friends, I gave notice of my wish to resign the
office."*
Rumford's original and noble design, frankly avowed,
certainly was to make a regard for the welfare of the
common people, their relief and thrift and comfort,
" fashionable." Nor would he probably have felt the
least objection to investing science with the same attrac-
tion. Of late years the lectures before the Royal In-
stitution have not been wanting in solidity of substance
as dealing with themes which engage the foremost
natural philosophers of our times. Sir John Lubbock's
lectures on the Origin of Civilization and the Primi-
tive Condition of Man, delivered in 1868; those of
Professor Humphrey on the Architecture of the Hu-
man Body and those of Professor Odling on the
Chemistry of Vegetable Products, delivered in 1870,
are among the latest contributions made by profound
investigators to the broadest popular advancement in
science. Max M tiller's two courses were attractive and
instructive.
I will here add the remainder of Pictet's letter, written
while he was still in close intercourse with his friend.
"Towards the autumn of 1800, Count Rumford went to
* Miscellaneous Works, Vol. I. pp. 214, S-
446 Life of Cozint Riimford.
Scotland. The magistrates of Edinburgh made him a visit of
ceremony, gave him a dinner in the City Hall, and added to
these marks of distinction the freedom of the city, expressed in
the most flattering terms. They consulted him on measures
for improving their public charitable institutions and for abolish-
ing mendicity. They put the work into his hands, and this
great undertaking was completed in less than a month, with full
success. No more beggars are seen in Edinburgh, and all indi-
gent persons there able to work have become industrious.
" The Royal Society of Edinburgh and that of Medicine
made the Count an Honorary Member, and the University gave
him the diploma of a Doctor of Laws. I regret that I am not
able to transcribe this instrument, which was inserted in the
Edinburgh Gazette. It is of the most elegant latinity, and
expresses laconically and justly the obligations of humanity to
my illustrious friend.
" During his stay in this city he was occupied in supervising
the introduction in that great establishment, Heriot's Hospital,
of the improvements of his own invention in the application of
tlTtfee preparation of food.
" I have before me a recent letter from Mr. Jackson, one of
the principal guardians of the hospital, to the author of these
improvements. Here is a literal translation [which I translate
again from the French].
"EDINBURGH, July 21, 1801.
" MY DEAR SIR, With a view of procuring the most ex-
act information about the result of the repairs made in Heriot's
Hospital, I have preferred to allow a sufficient length of time
to pass that their value might be sufficiently tested. To-day I
have the satisfaction to inform you that a trial of six months has
proved with certainty that the same operations are performed
with only a sixth part of the fuel which was used before. The
saving will nevertheless be only two thirds, because the price
of coke is nearly double that of the fuel which we used before.
I assure you, with much pleasure, that the food is prepared
better than before, and with half the trouble to the servants.
Life of Count Rumford. 447
In a word, I cannot express the facility, the convenience, and
the economy which attach to the improvements introduced into
the hospital under your directions. The kitchen, the laundry,
and the drying-room are so perfectly arranged, that, in my humble
opinion, it would be impossible to add to their advantages.
u The Lord Provost and the magistrates join me in their
thanks, &c.
"JAMES. JACKSON.
" The guardians wished to signify their gratitude by a token
more durable than that of a simple letter. They therefore sent
to the Count a silver casket bearing an inscription very honora-
ble for him, and upon one of its faces is represented in a massive
gold relief the principal facade of the building, to the improve-
ment of which he had so efficiently contributed, and the gift is
besides a beautiful architectural fancy.
" Finally, he has crowned his work by the superb establish-
ment of the Royal Institution, of which he was the principal
promoter, and which I described to you on my arrival. It is
one of the most remarkable monuments of his patriotism and
of his ingenious activity. This enterprise advances rapidly to
perfection, and he devotes to it his most assiduous pains.
" Happy, however, as he might be, and usefully employed in
England, he is not permanently fixed here. The same sov-
ereign who, in 1784, had divined what a blessing such a man as
the Count might be to his nation, signified a very emphatic
intention of calling him back to him. With difficulty could he
withstand the appeal of a Prince who sought the good of his
country in attaching to himself a man whom he regarded as best
able to aid him in his proposed reforms. I think that the
next spring, or a little later, he left his quiet residence to re-
sume for some time the high functions in which he had ren-
dered such eminent services in Bavaria.
" Such, my friends, is a resume of my notes. It will but
partially satisfy your curiosity, and I am perplexed by my desire
to tell you what I think will interest you, and the fear of being
indiscreet in my communications."
448 Life of Count Rumford.
It is observable that Pictet has no knowledge of, or,
at least, makes no reference to, any breach of the most
cordial relations between Rumford and his associates.
He sent with the letter to his co-editors an engraved
portrait of Rumford, which appears with it in the
Bibliotheque Britannique, and gives also a list of the
Count's papers published in the Philosophical Trans-
actions for 1781, 1786, 1787, 1792, 1795, 1796, 1797,
1798, and 1799. ^ e likewise sa y s that Rumford's
Essays have been translated into French, German, and
Italian. In the preface to Vol. XXXIV. of the Bib-
liotheque the editors claim that their work has been
the medium of making known through France the illus-
trious career and the philanthropic labors of Rumford.
The embargo still continuing and making intercourse
with the Continent from England difficult for travellers,
PictelT^rites a second letter, dated from Brompton
Row, September i, 1801, in which he expresses him-
self very warmly as to the enjoyment he is finding as a
household guest of Rumford, though he is anxious to
return home.
A third letter from Pictet* informs his fellow-editors
and us, that, notwithstanding the embargo, the Count,
disposed to pass some time at Munich, has obtained a
passport for himself by way of Dover, and has done
him the great favor of procuring for him the privilege
of accompanying him. Such indulgence had not been
granted for a long time. Their departure is fixed for
the 2oth of September. The friends are to separate for
their different routes at Calais.
Pictet writes that he has been in England three
months, and that the visit has been the happiest inci-
* Bibliothfeque Britannique, Vol. XXL
Life of Count Rztmford. 449
dent in his life. Besides visiting with the Count the
famous brewery of Meux, they had made together a
short tour as an- excursion to Woburn Abbey, the
estate of the Duke of Bedford. They had examined by
the way many manufactories and other interesting ob-
jects. The writer describes the Duke's estate and
farms. The friends spent two days with Sir John
Sebright, a warm admirer of Rumford, where a great
fete was made for them, and where they enjoyed a
hunt.
In here parting company with Pictet, to whom I
have been so much indebted for confidential informa-
tion, though it has needed a little revision, I must
express my obligations to him for the results of his ar-
dent esteem for Count Rumford, and must claim for the
Count the constant regard of one who appears to have
been a most excellent man as well as a distinguished
philosopher. I have seen a profile drawing of him,
with a fine amiable countenance, which he gave to the
Countess Sarah, and on the back of the frame of which
he has written, <c One who is proud to call himself the
friend of Count Rumford."
The Count was abroad from September 20, 1801, to
January 19, 1802, when he was at a managers' meeting
of the Institution. His last attendance was April 26,
1802. On May 3, 1802, he signed at Brompton a
report of his own to the managers. He was at a lec-
ture of Davy's in that month. On May 7 or 8 he
went to Paris, where he remained up to July 30. On
the 5th of August he writes from Munich. On De-
cember 24, he writes from Mannheim, and hopes to be
back in the Royal Institution in April or May. Janu-
* It is now in the possession of Mr. J. B. Walker, Concord, N. H.
2 9
450 Life of Count Rzimford.
ary 24, 1803, he was at Munich. November 1 1 he
was in Paris, hoping to be in England in the course of
the winter. July, 1804, he was in Paris, with the ex-
pectation of occupying his house at Brompton in the
winter. May i, 1805, he was at Munich, more than
ever uncertain when he should be in England again.
He was in Paris in 1807.
But this is anticipating events in his personal ex-
perience and in his domestic life the relation of which
is to be far from agreeable. Before rehearsing these, I
must again make a brief reference to the philanthropic
and scientific labors of Count Rumford, as set forth in
his Essays.
CHAPTER VIII.
Count Rumford's Fame in Bavaria, Great Britain, and
the United States. Permanent Results of his Philan-
thropy. Tribute to him from Dr. A. Joly. His In-
stitutions' in Bavaria. His Permanent Influence in
England and the United States. Continued Economical
and Scientific Experiments, as described in his Essays.
The Propagation of Heat in Fluids : and in various Sub-
stances. Inquiry concerning the Source of the Heat
excited by Friction. Rumford's Claims as a Discoverer.
Depreciation of him by some English Authorities.
Economical Inventions. Franklin s Fireplaces. Rum-
ford *s Improvements. Essay on the Construction of
Kitchen Fireplaces and Utensils. Savory Food. A
Chinese Example. Replies to Critics and Jesters.
Appeal to the Rich. Pleasures of Benevolence. Essay
on Open Chimney Fireplaces. The Count y s Name at-
tached to other than his own Inventions. Essay on the
Salubrity of Warm Rooms. Essays on the Management
of Fires in closed Fireplaces, and on the Use of Steam as a
Vehicle for transporting Heat. Encomiums on Rum-
ford's Benevolence in the English Parliament. Cobbetf s
Satire. Boston follows Rumfcrd's Method.
IAVARIA, Great Britain, and the United States of.
America retain permanent memorials of the phil-
anthropic and the scientific services of Count Rumford.
His fame, coupled with strong claims upon the grati-
tude of large numbers of each successive generation,
452 Life of Count Riimford.
might be considered as well established in either of
those countries. But we must recognize a distinction
in the character of his services in each of them, as
affecting the renewed or the popular remembrance of
him. The severest and the most protracted labors
which he performed were those that had employed him
in Bavaria, where he had spent the longest period of
years successively, after he left his . native country.
And his work 'in Bavaria had been mainly that of
benevolent activity in instituting, organizing, and over-
seeing schemes and establishments of a humane and
reformatory character. But work of this sort, however
effective for the time, and however conspicuous in its
beneficence, and however gratefully appreciated, has
directly, at least, but a temporary and local influence.
The record in the Count's Essays relating to it may
indeed, by the help of the press and by commemo-
rative tributes, inspire and guide successive laborers in
the fields of practical benevolence,, and in dealing with
new phases and difficulties of the permanent problems
and evils presented by poverty. But as buildings fall
to ruin and require renewal, and as cultivated fields
and gardens run to waste, and an increasing population
multiplies the ranks and intensifies the mischiefs and
miseries of pauperism, so there must be a reconstruc-
tion, through new adaptations, of the theory and prac-
tice of beneficence ; while those who labor in this cause
for their own generation must consent to be superseded,
that others following them may receive their just trib-
utes. Count Rumford is by no means forgotten in
Bavaria, nor have the institutions which he so zealously
and wisely founded and put into operation passed under
complete decay, or fallen into oblivion. Natives and
Life of Count Rumford. 453
strangers still enjoy their promenades in his English
Garden. The Workhouse and the Asylum for the
poor still serve their original uses. Three years ago a
superb bronze statue of Rumford, cast in the famous
foundry of the city, was set up in one of the public
squares of Munich. Yet none the less is it true, that,
in the changing of generations and under the circum-
stances of social life in a populous community, while
the fame of a philanthropist may be historically assured,
the practical fruits of his schemes and plans and labors
may not be apparent or seemingly permanent.
In his journeys in the south of Europe, Count Rum-
ford, as has already been related, even while wearied
and ill, and seeking relief and rest, incessantly busied
himself in the service of the charitable and reformatory
institutions of the cities through which he passed. His
friend Pictet, whom he had known by correspondence
before they personally met, had taken care by his own
pen and by the help of his fellow-editors and correspond-
ents, to extend the fame of the Count both for benevo-
lence and for science, through the voluminous pages of
the Bibliotheque Britannique. I have translated from
those pages the following letter from Dr. Joly, as a happy
recognition of the eminent esteem which Count Rum-
ford had secured in both- departments of his activity.
"ONNEX, near Geneva, November 25, 1797.
"GENTLEMEN, Among the very many important services
for which we are indebted to your excellent journal, there
ought especially to be made known there the works of the
Count Rumford. In the midst of a war which has suspended
so many enterprises, you have given the results of investigations
and experiments which it would seem as if only peace could
favor. While warriors, have been establishing their fame upon
4*54 Life of Count Rtimford:
the destruction of men, you have recognized only that which
comes from labors to advance their welfare. We have need
of this consolation, and of a striking illustration of it. I con-
gratulate myself at having seen a philanthropist par excellence.
Although you have already given an account of his seventh
Essay, you are far from realizing the immense extent of his
labors. I hope that he will not delay to give to the public the
interesting detail of them.
" The subject with which Count Rumford as a physicist is
chiefly engaged is the Nature and Effects of Heat. He is not
only indefatigable in his researches, but, ardently desirous of
gathering a large co-operation in the investigations directed to
that subject, he has made, as you will see in the volume of
Philosophical Transactions for 1797, an endowment of <i,ooo
sterling, the interest of which is to be devoted to rewarding the
authors of the best memoirs on this subject, to be adjudged by
the Royal Society of London. He has established a similar
endowment in the United States, his native country. He
requires that all in both countries who desire to co-operate in
this study shall have equal privileges in whatever language the
memoirs may be written.
" It is not necessary to be a savant in order to share in the
favors of Count Rumford. Those who have followed hfs prin-
ciples in the construction of fireplaces are already enjoying the
fruits of his active benevolence. I hope we shall not be slow
to appreciate the whole advantage of it in our kitchen furnaces
where the fire is shut in. The economy of combustibles is too
important for us in our local circumstances for us to fail of giv-
ing it all our care.
" Count Rumford has pursued another service with like
marked success. He has become the father of the indigent.
His establishment for the poor has banished mendicity from
Munich, and his House of Industry tends to the absolute pre-
vention of pauperism. The double means used in this under-
taking have made me conceive, that, when Benevolence is per-
sonified, she o'ught to wear two visages ; one should express the
gaze of pity, with the hand which succors the wretched ; the
Life of Count Rumford. 455
other should express the pleasing consciousness in imparting a
deserved remuneration as a substitute for alms. The Institu-
tion once had two thousand poor people in its charge, and now
has fourteen hundred. The House of Industry contains from
twelve to fifteen hundred persons, of whom several hundreds
have there for the first time learned to recognize the honorable
employment of labor.
" It is impossible, gentlemen, to tell you all which one finds
to admire about this excellent man. If you would judge how
an exquisite taste may be combined with a most delicate sensi-
bility to make our fellow-creatures happy in their relaxations
after fatigue, you have but to visit the English Garden at
Munich. Would you see a productive activity follow a waste-
ful sterility in a park, you have but to examine the farm of that
Garden, or the Military Garden, or the Veterinary School.
These establishments are as honorable to the Sovereign who
allowed them as to the man who called them into being.
Would you conceive the method of reducing to order the most
complicated arrangements, and seizing upon the results from
such various establishments, and inspecting them with a rapidity
which holds you as by enchantment, just take the trouble to
look at the pictures of the Military Academy, of the Institute,
and of the House of Industry, and at the originals of those
pictures. Would you then have the least misgiving of the ex-
periments and the success of Count Rumford, of which you
have given an account ?
" But one must hurry to go to Munich to do justice, after a
thorough inspection, to the candor and the scrupulous exactness
of the author of these Essays.
" I have the honor to be, &c.,
A. JOLY, D. M." '
While the Count had been publishing his Essays in
England, he had sent copies of the advanced sheets to
his friend F. I. Hertuch in Weimar, who with the
author's knowledge and approbation, and with help
456 Life of Coimt Rinnford.
from others, was to translate them into German for as
early publication as possible. The translator had .pre-
viously made a compilation from the writings of Frank-
lin, for which he says he thought those of Rumford "a
worthy pendant." The Preface to his first edition was
dated at Weimar, where the translation was published,
June 1 6, 1797. The fourth edition of this translation
appeared in 1806. The subjects, especially those of re-
form and benevolence, to which public attention and
the enthusiasm of more generous spirits were engaged
by those Essays, were then comparatively novel. They
were presented by the Count almost equally as pressing
obligations of duty and as offering pure and happy
satisfactions for those who would labor to advance
them. Experience proved that his institutions in Bava-
ria, however wisely planned, and even however gene-
rously supported by government patronage and by
money, needed the watchful and zealous oversight of
a disinterested and well-sustained superintendent,
needed, in fact, a succession of Count Rumfords. He
found on the transient visits which he made to Munich,
after his rejection by the English government as the
Minister of Bavaria, that these institutions certainly
were not increasingly prosperous. To a moderate ex-
tent he might, indeed, take for granted that a few years
of their effective working would be corrective or reme-
dial of the gigantic evils of mendicity and pauperism in
Bavaria, and therefore that, so far as the decline of the
institutions signified that they had answered their pur-
pose, there was really no occasion for regret.
We have seen, too, how largely and earnestly the
Count devoted himself in Great Britain to schemes of
pure benevolence, in which his scientific interest and
Life of Count Rumford. 457
skill were engaged simply to originate or perfect his
most utilitarian practical objects. Of tne results of
many of his economical projects and inventions we
must also admit the same qualification. The inge-
nuity of an inventive and thrifty people would be sure
to introduce a succession of improvements in all the
details and utensils of household economy. Still, be-
sides having done more than any one who preceded
him in drawing general attention to the evils and waste
in connection with the use of fuel and the culinary art,
it is undoubtedly true, that, in so far as the philosoph-
ical and utilitarian principles which he advocated and
demonstrated have failed of practical regard since his
own time, Count Rumford's memory and advice might
be profitably revived for the benefit of the third genera-
tion after his own. In the pages of a literary periodical
published but a few years ago in London, it was grate-
ful to meet the following sentences : " That untiring
worker, Count Rumford, c one of the worthiest of
England's sons/ though an American born and bred,
wrought an immense change in the construction of
grates. This was fifty [seventy] years ago ; yet the
generality of our fireplaces are as he left them, without
many of the improvements suggested by the Count.
