Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford

“ Under-Secretary of State at twenty-eight, he was knighted by George III. at thirty; and eight years later, by the pleasure of the King of Bavaria, Benjamin Thompson, of Woburn, Massachusetts, was transformed into Count Rumford, having already taken rank as a European celebrity. But he did not forget his early home and friends, and it is pleasant to find him deriving his title from the name given to Concord by the early settlers—a name, by the way, that these patriots misspelled from Romford, the village near London whence some of them came. ”

“ He took as one of his ministers the celebrated American, Benjamin Thompson, whom he created Count Rumford, and that man of science and learning endeavoured to suppress mendacity, and made efforts to bring material comforts within reach of the very poorest. ”

“ RUMFORD, BENJAMIN THOMPSON, Count (1753-1814) , British-American man of science, philanthropist and administrator, was born at Woburn, in Massachusetts, on the 26th of March 1753. The Thompson family had been settled in New England since the middle of the previous century, and belonged to the class of moderately wealthy farmers. His father died while he was very young, and his mother speedily married a second time. ”

“ The principle on which their treatment proceeded is stated by Thompson in the following memorable words:—"To make vicious and abandoned people happy," he says, "it has generally been supposed necessary first to make them virtuous. But why not reverse this order? Why not make them first happy, and then virtuous?" In 1791 he was created a count of the Holy Roman Empire, and chose his title of Rumford from the name as it then was of the American township to which his wife's family belonged. ”

“ George III not only gave Thompson the requisite permission, but knighted him on 23 Feb. 1784, shortly before his departure for Bavaria. He returned to England in October 1795 with the title of Count von Rumford. During the eleven years he passed in Munich he had made important reforms in the public service and in social economy. As minister of war he increased the pay and comfort of the private soldier ”

“ Thompson was at that period between eighteen and nineteen years old, and at nineteen, he says, "I married, or rather I was married." His wife was the widow of a Colonel Rolfe, and the daughter of a Mr Walker, "a highly respectable minister, and one of the first settlers at Rumford," now called Concord, in New Hampshire. His wife was possessed of considerable property, and was his senior by fourteen years. This marriage was the foundation of Thompson's success. ”

“ In youth Thompson became a formidable pugilist. In 1832 he beat Bill Faulker, a Nottingham notoriety, and in the following year defeated Charles Martin. In his first challenge in ‘Bell's Life in London’ in 1835 he styled himself ‘Abednego of Nottingham,’ and from that date he was spoken of in the sporting press as ‘Bendigo.’ His first important fight was on 21 July 1835, near Appleby House, about thirty miles from Nottingham, when he met Benjamin Caunt [q. v.] In the twenty-third round Caunt, wearied with Bendigo's shifty conduct, struck him a blow while he was on his second's knee ”

“ In most people’s minds there is a sort of wonder whether he could be a real Count if his business in life was—stoves. Some of us elders of our day had fathers who knew Count Rumford, and who remembered and talked of him, not in connection with stoves, but as a nobleman of great knowledge, of an active inquiring spirit, of great administrative faculty, and the most indefatigable, resolute, vigilant and enterprising benevolence. Whenever society needs the largest amount of comfort at the smallest cost, the name and memory of Count Rumford come up again. ”

“ Thomas forbade his overseers meddling with Ben, telling them that he would kill them if they did; also, that he was a good hand, and needed no driving. When Ben got well, Mr. Thomas knowing his disposition, was afraid to go near or speak to him; consequently, he was sent to a distant part of the farm to work by himself, nor was he ever again struck by master or overseer.
Ben was a brave fellow, nor did this flogging lessen his bravery in the least. Nor is Ben the only brave slave at the South; there are many there who would rather be shot than whipped by any man. ”

“ He was a man of great kindness and benevolence, by which he was prompted to establish a reformatory institution for the mendicants of Bavaria, and so great was its success that it became renowned all over Europe. The sovereign conferred one honor after another upon him, and finally "created him a count by the name of Rumford, in honor of Concord, New Hampshire, whose original name was Rumford."
His writings upon philosophical subjects were valued highly, and widely circulated. He was a leader in founding the Royal Society of Great Britain. ”

“ Thompson had entered as a student at the Middle Temple on 6 April 1877, and was called to the bar on 26 Jan. 1880. He formed a practice as the leading professional advocate of trade societies and of persons of advanced opinions charged with political offences. As a member from 1886 of the democratic club in Chancery Lane he became intimate with leading democrats, including Mr. ”

“ His family was of intensely Orange and anti-nationalist sympathies. After education at a private school, Thompson was for a time clerk in the office of James Hayden, solicitor. At the age of sixteen he contributed verses to the 'Derry Journal' and developed an aptitude for journalism. He found employment on the 'Belfast Morning News,' and then in 1877, at the age of twenty, through the influence of Sir Charles Lewis, baronet, M.P. for Derry, he joined the staff of the conservative 'Standard' in London, writing chiefly on non-political themes. ”

“ Thereafter the scope of his thought and action, with murder-case reporting in New York, with his unconfined sympathies for rebel blood, and contempt for "Anglo-Saxon prudery," might most easily be described as the opposite of Thompson's. A closer observer marks something more remarkable than dissimilarity. His Japanese biographer says of him that "he laughed with the flowers and the birds, and cried with the dying trees"—words which have an accidental likeness to "Heaven and I wept together." ”

“ Such courage did not suit the overseer, who wanted each slave to tremble with fear when he addressed him. Ben was too high-minded for such humiliation before any insignificant overseer. He had philosophically concluded that death is but death any way, and that one might as well die by hanging as whipping; so he resolved not to submit to be whipped by the overseer.
One day in the month of November, when the slaves were in the field gathering corn, which Ben was carting to the barn, the overseer thought he did not drive his oxen fast enough. ”

