Abrantès, Laure Junot (née Permon), Duchesse d’Abrantès (1788–1838) memoirist. Napoleon arranged her marriage in 1800 to his aide-de-camp, Andoche Junot. The marriage was unhappy and the Duchess had various lovers including Metternich, the Austrian ambassador. Angered by her infidelities and her continuing relationships with émigrés, Napoleon ordered her to leave Paris in 1813 after the death of her husband; after the fall of the Empire she was obliged to stay in exile in Rome. Many years later, she eventually returned to Paris, where she wrote entertaining, but often incorrect and malicious memoirs.
Acton, Guglielmo (William) (1825–96) Admiral in the Italian navy. He was first director general of the arsenal of La Spezia. In 1870–71 he was minister of marine and in 1879 promoted to Vice-Admiral.
Adam, Sir Frederick (1781–1853) Scottish soldier. In 1804 he was a lieutenant-colonel in the Coldstream Guards and in 1805, at the age of 24, had command of the 21st Regiment. He fought in Spain in the Napoleonic Wars, becoming major-general in 1814 and dis-tinguishing himself at Waterloo. He was a full general by 1846.
Adams, John Couch (1819–92) astronomer. He became professor at Cambridge University in 1858. In 1845 he predicted to within 28 the position of the still undiscovered planet Neptune. This was confirmed the following year by the independent prediction of Leverrier (q.v.). Adams also worked on lunar parallax (apparent displa-cement in the position of an object caused by actual change in position of the point of observation), the earth’s magnetism and Leonid meteors (meteors which appear to emanate from the constellation Leo).
Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (1792–1849) consort of William IV of England. Before William married her in 1818, he had ten illegitimate children by the Irish actress Dorothea Jordan, but Adelaide’s two daughters died in infancy, and so William was succeeded by his niece, Victoria. Adelaide was unpopular because of her supposed interference in politics during the agitation for parliamentary reform.
Airy, Sir George Biddell (1801–92) Astronomer Royal from 1835–81. In 1826 he estimated the Earth’s density from gravity measurements in mines. By showing that the motions of the Earth and Venus are not in a simple ratio, he uncovered existing errors in planetary theory. The story (Frances Power Cobbe, Life, as Told by Herself (1894) that he refused to support the commemoration of Mary Somerville in Westminster Abbey because he had not read her works seems odd in view of his acquaintance with her.
Albany, Countess of (1752–1823) Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, died in 1788 at the age of 68 but the Countess had already left him in 1780. She spent the following years in an informal union with Alfieri (q.v.) until his death in 1803. Clearly, Mary Somerville must have heard that the Countess of Albany was supposed to have been married to Alfieri.
Albrizzi. A Venetian family of printers and editors.
Alembert, Jean le Rond, Duc d’ (1717–83) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters, who studied vibrating strings to produce the general solution to the wave equation. D’Alembert’s principle is a theo-rem in mechanics which is essentially a form of Newton’s second law of motion.
Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte (1749–1803) Italian poet and dramatist. He gave up his military career to travel in Europe during the years 1767–72. His first play, Cleopatra (1775), was a success and this induced him to devote himself to his writing. Nineteen of his 28 plays focus on romantic heroes fighting oppression. He also wrote poetry and published an autobiography, La Vita, in 1804.
Amélie, Queen (1782–1866) wife of Louis-Philippe of France. Louis-Philippe married Marie-Amélie, daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples. Known as ‘King of the French’ instead of the previous title of ‘King of France’, Louis-Philippe reigned from 1830–48, when, during the political unrest of 1848, he abdicated and went to live in Surrey.
Amici, Giovanni Battista (1786–1863) Italian astronomer, microscopist and optical-instrument maker. He invented the achromatic lens which eliminated distortion resulting from different colours passing through the lens. In botany, he discovered details of orchid pollination and seed development; in astronomy, he studied double stars and the moons of Jupiter. He also designed mirrors for reflecting telescopes.
Ampère, André Marie (1775–1836) French physicist, professor at Bourg and Paris. He became and remains a household name after his work on the physics and mathematics of electricity and electromagnetism. The distinction between current and voltage was introduced by him. He demonstrated that wires that carry current exert force on each other, and the unit of electric current is named after him. He also explained magnetism in terms of electric currents.
Antinori, Vincenzio, Marchese (1792–1865) scientist. He worked and wrote within the Italian scientific tradition. He studied Galileo and corresponded with Plana (q.v.).
Antonelli, Giacomo (1806–76) cardinal and secretary of state to Pius IX (q.v.). Pius IX made him a cardinal in 1847, although he was not an ordained priest. In 1848 he was premier of the Papal States; he stayed with the Pope and fled with him to Gaeta after the assassination of Rossi (q.v.). He returned with the Pope to Rome in 1850 and remained his secretary of state until his death. It is said that the impurity of his life and his manner of accumulating wealth made the Pope rather glad to be rid of him notwithstanding his loyalty.
Arago, (Dominique) François (Jean) (1786–1853) French astronomer and physicist, Professor of Physics at the École Polytechnique in Paris. His important work covered astronomy, electricity, magnetism, meteorology and optics. He was an advocate of the wave theory of light.
Argyll, George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823–1900). The Duke was an amateur of science and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1861. He exerted a considerable influence on scientific progress, but he remained committed to the cataclysmal school of geology, never coming round to the newer evolutional school. He published on religion and politics as well as science.
Babbage, Charles (1792–1871) mathematician and inventor. In an attempt to produce more accurate mathematical tables, Babbage conceived the idea of a calculating machine, a kind of computer which could store information. He never completed the project but his idea is recognised as the forerunner of the modern computer. Babbage was a difficult man and his outspoken criticism of the Royal Society made him enemies. Yet he was in many ways right about the conservatism of British science in the first part of the 19th century and its refusal to look beyond Newtonian physics and mathematics.
Baillie, Joanna (1762–1851) Scottish dramatist and poet. She was one of the three children of Dorothea Hunter and James Baillie, minister of Bothwell, Lanarkshire and later Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University. She and her elder sister, Agnes, were educated at a boarding school in Glasgow. Her mother’s brothers were the celebrated surgeons, anatomists and collectors, William and John Hunter. When in 1783 her brother, Matthew, who had been educated at Glasgow and Balliol College, inherited William’s School of Anatomy in Great Wind-mill Street in London, his mother and sisters moved to London to keep house for him. When Matthew married in 1791 the three women eventually settled in Hampstead.
Joanna Baillie became the pre-eminent female dramatist of her day and, although her plays had very limited stage success, it was significantly greater than that enjoyed by any of the now more celebrated male romantic poets. The first volume of her Series of Plays: In Which It Is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind appeared in 1798; two subsequent volumes were published as well as a number of other plays, one of which, The Family Legend, enjoyed some success in Edinburgh; her early verses and some later productions were collected as Fugitive Verses in 1840. Joanna Baillie had a long publishing life, seeing the first edition of her collected works through the press before she died in 1851, aged 88.
Baily, Francis (1774–1844) English amateur astronomer. Baily’s bead, the broken line of sunlight that shines through the valleys of the moon close to total eclipse, are named after him. He also revised the then-current catalogues of the stars and calculated accurate values for the density and ellipticity of the earth.
Bannister, John (1760–1836). The only Bannister I can find whose dates fit is John Bannister, who was principally, however, a comic actor. He worked mainly at Drury Lane, with some appearances at the Haymarket and in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Interestingly, given what Mary Somerville says about the moral character of ‘our principal actors’, it was said of Bannister on his death ‘The stage can point to few men of more solid virtue and unblemished character.’
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia (1743–1825) poet, writer of prose and scholar. Anna Laetitia Aikin, Mrs Barbauld, with her husband, a dissenting clergyman, ran a school for boys at Palgrave, Sussex. The school closed in 1785 and the Barbaulds eventually settled in 1802 in Stoke Newington. The mental health of Mrs Barbauld’s husband deteriorated until be became violent towards her and had to be put under restraint. He escaped from his keeper and was found drowned in 1808. In 1812 Mrs Barbauld published a poem, ‘Eighteen Hundred and Eleven’, which lamented the decline of moral, political and artistic life in Britain. The poem was reviewed so harshly by J. W. Croker in the Quarterly Review in June 1812 that it put an end to her public career as a writer. Although Mrs Barbauld had a classical education, she said that she saw no point in producing femmes savantes, rather than good wives or agreeable companions.
Barbieri-Nini, Marianna (1820–87) Florentine diva. She studied with Pasta (q.v.) and made her operatic debut in Milan in Donizetti’s Belisario. She is said to have been so ugly in face and upper body that the audience made it clear they thought so and she was advised to wear a mask. When she played more bloodthirsty roles, like Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia and Verdi’s Lady Macbeth, her appearance seemed to suit better. She retired early in 1856 but she had already sung all over Italy, and in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris.
Barclay, Misses The Misses Barclay, who looked after Mary Somerville during her illness in Switzerland, were the daughters of Robert Barclay of Bury Hill. In 1814 the fourth Barclay daughter married the Cornish philosopher and inventor, Robert Were Fox, of Falmouth (1789–1877; FRS, 1848) (EP, p. 27). The Barclays were also members of the Clapham Sect (see p. 404, n.57).
Barthe, Félix (1795–1863) lawyer and politician. The Garde des Sceaux is the French Minister of Justice, roughly equivalent to the Lord Chancellor in Britain. During his first period in the office in the ministry of the Duc de Broglie, he reformed the penal code.
Bartolommei, Ferdinando, Marchese (1821–69) Italian statesman, one of the founders of the journal La Nazione (1859), and senator in 1862.
Beaufort, Sir Francis (1774–1857) Admiral. In 1805 he devised the Beaufort Scale, a scale of wind speed, based on observable indicators such as smoke, tree movement and damage incurred.
Becker, Karl Ferdinand (1775–1849) educationalist and linguist. Becker had five sons and three daughters.
Becquerel, Antoine César (1788–1878). Originally in the army, Becquerel left it to work with Ampère (q.v.) in his study of electricity, thus becoming one of the founders of electrochemistry. His grandson, (Antoine) Henri (1852–1908), physicist, became professor at the Conser-vatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris and shared the Nobel Prize in 1903 with Pierre and Marie Curie.
Bell, Sir Charles (1774–1842) anatomist. Educated in Edinburgh, Bell published widely on anatomy and surgery. He was a Royal Society medallist in 1829 and Professor of Surgery in Edinburgh University in 1836. He discovered the distinct function of the nerves.
Berry, Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, Duchesse de (1798–1870) wife of Charles, Duc de Berry (1778–1820), son of Charles X (q.v.). After the death of Charles X, she conspired to obtain the throne for her son, Henri, Comte de Chambord (1820–83). In 1832 she instituted an unsuccessful revolt in the Vendée.
Berry, Mary (1763–1852). Celebrated for her beauty, wit and most of the other reputedly female virtues, she lived a single and singularly happy life with her sister Agnes, who was born a year after her, for nearly 88 years. She and her sister had a famous friendship with Horace Walpole, the landscape gardener, poet and, with The Castle of Otranto, inventor of Gothic fiction. They lived in a house owned by Walpole, known as Little Strawberry Hill after the parent house owned by Walpole; Walpole bequeathed the house to them. When Miss Berry received Joanna Baillie’s first volume of the Plays on the Passions, she apparently sat up all night in a ball dress to read it. From the first she believed the plays to have been written by a woman, because the female characters were rational before beautiful.
Billington, Elizabeth Weichsel, Mrs (1765 or 1768–1818) a celebrated singer, actress and composer.
Biot, Jean-Baptiste (1774–1862) physicist, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Beauvais. He helped to formulate laws concerning magnetic fields. With Gay-Lussac (q.v.), he made the first balloon flight for scientific purposes. He also worked with Arago (q.v.) on the refractive purposes of gases and received the Rumford Medal in 1840.
Blair, Hugh (1718–1800) minister of Athelstaneford in East Lothian, where he was succeeded by Home (q.v.). He was Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres at Edinburgh, and his lectures on rhetoric made him famous. He also published his sermons in five volumes (1777–1801). He was one of the defenders of the authenticity of the Ossian poems (see p.411, n.111).
Bonaparte or Buonaparte, Lucien (1778–1846) brother of the Emperor Napoleon. Under the Directory he was president of the Council of Five Hundred, and subsequently became a critic of Napoleon’s policies. The brothers were reconciled on the eve of Waterloo. After Napoleon’s defeat, Lucien lived in exile in Italy.
Bon-Brenzoni, Caterina, Contessa (1813–1856) The Countess’s poems were collected and published in 1857, preceded by a biography by Dr Angola Messadaglia.
Bordeaux, Henri-(Charles-Ferdinand-Marie-Dieu-donné), Comte de Chambord, Duc de Bordeaux (1820–83). He received as a birth present the Château of Chambord. A relic of the old régime in France, he travelled widely in Austria and Italy. In 1843 he went to England, visited Scotland, and finally settled in Bel-gravia Square, London.
Boswell Claude Irvine, Lord Balmuto (1742–1824) nephew of James Boswell, Johnson’s biographer. He was educated at Edinburgh University, became a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1766 and was Lord of Session (1799–1822).
Bouvard, Alexis (1767–1843; FRS 1826) astronomer and Director of the Paris Observatory. He discovered eight comets and wrote Tables astronomiques of Jupiter and Saturn (1808) and Uranus (1821). His hypothesis of an unknown celestial body was confirmed by John Couch Adams’s discovery of Neptune.
Bouvard, Jean-Louis-Eloi (1768–1834) French general. Bouvard took part in the Peninsular campaign.
Bowditch, Nathaniel (1773–1838) self-educated American mathematician and astronomer. He translated and updated the first four volumes of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste as Celestial Mechanics, 1829–39. He refused pro-fessorships at several American universities. From 1829 until his death he was President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bradley, James (1693–1762) astronomer and divine; Astronomer Royal (1742). He announced his discovery of ‘aberration of light’ in a paper read to the Royal Society in 1729 and, in a paper in 1748, published his discovery of the nutation of the Earth’s axis. He was also Copley medallist.
Brand or Brande, William Thomas (1788–1866; FRS 1809) chemist. He succeeded Sir Humphry Davy (q.v.) as Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution (1813). He was one of the secretaries of the Royal Society (1816–26) and chief officer of coinage at the Department of the Mint (1854).
Brewster, Sir David (1781–1868; FRS 1815) Scottish physicist. He studied the polarisation of light, double refractions in crystals and relations between crystalline forms and optical properties, giving his name to Brewster’s Law. He invented the kaleidoscope. In 1831 he helped to found the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was principal of St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities, Edinburgh (1860). He was Copley medallist in 1815 and Rumford medallist in 1818.
