MacTutor
Mary Somerville
Times obituary
Mary Somerville died on Friday in the neighbourhood of Naples, where she had of late years taken up her residence. Had she lived to the 20th of the present month, she would have attained her 83rd year. Mary Somerville, or, to give her maiden name, Mary Fairfax, was a lady of good Scottish ancestry, being the daughter of the late Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, who was a cadet of the noble Scottish house of Lord Fairfax, and who commanded His Majesty's ship Venerable at the Battle of Camperdown. She was born on the 20th of December, 1789; her mother was Margaret, daughter of Mr. Samuel Charters, Solicitor of Customs for Scotland. All that is known of her early life is that she was a great reader, from childhood onwards, and that she was brought up at a school in Musselburgh, in the vicinity of Edinburgh. Before many of the most distinguished cultivators of physical science were born, Mrs. Somerville had already taken her place among the original investigators of nature. In 1826 she presented to the Royal Society a paper on "The magnetizing power of the more refrangible solar rays," in which she detailed her repetitions of the experiments made by Morichini of Rome and Bérard of Montpelier. The paper had for its object to prove whether solar light is a source of magnetic power. By means of a prism the component rays of a sunbeam were separated, and those which are now known as the chemical or actinic rays were allowed to fall upon delicately poised needles of various sizes which had been previously proved to be devoid of magnetism. In every instance, the steel exhibited its true magnetic character after an exposure of several hours to the violet light. Experiments were then made by covering non-magnetic needles with blue glass shades and placing them in the sun, and in all cases they became magnetic. From these experiences, Mrs. Somerville concluded that the more refrangible rays of the solar spectrum, even in our latitude, have a strong magnetic influence. This communication was printed in the Philosophical Transactions at the time; it led to much discussion on a very difficult point of experimental inquiry, which was only set at rest some years later by the researches of two German electricians, Riess and Moser, who showed that the action upon the magnetic needle was not caused by the violet rays.
In 1831 or 1832, Mrs. Somerville published her Mechanism of the Heavens. This book, her only strictly astronomical work, which is largely derived from Laplace's celebrated treatise, La Mécanique Céleste, and is understood to have been originally suggested by Lord Brougham, was originally proposed by its author as one of the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; but, being moulded on too large a scale for their series, it was given to the world in an independent form. A few years later her name became more widely known by her Connexion of the Physical Sciences, which obtained the praise of the Quarterly Review as "original in plan and perfect in execution," and, indeed, "a true 'Kosmos' in the nature of its design and in the multitude of materials collected and condensed into the history which it affords of the physical phenomena of the universe." This she followed up with her Physical Geography, which, as its name imports, comprises the history of the earth in its whole material organization. These two works, in addition to their popularity in this country, as testified by the many editions through which they have passed, have been translated into several foreign languages; and their author's services to geographical science were recognized in 1869 by the award of the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. In the same year she gave to the world her Molecular and Microscopic Science, a work which, to use the expression of a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "contains a complete conspectus of some of the most recent and most abstruse researches of modern science, and describes admirably not only the discoveries of our day in the field of physics and chymistry, but more especially the revelations of the microscope in the vegetable and animal worlds."
The publication of such a work as that last mentioned by a lady in, we believe, her eighteenth year is without a parallel in the annals of science. In it, what most forcibly strikes the reader is the extraordinary power of mental assimilation of scientific facts and theories displayed by its author. In it, Mrs. Somerville first gives us a clear account of the most recent discoveries in organic chymistry, in the elementary condition of matter, and tells us of the latest researches into the synthesis of organic carbon compounds. She next leads us on to the relations of polarization of light in crystalline form, and, quitting the subject of molecular physics with an account of the phenomena of spectrum analysis as applied to the stars and nebulae, she begins the consideration of the microscopic structure of the vegetable world; then, passing in review the whole of the organisms from algae to exogenous plants, she lands us in her second volume among the functions of the animal frame in its lowest organizations, and describes the morphology of the various groups of animals from the protozoa to the mollusc. In thus traversing this immense field of modern scientific inquiry, Mrs. Somerville does not attempt to generalize to any great extent, much less to bring forward any original observations of theories of her own; but, as she most definitely hints in her preface, she has simply given in plain and clear language a résumé of some of the most interesting results of the recent investigations of men of science.
