The Woman-hating Cavendish
Eccentricity in men of science is not rare. The Hon. Henry Cavendish, who demonstrated, in 1781, the composition of water, was a remarkable instance. He was an excellent mathematician, electrician, astronomer, and geologist; and as alchemist shot far ahead of his contemporaries. But he was a sort of methodical recluse, and an enormous fortune left him by his uncle did little to change his habits. His shyness and aversion to society bordered on disease. To be looked at or addressed by a stranger seemed to give him positive pain, when he would dart away as if hurt. At Sir Joseph Banks’s soirées he would stand for a long time on the landing, afraid to face the company. At one of these parties the titles and qualifications of Cavendish were formally recited when he was introduced to an Austrian gentleman. The Austrian became complimentary, saying his chief reason for coming to London was to see and converse with Cavendish, one of the greatest ornaments of the age, and one of the most illustrious philosophers that ever existed. Cavendish answered not a word, but stood with his eyes cast down, abashed, and in misery. At last, seeing an opening in the crowd, he flew to the door, nor did he stop till he reached his carriage and drove directly home. Any attempt to draw him into conversation was almost certain to fail, and Dr. Wollaston’s recipe for treating with him usually answered best: “The way to talk to Cavendish is, never to look at him, but to talk as if it were into a vacancy, and then it is not unlikely you may set him going.”
Among the anecdotes which floated about it is related that Cavendish, the club Crœsus, attended the meetings of the Royal Society Club with only money enough in his pocket to pay for his dinner; that he declined taking tavern soup, picked his teeth with a fork, invariably hung his hat upon the same peg, and always stuck his cane in his right boot. More apocryphal is the anecdote that one evening Cavendish observed a pretty girl looking out from an upper window on the opposite side of the street, watching the philosophers at dinner. She attracted notice, and one by one they got up, and mustered round the window to admire the fair one. Cavendish, who thought they were looking at the moon, bustled up to them in his odd way, and when he saw the real object of attraction, turned away with intense disgust, and grunted out “Pshaw!” the more amorous conduct of his brother philosophers having horrified the woman-hating Cavendish.
If men were a trouble to him, women were an abhorrence. With his housekeeper he generally communicated with notes deposited on the hall-table. He would never see a female servant; and if an unlucky maid showed herself she was instantly dismissed. To prevent inevitable encounters he had a second staircase erected in his villa at Clapham. In all his habits he was punctiliously regular, even to his hanging his hat upon the same peg. From an unvarying walk he was, however, driven by being gazed at. Two ladies led a gentleman on his track, in order that he might obtain a sight of the philosopher. As he was getting over a stile he saw, to his horror, that he was being watched, and he never appeared in that path again. That he was not quite merciless to the sex was proved by his saving a lady from the pursuit of a mad cow.
Cavendish’s town house was near the British Museum, at the corner of Gower Street and Montague Place. Few visitors were admitted, and those who crossed the threshold reported that books and apparatus were its chief furniture. He collected a large library of scientific books, hired a house for its reception in Dean Street, Soho, and kept a librarian. When he wanted one of his own books, he went there as to a circulating library, and left a formal receipt for whatever he took away. Nearly the whole of his villa at Clapham was occupied as workshops; the upper rooms were an observatory, the drawing-room was a laboratory. On the lawn was a wooden stage, from which access could be had to a large tree, to the top of which Cavendish, in the course of his astronomical and meteorological observations, and electrical experiments, occasionally ascended. His apparatus was roughly constructed, but was always exact and accurate.
His household was strangely managed. He received but little company, and the few guests were treated on all occasions to the same fare—a leg of mutton. One day, four scientific friends were to dine with him; when his housekeeper asked him what was to be got for dinner, Cavendish replied, “A leg of mutton.”
“Sir,” said she, “that will not be enough for five.”
“Well, then, get two,” was the reply.
Cavendish extended his eccentric reception to his own family. His heir, Lord George Cavendish, visited him once a-year, and was allowed an audience of but half-an-hour. His great income was allowed to accumulate without attention. The bankers where he kept his account, finding they had in hand a balance of 80,000l., apprised him of the same. The messenger was announced, and Cavendish, in great agitation, desired him to be sent up; and, as he entered the room, the ruffled philosopher cried, “What do you come here for! what do you want with me?”
“Sir, I thought it proper to wait upon you, as we have a very large balance in hand of yours, and we wish your orders respecting it.”
“If it is any trouble to you, I will take it out of your hands. Do not come here to plague me!”
“Not the least trouble to us, sir, not the least; but we thought you might like some of it to be invested.”
“Well, well, what do you want to do?”
“Perhaps you would like 40,000l. invested.”
“Do so, do so! and don’t come here to trouble me, or I’ll remove it,” was the churlish finale of the interview.
Cavendish died in 1810, at the age of seventy-eight. He was then the largest holder of Bank-stock in England. He owned 1,157,000l. in different public funds; he had besides, freehold property of 8,000l. a-year, and a balance of 50,000l. at his bankers. He was long a member of the Royal Society Club, and it was reported at his death that he had left a thumping legacy to Lord Bessborough, in gratitude for his Lordship’s piquant conversation at the club meetings; but no such reason can be found in the will lodged at Doctors’ Commons. Therein, Cavendish names three of his club-mates—namely, Alexander Dalrymple to receive 5,000l., Dr. Hunter 5,000l., and Sir Charles Blagden (coadjutor in the water question) 15,000l. After certain other bequests, the will proceeds: “The remainder of the funds (nearly 100,000l.) to be divided: one-sixth to the Earl of Bessborough,” while Lord George Henry Cavendish had two-sixths instead of one. “It is, therefore,” says Admiral Smyth, in his History of the Royal Society Club, “patent that the money thus passed over from uncle to nephew was a mere consequence of relationship, and not at all owing to any flowers or powers of conversation at the Royal Society Club.”
Cavendish never changed the fashion or cut of his dress, so that his appearance in 1810, in a costume of sixty years previously, was odd, and drew upon him the notice which he so much disliked. His complexion was fair, his temperament nervous, and his voice squeaking. The only portrait that exists of him was sketched without his knowledge. Dr. George Wilson, who has left a clever memoir of Cavendish, says: “An intellectual head, thinking—a pair of wonderful acute eyes, observing—a pair of very skilful hands, experimenting or recording, are all that I realize in reading his memorials.”