Broglie, 3rd Duc de (1785–1879) politician and diplomat. He was Prime Minister from 1835–36. Always antipa-thetic to Napoleon III, he spent the last 20 years of his life in literary and philosophical pursuits.
Brongniart, Alexandre (1770–1847; FRS 1825). Originally intended for medicine, Brongniart was also interested in zoology, botany and chemistry. He travelled to England where he learned the art of enamelling. On his return to France in 1800, he became director of the Sèvres factory, a post he held until his death. He was also chief engineer for mines in 1818 and professor of mineralogy at the Museum of Natural History in 1822.
Brougham, Henry Peter, Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868). He was educated at Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University and finally became Lord Chancellor; he was a celebrated orator and advocate of Queen Caroline. He published widely on social, political and literary matters. In addition to his literary activities, he effected improvements in the Court of Chancery and assisted in the founding of London University (1828). With Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, he founded The Edinburgh Review in 1802.
Brown, Montagu Yeats-(1834–1912) member of the Diplomatic Service. The son of a former consul at Genoa, Yeats-Brown was himself consul at Genoa in 1858. In 1893 he was consul in Boston.
Brown, Rawdon Lubbock (1803–83) student of history. He lived in Venice 1833–83, working in the archives there, particularly on the reports sent by Venetian am-bassadors from London. He wrote historical works in both English and Italian.
Brown, Robert (1773–1858) traveller and botanist. Brown was born in Montrose. In 1801 he embarked from Portsmouth under the command of Flinders (q.v.) and explored the vegetable world of new Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. He wrote ‘General Remarks, Geographical and Systematical on the Botany of Terra Australis’ appended to the Narrative of Captain Flinders’s Voyage (1814). He also wrote botanical appendices to Voyages and Travels of the Most Celebrated Navigators and Travellers. Humboldt (q.v.) dedicated Synopsis Plantarum Orbis Novi to him. He was librarian of the Linnean Society.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806–61) poet. She married the poet Robert Browning in 1846. After their marriage the Brownings lived mostly in Italy. Her poem, Casa Guidi Windows (1851) from the name of the house in Florence in which they had an apartment, recorded political events in Italy coloured by Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s enthusiasm for the cause of Italian liberty.
Buckland, William (1784–1856) geologist. He was educated at Corpus Christi College and became a Fellow there (1808–25). He was President of the Geological Society in 1824 and 1840. He wrote a number of geological papers and in his ‘Bridgewater Treatise’ upheld the Mosaic account of the Flood. He became Dean of Winchester in 1845.
Buller, Charles (1806–48) Liberal politician, taught by Thomas Carlyle from 1822–25. He was MP for West Looe, Cornwall. Buller generally had a reputation for decency and progressive ideas. Why he should have attacked Mary Somerville is rather obscure. He also spoke against her Civil List pension but it is easier to understand this as a point of principle about pensions. Carlyle was rather dismissive of Mary Somerville in one of his letters to his brother John: ‘We have seen Mrs Somerville (an unblameable, unpraising canny Scotch lady, of intellect enough to study Euclid, and not more than enough)’ 30 April 1835 (The Carlyle Correspondence, vol. 8, 1981).
Bunbury/Napier/Fox families. Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Fox, Charles James Fox’s younger brother, married Sir Henry Bunbury. Her younger sister, Caroline, married William Napier (1785–1860). George Napier was the second husband of Sarah Lennox (1745–1826). Richard Napier (1787–1868) married Louisa Staples. Later, after Sarah’s death, her daughter Emily married Sir Henry Bunbury as his second wife: Sir Henry was the son of Sarah’s first husband who divorced her for adultery. Lady Sarah Napier was said to be the last surviving great-granddaughter of Charles II; she had five sons and three daughters. The complicated affairs of these families make up the fascinating story of Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994).
Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm (1811–99) German chemist. He did not actually invent the Bunsen burner, which bears his name, but was responsible for its popular use. He worked with Gustav Kirchhoff (q.v.) to develop the technique of spectroscopy, which they used to discover the elements caesium and rubidium in 1861.
Buoncompagni or Boncompagni di Mombello, Carlo (1804–80) Italian statesman. Cavour (q.v.) contributed much to his political formation.
Byron, Ada see Lovelace.
Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron (1788–1824) poet. Byron wrote the first five cantos of Don Juan between 1818 and 1820. In 1819 he had already begun his relationship with Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, with whom he was probably living when Mary Somerville saw him in Venice.
Byron, Lady Noel (Annabella (Anne Isabella) Milbanke). She married Lord Byron in 1815 but left him the following year. Annabella was a bluestocking, called by Byron ‘Princess of Parallelograms’. For Ada Byron see Lovelace.
Campbell, Thomas (1777–1844) poet. He was the son of a Glasgow merchant and was educated at Glasgow University. ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ (1799), and ‘Ger-trude of Wyoming’ (1809), in Spenserian stanzas, both became very popular. He is remembered also for such stirring battle songs as ‘Ye Mariners of England’.
Canning, Stratford, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe (1786–1880) diplomat. He was styled the ‘Great Elchi’, ambassador par excellence. He was ambassador at Constantinople (1842–44) and again in 1848–58.
Canova, Antonio (1757–1822) Italian neoclassical sculptor. He worked at first in Venice and then in Rome from 1781. He travelled to Vienna and Paris and was employed by Napoleon. His marble of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Borghese, as ‘Venus Victrix’ (1805–07) in the Borghese Gallery in Rome remains one of his best known images.
Capellini, Giovanni (1833–1922) geologist. He published Geologia dei colli di Val d’Elsa when he was 25 and became Professor of Geology at Bologna when only 28.
Carignani. Neapolitan noble family.
Catalani, Madame Valabrèque (1780–1849) soprano. She made her debut at the Fenice Theatre in Venice in 1795. She sang in Florence in 1799 and Milan 1801; in the same year she married Paul Valabrèque, a French attaché in Lisbon. She had a commanding stage presence and range. She retired in 1828 to her country home near Florence.
Cavour, Camillo Benso di, Count (1810–61) Italian statesman, generally held to be the architect of Unification. A liberal from an early age, he was one of the founders of the organ Il Risorgimento in 1847. Under Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia-Piedmont, he formed a government in 1852. With the object of ejecting the Austrians from Italy, Cavour formed an alliance with Britain and France during the Crimean War. He resigned when France came to terms with Austria but became Prime Minister again in 1860. He negotiated the union of Sardinia-Piedmont with Parma, Modena, Tuscany and the Romagna. By 1861 he had achieved the establishment of a united Italy.
Champollion, Jean-François (1790–1832) French Egyptologist who, without proper recognition, built on Young’s intuitions about hieroglyphs. His Lettre à M. Dacier (1822) identified and assigned phonetic values to about 40 symbols. These results were expanded in his Précis du système hieroglyphique (1824).
Chantrey, Sir Francis Leggatt (1781–1841). The son of a carpenter, he was originally apprenticed to a wood carver but went to London about 1802 and studied at the Royal Academy Schools. He was a Royal Academician from 1811 and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1818. As an amateur of science, Chantrey was an appropriate person to do the bust of Mary Somerville which is in the Royal College of Surgeons (EP, pp. 89–90). He is perhaps best known for his equestrian statue of George IV in Trafalgar Square but he did many of the famous of the age, including Scott twice. He became very rich and left £150,000, the bulk of his fortune, to the Royal Academy to buy high-quality art.
Chapone, Hester (née Mulso) (1727–1801). A friend of the novelist Samuel Richardson, author of Clarissa, she published poems and stories (1750–53), as well as essays (1773–77). She also had a hand in the periodical The Rambler. Her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady was published in 1774. This is presumably the work Mary Somerville has in mind.
Charles, Archduke (1771–1847) Austrian archduke and field marshal. He was an army reformer and theoretician, who modernised the Austrian army and thus did much to enable French defeats during the Napoleonic period.
Charles X (1757–1836) King of France (1824–30). Charles lived abroad after the Revolution, but returned to become leader of the ultraroyalist party at the restoration of the Bourbons. His own reactionary rule led to his over-throw in 1830, when he returned to England.
Charles Albert (1798–1849) King of Sardinia-Piedmont (1831–49). During the Risorgimento (the movement for Italian Unification), he introduced reforms and reluctantly granted representative government to Sardinia in 1848. He joined the revolt of the city of Milan against Austrian government but abdicated after his defeat at Custoza (1848) and Novara (1849).
Chigi. This old Sienese family rose from 13th-century banking to princely rank in papal Rome and the Holy Roman Empire in the 17th century.
Choiseul, Étienne François, Duc de (1719–85) an extremely powerful French minister. As foreign minister, he negotiated good terms for France in the Treaty of Paris, which closed the Seven Years’ War. By the later part of the century, his position had been undermined and he was exiled in 1770.
Clarke (more usually Clark), William (1788–1869) anatomist. He was a professor at Cambridge from 1817 to 1866. He was a friend of Byron.
Clerk, William, of Eldin (1771–1847) brother of John Clerk, Lord Eldin (1757–1832). It was said by his friends that only William’s diffidence prevented him from being as great a success as his brother, the judge.
Cobbe, Frances Power (1822–1904) philanthropic and religious writer. She published The Theory of Intuitive Morals (1855–57), Darwinism in Morals (1872), The Duties of Women (1881) and an autobiography (1904). She was associated with Mary Carpenter in her educational advances, including the ragged schools, and concerned herself also with relief of destitution and philanthropy in the workhouses. She campaigned for suffrage for women and for the admission of women to degrees; she was joint secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, a cause that was particularly close to Mary Somerville’s heart.
Coke, Thomas William, Earl Leicester of Holkham (1752–1842) agriculturist. Coke introduced new farming systems. On his own estate he replaced cattle with sheep and introduced new crops. The note in the original edition merely points out that Mr Coke later became Earl of Leicester.
Colbert, Auguste-Napoléon-Joseph, Marquis de Chabanais (1805–83). Colbert’s father was killed during the Peninsular campaign in 1809; the English Colonel Napier paid tribute to his bravery. Colbert himself began as a soldier but left the army and married the niece (not the granddaughter, as Mary Somerville has it) of Laplace.
Condé a French princely family, a branch of the Bourbon royal house.
Cooper, James Fenimore (1789–1851) American novelist, best known for The Last of the Mohicans (1826). His England, with Sketches of Society in the Metropolis, a highly critical account of English society, appeared in 1837. Despite Mary Somerville’s slightly equivocal account of him, their families became quite intimate. Cooper had a copy of his Rural Hours sent to Mary Somerville and, in a letter to Samuel Rogers (q.v.) in 1832, he asks to be remembered to the Somervilles (Letters and Journals, ed. James Franklin Beard, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap P., 1968, vol. 2, p. 181). Mary Somerville wrote Harriet Martineau (q.v.) a letter of introduction to him when Martineau toured America.
Corri, Natale (1765–1822) Mary Somerville’s mentor must have been Natale, the brother of the more famous Domenico, who took over his brother’s music-publishing establishment when Domenico moved to London in 1790. Natale was involved in concert promotion as well as other musical activities and, although he was declared bankrupt, he remained in Edinburgh until 1821, when he left for the continent with his daughters, Frances and Rosalie.
Craig, Sir James Henry (1748–1812) general. Craig took the Cape Colony in 1795 and was governor there (1795–97). He was governor of Canada from 1807–11 and was made a general in 1812. William Somerville named his illegitimate child after him (EP, p.7).
Cromek, Robert Hartley (1770–1812) engraver and publisher. He studied under Bartolozzi. Cromek published an edition of Robert Blair’s Grave with etchings after Blake. He compiled Reliques of Burns (1808) and Select Scottish Songs (1810).
Cuvier, Georges, Baron (1769–1832) French zoologist, who founded the sciences of comparative anatomy and palaeontology. By extending his study of animal skeletons to fossils, he was able to construct entire skeletons from the incomplete ones in existence. His system of classification, although subsequently superseded, was an advance on Linnaeus.
Dana, James Dwight (1813–95) geologist, zoologist and teacher, member of the Royal Society. He was assistant in chemistry to Silliman (q.v.). He became Professor of Natural History at Yale in 1855. He was a devout believer and it took him 15 years to accept a version of Darwin.
Daniell, Samuel (1775–1811) artist. He served with William Somerville for years at the Cape; they both returned to Britain in 1803. He was the draughtsman on a mission to explore Bechuanaland in 1801. He died in Ceylon and his Sketches Representing the Native Tribes, Animals, and Scenery of Southern Africa, from Drawings made by the Late Samuel Daniell, Engraved by William Daniell, were published posthumously in 1820.
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–82) naturalist, widely known for his theory of natural selection, first published in The Origin of Species (1859). Since his views conflicted with the biblical account of creation, they aroused fierce controversy at the time and later. The modern, modified version of his theories is known as neo-Darwinism. Mary Somerville was already an old lady when Darwin’s theory reached her and she never wrote extensively about it nor wholly embraced it but, typically, she did not reject it either.
David d’Angers, Pierre-Jean (1789–1856) French sculptor. Although he worked with Canova in Rome, David d’Angers rebelled against the prevailing neoclassical style of early-19th-century French sculpture in the interest of a greater degree of realism. He visited England in 1827. David was always radical in politics and in 1831 presented a bust of Goethe to the poet.
Davis, Paulina Kellogg Wright (1813–76) American abolitionist, suffragist and educator. Her first husband died in 1845, leaving her sufficiently wealthy and free to pursue studies in medicine. In 1849 she married Thomas Davis and adopted two daughters. She lectured on anatomy with particular reference to the female body and began a literary magazine called The Una from Spenser’s pure heroine in The Faerie Queene. She spent the latter part of her life in Providence, where it was said she was too serious for society women and too radical for the college community.
Davy, Lady (née Kerr, formerly Mrs Jane Apreece) (1780–1855). When her first husband, Sir Shuckburgh Ashby Apreece, died in 1807, she became the wife of the scientist, Sir Humphry Davy (q.v.). Lady Davy was well known in society in her own right and was also a close friend and correspondent of Joanna Baillie. She was commended by Madame de Staël, who did not com-mend many women.
Davy, Sir Humphry (1778–1829). He invented the miners’ safety lamp in 1815 and discovered the use of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic. For this he was invited to join the Royal Institution. By passing electricity through molten metallic compounds, he discovered potassium in 1807 and, in 1808, sodium, calcium, barium, magnesium and strontium. He encouraged Michael Faraday (q.v.), employing him as his assistant at the Royal Institution, and Faraday eventually took over from him there.