The chief of these is the unsparing use of fire-clay."
Having attempted, by such a particular narration in
preceding pages, to set forth the documentary history
of the endowments in England and America, and of the
Institution in London by which Count Rumford has
secured a permanent and renewed public fame, and
reserving for subsequent mention the establishment
by him of a scientific professorship in the oldest seat of
* London Reader for 1865, Vol. II. p. 428.
458 Life of Count Rumford.
learning in America, I may devote this chapter to a
sketch of some of his miscellaneous labors as described
in his Essays.
After much time and study, through one whole series
of experiments, given to the subject of the best con-
struction of kitchen fireplaces and utensils, the Count
instituted a second course of 'experiments, with a view
to contrive closed fireplaces to serve instead of fixed
fireplaces for cooking on a small scale. These he knew
would be extremely useful to the families of the poor,
who cook in the rooms where they live ; while even the
opulent would be glad to -have them in their houses.
He had in view another object of great importance,
namely, the making of "sauce-pans and other kitchen
utensils constructed of porcelain and of earthenware,
instead of those now in common use, which are mostly
of copper, by which the deleterious effects of that
poisonous metal may be avoided.'*
He had himself set up a large kitchen in the Veteri-
nary College in his English Garden at Munich, in the
construction of which not a particle of any kind of
metal was employed, earthenware being the substitute.
And he caused to be prepared for his own house such
utensils "made of white porcelain, very thin, free from
all sharp edges, and covered on the outside with thin
sheet-iron, to prevent the effects of a too sudden appli-
cation of heat."
In his Essay upon the Propagation of Heat in
Fluids, the Count starts with the admirable caution,
the consequences of the neglect of which he had had to
lament in many of his earlier researches, that "there
is nothing more dangerous in philosophical investiga-
tions than to take anything for granted, however uh-
Life of Count Rumford. 459
questionable it may appear, till it has been proved by
direct and decisive experiment." Thus, he had taken
for granted, as apparently everybody had done, " that
heat had a free passage in all directions, through all
kinds of bodies/' But this assumption alike of the
learned and the unlearned, and which, to his knowledge,
had never been called in question, is erroneous. To
this mistaken belief he attributes cc the little progress
that has been made in the investigation of the science
of heat, a science assuredly of the utmost importance
to mankind." He began his own experiments on the
subject under that delusion, and only an accidental dis-
covery convinced him of his error, and led him to
recognize first that air is a non-conductor of heat ; and
even then he had been so blinded by his prepossession
as not at once to recognize the most evident proof that
liquids also would not admit of the free passage of heat
in all directions through them. Having in a previous
Essay announced his discovery that steam and flame are
non-conductors of heat, he proceeds to describe the ex-
periments which proved to him that " although the
particles of any fluid individually can receive heat from
other bodies or communicate it to them, yet among
these particles themselves all interchange and communica-
tion of heat is absolutely impossible."
The Count had often burned his own mouth, and seen
other persons burn theirs, while eating at dinner of a dish
much used in England, namely, apple-pies, or apples
and almonds mixed. Apples thus cooked retained their
heat for a surprising length of time. Why was it so ?
There was also a great difference in this respect between
several other cooked foods. The philosopher tried to
account to himself for the fact which had engaged his
460 Life of Count Rinnford.
attention on his first residence in England. The ques-
tion came back to him with new force many years after-
wards in connection with the following incident. His
dinner, a bowl of thick rice soup, having been brought
in to him one day when he was very busy, he ordered it
set upon the stove, that it might not grow cold. The
soup was hot, and the stove was probably cool at the
moment, though fresh fuel was soon put in. When the
Count was at leisure, feeling very hungry, he turned to
his soup and taking a spoonful from near the sur-
face, found it cold and thick. Putting the spoon in
deeper the second time, he burned his mouth. Why
was this so ? Some phenomena which he observed
when at Naples, in 1794, he visited the hot springs at
Baia, also engaged his interest in the same direction, and
even, he says, " astonished " him. .
" Standing on the sea-shore, near the baths, where the hot
steam was issuing out of every crevice of the rocks, and even
rising up out of the ground, I had the curiosity to put my hand
into the water. As the waves which came in from the sea
followed each other without intermission, and broke over the
even surface of the beach, I was not surprised to find the water
cold ; but I was more than surprised, when, on running the
ends of my fingers through the cold water into the sand, I
found the heat so intolerable that I was obliged instantly to
remove my hand. The sand was perfectly wet, and yet the
temperature was so very different at the small distance of two
or three inches ! I could not reconcile this with the supposed
great conducting power of water. I even found that the top of
the sand was, to all appearance, quite as cold as the water
which flowed over it ; and this increased my astonishment still
more. I then, for the first time, began to doubt of the con-
ducting power of water, and resolved to set about making ex-
periments to ascertain the facts."
Life of Co^tnt Rutnford. 461
He, however, deferred these experiments till another
incident, two years subsequently, freshened his curiosity.
While experimenting on the communication of heat, he
had prepared several thermometers of an uncommon
size, their globular bulbs being above four inches in
diameter. These he had filled with various kinds of
liquids. One of them containing spirits of wine, poured
in as hot as the glass tube would endure, he placed .to
cool in a window where the sun was shining. The
divisions on the tube were marked by a diamond on the
glass. The bulb, which was of copper, having been laid
aside for two years, and its orifice not being filled with a
stopple, some fine particles of dust had found their way
into it. These particles, intimately mixed with the
spirits of wine, helped to show the whole mass of liquid
through the thin, transparent, colorless glass of the
tube, in a most rapid motion, running swiftly in two
opposite directions, up and down, at the same time.
On examining the instrument with a lens, the Count
observed that the ascending current occupied the axis of
the tube, while the descending current followed its sides.
When the tube was inclined, the rising current moved
out of the axis and occupied the uppermost side, the
descending current making use of the lower side. When
the cooling of the spirits of wine was hastened by wet-
ting the tube with ice-cold water, the velocities of both
currents were accelerated ; and the motion ceased when
the instrument and its contents had acquired nearly the
temperature of the air of the room. The motion was
prolonged by wrapping the bulb of the thermometer in
furs, or any warm covering. The appearances were the
same when the experiment was tried with a similar ther-
mometer filled with linseed oil. The observer at once
462 Life of Count Rumford.
became persuaded that the motion of these liquids was
occasioned by their particles going individually and in suc-
cession to give off their heat to the cold side of the tube,
and he set himself to contrive experiments to prove
beyond all doubt that these and probably all other
liquids are, in fact, non-conductors of heat. He inferred
that if heat is propagated in liquids only in consequence
of. the internal motions of their particles, then every-
thing which tends to obstruct those motions ought cer-
tainly to retard the operation, and render the propaga-
tion of heat slower and more difficult. It was his object
to verify this inference. He contrived, therefore, to
make a certain quantity of heat pass through a certain
quantity, first, of pure water, confined in a certain tube ;
and then, repeating the experiment with the same appa-
ratus, instead of using pure water, he mixed with it a
small quantity of eider-down, which, without altering
the chemical properties of the water or impairing its
fluidity, served merely to embarrass the motions of the
particles of the water in transporting the heat. The
Count gives a very minute description of his apparatus,
and of the method of his experiments. Remembering
his experience in eating hot apple-pies, he determined
to test whether apples, which he knew were composed
almost entirely of water, really possess a greater power
of retaining heat than does pure water. He reduced a
quantity of stewed apples, by washing and soaking, to
a fibrous remainder, which proved to be less than one
fiftieth part of the whole mass, showing that more than
forty-nine fiftieths of an apple is little else than pure
water. The experiment proved that the conducting
power of water, with regard to heat, was impaired when
the bulb of his thermometer was surrounded with a
Life of Count Rumford. 463
quantity of stewed apples. He illustrates his experi-
ments by tables. The results showed that heat is
propagated in fluids by the transporting of their par-
ticles, which are put in motion by the change pro-
duced in their specific gravity by the change of tempera-
ture, and that there is no interchange of their heat among
the particles of the same fluid.
Finding that the propagation of heat in fluids might
be obstructed both by diminishing their fluidity and
by obstructing the motion of their particles, the Count
next engaged in experiments to test the comparative
effects of these two causes, permitting only one of them
to act at the time of each trial. To ascertain the effects
produced by diminishing the fluidity of water, he boiled
with it a small quantity of starch ; and to determine the
effects produced by merely embarrassing the water in its
motions, he mixed with it the same proportion of eider-
down as before of starch. The results he compares in
tables with his experiments made with pure water, and
with water infused with baked apples, to show the differ-
ent measurements of time consumed by the heat in
passing into the thermometer.
The Count concluded that he had thus proved, almost
to a demonstration, that heat is propagated in water in
consequence of its internal motions ; that is, that it is
transported or carried by the particles of that liquid,
and that it does not spread or expand in it as had gen-
erally been imagined. He had thus proved concerning
water the same scientific fact which he had announced in
a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions, in
1792, concerning the propagation of heat in air. 'The
conducting power of water was found to be nearly, if
not 'quite, as much impaired by the mixture of eider-
464 Life of Count Rumford.
down as was that of air, though the mixture does not
affect the specific qualities of either of the fluids, and
merely embarrasses their internal motions." He then
proceeded to connect these experiments with those
which he had made on the various substances used in
forming artificial clothing for confining heat. The
Count follows the results he had obtained as guides in
tracing out the tokens <c of the wisdom of the Creator
of the world " in the provisions made in the animal
and vegetable kingdoms for preserving the life of
plants and living creatures, according to the proportion
of fluids and solids in them, and the risk of congela-
tion. An illustration of these provisions he finds in the
fact that the sap of all trees which are capable of sup-
porting a long continuance of frost grows thick and
viscous on the approach of the winter. To this in-
creased viscosity of the sap in winter are to be added
the extreme smallness of the vessels through which the
sap moves in vegetables and in large trees, the fact that
thq substance of these small tubes is one of the best non-
conductors of heat, and also the protection furnished
by a thick covering of bark. He thus accounts for the
preservation of the life of trees through a long and hard
winter. The Count had observed the extreme dif-
ficulty with which heat passes into wood, when he
noticed in his foundry, at Munich, that the fireman
stirred the melted metal with a wooden instrument,
which was found not to be affected through even one
twentieth of an inch within its surface by the glowing
fire. The less watery fruits are, the longer will they
bear the cold without freezing.
The Count next devised a more elaborate mechanical
contrivance for investigating the internal motions among
Life of Count Rumford. 465
the particles of liquids as they are heated or cooled. He
demonstrated that heat cannot be propagated down-
wards in liquids as long as they continue to be con-
densed by cold, " that ice would take more than
eighty times as long to melt when boiling water stood
on its surface as it would take if allowed to swim
on the top of the hot water ; and that water at the
temperature of 41 would melt even more ice, when
standing on its surface, than boiling water." The
proof was thus complete that water is almost a perfect
non-conductor of heat. The experiments with these
results were chiefly made in March, 1797. The Count
adds to his conclusion, at this point, the following ob-
servation :
" The insight which this discovery gives us in regard to the
nature of the mechanical process which takes place in chemi-
cal solutions is too evident to require illustration ; and it
appears to me that it will enable us to account in a satisfac-
tory manner for all the various phenomena of chemical affini-
ties and vegetation. Perhaps all the motions among inanimate
bodies on the surface of the globe may be traced to the same
cause, namely, to the non-conducting power of Fluids, with
regard to Heat."
Pursuing his investigations, the Count recognizes the
fact that as the motions in a liquid, when undergoing a
change of temperature, are caused by a change in the
specific gravity of those particles of the liquid which
become either hotter or colder than the rest of the mass,
there will be a difference in the conducting power of the
liquids, according as their respective specific gravities are
more or less changed by any- given change of tempera-
ture. The less, then, that the specific gravity of a liquid
is changed by any given change of temperature, the
30
466 Life of Coztnt Rumford.
more sluggish will be the communication of heat through
its particles.
" Let us stop here," adds the Count, " for one moment, just
to ask ourselves a very interesting question. Suppose that in
the general arrangement of things it had been necessary to con-
trive matters so that water should not freeze in winter, or that
it should not freeze but with the greatest difficulty, very slowly,
and in the smallest quantity possible. How could this have been
most readily effected ?
" Those who are acquainted with the law of the condensa-
tion of water on parting with its Heat have already anticipated
me in these speculations ; and it does not appear to me that
there is anything which human sagacity can fathom, within the
wide-extended bounds of the visible creation, which affords a
more striking or more palpable proof of the wisdom of the
Creator, and of the special care he has taken in the general
arrangement of the universe to preserve animal life, than this
wonderful contrivance ; for though the extensiveness and im-
mutability of the general laws of Nature impress our minds
with awe and reverence for the Creator of the universe, yet
exceptions to those laws, or particular modifications of them, from
which we are able to trace effects evidently salutary or advan-
tageous to ourselves and our fellow-creatures, afford still more
striking proofs of contrivance, and ought certainly to awaken in
us the most lively sentiments of admiration, love, and gratitude.
" Though in temperatures above blood heat the expansion of
water with Heat is very considerable, yet in the neighborhood
of the freezing point it is almost nothing. And what is still
more remarkable, as it is an exception to one of the most gen-
eral laws of Nature with which we are acquainted, when in
cooling it comes within eight or nine degrees, on Fahrenheit's
scale, of the freezing point, instead of going on to be farther
condensed as it loses more of its Heat, it actually expands as it
grows colder, and continues to expand more and more as it is
more cooled The difference between the laws of the
condensation of pure water, and of the same fluid when it holds
Life of Cowit Rumford. 467
in solution a portion of salt, is striking. But when we trace the
effects which are produced in the world by that arrangement, we
shall be lost in wonder and admiration."
The Count then begs the indulgence and candor of
his readers as he pursues the investigation of this sub-
ject, and risks the danger " to which a mortal exposes
himself who has the temerity to undertake to explain
the designs of Infinite Wisdom." He says, that in
contemplating the simplicity of the means employed by
the Creator to produce the changes of the seasons, with
all the blessings accruing from them, and the effects
produced by the various modifications of the active
powers which we perceive, "we shall be disposed to
admire, adore, and love that great First Cause which
brought all things into existence." Besides that me-
chanical contrivance, the inclination of the axis of the
earth to the plane of the ecliptic, the simple but
stupendous means which causes the changes of the
seasons, other agencies are engaged in producing the
gradual changes of temperature necessary to the growth
and perfection of most vegetables. These agencies are
required to moderate and equalize the heat of the sun
in the extremes of the seasons. Among these agencies
the principal is water, acted upon by the remarkable
law which causes its condensation by cold.
" Had not Providence interfered in a manner which may well
be considered as miraculous^ all the fresh water within the polar
circle must inevitably have been frozen to a very great depth in
one winter, and every plant and tree destroyed ; and it is more
than probable that the regions of eternal frost would have spread
on every side from the poles, and, advancing towards the equa-
tor, would have extended its dreary and solitary reign over a
great part of what are now the most fertile and most inhabited
468 Life of Count Rumford.
climates of the world Let us with becoming diffidence
and awe endeavour to see what the means are which have been
employed by an almighty and benevolent God to protect his fair
creation."
It was absolutely necessary that a great quantity of
living water should be preserved in a fluid state in
winter as well as in summer. Water must therefore
be prevented from parting with its heat in a cold at-
mosphere. Liquids part with their heat only in conse-
quence of their internal motions, and proportionately to
the rapidity of those motions, which are produced by
changes in the specific gravity of a liquid, induced by
a change of temperature. Now it has been proved that
the peculiarity of water is that the change in its specific
gravity induced by any given change in temperature is
very small ; and, when water is cooled to within seven
or eight degrees of the freezing point, it not only ceases
to be further condensed, but actually begins to expand,
and continues increasingly to do so as long as it can
be kept fluid. And when water is changed to ice it
expands even still more, and the ice floats on the surface
of the uncongealed part of the fluid. The consequence
is that the tendency of water to cooling by mere con-
duction when exposed to a cold atmosphere is thus
retarded. The Count then proceeds to trace the opera-
tion of the principle which he has thus described, in
effecting, as a result, that when the upper surface of a
lake, for instance, is covered with ice and snow, the
mass of water below loses no part of its heat, but
rather increases it. He then passes to a very lucid
and eloquent exposition of the beneficent agency of
the oceans of salt water under the operation of the laws
he has investigated. It is but just that the "devout
Life of Count Rumford. 469
philosopher's " conclusion should be given in his own
words.
" If, among barbarous nations, the fear of a God and the
practice of religious duties tend to soften savage dispositions
and to prepare the mind for all those sweet enjoyments which
result from peace, order, industry, and friendly intercourse,
a belief in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence, who rules and
governs the universe with wisdom and goodness, is not less
essential to the happiness of those who, by cultivating their
mental powers, HAVE LEARNED TO KNOW HOW LITTLE CAN BE
KNOWN."
In continuing the subject of this Essay in a second
part, Count Rumford gives " An Account of several
New Experiments, with occasional Remarks and Obser-
vations, and Conjectures respecting Chemical Affinity
and Solution, and the Mechanical Principle of Animal
Life."
The Count had sent a manuscript copy of the first
part of this Essay to his friend Pictet at Geneva, who
translated and published it. To a letter of acknowl-
edgment from Pictet, the Count had replied in a letter
dated June 9, 1797, which he designed simply as a
private one, and which Pictet inadvertently put in print.
