The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian

by Heather Ewing

In the mid-1830s, the United States learned that it was the beneficiary of a strange and unprecedented bequest. An Englishman named James Smithson, who had never set foot in the U.S., had left all his fortune to found in Washington "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." He left no further instructions, and the questions surrounding the extraordinary bequest sparked a rancorous decade-long debate in Congress. Since its founding in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution has grown into the largest museum and research complex in the world. Known as "the Nation's Attic," it is the keeper of many of America's most treasured cultural icons-the Star-Spangled Banner, the Spirit of St. Louis, Lincoln's top hat, and Dorothy's ruby slippers. At its heart, however, has always been the mystery of its enigmatic benefactor. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries from archives across Europe and the United States-including the entirety of the Smithsonian's archive-Heather Ewing paints the fullest picture to date of James Smithson and his compelling story. The illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland, Smithson was born into the world of the ancien regime, where birth and name meant everything. He found a new future in science, the closest thing the eighteenth century had to a meritocracy. Against a backdrop of war and revolution, Smithson and his friends, who included many of the most famous scientists of the age, burst through boundaries at every turn, defying gravity in the first hot air balloons, upending the biblical timeline with their geological finds, and exploring the realm of the invisible with the discovery of new gases.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Museums, Science, Natural History, American History

466 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Brittany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm throwing in the towel. I'm sorry. I hate quitting a book, especially one with such interesting and personally relevant subject material, but I'm just not making any progress. I plan to pick it up again in the future. For now, I'll review the part of it I did read.

The prologue of this book was mind-blowingly cool. I have worked for the Smithsonian for three years, and I had no idea that the Castle burned at one point. This whole chapter, the events, and supporting material were exceptional. The writing was well-done, and the story was captivating. I was feeling very encouraged for the book at this point.

However, I maybe shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. The history of the fire sets up the context for the book. Namely, that most of Smithson's diaries, documents, and collections were lost in the fire, so that we know almost nothing about his life, which is why no comprehensive biography of him has ever appeared, and why he has a reputation of being a complete mystery, even to the Smithsonian he endowed.

Heather Ewing does a valiant job trying to replace that missing material. She mines newspapers, legal records, other people's letters, and the marginalia of Smithson's books for any glimpse into his personality, mind, and personal history. She obviously did a prodigious amount of research and the book is copiously foot-noted. However, she also just didn't have enough to work with. At points, her stories are very thin and very conjectural. (Smithson must have known so-and-so because there's a record of him attending a Royal Society meeting, and here's what Smithson may or may not have thought of him.) It's all very interesting, but it ends up being mostly context and conjecture. In the end, we don't know much more about Smithson, though we do know more about his cultural and historical environment, which is useful in a limited capacity. It makes for a pretty dry slog of a read.

Ewing did her best. She's obviously a consummate researcher and a good writer. Through no fault of her own, she just didn't have enough source material to write the book she wanted to write.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

There have been other books written about the founder of the Smithsonian, mostly combined with a history of the institution itself, but Ewing's book is based on new original research by the author and seems far more complete, to the extent anything can be known. Smithson left a great deal of material -- journals, unpublished manuscripts, and so forth -- but it was nearly all destroyed in the fire at the Smithsonian in 1865. The author has searched for letters to other scientists, documents in various government and private archives, and the annotations in the books he left (which were in the library wing of Smithsonian which was not damaged by the fire) in order to reconstruct as much of his life and work as is now possible.

Although he is not known for any great discoveries, Smithson was a significant figure in the early history of chemical mineralogy, and had a high reputation among his contemporaries, which I had not realized. He was on the governing board of the Royal Society, a founder of the Royal Institute, and a member of several other important scientific societies. The book is interesting for its descriptions of the European scientific community of the time (Smithson spent much of his later life on the continent, including three years as a prisoner of war in Denmark, and had contact with nearly all the major scientists).

[Wayland Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most people have heard of the Smithsonian Institution. Not many know a lot about James Smithson, the man who left the money to the United States government to start it. Turns out, there's a good reason-- more than one, actually.

I knew the vague basics that I'd picked up from going to the Smithsonian several times. James Smithson was a wealthy Englishman who left his fortune to America and funded what eventually became the Smithsonian. Among the reasons the man is shrouded in mystery are the fact that the papers he left to the museum were almost completely destroyed by a freak fire in 1865. Then later, when they tried to study his body for clues about the man, there was a mishap with the tools to open the tomb, and that caught fire, too. Sounds like something for a fantasy novel, doesn't it? Also, in addition to spotty record keeping back in the late 1700's, there's the further complication that he wasn't born Smithson, but rather James Macie.

