The Gentleman Scientist
I first became aware of the work of Andrew Crosse when I visited Fyne Court in Somerset a couple of weeks ago. He was a Regency "gentleman scientist" who was an early pioneer in the 
experimentation and use of electricity. He was a child prodigy who had mastered Ancient Greek by the age of eight and then became obsessed with scientific development. As the son of a wealthy family he was fortunate that he had the means to indulge his obsession.
Crosse first developed a fascination with electricity when he went to a lecture on it at Oxford. His early experiments with it involved giving electric shocks to unsuspecting friends (one assumes the friendships if not the friends did not always survive!) When he returned from his studies at Oxford to run the estate at Fyne Court, Crosse's interest in experimenting intensified. He strung up a third of a mile of copper wire in the grounds of the house and connected it to equipment in the music room. Voltage would build up when there was a fog, heavy rain or thunder and lightning. Conducting equipment would begin sparking and flashing and explosions would shake the music room. Local people assumed Crosse was trying to attract storms and he became known as the "Wizard of Broomfield." Another of Crosse's experiments proved even more controversial. When he put volcanic rock into acid and passed an electric current through it to generate crystals, Crosse found that insects began appearing from out of the stone. When this was reported in the local newspapers, Crosse was accused of trying to play God by creating life. It is also claimed that Crosse's lecture on this experiment, which was attended by Percy and Mary Shelley, was the inspiration for Mary's novel Frankenstein.
Crosse was something of a polymath as he was also a poet who took his inspiration from the Somerset Quantock hills. He was reputedly a friend of both Wordsworth and Coleridge who visited Fyne Court to discuss poetry with him. On a personal level, Crosse married twice, the second time amid some scandal. His first wife was Mary Ann Hamilton with whom he had seven children. After her death and that of his brother, both in 1846, Crosse was stricken with grief and left Fyne Court, and the house and estate fell into disrepair. Three years later, however, he met his second wife, the beautiful Cornelia Berkeley, who was forty three years his junior and a mere twenty two years old when they married. They went on to have three children of their own and Cornelia recorded Crosse's life and work in two volumes "Red Letter Days of my Life" and "Memorials Scientific and Literary of Andrew Crosse the Electrician" (which sounds a little odd to our ears as the word electrician in those days was used to denote someone at the cutting edge of scientific experimentation). Crosse left Fyne Court and his fortune to Cornelia in a will made on his deathbed, and left the organ in the music room to his eldest son, John. Cornelia, however, promptly handed over the estate to John.
Andrew was not the only member of the Crosse family with a scandalous reputation. He introduced his eldest son John to Byron's daughter Ada, Countess 
of Lovelace (pictured right). The two, who were both married to other people, embarked on an affair that was apparently fuelled by a mutual love of gambling. Ada lost enormous sums of money at the gambling table and John sold the family jewels to pay her debts. What John's wife and indeed his step-mother thought of this is not recorded but perhaps Andrew Crosse had been on to something when he had left his son nothing but the…um… organ in his will.
The house at Fyne Court is no longer standing as it was destroyed by fire in 1894 when one of the servants lit a candle to warm her metal hair curling tongs and forgot to blow it out when she left the house. The candle set fire to the curtains, dressing table and floor and from there it raged out of control. A message was sent to Taunton for the fire engine but it took several hours for the fire brigade to arrive because of the steep hills along the route. At various points the crew had to get out and push the engine. Desperate attempts were made to save family portraits, china and furniture. All the books from the library were thrown out onto the lawn in case the library and music room burned. The central part of the house collapsed. Although a claim for insurance eventually paid out £4000, which in the late Victorian period would have been enough to rebuild the house, it was never reconstructed. The remaining buildings are however open to the public and can be visited. In the Information Centre you can learn more about Crosse and his work. There was wonderful walks around the grounds. And the cafe serves delicious cake!
©2011 Nicola Cornick. All Rights Reserved.
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