The Smithsonian Institution

Second Edition

Paul H. Oehser, Louise Heskett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000305463
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Smithsonian Institution has grown and prospered since the first edition of this book appeared in 1970, and Paul Oehser's revised edition is badly needed. New and expanded structures (the Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn, the National Museum of American Art, the National Portrait Gallery) and new undertakings (Smithsonian magazine, the Handbook of North American Indians series, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and prestigious symposia) richly serve the original purpose James Smithson envisioned in his will: " To found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." The heart of Oehser's original work has been left intact in this second edition. His is the only survey that combines the dramatic story of the Smithsonian's influence and expansion with the behind-the-scenes details of daily operations, structure, and administrative problems. The book has been updated to include all important developments of the last thirteen years, as well as to describe current plans for future expansion and program additions. The whole picture leads one to the conclusion that the world's largest museum complex, housing over seventy million objects, has succeeded—despite its air of old-fashioned traditionalism—in reflecting the adventure of the American experience and the insatiable curiosity and dynamics of the American spirit.

1
The Beginnings: James Smithson, his will and the Congress of the United States

In the autumn of 1965, in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution celebrated, with appropriate pomp and some circumstance, the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of its founder, James Smithson. During a three-day program, much of it held al fresco on the Mall, with its array of Smithsonian buildings, scholars and other well-wishers gathered from all over the world to pay tribute to the obscure Englishman whose vision and somewhat fortuitous bequest generated the complex that today is the Smithsonian Institution. Some of the participants in the event certainly had only a vague notion of who James Smithson was, but all were surely aware of the lengthened shadow that the life of this man had cast over the world of learning. Referring to his own interest in science, Smithson once expressed the modest hope that he might "enlarge those lurid specks in the vast field of darkness." This wish was the seminal purpose of his life, and he sowed its seed in a fertile spot. The Smithson bicentennial celebration, held at a time when the Smithsonian Institution itself had reached a turning point, focused long overdue world attention on Smithson and his creation, on what he had prescribed that he wanted done, and on how his wishes had been interpreted and carried out in the years since his death.

James Smithson was born in Paris, France, in the year 1765, the month and day unknown. The circumstances of his birth were peculiar, to say the least. He was the natural son of the rich and handsome Hugh Smithson, who was made Duke of Northumberland the year after James's birth. His mother was Mrs. Elizabeth Hungerford Keate Macie, a rich widow of Bath.

Portrait of James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsons were an old family remotely related to the Percys, the family of Hugh Smithson's wife, and the Duke, by act of Parliament, took the Percy name. Sir Hugh is said to have "sustained his royal rank with great dignity, generosity, and splendor"; he lived a charitable and rollicking life and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In all, he had four illegitimate children, as well as three children by his wife, also named Elizabeth, one of the latter being James's half-brother Hugh Percy, who fought with the British at Bunker Hill and Lexington and who inherited the dukedom.

James's mother was a lineal descendant of King Henry VII through Charles, Duke of Somerset, her great-granduncle, and was a cousin of Hugh Smithson's wife. She was heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley, whose property she inherited in 1766. Nothing is known of Smithson's early life in France, but he was taken to England and there naturalized, at the age of nine, and educated. Smithson kept his mother's name and was known as James Lewis Macie at the time he entered Oxford, but by permission of the Crown he later took the name Smithson.

Smithson always retained respect for his noble birth and a sensitivity to the bar sinister. In later years he wrote, "The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to Kings, but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten." This, though a rather rash prophecy, since the line of Percys is by no means extinct, struck close to the heart of Smithson's discontent, and it may well in part have been this resentment of the injustice dealt him that motivated his unusual bequest.

In May 1782, matriculating as a "gentleman commoner" under the name Macie, James entered Pembroke College, Oxford, whose most famous sons up to that time had been Samuel Johnson and William Blackstone. It is not to be supposed that Sir Hugh was averse to educating his son, but records seem to indicate that the costs of his college education were borne by his mother. He was evidently a serious student and soon acquired an enthusiasm for the natural sciences and a bent for scientific research that influenced his later life. Perhaps this inclination was due in part to the spirit of the times, for it was a period of intellectual advancement, when ingenious men such as Joseph Priestley, Count Alessandro Volta, Immanuel Kant, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baron Georges Cuvier, Sir William Herschel, Sir Humphry Davy, James Watt, and many others were making brilliant discoveries in science and invention and expanding the horizons of philosophic inquiry.