The man who would be Smithson was the illegitimate son of English nobility, and, while he desperately wanted it, was never acknowledged. He grew up with his mother, a very litigious woman. He became fascinated by science, and went on to make contributions in the fields of geology and chemistry. Smithson had frail health, but didn't let that stop him from traveling to get his own specimens. He didn't always make the best-timed choices in his travels, and was captured and held prisoner during the Napoleonic Wars. Between his unrecognized background and experiences in France, you can see why he might not leave money to England or France. The fact that he left it to America is even more striking considering he never came to the country, and had no relations here.

It's a well researched book, but the author can't work miracles. We don't know when he was born. A lot of his travel records are missing. There's not a definitive cause of death for Smithson, or his adopted nephew, who might have inherited and prevented the Smithsonian from ever coming into being. It's kind of a historical mystery, and one with few definitive answers.

Recommended for anyone who likes history.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in Washington D.C. last year and there was a news report that had the descendants (he had no children) of James Smithson come to Washington D.C. for a celebration of his gift to America. I noticed the people they interviewed were all from Great Britain. Since I was young, living in Maryland, I spent hundreds of hours of my life in the Smithsonian Institute museums. I never had any idea who Smithson was and that he had never stepped foot in America. Although much of his papers were burned in a fire in 1865 Ewing does a good job of piecing together the man behind the endowment. I learned a lot and gained a greater appreciation for Smithson and how the institute came about. My visits to the Smithsonian castle will never be the same.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Smithson is a wonderfully interesting figure, a caring contributor to chemistry using small scale instruments and analysis to make his scientific mark. Smithson is a man who strongly desires to be consequential, either through his heritage or through scientific achievement. Neither of these desires come to fruition, but his fame is won through a small secondary line in his will, a germ of an idea that becomes one of the great scientific institutions in the United States. You will marvel at how this fragile wish is made to work.

This book opens up the, "on the ground" world of science in the late 18th and early 19th century. It gives the reader a palpable sense of the "scientific excitement" engulfing the west as the world becomes a more connected place.

Strangely enough, one of the most interesting facets of this book was the picture painted of Europe during the wars, post French Revolution. It helped me understand how the revolution of liberty sweeping Europe turned a dark and confusing corner, scattering scientists and lovers of shared knowledge.

Creativity and Liberty, Knowledge and Freedom go hand in hand. This book helped me see that connection.

[William Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of The lost world of James Smithson: science, revolution and the birth of the Smithsonian by Heather Ewing

Reviewed by Dr Bill Palmer, Associate, Curtin University, Australia.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Place: London

Price: £20.00

Heather Ewing provides her readers with a portrait of James Smithson, who was in his time well known as a scientist, but who is now better known as the founder of Washington’s Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian has become the largest museum and research complex in the world.

However the book is largely about James Smithson himself (born James Macie) and how he came to leave a large sum of money to a country that he had never visited. Ewing explains in the Prologue that much of the information that the Institution had about Smithson including his papers was destroyed in a terrible fire in 1865, before the contents had been properly catalogued and summarised; this has made the task of writing a Smithson biography very difficult. Quite frequently during the narrative there are places where it is really not known where Smithson was at a particular time or whom he met. Even the way in which he gained his fortune is far from clear. However the difficulty does provide an advantage which Ewing uses to good effect by employing a wide variety of sources, carefully referenced; these provide a wider background to the biography in her examination of motivation and custom, so that the reader is brought into an understanding of the science and the social customs of the times. Factual uncertainties about James Smithson include the date of his birth, the details of his schooling and the cause of his death.

James Smithson was born as an illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, with whom his mother, Elizabeth Macie, recently widowed, had had an affair. He was not recognised by the Duke and one of the driving ambitions of his life was to be recognised by the Northumberland family. Smithson was intelligent, articulate and prone to lengthy bouts of ill-health. He never married, was a hard-working gentleman scientist and collector of geological specimens; he liked to travel on the Continent meeting other scientists whilst playing the part of a ‘Seigneur Anglais’, never purchasing property but renting accommodation as required. His other major activity was gambling at cards at which he seemed quite successful. It is said that Smithson travelled on the Continent because he did not feel the stigma of his illegitimacy so heavily when abroad.

