The Man Who Changed Everything

In June he and Katherine went to Glenlair as usual. By September he was getting attacks of violent pain but insisted on going ahead with a planned visit by William Garnett, his demonstrator at the Cavendish, and his wife ¹. Garnett was alarmed by the change in his appearance but marvelled at the way he still conducted evening prayers for the whole household and at the care he bestowed on his guests. He showed them memorabilia of his childhood: the oval curves, cousin Jemima’s water colours, the bagpipes that had saved his grandfather’s life. When they walked round the estate he went with them a little way down to the river, pointing out where the stepping stones used to be and where he used to bathe and sail in the old washtub. This was the longest walk he had taken for some weeks. When they went for a drive in the afternoon he could not go with them because the shaking of the carriage was unbearably painful.

He remembered his mother’s torment and must have been fairly certain that he was suffering from the same disease. To get an authoritative diagnosis they sent for Professor Sanders from Edinburgh. He arrived on 2 October and, finding that it was indeed an advanced case of abdominal cancer, told James that he had about a month to live. Sanders urged James to go to Cambridge, where Dr Paget would be able to arrange relief for the worst of the pain and help to make his last few weeks as bearable as possible for Katherine as well as himself. Luckily Katherine was having a period of respite from her own illness and was able to organise the packing and the journey.

On arrival in Cambridge on 8 October, James was so weak he could barely walk from the train to a carriage. Once in the care of Dr Paget, his pain was considerably relieved and for a few days he seemed slightly better. The news spread and some of his friends felt a frisson of hope that he would recover, but then his remaining strength began to ebb away and it was clear to everyone that he was dying.

Dr Paget later described this time:

As he had been in health, so was he in sickness and in the face of death. The calmness of his mind was never once disturbed. His sufferings were acute for some days after his return to Cambridge, and, even after their mitigation, were still of a kind to try severely any ordinary patience and fortitude. But they were never spoken of by him in a complaining tone. In the midst of them his thoughts and consideration were rather for others than for himself.

Neither did the approach of death disturb his habitual composure ... A few days before his death he asked me how much longer he could last. This inquiry was made with the most perfect calmness. He wished to live until the expected arrival from Edinburgh of his friend and relative Mr Colin Mackenzie. His only anxiety seemed to be about his wife, whose health had for a few years been delicate and had recently become worse ...

His intellect also remained clear and apparently unimpaired to the last. While his bodily strength was ebbing away to death, his mind never wandered or wavered, but remained clear to the very end. No man ever met death more consciously or more calmly.

James’ local doctor at Glenlair, Dr Lorraine, had sent a note on the case to Dr Paget. This was, of course, routine. What was extraordinary was that Dr Lorraine had such admiration for the patient that he spontaneously included a tribute in his professional note:

I must say he is one of the best men I have ever met, and a greater merit than his scientific achievements is his being, so far as human judgement can discern, a most perfect example of a Christian Gentleman.

According to Dr Paget, this remark accurately described the feelings of all who knew Maxwell during his last illness. It also bears a striking similarity to comments made independently by various people who had met him over the years.

James’ own reflections on his life were typically self-effacing. He told his friend and Cambridge colleague Professor Hort:

What is done by what I call myself is, I feel, done by something greater than myself in me ...

I have been thinking how very gently I have always been dealt with. I have never had a violent shove in all my life.

The only desire which I can have is like David to serve my own generation by the will of God, and then fall asleep.

James Clerk Maxwell died on 5 November 1879. Katherine and his good friend and cousin Colin Mackenzie were with him. The following Sunday many people attended a memorial service at St Mary’s Church, Cambridge. The sense of loss was palpable, and the task of giving it a voice fell to the Rev. H. M. Butler, one of James’ old friends from student days who was by now headmaster of Harrow School. He put it simply, with a fitting choice of metaphor:

It is not often, even in this great home of thought and knowledge, that so bright a light is extinguished as that which is now mourned by many illustrious mourners, here chiefly, but also far beyond this place.²

These thoughts were echoed by P. G. Tait, writing in Nature:

I cannot adequately express in words the extent of the loss which his early death has inflicted not merely on his personal friends, on the University of Cambridge, on the whole scientific world, but also, and most especially, on the cause of common sense, of true science, and of religion itself, in these days of much vain-babbling, pseudo-science, and materialism. But men of his stamp never live in vain; and in one sense at least they cannot die. The spirit of Clerk Maxwell still lives with us in his imperishable writings, and will speak to the next generation by the lips of those who have caught inspiration from his teachings and example.

After a preliminary ceremony in Trinity College Chapel, James’ body was taken to Glenlair and buried in Parton Churchyard next to that of his father and mother. Katherine was buried there 7 years later and the four share a headstone. At the roadside in front of the church stands a simple plaque. The inscription summarises his career and achievements, and concludes:

A good man, full of humour and wisdom, he lived in this area and is buried in the ruins of the old Kirk in this Churchyard.

This and a stained glass window in the church at Corsock are the only memorials that a visitor to the area is likely to find. But there is another. Glenlair passed to the Wedderburn family and the house was destroyed by fire in 1929. If you walk half a mile down a private drive off the Dalbeattie to Corsock road, crossing the Urr by William Dyce Cay’s bridge, you will see the shell of a building, its chimneys and roofless gables pointing silently to the sky.