At Pembroke, Smithson became associated with others who shared his interest in science—Davies Gilbert, who was later knighted and became a president of the Royal Society; William Higgins, who anticipated Dalton by his application of the atomic theory to chemistry; and Thomas Beddoes, who became an eminent physician. Although he was thirtyfour years younger, Smithson became an intimate friend of the eccentric discoverer of hydrogen Henry Cavendish and worked in his laboratory. Another good friend was the chemist and natural philosopher William Hyde Wollaston.

James was graduated from Pembroke College on May 26, 1786, a few days before his father's death. He was given the degree master of arts. The very next year, at the age of only twenty-two, he was elected a member of the Royal Society. His nomination, signed by five members, including Cavendish, attests to his abilities and to perhaps a certain precociousness:

James Lewis Macie, Esq., M.A., late of Pembroke College, Oxford, and now of John Street, Golden Square—a gentleman well versed in various branches of Natural Philosophy, and particularly in Chymistry and Mineralogy, being desirous of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, we whose names are hereunto subscribed do, from our personal knowledge of his merit, judge him highly worthy of that honor and likely to become a very useful and valuable member.

Under the terms of his naturalization petition granted by the Crown, Smithson was debarred from entering politics, the civil service, the army, and the church—the professions then customarily available to gentlemen. It was, therefore, natural that he should find in science a sort of haven, where, in association with men whose interests were similar to his own, he could forget the cloud of his birth. He turned to the serious pursuit of chemistry, which he viewed as an almost virgin field. "Chemistry," he said, "is yet so new a science, what we know of it bears so small a proportion to what we are ignorant of . . . that no researches can be undertaken without producing some facts leading to consequences which extend beyond the boundaries of their immediate object."

Smithson's Scientific Achievements

On July 7, 791, Smithson read to the Royal Society his first scientific paper, entitled "An Account of Some Chemical Experiments on Tabasheer," tabasheer being a curious concretion found in the hollow of bamboo canes and "an article of importance in the materia medica of the ancient Arabians."

He continued his experimentation and made chemical analyses of the calamines. He discovered and analyzed a new zinc ore, which is today called smithsonite in his honor. He subjected various members of the vegetable kingdom—violet, daisy, hollyhock, artichoke, currant, and many others—to minute chemical study. Indeed, it was his habit to analyze in this way practically everything that came to his notice, and he equipped himself with a portable laboratory for that purpose. He assembled a large collection of minerals and rare gems, many of them minute specimens, which when systematically labeled and classified enabled him to compare and readily identify samples that came to hand. His analytical approach is illustrated by an anecdote related by Sir Davies Gilbert in an address before the Royal Society.

Mr. Smithson declared that, happening to observe a tear gliding down a lady's cheek, he endeavored to catch it on a crystal vessel; that one-half of the drop escaped, but having preserved the other half he submitted it to reagents, and detected what was then called microcosmic salt, with muriate of soda, and, I think, three or four more saline substances, held in solution.

Smithson published, in all, eight scientific papers in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions (1791-1817), eighteen in the Annals of Philosophy (1819-25), and a short note in the Philosophical Magazine (1807). Smithsonian Secretary Spencer Baird, in an introduction to the published collection of Smithson's papers, stated that the articles embraced "a wide range of research, from the origin of the earth, the nature of the colors of the vegetables and insects, the analysis of minerals and chemicals, to an improved method of constructing lamps or of making coffee." This was in 1879, the fiftieth anniversary of Smithson's death when the twenty-seven papers constituting his entire published scientific works were collected and reprinted in Volume 21 of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections.

During a vacation in 1784, even before he had left Pembroke, Smithson made a geological expedition to explore Fingal's Cave off the northeast coast of Scotland. The journal that he kept reveals his development as a young scientist, already acquiring diligence in recording his scientific observations of ores and minerals. Though Smithson would probably be called an amateur by today's criteria, he early acquired a fidelity to the experimental method and a high regard for science in general. He tried to record his experiments "precisely as they turned out."

