THE first school-days are not always a time of progress. For one whose home life has been surrounded with an atmosphere of genial ideas and liberal pursuits, to be thrown, in the intervals of “gerund-grinding,” amongst a throng of boys of average intelligence and more than average boisterousness, is not directly improving at the outset. Not that Maxwell ever retrograded—for his spirit was inherently active; but where the outward environment was such as awakened no response in him, he was like an engine whose wheels do not bite—working incessantly, but not advancing much. If the Scottish day-school system had not still been dominated by a tyrannous economy, and by that spirit of laisser faire which in education is apt to result in the prevalence of the worst, much that was in Maxwell would earlier have found natural vent and growth. As it was, he was of course storing up impressions, as under any circumstances he would have been; but his activities were apt for the time to take odd shapes, as in a healthy plant under a sneaping wind. Or, to employ another metaphor, the light in him was still aglow, but in passing through an alien medium its rays were often refracted and disintegrated. The crowd of “aimless fancies,” whose influence upon his life be so touchingly deprecated at a later time,[46] were now most importunate; and, bright and full of innocence as they were, they produced an effect of eccentricity on superficial observers which he afterwards felt to have been a hindrance to himself. His mother’s influence, had she lived, would have been most valuable to him at this time.

The journey from Glenlair had been broken at Newton[47] and at Penicuik, where a halt of some days was made. It was the middle of November, and a season of snow and frost.

Soon after dusk on the 18th of November, the whole family party, including the faithful domestic, Lizzy Mackeand,[48] arrived at the door of No. 31 Heriot Row, Mrs. Wedderburn’s house in Edinburgh. This (with occasional intervals, when he was with Miss Cay) was to be James Clerk Maxwell’s domicile for eight or nine years to come.

The “White Horse” seen through a lunette above the doorway, the quaint figure of the butler (nick-named “Hornie” from the way he dressed his hair[49]), and other noticeable features of this dwelling, appear and reappear in the boy’s letters to his father, which now become more frequent. For, although not choosing to be much separated from James, Mr. Clerk Maxwell could not be long absent from Glenlair, and henceforward he lived a divided life between the two, spending most of the winter evenings by his sister’s fireside in Edinburgh, and during most of the spring and summer attending personally to the improvement of his estate.

The Edinburgh Academy, which had been founded in 1824, was in high favour with the denizens of the New Town. Lord Cockburn was one of the directors. The Rector, Archdeacon Williams, was an Oxford first-classman, a College acquaintance of John Lockhart’s,[50] and an admirable teacher. He had at one time been an assistant master at Winchester, and had subsequently, at Lockhart’s recommendation, been tutor to Charles, Sir W. Scott’s second son. The boys in the junior classes, however, knew little of him except by report, for the assistant masters were jealous of their independence.

Various entries in his Diary testify to the father’s deliberate care in placing his son at the Academy. Everything which seemed material to the boy’s advantage had no doubt been carefully considered; but there was one serious omission, arising from Mr. Clerk Maxwell’s inveterate disregard of appearances. The boy was taken to school in the same garments in which we have seen him at Glenlair. No dress could be more sensible in itself. A tunic of hodden gray tweed is warmer than a round cloth jacket for winter wear, and the brazen clasps were a better fastening for the square-toed shoes than an adjustment of black tape, which is always coming undone. But round jackets were de rigueur amongst the young gentlemen; while it must be admitted that they were equally intolerant of dandyism. A frill for a round collar was of course unendurable, and the Gallovidian clasps—not to mention the square toes—were an unheard-of novelty. A new boy, coming in the second month of the second year, must in any case have had something to undergo; but here was evident provocation to “a parcel of boys in their teens.”[51]

What happened in the interval after the first lesson (in the space behind the second class-room) is best indicated in the words of the Psalmist:—“They came about me like bees.”