Dawes, William Rutter (1799–1868; FRS 1865) astronomer. He had charge of the observatory at South Villa, Regents Park (1839–44), and was gold medallist of the Astronomical Society in 1855. He established the non-atmospheric character of the redness of Mars.
De Candolle, Augustin Pyrane (1778–1841) Swiss botanist. After Darwin, De Candolle’s scientific structural criteria for determining natural relations among plant genera provided the empirical foundation for a modern evolutionary history of plants. His most important work was his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique (1813). He held the Natural History chair at the University of Geneva (1817–41) and was first director of the botanical gardens there.
De Filippi, Filippo (1814–67) Italian zoologist. Born in Milan, he studied medicine at Pavia. He went to Turin in 1848 and organised the natural history collections of the university museum. In 1862 he went on a diplomatic mission and a round-the-world voyage on the frigate Magenta in 1865. He never returned to Italy and died in Hong Kong.
De la Rive, Auguste Arthur (1801–73) Swiss physicist. He held the Natural Philosophy chair at the Academy of Geneva from 1823. He was one of the founders of the electrochemical theory of batteries and shared Faraday’s view that voltaic electricity was caused by chemical action.
De la Rive, Gaspard (1770–1824) one of the Genevese savants that the Somervilles met through their connection with the Marcets (EP, pp. 26, 29).
De Morgan, Augustus (1806–71) mathematician and logician. He was important in the development of modern algebra and symbolic logic. His Elements of Algebra Preliminary to the Differential Calculus was published in 1837. He was the first President of the Mathematical Society, 1865.
De Vico, Padre Francesco (1805–48) cleric and scientist. De Vico became a Jesuit in 1823 and director of the astronomical observatory at the Collegio Romano in Rome in 1838. He was a member of various European scientific academies.
Donati, Giovanni Battista (1826–73) astronomer. He was the first to observe the spectrum of a comet (Comet 1864 II). This observation indicated that comet tails contain luminous gas. From 1854–64 he observed six comets and that of 2 June 1858 bears his name. He was Professor of Astronomy and director of the observatory at Florence.
Doria, Teresa, Marchesa. The Dorias were a leading family in the political, military and economic life of Genoa from the 12th century.
Duchênois, Catherine Josephine Rufuin (dite Rafin), Mademoiselle (1777–1835) French actress. She made her début at Versailles in 1802 and then joined the Comédie Française. She was much loved by audiences and between 1804 and 1829 played at least 36 roles, including Andromaque, Marie Stuart and Clytemnestra.
Dudley, John William Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley of Castle Dudley, Staffordshire (1781–1833) politician. He was foreign secretary, 1827–28. Rogers (q.v.) hated Ward after he attacked his ‘Columbus’ in a review in the Quarterly (vol. ix, 207).
Duncan, Adam, Viscount Duncan (1731–1804) Admiral. He was Commander-in-Chief in the North Sea (1795–1801). In 1797, after the victory at Camperdown, he was created Baron Duncan of Lundie and Viscount Duncan of Camperdown. Mary Somerville is tart about him, thinking that he overshadowed her father, but Duncan, a Scotsman, was an extremely impressive figure both morally and physically: he was six foot four and built in proportion.
Dupin, (François Pierre) Charles (1784–1873) French mathematician and politician. President of the Chamber of Deputies (1824). He was interested also in the useful arts and came to Britain in 1836 for the sixth meeting of the British Association (EP, 119, 180). He was made a grand officer of the Légion d’honneur in 1840.
Edgeworth, Maria (1767–1849) Irish novelist, educationist, and writer of moral tales for children. She is best known for her novels, Castle Rackrent (1800) and Belinda (1801). Maria Edgeworth knew Scott well and knew and corresponded with Joanna Baillie (q.v.). She was one of the children of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817), also an educationist, who wrote the Rousseau-esque Practical Education with Maria. She refers, in her letter to Mary Somerville (p. 165), to her sister Harriet. Her Letters in England are a useful source of information about Mary Somerville.
Edwards, Henri Milne-(1800–1885). Born in Bruges of English parents, Milne-Edwards became a doctor of medicine in Paris in 1823 and at first did medical work. He was elected in 1838 to the Académie des Sciences as Cuvier’s successor. He published widely in zoology and natural history.
Elgin, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (1766–1841). He gave his name to the famous and still-disputed Elgin Marbles. He arranged for the transportation of the Parthenon frieze, etc. to England in 1803–12 at a time when the Turks were apparently using them for target practice. He sold these marbles to the nation in 1816. He was married first to Mary Hamilton Nisbet (1778–1855) and, after divorcing her in 1808, to Elizabeth Oswald of Dunnikier. Mary Nisbet married her lover Robert Ferguson (see Fergusons of Raith) and the couple remained good friends of Mary Somerville.
Elliot, Gilbert, 2nd Earl of Minto (1785–1859) politician and diplomat. He was educated at Edinburgh University. He was ambassador to Berlin (1822–4) but, from Mary Somerville’s point of view, his most important act was to persuade the King of Naples to grant Sicily a separate parliament.
Elphinstone, Mountstuart (1779–1859) Governor of Bombay. He declined Governor-Generalship of India on his retirement. He wrote a History of India (1841) and The Rise of British Power in the East (published 1887).
Erskine, David Stuart, 11th Earl of Buchan (1742–1829). The Erskines gave Mary Somerville one of her American connections: in 1792, the Earl presented Washington with a snuffbox made from a tree that supposedly sheltered Wallace. He also founded an annual festival to commemorate the poet James Thomson.
Erskine, Thomas, 1st Baron Erskine (1750–1823) Erskine’s defence of the radicals in the infamous Treason Trials of 1794 made him famous. He was an MP from 1783–84 and 1790–1806, and Lord Chancellor in 1806–07. He also successfully defended the leader of the Gordon Riots in 1781 and he got Hadfield, who attempted to assassinate George III, acquitted on the grounds of insanity.
Fairfax, Admiral Sir Henry (1837–1900). Mary Somerville’s nephew became an Admiral in 1897.
Fairfax, Margaret Charters, Lady Fairfax (1741–1832). Mary Somerville’s mother was the daughter of Samuel Fairfax, Solicitor of Customs for Scotland. Mary was the fifth of her seven children, four of whom, Samuel, Mary, Margaret and Henry, survived infancy. The house in Burntisland where she brought up her children is still standing.
Fairfax, Vice-Admiral Sir William George (1739–1813) father of Mary Somerville with his second wife, Margaret Charters. The original edition of Personal Recollections has the following note: ‘Sir William Fairfax was the son of Joseph Fairfax, Esq. of Bagshot, in the county of Surrey, who died in 1783, aged 77, having served in the army previous to 1745. It is understood that his family was descended from the Fairfaxes of Walton in Yorkshire, the main branch of which were created Viscounts Fairfax of Emly, in the peerage of Ireland (now extinct), and a younger branch Barons Fairfax of Cameron, in the peerage of Scotland. Of the last-named was the great Lord Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the parliament (1645–50), whose title is now held by the 11th Lord Fairfax, a resident in the United States of America.’ He was a prisoner in France 1778–82; fought in the successful sea battle of Camperdown in 1797 and was made Vice-Admiral of the Red in 1810.
Falkner or Falconer, Hugh (1808–65) palaeontologist and botanist. Falconer was educated at Aberdeen University and Edinburgh, where he graduated MD in 1829. While working for the East India Company, he discovered fossil mammals in the Sivalik Hills. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society. Latterly he travelled in South Europe for his health and made discoveries during this period too.
Fanshawe, Catherine Maria (1765–1834) minor poet. Her charade/riddle on the letter ‘h’, which was sometimes attributed to Byron, ran ‘’Twas in heaven pro-nounced, and ’twas muttered in hell.’ ‘The Butterfly’s Ball’ was actually by William Roscoe. She gave several pieces to Joanna Baillie for her Collection (1823), which was designed to provide a charitable contribution to the poet Struthers.
Faraday, Michael (1791–1867) chemist and physicist. He was born into a poor London family and apprenticed to a bookbinder where he found books on science that stim-ulated his interest, notably one by Jane Marcet (q.v.). He met Humphry Davy after attending lectures at the Royal Institution and became his apprentice, later in 1833 succeeding him there as Professor of Chemistry. Lady Davy may not have made life wholly easy for him in the earlier stages of his relationship with her husband and she is rumoured to have treated him like a menial (DNB). He worked on the liquefaction of gases and discovered benzene. But his enduring contribution to science was in the field of electricity and electrochemistry, in which he discovered the process of electrolysis and the laws that control it. He discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism and first showed that electromag-netic induction was possible. Using induction, he produced the first electrical generator in 1831, and the first transformer. Faraday, a deeply religious man, who belonged to the extreme Sandemanian sect, had a break-down in 1839, but continued to do useful work after this point. Mary Somerville’s praise of him as the greatest experimental philosopher and discoverer since Newton is not hyperbolic.
Ferguson, Sir Adam (1770–1854). He was the son of Professor Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh; he was one of Scott’s closest friends. Having served with distinction in the Peninsular campaign against Napoleon, he was appointed Keeper of the Regalia of Scotland in 1818 and was knighted during the visit of George IV in 1822.
Fergusons of Raith. Robert Ferguson (1771–1840; FRS 1805) was a radical MP for Kirkcaldy. Mary Somerville knew the Fergusons from her early life in Burntisland and had become friendly with Mary Nisbet (1778–1855), Robert’s wife after her divorce from Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin (EP, p. 160).
Finlayson, George (1790–1823) traveller who, as naturalist, accompanied the expedition of 1821 to Siam and Cochin China. His journal was edited by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1826.
Fiorelli, Giuseppe (1823–96) Neapolitan archaeologist. His systematic excavation at Pompeii helped to preserve much of the ancient city as nearly intact as possible. In this way, he made an important contribution to modern archaeological methods. His initial work was completed in 1848. Fiorelli was Director of the National Museum in Naples from 1863.
Flamsteed, John (1646–1719) was appointed the first Astronomer Royal in 1675 and was permitted by Charles II to establish a national observatory at Greenwich. He catalogued and gave the position of more than 3000 stars. The references in Admiral Smyth’s letter to Mary Somerville (p. 169) seem to confirm Flamsteed’s reputation as a quarrelsome man, who argued with both Newton and Halley when they requested access to his astronomical observations.
Flinders, Matthew (1771–1814) British navigator and hydrographer. He joined the navy in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, sailed in the Pacific with the notorious Captain Bligh and saw active service in the wars with France. He explored the Bass Strait and was commissioned to survey the coasts of Australia and Tasmania. The Flinders range of mountains in E. South Australia is named after him.
Foscolo, Niccolò Ugo (1778–1827) a great Italian patriot. His early tragedy, Tieste (1797) and his poem A Bonaparte liberator reflect his anti-Austrian sentiments, although his trust in Napoleon was somewhat misplaced. He served in the Napoleonic armies but settled in Britain in 1816. He made only a precarious living there by his pen and by teaching Italian. His remains were removed to Florence in 1871.
Foucault, Jean Bernard Léon (1819–68) French physicist, after whom Foucault’s pendulum, which demon-strates the rotation of the earth, is named. He also worked on light, showing that its speed decreases in water, and he invented the gyroscope. His pendulum was first demonstrated in Paris in 1851.
Franklin, Sir John (1786–1847) explorer. While in the Royal Navy, he fought at Trafalgar (1805) and was subsequently governor of Tasmania, then Van Diemen’s Land. His ill-fated expedition with two ships to discover the Northwest Passage never returned. Various expeditions to find him were unsuccessful until 1859, when the skeletons of the crew and their records were found on King William Island. The ‘deplorable fate’ that Mary Somerville alludes to is that they became ice-locked and must have died of scurvy or starvation.
Fraunhofer, Joseph von (1787–1826) German physicist, whose work improved the quality of lenses and prisms and the design of optical instruments. This equipment enabled him to detect numerous dark lines in the sun’s spectrum (1814), which are now known as Fraunhofer lines. Eight of the lines are still known by the letters he gave them.
Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, 1st Baronet (commonly called Sir Bartle Frere) (1815–84) statesman. He was Governor of Bombay (1862–67). Mary Somerville remarks the occasion on which he was sent to Zanzibar to negotiate the suppression of the slave trade in 1872. He was subsequently governor of the Cape and first high commissioner of South Africa (1877).
Fry, Elizabeth (née Gurney) (1780–1845) Quaker prison reformer, who first visited Newgate in 1813, aiming to improve the conditions under which women prisoners lived. She worked also for improvement of conditions on convict ships to Australia and with vagrants in London and Brighton. Later she travelled in Europe visiting prisons, hospitals and mental asylums.
Gaetani, Don Michelangelo, Duke of Sermoneta. The Gaetani are the oldest of the Roman princely families. There are two lines: the Princes of Teano and Dukes of Sermoneta, and the Princes of Piedmont and Dukes of Laurenzana.
Gaimard, Joseph-Paul (1793–1858) naval surgeon. In the course of his voyages, he collected zoological and botanical specimens. He also published several accounts of his voyages.
Garibaldi, Giuseppe (1807–82). The hero of the Italian Unification Movement was an enormously popular figure in Britain, which he visited in April 1864. It was said that the crowds that gathered to welcome him constituted the largest spontaneous gathering of all time in London. He spent ten years in exile in South America, fighting in various liberation movements there, and returned to Italy in 1848 to fight the Austrians. After the flight of Pope Pius IX, he played a heroic part in the unsuccessful defence of Rome against the French. Exiled again, he returned to assist Cavour (q.v.) and Victor Emmanuel II (q.v.) in the Unification Movement. In 1860 he set out from Genoa on the celebrated Expedition of a Thousand, which achieved the conquest of Sicily and Naples; after this, he continued to serve Victor Emmanuel II.
Gasparis, Annibale de (1819–92) Neapolitan Professor of Astronomy and senator. He was head of the observatory at Capodimonte.
Gassiot, John Peter (1797–1877) business man and physicist. Gassiot was born in London in 1797 of French parentage He became an FRS in 1840. He worked on electricity in its relations with light, heat and chemical compounds and his work had important practical applications, for example in the development of batteries.
Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis (1778–1850) French chemist and physicist. In 1808 he discovered the element boron, a non-metallic solid normally found as green-brown powder or crystals. Gay-Lussac’s law states that gases combine in a simple ratio by volume. He also discovered Charles’s law, on the proportionality of the volume of a gas at constant pressure to its absolute temperature, independently of Charles.
George III (1738–1820). He was, as Mary Somerville suggests, very popular with the middle classes. Indeed, the majority of his subjects approved the decency of his life and his determination, which his enemies called obstinacy.