This expedition was the first of many mineralogical field trips that he took throughout Europe during his lifetime. As he traveled around the Continent, he became well known among a large number of scientists and corresponded and exchanged views with such men as Dominique François Jean Arago, the French physicist and revolutionist; Ottavio Tozzetti, the Italian botanist; Giovanni Febbroni, the Florentine naturalist, chemist, and engineer; and Anton Vassalli-Eandi, inventor of an electrometer. Years later, Smithsonian Secretary Samuel P. Langley, in his memoir on Smithson, noted that it was Arago, in fact, who recorded an interesting sidelight on Smithson's habits. It seems that, during his later life, Smithson acquired a taste for gambling. "Save for a few hours given to repose," said Arago, his life "was regularly divided between the most interesting scientific researches and gaming. It was a source of great regret to me that this learned experimentalist should devote half of so valuable a life to a course so little in harmony with an intellect whose wonderful powers called forth the admiration of the world around him." Smithson did not, however, allow this pastime to fritter away his fortune, and apparently he never lost any great amount in excess of his winnings.

A reasonable evaluation of Smithson's scientific achievements, given by Dr. Frank Wigglesworth Clarke, a former chief chemist of the United States Geological Survey, was also recorded in Langley's memoir on Smithson:

The most notable feature of Smithson's writings, from the standpoint of the modern analytical chemist, is the success obtained with the most primitive and unsatisfactory appliances. In Smithson's day, chemical apparatus was undeveloped, and instruments were improvised from such materials as lay readiest at hand. With such instruments, and with crude reagents, Smithson obtained analytical results of the most creditable character, and enlarged our knowledge of many mineral species. In his time the native carbonate and silicate of zinc were confounded as one species under the name "calomine"; but his researches distinguish between the two minerals, which are now known as smithsonite and calamine respectively.

To theory Smithson contributed little, if anything; but from a theoretical point of view the tone of his writings is singularly modern. His work was mostly done before Dalton had announced the atomic theory, and yet Smithson saw clearly that a law of definite proportions must exist, although he did not attempt to account for it. His ability as a reasoner is best shown in his paper upon the Kirkdale bone cave, which [Granville] Penn had sought to interpret by reference to the Noachian deluge. A clearer and more complete demolition of Penn's views could hardly be written today. Smithson was gentle with his adversary, but none the less thorough for all his moderation. He is not to be classed among the leaders of scientific thought; but his ability, and the usefulness of his contributions to knowledge, cannot be doubted.

A more recent account of Smithson's contributions is provided by former Secretary Leonard Carmichael and J. C. Long in James Smithson and the Smithsonian Story published in 1965:

Smithson's intellectual curiosity was endless. A lesson which may be learned from his career is that everything in the material world is worthy of study. The very catholicity of his view kept him from concentrating on any particular field. But his example served to enhance his reputation in his own time, and his studies gave hints which were useful to future research chemists.

The Temper of the Times

Smithson apparently lived in Paris through much of the turbulent period of the French Revolution, and at least in the early stages of that struggle his sympathies were with the revolutionists. He was still a young man, in temperament sensitive to the social and political injustices that lay at the bottom of the world unrest. Although his older half-brother, Hugh Percy, had fought at Bunker Hill, James was only ten years old at the time, and the American Revolution probably made even less of an impression on him than it did on most of his older countrymen. The struggle in Europe, however, was different, and living through it strengthened his internationalist and republican philosophy. In 1792, three years after the storming of the Bastille, he wrote from Paris:

Ça ira is growing to be the song of England, of Europe, as well as of France. Men of every rank are joining in the chorus. Stupidity and guilt have had a long reign, and it begins, indeed, to be time for justice and common sense to have their turn. . . . Mr. Louis Bourbon is still at Paris, and the office of King is not yet abolished, but they daily feel the inutility, or rather great inconvenience, of continuing it, and its duration will probably not be long. May other nations, at the time of their reforms, be wise enough to cast off, at first, the contemptible incumbrance.

