Part 3 (1/2)
Doubtless in the society of so many worthy Philadelphians, the Priestleys were happy, for they had corresponded with not a few of them.
The longing for Northumberland became very great and one smiles on reading that the good Doctor thought ”Philadelphia by no means so agreeable as New York ... Philadelphia would be very irksome to me....
It is only a place for business and to get money in.” But in this City he later spent much of his time.
It was about the middle of July, 1794, that the journey to Northumberland began, and on September 14, 1794, Priestley wrote of Northumberland ”nothing can be more delightful, or more healthy than this place.”
Safely lodged among those dear to him one finds much pleasure in observing the great philosopher's activities. The preparation of a home for himself and his wife and the unmarried members of the family was uppermost in his mind. But much time was given to correspondence with loyal friends in England. Chief among these were the Reverends Lindsey and Belsham. The letters to these gentlemen disclose the plans and musings of the exile. For instance, in a communication to the former, dated September 14, 1794, he wrote:
The professor of chemistry in the College of Philadelphia is supposed to be on his death-bed ... in the case of a vacancy, Dr.
Rush thinks I shall be invited to succeed him. In this case I must reside four months in one year in Philadelphia, and one princ.i.p.al inducement with me to accept of it will be the opportunity I shall have of forming an Unitarian Congregation....
And a month later he observed to the same friend:
Philadelphia is unpleasant, unhealthy, and intolerably expensive.... Every day I do something towards the continuation of my Church History.... I have never read so much Hebrew as I have since I left England....
He visited freely in the vicinity of Northumberland, spending much time in the open. Davy, a traveler, made this note:
Dr. Priestley visited us at Sunbury, looks well and cheerful, has left off his perriwig, and combs his short grey locks, in the true style of the simplicity of the country.... Dined very pleasantly with him. He has bought a lot of eleven acres (exclusively of that which he is building on), which commands a delightful view of all the rivers, and both towns, i.e. Sunbury and Northumberland and the country. It cost him 100 currency.
It was also to Mr. Lindsey that he communicated, on November 12, 1794, a fact of no little interest, even today, to teachers of Chemistry in America. It was:
I have just received an invitation to the professors.h.i.+p of chemistry at Philadelphia ... when I considered that I must pa.s.s four months of every year from home, my heart failed me; and I declined it. If my books and apparatus had been in Philadelphia, I might have acted differently, but part of them are now arrived here, and the remainder I expect in a few days, and the expense and risk of conveyance of such things from Philadelphia hither is so great, that I cannot think of taking them back ... and in a year or two, I doubt not, we shall have a college established here.
It was about this time that his youngest son, Harry, in whom he particularly delighted, began clearing 300 acres of cheap land, and in this work the philosopher was greatly interested; indeed, on occasions he actually partic.i.p.ated in the labor of removing the timber. Despite this manual labor there were still hours of every day given to the Church History, and to his correspondence which grew in volume, as he was advising inquiring English friends, who thought of emigrating, and very generally to them he recommended the perusal of Dr. Thomas Cooper's
”Advice to those who would remove to America--”
Through this correspondence, now and then, there appeared little animadversions on the quaint old town on the Delaware, such as
I never saw a town I liked less than Philadelphia.
Could this dislike have been due to the fact that--
Probably in no other place on the Continent was the love of bright colours and extravagance in dress carried to such an extreme.
Large numbers of the Quakers yielded to it, and even the very strict ones carried gold-headed canes, gold snuff-boxes, and wore great silver b.u.t.tons on their drab coats and handsome buckles on their shoes.
And
Nowhere were the women so resplendant in silks, satins, velvets, and brocades, and they piled up their hair mountains high.
Furthermore--
The descriptions of the banquets and feasts ... are appalling.
John Adams, when he first came down to Philadelphia, fresh from Boston, stood aghast at this life into which he was suddenly thrown and thought it must be sin. But he rose to the occasion, and, after describing in his diary some of the ”mighty feasts” and ”sinful feasts” ... says he drank Madeira ”at a great rate and found no inconvenience.”
It would only be surmise to state what were the Doctor's reasons for his frequent declaration of dislike for Philadelphia.
The winter of 1794-1795 proved much colder ”than ever I knew it in England,” but he cheerfully requested Samuel Parker to send him a hygrometer, shades or bell-gla.s.ses, jars for electrical batteries, and
a set of gla.s.s tubes with large bulbs at the end, such as I used in the experiments I last published on the generation of _Air_ from water.