Gibson, John (1790–1866) neoclassical sculptor. Originally a monumental mason in Liverpool and protégé of the banker William Roscoe, Gibson went to London in 1817 and studied with Flaxman. Flaxman sent him to Rome with an introduction to Canova (q.v.), whose pupil he became. He was later taught by Thorwaldsen (q.v.). He lived mostly in Italy, with occasional visits to England. He experimented with polychromy: his Tinted Venus is in the Walker Gallery, Liverpool. He opposed the use of modern clothing in statues and this limited his commissions but he, nevertheless, made a substantial fortune, which, like Chantrey (q.v.), he left to the Royal Academy. He is said to have exclaimed, ‘I thank God for every morning I open my eyes in Rome.’
Ginori an old and notable Tuscan family.
Glaisher, James (1809–1903) British astronomer and meteorologist. Glaisher made a series of balloon ascents in the 1860s, reaching the unprecedented height of 9 km. He also used balloons in a weather-station network.
Glover, John (1767–1849) landscape painter. He became President of the Water-Colour Society in 1815. He exhibited at Paris, and sketched in Switzerland and Italy. After his important exhibition of watercolours and oils in Old Bond Street in 1821, he was one of the founders of the Society of British Artists, with whom he exhibited (1824–30). In 1831 he emigrated to Australia, dying in Tasmania in 1849.
Grant, Anne (Mrs Grant of Laggan) (1755–1838) didactic writer. Anne Macvicar Grant wrote sometimes pene-tratingly about small communities in both Albany in America, where she spent her late childhood and early adolescence, and the Scottish Highlands, where her husband was the minister in Laggan. She seldom, however, forgot her didactic intent and always disapproved of more forthright feminists. Her Tory politics, too, were not calculated to please Mary Somerville. Yet her Letters from the Mountains (1806), her Memoirs of an American Lady (1808) and her Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland (1811) are still of interest to a modern reader.
Granville, Lord. James Fenimore Cooper describes Lord Granville as a ‘large well-looking man’ who ‘wanted the perfect command of movement and manner that so much distinguish his brethren in diplomacy’. He came to the conclusion, however, that Granville was a ‘straightforward, good fellow’ (Gleanings in Europe, ‘France’ Albany: SUNY Press (1983), p. 86).
Gregory, James (1753–1821) Scottish physician. He was born in Aberdeen but went to Edinburgh and graduated in medicine from Edinburgh University in 1774. He became head of the medical school on the death of Cullen in 1790 and, for the last ten years of his life, was head of the profession in Scotland.
Gregory XVI, Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari (1765–1846) Pope from 1830 to 1846. Made cardinal in 1825, he was unexpectedly chosen to succeed Pius VIII. Reactionary in every way he even objected to railways and illuminating gas. Spies and prisons characterised his term of office.
Greig, Sir Alexis Samuilovich (1775–1845) Admiral in the Russian service. Son of Sir Samuel Greig (q.v.) and brother-in-law of Mary Somerville, he was enrolled at birth as a midshipman in the Russian navy. He distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29), receiving the rank of full Admiral in its course. He devoted himself after the war to the organisation of the Russian navy: the formation and development of the Black Sea fleet is owed to him.
Greig, Sir Samuel Carlowitz (1735–88) Russian Admiral. Samuel Greig was born in Inverkeithing, son of Charles Greig, shipmaster, and his wife Jean Charters. At 23 he moved from the merchant service to the navy and subsequently served in the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). In 1764 he responded to a request from Catherine the Great of Russia for British officers to help build up the Russian navy. Greig was hugely successful in the Russian navy; he seems to have been a most able navigator and administrator. Greig visited Scotland again in October 1777, when he was given the freedom of the City of Edinburgh. He was given an elaborate State funeral when buried at Tallinn. He left two sons: Alexis (q.v.) and Samuel, Mary Somerville’s first husband.
Greig, Woronzow (1805–65; FRS 1833) Mary Somerville’s son by her first marriage. He was a barrister and became Clerk of the Peace for Surrey. He married Agnes Graham in 1837. Agnes’s brother James looked after Mary Somerville’s affairs following Woronzow’s death. Woronzow had some amateur scientific interests. See John H. Appleby, ‘Woronzow Greig and His Scientific Interests’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 53:1 (1999), 95–106.
Grisi, Giulia (1811–69) Italian soprano with a brilliant dramatic voice. Bellini wrote Juliet for her in his Mon-tagues and Capulets in 1830. Bellini wrote I Puritani for Grisi, Lablache (q.v.), Rubini (q.v.) and Tamburini in 1835 and Donizetti wrote Don Pasquale for the same voices in 1839.
Gurney, Hudson (1775–1864; FRS 1818). Gurney was a man of substance who was also an amateur of science and the arts. In 1831 he published a Memoir of the Life of Thomas Young, MD, FRS (q.v.) (EP, 233). He was also an antiquary and a writer of verse and vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries (1822–46).
Hall, Sir James, 4th Baronet (1761–1832) geologist and chemist. Hall was a friend of Playfair (q.v.). He used laboratory experiments to refute Wernerian views. He was president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and published an Essay on Gothic Architecture (1813).
Hallam Henry (1777–1859) historian, educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. His first published work was A View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818): it had been in preparation for ten years. He was best known for his Constitutional History of England (1827) which discusses the relationship between the royal pre-rogative and the British principles of law.
Hamilton, Elizabeth (1756–1816) novelist and didactic writer. Although born in Belfast, Elizabeth Hamilton was brought up in Scotland by an aunt and learned early to identify herself closely with Scotland and Scottish affairs and manners. Throughout her writing life she showed an unusual interest in Scots, which she used in her poems and, although only for lower-class characters, in her last satirical and didactic novel, The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808). Among her other novels, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) attacks feminist pretensions in bluestocking Bridgetina Botherim, who is supposed to be based on the feminist, Mary Hays. Other works include the rather dully humourless Letters on Education. Eliza Hamilton maintained a friendship with Mary Somerville’s close friend Joanna Baillie (q.v.).
Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805–65) Irish mathematician. Hamilton was a child prodigy and was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Dublin. His most important work was on quaternions but he also contributed to the mathematics of light rays and helped to establish the wave theory of light.
Hardy, Thomas (1752–1832) bootmaker and radical politician. In 1792 Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society, to promote parliamentary reform. He was tried, along with Horne Tooke (q.v.) and John Thelwall (q.v.), in the Treason Trials of 1794.
Haüy, René-Just, Abbé (1743–1822) French mineralogist, one of the founders of the science of crystallography. He originally studied theology but later, in 1802, became Professor of Mineralogy at the Museum of Natural History in Paris; in 1809 he took up a similar post at the Sorbonne. He is also known for studies of pyro-electricity and piezo-electricity in crystals.
Herbert, Auberon Edward William Molyneux (1838–1906) political philosopher and politician, Herbert was altogether a remarkable man. He was present in America during the Civil War and he was at Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). He was Liberal MP for Nottingham (1872–74), during which period he declared himself a republican, causing great consternation. His Wild Birds’ Protection Act was passed in 1872. Always a radical, he spoke at a mass meeting in Leamington in 1872, when Warwickshire’s Agricultural Labourers’ Union was formed. In later life he became an agnostic and a vegetarian, at which point he gave up the sports he had previously enjoyed.
Herschel, Caroline Lucretia (1750–1848) astronomer, sister of Sir William Herschel and aunt of Sir John Herschel. In 1788 the Royal Astronomical Society published her revision of the Index to Flamsteed’s Observations of the Fixed Stars, which included a catalogue of 561 previously omitted stars.
Herschel, Sir John (1792–1871; FRS 1813) astronomer, son of Sir William Herschel and nephew of Caroline Herschel. Sir John was a close correspondent and friend of Mary Somerville throughout his life. Much of their correspondence is in the library of the Royal Society. Sir John used his father’s telescope to continue the mapping of binary stars and nebulae. The observatory in Cape Town was set up in 1834. He also used photography for astronomical purposes and his advances in this field include the first use of sodium thiosulphate (hypo) as a fixer and the development of sensitised photographic paper.
Herschel, Sir William (1738–1822; FRS 1871) British astronomer, who worked with his sister Caroline (q.v.). They became expert in grinding lenses, which enabled them to build the largest telescopes then known. Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, binary stars, two new satellites of Saturn and, in 1800, infra-red rays from the sun. He was a Copley medallist.
Hobhouse, Sir John Cam, Baron Broughton de Gyfford (1786–1869) politician and friend of Byron. He wrote the notes to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, which Byron dedicated to him. He was Byron’s executor and advised the destruction of his memoirs (1824).
Holland, Sir Henry, 1st Baronet (1788–1873; FRS 1816) physician. Holland graduated from Edinburgh in 1811, having visited Iceland the year before. He became medical attendant to Caroline, Princess of Wales (1814) and gave evidence in her favour (1820). He later became physician-in-ordinary to Prince Albert in 1840 and Queen Victoria in 1852.
Home, John (1722–1808) minister of Athelstaneford, was later secretary to Lord Bute and tutor to the Prince of Wales. His first tragedy, Agis, was rejected by Garrick but Douglas was successfully performed in Edinburgh in 1756 and at Covent Garden in 1757. In spite of the scandal of the involvement of a minister in the theatre, Douglas was frequently revived.
Hope, James (later Hope Scott) (d.1873). He married Scott’s granddaughter, Charlotte. Only their first child, Mary Monica, survived. In 1874 she married the Honourable Joseph Constable Maxwell who also assumed the name Scott. Their eldest son, Sir Walter Maxwell Scott died 3 April 1954.
Hosmer, Harriet Goodhue (1830–1908) American sculptor. She was a friend of Fanny Kemble (q.v.) from her schooldays. In 1852 she went to Rome to study with John Gibson. One of her most famous productions was her Puck, which she thought would be commercial and it was indeed widely reproduced. She began to receive public commissions throughout Europe. When her Ze-nobia was purchased for Dublin, she sued the Art Journal and Queen for their suggestions that it had been the work of Gibson: they retracted. Her Roman circle included the Brownings (q.v.). She died in England of influenza. On her death it was remarked, ‘She has not creative power, but has acquired no small degree of executive skill and force’, a remark oddly like Mary Somerville’s estimate of her own abilities (p. 145).
Huggins, Sir William (1824–1910) British astronomer, knighted for his services to science in 1897. It was his application of spectroscopy to astronomy that enabled him to discover that the stars consist of the same elements as those found on Earth. He also discovered the red shift in the lines of a star’s spectrum, which was used in 1929 by Edward Hubble as the basis of the theory that the universe is expanding.
Humboldt, Alexander von (1769–1859) scientist and explorer. He travelled in Central and South America and in central Asia, collecting material of great importance for life sciences. In his monumental work Kosmos (five vols) (1845–62), he laid out his view of the entire universe. Active until the end, he died while still writing the fifth volume of Kosmos.
Hume, David (1711–76) philosopher and historian born in Edinburgh. In 1739 he published his Treatise of Human Nature and in 1748 his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. His History of England (1754–62) was written while he was librarian of the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh and was enormously influential, a bestseller of its time.
Irving, Washington (1783–1859) American writer. Born in New York, the son of an Englishman, he wrote a humorous history of New York (1809). He was attached to the American legation in Spain (1826), secretary of legation in London (1829) and minister in Spain (1842). He wrote in a number of different genres and his greatest work is probably his Life of George Washington (1855–59). But he is now chiefly remembered for his tales in The Sketch-Book, which include ‘Rip van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. He was the first American writer to be truly internationally celebrated.
Ivory, Sir James (1765–1842; FRS 1815) mathematician, who pursued French analytical methods and worked on refraction. He was Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military College at Marlow (1805–19); he was awarded two gold medals, the Copley (1814) and the Royal (1826). He also received a pension and a knighthood. But his correspondence with Mary Somerville reveals that he was distressed by the persistent denigration of his work as impractical (EP, pp.113–14).
Jameson, Robert (1774–1854; FRS 1826) mineralogist and follower of Werner (q.v.). He studied at Edinburgh University and became Professor of Natural History there (1804–05). In 1813, William Somerville joined Jameson’s Wernerian Society, founded in 1808. With Brewster (q.v.), Jameson established the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1819). He published Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles in 1800 (EP, 13–14, 16).
Jeffrey, Francis, Lord (1773–1850). He was educated at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities and became a judge and an MP. His political sympathies were Whig and with Sydney Smith and Henry Brougham he founded the Edinburgh Review in 1802, being editor until 1829. As a critic, Jeffrey approved of Byron, Scott and Keats but is known as the scourge of Wordsworth and the Lake Poets – his review of Wordsworth’s ‘The Excursion’ famously begins ‘This will never do.’ He was also severe, although less so, on Joanna Baillie.
Johnston, (Alexander) Keith (1804–71) geographer. Johnston was educated in Edinburgh and gained the Victoria medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His Dictionary of Geography was published in 1850. He also travelled in Palestine.
Kater, Captain Henry and Mrs (Mary Frances Reeves) (1777–1835; FRS 1814). Kater was a man of science who was originally an army officer. Kater prepared standard measures for the Russian government and made mainly pendulum and telescopic experiments. He was Copley medallist in 1817. Mrs Kater assisted her husband with his calculations. Wollaston (q.v.) and Thomas Young (q.v.) befriended Kater when he moved to London and made sure that he took an active part in the management of the Royal Society (EP, 35, 41).
Kean, Edmund (c.1787–1833) actor. Kean made his name as Shylock in the 1814 Merchant of Venice; other famous Shakespearean roles were Richard III, Macbeth, and Iago in Othello, all of which suited his large passionate style. He also played Barabas in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, as well as numerous other tragic roles, including the title role in Joanna Baillie’s De Monfort.
Kemble, Charles (1775–1854) actor, younger brother of Sarah Siddons (q.v.) and John Kemble (q.v.). He was a leading actor for twenty-five years, most successful in comedy and romance. His main success in tragedy was as Romeo.
Kemble, Frances Ann (Fanny) (1809–93) actress and memoirist. Fanny Kemble was the daughter of the actor Charles Kemble (1775–1854), who managed Covent Garden Theatre from 1822. Her successful début at Covent Garden in 1829 was made to save her father from bankruptcy She toured several times in the USA, where she married Pierce Mease Butler, a Philadelphia plantation owner. The marriage was difficult in any case but became impossible when Fanny Kemble became fully aware of her husband’s involvement in slavery and in some of its worst aspects. Her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation appeared in 1863. She obtained a divorce in 1849 and in 1853 paid a second visit to Italy. She published a volume of Poems (1844), and Records of Later Life in 1822. In Italy she was intimate with Mary Somerville and her daughters.