For a few years before her death, Mrs. Somerville was in receipt of a literary pension, bestowed upon her in recognition of her services to science. This was the nation's tribute to her worth. But among men of science, a far higher value than pecuniary grants can have is set upon those rewards which can be bestowed only by such as can appreciate the labours and aims of a worker in the scientific field. And these Mrs. Sornerville received the Geographical Society, as we have said, awarded her its medal; the Royal Astronomical Society elected her, in 1834, one of its honorary Fellows, the same honour being at the same time bestowed upon Miss Caroline Herschel—the only two ladies on whom such a distinction was ever conferred. The Fellows of the Royal Society also signed their appreciation of her works and their personal regard for their author by subscribing for a bust of Mrs. Somerville, which Chantrey executed, and which the Duke of Sussex publicly presented to the Society in 1842, in his own name and in that of the subscribers. This monument adorns the Library of the Royal Society.
Mrs. Somerville was married twice. Early in life she became the wife of Mr. Samuel Greig, who is described in Burke's Peerage as "a Captain and Commissioner in the Russian Navy." Her union with him became the means of developing her latent scientific powers, as he took great pleasure in mathematical inquiry and carefully initiated her in both the theory of mathematics and its practical application. Her second husband was Dr. William Somerville, a member of a good old family of Scottish extraction.
__________________________________________________
It was stated by a clerical error in our biography of this distinguished lady that she was in her 82nd year. If she had survived until the 26th of this month she would have entered on her 93d year, having been born in Roxburghshire on the 26th of December, 1780. Her father, the late Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, Knight Banneret, and Lord Duke's flag captain at Camperdown, was English, and the younger son of Mr. Joseph Fairfax, of Bagshot, in the county of Surrey. On going with his ship to Scotland he married there, first in 1767, Hannah, daughter of the Rev. Robert Spears; She died childless in 1770. Sir William married, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Mr. Samuel Charters, Solicitor of Customs for Scotland, and she was the mother of Mrs. Somerville and the late Sir Henry Fairfax.
_________________________________________________
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir
May I ask for a space in The Times for a few personal memories of Mrs. Somerville, supplementary, they may he considered, to your article on this very distinguished lady in The Times of Monday last? I may plead in justification of this request my intimate relations of friendship and correspondence with her during a period of more than 50 years. I am glad to see in The Times of to-day the correspondence of an inadvertent error as to Mrs. Somerville's age. Had she lived but a month longer she would have reached her 93rd year This correction will interest all to whom it is welcome to see great faculties like hers maintained and actively exercised to this great age.
That they were so maintained, and this with little impairment of the senses, is attested by two or three striking facts. Only three years have elapsed since she published her two volumes on Molecular and Microscopic Science, a work of great labour and research, accomplished under circumstances little favourable to its prosecution. I happen to know that within the last year of her life she wished to be sent to her at Naples Professor Hamilton's Calculus of Quaternions, a record of one of the most recent and remarkable attainments in higher mathematics. It is interesting to associate this fact with one dating 60 years before. In 1811 Mrs. Somerville received a medal at Edinburgh as a prize for the solution of some mathematical problem.
I need not speak in detail of her several scientific writings during this long interval of years, though I might be privileged in some part to do so by my frequent communications with her during the progress of two of them. These several works gave to Mrs. Somerville's name a high reputation, eminently merited, and not limited to our own country. In France, Germany, and Italy they were well known and duly valorized. The testimonies of Laplace, Humboldt, Herschel, Airy, Davy, and Faraday all stand in record of their excellence. The Royal Society, the Astronomical and Geographical Societies, bestowed their honours upon her, in as far as their respective usages allowed in the case of a lady. The pension of £300 a year given to her under Sir Robert Peel's administration (with a motive and in a manner honourable to the Minister himself) was fully sanctioned by the feelings of the scientific community, as well as by those who knew her other various attainments and the virtues and graces of her private life.
