Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, August 11, 1850

London, Aug.11, '50.

My Dear Sumner: — At last we have done with England, and go to Paris to-morrow morning, where we shall join the girls.¹ I have attended the meeting of the British-Association (saving the two first days) and Julia has been spending some time with the Nightingales at Lea Hurst in Derbyshire.

As touching the Association, it was a failure as measured by my anticipations. There were over one thousand members, and yet only a score or so of really eminent men. Brewster, Sedgwick, Owen, Carpenter, Chambers, Murchison, Mantell, &c., &c.

The section I attended was that of Physiology as a subsection of Statistics. A very great interest was excited by Dr. Carpenter's² showing the entire and perfect connection and dependence of mental manipulation upon corporeal conditions. He approached it cautiously, but not so cautiously as not to alarm the divines and metaphysicians, who flared up at once and brought on a most animated and interesting debate. You never saw such a flurry among white neck-cloths. The new professor of metaphysics in the university and his brethren from Glasgow flew to the assault, and assailed Carpenter, who defended his ground, and even gained new ground from his adversaries. He is a man of extraordinary power and learning, and one of the best disputants I ever heard; ever good-natured, cool and collected, and yet correct and impressive. He has a most extraordinary head; very like Scott's; less veneration, ideality and wonder, with a more active temperament and better moral development. At the age of thirty-eight he has put himself at the head, the very head, of British physiologists, and among the foremost in the world. In his debate he appealed to me, quoted my idiots and Laura (he has my reports more at his fingers' ends than I have). He invited me to get up a paper; I tried, but, under the excitement, and in my exhausted state, the pumps sucked; I only made myself ill and effected nothing. Oh! for Parker's brain and his chest under it.

I have been shocked and grieved at the news of the dreadful storm on our coast which carried such desolation to hundreds of households, and to yours, my dear Sumner,³ among the number. The report here was that George Sumner was lost: it is not so I presume.

Ever and ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

_______________

¹ My mother's sisters.

² Dr. William B. Carpenter.

³ Sumner's brother Horace was lost at sea in this storm.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 320-2