Kemble, John Philip (1757–1823) actor, elder brother of Charles Kemble and Mrs Siddons. He played a number of Shakespearean roles – Romeo, Iago, Prospero, etc. – with huge success. John Kemble played De Monfort and Mrs Siddons played his sister, Jane de Monfort in the first performance of Joanna Baillie’s De Monfort at Drury Lane on 29 April 1800. It had a total of eight performances in this run.
Kent, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duchess of Kent (1786–1861) mother of Queen Victoria who, in 1837, succeeded to her uncle, William IV, whose two legitimate daughters died in infancy.
Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert (1824–87) German physicist, appointed professor at Heidelberg University, where he worked with Bunsen (q.v.) to invent the technique of spectroscopy. Working alone, investigating the solar spectrum, he discovered several elements in the sun. He also worked on thermal radiation and on networks of electrical wires, laying down Kirchoff’s laws.
Kosloffsky (Koslofski), Petr Borisovich, Prince (1783–1840). Wrote an elementary book on conic sections for ‘the little Imperial Majesty of Russia’, later Tsar Alexander II. Koslofski’s private life was somewhat scandalous but Mary Somerville, here faithful to her refusal of private lives, does not mention it (EP, 113). He also published Lettres au Duc de Broglie sur les prisonniers de Vincennes, 1830.
Lablache, Luigi (1794–1858) Italian bass of French and Irish descent. He sang all over Europe and when in England (1836–37), acted as singing master to Princess Victoria. Schubert dedicated his three Italian songs to him.
Lacroix, Sylvestre François (1765–1843) French mathematician. Lacroix was, above all, a great teacher, and his many Traités élémentaires formed generations of mathematicians. Notable are his two volumes of 1797–98, Traité du calcul différential et du calcul intégral.
Lafayette, General Marie Joseph Gilbert Motier, Marquis de (1757–1834) French general and politician. His early military career was principally spent fighting against the British during the American War of Independence. He was prominent in the early stages of the French Revolution: in 1789 as representative of the States General he presented the Declaration of the Rights of Man and became commander of the new National Guard after the storming of the Bastille. By 1792, however, he was threatened by the rising power of Robespierre and gave himself up to Austria. Lafayette never deserted the liberal cause and, in 1830, he was prominent again in the July revolution which overthrew Charles X (q.v.).
Lagrange, Joseph Louis, Comte de (1736–1813) mathematician and astronomer. Although of French parentage, Lagrange was born in Italy. His Mécanique analy-tique was published in 1788: it develops mechanics al-gebraically and solves problems by the application of general equations. He worked with Laplace on planetary perturbations. He also headed the commission that produced the metric system of units in 1795.
Lansdowne, Sir Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquis of Lansdowne (1780–1863) politician. He supported the abolition of the slave trade and other liberal measures. A moderate Whig, he held various offices in the course of his political life.
Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de (1749–1827) French mathematician and astronomer. His first paper to appear in print was on the integral calculus. He worked with Lagrange (q.v.) on the small gravitational forces that planets exert on each other. The effects of this were called perturbations. The pair deduced that perturbations cause small oscillations in the planets’ motions but no permanent movement and in this way they demonstrated the stability of the solar system. Laplace published the results, without due recognition of Lagrange, as the five-volume Mécanique céleste (1799–1825), translated by Mary Somerville as Mechanism of the Heavens and published in 1831. Laplace is credited with the witticism that only two women ever understood his work: Mary Greig and Mary Somerville. This later was elaborated to three by the addition of Mary Fairfax.
Larrey, Dominique-Jean, Baron (1766–1842) French military surgeon in the service of Napoleon. Larrey introduced field hospitals, ambulance services and first-aid practices to the battlefield. After the fall of Napoleon his medical reputation saved him from disgrace. In 1812, he gave the first description of trench foot. The first draft of the autobiography has a comment that he ‘had the reputation of having poisoned at his master’s command the sick and wounded soldiers before the flight from St Jean d’Acre’ [1D, 89]. His record seems to speak against this possibility and it was no doubt one of the wise omissions from the printed text.
Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1743–94) French chemist. Born into an aristocratic family, he also secured a fortune by investments in a private company that collected government taxes. He used his wealth to build a laboratory, where he discovered (1778) that air is a mixture of two gases and he called the gases oxygen and nitrogen. He went on to discover the role of oxygen in combustion and the law of conservation of mass. He devised the modern method of naming compounds. During the French Revolution, Lavoisier was tried and condemned to the guillotine for his role in the tax-collecting company.
Leslie, Sir John (1766–1832) mathematician and natural philosopher. He was educated at St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities, becoming Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh in 1805, and of Natural Philosophy in 1819. He was knighted in 1832.
Leverrier, Urbain Jean Joseph (1811–77) French astronomer. Independently of John Couch Adams (q.v.), he predicted the existence of Neptune after investigating anomalies in the orbit of Uranus. The planet was first observed by the German astronomer Johann Galle in 1846, using Leverrier’s information.
Lindsay, Lady Charlotte (d.1849) daughter of the 2nd Earl of Guildford and widow of Lieutenant-Colonel, the Honorable John Lindsay. Lady Charlotte was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline (see ‘Biographical Index’, Maria Edgeworth, Letters from England, ed. Colvin, 1971).
Lister, Lady Theresa (afterwards Lewis) (1803–65) editor of Mary Berry’s memoirs as Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry (1865). Her other productions include The Semi-Detached House, by the Hon. Emily Eden, edited by Lady Theresa Lewis, and the dramatisation of the stories ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Cinderella’ for juvenile performers in 1844.
Liston, John (1776?–1846) actor. He played comic parts at the Haymarket Theatre (1805), Covent Garden (1808–22), and Drury Lane (1823). He retired in 1837. His parts include Polonius, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Bottom.
Livingstone, David (1813–73) Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa. Livingstone was self-educated and embarked for the Cape of Good Hope in 1840. He found Lake Ngami in 1849 and the Zambesi in 1851, publishing Missionary Travels in Africa in 1857 and The Zambesi and Its Tributaries in 1865. On an expedition to find the source of the Nile he was believed to have been lost. Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) was sent by Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald, to find David Livingstone. He found him at Ujiji and published an account of his travels in How I Found Livingstone. Livingstone died in Ilala and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Livingstone’s horror of the slave trade was such that he refused to travel under the protection of the Arab traders.
Lockhart, John Gibson (1794–1854). The Quarterly Review, founded in 1809 as a Tory rival to The Edinburgh Review, was promoted by Scott and his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart. Lockhart was editor from 1825 to 1853. He was also celebrated as a novelist and critic but is perhaps best remembered for his controversial biography (1837–38) of his father-in-law, Scott.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807–82) American poet. He was born in Maine and, in 1836, became Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard. He travelled widely in Europe before taking up his professorship. He was an enormously popular poet with his narrative poems and is still well known as the author of ‘The Song of Hiawatha’ (1855).
Louis, Joseph-Dominique, Baron (1755–1837) French statesman. He fled to England on the arrest of the fleeing Louis XVI at Varennes. At the Restoration he returned to various financial positions under succeeding régimes. He is supposed to have said, ‘Give me good politics and I will give you good finances’ (Faites-moi de la bonne politique et je vous ferai de bonnes finances).
Louis I, King of Bavaria (1786–1868). Louis had strong artistic tendencies: he was a patron of art and beautified his capital, Munich. His fascination for the Spanish dancer, Lola Montez, and political troubles in the country led him to abdicate in 1848 in favour of his son.
Lovelace, Ada Augusta Byron King, Lady Lovelace (1815–52) the daughter of Byron and his wife Annabella Milbanke. Annabella left Byron when Ada was only a month old. Her mother, who had herself taken lessons in mathematics, encouraged Ada Byron’s mathematical bent. Lady Byron became acquainted with the Somervilles in the early 1830s and Ada became friendly with the Somerville daughters. The families remained friendly and Mary Somerville helped to direct Ada’s studies. Ada’s husband William Lovelace had been at Cambridge with Woronzow Greig and this strengthened the friendship between the families. After the Somervilles left Britain, Ada Lovelace was advised by De Morgan (q.v.) and Charles Babbage (q.v.). De Morgan said that Ada had more mathematical genius than Mary Somerville but unfortunately she lacked her application (EP, 150). She helped Babbage with his calculating machine. She translated a paper by General Menabrea (q.v.). She died in great pain from uterine cancer with disturbing, but never quite proved, stories of gambling debts hanging over her.
Lowry, Joseph Wilson (1762–1824) engraver, whose wife instructed Mary Somerville in mineralogy. He studied in the Royal Academy schools. He was best known as an engraver of architecture and mechanism and devised special instruments for the work. He was first to use diamond points for ruling in steel.
Lubbock, Sir John William (1803–65; FRS 1829) mathematician, who was at Trinity with Woronzow Greig. Treasurer of the Royal Society from 1830–35 and 1838–45. He and Mary Somerville shared an involvement with Laplace. While Mary Somerville was engaged in The Mechanism of the Heavens Lubbock had begun to apply Laplace’s probability theory to annuities, lunar theory and study of the tides. Mary Somerville and Lubbock read each other’s work (EP, 65, 108–9).
Lyell, Sir Charles (1797–1875) traveller and geologist. His works include The Principles of Geology (1830–3), The Elements of Geology (1838) and, following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, The Antiquity of Man (1863). Lyell was Professor of Geology at King’s College, London (1831–33), and President of the Geological Society (1835–36 and 1849–50). He lectured in the US in 1841 and 1852. Lyell is mainly responsible for the view that the Earth was formed by slow continual processes and is much older than had been believed. He married Miss Mary Horner, daughter of Leonard Horner, who was a member of the Geological Society. Mary Horner Lyell was a devoted and capable wife. She travelled with her husband and assisted him in his researches, particularly by acting as his scribe when his sight became very bad. They were both also lovers of literature and had many literary friendships.
Macaulay, Thomas Babbington, 1st Baron (1800–59) historian, politician, man of letters. Macaulay is best known for his History of England in five volumes (1849–61), the last volume published posthumously, edited by his sister Lady Trevelyan. He was liberal MP for Calne in 1830 and for Leeds in 1831, and a member of the Supreme Council of India (1834–38).
Macdonald, Jacques-Etienne-Joseph-Alexandre, Duc de Tarante (1765–1840) Marshall of France (1765–1840). Originally of a Scottish family, he came to France with the Stuarts. He was a great soldier and tried with some success to maintain his independence of political régimes.
Macdonald, Lawrence (1799–1878) Scottish sculptor. He was born in Perthshire and moved to Edinburgh to work as an ornamental sculptor. In 1822 he went to Rome, where, the following year, he was one of the founders of the British Academy of the Arts in Rome. He returned to work in Edinburgh from 1827, returning to Rome in 1832. He was a member of the Scottish Academy and his busts include Scott, Fanny Kemble (q.v.) and J. G. Lockhart (q.v.). His studio was said to be filled with the ‘peerage done into marble, a plaster gallery of rank and fashion’.
Mackintosh, Sir James (1765–1832; FRS 1813) (EP, 45) philosopher and statesman. Educated in Aberdeen and studied medicine in Edinburgh. He went to London in 1788. He published Vindicae gallicae in 1791, in answer to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). He was judge in the Vice-Admiralty Court in Bombay from 1806–11 and Commissioner of the Board of Control in 1830.
Maclane, Miss Clephane (possibly Anna Jane Maclean Clephane) second daughter of Mrs Maclean Clephane of Torloisk. Scott assisted the family in business matters: The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed. W. E. K. Anderson (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1998), p. 99.
Macpherson, Samuel Charters (1806–60) political agent in India. Macpherson was educated at Edinburgh University and Trinity College, Cambridge. In India he was the governor-general’s agent for the suppression of human sacrifice and female infanticide among the Khonds in Orissa. Orissa is still a most undeveloped part of the country. He died in India.
Macready, William Charles (1793–1873) actor-man-ager, distinguished as a tragedian and famous for his Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth. He tried to be more faithful to Shakespeare’s text than was customary at the time. Edmund Kean was his principal rival.
Majendie or Magendie, François (1783–1855) French physiologist, who worked on the nervous system. He experimented on nutritional requirements and the effects of drugs on the body. It may be seen from these concerns, and from the fact that he was a vivisectionist and experimenter on animals, why Mary Somerville disliked and disapproved of him.
Malibran, Mme Maria Felicita Garcia (1808–36) celebrated soprano, born in Paris. She sang throughout Europe, but principally in Paris and London. The poet Alfred de Musset wrote ‘Stances à la Malibran’ in tribute to her.
Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766–1834). He became curate of Albury in Surrey after a brilliant career at Cambridge. In 1798 he published An Essay on the Principle of Population, partly as a reply to Godwin’s radical Political Justice of 1793, in which he argued that since population would soon increase beyond the possibility of subsistence, poverty, disease, starvation and disaster were necessary checks. In 1803, recognising what was offensive in such a position, he argued that the regulation of human greed and sexuality might provide the necessary checks. Liberal thinkers, like Godwin, Cobbett and Hazlitt, attacked Malthus’s work but it remained influential throughout the 19th century.
Marcello, Benedetto (1686–1739) Italian composer of operas, oratorios, etc.
Marcet, Alexander John Gaspard (1770–1822; FRS 1815) physician and chemist. A Swiss, he fled from Geneva in 1794 to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, graduating in 1799. He married Jane Haldimand, became a naturalised British citizen and, by 1803, was physician and chemical lecturer at Guy’s Hospital. He was an able experimentalist, one of the founders of the Medical and Chirurgical Society (1805), and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815. He and Wollaston (q.v.) were good friends (EP, 12).
Marcet, Jane Haldimand (1769–1858) popularising science writer. Jane Haldimand was the daughter of a Swiss banker and his English wife. After her marriage to Alexander Marcet (q.v.) in 1799, her husband persuaded her to try her hand at a simple book on chemistry written in a way that would make it accessible to the young women who attended Sir Humphry Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution. Her textbook, Conversations on Chemistry, published anonymously in 1806, gained a wider readership than this and was the book that awakened Michael Faraday’s (q.v.) interest in the subject. Jane Marcet followed this success with a series of ‘Conversations’ on various subjects. She did not pretend to professional scientific knowledge but was well regarded in intellectual circles because she was an intelligent woman and a good hostess. She became a good friend of Mary Somerville (EP, 12–13).
Marmont, (Auguste-Frédéric-Louis-) Viesse de, Duc de Raguse (1774–1852) Marshal of France. He wrote self-aggrandising memoirs, described as a monument to pride.