Mrs. Somerville's first great work, The Mechanism of the Heavens, based on the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace, established at once her reputation as a mathematician, and in a branch of mathematics at that time little pursued or touched in England, though since cultivated with such admirable success, and so largely applied to other departments of science. It is told, and I believe the anecdote to be well founded, that Laplace himself, commenting on the English mathematical school of that period, said there were only two people in England who thoroughly understood his work, and these two were women—Mrs. Greig and Mrs. Somerville. The two thus named were, in fact, one. Mrs. Somerville married twice. Her first husband was Captain Greig, son of High Admiral Greig, of the Russian Navy, a distinguished officer under Empress Catherine. Left a widow, with one son, Mr. Woronzow Greig (since deceased), she some years afterwards married her cousin, Dr. Somerville, by which marriage she had three daughters, two of them now surviving her.
Recurring for a moment to Mrs. Somerville's works, I may speak of the volume on the Connection of the Physical Sciences as being, on the whole, that of the highest merit. It was almost the first attempt to bring the different branches of science into that close correlation which, more than any other principle of research, has tended to give unity and grandeur to the whole. The style of this work merits every commendation. It is excellent English, simple and lucid even on the most difficult subjects, though, perhaps, somewhat too condensed for common readers. With many eloquent passages, she generally lets the great phenomena she describes tell their own wonderful tale.
This work has gone through many editions. In 1858 I brought with me from Florence, where Mrs. Somerville then resided, the proof sheets of the ninth, the perusal of which on the journey home showed me the wonderful industry and accuracy with which she had interwoven into this edition the latest discoveries in physical science. It was on this visit to Florence, as I have related in my little volume of Recollections of Past Life, that I passed the evening with her, gazing together at the magnificent comet of Donati, the very night of its nearest approach to the earth. Other ladies then at Florence were buying tickets in the State Lottery, with numbers fancifully suggested by the aspect of the comet. Mrs. Somerville looked at this wonderful object with a very different eye and meditation.
Her work on Physical Geography has similar and almost equal value with that just mentioned. It has contributed, with other aids, to rectify the barren and tedious method of teaching geography by nomenclature merely, which long prevailed in England, and is still not wholly discarded. In numerous points this work comes into close contact with the subjects of Humboldt's Kosmos - a formidable competition, but one out of which Mrs. Somerville often comes successfully.
From these slight notices of her scientific career, I willingly pass to those other features of Mrs. Somerville's character and life which her long absence from England (caused by motives of economy and the love of tranquil leisure) have hidden from general knowledge. She was a woman not of science only, but of retined and highly cultivated tastes. Her paintings and musical talents might well have won admiration, even had there been nothing else beyond them. Her classical attainments were considerable, derived, probably, from that early part of life when the gentle Mary Fairfax—gentle she must ever have been—was enriching her mind by quiet study in her Scotch home. It may surprise some of the readers of this letter to be told that she was admirable in needlework also. A rent in old lace she would so repair that the new work could hardly be distinguished from the old.
A few words more on the moral part of Mrs. Somervillo's character; and here too I speak fro from intimate knowledge. She was the gentlest and kindest of human beings; qualities well attested even by her features and conversation, but expressed still more in all the habits of her domestic and social life. Her modesty and humility were as remarkable as those talents which they concealed from common observation. Reverting to a time 40 or 50 years ago, I recollect dinner parties in London at which guests, strangers to Mrs. Somerville, have commented to me upon the charm of her appearance, ignorant of, and not perceiving, those other qualities which have made her eminent in the world.
I have already, I fear, encroached too largely on the space you can allow me. The excuse must be found in my desire that nothing should be wanting to the delineation of one of the most remarkable persons, male or female, whom I have known in the course of my long life. Scotland is proud in having produced a Crichton. She may be proud also in having given birth to Mary Somerville.
I remain, Sir, yours truly,
72; Brook-street, December 4.
H. HOLLAND.
______________________________________________________
Our Naples correspondent writes under date, December 4:
The death of Mrs. Somerville last Thursday at the advanced age of 92 was an event which, in the course of nature, might well have been expected. She was in delicate health and full of years, but not the less will the world regret the loss of one who shed a lustre on her sex with her remarkable attainments and achievements, and who won the regard of everyone who approached her with her simple and genial manners.