It contained the following sentences: "I should have
been much surprised if my Seventh Essay had not
interested you, for in my life I never felt pleasure equal
to that I enjoyed in making the experiments of which I
have given an account in that performance. You will
perhaps be surprised when I tell you that I have sup-
pressed a whole chapter of interesting speculation,
merely with a view of leaving to others a tempting field
of curious investigation untouched."
The Count, being apprehensive that these assertions,
470 Life of Count Rumford.
which admitted of many interpretations, coming before
the public contrary to his intentions, might be per-
verted, felt called upon to guard himself against mis-
construction. He might be charged with giving out
obscure hints of important information which he held
back, and thus with keeping others in doubt about the
originality of the discoveries made by their own investi-
gations. This, he says, would tend to damp instead of
exciting the spirit of inquiry. He might also be sus-
pected of " lying in wait to seize on the fair fruits of
the labours of others." He therefore justifies himself
by affirming that the assertions he had privately made
to Pictet were perfectly true. He suppressed some of
his speculations on the enticing subject which he had
presented to those fond of philosophical . pursuits, in
order to prompt others to strike out roads for them-
selves, instead of following in his footsteps. He adds :
" And with regard to the reputation of being a dis-
cover er, though I rejoice, I might say exult and tri-
umph, in the progress of human knowledge, and enjoy
the sweetest delight in contemplating the advantages to
mankind which are derived from the introduction of
useful improvements, yet I can truly say that I set
no very high value on the honour of being the first to
stumble on those treasures which everywhere lie so
slightly covered."
In reference to the religious sentiment with which
he had concluded the first part of his Essay, the Count
says: "Though some may smile in pity, and others
frown at it, I am neither ashamed nor afraid to own
that I consider the subject as being of the utmost im-
portance to the peace, order, and happiness of mankind
in our present advanced state of society"
Life of Count Riimford. 471
With these preliminary avowals the Count continues
the rehearsal of his experiments to prove of other fluids
what he had proved of water as a non-conductor of heat.
He describes the instruments and the processes by
which he verified the fact as regards oil, and even mercury,
which is a metal in fusion, and, inferring the same of all
fluids, he concludes " that the property of a non-conductor
is even essential to fluidity'' The discovery of so im-
portant a truth, he argues, must necessarily change
some of our ideas in respect to the mechanical opera-
tions in many of the great phenomena of nature, as well
as in many still more interesting chemical operations,
"which we are able to direct, but which we find, alas !
very difficult to explain."
In his paper on Heat, published in the Philosophical
Transactions before referred to, he had turned his dis-
covery of the non-conducting power of air to account-
ing for the warmth of the hair of beasts, of the feath-
ers of birds, of artificial clothing, and of snow, the
winter garment of the earth, and also to explaining the
causes of the coldness and the directions of the winds..
Also in his Essay on the Management of Heat and the
Economy of Fuel, he had turned the non-conducting
power of steam and of flame to the explanation of the
action of the blow-pipe, and to improvements in the
construction of boilers. He now proceeds to apply
his discoveries to chemistry, vegetation, and the animal
economy. "Perhaps/' he says, "it will be found that
every change of form in every kind of substance is
owing to Heatr." We must refer the reader to the
Essay itself if he would be informed of the interesting
facts, and the curious and often bold speculations,
sometimes a little beyond his province, which the
472 Life of Count Rumford*
Count sets forth. He reminds us that there are but
three forms under which all sensible bodies are found to
exist, that of a solid, that of a fluid, and that of gas;
and that every substance with which we are acquainted
may exist under all those three forms alternately, the
condition for either form being dependent upon tem-
perature. He works out elaborately his hypothesis of
the existence of intense heat in the midst of cold liquids.
He recognizes two ways in which philosophers, like
other men, may be excited to action and induced to
engage zealously in the investigation of any curious
subject of inquiry, " they may be enticed, and they
may be provoked. It will' probably not escape the pene-
tration of my reader that I have endeavored to use both
these methods. I am well aware of the danger that
attends the latter of them ; but the passionate fondness
that I feel for the favorite objects of my pursuits fre-
quently hurries me on far beyond the bounds which
prudence would mark to circumscribe my adventurous
excursions."
Count Rumford made an eighth Essay on the
Propagation of Heat in various Substances, by a
reprint of two papers, which first appeared in the
Philosophical Transactions, the one having been read
before the Royal Society in 1786, and the other, for
which he received the Copley Medal of the Society, in
1792. He gives in it an account of the beginning of
his experiments on the conducting power of the Torri-
cellian vacuum. These he had made while on a journey
with the Elector, at Mannheim, in July, 1785, in pres-
ence of Professor Hemmer, of the Electoral Academy
of Sciences, of that city, and of Charles Artaria, mete-
orological instrument maker, who assisted him. His
Life of Count Rumford. 473
experiments led him to a philosophical view of the
well-known facts as to the way in which we "catch
cold " or become afflicted with catarrhs ; why these
disorders prevail most in the cold autumnal rains and
upon the breaking up of the frost in the spring; whence
it is that sleeping in damp beds and inhabiting damp
houses is so very dangerous ; and why the evening air
is so pernicious in summer and in autumn, and why it
is not so during the hard frosts of winter.
Finding a great difference between the conducting
powers of common air and of the Torricellian vacuum,
the Count continued his experiments by testing the con-
ducting powers of common air of different degrees of
density. He was surprised at the result of his experi-
ments, though he could not discover the cause of the
fact, nor account for it that there is so little difference
in the conducting powers of air of such very different
degrees of rarity, while there is so great a difference in
the conducting powers of air and of the Torricellian
vacuum. Obliged by the return of the Elector to
Munich to suspend the experiments which he had been
pursuing at Mannheim, he was privileged by his patron
in being allowed to take M. Artaria back with him to
the capital, to aid him in the construction of costly
apparatus for pursuing his investigations.
In the second part of this Essay, which is substan-
tially the paper read, as sent by him, before the Royal
Society, January 19, 1792, he extends the inquiries he
had been making concerning the conducting powers of
fluids to those of solids, particularly such bodies as are
used for clothing. The especial object of his researches
was to ascertain the laws relative to the confining and
directing of heat. He constructed what he calls a pas-
474 Life of Count R^lmford.
sage thermometer, the tube of which was suspended in
a cylindrical glass tube terminating in a glass globe
around the bulb of the thermometer. The space be-
tween the inner surface of the globe and the outer sur-
face of the bulb was then filled successively by various
substances whose conducting powers he wished to test.
The instrument, when filled, was heated in boiling
water, and afterwards plunged into a freezing mixture
of pounded ice and water, or vice versa. The times of
cooling or heating were carefully observed by the scale
of the thermometer and a watch which beat half-seconds.
He subjected to this test raw silk, sheep's wool, cotton-
wool, linen lint, the fur of the beaver, the fur of a white
Russian hare, and eider-down. The relative warmth
of these substances proved to be as follows : hare's
fur and eider-down were the warmest ; then came in
order beaver's fur, raw silk, sheep's wool, cotton-wool,
and lastly lint. Rectifying his tests by others which
allowed for the respective density and the internal struc-
ture of these various substances, he proceeded with his
experiments on other solids. In revising the matter of
this Essay he was enabled to correct his own error, when
he first wrote the paper, as to the conducting power of
air.
The Count's ninth Essay is " An Inquiry concern-
ing the Source of the Heat which is excited by Fric-
tion." The substance of it was read before the Royal
Society, January 25, 1798. It was after he had been
summoned back to Munich in 1796, and in the two
years following, while war, with the dread of new cam-
paigns and preparation for them, were engrossing the
anxieties of every European sovereign and people, that
Rumford made the experiments which he here described.
Life of Co^lnt Rumford. 475
In the scientific results which he obtained from them,
in the theory which he deduced, and in the large philo-
sophical generalizations which he announced as war-
ranted by them, he is fairly to be regarded as the dis-
coverer and first promulgator of the facts and principles
which are grouped under the now familiar designation
of the Conservation and Correlation of Forces. As La-
voisier with whose widow Rumford was soon to form
what promised to be a felicitous, though it proved to
be an uncongenial marriage, had illustrated a new era
in chemical science by establishing the truth that in the
processes of analysis no atom or element of matter is
annihilated or irrecoverably lost, so the American phi-
losopher illustrated the corresponding truth as to Heat
and Force once generated.
Count Rumford introduces this, as he does each of
his Essays, with one of those general and comprehen-
sive observations which, as stated in his lucid and
forcible way, convey such obvious truths, that, as we
read them, we almost wonder that they need to be
set forth. He reminds us that the habit of keeping
the eyes open, and the mind attent, in the ordinary
affairs of life, while contemplating some curious opera-
tion of nature, or pursuing any mere mechanical process
in art or manufacture, may, as it were by accident, lead
to discoveries such as will not reward the intensest
meditations of philosophers in their hours of study. It
was by accident, he says, that he was led to pursue the
experiments the rewarding results of which he proceeds
to describe. He was engaged in superintending the
boring of cannon in the workshops of the Electors
arsenal and foundry in Munich, when his attention was
arrested by observing the considerable degree of heat
476 Life of Count Rumford.
which a brass gun so soon acquires in being bored. He
found, by experiment, that the metallic chips separated
by the borer had an intensity of heat exceeding that of
boiling water. He was persuaded that a thorough in-
vestigation of these phenomena would afford an insight
into the hidden nature of heat, and help to decide the ex-
istence or the non-existence of an igneous fluid, a point
on which the opinions of philosophers of all ages have
been divided. He put to himself the question, Whence
comes the heat actually produced in the mechanical
operation above mentioned ? Is it furnished by the metal-
lic chips which are separated from the solid mass of the
metal ? If so, then, according to the doctrines about
latent heat and caloric, the capacity for heat of the parts
of the metal so reduced to chips ought not only to be
changed, but the change undergone by them should be
sufficiently great to account for all the heat produced.
But the test which compared some of these chips with
the same quantity of thin slips separated by a fine saw
from the same block of metal, proved that the capacity
of heat of the former had not been changed. It was
evident, then, that the heat produced by boring was not
furnished at the expense of the latent heat of the metal-
lic chips. Being assured of this fact for a starting-
point, the philosopher proceeded with a series of ex-
periments in the succession of which the elements of his
inquiry and the conditions for investigating them led
him to contrive apparatus, and to advance gradually to
his great discovery. Reminding his readers that he was
not chargeable with prodigality or waste of material in
these experiments, he informs us of an interesting fact
in the process of constructing a cannon of which he
availed himself. In the casting of a gun, he says, the
Life of Coitnt Riunford. 477
cylinder is made longer than the intended cannon, a
projection nearly ten inches beyond what will be the
muzzle of the completed weapon forming part of the
contents of the mould. The object of this additional
material is, that by the pressure of its weight on the
metal below it in the mould, while it is cooling, the
gun may be more compact in the neighborhood of the
muzzle, when, without this precaution, the metal there
would be likely to be porous or honeycombed. Tak-
ing a brass six-pounder cast solid, and rough from the
foundry, he had it finished by the usual process of turn-
ing. He then cut round the projection beyond the
muzzle, leaving it attached only by a small cylindrical
neck to the intended muzzle. This short cylinder, sup-
ported horizontally, and still united to the cannon, was
bored, in the usual way, to a depth which left to it a
solid bottom two and six tenths inches in thickness.
Intending to use this cylinder for the purpose of gene-
rating heat by friction^ a blunt borer of hardened steel
was pressed against the bottom of the cavity in it by a
force of ten thousand pounds, while the cannon to
which the cylinder was attached was made to revolve by
horse-power at the rate of thirty-two times a minute. In
order that he might measure the heat that accumulated
in the cylinder, he introduced into i-t a small cylindrical
mercurial thermometer, through a round hole, drilled
perpendicularly to the axis of the cylinder, thirty-seven
hundredths of an inch in diameter, and four and two
tenths inches in depth. This hole ended in the middle
of the solid part of the metal which formed the bottom
of its bore. The object of this 'first experiment was to
ascertain how much heat was actually generated by fric-
tion under these given conditions, the pressure of a
478 Life of Count Rumford.
blunt steel borer, by means of a strong screw with the force
often thousand pounds, against the bottom of the bore
of the cylinder while that cylinder was made to revolve
by horse- power thirty-two times in a minute. To di-
minish as much as possible the loss of any part of the
heat that might be generated, the cylinder was carefully
wrapped in thick and warm flannel, and defended from
the cold air of the atmosphere. The area of the surface
at which the rounded end of the steel borer was in contact
with the cavity at the bottom of the bore in the cylinder
was nearly two and one third inches. The temperature
of the air and of the cylinder at the beginning of the
experiment was 60 F. At the end of thirty minutes,
when the cylinder had made 960 revolutions, the mer-
cury, as indicated by the thermometer introduced into
the cavity above described, rose almost instantly to
130.
In order to approximate to the amount of the heat
which had been given off during the time in which the
heat generated by the friction had been accumulating,
the experimenter took note of the rapidity with which
the heat escaped out of the cylinder. To this end,
while the machinery was stopped, he left the thermom-
eter in the cavity, observing at short intervals of tkme
the temperature which it indicated. This fell iioin
forty-one minutes.
The weight of the metallic dust which had been de-
tached by the borer from the bottom of the cylinder was
found to be 837 grains Troy. The Count asks, "Is it
possible that the very considerable quantity of heat that
was produced in this experiment (a quantity which actu-
ally raised the temperature of above in pounds of gun-
metal at least 70 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer,
Life of Count Rumford. 479
and which of course would have been capable of melting
six and a half pounds of ice, or of causing near five
pounds of ice-cold water to boil) could have been fur-
nished by so inconsiderable a quantity of metallic dust,
and this merely in consequence of a change of its ca-
pacity for Heat ? " The weight of the metallic dust was
no more than $%-$ part of that of the cylinder. The
dust, then, would need to have parted with 948 degrees
of heat to have raised the temperature of the cylinder
by a single degree. Consequently the dust must have
yielded 66,360 degrees of the virtue called latent heat, in
order to have produced the effects which were reached
by the experiment !
This experiment having been repeated with the ut-
most care several times, the Count satisfied himself that
the heat which, as he prefers to say, had been excited,
rather than generated, by them, was not furnished at the
expense of the latent heat or combined caloric of the metal.
The Count's second experiment was for the purpose
of ascertaining whether the air, which had free access to
the inside and bottom of the bore in the cylinder, did or
did not contribute to the generation of the heat. He
therefore excluded the external air by means of a piston
fitted to the mouth of the bore. The test proved
that there was no diminution of the quantity of the heat
excited.
A slight doubt suggesting itself whether some part
of the heat produced might not be occasioned by the
friction of the piston, fitted as it was, air tight, by
means of leather collars, the Count had recourse to
a third experiment. His apparatus was enclosed in a
strong deal box, which was filled with cold water,
and suspended between the muzzle of the cannon
480 Life of Count Rumford.
as it revolved and the borer with the piston that was
turned against the bore of the cylinder. Soon the water,
which surrounded the cylinder began to be warm. In
two hours and a half " IT ACTUALLY BOILED ! "
The philosopher shall speak for himself:
" It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonish-
ment expressed in the countenances of the bystanders on
seeing so large a quantity of cold water heated and actually
made to boil without any fire. Though there was, in fact,
nothing that could justly be considered as surprising in this
event, yet I acknowledge fairly that it afforded me a degree of
childish pleasure which, were I ambitious of the reputation of a
grave philosopher, I ought most certainly to hide rather than
discover."
He then proceeds to estimate the total quantity of
heat generated, accumulated, and dispersed by the ex-
periment in the water and in the apparatus.
From the quantity of heat generated in the last ex-
periment, and from the time required for its production,
Rurnford next sought to ascertain the velocity of its pro-
duction. He wished also to determine how large a fire
must have been, or how much fuel must have been con-
sumed, in order that in burning equably it should have
produced by combustion the same quantity of heat in
the same time. He found that nine wax candles of
three quarters of an inch in diameter, all burning to-
gether with clear bright flames, would not produce so
great a quantity of heat as had been excited in the
above-described experiment. His computations showed,
further, how much heat might be produced through
mechanical contrivances, employing the strength of a
horse, without either fire, light, combustion, or -chem-
ical decomposition, to be had recourse to in case of
Life of Coimt Rumford. 481
necessity in cooking victuals. Having ventured on this
suggestion, he is careful to anticipate by his own good
sense the ridicule that might be turned upon him, by
confessing that no advantageous circumstances can be
imagined for thus generating heat by horse-power, inas-
much as more heat might be got by using the horse-
fodder as fuel.
In the last experiment the water in the box, though
it surrounded the metallic cylinder, was not allowed to
enter the cavity of its bore, being prevented by the
piston, and so did not come in contact with the metal-
lic surfaces where the heat was generated. No essential
difference followed in the trial of another experiment in
which this free contact of the water with the inside of
the bore was allowed. Rumford was, however, sur-
prised by his incidental observation that the almost in-
supportable grating noise made by the borer in rubbing
against the bottom of the cylinder when only in contact
with air was not diminished when they were wet by
water.
These experiments having been thus pursued to re-
sults furnishing new materials for thought and scientific
deduction, the Count says he was naturally brought to
that great question which has so long engaged the
speculations of philosophers, namely, What is heat ?
Is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there
anything that can with propriety be called caloric ?
