Showing 42 results

The Athenaeum Club - WW met Charles Babbage on the road to Cambridge: 'He is resolved to give his lectures sixth week, in as much as they are finished and just about to be published in the Encyc. Met. [Encyclopaedia Metropoliatana]. They will contain I conceive the views which you want from him of the economical laws of the division of labour &c. He will not make any great approximation to a conformity with established rules by thus delivering his lectures in what is practically vacation and without any notice.

Trinity College - WW is delighted with the inductive character which RJ's appendix gives to the book ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation: Part 1. - Rent', 1831]. WW has heard a great deal of 'indignation expressed' at Charles Babbage not printing his examinations by the young tutors and examiners.

Lord Francis Jeffrey is expecting a copy of WW's paper ['On the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy', Trans. of the Cambridge Phil. Soc., 1844] - 'you had better send one'. Charles Babbage would also like one Edward Ryan says. 'Ld. J. has been reading my copy and scribbling on it but he has been so seriously ill with the influenza that I have not had any talk with him about it '. John S. Mill 'has been publishing a paper to prove that a priori reasoning is not only good in Pol. Eco. but the only reasoning applicable to it. God help him and those this belief leads to trust in him[,] his Papa and his school'. Charlotte Jones is still an invalid and RJ is worried that her symptoms are precisely those which preceded the fatal illness of her sister.

RS had no idea of the state of Robert Woodhouse: 'I never should have suspected him of getting off the hinges but I dare say the loss of his wife disturbed him more than it would have done a soft tempered and opener mannered man'. John Herschel 'who seems to be the kindest scientific or unscientific soul breathing went down to Worcester where Babbage was indisposed and carried him a tour into Ireland. I have not heard anything of them but it was the wisest and kindest thing a friend could do'. RS congratulates 'our worthy Lucasian [George Airy] upon his promise of success and if he can destroy the influence of Venus entirely (not take a poor tithe of her) he has my best wishes'. Although RS would like the money attached to the office of head lectureship, he will not take it this year. RS thinks WW should plan his university career towards getting the divinity chair.

Concerning the donation of a book in her possession created by Augustus De Morgan, recording the quarrel between Richard Sheepshanks, Sir James South and Charles Babbage, now on the shelves of Trinity College Library, shelfmark Adv.c.16.32.

Trinity College - WW cannot imagine why RJ has not sent more work to the printers ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation: Part 1. - Rent', 1831]: 'the university lose money, and will make us all lose patience by and bye'. Charles 'Babbage is come and gone wilder than ever'.

Two letters

Trinity College - How is RJ progressing with his manuscripts ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation: Part 1. - Rent', 1831]. Charles Babbage has arrived in his capacity as Lucasian Professor: 'I have really enjoyed his society much having seen him more closely than I had done before. But his anxiety about the success and fame of his machine is quite devouring and unhappy'. WW also relates this to RJ's anxiety about his book.

RJ went to dine with Henry Hallam, Thomas Malthus and John Elliot Drinkwater at Charles Babbage's. Malthus did not turn up: 'I prevailed on Babbage (who was not reluctant) to call a general meeting of the Committee of the association [BAAS] for next week and got an authority from them to set about forming a society as the best means of carrying the spirit of the Cambridge instructions into effect'. RJ proposes to divide the proposed Statistical Society as follows: 'Economical Statistics 1 agriculture - 2 manufactures 3 commerce and currency 4 distribution of wealth i.e. rent[,] wages and profits. Political Statistics 1. statistics of elements of institutions...2 Legal statistics number of national and local tribunals, nature of causes tried etc. public establishments etc. etc. Medical Statistics 1 general medical statistics 2 Population (the doctors say they shall want subdivisions) Moral Intellectual Statistics 1 Crime 2 education and literature 3 ecclesiastical statistics'. The first meeting will be in two or three weeks.

Trinity College - If an order is not made for the printing of RJ's book by the end of May it cannot be done till October or November: 'By the bye it has occurred to me that your way of beginning by talking about the definition of wealth is both uninviting and unnecessary. Cannot you manage to introduce the definition their when you first want it, and make your start more characteristic of the views you are going to take?' Charles Babbage has heard in Rome that he is Lucasian Professor 'and is full of gratitude and delight at the honor...Nothing can be better or prettier than all he writes about it'. Rose [Hugh James Rose] says that RJ should read Sismondi's work about Italy. WW hopes RJ has 'not split your head with Niebuhr.