Mars, Mademoiselle (Anne-Françoise-Hippolyte) (1779–1847) French actress, who appeared from childhood, at her best in Molière’s comedies. Her last appearance in 1841 was as Elmire in Molière’s Tartuffe.
Martineau, Harriet (1802–76) novelist, essayist and educationalist. She began to go deaf in her teens and so, despite a good Unitarian education, she could not teach. When she was still in her early 20s, her father died, and her fiancé, a Unitarian minister, went mad. She wrote in order to look after the rest of her family and came to make more by her pen than any previous woman writer. When she toured America she was outspoken against slavery and for women’s rights.
Maskelyne, Nevil (1732–1811; FRS 1758) astronomer. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1761 he was sent by the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus at St Helena; although he was unsuccessful in this, he made other useful observations. He became Astronomer Royal in 1765 and was Copley medallist in 1775.
Massa, Nicolas-François-Sylvestre Régnier, Comte de Gronan (afterwards duc de Massa) (1783–1851) minor statesman. He attached himself to the Bourbons in 1815 but never played a major role.
Maury, Matthew Fontaine (1806–73) US naval captain. For his pioneering work in oceanography, he was given the appellation ‘the Pathfinder of the Seas’.
Mazzini, Giuseppe (1805–72) leader of the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian Unification. For much of his life, he lived in exile in England, France and Switzerland. He planned a rising in Piedmont and an invasion of Savoy in the 1830s but both were unsuccessful. Mazzini returned to Italy for the 1848 revolutions in Piedmont, Milan, Tuscany and Rome. Mazzini was a republican and so, although Italy became a unified kingdomin 1861, his ideal republic never was achieved.
Melbourne, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848) Whig Prime Minister in 1834 and 1835–41. He was an influence on the young Queen Victoria. His private life had been somewhat scandalous: in 1805 he had married Lady Caroline Ponsonby, who had an affair with Byron (1812–13). After he and his disturbed wife formally separated, he was named in two divorce suits, one of which also involved the Sheridan sister (q.v.) Caroline Norton.
Menabrea, Luigi Federico, Conte (1809–96) general, politician and scientist. Devoted throughout his life to physics and mathematics, he was Professor of Mechanics at the military academy, Turin, and ambassador in London (1876–82) and Paris (1882–92).
Mezzofanti, Giuseppe Caspar (1774–1849). Italian cardinal and linguist. He was ordained in 1774 and in the same year became Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at the University of Bologna. He had the peculiar talent of speaking 50 to 60 languages from the most widely separated families but was not otherwise an intellectual.
Mill, John Stuart (1806–73) a great thinker in a number of different areas. Following in the tradition of Adam Smith and Malthus (q.v.), he published Principles of Political Economy (1848). Working within the Lockean empirical tradition, Mill published Utilitarianism, for which he is popularly famous, in 1859. Mill tried to combine a concern for the individual with the principles of early soci-alism. His importance for Mary Somerville was as an advocate of women’s rights. His The Subjection of Women (1869) famously stated that if women lived in another country from men they would have a ‘literature of their own’. He too wrote an Autobiography, which appeared in 1873, the same year as Mary Somerville’s Recollections.
Miller, Hugh (1802–56) a stonemason to trade. Hugh Miller was one of the great 19th-century geologists. He published The Old Red Sandstone (1847), Footprints of the Creator (1847), and an autobiography, My Schools and Schoolmasters (1854). Miller committed suicide, some believe because he could not reconcile his religious beliefs with his geological knowledge, others simply cite depression brought on by overwork. The Testimony of the Rocks was published in 1857.
Milman, Henry Hart (1791–1868). He was educated at Eton and Oxford. He took orders but subsequently became Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1821–31) and then Dean of St Paul’s in 1849. He wrote plays, one of which, Fazio, was reasonably successful on the stage, but his enduring work is his historical writing, including The History of the Jews (1830) and The History of Latin Christianity (1854–55).
Minghetti, Marco (1818–86) Italian statesman. Minghetti joined the Piedmont-Sardinian army in 1848 to fight the Austrians. In 1859 Cavour appointed him secretary-general of the Piedmontese foreign office. He finally became Prime Minister of a united Italy in 1863 and again in 1873, when his period of office was characterised by balanced budgets but somewhat arbitrary treatment of the Opposition.
Miniscalchi, Count Erizzo (1810–1875) geographer and philologist.
Minto, Earl of see Elliot.
Mitford, Mary Russell (1787–1855). Our Village sketches of rural life, was begun in The Lady’s Magazine (1819) and published separately in 1824–32. She also published a novel, plays and, in 1852, Recollections of a Literary Life.
Mocenigi one of the most renowned patrician families of the Venetian Republic, producing military leaders, churchmen, scholars, diplomats and statesmen, including seven doges.
Montalembert, Charles-(Forbes-René), Comte de (1810–70) orator, politician and historian. Born in London during the exile of his father, he became a leader in the struggle against absolutism in Church and State in France. He began his career with the journal L’Avenir, helped found a Roman Catholic school in 1831, opposing the state monopoly. The school was closed by the police but, at the same time, his insistence that the Catholic Church should embrace civil and religious liberty brought him into conflict with Rome. His motto was ‘a free Church in a free State’.
Moore, Thomas (1779–1852) Irish poet born in Dublin. Moore was a grocer’s son. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and entered at the Middle Temple. Moore was appointed Admiralty registrar in Bermuda in 1803; he left a deputy in charge and returned to London. When his deputy decamped with the official funds, Moore was declared bankrupt and lived in Europe until his debts were discharged in 1822. He became, in a sense, the national poet of Ireland, or at least its national lyricist. His range of writing was considerable: poetry, fiction, biography, but he still probably remains most famous as the burner of his friend Byron’s Memoirs. It is likely that Moore felt that he had no choice, given the representations of Lady Byron (q.v.) and the advice of Hobhouse (q.v.).
More, Hannah (1745–1833) didactic writer. More was educated at her sisters’ boarding school in Bristol where she learned Italian, Spanish and Latin. She went to London in 1774 and became a member of various intellectual circles, joining Elizabeth Montagu as one of the ‘Blue Stocking’ circle. Her didactic writing covered several genres, from plays to tracts, and she was a brilliant letter writer.
Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey, 1st Baronet (1792–1871; FRS 1826). Originally an army officer, Murchison retired from the army to pass his time in travel and study. He ultimately became a celebrated geologist, notably attempting to unravel the complicated structure of the Scottish Highlands.
Murray, John (1778–1843) publisher, the second John Murray of the celebrated house. He started the Quarterly Review in 1809. He published Byron and Jane Austen among many others. He was succeeded by his son John Murray (1808–92), who published the works of Milman (q.v.) and Darwin (q.v.), as well as Mary Somerville’s later works.
Naldi, Giuseppe (1770–1820) Italian bass singer, who made his début in Milan in 1789 and subsequently played in a number of Italian cities. His first appearance in London was in 1806 and he went on to play twelve seasons there: he was Figaro in the first performance of The Barber of Seville in 1818. The tragic accident which killed him actually occurred at the house of his friend, the tenor Manuel Garcia.
Napoleon III (1808–73) nephew of Napoleon. Louis Na poleon was Emperor of the French from 1852–73. After the defeat of the Second Empire in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), he and his wife, the Empress Eugénie, went into exile in England.
Nasmyth, Alexander (1758–1840) painter of portraits and landscapes. Born in Edinburgh, the son of an architect, Nasmyth studied in London under Allan Ramsay, and also worked in Italy. On returning to Edinburgh he turned to portrait painting, producing perhaps the most famous image of Burns, with whom he became friendly. He was always interested in science and designed the bow-and-string bridge used at Charing Cross and Birmingham Stations.
Nélaton, Auguste (1807–73) surgeon, celebrated for his skill. He attended Garibaldi (q.v.) after he was wounded at Aspromonte.
Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727) the great philosopher and mathematician. The first book of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which contained his laws of motion and expounded his idea of universal gravitation, was exhibited at the Royal Society in 1686 and the whole published in 1687. Newton was knighted in 1705. He became, like Mary Somerville’s friend, Sir John Herschel, Master of the Mint in 1699. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Nightingale, Florence (1820–1910) celebrated hospital reformer, best known as ‘The Lady with the Lamp’, the name given to her by her patients in the hospital in Scutari during the Crimean War (1853–56). After the war, she agitated for and got improved living conditions in the army. She organised a subscription, the Nightingale Fund, with which she established the Nightingale School for Nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital, London in 1860. In 1907 she was the first woman to be awarded the OM (Order of Merit).
Normanby, Sir Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquis of Normanby and 2nd Earl of Mulgrave (1797–1863) politician and diplomat. He became MP for Scarborough in 1818 and supported parliamentary reform. He was Governor of Jamaica in 1832–34 and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1835, where he annoyed Pro-testants by his friendship with Catholic leaders, such as O’Connell. Again, as ambassador in Paris (1846–53) and minister in Florence (1854–58), he tended to involve himself too much in the politics of the foreign states.
Northesk, William Carnegie, 7th Earl of Northesk (1771–1806) Admiral. He was imprisoned by the Nore mutineers (see p. 400 n. 28), fought at Trafalgar (1805) and was Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth (1827–30).
Novello, Clara Anastasia noted lyric singer. In 1843 she married Giovan Battista Gigliucci (1815–93), a statesman and supporter of Cavour.
O’Neill, Miss, Lady Becher a great tragic actress. She was lost to the stage when in 1829 she married William Wrixon Becher, MP for Mallow in 1819. Becher was created Baronet in 1831.
Opie, Amelia (1769–1853) novelist and poet, wife of John Opie, the painter. Her novel Adeline Mowbray (1804) was suggested by the story of Mary Wollstonecraft. She became a Quaker under the influence of Hudson Gurney (q.v.) and family. She was a friend of Sydney Smith (q.v.) and Madame de Staël (q.v.).
Oswald, Elizabeth (1790–1860) second wife of Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin (q.v.). Mary Somerville is right that she was a classical scholar and that she would apparently have liked to study mathematics, but wrong about her age. She was ten years younger than Mary Somerville and may have acquired her desire to learn mathematics from the older girl.
Panceri, Paolo (1833–77) doctor and zoologist. He was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Naples from 1866.
Pantaleone, Diomede (1810–85) doctor and politician. An intimate of Cavour, Pantaleone treated a number of English and American tourists.
Parry, Sir William Edward (1790–1855) navigator and explorer. He made three unsuccessful journeys in search of the Northwest Passage, the sea route along the coast of America which gives access from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. In 1827 he tried to reach the North Pole by sledge from Spitsbergen.
Pasta, Giudetta (Maria Constanza) (née Negri) (1797–1865) soprano with remarkable range and expressive-ness. She made her début in 1815, sang Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello in Paris in 1821 and various Rossini roles in London in 1821. In 1850 she retired to a villa on Lake Como to teach.
Peacock, George, Professor, Dean of Ely (1791–1858; FRS 1818) mathematician and Dean of Ely (1839–58). Peacock was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1814). With Whewell (q.v.) he prescribed Mary Somerville’s Mechanism of the Heavens for their advanced mathematics students at Cambridge (EP). Together with Herschel (q.v.) and Babbage (q.v.) he introduced modern analytical methods and differential notation into the mathematical course at Cambridge. In Ely he persuaded the chapter to undertake the complete restoration of the cathedral under Sir Gilbert Scott, the architect of St Pancras Station and Glasgow University.
Peel, Sir Robert (1788–1850) Conservative Prime Minister (1834–35) and (1841–61). Peel is remembered as a moderniser and reformer. The question of Civil List pensions for scientists became something of a political matter with Tories apparently anxious to be as friendly to science and literature as the Whigs had been. A full account is given in EP, chapter 8, pp.151–162.
Peirce, Benjamin (1809–80) US mathematician and astronomer. He was born in Salem, Mass., where he attended Salem Private Grammar School with Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, son of Nathaniel Bowditch (q.v.). From there he proceeded to Harvard, becoming Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy there (1833–42). He established Harvard as the most important centre for mathematics and astronomy in the USA. He was elected FRS (foreign member) in 1852.
Pentland, Joseph Barclay (1797–1873) traveller. ‘Joseph Barclay Pentland, Consul-General in Bolivia (1836–39) died in London, July, 1873. He first discovered that Illimani and Sorata (not Chimborazo) were the highest mountains in America. (See Humboldt’s Kosmos)’: note in original edition of Personal Recollections.
Percy, Charles, Lord son of Lord Algernon Percy, Earl of Beverley and brother of Lady Susan Percy (q.v.). He married Anne, heiress of Guy’s Cliff or Guycliffe, Warwickshire.
Percy, Lady Susan one of the three daughters of Lord Algernon Percy, Earl of Beverley. She died unmarried in 1847.
Peruzzi a very old Italian family of bankers from medieval times.
Phillips, John (1800–74; FRS 1834) geologist. He was professor at Trinity College, Dublin (1844–53), keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1854–70). He published over 100 papers on scientific subjects, as well as more extended works on geology (EP, 113).
Pianciani, Padre (1784–1862) possibly the Jesuit, man of letters and naturalist.
Pillans, James (1778–1864) rector of the High School of Edinburgh from 1810 to 1820. He went on to be Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University (1820–63). Byron, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, has the following verses:
Smug Sydney too thy bitter page shall seek, And classic Hallam, much renowned for Greek; Scott may perchance his name and influence lend, And paltry Pillans shall traduce his friend. (Ll. 512–15)
The lines are more witty than just.
Pius VII, Gregorio Barnaba Chiaramenti (1740–1823) Pope from 1800–23. He tried but failed to preserve papal privileges in the face of Napoleon’s demands. He was forced in 1804 to consecrate Napoleon Emperor. In 1809 he was taken prisoner after the French conquest and forced to make concessions to the secular power in the Concordat of Fontainebleau (1813). After the fall of Napoleon, Pius was able to negotiate agreements with a number of the victorious powers and to achieve the restoration of the papal estates.
Pius IX, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Feretti (1792–1878). Elected in 1846, Pius IX was a liberalising pope, allowing freedom of the press and establishing a civic guard. This encouraged the United Italy movement and worried the Austrians. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (q.v.) expressed enthusiasm for him in Casa Guidi Windows, but Pius IX never became the leader that she hoped for. Nonno is the familiar term for grandfather and so his nickname puns on ‘ninth’ and ‘grandpa’.