Whence came the heat given off in the foregoing ex-
periments in a constant stream, in all directions, with-
out diminution or exhaustion, as excited in the friction
of two metallic surfaces ? It was found that this heat
was not furnished by the small particles of metal de-
tached by rubbing from the larger mass. Nor was it
31
482 Life of Count Rumford.
furnished by the air, for in one set of the experiments,
the apparatus being immersed in water, the atmospheric
air was excluded. Nor yet was the heat furnished by the
water, because, first, the water was receiving heat from
the machinery, and therefore could not at the same
time be giving heat to it ; and, second, because there
was no chemical decomposition of the water. So con-
siderate and cautious had the Count's method been, that,
allowing for the possibility of this latter contingency,
he had been on the watch for any sign of the decom-
position of the water by the escape of either of its com-
ponent elastic fluids, and had even made preparations
for seizing and examining any air-bubbles which might
rise through it. It being evident that the heat was not
to be referred to either of these sources, and that the
source of it, as generated by friction, was inexhaustible,
the conclusion reached by Rumford is thus expressed in
his own clear language.
" It is hardly necessary to add that anything which any in-
sulated body or system of bodies can continue to furnish with-
out limitation cannot possibly be a material substance ; and it
appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible,
to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited
and communicated in the manner the Heat was excited and
communicated in these Experiments, except it be MOTION.
" I am very far from pretending to know how, or by what
means or mechanical contrivance, that particular kind of mo-
tion in bodies which has been supposed to constitute Heat is
excited, continued, and propagated, and I shall not presume to
trouble the Society with mere conjectures ; particularly on a
subject wfiich, during so many thousand years, the most en-
lightened philosophers have endeavored, but in vain, to com-
prehend.
u But, although the mechanism of Heat should, in fact, be
Life of Count Rumford. 483
one of those mysteries of nature which are beyond the reach of
human intelligence, this ought by no means to discourage us, or
even lessen our ardour in our attempts to investigate the laws
of its operations. How far can we advance in any of the paths
which Science has opened to us before we find ourselves
enveloped in those thick mists which on every side bound the
horizon of the human intellect ? But how ample and how
interesting is the field that is given us to explore !
" Nobody, surely, in his sober senses, has ever pretended to
understand the mechanism of gravitation ; and yet what sublime
discoveries was our immortal Newton enabled to make, merely
by the investigation of the laws of its action !
" The effects produced in the world by the agency of Heat
are probably just as extensive, and quite as important, as those
which are owing to the tendency of the particles of matter
towards each other ; and there is no doubt but its operations are
in all cases determined by laws equally immutable.
" Before I finish this Essay, I would beg leave to observe,
that, although in treating the subject I have endeavored to
investigate I have made no mention of the names of those who
have gone over the same ground before me, nor of the success
of their labours, this omission has not been owing to any want
of respect for my predecessors, but was merely to avoid pro-
lixity, and to be more at liberty to pursue without interruption
the natural train of my own ideas."
In reference to the frank avowal made in this last
paragraph, a passing notice may not be out of place
here, of two depreciatory articles upon Count Rum-
ford's scientific merits in the Edinburgh Review, Vol.
IV. p. 399, etc. The articles which are ostensibly
critical notices of Rumford's papers concerning the
Nature of Heat, and concerning a "Curious Phenom-
enon in the Glaciers of Chamouny," which he had
observed with his friend Pictet, are evidently strongly
imbued with jealousy and personal malignity. They
484 Life of Count Rumford.
sharply charge upon Rumford that he has assumed an
original discovery which does not belong to him, and
that he plagiarized from Leslie. Rumford had at the
time a bitter controversy with Leslie, and it is alto-
gether probable that the latter was the source of the
imputation against Rumford of making an unacknowl-
edged use of his thoughts and apparatus.
The records of scientific research, experiment, and
discovery do not contain any more lucid or creditable
communication in the higher interests of philosophy
than that which is so admirably set forth in this last-
mentioned essay of Count Rumford. It secures to him
an honorable distinction and fame as a prime and emi-
nently successful guide in that new path of experimental
philosophy which has developed the principles of the
mutual relation and the indestructibility offerees. Pro-
fessor Tyndall, in his work on Heat, has but moder-'
ately recognized the claims and merit of Rumford when,
after largely quoting from his Essay, he adds: "When
the history of the dynamical theory of heat is written,
the man who in opposition to the scientific belief of his
time could experiment and reason upon experiment, as
did Rumford in the investigation here referred to, can-
not be lightly passed over."
The most appreciative recent estimate of Count Rum-
ford's actual experimental discoveries and philosophical
genius is that made by Edward L. Youmans, M. D.,
in his compilation of essays on The Correlation and
Conservation of Forces : A Series of Expositions, by
Professor Grove, Professor Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer,
Dr. Faraday, Professor Liebig, and Dr. Carpenter.'*
The editor and commentator upon some of the essays
* New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1865.
Life of Count Rumford. 485
of this series of writers endeavors with marked candor
to recognize their respective services and merits in deal-
ing with the great subject of investigation common to
them and to other philosophic inquirers of the last and
the present age. He endeavors, indeed, to go farther,
and to trace and distribute among them the portion or
degree of honor which belongs to each of them for his
measure of success in working upon the new vein of
truth. This distribution, however, he finds to be
difficult. When many well-informed and acute minds
furnished alike with the stores and results already at-
tained in a special science, and starting from a position
already reached, look out with their unpatented instru-
ments and with their approved methods upon the open-
ing way of investigation for the future, with the themes
which instruct as well as tease their curiosity, it is not
easy always to assign to any one a discovery or an
advance which may be simultaneously made by many.
" Great discoveries belong not so much to individuals
as to humanity; they are less inspirations of genius
than births of eras." The history of science is full of
the records of these simultaneous discoveries, and the
biographies of philosophers too often are painful plead-
ings for rival claims.
Dr. Youmans, in his introduction to his compilation,
gives a brief sketch of the life and career of Count
Rumford, substantially correct. After quoting the
sentence given above from Professor Tyndall, he adds
that,
" If other English writers had been equally just, there would be
less necessity for the exposition of Rumford's labors and claims.
But," he continues, "there has been a manifest disposition in
various quarters to obscure and depreciate them. Dr. Whewell,
486 Life of Count Rumford.
in his History of the Inductive Sciences, treats the subject of
thermotics without mentioning him. An eminent Edinburgh
professor, writing recently in the Philosophical Magazine, under
the confessed influence of ' patriotism ' undertakes to make the
dynamical theory of heat an English monopoly, due to Sir
Isaac Newton, Sir Humphry Davy, and Dr. J. P. Joule ;
while an able writer in a late number of the North British
Review, in sketching the historic progress of the new views,
puts Davy forward as their founder, and assigns to Rumford a
minor and subsequent place."
How unwarranted is the claim for priority thus ad-
vanced for Davy will be evident from the simple state-
ment of the facts in the case. In 1799, the year after
Rumford's full publication of his experiments with
their results^ Davy, at the age of twenty-one, published
a tract at Bristol relating some of his own experiments,
and proving that he rejected the common theory of
caloric or latent heat. 'The notice of Rumford was
drawn to Davy through this tract, in which he recog-
nized a partial accordance with his own views, and an
interesting and promising, though as yet but very im-
perfect perception, recognition, and treatment of the
elements of the great subject of investigation. Rum-
ford was induced, mainly by his appreciation of the
ability manifested by Davy in dealing with that subject
which had so long and so successfully engaged his own
laborious and ingenious efforts, to entertain favorably
the suggestion of giving the writer of the tract a situa-
tion in the Royal Institution, as already related. Davy,
however, does not appear to have directed his inquiries
upon the quantitative relation between mechanical force
and heat. It was as long after as the year 1812 that, in
his Chemical Philosophy, he for the first time clearly
stated the conclusion that " the immediate cause of
Life of Count Rumford. 487
the phenomena of heat is motion, and the laws of its
communication are precisely the same as those of the
communication of motion."
Dr. Youmans, with admirable distinctness of state-
ment and with the full warrant of truth, distributes,
under the following specifications, a summary of the
claims of the American philosopher :
" i. He was the man who' first took the question of the
nature of heat out of the domain of metaphysics, where it had
been speculated upon since the time of Aristotle, and placed it
upon the true basis of physical experiment.
tc 2. He first proved the insufficiency of the current explana-
tions of the sources of heat, and demonstrated the falsity of the
prevailing view of its materiality.
" 3. He first estimated the quantitative relation between the
heat produced by friction and that by combustion.
"4. He first showed the quantity of heat produced by a
definite amount of mechanical work, and arrived at a result
remarkably near the finally established law.
"5. He pointed out other methods to be employed in deter-
mining the amount of heat produced by the expenditure of me-
chanical power, instancing particularly the agitation of water or
other liquids, as in churning.
" 6. He regarded the power of animals as due to their food,
therefore as having a definite source and not created, and thus
applied his views of force to the organic world.
" 7. Rumford was the first to demonstrate the quantitative
convertibility of force in an important case, and the first to
reach, experimentally, the fundamental conclusion that heat is
but a mode of motion."
Nor did Rumford immediately find himself to be
followed, as he had so plainly intimated his expectations
and desire that he should be, by many inquirers pursu-
ing the path and method which he had opened. The
distinguished Dr. Thomas Young, at one time the
488 Life of Count Rumford.
grateful admirer and friend of Rumford, pronounced
by Dr. Youmans (( perhaps the greatest mind in sci-
ence since Newton/' failed to give currency to the
novel conclusion which the Count had so sufficiently
verified. Yet the publication of Rumford's experi-
ments, and of the views which they led him to adopt,
was certainly not among the least of the agencies and
guides which have induced so many savans of Europe,
during the last twenty-five years, to make a profound
study of the relations of forces, a study the signal re-
sults of which now enrich so many learned essays. In-
deed, so numerous have been the inquirers in this field,
and so mutually helpful and suggestive have been the
contributions made by each of them to the common
stock of the philosophy of forces, that it is impossible
to distribute among them the respective shares of award
for their individual help in assuring the now accepted
theories. The names of Englishmen, Danes, Germans,
Frenchmen, and Americans are gathered on the list of
th'ose who by speculation, theory, or experiment have
followed in the track of Rumford without finding rea-
son to leave it. Seguin of France, Grove and Joule of
England, Mayer of Germany, and Colding of Den-
mark, the earlier disciples of the new theory, have found
successors in Helmholtz, Holtzman, Clausius, Faraday,
Thompson, Rankine, Tyndall, Carpenter, and others.
Professor Henry and Leconte, in the United States,
have also made contributions to the theory and litera-
ture of the subject.
Dr. Huxley does not fail to assign to Rumford the
high place belonging to him for his leadership in " the
theory of the persistence or indestructibility of force."
* Lecture on the Advisableness of improving Natural Knowledge.
Life of Count Ruwiford. 489
Count Rumford's papers on Heat, either as com-
municated to Sir Joseph Banks, as read before the
Royal Society and the French Institute, or as put into
print under his own eye, will be found to be so con-
tinuous and numerous, and to extend over so long a
series of years, as to justify the assertion that of all the
subjects of his investigation this was his favorite and
engrossing theme. His first communication on the
subject dates in 1786; his last, in 1812.
If we turn from the strictly scientific to consider
briefly the experimental results of the practical projects
and improvements introduced by Count Rumford into
household economy and the administration of pub-
lic charity, we can trace these results as he himself saw
them during the last years of his residence in England.
In Germany the people had been used to closed stoves
for obtaining warmth and for cooking food. In Eng-
land open fireplaces for wood, or open grates for coal,
were identified with the habits and the requisitions for
comfort and cheer in all houses. English travellers in
America to this day Dickens having been among
the most emphatic in his expressions regard our
stoves and hot-air furnaces as abominations. Count
Rumford, in the home of his childhood, and in the
houses of his neighbors, had seen the enormous square
mass of stone and brick rising from the cellar on an
arch, and passing through the centre of the structure,
which seemed to be built to surround it, till it pierced
the roof, without any division of flues through at least a
part of its course. There was probably not a stove in
New England when he left it, save only, it may have
been, the little tin boxes arranged for warming the feet,
which some delicate matrons carried with them, on
49 Life of Count Rumford.
Sundays, into the barn-like and teeth-chattering meet-
ing-houses. Franklin had preceded him by a few years,
in devising those iron jambs, united by a narrow mantel
at the top, which were inserted nearly on the front of an
old deep fireplace, that had in the mean while been par-
titioned by an apron of brick-work or an iron back like
a gravestone, through an orifice between the top of
which and the throat of the chimney the smoke could
pass off. As a boy, most probably, Benjamin Thomp-
son had helped his mother to bring in one of the old-
fashioned New-England <c back-logs," four feet in
length, from the trunk of a hard-wood tree, for her
kitchen fire, the only fire kept in such a home, except
on gala-days. Rumford had seen the Franklin fire-
places in use, and he introduced substantially the really
excellent qualities of them in his own plans. But very
soon after the Franklin models had become common,
the original provision made by Franklin for the circu-
lation of air through them was neglected. Rumford
found that if he would meet the demands of the Eng-
lish people, he must gratify the national preference for
meats roasted, fried, and broiled, above those prepared
by boiling or stewing. He had also to provide, if pos-
sible, for apparatus which in the summer season would
allow for the preparation of food without heating the
apartment, while the apparatus would answer in the
winter alike for cooking and warming. The rigidly
practical and experimental way in which he tested every
scheme and method that he put on trial, and the
conscientious scrupulousness with which he proved all
his processes before he made them public, together with
the admirable candor with which he would recognize
and announce his own mistakes, insured a practical
Life of Count Rumford. 491
improvement on every subject of the kind that engaged
his attention. He knew very well that as there is no
panacea in medicine, so there is no faultless piece of
mechanism which will answer ends so unlike as were
some of the objects which he tried to attain at the same
time. His desire and pains to secure testimonials, from
private persons and from the managers of public insti-
tutions, of the utility of his improvements indicate that
he had to urge them into notice. They failed in use
sometimes, because of the neglect of some of the prime
conditions frankly and emphatically declared by him as
essential to their success.
The Count's tenth Essay relates mainly to the con-
struction of kitchen fireplaces and utensils. It is the
longest of his essays, and was published at intervals,
four years after it was announced, in three parts, the
third of which appeared only just before, if not even
after, his leaving England for the last time. It is of an
exceedingly homely, economical, and thrifty tenor, ex-
hibiting many tokens and expressions of the writer's
earnest and practical benevolence, especially of his pure
and generous sympathies with, and his desire to pro-
mote the comfort of, the poor, as also of his horror of
waste of anything good, and of his deep conviction that
the means of life may be made to afford far more of
pleasure and satisfaction than men ordinarily obtain
from them. There are evidences, likewise, in the Essay,
that the Count was aware of the jeers and ridicule occa-
sionally visited upon him in the ephemeral journals for
his very sublunary theorizings and experiments. We
are glad to have had Pictet's testimony, as given on a
previous page, that the Count was only amused by
some of the references to him in the newspapers.
49 2 Life of Count Rumford.
This Essay treats of the more common imperfections
in the plan, construction, and machinery of kitchen
fireplaces, and of the means for remedying them ; gives
descriptions of many kitchens, public and private, then
in operation, made under his own oversight and direc-
tions, that on which he prided himself most being
in the house of Baron de Lerchenfield, at Munich, and
suggests the necessary alterations and improvements
that may be made in open fireplaces, for cooking, and
the superiority of closed ones, and of nests of ovens,
with a condemnation of smoke-jacks as fearfully waste-
ful. Then we have a full description of his famous
roasters, with improvements. He had found, on his
return to England, that this invention of his had in
some places fallen into discredit on trial, and that its
use had not in all cases vindicated its advantages for
promised convenience and economy. These failures he
ascribed to a neglect of the rules which he had so care-
fully given for its construction, and to the heedlessness
or prejudices of cooks. He sets himself resolutely to
maintain its value, and to expose the errors of its con-
struction or use. He took pains to instruct an iron-
monger, Mr. Summers, of New Bond Street, and his
cook, how to set a roaster, and to make daily use of it
in his kitchen, to show to his customers in the presence
of other cooks. He also prevailed on an intelligent
bricklayer to be taught how to set roasters properly,
and to follow directions without deviation ; everything
depending upon accuracy in this matter. Nearly a
thousand of these roasters appear, as the result of the
Count's efforts, to have been set up in the next two
years. As he always positively refused to take out a
patent, or in any way to restrict the freest use of any of
Life of Coimt Riimford. 493
his inventions and improvements, and, indeed, exposed
models of them in the repository of the Institution for
workmen to examine and copy, his sole desire was that
the public should be furnished with them at the lowest
price for which competing mechanics could afford them.
He also added an invention of small iron ovens, to be
used for all the processes of cookery, including boiling.
Next he turned to the materials for, and the mode of
constructing, all kitchen utensils, boilers, sauce-pans,
stew-pans and their handles, register stoves, steam
dishes and stoves., and portable furnaces, with references
to the effects of different kinds of lining and glazing on
the taste of food and its healthfulness ; and he com-
mends the newly introduced Wedgewood and other
kinds of earthenware.
In reading these pages, one can hardly repress a smile
to find a philosopher going into such details as does the
writer on matters relating wholly to the appetite, the
flavor of food, the ways in which it is made palatable,
how meat can be cooked so as to retain its rich juices;
how it can be roasted in an oven so as even to taste
better than when done before an open fire ; how to pre-
vent its becoming sodden ; and the reader may even be
made conscious of a rising desire within him to get
within reach of the hot viands, as the pages tell him
how the meat is at one stage of the process to be deli-
cately browned, and how savory the fat of mutton and
beef, and even venison, may become in one of these
wonderful Roasters. The surprise of the reader, too,
is enhanced when he calls to mind that the writer, in-
stead of being an Apician epicure, or a gormand, or a
critical discriminator in the pleasures of the table, for
himself was remarkably abstemious, most simple in his
494 Life of Count Rumford.
tastes, self-denying in, or rather unconscious of, such
appetites, and more easily satisfied with frugal, plain
diet than most men, while he was also positively hostile
to all banqueting. The reader will naturally feel that
his author can hardly deal so minutely as he does with
these provocatives of sense without putting in some
disclaimer for himself. And he will find such a dis-
claimer at the close of the eighth chapter of the Essay,
where the Count, after having described an appetizing
process for a steak or cutlet, adds :
" I imagine it would be an excellent dish, and very whole-
some ; but it must be left to cooks and to professed judges of
good eating to determine whether these hints (which are thrown
out with all becoming humility and deference) are deserving of
attention. For although I have written a whole chapter on the
pleasure of eating, I must acknowledge, what all my acquaint-
ances will certify, that few persons are less attached to the
pleasures of the table than myself. If, in treating this subject,
I sometimes appear to do it con amore, this warmth of expression
ought, in justice, to be ascribed solely to the sense I entertain of
its infinite importance to the health, happiness, and innocent
enjoyments of mankind."