Mrs. Somerville was born in Jedburgh on December 25, 1870, so that she was within a month of attaining her 92nd year. That she was married twice and leaves two daughters behind her; that she contributed to the library of useful knowledge a summary of the Mécanique Céleste of La Place; that she published later still a treatise on the connection of the physical sciences, and another on Physical Geography, to which must be added a work on Molecular and Microscopic Science, published in 1864, all these facts are well known to the world. There is little, therefore, to be added to what has already been made public, still, let one who had the honour of her acquaintance make a few alight contributions to the history of a valuable life.
Mrs. Somerville was very deaf, and we may almost say it was the only infirmity of ago from which she suffered. In other respects she was wondrous and full of interest in all that was going on. On visiting her some months since I was she walked across two rooms, followed close, indeed, by one of her devoted daughters. Her mind was even younger than her body, and no subject was started on which she did not take a lively interest. "I am writing," she said on the occasion of my last visit, "the history of my life; but do not say anything about it; I have made considerable progress with it, yet I may not live to complete it." Whether it has been finished, or in what state the manuscript is, I cannot say, but it is to be hoped that such a valuable piece of autobiography will not be lost. Till within a short interval of her death a portion of every morning was devoted to reading or writing, and in the spring of this year she amused herself with mathematical studies for several hours a day—it was then her favourite occupation. But though familiar with subjects which do not often command the attention of her sex, nor, indeed, of ours at an advanced age, she could condescend to the humblest subjects and enliven them with her sprightly lines. It is not ludicrous since, accompanied by a young lad just in his teens, I visited her, when she made him sit on a low chair by her side and fascinated him by talking about trifles proper to boyhood. I am pretty well, said, for an old lady entering on her 91st year, and she, my young friend, who was just commencing the race of life, will not soon forget how the learned Mrs. Somerville chatted with him about the serious nothings of childhood.
Distinguished far beyond the rest of her sex by her mental power and attitudes, the death of Mr. Somerville leaves a void in the world, while the sincerity and simplicity of her manners make her loss deeply felt by a large circle of friends and acquaintances. Many a better pen than mine has already, no doubt, celebrated her praise. I have nothing to offer but these few personal reminiscences, and I offer them as an humble homage to the memory of one whom any man may be proud to have known.
Mary Somerville died on Friday in the neighbourhood of Naples, where she had of late years taken up her residence. Had she lived to the 20th of the present month, she would have attained her 83rd year. Mary Somerville, or, to give her maiden name, Mary Fairfax, was a lady of good Scottish ancestry, being the daughter of the late Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, who was a cadet of the noble Scottish house of Lord Fairfax, and who commanded His Majesty's ship Venerable at the Battle of Camperdown. She was born on the 20th of December, 1789; her mother was Margaret, daughter of Mr. Samuel Charters, Solicitor of Customs for Scotland. All that is known of her early life is that she was a great reader, from childhood onwards, and that she was brought up at a school in Musselburgh, in the vicinity of Edinburgh. Before many of the most distinguished cultivators of physical science were born, Mrs. Somerville had already taken her place among the original investigators of nature. In 1826 she presented to the Royal Society a paper on "The magnetizing power of the more refrangible solar rays," in which she detailed her repetitions of the experiments made by Morichini of Rome and Bérard of Montpelier. The paper had for its object to prove whether solar light is a source of magnetic power. By means of a prism the component rays of a sunbeam were separated, and those which are now known as the chemical or actinic rays were allowed to fall upon delicately poised needles of various sizes which had been previously proved to be devoid of magnetism. In every instance, the steel exhibited its true magnetic character after an exposure of several hours to the violet light. Experiments were then made by covering non-magnetic needles with blue glass shades and placing them in the sun, and in all cases they became magnetic. From these experiences, Mrs. Somerville concluded that the more refrangible rays of the solar spectrum, even in our latitude, have a strong magnetic influence. This communication was printed in the Philosophical Transactions at the time; it led to much discussion on a very difficult point of experimental inquiry, which was only set at rest some years later by the researches of two German electricians, Riess and Moser, who showed that the action upon the magnetic needle was not caused by the violet rays.
