London Days Part 8

"Three hundred miles," said he.

They laid their plans for a much shorter distance, within a hundred miles, and they thought that Kelvin was dreaming. Years later, when power and lighting current had been successfully conveyed over much greater distances than Kelvin had suggested, an acquaintance of mine asked him: "Why did n't you tell us that electric power can be conducted over these greater distances? I thought three hundred miles was the limit."

"The limit is not known," replied Lord Kelvin. "In the case you refer to, I answered a specific question regarding a specific plan undertaken for commercial purposes. The limit was improved by time and circ.u.mstance, not by Nature. Ten years ago we could not build the machinery that is built {103} to-day, nor, on a great scale, employ the conductors that are used to-day. My suggestion concerned the means then known, not the means that might be developed in a decade."

"Well, I lost a chance," said the would-be investor, who was also a Scot.

"So, I imagine, did the capitalists of Archimedes' day. You will remember that they failed to provide him with a fulcrum," said Lord Kelvin dryly.

Lord Kelvin, when a young man, became permanently lame as the result of a skating accident, but his lameness did not r.e.t.a.r.d his physical activity. Sir William Ramsay, the celebrated chemist who had been a pupil of Kelvin, said that it "lent emphasis to his amusing cla.s.s demonstration of 'uniform velocity' when he, Kelvin, marched back and forth behind his lecture-bench with as even a movement as his lameness would permit; and the cla.s.s generally burst into enthusiastic applause when he altered his pace, and introduced them to the meaning of the word 'acceleration.'"

Ramsay's opinion was that Kelvin "was not what would be called a good lecturer; he was too discursive." Ramsay doubted whether any man "with a brain so much above the ordinary, so much more rapid in action than the average, can be a first-rate teacher.... But Kelvin never allowed the interest of his students to flag. His aptness in ill.u.s.tration and his vigour of language prevented that. Lecturing one day on 'Couples', he explained how forces must be applied to const.i.tute a Couple and ill.u.s.trated the direction of the forces by turning around the {104} gas-bracket. This led to a discussion on the miserable quality of Glasgow coal-gas and how it might be improved. Following again the main idea, he caught hold of the door and swung it to and fro; but again his mind diverged to the difference in the structure of English and Scottish doors. We never forgot what a 'Couple' was--but the idea might have been conveyed more succinctly." Yes, and ten to one the receivers of it would have forgotten what a "Couple" was!

I heard Kelvin address the Royal Society in London while he was president of that body. He had invited me to come, and I was curious enough to see the most distinguished scientific body in the world learning something from the world's most distinguished mathematician, electrician, and natural philosopher. The hall in Burlington House was filled. Had an earthquake swallowed the hall then, the world would have been deprived instantaneously of dozens of men who were doing its thinking for it. The subject of the discourse was not thrilling, nor could the lecturer have been accused of an attempt to pander to popularity. The subject was "The h.o.m.ogeneous Division of s.p.a.ce."

There shot through the hour's talk a stream of descriptive phrases such as "tetrakaidekahedronal cells", "parallelepipedal part.i.tionings", "enantiomorphs ", and their progeny.

The genial old gentleman on the platform would rest his weight upon his hands on the table, or the lecture-desk, and lean forward towards his audience, and tell some puzzling facts about nature's puzzles, {105} pouring streams of numbers and their multiplications and divisions into their ears while they floundered in the mathematical deluge. He would see that he had them puzzled, that his mind was working too fast for them; he must have surmised it from the expressions on their faces, for while he announced theories, discoveries, and drew conclusions, they, with all their knowledge and experience, would look as blank or bewildered as schoolboys, and he would step back from the table and, with a winning smile, remark, "It's this way", or "After all, it's simpler than it seems", or "I think it would be demonstrated so", and turning swiftly on one heel would face the blackboard and draw upon it in strokes that were like flashes, a diagram which made it all so clear that his hearers chuckled, or laughed outright; then swiftly he would turn again and face them with that winning smile which seemed to mean, "See how simple it is!" Then they would applaud him, which is very difficult for the Royal Society to do.

Lord Kelvin's was the first house in the world to be lighted by electricity throughout. He utilized the current in every nook and corner, in attics and cellars, in cupboards, closets and wardrobes, long before anybody else had attempted to do so. This was when everybody else thought electric lighting a luxury, but his purpose was to prove it a necessity. That was his way. Whenever he acquired new knowledge he applied it forthwith to the betterment of the human lot.

He thought that science for the sake of science, or scientists, was as stupid a formula as "art for art's sake." Cheese for cheese's sake {106} would be quite as useful to mankind. Of what use was knowledge if it were not applied to the needs of man?