An interesting reference is made to the habits of the
Chinese, for the sake of an example which the Count
thinks his own countrymen might imitate.
" The portable kitchen-furnaces in China are all constructed
of -earthenware ; and no people ever carried those inventions
which are most generally useful in common life to higher per-
fection than the Chinese. They, and they only, of all the
nations of whom we have any authentic accounts, seem to have
had a just idea of the infinite importance of those improvements
which are calculated to promote the comforts of the lowest
classes of society.
" What immortal glory might any European nation obtain by
following this wise example !
Life of Count Rumford. 495
" The Emperor of China, the greatest monarch in the world,
who rules over full one third part of the inhabitants of this
globe, condescends to hold the plough himself one day in every
year. This he does, no doubt, to show to those, whose ex-
ample never can fail to influence the great bulk of mankind,
how important that art is by means of which food is provided.
" Let those reflect seriously on this illustrious example of
provident and benevolent attention to the wants of mankind,
who are disposed to consider the domestic arrangements of the
labouring classes as a subject too low and vulgar for their
notice.
" If attention to the art by which food is provided be not
beneath the dignity of a Great Monarch, that art by which
food is prepared for use, and by which it may be greatly econo-
mised, cannot possibly be unworthy of the attention of those
who take pleasure in promoting the happiness of mankind."
Not wholly insensible to the flippant .badinage with
which portions of his economical projects were treated
in some quarters, nor to the impatience with which his
prolixity and minuteness of detail in very homely coun-
sels were received by many, the Count remonstrates
with dignity, while he still keeps to his own chosen
method. He says he is willing to be judged by the
more intelligent of his readers, and feels that they will
appreciate his motive in mingling abstruse philosophical
researches and the results of profound meditation with
the explanation of most humble and ordinary subjects.
He says :
" I am not unacquainted with the manners of the age. I
have lived much in the world, and have studied mankind
attentively ; I am fully aware of all the difficulties I have to
encounter in the pursuit of the great object to which I have
devoted myself. I am even sensible, fully sensible, of the
dangers to which I expose myself. In this selfish and sus-
picious age it is hardly possible that justice should be done to
496 Life of Count Rumford.
the purity of my motives ; and in the present state of society,
when so few who have leisure can bring themselves to take
the trouble to read anything except it be for mere amusement, I
can hardly expect to engage attention. I may write, but what
will writing avail if nobody will read ? My bookseller, indeed,
will not be ruined as long as it shall continue to be fashionable
to \\avz fine libraries. But my object will not be attained unless
my writings are read, and the importance of the subjects of my
investigations is felt.
" Persons who have been satiated with indulgences and luxu-
ries of every kind are sometimes tempted by the novelty of an
untried pursuit. My best endeavours shall not be wanting to
give to the objects I recommend, not only all the alluring
charms of novelty, but also the power of procuring a pleasure as
new, perhaps, as it is pure and lasting.
" How might I exult could I but succeed so far as to make
it fashionable for the rich to take the trouble to choose for them-
selves those enjoyments which their money can command, in-
stead of being the dupes of those tyrants who, in the garb of
submissive, fawning slaves, not only plunder them in the most
disgraceful manner, but render them at the same time perfectly
ridiculous, and fit for that destruction which is always near at
hand, when good taste has been driven quite off the stage.
" When I see, in the capital of a great country, in the midst
of summer, a coachman sitting on a coach-box dressed in a
thick, heavy great-coat with sixteen capes, I am not surprised to
find the coach-door surrounded by a group of naked beggars.
" We should tremble at such appearances, did not the short-
ness of life and the extreme infirmity of the human character
render us insensible to dangers while at any distance, however
great and impending and inevitable they may be."
Again he writes :
" In justice it ought always to be remembered that my object
in writing is, professedly, to be useful, and that I lay no claim
to the applause of those delicate and severe judges of literary
composition who read more with a view to being pleased by fine
Life of Count Rumford. 497
writing than to acquire information. If those who are quick of
apprehension are sometimes tempted to find fault with me for
being too particular, they must remember that it is not given to
all to be quick of apprehension, and that it is amiable to have
patience, and to be indulgent."
When Lord Brougham, as quoted on a previous
page, satirized the Count for giving such particular
directions about the proper way of eating Indian pud-
ding, his Lordship must have overlooked a passage
in this Essay even more to his purpose as an illus-
tration. After the Count has described most elabo-
rately how stewpans and saucepans should be shaped,
how their rims should be turned and their handles
riveted, he adds : " There should be a round hole
about a quarter of an inch in diameter, near the end
of the handle, by which the saucepan may occasionally
be hung upon a nail or peg, when it is not in use. The
cover belonging to the saucepan may be hung up on
the same nail, or peg, by means of the. projection of its
j>
rim.
The Count, of course, realized that one of the effects
of the introduction of his improvements in household
and kitchen utensils would be to render unsalable
many manufactured articles then in the market, and
to excite the opposition of self-interest among many
artisans. So he writes :
" However anxious I am to promote useful improvements,
and especially such as tend to the preservation of health and
the increase of rational enjoyments, it always gives me pain
when I recollect how impossible it is to introduce anything new,
however useful it may be to society at large, without occasion-
ing a temporary loss or inconvenience to some certain indi-
viduals whose interest it is to preserve the state of things
actually existing.
32
49 8 Life of Count Ritinford.
" It certainly requires some courage, and perhaps no small
share of enthusiasm, to stand forth the voluntary champion of
the public good. But this is a melancholy reflection on which
I never suffer my mind to dwell. There is no saying what the
consequences might be were we always to sit down before we
engage in a laudable undertaking and meditate profoundly upon
all the dangers and difficulties that are inseparably connected
with it. The most ardent zeal might perhaps be damped, and
the warmest benevolence discouraged. But the enterprising
seldom regard dangers, and are never dismayed by them ; and
they consider difficulties but to see how they are to be over-
come. To them activity alone is life, and their glorious reward
the consciousness of having done well. Their sleep is sweet
when the labours of the day are over, and they await with placid
composure that rest which is to put a final end to all their
labours and to all their sufferings. "
There is also a fine passage in the beginning of -the
thirteenth chapter of this Essay.
" Amongst the great variety of enjoyments which riches put
within the reach of persons of fortune and education, there is
none more delightful than that which results from doing good
to those from whom no return can be expected, or none but
gratitude, respect, and attachment. What exquisite pleasure,
then, must it afford, to collect the scattered rays of useful science
and direct them, united, to objects of general utility ! to throw
them in a broad beam on the cold and dreary habitations of the
poor, spreading cheerfulness and comfort all around !
" Is it not possible to draw off the attention of the rich from
trifling and unprofitable amusements and engage them in pur-
suits in which their own happiness and reputation and the public
prosperity are so intimately connected ? What a wonderful
change in the state of society might in a short time be effected
by their united efforts !
"It is hardly possible for the condition of the lower classes of
society to be essentially improved without that kind and friendly
assistance which none can afford them but the rich and the
Life of Coiint Rumford. 499
benevolent. They must be taught, and who is there in whom
they have confidence that will take the trouble to instruct
them ? They cannot learn from books, for they have not time
to read ; and if they had, how few of them would be able, from
a written description, to comprehend what they ought to know !
If I write for their instruction, it is to the rich that I must
address myself, and if I am not able to engage them to assist me
all my labours will be in vain."
Again he writes :
" Whenever I sit down to write, I feel my mind deeply im-
pressed with a sense of the respect which I owe, as an indi-
vidual, to the public, to whom I presume to address myself, and
often consider how blameable it would be in me, especially
when I am endeavouring to recommend economy, to trifle with
the time of thousands.
" Too much pains cannot be taken by those who write books
to render their ideas clear, and their language concise and easy
to be understood.
" Hours spent by an author in saving minutes, or even seconds,
to his readers, is time well employed."
The Count had bestowed great pains and much time
in planning, constructing, and improving a gridiron grate,
with its appurtenances, for the use of those in narrow
circumstances. When, by many experiments, he had
satisfied himself with the exactness of his patterns, he
had. castings taken from them by the best London
founders. Of these he made a present to the Carron
Company, at their works in Scotland, on his journey
there in the autumn of 1800. At the same time he
made a contract with the company to furnish the articles
at their warehouse in London at the lowest reasonable
price, that gentlemen might buy them by the dozen for
distribution to the poor.
I have made these large extracts from the Count's
5 co Life of Count Rumford.
tenth Essay, as a substitute for any extended com-
ments or suggestions of my own, that I may give
the reader the means of forming an instructed opinion
of the chief motives, the sagacious methods, the be-
nevolent spirit, and the actual practical work of its
author. We have in these extracts as candid exposi-
tions of himself as it is possible for a man to make.
If there is discernible in them some traces of human
infirmity in the betrayal of a consciousness of good
desert, or in the falling back upon a self-appreciation
in amends for the lack of expected commendation from
others, such weakness will be sufficiently allowed for
by the mere recognition of it. The following sentences
will properly give us a summing up of the matter :
cc Whether the reader agrees with me or not, I hope
and trust that he will do me the justice to believe
that I have no wish so much at my heart as to render
my labours of some real and lasting utility to mankind.
How happy shall I be, when I come to die, if I can
then think that I have lived to some useful pur-
pose ! " ;
Professor Renwick, in his Life of Count Rumford,
prepared for Sparks's American Biography, records a
fact which ought to find mention here. After referring
to the Count's efforts and plans for the improvement
of the grates used in England for burning coal, the
Professor says that his principles, soon after they were
published, reached a degree of development in the
United States beyond that to which they were carried
by the Count himself, or had attained half a century
subsequently in the mother country. When the Count's
Essay reached New York, owing to the exhaustion of
the neighboring forests and the high price of firewood,
Life of Count Rumford. 501
bituminous coal from Liverpool had come into general
use, the vapor and soot from which, as then burned,
were a great annoyance. The Professor adds :
" It is due to the persons concerned in the introduction of the
use of this description of fuel into the United States, and of
Rumford's plans and principles for its cleanly and economic use,
that they should be commemorated while those who witnessed
their experiments and efforts still live to record them. To
fulfil this grateful task, we may therefore state that the first
range for cooking with coal was imported and set up by Wil-
liam Renwick, in 1796; and that in 1798 it was lined with
fire-brick, in conformity with Rumford's principles, under the
direction of Professor John Kemp, of Columbia College; that
a Rumford kitchen was put up by Isaac Gouverneur in 1798;
and that parlor grates were planned and the details of their
setting pointed out to the mechanics who executed them, by
David Gordon, afterwards, on his return to England in 1808,
distinguished as an engineer, and for his mode of rendeiing gas
portable for the purposes of illumination."
In a very short Essay, numbered as the eleventh, the
Count offers " Observations concerning Open Chimney
Fireplaces." He found that his own reputation and
the improvements which he had proposed in these con-
structions as in the use of his roasters had suffered,
during his two years' absence in Germany, by the care-
lessness and other faults of the workmen who had been
employed in altering old fireplaces or fitting up new
ones. He designates the mistakes and the consequences
which have resulted from them, and he insists upon
the absolute necessity of strict adherence, without devia-
tion, to the directions, measurements, and proportions
which he had prescribed.
More annoying still was another experience which
* Sparks's Library of American Biography, Second Series, Vol. V. p. 134.
502 Life of Co2int Rumford.
the Count endured as he walked the streets of London
and read the placards and advertisements in the jour-
nals. He found his own name attached to many boasted
improvements announced to the public, in connection
with certain stoves, grates, etc., that were exposed for
sale. The name of Rumford had become a synonyme
of Reform. He wished to preserve it from contact
with quackery or fraud. He adverts, but very mildly,
to this annoyance in this Essay, as follows :
" As I am extremely anxious not to injure any man,
either in his reputation for ingenuity, or in liis trade, or
in any other way, I shall not say one word more on
this s-ubject than what I feel it to be my duty to the
public to declare, namely, that I am not the inventor
of any of those stoves or grates that have been offered
to the public for sale, under my name."
The twelfth Essay, which also is very brief, is entitled
cc Of the Salubrity of Warm Rooms," of which the
Count shows himself a most earnest champion. He
draws the distinction between fresh or cold air, and pure
or wholesome air. He exposes the folly of sitting in a
room which has a large blazing open fire roasting one
side of the body, while blasts of cold air are coursing the
apartment ; and he explains the remarkable fact that we
are not capable of feeling, or rather are not conscious of
feeling, both heat and cold at the same time, though we
are really subject to them. He shows how streams of
cold air are always pernicious, and that the danger from
them is greatest when we are least sensible of it. He
insists that sudden changes from hot rooms to the cold
air, so far from being dangerous to health, are harmless,
as well as often pleasurable, confirming his position
by the examples of the Swedes and Russians, who,
Life of Count Rumford. 503
while living in the coldest climates, keep their apart-
ments very warm. He says that a warm room, by pro-
moting a free circulation of the blood, gives the health
and vigor which are necessary in order to support with-
out injury occasional exposure to intense cold. The
philosopher speaks in the following paragraph :
"There is a simple experiment, easily made and no wise
dangerous, which shows, in a sensible and convincing manner,
that warmth prepares the body to bear occasional cold without
pain and without injury. Let a person in health, rising from a
warm bed, affer a good night's rest, in cold weather, put on a
dry warm shirt, and, dressing himself merely in his drawers,
stockings, and slippers, let him go into a room in which there
is no fire, and walk leisurely about the room for half an hour; or
let him sit down and write or read during that time. He will
find himself able to support this trial without the smallest incon-
venience. The cold to which he exposes himself will hardly
be felt, and no bad consequences to his health will result from
the experiment. Let him now repeat this experiment under
different circumstances. In the evening of a chilly day, and
when he is shivering with cold, let him undress himself to his
shirt, and see how long he will be able to support exposure to
the air in a cold room in that light dress."
The Count likewise repeats the assertion made to
him by Dr. Blane, an eminent London physician, that
persons who had lived for years in the hot climates of
India, returning to reside in England, did not feel in-
convenience from the cold of its climate nearly so much
in the first year as they did in the second, after their
return. If they could be persuaded to have warm
rooms and freely use the warm bath, they would never
out of doors suffer any inconvenience, and might exer-
cise much more freely.
The Count's thirteenth Essay, "On the Salubrity of
504 Life of Count Rumford.
Warm Bathing," has already been noticed in another
connection.
The fourteenth and fifteenth Essays, respectively
" Of the Management of Fires in Closed Fireplaces "
and " Of the Use of Steam as a Vehicle for Trans-
porting Heat," are substantially additions to the matter
of the tenth Essay. They give practical information
of high value in all culinary and in many mechanical
processes. In the former of the two will be found one
of those very candid confessions which the writer, on
occasions for them, was always ready to give, of mis-
takes which he had himself made in some previous con-
clusions. He renders honorable amends to a cook who
was the medium of teaching him his error and the way
to truth.
The use of steam, according to the method which the
Count suggested, is now almost universally adopted in
the kitchens and wash-houses of public institutions, and
in dye-houses and breweries, where pipes are made to
convey heat to large wooden vats or tubs at a vast sav-
ing of time, fuel, and labor.
Mention has already been made, on a previous page,
that Count Rumford's efforts, publications, and schemes
to provide nutritious food, and to secure an economical
use of its materials, were all brought to public notice in
England at a period of general scarcity, and when there
were even well-founded apprehensions of famine. In
the very important and exciting debate on the Corn and
Bread Bill before Parliament in 1800, I find that the
Count was most honorably and gratefully named for his
valuable labors and counsels. Both Lord Hawkesbury
and Mr. Wilberforce passed upon him the highest en-
comiums as a public benefactor. In connection with
Life of Count Rumford. 505
his name, tney mention another eminent philanthropist,
Arthur Young.*
On a subsequent page I shall have occasion to quote
the words of a most eminent scientific man, an associate
of Rumford, to whom he was at first indebted for
favors, but against whom he afterwards seems to have
conceived a dislike, to the effect that at this time the
Count was much mortified at being "the object of the
impertinent attacks of a popular satirist." The refer-
ence, undoubtedly, is to that most sharp-spoken and
virulent of political, literary, and social Ishmaelites,
William Cobbett, whose voluminous Register was in
alternate volumes the vehicle of laudation and of objur-
gation directed towards the same persons, according to
the mood and temporary objects of the satirist. Cob-
bett spent all the force of his ridicule and invective
against Rumford' s project of soup-houses for the poor.
Doubtless the Count was, on this subject, somewhat
oblivious or disregardful of a characteristic distinction
between the habits and tastes of the Germans and the
French on the one side, and the English on the other,
touching the composition, quality, and preparation of
their food. The distinction continues to this day, and
is observable, if not sometimes mo're than observable,
by every traveller between England and the Continent.