In 1831 or 1832, Mrs. Somerville published her Mechanism of the Heavens. This book, her only strictly astronomical work, which is largely derived from Laplace's celebrated treatise, La Mécanique Céleste, and is understood to have been originally suggested by Lord Brougham, was originally proposed by its author as one of the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; but, being moulded on too large a scale for their series, it was given to the world in an independent form. A few years later her name became more widely known by her Connexion of the Physical Sciences, which obtained the praise of the Quarterly Review as "original in plan and perfect in execution," and, indeed, "a true 'Kosmos' in the nature of its design and in the multitude of materials collected and condensed into the history which it affords of the physical phenomena of the universe." This she followed up with her Physical Geography, which, as its name imports, comprises the history of the earth in its whole material organization. These two works, in addition to their popularity in this country, as testified by the many editions through which they have passed, have been translated into several foreign languages; and their author's services to geographical science were recognized in 1869 by the award of the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. In the same year she gave to the world her Molecular and Microscopic Science, a work which, to use the expression of a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "contains a complete conspectus of some of the most recent and most abstruse researches of modern science, and describes admirably not only the discoveries of our day in the field of physics and chymistry, but more especially the revelations of the microscope in the vegetable and animal worlds."
The publication of such a work as that last mentioned by a lady in, we believe, her eighteenth year is without a parallel in the annals of science. In it, what most forcibly strikes the reader is the extraordinary power of mental assimilation of scientific facts and theories displayed by its author. In it, Mrs. Somerville first gives us a clear account of the most recent discoveries in organic chymistry, in the elementary condition of matter, and tells us of the latest researches into the synthesis of organic carbon compounds. She next leads us on to the relations of polarization of light in crystalline form, and, quitting the subject of molecular physics with an account of the phenomena of spectrum analysis as applied to the stars and nebulae, she begins the consideration of the microscopic structure of the vegetable world; then, passing in review the whole of the organisms from algae to exogenous plants, she lands us in her second volume among the functions of the animal frame in its lowest organizations, and describes the morphology of the various groups of animals from the protozoa to the mollusc. In thus traversing this immense field of modern scientific inquiry, Mrs. Somerville does not attempt to generalize to any great extent, much less to bring forward any original observations of theories of her own; but, as she most definitely hints in her preface, she has simply given in plain and clear language a résumé of some of the most interesting results of the recent investigations of men of science.
For a few years before her death, Mrs. Somerville was in receipt of a literary pension, bestowed upon her in recognition of her services to science. This was the nation's tribute to her worth. But among men of science, a far higher value than pecuniary grants can have is set upon those rewards which can be bestowed only by such as can appreciate the labours and aims of a worker in the scientific field. And these Mrs. Sornerville received the Geographical Society, as we have said, awarded her its medal; the Royal Astronomical Society elected her, in 1834, one of its honorary Fellows, the same honour being at the same time bestowed upon Miss Caroline Herschel—the only two ladies on whom such a distinction was ever conferred. The Fellows of the Royal Society also signed their appreciation of her works and their personal regard for their author by subscribing for a bust of Mrs. Somerville, which Chantrey executed, and which the Duke of Sussex publicly presented to the Society in 1842, in his own name and in that of the subscribers. This monument adorns the Library of the Royal Society.
Mrs. Somerville was married twice. Early in life she became the wife of Mr. Samuel Greig, who is described in Burke's Peerage as "a Captain and Commissioner in the Russian Navy." Her union with him became the means of developing her latent scientific powers, as he took great pleasure in mathematical inquiry and carefully initiated her in both the theory of mathematics and its practical application. Her second husband was Dr. William Somerville, a member of a good old family of Scottish extraction.
__________________________________________________
It was stated by a clerical error in our biography of this distinguished lady that she was in her 82nd year. If she had survived until the 26th of this month she would have entered on her 93d year, having been born in Roxburghshire on the 26th of December, 1780. Her father, the late Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, Knight Banneret, and Lord Duke's flag captain at Camperdown, was English, and the younger son of Mr. Joseph Fairfax, of Bagshot, in the county of Surrey. On going with his ship to Scotland he married there, first in 1767, Hannah, daughter of the Rev. Robert Spears; She died childless in 1770. Sir William married, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Mr. Samuel Charters, Solicitor of Customs for Scotland, and she was the mother of Mrs. Somerville and the late Sir Henry Fairfax.