Album containing over 250 letters, notes, documents, unaccompanied envelopes, printed items, and photographic prints carrying the handwriting and/or autographs of sovereigns, prelates, government ministers, peers, authors, and Trinity College masters and professors, with a few unusual items in addition. The material appears to have been largely culled from the correspondence of George Peacock, his wife Frances Peacock, her father William Selwyn, and her second husband William Hepworth Thompson, with a few unrelated items. Most date from the 19th century but there are a few items from the 18th century.

Among those represented are King George III, Charles Babbage, E.W. Benson, the 15th Earl of Derby, the 7th Duke of Devonshire, W. E. Gladstone, Lord Houghton, Charles Kingsley, H. W. Longfellow, Lord Macaulay, Sir Robert Peel, John Ruskin, Adam Sedgwick, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, and William Whewell; there are in addition a miniature handwritten Lord's Prayer in a circle no larger than 15mm across, a carte-de-visite photograph souvenir 'balloon letter' from the Paris siege of 1870 with an image of the newspaper 'La Cloche', and a photographic print of Lane's portrait of George Peacock.

Trinity College - WW hopes RJ's political economy is soon to appear. What does RJ think of the 'heads having elected Babbage [Charles Babbage elected to the Lucasian Chair] and how do you suppose he will take it?' George Peacock, Higman and WW wrote letters to each of the electors - 'so I shall be vexed if he is not gratified and now that he has no wife he may perhaps better like to live here part of the year'.

Brasted - RJ has been very ill and has taken to severe exercise (he weighs 16 stone). John Herschel is to visit RJ for a couple of days: 'His wife writes word that he has something to talk to me about - I earnestly hope it may not be his scheme of expatriation which I can neither relish nor find fault with'. RJ has received Charles Babbage's book or paper - 'An Essay on the General Principles which Regulate the Application of Machinery to Manufactures etc ['The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures', 1832]. It is a characteristic thing - full of ingenuity, precision and acuteness, and a strange collection of facts taken from his common place book - some striking and valuable - some trivial and uninteresting but all apparently of equal value in his estimation very loosely connected and forming a whole as little like an Essay on General Principles of any kind as can well be coupled with his former sketch to which it is inferior in method and I think in merit, it is to form a little book like Herschel's but unless he adds much prose and rearrangement it will when measured by its title be counted superficial I should think - all this of course entre nous - he sends it me that I may remark on the political economy - I see little or none except an explanation of the manner in which the division of labor saves skilled labor which is striking and true though not I think of first rate importance which I know he imagines it is - I shall shuffle in my answer to him for I know full well that my very deep conviction of his genius and power would be a poor atonement for letting him see that I think this a bagatelle - the matter would have told well mixed up with lectures'. RJ wants to write a book 'On the economic conditions of the existence of different political institutions starting with the radical (i.e. liberal) proposition that those forms of government are best which secure persons and property at the least expense and with the least sacrifice of individual free agency and then shewing that no forms or modification of one form can do this under all circumstances using some facts as to the generation of classes, revenues, and bands of connections which you have seen...tracing their influence as the possible combinations of executive - legislative and judicial powers in nations - appealing of course to history and the world as it is and stabbing the metaphysical and abstract constitution mongers home with facts and details and induction - voila'.

Trinity College - WW's comments on the printing plans of RJ's book: 'I do not suppose that there will be any objection to the plan you mention of taking your impression printed by the university if it so seems good to them and making with it in your hand the best bargain you can with a London bookseller' ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation: Part 1. - Rent', London, 1831]. WW does not know what a London bookseller would think of such a plan. The Mineralogy professorship is still uncertain and indeed may be terminated. There is another professorship vacant on the death of Woodhouse [Robert Woodhouse] which Airy [George Airy] will probably get, 'and the vacant one will be the Lucasian for which Babbage [Charles Babbage] was a candidate. Some people here hope that Herschel [John Herschel] will take it which I much doubt. I should rejoice to have Babbage, but I am not so sure that he...would succeed and not at all certain that he would now offer himself'.