In France and Germany it would seem as if the more
of a mess, and of a compound in which the several in-
gredients of the mixture do not appear, was set before
the natives as food, in the shape of a soup or stew, the
more acceptable the contents of the dish would be. In
England, on the other hand, the hungry man, even
when not dainty, loves to know what he is eating, is
* Annual Register, Vol. XLII. pp. 13, '3 3-
.506 Life of Count Rumford.
suspicious of composite fabrics, and prefers to see
a whole joint or a cut, which will indicate from what
source it was derived. Soup-maigre, the solace and sus-
tenance of many a French peasant and household, is
an especial horror to an Englishman. Now it is not
to be denied that Rumford depended very largely upon,
and wrote very largely in the interest of, these lym-
phatic and often bilious compounds; even that word,.
tc compound," seems rather too substantial to be applied
to the products of some of his recipes. He did, however,
recommend, with great success, the establishment of
public soup-houses, where his cheap, but as he con-
tended nutritive, if not always palatable, concoctions
could be dispensed to the poor. He also sought to
induce those who were not needy, and even some of his
rich friends, to avail themselves of such public dispensa-
tions, with the aim and to the extent of giving them
their patronage and approval, so as to be induced after-
wards in their own families to practise an economy in
the use of what was often thrown away. "
Cobbett chose to represent the Count's devices of this
sort as an aggravation of the indifference and heartless-
ness sometimes disguised under the schemes and meas-
ures for relieving the poor. Dr. Johnson's famous
definition of oafs, as expressing on the English side
of the border the food of horses, and on the Scotch
side the food of human beings, was not so sharp as
were Cobbett's sarcasms cast upon Rumford's thin
soups. He insisted on representing it as an outrage
upon Englishmen that whatever the degree of their
poverty, and however nearly they approached starva-
tion, they should have offered to them, in the name of
science and charity, the insipid and flatulent compounds
Life of Count Rumford. 507
which he chose to ridicule as actually the products of
the philosophic philanthropist's recipes. " Dirt and
bones " were the terms which he applied to the prof-
fered soups. He -was willing that Irishmen, should eat
potatoes, but Englishmen were worthy of something
better. He, however, displayed his own ignorance
when he represented even an insipid compound as
necessarily without nutrition, or failed to recognize the
fact that a bone may contain more invigorating matter
than a piece of solid muscular meat of the same weight.
The satirist was successful to a great degree in bringing
reproach upon a well-intended and beneficent scheme.
The soup-houses fell into disrepute, and the result was,
to an unfortunate degree, somewhat unfavorable to the
whole scheme and method by which Count Rumford
had endeavored to reorganize and administer public
charity.
More recently a writer in Blackwood's Magazine,*
in a satirical article on " Panaceas for Poverty," has
found matter for raillery and jesting in the purely
humane and benevolent methods proposed by Count
Rumford for the relief of stern suffering in a time of
prevailing scarcity. It is well to keep in mind the fact,
that all bantering and trifling, on the part of those who
enjoy the comforts or revel in the easy luxuries of life,
with the appliances brought to bear, however inade-
quately, for the relief of destitution, are apt to be
regarded by the poor as a heartless mockery of their
condition.
In connection with Count Rumford's philanthropic
labors, especially those referred to in preceding pages,
which led him, from the combined results of his own
* Vol. XIV. p. 637.
508 Life of Count Rumford.
practical experiments and the theories suggested to
him as to the organizing of a wisely benevolent plan,
to present a new method for the systematic relief of the
poor, I have to mention a fact of "much interest. I
can well conceive that the Count himself would regard
this fact as perhaps the most grateful of all the tributes
that have been paid to the labors of his life or to his
memory.
In a note which is a part of a correspondence on
another subject, my friend, Mr. Thomas C. Amory,
lately an alderman of the city of Boston, and one of
the most discreet and earnest among those who have
administered the municipal charities, writes to me the
following sentences, just as I have before me the closing
page of this chapter.
" Pardon me if I venture to call to your attention the fact,
that those of us, including the Hon. R. C. Winthrop, who
took part in organizing the present system of relief of the poor
in Boston with the Industrial Aid Society and Provident
Association under the same roof, did not lose sight of the
example of Count Rumford at Munich. By permission of the
Board, I purchased for its use a copy of his works. It might be
worth your while, before completing your work, to take a look
at the books and pigeon-holes of the Chardon Street building
[the magnificent and commodious structure recently prepared
by the city for the administration of many of its charities]. The
system, of course, is still in its infancy, and has much progress
to make before it approximates perfection. But its aim is the
same as Rumford's, to render the poor self-sustaining by find-
ing them work.
" It sometimes occurs to me, that, as Rumford was of our
neighborhood, his statue or bust would be a fitting decoration
for the blank-wall space of the building over the entrance. He
was pre-eminently a philanthropist, and of the best sort, seeking
practical ends in improving the condition of his fellow-men.
Life of Count Rumford. 509
And though his efforts to reform pauperism and mendicity
found their principal field abroad, and this was but one of many
ways in which he sought to be of use, the results by example
belong to the world, and our Chardon Street building, the first
of its kind, would not seem an inappropriate place to do honor
to one whose fame belongs especially to Massachusetts, and to
Boston as its capital."
CHAPTER IX.
Countess Rumford in America. Correspondence. Letters
from her Father. Their Fate. Friendship and Let-
ters of Sir Charles Elagden. His Report of the Count's
Matrimonial Purposes. His Confidential Correspondence.
Information concerning Count Rumford. Breach of
Intercourse. The Count at Munich and Paris. His
Tour with Madame Lavoisier. Safatis Account and
Description of her Father. His Letters from England
and Bavaria. He writes to his Daughter of his In-
tended Marriage, and sends for Legal Documents. His
Marriage to Madame Lavoisier. Happy Prospects.
Letters from Colonel Baldwin. Letter from Sir Charles
Elagden. Unhappiness of the Count in his Marriage.
His Letters continued. Separates from his Wife.
Sarah 's Explanation. The Count sends for his Daugh-
ter. His Letters while awaiting her Arrival. His
Visit to Munich and Welcome Reception. Monsieur
Guizofs Memoir of Madame de Rumford. Tribute to
her by the Comtesse de Eassanville.
IN giving as full and accurate an account as is possible
of the events and the labors of Count Rumford's
life, from his leaving England for the last time till his
death, I shall be indebted chiefly for my materials to
papers left by his daughter. These will be found to
have a curious, and in many respects a painful interest,
as they give in such detail the particulars of a new
domestic relation formed by him, which promised him
Life of Count Rumford. 511
much happiness, but which resulted in alienation and
disappointment, and, it would seem, in clouding and
imbittering the last years of the Count's existence.
I shall follow the daughter's rehearsal of these ex-
periences, and then gather from other sources such
illustrative information as is within my reach.
As regards the daughter herself, in the interval that
elapsed after her return to America, and before she
joined her father again in Europe, I have several inter-
esting matters to communicate. The Count's mother
had removed with her husband to Maine before Sarah's
return. .This led the granddaughter to make frequent
visits to that State, in which, while visiting aunts and
cousins, she made many acquaintances and friends in
Portland, Brunswick, Flintstown, etc. Indeed, it would
seem as if she had no settled abiding-place, and became
quite reconciled to, if not fond of, a roaming life, which
made her the guest of many hospitable homes. I have
before me many letters of hers to female friends, and
they are largely occupied with affairs of the heart. Her
father's distinctions and reputation would have secured
her attentions, even apart from her own recommenda-
tion of herself by her natural or acquired attractions.
We have seen that she considered herself unfitted for a
quiet and simple life in a country village, or even in
a populous town in her native land, and that her for-
eign adventures made her crave a renewal of their ex-
citements.
Here is a pleasant note of hers to her father's friend,
Colonel Baldwin.
"BOSTON, October 15, 1799.
" DEAR SIR, "You were so good as to say that you would
carry me to Woburn any time. I should like to go. If you
512 Life of Count Rumford.
could conveniently call or send for me on Wednesday next, I
think upon the whole I should like to go. If you can call to
see me before that time, and can bring Miss Clarissa [Miss
Baldwin], I should be gratified, for I want to see her very
much. I never knew till I read the letter you was so kind as
to leave me yesterday, that you had a little son.* I feel quite
impatient to see him, and if you could contrive to bring him
with Clarissa I should be very glad.
" Believe me with much respect,
" Your much obliged
"SARAH RUMFORD."
Count Rumford's stepfather, Mr. Josiah Pierce, had
died in August, 1798.
The letter that follows from Colonel Baldwin to the
Countess was probably addressed to her while she was
residing in apartments in Boston :
" WOBURN, September 27, 1800.
" MY DEAR COUNTESS, Yours by the stage, I received
yesterday. Your grandmamma arrived at my house last Saturday
in good health, and tarried with us until Monday, when she
went to her sister Simonds, perhaps to visit her relations in
Woburn, and then to go to Boston. Perhaps you may see her
the beginning of next week. Miss Clarissa skipped upon read-
ing your kind invitation to make a visit just as her brother
Cyrus was setting out for Boston this morning in a sulky. The
scheme was started for her to go with him, and the experiment
to see if she could ride in that way was made. The result was
* This, now the only surviving son of Colonel Baldwin, is George Rumford Bald-
win, Esq., of Woburn, Massachusetts, who, with the genius and skill characteristic
of his family, is one of the most eminent engineers in the United States ; his father
having planned and engineered the Middlesex Canal ; his brother Loammi having
constructed the United States naval dry docks at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and
Norfolk, Virginia ; and his brother James F. having given his science to the Co-
chituate Water-Works of Boston. The present representative of the family was
the engineer of the water-works of Quebec, Canada, and of Charlestown, Massa-
chusetts.
Life of Count Rumford.
favorable to her wishes, and she was ready before I could
scribble this line. They are now both waiting, and the morn-
ing lowering. I must defer my observations on the feeling you
express in inhabiting your new mansion. I hope, and still
think you will prefer Woburn, for to spend half the year at
least.
" I am, my dear Countess,
" Yours sincerely,
"LOAMMI BALDWIN."
In a letter from Concord, to a female friend in
Boston, dated November 5, 1801, referring to her good
purposes of industrious occupation for that winter,
Sarah writes : " I should not so much mind spend-
ing my time idly, if I had no one to please but my-
self. My father is very active himself, and usefully
active; and he highly disapproves of the manner in
which I pass my time. He has proved a kind, good
father to me, and in return for his kindness I ought
to do everything in my power to please him. He is
extravagantly fond of drawing, and thinks if I have a
talent for anything it is for that ; and often reproaches
me for not attending to it more than what I do/'
Readers, I feel sure, will not expect or desire from me
any apology for the use which I am now to make of
some very miscellaneous papers that have fortunately
come to my hand, from various sources, filled with
details of more or less interest as contributions to a
biography. In one point of view some of the contents
of these papers are trivial, and may seem in their re-
hearsal to be below the dignity that should invest our
subject. But in another aspect they will engage the
reader as really "instructive in themselves, and, in fact,
as specially essential to our knowledge of Count Rum-
33
514 Life of Count Rumford.
ford in the more private relations of his life, and partic-
ularly in those with his daughter. The papers are of
the highest authenticity, and have a charming natural-
ness as well as variety in their details. So far as they
divulge matters of a disagreeable and discreditable char-
acter, it is to be remembered that public notoriety and
scandal once gave a far more extended and sharpened
relation of them than they will find in these pages.
It is necessary to anticipate in the order of narration
to introduce the materials now to be used.
On returning to his house at Brompton, after the
embarkation of his daughter, the Count expressed his
feelings on parting with her in a letter which immedi-
ately followed her over the seas.
"BROMPTON Row, 3o t . h Aug., 1799.
" DEAR SALLY, After giving myself much trouble, I ob-
tained the information that your vessel sailed from Gravesend
the day after I left you there, with a good wind ; that you were
well and in fine spirits, as expressed to me, like a bird let out
of a cage. While I was very dull and not well, I could not but
be struck with the contrast. But no matter, my dear. I
should be sorry to have you unhappy because I am. I dare say
you will be glad to see me when I join you in America next
year, as I hope to do. Or, if I come not there, you will return
here. So I shall make no further comments on the subject ;
only repeat my fervent prayer and wishes for your having a
prosperous voyage and finding friends well."
In the interval between the Countess's return to her
native country in 1799 and her second visit to her
father in 1811, she received from him, as she enumerates
them, one hundred and four letters. Remaining in
France and England many years after her father's death,
she led an unsettled life from that time. In the year
Life of Count Rumford. 515
1828, while living at her father's house in Brompton,
she had taken under her care an English child two
years of age, named Emma Gammell, who ever after-
wards lived with her in the closest and most affection-
ate relations, addressing the Countess as "aunt," be-
ing at home with her, and sharing her confidence in all
things. A short time before the Countess's death, her
"niece" was married to Mr. John Burgom, of Concord,
New Hampshire, also of English birth, and continued,
with her husband, to live in the Countess's house. In
the infirmities of advanced age, some of the peculiar-
ities and eccentricities with which nature and the circum-
stances of her life had marked Miss Sarah were much
intensified. She had divided the hundred and four let-
ters from her father, which she often pored over, into
two parcels. One of these, about twenty in number,
concerned the Count's efforts and experiences in con-
nection with the Royal Institution. The other parcel,
which she was wont to speak of as' " the scolding let-
ters," contained either advice and reprimand for herself,
or references to his own domestic unhappiness and
grievous disappointment in his second marriage. Of
this parcel the Countess had made abstracts, sometimes
selecting sentences and mixing her own comments with
them, sometimes copying the whole of the letter in her
father's words. She was, however, very careless about
dates, being as likely to attach wrong as right ones, and
thus causing some perplexity for a reader who uses these
materials in connection with other correctly dated papers.
Indeed, the Countess was so habitually negligent in this
matter of dates, that Sir Charles Blagden, who, as we
shall soon have occasion to note, was one of her warm-
est friends and most faithful correspondents, among
516 Life of Count Rumford.
other rebukes which he had the fidelity and courage
to administer, asks her pointedly if she had " no al-
manac."
Shortly before her death, while confined to her bed
and chair, and at times not wholly herself, she re-
quired her " niece " to bring to her the two parcels of
the Count's letters and commit them to the fire. Mrs.
Burgom informs me, that, under the persuasion that the
letters which related to the Royal Institution might at
some time have an historical value, she tried by a little
artifice of concealment to avert the fate designed for
that package. But the Countess, being at the moment
especially persistent and watchful, discovered the intent
and peremptorily required their destruction. In view
of what has been so imperfectly explained in a previous
chapter relating to the Count's breach with his friends
and a quarrel about the management of the Institution,
there is occasion to regret the destruction of that set of
the Count's letters, for they may have contained what
we have no trace or hint of in any other paper from his
pen, his own account of the nature and occasion of
the variance. The Countess's abstract of the larger
package, classed as " the scolding letters," is in my
hands, and its use, in the proper place, will afford in-
struction, though not pleasure.
I have also before me a bundle of some forty or
more letters to the Countess, from her friend Sir Charles
Blagden. He was her friend^ faithful, discreet, and so
sure of his right and duty in the case as to allow him-
self great frankness, and even a degree of severity, in
some of his communications to her. These letters
begin on her return to America, in 1799, and continue
at intervals till her second visit to Europe to join her
Life of Count Rumford. 517
father, when a new series of them commences and con-
tinues up to the death of the writer.
Those of Sir Charles's letters which were addressed
to the Countess while she was in America, between the
dates of her first two visits abroad, are especially valu-
able from the notices which they contain of her father's
course and doings in that interval. Though Sir Charles
was mistaken in his surmises as to the probable failure
of the Count's matrimonial scheme, it would, perhaps,
have been better for the parties if he had been a true
prophet. He appears to have been a fair-minded man,
and his reference to his own breach of confidential re-
lations with the Count, while not definite enough to
acquaint us with the subject-matter of the unkindness,
must lead us to recognize in it a token of those qual-
ities in the character or temperament of Count Rum-
ford which alienated from him several who were once
his friends.
For another, and though comparatively a trivial, yet
by no means an uninteresting, matter of human concern,
presenting itself in a very inartificial way in these let-
ters, they are of service to biographer and readers. Sir
Charles, as the Countess herself informs us, and as
possibly may be fairly inferred from his own expres-
sions, was once willing, perhaps desirous, to marry her.
Her account of his application to her father for that
purpose, and of the Count's way of dealing with the
case, has been given on a previous page. Sir Charles
seems not only to have acquiesced in the necessity of
laying aside the character of a lover, but also to have
willingly assumed the office of a guardian toward the
Countess. She was in her twenty-sixth year when the
correspondence from which extracts are to be given
518 Life of Count Rumford.
began. From the tenor of his letters we are to infer
some of the contents of hers to him. From this it
would appear, that, after he had yielded any expectations
or wishes of his own to make her his wife, she required
of him the somewhat exacting and embarrassing respon-
sibility of advising her as between various suitors and
available gentlemen, whose qualities and pretensions
she made known to her former admirer.
Sir Charles being a near neighbor of the Count, as
he had lodgings at No. 51 Brompton Row, writes to
the Countess under date of June 9, 1800, to congratu-
late her on her safe arrival in America. He begins in
this letter to assume the character of an adviser and
counsellor, sometimes a very frank and even severely
rebuking one, which, as we shall see, led him gradu-
ally to take upon himself, apparently with the full toler-
ance of the Countess, the authority of a father, strangely
qualifying the tone of a lover. It seems that Sir Charles
had investments in the American funds, and wished to
purchase more. He proposes to the Countess that she
shall collect his dividends for him, and intimates his
intention to go to the United States, at least as a vis-
itor, as he had once already been. The following is an
extract.