“Who made those shoes?” was the first question; but it was never easy to get a direct answer from Maxwell, least of all on compulsion. Brought thus to bay, he had recourse to his natural weapon—irony. His answer was soon ready, and his tormentors might make of it what they list. In the broadest tones of his Corsock patois he replied to one of them,

He returned to Heriot Row that afternoon with his tunic in rags and “wanting” the skirt; his neat frill rumpled and torn;—himself excessively amused by his experiences, and showing not the smallest sign of irritation. It may well be questioned, however, whether something had not passed within him, of which neither those at home nor his schoolfellows ever knew.

The nickname of “Dafty” which they then gave him clung to him while he remained at school, and he took no pains to get rid of it. His “quips and cranks” were taken for “cantrips,” his quick, short, elfin laughter (the only sign by which he betrayed his sensitiveness), was construed into an eldritch noise. Never was cygnet amongst goslings more misconstrued. Within the class-rooms things were not much more prosperous at first. Our master, Mr. A. N. Carmichael, was a good and experienced teacher, and an excellent scholar, in a dryish way. He was the author of the Edinburgh Academy Greek Grammar and of an Account of the Irregular Greek Verbs, which has now been superseded, but was justly respected in its day. He was a good disciplinarian; but those junior classes of sixty and upwards were too large and miscellaneous for real teaching. He had an eye for talent, too, where it was shown. But his first business was to hear our tasks, and to let us take places in the class in proportion to the accuracy and readiness with which we said them. Maxwell did not at once enter into the spirit of this contest, in which the chief requisites, next to average talent and intelligence, were push and promptitude. His first initiation in Latin had not been pleasant to him, and the repetition ad nauseam of “di, do, dum,” by his new acquaintances, varied with the sound of the tawse, did not make the subject more attractive. Like the boy Teufelsdröckh, he seemed to hear at school innumerable dead vocables, but no language. His hesitation got worse and worse, and as his place in the class was not amongst the “best boys,” some of his neighbours willingly did their utmost to disconcert him. On one occasion we shall find him humorously retaliating. He was not in the least inwardly perturbed by all this, nor bore any one the slightest malice. It was a new scene of life, which he contemplated with amused curiosity. But it was natural that his chief interest should not lie there. He seldom took part in any games, though he was loyally proud of the success of his school in them, and characteristically took some interest in the spinning of “pearies” (pegtops), and the collision of “bools” (marbles); but, when he could, preferred wandering alone, sometimes imprisoning the humble-bees on the green slope at the back and letting them go again, sometimes doing queer gymnastics on the few trees that were left,—availing himself, in short, of the scanty inlets by which Nature visited that shingly ground.[52] For his heart was at Glenlair, even when he made sport for the young Philistines of the Academy “yards.” It should be added that his attendance was a good deal interrupted by delicate health.

His life during this period was really centred in “Old 31.” He was presently allowed to have a room to himself, in which he could read and draw and write, besides preparing for school. His cousin Jemima was at this time learning the art of woodcutting, and he was allowed sometimes to dig away with her tools. The result was a series of rude engravings, to which allusions occur in his letters to his father; and a woodcut of his, representing the head of an old woman, still remains, with the date 1843 engraved on it. In the previous year he produced more than one elaborate piece of knitting. One of these, a sort of sling for holding a work-basket, with its proper name, “Mrs. Wedderburn’s Abigail,” worked into it, has been preserved by Mrs. Blackburn. The library at his new home was more extensive than at Glenlair. He came to know Swift and Dryden, and after a while Hobbes, and Butler’s Hudibras. Then if his father was in Edinburgh they walked together, especially on the Saturday half-holiday, and “viewed” Leith Fort, or the preparations for the Granton railway, or the stratification of Salisbury Crags; always learning something new, and winning ideas for imagination to feed upon.[53]

One Saturday, February 12, 1842, he had a special treat, being taken “to see electro-magnetic machines.”

Mr. Clerk Maxwell was much more like an elder brother than a “governor” to James, and there was nothing the boy could not or did not tell him,—none of his whimsical vagaries in which the father did not take delight.

