I'm just 40 pages into a book titled The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson and John Quincy Adams and the making of America's Greatest Museum by Nina Burleigh
I don't know how it will play out, but the beginning has been interesting. Smithson had never been to the U.S. or known anyone from the U.S. when he willed what would be $50 million dollars today to fund at Washington D.C., an institution "for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men."
It starts out telling how Alexander and Mabel Bell traveled to Italy to save Smithson's grave from tumbling into the Mediterranean, to bring the body back to the U.S. I have learned a lot of interesting tidbits. I didn't know that A.G. Bell not only invented the telephone, but he was responsible for a variety of "firsts," including the first hydrofoil, the first respirator, the first practical phonograph and the first metal detector (designed in frantic haste to locate the assassin's bullet in Pres Garfield) and he was involved w/ early experiments in flight.
Apparently there was some major battles about whether to accept the bequest and whether to accept Smithson's body and where to put it, what kind of a facility would hold it, from something bigger than the Jefferson Memorial to a recycled Syrian sarcophagus, that became the final resting place to the left of the entrance to the "Castle" at the Smithsonian.
The first half of the book is about how Smithson - a bastard son of Lord Northumberland - got his money, and the second half about how JQAdams championed the Institution.
Chapter 2 begins on July 2, 1761 when the Earl and countess of Northumberland arrive in Bath. Now, we've seen some very pretty pictures of Bath in the Austen movies, but the description in the book, makes one pause. It does say "the city was beautiful and sophisticated.....graceful sandstone buildings.....curving streets....Bath waters had been considered curative since Roman times.....in the 18th century science still had not yet recognized the importance of sanitatioin. ....the truly ill, especially people w/ virulent skin diseases, floated and defoliated alongside the well. ....liable to share pool space w/ dead animals and even human feces. The ladies who sipped the supposedly curative water....were essentially drinking the same fluid in which the bathers relieved themselves."!!!!
Sorry if that sickens you, but we see these beautiful movie scenes and forget what real live ws like......I would start my history classes by saying to the students "you live in the best of times," and asked if any disagreed w/ me. They would, of course, but when i asked them again at the end of the semester, more agreed w/ me...............i'll bring you more of the book later.................jean