" From a conviction that your natural discernment and the
openness with which I always spoke and acted before you and
the Count had made you exactly acquainted with my character
and turn of mind, I was induced to request that you would
frankly tell me, after you had resided a little time in America,
whether my removal from this country to that would, in your
opinion, contribute to my happiness. Would you advise me, as
a friend, to settle in America ? or to make a tour in that coun-
try ? or not to go thither at all ? You have often heard me
mention Rhode Island as by far the healthiest and pleasantest
Life of Count Rumford. 519
spot I had any opportunity of seeing on the west side of the
Atlantic."
Then follow specific inquiries as to expenses, privi-
leges, neighbors, etc.
" It will give me very great pleasure to see you again, either
here or in America. Do not depend upon the Count's going to
visit you there. It is indeed possible that the fancy may sud-
denly strike him, and then he will set off in an instant, almost
without giving notice. But his favorite child, the Institution,
cannot yet walk alone, and, if he quits it at the time he talks of,
will be a helpless cripple, even if it should continue to exist at
all. I still see, with regret, his time and powers wasted on an
object so inferior, in my opinion, to those which presented them-
selves to him in America. But he views the thing in a differ-
ent light, and I suspect will be led on to stay here one year after
another, till you are worn out with expecting him, and the oppor-
tunity of distinguishing himself in a rising country will be past."
Sir Charles subscribes himself, " With true esteem
and affectionate regard, Dear Madam, your faithful
friend and servant."
Under date of September 10, 1801, he responds to a
letter from the Countess of the ijth of July, and writes
that the Count had read to him " the very handsome
letter which he had received from General Knox," con-
cerning the agreeable arrangement she had made for
passing the summer at the General's residence in Thom-
aston, Maine, and he adds :
" It is with great pleasure that I learn, both from the Count
and yourself, the great proficiency you make in drawing. He
says that you have naturally a talent for that art, and could with
pains arrive to great perfection in it ; that he had advised you
whilst you were in Europe to cultivate this talent, but that you
did not then take to it as kindly as he wished. I believe it
would sensibly add to his pleasure on seeing you again if he
520 Life of Count Rumford.
found that you had made the progress in it of which he thinks
you capable. Your father is indeed going to Munich, and talks
of setting out in a fortnight. I had at one time almost settled
to go with him, but he then proposed to stay there all this
winter and next summer. Two or three weeks ago, however,
he changed his plan, and determined to make this only a pre-
paratory visit, and to return hither within three months. This
was more hurry of travelling than I could venture to undertake,
especially as the journey back would be in the bad months of
November and December. So that I now propose to spend the
winter in England. For my own part I sincerely wish that he
had found it expedient to make a voyage to America instead of
this journey on the Continent. I would then certainly have
accompanied him across the Atlantic, notwithstanding the un-
settled state of affairs here. He every day talks more and more
coolly about going to America, and though I really think that
he means to make you a visit there some time or other, yet it
does not seem as if he promised himself much satisfaction be-
sides. I am persuaded that I should like it much more than he
would, but whether I shall ever have the resolution to set out
unless some particular inducement of company or objects pre-
sents itself, remains uncertain even to myself. There is a hint
in your letter about ' seeing your European friends again, before
a great length of time/ To me, and I believe to all your
friends, the visit would afford very sincere pleasure. But before
you undertake it, I would advise you to be sure that the Count
approves of it. I have no reason to think that his regard for you
is lessened, but he seems to me rather more difficult to deal
with than formerly, and particularly more impatient if every-
thing be not said and done exactly according to his liking. I
mentioned that you thought he did not write to you so fre-
quently as he used to do, and he immediately took fire ; but at
the same time showed me a list of thirteen or fourteen letters
which he had sent you in the course of this year, 1801. No
one could deny that it was a sufficient correspondence. As to
his health, it is nearly the same as usual, except that he is
rather thinner, having lived long upon a very spare diet. The
Life of Coimt Rumford 521
constant agitation of his mind and the irritable constitution with
which it is connected will necessarily prevent him from enjoy-
ing a regular state of good health ; but his life seems to be in no
danger. At his desire I always considered myself as your guar-
dian, in case you should want one. And since I knew you, my
own inclination prompts me to do everything which I had be-
fore undertaken out of friendship for him. The Count assures
me that he will write to you before he sets out for Germany.
I thank you for your kind remembrance, whether kept within
your own breast, or expressed on the bark of trees, or in the
naming of places. Be assured of the constant regard and friend-
ship with which I am affectionately yours."
Under date of August 8, 1803, the Knight writes to
the Countess from London :
" When my letter of last June was written, I thought your
father pretty much fixed at Munich, and therefore ventured to
suggest to you that it might contribute to your happiness if you
were to be established at that court. But I learn since that the
Elector has set him more at his liberty, and that in consequence
he intends to return to England this autumn. Political diffi-
culties may possibly stand in the way of this journey, but he
hopes to avoid them. I am still as much at a loss as I was in
June, to answer your question whether your father be going to
marry. He is now, as I told you in that letter, making the tour
of Switzerland with a very amiable French lady. But I have
no reason to think that they have any idea of a matrimonial
connection. When the Count comes to England, she is to
return to Paris ; at least, so he writes me word.
" Your present situation, I believe, is approved by your
father, for in one of his letters last winter he mentioned that
he was better satisfied with your conduct than ever. I wish it
made you happier, but am not surprised at the kind of listless-
ness which your letter so strongly expresses without removing
it. Such good affections as yours ought to be placed. On this
subject, however, I will not repeat what I expressed so fully in
my letter of last June.
522 Life of Count Rumford.
" We are here in a great bustle, preparing to repel the inva-
sion with which we are threatened. It is an unpleasant time,
and I sincerely lament the renewal of war. It was my inten-
tion to have gone into Germany this summer, if the enemy had
not so much obstructed the passages.
" My health continues good, but I am not in very high spirits
any more than yourself. We have both nearly the same cause
for our complaint, namely, the want of objects sufficiently
interesting."
Under date of London, December 5, 1803, Sir
Charles writes :
" All I can tell you about your father is this : he continued
travelling with the French lady till about the middle of Septem-
ber, when she left him at Mannheim, and returned to Paris.
Your father had applied to the French government for leave to
come to England through France, but was refused. In con-
sequence he remained at Mannheim till the middle of October,
when, having by some means, I do not know how, induced the
French government to change their resolution, and allow him
to travel in France, he set out for Paris ; and I know that he
was in that city on the 1st of November. In the last letter I
received from him, which was written the day before he set out
from Mannheim, he said that he had great hopes of being
in England before the end of this year. Since that time I have
heard nothing from him. He continues very intimate with the
lady, but whether it will end in a marriage, I cannot say. My
own opinion is rather inclined to the negative, yet I have no
good foundation for it. However, should they marry, I do not
think it would be an unfortunate event for you. The lady is
rich, and most probably will have no children. If you should
have no other home you would naturally live with them, and in
that situation would enjoy every kind of comfort belonging to a
single state. Whether that would make you amends for the
want of conjugal felicity, you can best judge from your own
feelings. And this leads me to the part of your letter which
refers to your idea of settling at Northampton [Massachusetts].
Life of Count Rumford. 523
My advice on that subject is, that you should by no means
enter into such an engagement without your father's express
approbation. Acquaint him with all the circumstances, and
with your own feelings, as exactly as you can ; and then say
that you will accept or refuse the offer, according to the advice
that he shall give. It is probable that he will not be able to
make up his mind till his own affair with the French lady shall
be decided ; and your suitor, if he is reasonable, will have
patience till that time, on your fairly stating to him the causes
of your own indecision. Before you make an engagement with
this gentleman be sure of yourself in one respect, namely, that
you shall not regret the giving up the splendid society in which
your father will live in Paris, if he marries the lady in question,
for that sort of existence which you will have at Northampton.
" A letter which I sent you the latter end of last July (by
the favor of Mr. Gore, who promised to forward it by the first
ship for Boston) will have informed you that your father
seemed not likely to have any permanent settlement at the
court of Bavaria, in which case your establishment there would
not be so pleasant as I hoped when I wrote to you in June.
Where he will ultimately fix it is impossible to foresee. I do
not think it will be in this country, nor probably in France,
unless he should marry the lady with whom he travelled. As
to America, he seems less inclined to go thither than ever.
" I thank you very much for remembering my dear sister.
She died two years ago.
u My own situation is too uncertain to indulge any specula-
tion about going to America. But I am truly obliged by your
friendly offer of taking up my final abode with you at North-
ampton, in case you should settle there.
" Since this was written I have received a letter from your
father, dated at Paris, November n. By this it is evident that
he expects to marry the French lady, though nothing is yet
finally determined. I again particularly advise you not to enter
into any engagement till you know the result of this affair, and
the plan that your father shall adopt respecting you, in case it
should end according to his wishes, of which, however, I have
524 Life of Count Rumford.
still some little doubt, because he is, as you know, of a very
sanguine temper. He does not seem likely to come to England
very soon."
Under date of March 12, 1804, Sir Charles writes to
the Countess from Liverpool :
u The last account I received of your father was dated the
iQth of January. He was then at Paris, very assiduous in his
attentions to the French lady, with whom, indeed, he spent
most of his time. But I believe she had not then determined
to marry him, and I am still inclined to think she never will.
In the mean time he is entirely losing his interest in this country.
His residence at Paris this winter, whilst we were threatened
with an invasion, is considered by every one as very improper
conduct, and his numerous enemies do not fail to make the
most of it. He has quarrelled with Mr. Bernard and others
of his old friends at the Royal Institution, and they do all they
can to render him unpopular. Probably he has written to you
more than once by American ships since his residence at Paris.
To me he wrote on the I2th of November, about a fortnight
after his arrival there. But I expect no other letter from him,
as it would certainly be imprudent in him to keep up a corre-
spondence with this country during his residence in France. I
believe there are still letters from America lying for him at
Herries the banker's, for, as the Count had not given him
directions to forward them to Paris, he did not think himself
authorized to do so. Perhaps some of your letters are among
them.
" It is a long time since I have seen Lady Palmerston, but I
know that she is in tolerably good health. Her eldest son, the
present Lord Palmerston, is grown a fine young man.
" I am anxious to know what you have determined relative
to a certain affair at Northampton."
Under date of London, July 27, 1804, Sir Charles
writes :
" The last letter I received from your father was dated the
Life of Count Rimiford. 525
4th of this month. It appears that he was not married then,
but that he expected to be soon. He writes on this subject
with such confidence to all his friends, that I can scarcely ven-
ture to call in question any longer the favorable issue of his
suit. Yet, from my knowledge of the lady in question, her
sentiments and ideas, I shall not cease to entertain some doubts
till the event actually takes place. With respect to you he
writes to me thus : ' I have no very late news of my Daughter,
but report says that she is about to take a husband. Her for-
tune, or, rather, inheritance, is settled. She will have 6,000
livres a year in the French funds, with the capital, in addition to
her pension of 2,000 Florins a year from Bavaria.' Probably he
will acquaint you with this himself; if not, I beg you neither to
let him nor any person know that I have communicated it to
you. I am very much dissatisfied with his conduct toward me
in certain points, since he has been in France, and for that
reason have not written to him since last December. It is at
present my intention to drop his correspondence entirely, and
perhaps this is the last letter that you will receive from me for
a considerable time."
Reference is made in the letter to the death of Lord
Palmerston, and the illness of Lady Palmerston, of
whom Blagden writes :
"A letter from you, I am sure, would give her pleasure.
She retains the same regard for your father as formerly. Hav-
ing thus answered your questions, allow me to add that your
account of yourself gives me pain. That you are a tolerable
adept at the different games of which you are extravagantly
fond ; that you could play at billiards and whist forever, are
confessions which I hope you do not make to your father, and
particularly not to your lover. If the latter be really a man of
sense, and were to judge that such is unalterably your character,
he would avoid you as the most dangerous person with whom
he could form a connection. But no doubt he believes, as I
do, that your dissipation is not natural, and that if your affec-
tions were once properly fixed, if you were fulfilling the duties
526 Life of Count Rumford.
of your sex as the mother of a family, you would feel much
more real pleasure in the occupations which would result from
that situation than play, or company, or any kind of dissipa-
tion ever afforded you. The latter always end with the feeling
of which you so justly complain, that 'nothing delights.' With
respect to the Northampton gentleman, you seem to me to
like him quite well enough to marry him. If, therefore, your
father makes no objection, I should think you would do right to
give him a favorable answer at once. I have now some doubts
whether your father, even if he should succeed in marrying the
French lady, would wish to have you reside with him. But do
not marry till he gives his consent, or at least till he tells you
that he has no objection. How happens it that he had not to
the 4th of July received a letter from you on this subject ? I
should not wonder if his late kindness to you was chiefly at the
instigation of the French lady, nor indeed if she contributed to
it herself.* She is, in many respects, a very extraordinary
woman. Adieu, my dear Countess. Be assured of my sincere
wishes for your happiness, whether I write to you or not."
"LONDON, August 12, 1805.
" MY DEAR COUNTESS, It is now more than a year ago
that I wrote to you in answer to your letter of the preceding
spring, which is the last that I have received from you. Be
assured that I always entertain the same sentiments of regard
for you ; that I am anxious to know whether your health con-
tinues good, and particularly whether you are happy. Has the
marriage you had then in contemplation taken place ? It would
* Sir Charles was right in his surmise that the " French lady " had contributed to
certain valuable gifts sent at this time by the Count to his daughter, in anticipation
of his marriage. The Countess makes mention in her journals of having received
at this time some rich presents of lace, jewels, and trinkets from Madame Lavoisier.
These, which she highly valued, we shall find she was in danger of losing when the
vessel in which she was going to join her father was captured. She recovered them,
and had the opportunity of wearing them on fit occasions, and of bestowing them on
particular friends and relatives before her death. I have seen many of them, and they
are exceedingly beautiful, exhibiting fine taste in their selection, intrinsic value, and
the thoroughness and costliness of the workmanship of former days.
Life of Count Rumford. 527
give me great pleasure to learn that you are settled to your
satisfaction.
" In my last letter I hinted to you that I thought your father
had not acted toward me in Paris exactly as a friend ought to
have done. He assures me that I am mistaken ; but several
circumstances, and particularly his withholding from me infor-
mation of great consequence to me, and which he had the best
opportunity of sending, have raised in my mind such a distrust
of his friendship that we can never be on the same terms of
confidence as before. He is now at Munich, but still profess-
ing that he expects an union with the lady whom he has so long
attended. You know that I have always doubted of his success
in this point, and my doubts are not lessened. Our good friend
Lady Palmerston died last January. To the last she retained
her affectionate character, and more than once she inquired for
you.
" If you see Mr. and Mrs. Gore, remember me kindly to
them. I hear that they are building a fine house ten or twelve
miles from Boston.
" On whatever terms I may be with your father, depend upon
the sincerity of my friendship for you, and my fervent wishes
for your happiness.
" I remain, my dear Countess, your faithful servant,
"C. BLAGDEN."
Dating from the " Royal Society, Somerset 1 Place,
London, October 25, 1805, Sir Charles writes:
tc MY DEAR COUNTESS, I send you this short letter to
fulfil a promise I formerly made you, namely, that whenever I
should learn anything decisive on the subject of your father's
expected marriage, I would immediately let you know it. A
letter is just come to my hands from a well-informed person,
which contains the following passage :
"' Je puis vous annoncer actuellement d'une maniere positive,
que le mariage entre M. de Rumford et Madame Lavoisier est
d^finitivement arreteV
528 Life of Count Rumford.
" This letter is dated at Paris, the 2ist of October, and from
a direction in it I conclude that the marriage has taken place
before this time.
" On the 1 2th of last August I put a letter for you into the
hands of the American Minister here. In it I inquired if your
treaty of marriage had been concluded. But since that time a
gentleman from Boston has 'told me that it was broken off some
time ago. Perhaps this may prove a fortunate circumstance
now, as your father has effected bis marriage. I have not,
however, the remotest idea how he intends to act respecting
you, and particularly whether he thinks of bringing you to Paris
or not. Most likely he has himself written to you all the
details. With sincere wishes for your happiness, I remain, my
dear Countess,
" Your faithful friend,
"C. BLAGDEN."
At this point we may defer further extracts from the
letters of this faithful correspondent, and avail ourselves
of the abstract made by the Countess, with her own
comments from the papers which have been above
described.
The Countess precedes her extracts, copied from her
father's letters, with a few reminiscences and frank
remarks, giving her own opinion of him and the opin-
ions of others. She herself shared the general admira-
tion of his personal beauty, fine figure, and elegant
manners. She thinks he derived his talents from his
mother, who was herself noted for her ingenuity, her
soft, pleasing ways, and for moderately good looks.
She admits that he was naturally aristocratic, and says
that he was cc a great lover of perfection of every shade
and quality." The Rev. Dr. Lathrop, a distinguished
minister in Boston, who knew the Count in his youth,
is quoted by her as having said that " he was born a
Life of Count Rumford. 529
nobleman/' She says he was a great favorite with the
ladies, though some of them sharply censured him for
the four following faults : " First, for living so short a
time with his wives, considering him from it a bad hus-
band ; second, for taking sides against his country ;
third, letting his daughter get on as she could, he revel-
ling at the time in the city of Paris ; fourth, that he
should pitch on Paris as a permanent residence, when
both in Munich and in London he had made himself
so useful, had won such honors, and had such distin-
guished associates and friends." One of these female
critics, the Countess adds, repeated against him, "for
leaving his ladies in so easy a manner," the lines of
Cowper,
" Shows love to be a mere profession ;
Proves that the heart is none of his,
Or soon expels him if it is."