In England Smithson was recognised early on as a young scientist of promise, but he never achieved the greatness as a scientist which he so much desired. His interests were in chemistry and he became extremely skilled in chemical analysis, particularly where only small quantities of the substance to be analysed were available. His first scientific publication was an analysis of Tabasheer, a hard crystalline substance found in the joints of the bamboo and used in medicine. He was hand-picked for the investigation by Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society; he carried out his analyses accurately and promptly and the resulting paper was well received. Altogether Smithson published twenty-seven papers and these were collected and published posthumously by the Smithsonian Institute (Collection #21, 1881).

Some of his trips to the Continent coincided the French Revolution and some with times when Britain was at war with Napoleon. Smithson believed that the ideas of science should be recognised as a higher calling and that he should be allowed to travel as he wished as was customary. Unfortunately not all the belligerents subscribed to this view. In general he managed to move around Europe without challenge but at one stage in his travels he was imprisoned for more than three years and when released he was very ill. He returned to England for a few years, but when the monarchy was re-established in France he made Paris his home. His scientific activity increased and he published seventeen of his twenty-seven known papers in the next six years, though he seems to have quarrelled with the Royal Society and no longer published in Philosophical Transactions. For the last year of his life he lived in Genoa with only some of his possessions; the others were left in storage in Paris or London.

Smithson died in Genoa on June 27th, 1829, without close family, but he had made a clear and detailed will which left most of his fortune of about £100,000 to his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, with the provision that if his nephew died without issue, the remaining estate should be used to found an institution; this was to be called the Smithsonian Institution and to be built in Washington in the United States. The aim of the Institute would be ‘the increase and diffusion of knowledge amongst men’. On receipt of his inheritance, Henry James Hungerford spent his allowance of £4000 per annum on a lavish lifestyle and he died unmarried about six years after his uncle. The last section of the book tells how Smithson’s will resulted in the delivery, in September, 1838, of £104,960 in gold sovereigns to the US Government and how eventually the Smithsonian Institution was established under the care of its first secretary, Joseph Henry.

The book, The lost world of James Smithson: science, revolution and the birth of the Smithsonian, tells an interesting story well; it is attractively illustrated and thoroughly referenced. The book is 349 pages long, nicely printed with a further 82 pages of appendices and references, including a good index. Overall the story exemplifies the large part which chance played in the founding of an institution with the solemn purpose of the increase and diffusion of knowledge amongst men.

[Vagabond Geologist · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting story about a man of whom comparatively little is known given his contribution to the world. Sadly there are few facts, it I thought the book was as well researched as possible given the lack of primary sources. Smithson was present when chemistry and mineralogy were evolving into scientific fields and that aspect of the book was unite interesting. I thought the book was worth the effort to read.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning and the end of the biography were particular fascinating to me, but much of the parts in between were tedious. Nevertheless, I'm grateful the book exists, because I think James Smithson should be better known by Americans.

[Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not finish reading this book, nor did I come close. The best part was the Prologue. It's a shame as I really wanted to learn more about the man for which an institution was named after. But, it's hard to write about someone with a scarcity of materials.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable but not overly interesting.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don’t blame the author with lack of informations about James Smithson since his writings were destroyed in the fire long time ago. But it is hard to read when you don’t know much about Smithson.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way too long and academic. But the ending (how the Smithsonian came to be) was worth the slog.

[Olga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, contains a lot of interesting info. But for some reason it was very boring to read.

[Carl Rollyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

On June 27, 1829, a rather obscure Englishman died in Genoa. He carried with him a receipt for a will stipulating that the bulk of his fortune — something like £100,000 (around $50,000,000 today) — should be employed by the United States for "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

James Smithson wrote the will himself and omitted the lawyerly language that might have made his bequest clearer. A chemist by training who published a number of narrowly focused scientific papers measuring the amount and action of minerals in various substances, and active in London's Royal Society for the Advancement of Science, Smithson may have intended a museum of natural history — or perhaps a laboratory or school. No one knew.

And why America? Early on, Smithson expressed sympathy for the revolutionary cause, but as the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, Smithson seemed as much a royalist as a democrat, adopting after his mother's death the name of Smithson (it had been Macie, his mother's first husband's name) as if to reassert his aristocratic prerogatives.

