The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 1624: Chapter 32: Brothers for Life (Part 2)

Who would have thought there’d be such an unusual path?

Arthur stepped down from the podium, and before he could catch his breath, Conroy walked up with a smile: ”Sir Arthur, you really surprised me. I thought you...”

Arthur took a cigar case from his pocket, used his fingernail to open the lid, and held it out to Conroy: ”Thought I was a weirdo who hides in the lab all day, like Frankenstein?”

Conroy chuckled as he took a cigar: ”Society indeed has some misunderstandings about scientists.”

”It’s not exactly a misunderstanding.” Arthur lit the cigar hanging from his mouth: ”Because right now there’s someone just like that at school, who eats, drinks, and even more in the lab. He won’t even open the door when you bring him food, insisting it be left on the windowsill for him to retrieve himself.”

”There really are such people?”

”Haven’t you read Mr. Darwin’s ’Beagle Voyage Diary’?” Smoke puffed from Arthur’s nostrils: ”The world is full of wonders, it’s called species diversity. There are quite a few eccentrics among scientists. It’s just that I happen to be relatively normal.”

Conroy sighed at this: ”With your reminder, I suddenly recall hearing the Duke of Devonshire mention that his uncle, Henry Cavendish, seemed to be quite the oddball too.”

Arthur had heard many stories about Cavendish from members of the Royal Society before.

When Cavendish was still alive, many scholars in the Royal Society were young students entering the academic world, and they couldn’t hide their excitement at meeting such a great scholar, eager to seek his wisdom.

However, whenever they eagerly approached to greet him, Cavendish would always run away immediately.

After some comings and goings, they summarized a method of dealing with Cavendish.

For example, never make eye contact with Mr. Cavendish, or he would run away the instant your eyes meet. The correct way to talk to him was to stand nearby, look into the void, and pretend to talk to yourself; if he was interested in what you said, he would respond.

If you were lucky enough to dine at Cavendish’s house, you’d most likely have lamb leg, because Cavendish had lamb leg every night, so guests were treated to the same. To minimize interaction with his servants, he would leave notes specifying what he wanted for dinner, though the note always read ”a leg of lamb,” with only the dining time slightly differing.

If several guests attended (a rare occurrence in years), he might amend the menu slightly, increasing ”a leg of lamb” to ”two legs of lamb.”

Perhaps because Faraday had dealt with Cavendish in his youth, he was extremely tolerant of Wheatstone’s near-unreasonable behavior.

However, Wheatstone was not a complete replica of Cavendish’s personality.

As everyone knew, Cavendish came from the Duke of Devonshire’s family, his father was the fifth son of the second Duke of Devonshire, his mother was the fourth daughter of the Duke of Kent, so at a young age, Cavendish inherited a vast fortune from childless uncles and aunts, and when his parents passed, his wealth increased even further.

By the time of Cavendish’s death, his assets totaled over 1.3 million pounds, ranking among the top in all of Britain.

Yet, apart from lamb legs and books, Cavendish had virtually no expenses, living truly by the adage ”four seasons in eight suits, five flavors in dining,” having no real concept of money.

One of the Royal Society’s most talked-about stories is: once, through a friend, an old man helped him organize his books. The friend, knowing Cavendish to be generous, hoped he would provide a decent payment afterward. However, Cavendish didn’t mention compensation at all when the work was done. The friend, upon learning this, had to remind Cavendish that the old man was penniless and hoped he’d lend some help.

Learning of the old man’s plight, Cavendish asked in amazement: ”What can I do for him?”

”Give him some living expenses.”

Hearing this, Cavendish hurriedly pulled out his checkbook, writing as he asked: ”Is 20,000 pounds enough?”

This startled the friend, who leaped from his chair, exclaiming: ”Too much, too much!”

Wheatstone was certainly not as rich as Cavendish, nor as frugal.

Give Cavendish a leg of lamb, and he could do research living in a stable.

But clearly, no amount of lamb legs could allow Wheatstone to live by a slaughterhouse.

And though Wheatstone wasn’t as wealthy as Cavendish, he oddly developed an interest in investments.

Only when Wheatstone moved into London University recently did Arthur finally gather why this fellow was willing to work at the university and how he came to be living in a lab beside a slaughterhouse.

Wheatstone had sold his luxury house on Regency Crescent, using the proceeds to repay debts, and the wealth accumulated from selling phonographs was nearly depleted.

The culprit behind it all was the wired telegraph.

While Arthur served at Scotland Yard, he utilized police funding to have Wheatstone lay several telegraph lines from the headquarters to major district police stations.

And after Wheatstone attended the full European Electromagnetism conference in Gottingen, inspired by Gauss, Weber, and others, he became convinced that wired telegraph would surely be the main communication method of the future.