_________________________________________________
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir
May I ask for a space in The Times for a few personal memories of Mrs. Somerville, supplementary, they may he considered, to your article on this very distinguished lady in The Times of Monday last? I may plead in justification of this request my intimate relations of friendship and correspondence with her during a period of more than 50 years. I am glad to see in The Times of to-day the correspondence of an inadvertent error as to Mrs. Somerville's age. Had she lived but a month longer she would have reached her 93rd year This correction will interest all to whom it is welcome to see great faculties like hers maintained and actively exercised to this great age.
That they were so maintained, and this with little impairment of the senses, is attested by two or three striking facts. Only three years have elapsed since she published her two volumes on Molecular and Microscopic Science, a work of great labour and research, accomplished under circumstances little favourable to its prosecution. I happen to know that within the last year of her life she wished to be sent to her at Naples Professor Hamilton's Calculus of Quaternions, a record of one of the most recent and remarkable attainments in higher mathematics. It is interesting to associate this fact with one dating 60 years before. In 1811 Mrs. Somerville received a medal at Edinburgh as a prize for the solution of some mathematical problem.
I need not speak in detail of her several scientific writings during this long interval of years, though I might be privileged in some part to do so by my frequent communications with her during the progress of two of them. These several works gave to Mrs. Somerville's name a high reputation, eminently merited, and not limited to our own country. In France, Germany, and Italy they were well known and duly valorized. The testimonies of Laplace, Humboldt, Herschel, Airy, Davy, and Faraday all stand in record of their excellence. The Royal Society, the Astronomical and Geographical Societies, bestowed their honours upon her, in as far as their respective usages allowed in the case of a lady. The pension of £300 a year given to her under Sir Robert Peel's administration (with a motive and in a manner honourable to the Minister himself) was fully sanctioned by the feelings of the scientific community, as well as by those who knew her other various attainments and the virtues and graces of her private life.
Mrs. Somerville's first great work, The Mechanism of the Heavens, based on the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace, established at once her reputation as a mathematician, and in a branch of mathematics at that time little pursued or touched in England, though since cultivated with such admirable success, and so largely applied to other departments of science. It is told, and I believe the anecdote to be well founded, that Laplace himself, commenting on the English mathematical school of that period, said there were only two people in England who thoroughly understood his work, and these two were women—Mrs. Greig and Mrs. Somerville. The two thus named were, in fact, one. Mrs. Somerville married twice. Her first husband was Captain Greig, son of High Admiral Greig, of the Russian Navy, a distinguished officer under Empress Catherine. Left a widow, with one son, Mr. Woronzow Greig (since deceased), she some years afterwards married her cousin, Dr. Somerville, by which marriage she had three daughters, two of them now surviving her.
Recurring for a moment to Mrs. Somerville's works, I may speak of the volume on the Connection of the Physical Sciences as being, on the whole, that of the highest merit. It was almost the first attempt to bring the different branches of science into that close correlation which, more than any other principle of research, has tended to give unity and grandeur to the whole. The style of this work merits every commendation. It is excellent English, simple and lucid even on the most difficult subjects, though, perhaps, somewhat too condensed for common readers. With many eloquent passages, she generally lets the great phenomena she describes tell their own wonderful tale.
This work has gone through many editions. In 1858 I brought with me from Florence, where Mrs. Somerville then resided, the proof sheets of the ninth, the perusal of which on the journey home showed me the wonderful industry and accuracy with which she had interwoven into this edition the latest discoveries in physical science. It was on this visit to Florence, as I have related in my little volume of Recollections of Past Life, that I passed the evening with her, gazing together at the magnificent comet of Donati, the very night of its nearest approach to the earth. Other ladies then at Florence were buying tickets in the State Lottery, with numbers fancifully suggested by the aspect of the comet. Mrs. Somerville looked at this wonderful object with a very different eye and meditation.
Her work on Physical Geography has similar and almost equal value with that just mentioned. It has contributed, with other aids, to rectify the barren and tedious method of teaching geography by nomenclature merely, which long prevailed in England, and is still not wholly discarded. In numerous points this work comes into close contact with the subjects of Humboldt's Kosmos - a formidable competition, but one out of which Mrs. Somerville often comes successfully.
