1757 Henry Cavendish 63 



of it. In my case a substantial favour accompanied the 

 honour." l 



It is deserving of record that on the loth of November 

 1757, Lord Macclesfield, President of the Club, proposed the 

 Honourable Henry Cavendish as a Candidate for admission. 

 The proposal was made at a dinner where his father, 

 Lord Charles Cavendish, was present, probably sitting next 

 to the President. The young man had never yet been 

 a guest of the Club, but he was known to be interested in 

 physical science, and we may surmise that the design of 

 electing him a member was the outcome of a conversation 

 between the two noblemen on this occasion. It has been 

 insinuated that the relations between father and son were 

 not altogether harmonious, owing to parental dissatisfaction 

 with the youth's refusal to enter upon public or professional 

 life. Clerk Maxwell, however, has shown that this insinuation 

 is at variance with the evidence supplied in the papers left 

 by Cavendish, which prove that for years Lord Charles was 

 occupied conjointly with his son in carrying on electrical 

 and other researches in his laboratory in Great Marlborough 

 Street, where Henry lived with him under the paternal roof. 2 

 The ill-founded assertion is now further negatived by the 

 testimony of the records of the Royal Society Club. It is 

 there manifest that Lord Charles introduced his son into 

 the Club and went there with him again and again during 

 the interval that elapsed between Lord Macclesfield's 

 proposal and Henry Cavendish's election. It was on I5th 

 June 1758 that the young philosopher first sat at the table 

 of the Club as a visitor, and on July 3ist 1760 he was 

 admitted to membership. 



The longest entry in the weekly Register this year has 

 reference to an amusing satirical " petition " written by 

 Lord Chesterfield and apparently circulated privately 

 among his friends. On August 25, at a meeting where 



1 Letters to his son, William Franklin, from London, igth December 

 1767. Life, vol. i. p. 554. 



2 The Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish, Introduction, p. 



xxviii. 