He was a yachtsman, but not for sporting purposes, or faddishness, or luxurious idleness. He loved the sea, and his yacht, a schooner named _Lalla Rookh_, enabled him to wrest from the sea some of its secrets.

For twenty years he went sailing every summer, living aboard weeks at a time. He held the certificate of a master navigator. It was on board the _Lalla Rookh_ that he invented his famous apparatus for taking soundings and his no less famous compa.s.s. These things became necessities for navigators.

The first pair of telephonic instruments that Alexander Graham Bell brought to Europe were presented by him to Lord Kelvin, who immediately put them to use by connecting his house with that of his brother-in-law and a.s.sistant, Doctor J. T. Bottomley. The first electrically lighted house in the world was the first in the old world to be connected by telephone for purposes professional, social, personal, and domestic.

For how could Kelvin, who was always peering into the future, be afraid of new things? He peered into the past, too, for you remember how he startled the orthodox mind by his calculations regarding the age of the earth.

Lord Salisbury, just before he became Prime Minister for the last time (his long term of 1895-1902) was Chancellor of the University of Oxford and at the same time President of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science. At Oxford, {107} in a memorable year, and in behalf of the University of which he was chancellor, he welcomed the a.s.sociation of which he was president, and he reminded his learned listeners that Lord Kelvin, whom he alluded to as "the greatest living master of natural science amongst us", was the first to point out that the amount of time required by the advocates of the Darwinian theory for the working out of the process of evolution which they had imagined "could not be conceded without a.s.suming the existence of a totally different set of natural laws from those with which we are acquainted."

Hot things cool. The once seething earth has cooled and is cooling.

So many million years ago it must have been hotter than now by calculable degrees. "But if at any time it was hotter at the surface by fifty degrees Fahrenheit than it is now, life would then have been impossible on this planet."

Lord Kelvin a.s.sured us that organic life on earth cannot have existed more than a hundred million years ago. So if you believed in Archbishop Ussher's chronology, and n.i.g.g.ardly dealt out to the earth an age of only six thousand years, or went so far as Professor Tait with his ten million, you had, by Kelvin's figuring, a tremendous margin to fill up somehow. Of course the orthodox jumped and squealed. But the geologists and biologists stamped and yelled. Some of them wanted more than Kelvin's stingy allowance; they wanted not one hundred million years, but hundreds of millions. And there was a pretty ferment in the camps!

Sir William Ramsay I have quoted on Kelvin's {108} ill.u.s.tration, in the cla.s.s room, of the term "acceleration." Kelvin maintained speed when he had got it up. Remember that he was lame, and consider his energy.

He would dart at an object that stood a few feet from him, on his lecture-bench, use it for whatever demonstration was required, and then dart at another, or at the blackboard, or at the pointer, as if he were a busy bee extracting honey from the flowers. There was certainty about everything he did; no hesitation, no floundering, no hemming and hawing for a word, or the next act. His lameness merely lent emphasis to the fact that he was walking; it did not prevent his swiftness of movement. Across the grounds of the university I toiled after him like "panting time." He gave the impression of readiness for a race, and might challenge you at any minute. His gown was always streaming behind him, his mortar-board cap in imminent danger of blowing off in the breeze stirred by his advance. Well, he had raced the world many years and had always won.

Some great men are so impressed by their own greatness that their manner becomes ponderous and vast as if they lived in a belief that they cast shadows on the sun. Not so Lord Kelvin, who never seemed to think that great men thought him a greater than themselves. His manner was simple, gentle, courteous, and direct. He was easy to talk with, and yet he had no small talk. But it was not easy to answer his questions. There was never such a man as he for asking questions unless it were the Chinese Viceroy, Li Hung Chang. Whatever your profession, {109} trade, interests in life, he would put questions that went to the roots of your matter and revealed on his part a greater knowledge of the problems involved than you dreamed existed. By tireless questioning he learned. But where Li Hung Chang turned the results of his questioning to his own benefit, Kelvin applied them to the good of the world. Yet when, in 1896, they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Glasgow he was, I take it, the most surprised man in all the galaxy of the famous. The dear old gentleman with the domed head, the white hair, and generous white beard seemed to be asking himself, "What next? Why all this fuss and feathers?" But he was apparently genuinely pleased, too, for all the tributes bespoke honest admiration of achievement and character. Fifty-one learned societies, twelve colleges, and twenty-eight universities were represented. They were of all countries. That day the world, and all that was therein, lifted its hat to Lord Kelvin.

I may slip in here a quotation from Emerson. "In Newton," said Emerson, "science was as easy as breathing; he used the same wit to weigh the moon that he used to buckle his shoes; and all his life was simple, wise, and majestic. So it was in Archimedes--always self-same, like the sky. In Linnaeus, in Franklin, the like sweetness and equality--no stilts, no tiptoe; and their results are wholesome and memorable to all men."