As a British subject in France, he wisely kept his activities on a philosophical level, and it is not known how many or which of the revolutionists he may have known. However, he was able to avoid involvement for only a few years. When he returned to the Continent on a mineral-collecting expedition in 1807, he was imprisoned by the Danish government, which at that time was supporting Napoleon against Britain. It was an unfortunate incident, but since Smithson was a Britisher, though on a peaceful civilian mission, it was not easy to convince the Danes that he was not a spy. Incarceration was a rigorous experience for the innocent James, and he became ill. Finally, after his English friends intervened and the Danes realized that Smithson was a rather famous man, the King of Denmark set him free. Even then, he had difficulty in getting back to England. He was held captive again in Hamburg and did not reach England until 1812.

Influences on Smithson from the New World are mainly conjectural. He never visited America. He must have come in contact with some of the American sympathizers of the French Revolution, perhaps Thomas Paine, who was in England and France during the years 1787 to 1802, and the American poet and patriot Joel Barlow, who became a French citizen in 1792. Barlow acted as President James Madison's minister plenipotentiary to France and lived on intimate terms with the democratic leaders, French sympathizers, and philosophical deists. In fact, it is unlikely that, in his peregrinations around Europe, Smithson would have missed so well known and colorful a figure as Barlow.

In Smithson's library at the time of his death were three books that indicated he had some interest in and knowledge of the United States—a paper by DuPont de Nemours on education in the United States; J. Harriott's Struggles Through Life, Exemplified in the Various Travels and Adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa and America; and Isaac Weld's Travels Through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797.

There was probably no one event that persuaded James Smithson to bequeath his fortune to the United States. He was a man of his times, and his reasons were no doubt a result of the pervasive influences that his age brought to bear on an independent personality who wanted to do something original and lasting for his fellow man.

It was a time when the Romantic poets, no doubt familiar with the works of William Bartram and Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, saw America as a utopia, where people could be saved from Europe's corruption and injustices begotten of antiquity and outworn social systems. Joel Barlow saw an "Athens rising on the banks of the Potomac." Coleridge and Southey dreamed of a "pantisocracy" on the Susquehanna. Blake would have the Ohio wash from him the stains of the Thames. Goethe wrote: "America, you're better off than/ Our continent, the old./You have no castles which are fallen,/No basalt to behold." Shelley apostrophized America as the place where "Freedom and Truth are Worshiped," where "the multitudinous earth shall sleep beneath thy shade." Chateaubriand brought back from his voyage to America romantic pictures of the physical virginity of the country, the wilderness grandeur of the Mohawk and the Niagara. The new, optimistic spirit in the air of Europe was eloquently expressed by Wordsworth: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven."

Other influences have been suggested as well, but they, too, cannot be documented. There is a tradition, for example, apparently started by Louis Agassiz when he was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, that Smithson had intended to leave his money to the Royal Society, which had been good to him but with whose officers he was said to have had a quarrel. There is no foundation for this theory.

Another influence may have been the Royal Institution of London, established in 1800 by the American Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) "for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements and for teaching by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments the application of science to the common purposes of life." Smithson was a charter member of the Royal Institution and was thoroughly familiar with its purposes. His prescription for his institution—"the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men"—is broader and more succinct, but there is a parallel. Both are reminiscent of a phrase in George Washington's farewell address in which he urged his countrymen to "promote institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge."

But the fundamental impulse that led Smithson to the unusual disposition of his fortune was, I believe, his feeling that his own country, by denying him his noble birthright and the normal fulfillment of a life in England suitable to his talents and inclinations, had let him down. He may we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 The Beginnings: James Smithson, His Will, and the Congress of the United States
• 2 Joseph Henry, His "Programme," and the Early Years
• 3 The Continuum
• 4 "The Smithsonian Is Not a Museum"
• 5 Museums as Repositories and as Centers of Learning
• 6 Smithsonian Research
• 7 Galleries and the Arts
• 8 Publications, Information, and the Performing Arts
• 9 The Buildings
• 10 The Smithsonian's Finances and Friends
• 11 Quo Vadimus?
• Appendixes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Book and Authors