Plana, Giovanni Antonio Amedeo, Baron (1781–1864; FRS 1827) French mathematician and astronomer. He was taught by Lagrange (q.v.) and his early career was much influenced by political events in France and elsewhere in Europe during the Napoleonic Empire. He ended up in a Chair of Astronomy at the University of Turin. His most famous work in astronomy relates to the motion or perturbations of the moon. He did a great deal to improve the international reputation of Italian science. He maintained useful relationships with Charles Babbage (q.v.).
Playfair, John (1748–1819; FRS 1807). Son of the minister of Benvie, near Dundee, Playfair was educated at St Andrews University, where he studied divinity. After some time in the Church, during which he met Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, he worked as tutor to the sons of Ferguson of Raith, before becoming Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University in 1785. He was also a noted geologist. His work, particularly his Outlines of Natural Philosophy, two of the projected three volumes of which were completed before his death, influenced Mary Somerville in the writing of her second book, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834). Playfair lived in Burntisland from 1818. Lord Coburn confirms Mary Somerville’s estimate of Playfair’s charm: ‘He was admired by allmen, and beloved by all women.’
Plücker Julius (1801–68) German mathematician and physicist. His work suggested the far-reaching principle of duality, which states the equivalence of certain related types of theorems. He worked in Heidelberg, Berlin and Paris. In 1829 he became extraordinary Professor at the University of Bonn, Professor of Mathematics at Bonn in 1836 and of Physics in 1847.
Poinsot, Louis (1777–1859) French mathematician. Although Poinsot had a rather chequered early career, he published a number of works on geometry, mechanics and statistics while he was a schoolteacher of mathematics. These gained him a reputation and by 1816 he was admissions examiner at the École Polytechnique. He did important research in geometry, statics and dy-namics, invented geometrical mechanics and worked on number theory. He did much for the status of geometry by creating a Chair of Advanced Geometry at the Sorbonne in 1846. He was involved in both the politics of education and of the State, in which he was moderately liberal in his political opinions.
Poisson, Siméon Denis (1781–1840) French mathematician. He became professor at the E Â cole Polytechnique in 1806. He made important contributions to the theory of electricity, magnetism and mechanics and his mathematical discoveries are still of practical use to engineers.
Pond, John (1767–1836; FRS 1802) Astronomer Royal before Airy. He translated Laplace’s Système du Monde in two volumes in 1809. In 1833 he produced a catalogue of more than 1113 stars and he reformed the National Observatory by procuring modern equipment for it.
Pontécoulant, Philippe Gustave le Doulcet (1795–1874; FRS 1833). He turned from soldiering to mathematics and astronomy. Elizabeth Patterson quotes a letter from Mary Somerville to her husband which describes him as ‘agreeable and gentlemanlike’ and talking amusingly of military matters (EP, p. 101).
Pottinger, Sir Henry, 1st Baronet (1789–1856) soldier and diplomat. Pottinger served in the Indian Army during the Mahratta War and from 1836–40 was political agent in Sind. Made a Baronet in 1840, he proceeded as envoy to China (1842), as first British Governor of Hong Kong (1843). He was Governor of the Cape Province (1846–47) and Madras (1847). His last place was unsuccessful and he retired in 1854.
Pozzo di Borgo, Count Russian ambassador in Paris. Fenimore Cooper describes him as follows: ‘handsome, good size, fine dark eye’ (Gleanings in Europe, p. 87). He was Corsican by birth and perhaps distantly related to Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1827 he held a ball in Paris at which 1500 people are said to have been present.
Prévost, Pierre (1751–1834; FRS 1806) Genevese savant, married to Alexander Marcet’s sister. Mary Somerville’s recognition by learned societies in Geneva was in part due to his sponsorship of her.
Prony, (Gaspard-François-Clair-Marie) Riche, Baron de (1775–1839) leading member of the French scientific establishment (EP, p. 100). He was an engineer, mathematician and physicist. In 1798 he was appointed Inspector General and Director of L’É cole des ponts et chaussées and he continued to serve the Restoration régime.
Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques (1796–1874) Bel-gian mathematician, astronomer, statistician and sociologist, known for the application of statistics and the theory of probability to social phenomena. He studied under Laplace, and founded and directed the Royal Observatory, Brussels (1828). His concept of l’homme moyen or ‘average man’ and his propensity theory (in which various age groups or social groups are believed to display pro-pensities to kinds of behaviour) were controversial.
Radetzky, Josef, Count of Radetz (1766–1853) Austrian soldier, originally from a Hungarian family. Radetzky was conspicuous for his bravery in the Napoleonic Wars. He tried unsuccessfully to reform the Austrian Army but, in spite of this and his age, he won a remarkable victory against the Piedmontese at Novara in 1849. In the history of the Austrian Army, he was known as Vater (‘Father’) Radetzky and idolised by his soldiers.
Ricasoli, Bettino, Baron (1809–80) Italian statesman and scientist. He studied natural science and physics. Elected Italian deputy in 1861, he succeeded Cavour in the premiership. As premier he admitted Garibaldian volunteers to the regular army, revoked the decree of exile against Mazzini and attempted, but failed in, a reconciliation with the Vatican.
Rigny, Henri Gautheir, Comte de (1782–1835) Admiral and statesman. He fought in the Egyptian campaign during the Napoleonic Wars, but later commanded the fleet at the battle of Navarin in 1827 and was Minister of Marine under Louis-Philippe from 1831, when he effected improvements in the administration of the colonies.
Robertson, John (1712–76) His The elements of navigation; containing the theory and practice. With all the necessary tables. To which is added, a treatise of marine fortification had gone into four editions by 1780. He was first master of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth (1755–66).
Rogers, Samuel (1763–1855) poet and man of letters. The son of a banker and relatively wealthy, Rogers was able to pursue his love of literature without money worries. His ‘The Pleasures of Memory’ (1792) became popular and his verse tales, Italy (1822–28) obtained a certain degree of fame.
Ross, Sir James Clark (1800–62) explorer. He accompanied Sir William Parry (q.v.) on his Arctic expeditions and also his uncle, Sir John Ross, with the latter dis-covering the North Magnetic Pole in 1831. Later, 1839–43, he explored the Antarctic, where the Ross Sea is named after him.
Rosse, William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse (1800–67) Irish MP and astronomer. He constructed a large 72-inch reflecting telescope, which he used to study one of the blurred objects first listed by the French astronomer, Messier; this he named the Crab Nebula from its shape. In 1845 he discovered the first spiral galaxy.
Rossi, Count Pelligrino (1787–1848) the Pope’s chief minister, he was stabbed to death on 15 November on his arrival at the Roman Senate for the first sitting of the Chamber of Deputies. His assassins, members of the extreme revolutionary faction, escaped. A note in the original edition reads: ‘M. Pellegrino Rossi, afterwards Minister of France at Rome, then Prime Minister to Pius the Ninth; murdered in 1848 on the steps of the Chan-celleria, at Rome.’
Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio (1792–1868) composer. His father was a trumpeter and his mother an opera singer. He studied in Bologna, writing, before 1829, 36 successful operas, including the ever-popular The Barber of Seville, Cenerentola and William Tell. In his later life Rossini complained about the decline in vocal art and the need to seek expressive rather than imitative music; he insisted that delight should be the basis and aim of the musical art.
Rubini, Giovanni Battista (1794–1854). The son of a horn player, Rubini sang from the age of eight. His first professional engagement was in Pavia in 1814, after which he worked for ten years in Naples. From 1831–43 he alternated between London and Paris. He was neither good-looking nor a particularly good actor but had beautiful tone.
Rumford, Thompson, Benjamin, Count Rumford (1753–1814). The American-born scientist had a remarkably eventful life. He spied for the British during the War of Independence and so was forced to flee the country in 1776, leaving his wife behind. In England his research into ballistics and the theory of heat was again interrupted when he was suspected of spying for the French. In 1785 he left for Paris and then Bavaria, where he was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire by the Elector, Karl Theodore: Rumford, now Concord, was the name of his home town. In 1795 he returned to England, where, in 1799, he founded the Royal Institution, one of the first research centres for science.
Russell, John, 1st Earl (1792–1878). Russell had been home secretary under Lord Melbourne’s administration (1835–39) and himself became Whig (Liberal) Prime Minister (1846–52 and 1865–66). The increase in Mary Somerville’s pension probably had more to do with Melbourne than Russell but he was interested in science and was himself a member of the Royal Society.
Rutherfurds of Edgerton. The family was also known to Scott. See Burke’s Landed Gentry.
Sabine, General Sir Edward (1788–1883; FRS 1818) scientist and explorer. Sabine was astronomer to Arctic expeditions under Ross (q.v.) and Parry (q.v.) and Copley medallist in 1821. He worked with Herschel on longitude in 1825 and later on magnetic surveys of the British islands (1834–36 and 1861). His wife Elizabeth Juliana, Lady Sabine, translated Humboldt’s (q.v.) Kosmos (1846) and Aspects of Nature (1849).
Say, Jean-Baptiste (1767–1832) French economist. He held that in the law of markets, supply creates its own demand and, until the great Depression of the 1930s, Say’s law remained more or less the orthodoxy.
Scarlett, Sir James. According to Fenimore Cooper, who met him in London, Scarlett was a handsome, genteel, well-formed and well-dressed man of fashion. An English politician remarked, however, ‘Yes, yes; he is, good-looking and all that, but he is an impudent dog in the House; most of the lawyers are impudent dogs in the House’ (Gleanings in Europe, ‘France’, p. 181).
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1767–1845) German critic, poet and translator. His criticism, especially Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 3 vols. (1809–11), and his translation of Shakespeare made a great impression on the early romantic writers.
Schwartzenberg, Friedrich (Johann Josef Cölestin) Cardinal (1809–85) Austrian churchman, archbishop in Salzburg and Prague, and then cardinal.
Scoresby, William (1760–1829) Arctic navigator. He was employed in the Greenland whale fishery (1785–90); made a captain in 1790, he retired in 1823. In 1806 he reached 81° 30" Nand this was for a long time the highest latitude reached by any ship.
Sebright, Sir John Saunders, 7th Baronet (1767–1852) politician, who supported political and agricultural reform. Although Sebright gave up pure science, his animal-breeding activities and his studies of animal behaviour were useful to other scientists, such as Henri Milne Edwards (q.v.).
Sedgwick, Adam (1785–1873; FRS 1821) geologist. Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, he was president of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He was Wollaston medallist in 1851 and Copley medallist in 1863. He greatly improved the geological collection of Cambridge University.
Shee, Sir Martin Archer (1769–1850). Mary Somerville gets the name slightly wrong of the portrait painter, President of the Royal Academy (1830–50) and one of the founders of the British Institution. Shee also wrote in a minor way.
Sheridan, Helen Selina, Caroline and Jane Georgina. The Sheridans, known as the ‘Three Graces’, were the granddaughters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the play-wright and politician. The eldest, Helen Selina (1807–67), became Lady Dufferin, afterwards Countess of Gifford: she wrote songs and a play which was performed at the Haymarket Theatre in 1863; the second sister, Caroline (1808–77), was a writer who wrote for money when she separated from her husband, the Honourable George Norton, who deprived her of her children and tried to attach her earnings. When he died, she married Sir William Stirling Maxwell in 1877; the youngest and, by most accounts, the most beautiful, Jane Georgina, married the 12th Duke of Somerset and was Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament in 1839.
Siddons, Sarah (née Kemble) (1755–1831) the most celebrated actress of her generation. She made her London début at Drury Lane in 1782. She played the part of Jane de Monfort in Joanna Baillie’s De Monfort. Her son, the actor-manager, Henry Siddons, was responsible for the Edinburgh production of The Family Legend in 1810 at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh.
Silliman, Benjamin (1779–1864) professor at Yale University. He edited the American Journal of Science and the Arts, which supported Mary Somerville’s work.
Sismondi, J (ean)-C (harles)-L (éonard) Simonde de (1773–1842) Swiss economist (1809–18), who in many ways inspired the Risorgimento. As an economist, he began as a disciple of Adam Smith, but came to believe in regulation to assist the poor.
Smart, Admiral Sir Robert (1796–1874). Smart became a full admiral in 1869, having been knighted in 1865.
Smith, Sir (William) Sidney (1764–1840) Admiral. He was imprisoned for two years in the Temple during the wars with France; he escaped in 1798 and went off to defend Saint Jean d’Acre in May 1799, when he re-pulsed the French. He is described in the DNB as ‘theatrical and fond of self-laudation; but brave and energetic’, which accords with Mary Somerville’s remarks.
Smith, Rev. Sydney (1771–1845) divine, philosopher and wit, who, in 1802, founded The Edinburgh Review with Brougham and Jeffrey. He came to London in 1803 and lectured on Moral Philosophy at the Royal Institution. He held a number of livings and in 1831 was made a canon of St Paul’s. He was a famed conversationalist, noted for his wit and humour.
Smith, William (1756–1835) politician. The son of a London merchant, he was a noted abolitionist and emanci-pator. Always radical, he opposed the war with France. He was a friend of Rogers (q.v.) and Wilberforce.
Smyth, Admiral W.H. (1788–1865; FRS 1826). After an active naval career, he retired to Bedford, where he built himself an observatory. His wife acted as his assistant, as well as raising a large family. He took an active part in the Royal Society, the Geological Society and the Astronomical Society (EP, 143–4).
Somerville, Rev. Dr Thomas (1741–1830) Mary Somerville’s uncle and father-in-law. A note in the original edition of Personal Recollections explains that Martha Charters was his wife and that he was ‘… minister of Jedburgh… author of Histories of Queen Anne and of William and Mary, and also of an autobiography.’ In his Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott (5 vols) (London; Macmillan, 1900), Lockhart says, ‘Dr Somerville survived to a great age, preserving his faculties quite entire, and I have spent many pleasant hours under his hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter Scott. We heard him preach an excellent sermon when he was upwards of ninety-two, and at the Judges’ dinner afterwards he was among the gayest of the company,’ vol. 1, p.220. His autobiography, My Own Life and Times, was, according with his own directions, published 30 years after his death.
Somerville, Samuel brother of William Somerville. He died suddenly in London in 1823. See Gentleman’s Magazine, xciii, Part 1 (1823), 651 (quoted in EP, p.204).
Somerville, William (1771–1860; FRS 1818) Mary Somerville’s second husband. He was the eldest son of Thomas Somerville (q.v.) and Martha Charters. He entered the army as a surgeon and accompanied the expedition of Sir James Henry Craig (q.v.) to the Cape of Good Hope in 1795. In an interval from his African experiences, he took his MD from Aberdeen University in 1800. He travelled widely on government missions into the African interior, one of which is described in an appendix to John Barrow’s Voyage to Cochin China (1806). He also served with Craig in the Mediterranean and in Canada in 1807. After his marriage to Mary Fairfax Greig, he became, first, head of the army medical department in Edinburgh, and then one of the principal inspectors of the army medical board in London. In 1819 he was appointed Physician to Chelsea Hospital and continued in this post until forced by his health to retire to the continent in 1838. In 1840 he fully resigned his post and the Somervilles made their residence in various places in Italy. Somerville lived long after all, dying at 89.