RJ accepts WW's offer to be a bystander and gives up all idea of writing anything himself [responding to John McCulloch's adverse review of RJ's book - 'Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation By the Rev. Richard Jones', Edinburgh Review, 1831]. However, RJ does think WW should see what he has written and he will send him a copy. He will also 'send back you Pryme's [George Pryme] letter. The professor's chemical illustration is so ingenious that it is almost a pity it is inapplicable - but though neither he nor McCulloch can comprehend it, yet the fact is (as you will see) that I have in tracing farmers rents made no such confusion as that which they complain of and I have asked pure rents and rejected returns to landlords improvements with a strictness of abstract analysis which ought to please them - but which has only puzzled them - as to the metayers - do turn to page 73 and 74 where I have stated nearly what Pryme states himself, as to the mixture of funds - I promised more. I am afraid his memory is not as good as might be wished for'. RJ is sorry WW is to be on the Council of the Royal Society. Does WW know that Charles Babbage is 'concocting some thunder to crush Daniel who preached against his Causes of Decline ['Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on some of its Causes', 1830] in his inaugural lecture at King's College - B.'s murder of Sabine [Edward Sabine] has made him blood thirsty and adventurous - he will commit more slaughter very likely - but when a man runs amuck he always gets slain at last - this warlike project of his is a secret mind, pray do not let it escape or I shall have a taste of the create'. RJ is annoyed with WW over his decision to be on the Council of the Royal Society because 'I find to my infinite vexation that party feeling is still so high in turn that you will lose some of the good will of people not otherwise than estimable'. RJ's reviewer in the Quarterly Review 'is a man of fortune - a ministerialist - rather an ultra liberal and apparently so ashamed of writing in the Tory Journal that he makes a point of concealment which will not last long I dare say - even what I tell you however is to be a great secret' ['Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation By Rev. Richard Jones, Quarterly Review, 1831].

A note to arrange a visit.

Regrets he cannot meet Mr V. Raumer at his house for dinner.

Mr Ewart has asked Babbage to introduce Wellwood Maxwell, an heir to considerable property, who is leaving Eton and heading to Trinity.

WW hopes to be working on etymological history, like HJR, in a week. His speculations on the subject 'have not advanced much farther than general notions of the points to be investigated and the method of philosophising upon them. I know nothing of Saxon though I have some intention of descending upon it from German'. HJR's successor on the Cambridge Union is Sheridan [Charles B. Sheridan]. WW is beginning 'to feel for poor Lacroix [Silvestre F. Lacroix] - if he be published at all it would be advisable that he should be out by next October; and for that he must be in the press immediately' [see WW to HJR, 15 April 1817]. The Fitzwilliam Museum is open and are in considerable danger of becoming all conoisseurs'. Has HJR seen Richard Jones in the pulpit? Charles Babbage 'has been here taking his degree and is just as mad about functions as he ever was '.

Introduces Dwarkanauth Tagore, a "wealthy merchant" who is seeking a tutor for his children.

Edinburgh - JDF's experiments with his subterranean thermometers have been so successful he has printed an early circular giving a first approximation of the results [attached to this letter - Discussion of One Year's Observations of Thermometers Sunk to Different Depths in Different Localities in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh, private circulation, 1838: The aim of the experiments was to ascertain the progress of solar heat in the crust of the globe - see JDF to WW, 21 Sept. 1836]. JDF notes that Hopkins [William Hopkins] has been giving his views respecting the interior of the earth to the Royal Society: 'Are his results wholly dynamical or partly theoretical'. A pupil of JDF's has been investigating the temperature of the interior of the globe in the manner of S.D. Poisson but with P.L. Dulong and A.T. Petit's law. JDF came to Newcastle shortly after the BAAS meeting hoping to find WW. He saw Babbage [Charles Babbage]: 'as miserable as a man could well be after all his wanton mischief at Newcastle. He wished to make me a convert to his cause, but even by his own shewing he was so utterly in the wrong that there was no hope for him'. JDF has been at work on heat: 'trying to get the law of reflection at surfaces'.

Trinity College - WW is preparing the sermons he is to give at St. Mary's in February. He is shortly departing with Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] on an expedition to Paris. He is behind in writing the sermons: 'with time enough I should not fear the greater part of the work - all the argument about the activity and omnipresence of the Deity, but when I come to the indications of benevolent design in the moral frame of society I have not such an habitual familiarity with the view of the subject in its details as merits with the confidence and vehemence which would be becoming. I have no doubt I should get on better if I had you at my elbow'. Babbage is in Cambridge canvassing for the Lucasian Chair - John Herschel is here to support him - 'but all in vain'. George Airy has been elected. WW thinks this a good choice - he 'will reside and give lectures - practical and painstaking ones - who is par eminence a mathematician - and whose reputation will all go to the account of the university'.