The man was a mystery. South Carolina senator John Calhoun, always suspicious of centralized power, opposed a national museum, especially one endowed by a virtually anonymous Englishman. Accepting Smithson's bequest was "beneath the dignity" of America. John Quincy Adams, on the other hand, still aggrieved over his failure to establish a national university, led the forces that eventually prevailed in establishing an institution that describes itself as "America's national education facility with 19 museums, 9 research centers, and over 140 affiliate museums around the world"—not to mention its display of Charles Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis" and Dorothy's ruby slippers.

But the Smithson mystery deepened in 1865, when a fire in the newly established Smithsonian Institution destroyed his papers. Heather Ewing begins her biography by making it seem that Smithson's story has irrevocably vanished, which of course makes her heroic efforts to recover a sense of Smithson from public documents and from the diaries and letters of his friends all the more laudable.

Ms. Ewing has turned up valuable new material, bringing to light her subject's "lost world," but whenever his own words and papers are missing, the diligent biographer heads for quaint, entertaining tidbits — such as this description of John Graham's "Temple of Health and Hymen," an institution capitalizing on the public's "newfound curiosity for electrical experiments and their ageold interest in sex":

Visitors willing to pay an exorbitant fee could allegedly cure their infertility with a night in the massive "Celestial Bed," in which silk sheets performed "in oriental manner" atop mattresses stuffed with the "most springy hair, produced at vast expense from the tails of English stallions." The bed's domed canopy, supported by forty pillars of colored glass, contained a series of artificial lodestones or magnets, providing the participants with "the exhilarating force of electrical fire."

Remember, these were prehistoric days before you could hook yourself up to a car battery.

This is all very jolly, but in the end Ms. Ewing has to resort to the bane of all biographers: the "must have been." She does not know much about what Smithson really thought, but she is sure about what "must have been." The results of all her probablys and likelys are tenuous, if suggestive.

In "The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and The Making of America's Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian" (2003), Nina Burleigh has written a tauter, more penetrating biography. Instead of trying to stretch her data, Ms. Burleigh asks pointed questions. Why didn't Smithson marry? Why didn't he give his money to the Royal Society? Because, Ms. Ewing answers, he had a falling out with his colleagues. But then why not another august British institution, Ms. Burleigh asks. Her questions, it seems to me, are more instructive than Ms. Ewing's nugatory speculations.

Smithson's motivations remain a puzzle, though Ms. Burleigh has a final surmise of her own that strikes home. Northumberland never publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son, and Smithson knew that if he did not "specify a contingent use for his money and his nephew died, the estate would revert to the government of England." Whatever else America was, it was a new world, one where Smithson's name could be recognized in its own right rather than absorbed into England's treasury.

Ms. Ewing makes a similar point, that Smithson's life was all about seeking "identity, prestige, and progress," but her narrative is tricked out with too many suppositions that make its arrival at that fundamental point a rather tedious affair.

[Barbara Geffen · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Smithson gave his earned fortune to the USA, where he never set foot, serendipitously. His only named heir, his nephew, died soon after coming into the inheritance, thus invoking the alternative clause, which had only one condition for the use his gift to the country he had come to love from afar: "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Thus, eventually, came into being The Smithsonian Institution. Smithson was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, always an outsider, never acknowledged, but brought up on the sidelines as a gentleman and allowed a proper education and introduction into English society. He became a chemist, just as that science entered its heyday, and he mingled with the famous thinkers and doers in England and on the Continent. He met many who had been to America, or who met Benjamin Franklin in Paris or other founders of the new nation elsewhere. He was imprisoned during the French Revolution, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He fell in love with the ideals of what the USA stood for. This book tells what little is known of his actual life and research. Unfortunately, the many journals and field notes he copiously maintained were destroyed during the fire that consumed the original Castle of the Smithsonian while under construction. The few that were saved and letters and notes others kept, as well as official records, form the basis for this well-researched biography by then Smithsonian historian Heather Ewing. I wish she had provided specifics as to how Smithson turned his small fortune into a larger one (he was an astute investor - his friends from youth who had equivalent start up funds did not become so wealthy!). But that is not where her strength in research lies, so she goes with what she can do. The book gives us important insight into the man who gave this extraordinary gift to our nation, transforming it forever. We owe him much gratitude, and to Ms. Ewing for meticulously finding key nuggets of his own truth to share and keep.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found myself drifting--probably because I didn't find the science interesting. I'd recommend this book more to people interested in the history of science than to general readers of biographies and histories. I did think that sometimes the author seemed as obsessed with Smithson's illegitimacy (he was the natural son of a duke)as she says he was. But she also had to deal with a lack of evidence since much of what existed was destroyed in the Smithsonian fire. The part I found most interesting was the conclusion which covers the reading of his will to the founding of the Smithsonian. Smithson had never been to America. And it was a secondary bequest--conditional on his nephew not leaving any heirs--legitimate or illegitimate. The Smithsonian may very well have never come to be. No one knows what made Smithson decide to found an institution in a country he had never visited but we are certainly the better for his decision. Ewing points out the irony that it was this secondary bequest that may never have born fruit that brought him his only fame.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never really thought about how the Smithsonian came to be until I saw this book on a library shelf, and on a whim, decided to read it.
Mr. Smithson is a little known figure but important to DC. He lived his entire life in Europe, but gave a wonderful gift to the US that almost didn't become the Smithsonian. There were many setbacks along the way, but in the end, the gift he gave the US was priceless and unique.
The book reads quickly, and is a nice overview of his life and the events leading up to his decision to donate his entire fortune to a country he'd never seen.
A good read for those interested in the history of Washington DC, the US, or science. There are many references to the works of famous scientists of the time as well as tracking the life of this little known geologist.