What Lord Kelvin had done, and was still to do, could not be described by any writing of less than encyclopaedic scope, and a knowledge as wide and {110} deep as his own. Helmholtz may be quoted, as he has been quoted by many who attempted the larger task from a scientific standpoint. Helmholtz was his intimate friend. Helmholtz said: "He is an eminent mathematician, but the gift to translate real facts into mathematical equations, and vice versa, is, by far, more rare than to find a solution of a given mathematical problem, and in this direction he is most eminent and original."

Kelvin's first published paper was a defence of the mathematician, Fourier. His second was on "The Uniform Motion of Heat in h.o.m.ogeneous Solid Bodies, and Its Connection With The Mathematical Theory of Electricity." I think he was eighteen then. He was certainly showing the bent of his mind. Fifty or sixty years later he said, in a presidential address to the Royal Society: "Tribulation, not undisturbed progress, gives life and soul, and leads to success where success can be reached." I do not know what his tribulations were, but they may have been the tribulations of defeat. He may have faced many defeats, but he won more successes. And the world was more concerned with scientific discoveries during his career than it had been in the time of Count Rumford and Humphry Davy, whose work in disproving that heat is a material body had been forgotten because n.o.body seemed to think it more important than curious. Sometime in the eighteen-forties James Prescott Joule ascertained the dynamical equivalent of heat, and settled the fact that heat is a mode of motion. Kelvin may be said to have leaped to the side of his friend.

{111}

Lord Kelvin was the first to appreciate the importance of Joule's discovery, and it was not long before he placed the whole subject of thermodynamics on a scientific basis. He put his conclusions into these easily understandable words: "During any transformation of energy of one form into energy of another form, there is always a certain amount of energy rendered unavailable for further useful application.

No known process in nature is exactly reversible: that is to say, there is no known process by which we can convert a given amount of energy of one form into energy of another form, and then, reversing the process, reconvert the energy of the second form thus obtained into the original quant.i.ty of energy of the first form. In fact, during any transformation of energy from one form into another, there is always a certain portion of energy changed into heat in the process of conversion, and the heat thus produced becomes dissipated and diffused by radiation and conduction. Consequently there is a tendency in nature for all the energy in the universe, of whatever kind it be, gradually to a.s.sume the form of heat, and having done so to become equally diffused. Now, were all the energy of the universe converted into uniformly diffused heat, it would cease to be available for producing mechanical effort, since, for that purpose, we must have a hot source and a cooler condenser. This gradual degradation of energy is perpetually going on, and, sooner or later, unless there be some restorative power of which we have, at present, no knowledge whatever, the present state of things must come to an end."

{112}

He revealed the Electrodynamics of Qualities of Metals; the size of atoms, the horse-power of the sun; he determined the rigidity of the earth, the laws of the tides, made far-reaching discoveries in electricity, in vortex motion; it might be said of him that he took the universe for his field.

But in a chapter like this one is tempted to dwell too long on high achievements. What attracted one more than the achievements was the man, the kindly, sympathetic man who loved truth not celebrity, and work more than its rewards. He was ever the same, whether one met him in Glasgow, London, at sea, or in America, the same simple, straightforward, kindly character. He retained his mental activity to the end. He died at eighty-four, and seemed only to be departing on another journey in quest of truth and friendship.

On one of the afternoons when I sat with him in his study, within the precincts of the university, he said, "Patience, great patience is the need of this generation. It asks results before it earns them. Man is too wasteful of the resources he finds in the earth. The most of our coal is lost in smoke; the most of our heat is dissipated in the air.

We need patience not less than courage in dealing with our problems."

The study was lined with engravings and photographs. Darwin and Joule and Faraday looked down from the walls, and there were pictures of the cable-laying ships, the _Hooper_, and the _Great Eastern_. There were trophies of travel,--from specimens of sea-bottom along the African coast, to quite personal mementos of his lectures at {113} Johns Hopkins University and other places in America.

A typical day of Lord Kelvin's was, in outline, this: After breakfast he would, at nine, face his cla.s.s in the university and lecture for an hour. I heard him in such an hour lecture on "Kepler's Laws." He lectured to his cla.s.s three days a week. After the lecture he would go to White's where he was perfecting an electric metre. After White's he would return to the university and lecture until one o'clock, say, on the "Higher Mathematics." Then home to lunch. After lunch consulting work on the lighting of a town by electricity. After that an hour in Lady Kelvin's drawing-room, taking tea with friends. Then work in the study over the laws governing the formation of crystals. Then dinner.