Trinity College - WW has had confirmation that Herschel [John Herschel] will not be coming forward for the vacant office of Lucasian Chair of Mathematics. 'Babbage [Charles Babbage] is making application and has written to people here on the subject. He has no chance whatever and it is mere extravagance, at least as appears to me, his taking up the thing. I do undoubtedly believe that he would be a good Professor now, but it is too much to expect that our heads should understand not only his merits, but the varying shape of them as time and circumstances may have modified it'. WW thinks Peacock [George Peacock] the most desirous candidate: 'I suppose Airy [George Airy] will not think of offering him for though he would be a better professor, it would be ungracious in him to fight Peacock - and after all it makes no difference. For French if he be a candidate will undoubtedly be elected'.

RJ is pleased WW has 'finished me up' ['Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation by the Revd Richard Jones', The British Critic, Quarterly Theological Review and Ecclesiastical Record, 1831]: 'I much wish if you can do it that you would slightly state that the argument drawn from landlords proportion is decisive against Ricardo on his own shewing but only probable in itself - the changed proportion of population is I think unassailable - indeed I feel sure - also where you state that the Irish starvation would not have taken place in metayer or serf countries and unless under very peculiar and rare circumstances for I have found a case and oddly enough of absentee landlords'. Could WW also state that RJ had only consulted McCulloch's first edition and was not probably aware of the second, since had he seen it he would have added a particular quotation. RJ will not send WW any classification of the population until he is less sure it is erroneous: 'Babbage could help us to the auxiliary manufacturing (one of the most difficult) but I little doubt his willingness - he is good humouredly but evidently thoroughly jealous of his discoveries - as if he had a power of making them as diminutive as it really is extraordinary and vast - he has thought and collected on that very point I suspect - by the bye he says I hear that he could fancy I was talking while he read the book ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation', 1831] - the greatest compliment I hold that has been paid to its style yet'. Moreover he recognises 'the fruit and spirit of the undergraduate' concerns 'of the good old set in every page'. Does not WW think it comical that since he last wrote 'I have found out that a tenantry is forming in America - that it is not like the English or quite like any of the old forms but a fresh variety of the metayer [see RJ to WW, 7 March 1831] - what a lesson to guesses but then you know I did not set about guessing till I was twisted into it '.

WW has been meaning to write to HJR for some time 'for the purpose of remonstrating with you as to one or two things more hard than was necessary which you have said of my friends the experimental philosophers'. WW cannot imagine why HJR 'should charge mathematics with being useful and with strengthening the memory, when you may easily know that all of the science which we learn here is devoid of all practical use; and I can give you plenty of testimony that it may produce the effect of very thoroughly spoiling memories naturally good, besides giving you psychological reasons why it should do so if you wish for them. Nor do I think that you quite fairly represent the nature of progress in scientific knowledge when you talk of its consisting in the rejection of present belief in favour of novelty; at any rate if the novelty be true one does not see what else is to be done. But, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that there is not in the nature of science anything unfavourable to religious feelings, and if I were not so persuaded I should be much puzzled to account for our being invested, as we so amply are, with the faculties that lead us to the discovery of scientific truth. It would be strange if our Creator should be found urging us on in a career which tended to a forgetfulness of Him. I have undertaken to preach at St. Mary's next February, and may possibly take that opportunity of introducing some of my own views on this subject'. WW is not surprised HJR likes the Master of Trinity [Christopher Wordsworth] so much 'for he always strikes me as most admirable in respect of principles, affections and temper'. If French is made Lucasian Professor, WW will be very upset - 'It will be making the office contemptible, and will besides be a clear proof that there is no greater dispositiion here to select people for their fitness to offices than there has been in previous times; that we do not feel the responsibility of our situation. I wish Babbage had any chance. He would be an admirable person, and so would Airy who is also a candidate'.

Lancaster - WW has been moving from one part of the country to another since the BAAS meeting at Newcastle. He met RJ's friend, Sir James Graham, who speaks very well of RJ: 'he tells me that he has proposed this as a prize question for the new agricultural association: What are the causes of the difference in prosperity of Belgium and Ireland, since you have in both the same small properties and individual labour, and the same religion'. There was a dispute at Newcastle: 'Babbage [Charles Babbage] has behaved with great bitterness to Murchison [Roderick Murchison] and tried to get him drummed out of the association in which he failed'. WW refused to support 'Babbage's dogma that men of science in England are a dogmatical race'.