From these slight notices of her scientific career, I willingly pass to those other features of Mrs. Somerville's character and life which her long absence from England (caused by motives of economy and the love of tranquil leisure) have hidden from general knowledge. She was a woman not of science only, but of retined and highly cultivated tastes. Her paintings and musical talents might well have won admiration, even had there been nothing else beyond them. Her classical attainments were considerable, derived, probably, from that early part of life when the gentle Mary Fairfax—gentle she must ever have been—was enriching her mind by quiet study in her Scotch home. It may surprise some of the readers of this letter to be told that she was admirable in needlework also. A rent in old lace she would so repair that the new work could hardly be distinguished from the old.
A few words more on the moral part of Mrs. Somervillo's character; and here too I speak fro from intimate knowledge. She was the gentlest and kindest of human beings; qualities well attested even by her features and conversation, but expressed still more in all the habits of her domestic and social life. Her modesty and humility were as remarkable as those talents which they concealed from common observation. Reverting to a time 40 or 50 years ago, I recollect dinner parties in London at which guests, strangers to Mrs. Somerville, have commented to me upon the charm of her appearance, ignorant of, and not perceiving, those other qualities which have made her eminent in the world.
I have already, I fear, encroached too largely on the space you can allow me. The excuse must be found in my desire that nothing should be wanting to the delineation of one of the most remarkable persons, male or female, whom I have known in the course of my long life. Scotland is proud in having produced a Crichton. She may be proud also in having given birth to Mary Somerville.
I remain, Sir, yours truly,
72; Brook-street, December 4.
H. HOLLAND.
______________________________________________________
Our Naples correspondent writes under date, December 4:
The death of Mrs. Somerville last Thursday at the advanced age of 92 was an event which, in the course of nature, might well have been expected. She was in delicate health and full of years, but not the less will the world regret the loss of one who shed a lustre on her sex with her remarkable attainments and achievements, and who won the regard of everyone who approached her with her simple and genial manners.
Mrs. Somerville was born in Jedburgh on December 25, 1870, so that she was within a month of attaining her 92nd year. That she was married twice and leaves two daughters behind her; that she contributed to the library of useful knowledge a summary of the Mécanique Céleste of La Place; that she published later still a treatise on the connection of the physical sciences, and another on Physical Geography, to which must be added a work on Molecular and Microscopic Science, published in 1864, all these facts are well known to the world. There is little, therefore, to be added to what has already been made public, still, let one who had the honour of her acquaintance make a few alight contributions to the history of a valuable life.
Mrs. Somerville was very deaf, and we may almost say it was the only infirmity of ago from which she suffered. In other respects she was wondrous and full of interest in all that was going on. On visiting her some months since I was she walked across two rooms, followed close, indeed, by one of her devoted daughters. Her mind was even younger than her body, and no subject was started on which she did not take a lively interest. "I am writing," she said on the occasion of my last visit, "the history of my life; but do not say anything about it; I have made considerable progress with it, yet I may not live to complete it." Whether it has been finished, or in what state the manuscript is, I cannot say, but it is to be hoped that such a valuable piece of autobiography will not be lost. Till within a short interval of her death a portion of every morning was devoted to reading or writing, and in the spring of this year she amused herself with mathematical studies for several hours a day—it was then her favourite occupation. But though familiar with subjects which do not often command the attention of her sex, nor, indeed, of ours at an advanced age, she could condescend to the humblest subjects and enliven them with her sprightly lines. It is not ludicrous since, accompanied by a young lad just in his teens, I visited her, when she made him sit on a low chair by her side and fascinated him by talking about trifles proper to boyhood. I am pretty well, said, for an old lady entering on her 91st year, and she, my young friend, who was just commencing the race of life, will not soon forget how the learned Mrs. Somerville chatted with him about the serious nothings of childhood.
Distinguished far beyond the rest of her sex by her mental power and attitudes, the death of Mr. Somerville leaves a void in the world, while the sincerity and simplicity of her manners make her loss deeply felt by a large circle of friends and acquaintances. Many a better pen than mine has already, no doubt, celebrated her praise. I have nothing to offer but these few personal reminiscences, and I offer them as an humble homage to the memory of one whom any man may be proud to have known.