And when “his papaship” was alone at Glenlair, James would strive to cheer him in his solitude by concocting the wildest absurdities, inventing a kind of cypher to communicate some airy nothing, illuminating his letters after the fashion of his school copy-books, and adding sketches of school-life (e.g. the class-room in the absence of the teacher), et cetera. This series of letters is so curious that it has been thought worth while to reproduce one of the least elaborate of them in facsimile. Some of those omitted are still more interesting, as showing his love of drawing complicated patterns and arranging colours, and as marking the early and spontaneous development of “the habit of constructing a mental representation of every problem,”[54] which was in some degree an hereditary proclivity. In order, however, to judge fairly of these enfantillages, the reader must take into account the boy’s affectionate solicitude to amuse his father, who was accustomed to receive whimsical familiarities from his young relatives in “Old 31.”[55]

In Edinburgh, as at Glenlair, he was allowed to participate in the amusements of his elders.

It is just worth mentioning that his first play was As You Like It, with Mrs. Charles Kean as Rosalind; and more important to observe that on December 18th, 1843, his father took him to a meeting of the Edinburgh Royal Society.

But at school also he gradually made his way. He soon discovered that Latin was worth learning, and the Greek Delectus interested him, when we got so far.[56] And there were two subjects in which he at once took the foremost place, when he had a fair chance of doing so; these were Scripture Biography and English. In arithmetic, as well as in Latin, his comparative want of readiness kept him down.

On the whole he attained a measure of success which helped to secure for him a certain respect, and, however strange he sometimes seemed to his companions, he had three qualities which they could not fail to understand—agile strength of limb, imperturbable courage, and profound good nature. Professor James Muirhead remembers him as “a friendly boy, though never quite amalgamating with the rest.” And another old class-fellow, the Rev. W. Macfarlane of Lenzie, records the following as his impression:—“Clerk Maxwell, when he entered the Academy, was somewhat rustic and somewhat eccentric. Boys called him ‘Dafty' and used to try to make fun of him. On one occasion I remember he turned with tremendous vigour, with a kind of demonic force, on his tormentors.

I think he was let alone after that, and gradually won the respect even of the most thoughtless of his schoolfellows.”[57]

It was on some such occasion as that to which Mr. Macfarlane here refers,—somewhere in 1843 or 1844,—that my own closer intimacy and lifelong friendship with James Clerk Maxwell began. I cannot recall the exact circumstances, only the place in the Academy yards, the warm rush of chivalrous emotion, and the look of affectionate recognition in Maxwell’s eyes. However imperturbable he was, one might see that he was not thick-skinned.

Shortly after this we became near neighbours, my mother’s new domicile being 27 Heriot Row, and we were continually together for about three years.

His letters now refer with more of interest to his progress at school, especially to exercises in verse, and to outdoor recreation with companions; above all to his delight in bathing and in learning to swim. In this, as in everything he did, he invented curious novelties, and was particularly fond of mimicking his old acquaintance, the frog.

On Sundays he generally went with his father to St. Andrew’s Church (Mr. Crawford’s) in the forenoon, and, by Miss Cay’s desire, to St. John’s Episcopal Chapel in the afternoon, where, also by her desire, he was for a time a member of Dean Ramsay’s catechetical class. Thus, having of course learned “his questions” as a child, he became equally acquainted with the catechisms both of the Scotch and of the English Church, and with good specimens of the Presbyterian and Episcopalian styles of preaching. He also went regularly “to the dancing” at Mr. MacArthur’s, where he was distinguished for the neatness of his reel-steps, especially of those curious ones which some of us found most difficult, such as the “lock-step.”

But more delightful than bathing, and more interesting even than writing English verse, was the achievement of which he writes casually to his father very shortly after his thirteenth birthday.