“ If he stands by his "immeditatably," it is only because he knows that the public will come to stand by it too. He chooses to be obstinate on behalf of someone who waits for the word. In flouting his public, the poet is like a man who, scattering sweets for children, tosses them away only that they shall be recovered; or, hiding them, is distressed if they are not found. Thompson put his sweets in difficult places; but only that he and the others might have the keener recreation.
After more sheets had been corrected and returned to Palace Court, he writes ”

“ In Wordsworth Thompson we find an artist who seems to realize the possibilities of American historical art. Although a pupil of Gleyre, and for a number of years a resident abroad, there is no evidence of servile subserviency to any favorite school or method in the style of Mr. Thompson. He is an excellent draughtsman, his color is a happy medium between the high and low keys of different schools—fresh, cool, and crisp—and his work is thoroughly finished, and yet broad in effect. He evidently has no hobbies to ride. As a designer of horses he has few equals in this country. ”

“ Perhaps the Saturday Review was the most severe:—
"He has been, from the first, unfortunate in being shielded from sincere criticism. He has been persuaded by his friends that [240] he is a genius, divinely inspired, whose wildest utterances are his best. . . . In no poet of reputation is it (order) more strikingly absent than in Mr. Thompson. Beautiful fancy, sonorous and picturesque diction we find here, indeed, but no motive power. ”

“ Thompson, at first, made no exclamations, but on being struck in the more delicate parts of his body, screeched fearfully. He was brought to his feet several times while the punishment was being inflicted, only to be knocked down by the strap, and kicked by those who were standing around him. The members of the band laughed at his agony and said to the executioners: “Give it to the damned radical; learn the son of a b...h to keep his piety and politics to himself; we’ll teach him how to lead the niggers.” ”

“ Thompson's poetry scarcely comes by way of the outward eye at all. He scarcely depends upon occasions. In a dungeon one imagines that he would be no less a poet. The regal air, the prophetic ardours, the apocalyptic vision, the supreme utterance—he has them all. A rarer, more intense, more strictly predestinate genius has never been known to poetry. To many this may well appear the simple delirium of over-emphasis. The writer signs for those others, nowise ashamed, who range after Shakespeare's very Sonnets the poetry of a living poet, Francis Thompson. ”

“ George Thompson's love of freedom, his labours in behalf of the American slave, the negroes of the West Indies, and the wronged millions of India, are too well known to the people of both hemispheres, to need a word of comment from me. With the single exception of the illustrious Garrison, no individual is more loved and honoured by the coloured people of America, and their friends than Mr. Thompson.
A few days after my arrival in London, I received an invitation from John Lee, Esq., LL.D., whom I had met at the Peace Congress in Paris, to pay him a visit at his seat, near Aylesbury ”

“ Thompson forgot himself in a most unusual way, forgot that he was an old family servant, that the apron-string met round his middle with difficulty, that the Authorities were away and his responsibilities increased thereby; forgot too, that for twenty years he had been answering bells, over-hearing conversations without pretending to do so, and that visitors wanted hot water and early tea at "7:30 sharp." He remembered suddenly that he was a man—and that he was very fond of some one. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, the flowers were out upon the lawn, and it was Spring. ”

“ And when later the poet had a friend, and was to be found at his house, Bishop Carroll sought him there in London, and at Pantasaph from time to time, and had the poet, if not in his diocese, almost within his fold. We have Dr. Mann's record of a visit to London and a meal with Francis at Palace Court, but I know of no other meeting with a college friend. Thompson had never been a schoolboy, nor did he grow into an "old boy." ”

“ Thompson felt and evinced in his every word and act. Few home-born lovers of our country have done a tithe as much as he did to save her from the ruin she was bringing upon herself by her recreancy to the fundamental principles, upon which she professed to stand. Not a dozen names, of those who have lived within the last forty years, deserve to stand higher on the list of our public benefactors than the name of George Thompson. ”

“ The poems as they appeared in Merry England or in journals quoting Merry England found notable adherents. "The Making of Viola" was re-printed by Miss Katharine Tynan in 1892 in a Dublin paper, to which she contributed a London letter, and it was in that form that Mr. Garvin, to be later the poet's inspiring critic and friend, first chanced upon Thompson. A leader-writer on the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, he found that "up in the north here, if one has a passion for the finer letters, one must possess his insulated soul in silence." ”

“ Thompson felt that he must certainly have been killed. After many days’ quest, and many uncertainties, he found the spot where his house had stood; it was a heap of rubbish. His servant and merchandise lay beneath it. He had money enough, or credit enough, to set to work men to clear away some of the fallen materials, and to explore whether any amount of property were recoverable. What’s that sound? A subterranean, or subruinan, voice? The workmen stop, and are ready to fly with fear. Thompson exhorts them, and they work on. But again that voice! No human creature can be living there. ”

“ Thompson writes lightly in the following note-book comment, but he is treading lightly because the ground beneath quakes with radical conflict:—
"We are convinced Mr. H. has been misled by a false report. It is the more probable because Spring, of late years, has been flighty, and given rise to dissatisfied comment. We are aware that C. P. has spoken of 'all amorous May,' and yet another poet has gone so far as to call the same lady 'wanton.' But 'the harlot spring'—Captain, these be very bitter words. Why in the name of wilfulness, why must poor Spring—of all seasons, poor Spring—be a harlot? ”

“ One of Thompson's sayings, ‘We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest among us,’ has become proverbial. It was a reply made incidentally at one of the college meetings held for the alteration of statutes in 1877 or 1878, to a junior fellow who had proposed to throw upon the senior members of the society a new and somewhat onerous responsibility. To the young, the diffident, the little known, the poor, Thompson was uniformly kind, helpful, and generous ”