[Eric Atkisson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book. The last couple of chapters alone--about the convoluted legal and legislative maneuvers it took to bring Smithson's generous bequest to life--are well worth the read. I also enjoyed the portrait of Smithson and his world that emerged from the author's research, especially of how idealistic and cosmopolitan that generation of European scientists was. They were idealists who believed themselves to be "citizens of the world", but their optimism was sorely tested by the dark turn the French Revolution took, as Smithson himself was to learn as a prisoner of Napoleonic France for over a year. It's a fascinating story, and the author does great justice to the man and his times, as well as the incredible legacy he left through the Smithsonian Institution.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful research and an interesting story of the life of a man who has been mostly lost in the mists of time. In the absence of any collection of his own papers (lost in a fire) the author has done an amazing job of piecing his story together from brief mentions in other people's letters, notes he made in his library of books (which has survived) and obscure historical sources such as bank records. Not unlike what we genealogists do when looking for an ancestor. I knew nothing of Smithson or of the burst of scientific exploration in the Revolutionary era, so this book was a delightful eye opener.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biography of the Smithsonian benefactor reconstructs the life of this "English gentleman" scholar and scientist living on the cusp of the professionalization of science and the heady atmosphere of the American and French Revolutions.

I say reconstructs because nearly all the papers and artifacts of his life were lost in the disastrous fire early in the life of the institution he bequeathed to the country he never visited, in lieu of the descendants he (and his surviving nephew) never had. For a public man of his time, little direct evidence remains of his passage of time--excepting that great institution!

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting biography of the man who bequeathed to the Unites States the money to found the Smithsonian Institute, our "nation's attic." Unfortunately, his journals and scientific papers were destroyed in a fire in the original Smithsonian building in 1865, before they had been documented thoroughly, so what is known about James Smithson today comes from research of letters and diaries of his contemporaries. A citizen of Great Britain, what is truly amazing is that he had never even visited the United States.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a *little* disappointed in this book. I guess it's really tough to write about Smithson because all of his records were destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian...but I still felt like this book promised a little more than it delivered. But it was kind of cool to read about this world of gentlemen-chemists in Europe all sending weird rocks back and forth to each other.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Smithson is such an interesting person and it is sad that so much was lost in the Smithsonian fire. Ewing does a really great job at piecing together a biography without all that material -- in fact, it is kind of cool to see how she worked out the puzzle. But, so many mysteries still remain. Great read about the father of the Smithsonian!

[Leslie Zampetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly yet interesting. I've always enjoyed the Smithsonian, but knew next to nothing about the man who made it possible. Quite a read, but perhaps one you need to read with another, lighter read....

[CQ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going downtown to the Smithsonian museums so often, I really appreciated the background history of the man who made it all possible. I would've appreciated a bit more information on what was going on at the time historically to place other world events.

[Drew]

The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian by Heather Ewing (2007)

[Anne Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it would be more about the Smithsonian but unfortunately not

[E.]

It's a bit slow going but some interesting information.