After describing the Virginian Minstrels, and betwixt inquiries after various pets at Glenlair, he remarks, as if it were an ordinary piece of news, “I have made a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron, and two other hedrons, whose names I don't know.” We had not yet begun geometry, and he had certainly not at this time learnt the definitions in Euclid; yet he had not merely realised the nature of the five regular solids sufficiently to construct them out of pasteboard with approximate accuracy, but had further contrived other symmetrical polyhedra derived from them,[58] specimens of which (as improved in 1848) may be still seen at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Who first called his attention to the pyramid, cube, etc., I do not know. He may have seen an account of them by chance in a book. But the fact remains that at this early time his fancy, like that of the old Greek geometers, was arrested by these types of complete symmetry; and his imagination so thoroughly mastered them, that he proceeded to make them with his own hand. That he himself attached more importance to this moment than the letter indicates, is proved by the care with which he has preserved these perishable things, so that they (or those which replaced them in 1848) are still in existence after thirty-seven years.

Letters, 1842 to 1844.

[Illuminated letters at beginning, and border after.]

Envelope of 24th June 1843—

Mr. John Clerk Maxwell,
Postyknowswere,
Kirkpatrick Durham,
Dumfries.

I have been wavering about 14 for a good while in the Latin.

Holidays at Glenlair—1842 to 1844.

We can readily imagine the sense of enlargement and release with which the boy went home to Glenlair after his first long sojourn in Edinburgh.

The shadow which had fallen in 1839 was softened by time, and society in the Happy Valley[80] resumed its aspect of harmless gaiety.

Cousin Jemima was again there with her pencil. The “tubbing” was, of course, resumed, this time conjointly, and the scene of it was advanced from the duck-pond to the river, showing greatly increased confidence in navigation.[81]

There were nutting excursions, walks diversified with climbing, etc. etc.

And in August and September 1843 there were again archery meetings at different houses in the valley, of one of which (the last) there has been preserved the following notice from one of the local newspapers of the time:—

One of James’s spirited songs, a parody of Scott, beginning “Toxophilite, the conflict’s o’er,” still exists in Cousin Jemima’s handwriting, with a sketch for the picture of William Tell, in which the features of the House of Middlebie are idealised. The artist also proved the best shot on this occasion. The poem is not worth printing, though it has characteristic touches of grotesque ingenuity and humorous observation which are very curious in a boy of twelve.

The summer of 1843 was also memorable for the completion of the New Offices at Glenlair. Whatever he may have intended before the death of his wife, Mr. Clerk Maxwell made no change in the dwelling-house during his lifetime. But these out-buildings had been designed by himself; he had drawn the working plans for the masons; he had acted as clerk of the works, rejecting unfit material, etc., and every detail had been executed under his own eye. So absorbed was he in the supervision, that he omitted his usual visit to Edinburgh in July. In one of Mrs. Blackburn's drawings of the previous year, he is seen laying out the ground for the new offices, with James beside him intently contemplating his father's work. We may be sure that Mr. Maxwell had explained every step in the whole procedure, and equally sure that his son laid the lesson well to heart.

Soon after this he was provided with a new source of endless amusement in the “devil-on-two-sticks,” which thenceforth became inseparable from the home life at Glenlair, and the companion of his holidays at Glasgow and elsewhere, even in the Cambridge time. In the family dialect it was humorously referred to sotto-voce as “the deil.” There was nothing he could not do with that d——l. No performer on the slack or tight rope ever made such intricate evolutions and gyrations. His delight in it was like that which afterwards he used to take in the dynamical top.

The boy now came to know his own neighbourhood more widely. There were expeditions, visits, rides. The Covenanter’s pool in the burn above Upper Corsock, New Abbey, Caerlaverock, and other places of traditional interest, were explored. And in the summer of 1844 there was a sort of driving excursion into the Cairnsmuir country, which is described in detail in the Diary.

It may be mentioned here in a general way, that the Christmas holidays were spent either at Penicuik (with skating, etc.) or Killearn, and afterwards sometimes at Glasgow with Professor and Mrs. Blackburn or Professor (now Sir William) Thomson.