Another of the sex, on being told of his dereliction
towards his native country, repeated with a sigh,
" O ye winds ! breathe not my faults ! "
Sarah writes as if several of these "female critics" had
once freely discussed her father's faults and merits in
her own hearing, and she appears to have made an im-
partial report of them. One of these women intimated
that the Count in his early manhood had been enticed
from the service of his native country by the contrast
between the appearance of the British officers, with their
fine accoutrements and splendid discipline, and the raw
and uncouth American volunteers, "possibly with tat-
tered garments, giving a shot, and then running behind
a tree." "Yes," interrupted another woman, "you
know the Count is fond of external show. But you
would not have caught your glorious Washington tak-
34
530 Life of Count Rumford.
ing up arms against his native country." Some kindly
participant in the discussion called attention to the
Count's noble qualities, and to his devotion of himself
so laboriously to the service of his fellow-men.
The daughter affirms that her father was deeply dis-
appointed at not being received as Minister of Bavaria
in England, as he would have greatly valued and en-
joyed the consideration which such an office would have
added to all his other distinctions. His chagrin was
very evident, though he exhibited no bitterness for his
discomfiture. She thinks that he was induced to plan
and promote the Royal Institution as a substitute for
occupation, and for claims to honor. In this latter
inference she may have been mistaken, for, as we have
seen, the Count was in correspondence with reference
to such an Institution with Mr. Bernard before his
appointment as ambassador. She is willing, however,
to recognize in the engrossing occupation which kept
him in England a providential favor to him, as the
change )f administration in Bavaria, though not depriv-
ing him of honor and influence, had qualified his op-
portunities for devising and effecting his favorite meas-
ures. She thinks also that, as Bavaria had become
involved in Bonaparte's wars, the fate which befell her
father's two aides-de-camp might have involved him, had
he returned.
The Count's German valet, Aichner, having been in
his service many years and proved himself capable and
faithful, had become very essential to his master, and
was generally his attendant on all his travels. The
Count had allowed him to marry, and the wife was of
use to him as a housekeeper. But when these servants
became the parents of six children, the Count's com-
Life of Count Rumford. 531
placency was somewhat tried. For five of these children
he found situations in Germany. He took the parents
and one of the children, a pretty little girl, with him to
England, in 1798, but found it necessary soon to send
them back to Germany. He engaged, in Aichner's
place, a capable young Englishman, named Roice, who,
being a carpenter, proved quite useful to him in im-
proving the house which he purchased at Brompton.
The German servants returned to Bavaria before the
daughter came to America. She thought they suffered
from homesickness, and, with an indirect reference to
her own feelings, she asked her father to read Cowper's
verses,
" O solitude ! where are the charms," etc.
Sarah adds that though her father was not received as
the Bavarian ambassador, he was honorably and heartily
welcomed by all classes of people. The Palmerstons
were his most intimate friends, and he was on terms of
the freest and most cordial relations with them. The
Count would seldom pass his Lordship's house, in
Hanover Square, without going in, and in the season
for it he made constant visits to the superb estate at
Broadlands. Lady Palmerston, as woman and house-
keeper, was the ideal of Miss Sarah's admiration. She
made her home so attractive to her guests that they did
not know how to leave it. " It was a kind of an en-
chanted castle, where there were regular reunions of the
J o
first society, entertained with amusements and splendid
hospitality." Still, the daughter says, her father's posi-
tion in England was a cc let-down " from what it had
been in Bavaria, and he felt the change in the considera-
tion practised towards him. His house, at Brompton,
a few minutes' walk from Piccadilly, was " pretty," and
532 Life of Count Riimford.
on account of its peculiar arrangements it was visited
as an object of curiosity by people of the middle and
higher classes. But it was not the palace which he
had occupied at Munich. He missed the warm and
devoted personal friends whom he had attracted to him
in that city. So he became restless, going to the Conti-
nent and returning after short visits, till he settled in
France, and then continuing the same visits to Munich,
when he painfully realized the change in his circle there.
Next to Lady Palmerston, his best female friend was
the Countess Nogarola, and she died from a broken
heart at the loss of her only son.
The new Elector and his advisers and confidants
were either deficient in sympathy with the Count or
directly hostile to him, and there had been an important
change in the political relations of the Electorate. The
policy of Charles Theodore in endeavoring, as a member
of the Germanic Empire, to preserve a neutrality be-
tween France and Austria in their wars, had been
changed by him before his death, and he had become
the ally of Austria. Rumford is supposed to have
approved, if he did not suggest, this change of policy,
which the succeeding Elector had reason to regard as
calamitous. The battle at Hohenlinden in December,
1 800, resulting in the defeat of the allies, put the Elec-
torate in the possession of France, of which the Elector
consequently became a vassal till the whirlwind of the
Revolution again delivered him.
The following note, of the Countess referred to her
again widowed grandmother.
"BOSTON, September 25, 1800.
" DEAR SIR, I heard by accident something as if grand-
mamma was at Woburn. If she is there, it would be a great
Life of Count Rumford. 533
satisfaction to me to know it. Would you be so obliging as to
let me know, by a line, if she be there ?
" I remain your much obliged friend,
"S. RUMFORD.
" HON. LOAMMI BALDWIN."
The following letter was written by the Countess
while she was on a visit to the house of General
Knox, Washington's Secretary of War, at Thomas-
ton, Maine.
"THOMASTON, St. George's River, July 12, 1802.
" DEAR SIR, I hope you will write to my father this sum-
mer. Before I left Boston I received a very charming letter
from him. He was then in London, but expected in May to
set out again for Germany. You may recollect that he has
already been once to Germany since I saw him. Adieu, my
dear sir ; remember me kindly to all friends at Woburn, and
believe me to be your very much obliged and sincere friend,
"S. RUMFORD.
" COLONEL LOAMMI BALDWIN."
It may interest some readers to have the daughter's
account and views of her father's second marriage and
its unhappy consequences, as she presents them in ex-
tracts from his letters to her, and from her own obser-
vation after she had joined him in France. She says
that after his rejection as Minister, " his first bold, im-
prudent step, completing his many vexations," was this
marriage. Though the lady herself was truly respect-
able, and worth more than three millions of francs, the
union proved so little to the Count's honor or happi-
ness, that Baron Cuvier in his Eloge made no mention
of it. The causes of their disagreements, she says,
were many and various, yet the marriage was entered
into under such favorable auspices, it was surprising
that it should have resulted so unhappily. Every friend
534 Life of Coimt Rumford.
of the parties said that what begun in friendship be-
tween them grew into such a strong affection that they
were really in love with each other, or at least fancied
themselves so for some time. Though the Count was
by no means destitute, yet the lady was so much richer
and so much in love that she settled upon him a large
sum in the marriage contract. This became a subject of
controversy in their subsequent separation, but the
friends who arbitrated in the matter decided in his favor,
because he had expended considerable sums upon the
house and premises which were provided for himself
and his wife.
The daughter urges that if her father " had shown him-
self mercenary or avaricious on this occasion, it would
have been for the first time. For, excepting a pension,
he left Germany a poor man, much to his credit, con-
sidering the honor and kindness that had been heaped
upon him. Such was his poverty, indeed, that he
would have had nothing to leave to her, had not the
Elector, in great kindness, settled the reversion of half
the pension on herself." This, she adds, was paid with
the utmost punctuality. The money which had been
settled upon him by Madame Lavoisier, or the re-
mainder of it, he left, by will, to different institutions.
The daughter, however, with the illustrative example
then fresh in her mind, feels bound to admit that
the Count, like Bonaparte, having reached conspicuous
eminence, had a downfall. With these prefatory re-
marks, the Countess proceeds to give extracts from,
or the substance of, "one hundred and four letters,"
which she received from her father between 1800 and
1810. Of the first we seem to have the whole, as
follows :
Life of Count Rumford. 535
"LONDON, Royal Institution, March 2, 1801.
" MY DEAR CHILD, I am still established at the Institu-
tion. I have been exceedingly busy, but desire to be thankful
that all is now nearly completed, when I shall be at liberty.
We have found a nice able man for his place as lecturer, Hum-
phry Davy. Lectures are given, frequented by crowds of the
first people. Lady Palmerston and her two daughters, Frances
and Elizabeth, are pretty constant attendants.
u They would not receive me as Minister here, but seem
disposed now to make it up to me by the respect they show the
Institution, originally and chiefly my work. Bernard says
they are crazy about it. It was certainly gratifying to me to
see the honorable list of Lords, Dukes, &c. as fifty-guinea
subscribers. It is a very extensive establishment, and will cost
a great deal of money ; but I hope it will be an equal advantage
to the world, as the expense and labor of forming it have been
great. To strive for good things I view as a laudable ambition,
as I hope you do, my dear Sally. But I hope, above all, to
hear of your being well and happy, not doubting the rest.
" I hope to be undisturbed by visitors this morning, or work-
men, from my being thought . to be at Harrowgate, and to be
allowed quietly to fill this sheet. You can form no idea of the
bustle in which I live since I have taken up my residence in this
place. In short, the Royal Institution is not only the fashion,
but the rage. I am very busy indeed in striving to turn the
disposition of the moment to a good account for the permanent
benefit of society.
" I have the unspeakable satisfaction to find that my labors
have not been in vain. In this moment of scarcity and general
alarm the measures I have recommended in my writings for
relieving the distresses of the poor are very generally adopted,
and public kitchens have been erected in all the great towns in
England and Scotland. Upwards of sixty thousand persons are
fed daily from the different public kitchens in London.
" The plan has lately been adopted in France, and a very
large public kitchen for feeding the poor was opened in Paris
three weeks since. A gentleman present tells me that the
536 Life of Count Rumford.
founders of the Institution did me the honor to put my name
at the head of the Tickets given to the poor authorizing them to
receive soup at the public kitchens. At Geneva they have done
still more to show me respect. They have marked their tickets
with a stamp on which my portrait and my name are engraved.
" I am not vain, my dear Sally, but it is utterly impossible
not to feel deeply affected at these distinguished marks of
honor conferred on me by nations at war with Great Britain,
and in countries where I have never been, or know little of the
inhabitants. But my greatest delight arises from the silent con-
templation of having succeeded in schemes and labors for the
benefit of mankind."
The Count adds an expression of his hope that his
daughter shares with him that pleasure, and announces an
improvement of his health from his visit to Harrowgate.
A series of twenty-two letters is passed over without
extracts, as their contents relate principally to the do-
mestic concerns of his daughter and to his American
friends. The Count writes often about the progress of
his house at Brompton, and the Royal Institution, and
he refers to the unpleasant intelligence he had received
of the French being in Munich. His excellent friend,
the Countess Nogarola, " whom he generally, for short-
ness, calls Mary," writes him word that the people of
Munich thought and spoke of him often under the
calamity of having an enemy among them. The experi-
ence called to mind the occasion when, a few years be-
fore, the Count having had the address to keep both an
Austrian and a French army out of the city, the people
had been profoundly grateful to him, expressing their
feeling in various ways and by presents, many ladies
having painted pictures for him.*
* Some of these, being views in water-colors of scenes in the English Garden at
Munich, are now in the .possession of Mr. Joseph B. Walker, of Concord, N. H.
Life of Count Rumford. 537
He writes from the
" ROYAL INSTITUTION, 15* March, 1801.
" Bavaria has made an advantageous peace with France, but
has been in danger of being given to the Emperor of Germany.
Professor Pictet of Geneva, a great friend of mine, has paid me
a visit off and on for some time, and I am now about going into
my own house at Brompton to receive him."
The Count describes this house to his daughter in
rapturous terms, and regrets that she is not there to see
it. In September following, he proposes to set out for
Bavaria, the Elector having kindly invited him to return,
with assurances of his warm friendship, and that, though
many salaries and pensions have been suspended through
the war, his shall be paid.
Accordingly he sets out in that month,' taking but
little clothing and few effects with him, as, if the Elec-
tor will excuse him, he does not intend to stay long,
the Royal Institution still requiring his oversight. Ac-
companied by Professor Pictet as far as Calais, who
there left him to go to Geneva by way of Paris, the
Count, having travelled some fifteen hundred miles,
reaches Munich by way of Mannheim, where he writes
as follows :
"MUNICH, 2d October, 1801.
" MY DEAR SALLY, I arrived here late last evening, and
even this morning went to pay my respects to the Elector, who
received me with all imaginable kindness. He appears to have
plenty of business for me in an Academy he is about building,
but as things are not yet in readiness to begin I am excused
from remaining ; instead of which I return to England to put
an end to the work begun there, that of the Royal Institution.
I owe so much to the Elector, it is my duty to do all in my
power to give him satisfaction. Besides, he says I shall be
President of the Academy when done."
538 Life of Count Rumford.
The letter continues in a cheerful strain, as if the
Count felt very happy, and found himself at home
again. He speaks of numbers of his acquaintance
of the highest class, all of whom received him kindly,
as if they were as glad to see him as he was to find him-
self once more surrounded by the friends he loved and
respected, amid scenes where he had enjoyed great
privileges in the vigor of his life for so many years.
Again he writes : " I leave Munich to-morrow, ijth
October, 1801. I have the honor to accompany Prince
George of Mecklenburg Strelitz, brother to the Queen
of Prussia, as likewise the Princess of Taxis, a friend
of mine, who lives at Dillingen, where we go first,
spending two or three days, then to Mannheim, on a
visit of two or three days there.'*
At Mannheim resided the Baroness de Kalbe, a very
particular friend of the Count, and of whom a fine por-
trait was left among the effects of the Countess.
There was a great fete made for the party at Dillin-
gen. Five princes and six princesses sat down to the
banquet, and there was a masked ball in the evening.
The Count writes : " I had slept but little for some
previous* nights, and went to bed about twelve ; of
course, considered early for such entertainments. I
found Laura (the Baroness of Kalbe) in perfect health,
and as enchanting as ever. She sends you a thousand
compliments."
The Count writes from Paris, 25th October, 1801 :
" I arrived here to-day at three o'clock, and propose
staying ten or twelve days. Shall set about seeing the
sights, but am somewhat fatigued, having travelled in
five days three hundred and ninety miles."
The daughter says this was her father's first visit to
Life of Count Rumford. 539
Paris. The reception which he met was <c simply en-
chantment." It appeared to him then as if there were
no other spot in the world worth looking at, no other
acquaintance worth cultivating. His inventions were
in common use; his name was known throughout the
whole country : he was making a world of acquaint-
ances, " particularly that of a lady the daughter was to
hear more about in the end." Parties were made for him
every day. " The Count was put into such good humor
that he even sends compliments from some Munich
gentlemen whom he finds there, that the daughter had
forgotten or never knew. Ladies at Munich, forgotten
till now, in these moments of joy desired to be remem-
bered to the' daughter. Luckily some of the inhabitants
of the earth have remembrance of the daughter, for soon
this heaven on earth was to make her father forget her."
In a letter dated at Brompton, January 15, 1802, the
Count writes of having returned on the 2oth of the pre-
ceding month. He had been three months on the Con-
tinent, spending seven weeks of the time in Paris. He
intended to enjoy again the delights of the French capi-
tal on his way, in the course of the summer, to Munich.
It was his full intention to get excused from any longer
residence at Munich, though the Elector continued
friendly to him. The Count mentions having just re-
ceived from him a very gracious letter, in which the
Elector expresses his pleasure at the cordiality extended
towards Rumford in France, and advises him to culti-
vate an acquaintance with a certain lady there, whom
he knew by reputation as, among other attractions, hav-
ing great wealth. When he made this second visit to
Paris, the Count accepted an invitation which he had
received to lodge with the Bavarian ambassador.
540 . Life of Count Rumford.
Before he left England again, Rumford published
more of his Philosophical Papers and new editions
of his Essays, which brought him some hundreds of
pounds. He also continued to work very diligently for
his Institution.
Dating from Brompton, May 6, 1802, he writes:
" In three days I shall set out for Dover, on my way to
Paris, where I expect to stay four or five weeks, and
then to proceed to Munich." He purposes to take
with him two carriages and much baggage. On quitting
England the Count makes mention of the melancholy
of his friend, Lady Palmerston, at the loss of Lord
Palmerston.
Writing from Paris, June 25,. 1802, the Count says:
cc I did not. propose to stay here long, but the Elector
has written commissioning me to transact some business
for him of a political nature, in which he is much inter-
ested." Sir Charles Blagden was with him in Paris,
and accompanied him to Munich. From this latter
place the Count dates a letter September i, 1802, men-
tioning his arrival there from Paris on the previous
week. He found the Elector living with his family at
his palace at Nymphenberg, very quietly. Here the
Count met with a hearty reception, and had a general
invitation to visit at his pleasure. He found his Eng-
lish Garden grown more beautiful than ever, the Elector
sparing no expense upon it. But his House for the
Poor had not been well attended to, though there were
few or no beggars to 'be met with in the streets. The
Count says that he was received by the public with the
most flattering marks of esteem and respect. The Em-
peror of Russia sent him an invitation to make a visit
to St. Petersburg. This invitation was reinforced by
Life of Count Rumford. 541
the Elector, whose oldest son was to marry the Em-
peror's sister. But the Count could not make up his
mind to the undertaking. He writes : " My health
requires that I should keep more quiet. It is all I ask
here. I have and ask no augmentation of appoint-
ments. Many cannot understand why I am not more
anxious for places and money. People even pretend
I am going to be Minister of State ; but for a cer-
tainty I am not, neither do I desire to be. I want
only quiet."
In her summary of a letter from her father, dated at
Mannheim, November 30, 1802, Sarah says that " he
alludes to his love concern : says he has got into full
employment at Munich, but would rather be in Paris;
and the certain lady would rather have him there,
meaning the widow Lavoisier. Oh ! in Paris were cen-
tred all charms. He did not know the fate that awaited
him in that country."
Writing again from Munich, January 22, 1803,
Rumford, evidently n'ot meaning to remain, says he is
unsettled there, and therefore could not conveniently