Then calculations in the study, or writing a paper for one of the numerous societies of which he was a working member. In the intervals, with his secretary's aid, he would attend to his correspondence. And, if waiting for his secretary, out of a coat pocket would come the little green book, and into it would go notes, calculations, or diagrams, perhaps all three. That little green book would come out whenever he had a minute to spare, in his dressing-room, or on the stairs, or in a train, or a cab, wherever he happened to be, and the thought flashed. I often wondered what his thoughts were on the conservation of personal energy.

{114}

CHAPTER IX

TENNYSON

Freshwater is an overgrown village which sprawls about the western end of the lovely Isle of Wight. The meanness of much of its masonry is compensated by its remarkably wholesome air. Man has done his best to spoil Freshwater, but he has not wholly succeeded--yet. Give him time, and more radicalism, and he will make it one of the ugly spots of earth. I made its acquaintance in the early spring of 1882, and subsequently have visited it many times.

When I first made acquaintance with Freshwater, there was no railway within eleven miles, Newport being the terminus of the island lines which were as drolly inconvenient as they are now. The fiddling, amateurish railway, which has come in since then, has not only robbed Freshwater of its seclusion but has saddled parts of the rolling country with shabby streets of mean houses worthy of a Montana mining town. Towards the downs and the sea much of the old charm remains.

About Farringford it is undisturbed. And it was at Farringford, that lovely estate, that Tennyson lived.

I had quarters in a house that faced the sea. And these quarters were mine whenever, in the {115} thirty-six years since that delightful May, I returned to Freshwater. They are mine no longer. The house has become an hotel. Now, in the thirty-eighth year of my Freshwatering, I have lodgment elsewhere. The house that sheltered me so long is scarcely a quarter of a mile from Tennyson's Lane, and many of the poet's friends have stayed in it, and friends of Watts, for that great artist also lived in Freshwater, first at a house which is now called Dimbola, and subsequently at "The Briary", a charming home built by the Prinseps and facing Tennyson's "n.o.ble Down." In the rooms to which I have so often retreated, and where I so often watched the blue Channel dancing in the sunshine, there are, or were, many mementos of past days. Some of them were photographs, and, as any one who knows the Freshwater legends may guess, they were taken by Mrs. Cameron, the first of the artist photographers, and, in her day, the celebrator of all the celebrated who came to Freshwater to visit the poet.

Mrs. Cameron lived at Dimbola which is at the southeastern corner of the Farringford estate. "She were a concentric lady who wore velvet gowns a-trailin' in the dusty roads," as one old-timer described her to me. Her photography was not professional but amateur, and her skill in it was quite remarkable. So was her persistence. She would not permit a possible "subject" to escape without "taking" him or her. She was quite intimate with the Tennysons, and always called the poet by his Christian name. One day, while there was a smallpox scare about, she rushed to Farringford, {116} with a stranger in tow, and finding Tennyson within, she opened the door of the room where he was sitting, and bidding the stranger follow, cried, "Alfred, I 've brought a doctor to vaccinate you. You must be vaccinated!"

Tennyson, horrified, fled to an adjoining room and bolted the door after him.

"Alfred, Alfred," Mrs. Cameron called, "I've brought a doctor. You must be vaccinated; you really must!"

There was no reply.

"Oh, Alfred, you 're a coward! Come and be vaccinated!"

She won.

When Garibaldi visited Tennyson, he planted a tree in the Farringford grounds. And Mrs. Cameron planted herself before him, and begged him to come and be photographed. Rather eccentric, as my old-timer had tried to convey, she had that morning hastened to Farringford without hat, or gloves, and with her sleeves rolled up, just as she came from her "dark room", and her hands were stained with photographic chemicals. Garibaldi seems to have taken her for a beggar and was turning away, when she knelt before him and implored him to let her photograph him.

Again she won. She always won in such contests.

Mrs. Cameron's day was before the days of dry plates and films. The acc.u.mulation of negatives that she left when, with her husband, she returned to Ceylon, where they had formerly lived for many years, pa.s.sed into the possession of a son. I do not {117} know what has been their subsequent fate; but if uninjured they would be very interesting now, and a collection of prints from them would have a value all its own. She made a number, I daresay many photographs of Tennyson and the members of his family; and when Longfellow came to Farringford, the good lady triumphantly proclaimed him a captive.

She was a kind-hearted, good-natured soul, but when she wanted to carry a point she could be as imperious and decisive as any one that ever lived in the Isle. The neighbourhood children she would persuade by "sweeties", or, failing these, by main force, to "come and be photographed" in this character or that, and there were maid servants with cla.s.sic faces and ploughmen with fine heads who posed for her as characters in plays and poems, in costumes which she would improvise.

Mrs. Cameron was a generous, interesting, impulsive woman. Much of Freshwater legend gathers about her, and her camera, and her diligence in amateur theatricals.