Sopwith, Sir Thomas (1803–79) civil and mining engineer. He worked on stratigraphical geology and produced a number of valuable technical works.
Sotheby, William (1757–1833; FRS 1794) a minor literary figure, a friend of Scott, Joanna Baillie (q.v.) and Wollaston (q.v.). In his poem Lines Suggested by the Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Held at Cambridge, in June 1833, he praises Mary Somerville and regrets her absence from the meeting (EP, 117).
South, Sir James (1785–1867; FRS 1821) astronomer. He observed in London with Herschel (q.v.) and in Paris with Laplace (q.v.). He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society, of which he was President in 1829 (EP).
Sparks, Jared (1789–1866) historian, editor and clergyman. In the early 1820s he was asked to edit and publish the writings of George Washington and in 1827 Washington’s nephew, Bushrod Washington, gave his permission. His The Life and Writings of George Washington was published in 12 vols. (1834–37).
Sparrow, Lady Olivia an aristocratic confidante of Wilberforce. Apparently, she regularly spent her holidays on the French Riviera in an effort to convert the Jewish and Catholic populations there: see Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Cape, 1976).
Spencer, William Robert (1769–1834) poet and wit. He was friendly with Sheridan, Sydney Smith (q.v.) and other noted literary/political wits. He died in obscure poverty in Paris after a life of extravagance.
Spottiswoode, William (1825–83) mathematician and physicist. He worked on curves and surfaces and the polarisation of light. He was President of the Royal Society (1878–83).
Stabilini, Girolamo (Hieronymo) (1762–1815). Stabilini was invited from Rome to Edinburgh to replace Giuseppe Puppo as leader of the St Cecilia Hall concerts (1783–98). He was very popular in Scotland, partly because he performed and arranged Scots tunes like ‘I’ll gae nae mair to yon toon’. He was also a noted member of the Masons, Canongate Lodge Kilwinning No. 2, and of the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers.
Staël, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame de (1766–1817) daughter of the financier Jacques Necker, she became famous as a writer and literary hostess. She married but separated from the Baron de Staël-Holstein, Swedish ambassador in Paris. Her salon was a centre of liberal intellectual thought from the eve of the Revolution. She later quarrelled with Napoleon and was forced to live in exile at her château on Lake Geneva. There she was part of the intellectual network of Europe, acquainted with Schiller and Goethe. She returned to Paris after the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814. Although her most important work for France was probably De l’Allemagne (1810–13), which introduced German literature and philosophy to France, in Britain she was best known for her novels Delphine (1802) and the universally read Corinne (1807). Her passionate friendship with Benjamin Constant is in part reflected in his novel Adolphe (1816).
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (1815–81) Dean of Westminster (1864). Stanley was a tiny and, in many ways, physically insignificant, man but he was, as Mary Somerville says, a liberal intellectual. He published Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, 3 vols. (1863–76).
Stanley, Lady Augusta (1822–76) the daughter of Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin (q.v.) and Mary Hamilton Nisbet, who later married Robert Ferguson of Raith (q.v.). Formerly lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, she married the Rev. Arthur Penryn Stanley (q.v.), Dean of Westminster, when she was 42. Lady Augusta was a considerable woman, ran an intellectual salon and tried to educate the Queen to the wider world. A splendid picture of her and her diminutive husband is in Sydney Checkland, The Elgins (1988).
Swinton, James Rannie (1816–88) portrait painter. He was born in Berwickshire and studied in Edinburgh and in London at the schools of the Academy. On the advice of Sir David Wilkie, he visited Spain and Italy. He painted most of the fashionable beauties of the period, including a large group portrait of the Sheridan sisters (q.v.). His drawing ofMary Somerville is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de (1754–1838) French politician and diplomat. He was excommunicated for the part he played in the reform of the church during the Revolution. Talleyrand was a survivor and was foreign minister from 1797 until 1807, when he quarrelled with Napoleon. He served again under Louis XVIII.
Talma, François-Joseph (1763–1826) French actor, who spent some of his early years in England. He made his début at the Comédie Française in 1787. He influenced costume reform in the direction of authenticity. In 1817 he played at Covent Garden in London. He was admired by Mme de Staël (q.v.).
Thelwall, John (1764–1834) radical reformer and lecturer on elocution. He supported Horne Tooke (q.v.) at Westminster and joined the Society of the Friends of the People. He was arrested in 1794 and sent to the Tower but acquitted after Erskine’s (q.v.) defence.
Thiers, Louis Adolphe (1797–1877) French statesman and historian and first President of the Third Republic (1870–73). After the fall of Napoleon III, Thiers became President and negotiated peace with Prussia, and his policies facilitated France’s economic recovery. His Histoire de la Révolution française runs to ten volumes (1823–27).
Thomson, George (1757–1851) son of Robert Thomson, schoolmaster in Dunfermline. Employed as a junior clerk, first in the office of a writer to the signet, and then to the Board of Trustees. He became principal clerk to the Board in 1780. In 1781 he married Katherine Miller, with whom he had six daughters and two sons. He lived in Edinburgh during his working life, retired to London and finally settled in Leith. Thomson was an accomplished violinist and particularly loved playing Haydn and Pleyel quartets.
Thorwaldsen Bertel (1768–1844) Danish sculptor. His highly successful career began in Rome in 1797. He returned to Denmark, to Copenhagen, in 1832. Like Canova, he worked within the tradition of neoclassicism, reworking ancient Greek sculpture, His subjects were generally mythological or religious. Many of his works are in the Thorwaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.
Thurn and Taxis. The Thurn and Taxis family founded its fortune on a courier service in the Italian city-states from about 1290. Franz von Taxis became postmaster to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I from 1489 and Philip of Spain from 1504. By the 19th century, branches of the family operated postal services in Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary and the Low Countries. The last postal system was purchased and nationalised by the Prussian government in 1867 but the family fortunes were by this point firmly established. The coiled post-horn symbol remains that of a number of European postal services.
Thury, (Louis-Étienne François) Héricault, Vicomte de (1776–1854) engineer and agriculturalist. He was educated at the Ecole des mines and wrote a number of papers on agriculture, geology and public works. In charge of the inspection of the catacombs of Paris from 1810 to 1830, he made remarkable improvements.
Tooke, (John) Horne (1736–1812) radical politician and philologist. Tried for treason with Thelwall and Hardy in 1794. Tooke was an old-fashioned radical, who appealed to Magna Carta but did not have much time for the new-fangled ‘rights of man’. His philological work was called The Diversions of Purley.
Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf (1802–72). Trendelenburg became Professor of Philosophy at Berlin in 1837.
Tuckerman, Rev. Joseph (1778–1840) American minister, best known for his ministry to the urban poor. He was educated at Harvard College and subsequently studied Theology. He began as an obscure rural parson in Chelsea, Mass. in 1801 but always had cosmopolitan friendships. In 1812 he was the force behind the Boston Society for the Religious and Moral Improvement of Seamen. His religious inclinations were Unitarian. When he assumed an urban ministry in Boston, his health made preaching difficult but he worked hard for the welfare of the people and, by encouraging private relief for poverty, assisted the poor in retaining their self-respect. In 1833–34, he visited England, where he helped to establish urban ministries in London and Liverpool.
Tuscany, Leopold II, Grand Duke of (1797–1870; FRS 1838) a Hapsburg prince of Italian blood. Leopold ‘was one of the most enlightened rulers in Italy and a generous patron of science. His library at the Pitti Palace had an excellent collection of scientific books and many current scientific periodicals. In addition to maintaining an observatory and museums, he undertook in 1838 the establishments of a Tuscan scientific society’ (EP, 190–191).
Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett (1832–1917) anthropologist. First Professor of Anthropology at Oxford in 1884, he was knighted in 1912. Primitive Culture was published in 1871 and Researches on the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization in 1865.
Tyndall, John (1820–93; FRS 1852) Irish physicist. In 1869 he discovered the effect of scattering of light by minute particles such as those in dust. He used this effect to explain the blue of the sky; he was also one of the first to show that the air contains microorganisms. He succeeded Faraday (q.v.) at the Royal Institution (1867–87), celebrating him in Faraday as a Discoverer (1868). He was Rumford medallist in 1869.
Usedom, Guido, Conte von (1805–84) Prussian diplomat. From 1845–54 Usedom was Prussian Minister at the Holy See. He held various posts until he gave up diplomacy in 1869 and took over the direction of the royal Prussian museums.
Veitch, James, Laird of Inchbonny, Roxburghshire (fl. 1810–40) (EP, p. 203) see note 42.
Victor Emmanuel II (1820–78) King of Italy (1861–78). He succeeded to the throne of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1849, when his father Charles Albert (q.v.) abdicated. He appointed Cavour Prime Minister in 1852, fought against the Austrians at Solferino and Magenta, freed Lombardy from Austrian rule and co-operated with Garibaldi (q.v.) in the campaign that freed Southern Italy. He acquired Venetia in 1866 and Rome in 1870.
Vogt, Professor possibly Karl Vogt, the German philosopher who suggested that the brain secretes thought in the same manner as the liver secretes bile.
Wallace, William (1768–1843) Scottish mathematician. He was largely self-educated; originally, like Faraday (q.v.), apprenticed to a bookbinder, he met Playfair (q.v.) while working in a bookshop in Edinburgh and attending classes at the university. With Playfair’s influence, he became assistant mathematics teacher at Perth Academy. While he worked there, he contributed papers on Mathematics to the Royal Society and wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. ‘In 1803, again at Playfair’s urging he competed in examination for the post of mathematics master at the Royal Military College at Great Marlow and won’ (EP, 5). In 1819 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University. He invented the pantograph, an instrument for duplicating a geometric shape at a reduced or enlarged scale. He also took an interest in astronomy and was involved in the erection of the Observatory on Calton Hill.
Wellwood, Sir Henry Moncreiff (afterwards Wellwood, 8th Baronet of Tullibole) (1750–1827) Scottish divine. He was educated in Glasgow and Edinburgh, became minister of Blackford in 1771 and of St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh in 1775. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1785 and chaplain to George III in 1793.
Werner, Abraham Gottlob (1750–1817) mineralogist. Werner was educated in Freiburg and Leipzig. He returned to Freiburg College as a teacher and studied rocks in the Harz Mountains. The Somervilles visited his collection of minerals at Freiburg in the Black Forest in 1836 (EP, 181). Despite the fact that much of his theoretical work turned out to be erroneous, he nevertheless made a tremendous contribution to science in demonstrating the chronological succession of rocks.
Whewell, William (1794–1866; FRS 1820). Whewell remained a good friend ofMary Somerville throughout his life and sent his work to her, as well as reading hers. Mary Somerville, however, expresses irritation with him in a private letter to her son quoted by Elizabeth Patterson:
I am rather angry with him for joining in the hue and cry against mathematicians for irreligion; a vulgar and monkish prejudice. All the philosophers were unbelie-vers before, and during the French revolution, the time when mathematics were cultivated with the greatest success, the fault is owing to the period, and not to the pursuit, I have no doubt however that it will make the book very popular among the saints (EP, p. 116).
White, Lydia. ‘Miss Lydia White was a lady who delighted in giving parties to as many celebrated people as she could collect’: R. Ellis Roberts, Samuel Rogers and his Circle (London: Methuen, 1910).
Wilkes, Charles (1798–1877) naval officer and explorer, mathematician and scientist. His most important command was with the US Exploring and Surveying Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas (1838–42). This was the first government sponsorship of scientific endeavour and it was instrumental in the nation’s westward expansion. Specimens gathered during it became the foundation collections of the Smith-sonian.
Wilson, Andrew (1831–81) traveller and author. He was educated at Edinburgh and Tübingen Universities, and travelled in southern China. He contributed to Black-wood’s and published on his travels and on Gordon’s Chinese campaigns.
Wilson, John (1785–1854). Although he lived for a time in the Lake district, Wilson was educated at Glasgow University and Magdalen College, Oxford. His Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University was a political appointment, based on his Tory principles. He joined the editorial staff of Blackwood’s Magazine when it was founded in 1817. The magazine which also had J. G. Lockhart (q.v.) and James Hogg on its staff, was intended as a rival to The Edinburgh Review, and was of a lighter kind than The Quarterly Review. In it, Wilson features as ‘Christopher North’ in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’, a series of imaginary conversations supposed to have been held in Ambrose’s Tavern in Edinburgh. Wilson was a prolific essayist who also wrote poetry: ‘The Isle of Palms’ was published in 1812.
Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen (1802–65) churchman and philosopher. He became Vice-Rector of the English college in Rome in 1827 and Rector from 1828–40. He published his lectures on The Connection between Science and Revealed Religion in 1836. He also had some influence on the development of the Oxford Movement. He became cardinal-archbishop of Westminster in 1850. He is supposed to be the model for Browning’s poem ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’, although his beliefs were not really those expressed by Blougram.
Wollaston, William Hyde (1766–1828; FRS 1793) physiologist, chemist and physicist. Wollaston was a friend to science in many different ways. He was Copley medallist in 1802 and secretary of the Royal Society from 1804–16. He left money to the Geological Society, which formed the Wollaston Fund and to the Royal Society, forming the Donation Fund.
Woronzow, Catharine, Countess of Pembroke (1783–1856) daughter of the Russian ambassador, Count Simon Woronzow (1744–1832), after whom Woronzow Greig was named.
Young, Charles Mayne (1777–1856) actor. He worked in Liverpool in 1798 and later in Manchester and Edinburgh, and was a friend of Scott. He played both comic and tragic, Shakespearean and other, roles.
Young, Thomas (1773–1829) British physician and physicist. Also something of a polymath, he apparently spoke twelve languages by the age of 20. He studied in Germany and Cambridge, practised medicine in London and became a professor at the Royal Institution (1801–3). He demonstrated the interference of light and from this suggested a wave theory of light in opposition to Newton’s corpuscular theory. The ratio of stress to strain is known as Young’s modulus, from his work in this area. He was also an Egyptologist and helped to decipher the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone from Rosetta, near Alexandria, carries a decree of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, who reigned 205–180 BC, in two languages and three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. Re-petition of Ptolemy’s name in different scripts gave Young the clue to deciphering hieroglyphics.
Zanetti, Ferdinando (1802–81) senator and Professor of Medicine.