I am in love with Heather Ewing and her book, The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian. (Bloomsbury, 2007)
I am in love with the amount of research it took to reveal the real James Smithson, (1765-1829) the British chemist, mineralogist, and philanthropist who donated $500,000 in 1836 to help establish the Smithsonian Institution, "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."
The Smithsonian, which was visited by 23.2 million people last year, and whose collections range from the first liquid-propellant rocket to Archie Bunker's chair, is now the world's largest museum complex and research organization. It is composed of 16 museums, the National Washington, D.C. zoo, and two museums in New York City. But, as Ewing sets out to reveal, who is man behind the mountain?
Heretofore not much has been known about Smithson, in large part to a tragic fire which destroyed most of his life's work and papers. (Ewing notes Smithson himself was almost set on fire when careless workers ignited the lining of his coffin.) He was largely thought to have been a shy and retreating recluse. A chemist's chemist.
Miss Ewing, who herself has worked at the Smithsonian as an architectural historian, flew to England, sorted through Smithson's bank statements, read his friend's letters, his fellow scientist's diaries, his mother's voluminous lawsuits, and managed to piece together a portrait of an altogether exceptional, eccentric and visionary man.
Ewing examines Smithson's motive for bequeathing his fortune to a country he had never set foot on. She illuminates the fact Smithson was the illegitimate son of an English landowner, which weighed heavily on his status and mind. She wonders if his vision for a new world might include a country where your title is not a precursor for your success.
An excerpt from the book:
Where a majority of the English reacted with fear and repression to the political and social upheavals of the late eighteenth century, Smithson was part of a small elite who looked at the factories sprouting up across England's green hills and saw not dark satanic mills, but rather the glow of industry and improvement.
In the French Revolution, they found not a threat to Britain's security, but triumphant confirmation that even the most hierarchical of societies could be transformed. And in America's unprecedented system of government, founded upon the rights of man, where each person was to be valued for his contribution rather than his pedigree, they saw the future -- the most promising foundation for the pursuit of knowledge and the advancement of society.
America's cause, as Tom Paine had famously said, was "the cause of all mankind." In this light, Smithson's bequest of an "establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," entrusted to the United States for its execution, shines from a new perspective.
There are curators of museums and then there are curators of life. It's a tonic to know some solitary souls are so carefully picking up pieces and sewing things back together again. Because of Heather Ewing's engaging and in-depth book, the lost world of James Smithson ceases to be lost, and the Smithsonian itself stands taller, richer and with one treasure more.