Young [q. v.] and Sir Humphry Davy [q. v.] were among the Institution's earliest professors, and to the latter's energy was due the success of Rumford's design (Bence Jones, The Royal Institution, pp. 121, 123). On 24 Oct. 1805 he married for the second time, his new wife being Marie Anne Pierret Paulze, widow of Lavoisier. They separated by mutual consent on 30 June 1809. Rumford thereupon took an estate at Auteuil near Paris, where he lived till his death on 25 Aug. 1814. He was buried in Auteuil cemetery (now disused). Under the provisions of his will, a professorship of physics was established at Harvard University in 1816, and his philosophical apparatus passed with 1,000l. to the Royal Institution. Cuvier read his ‘éloge’ before the French Institute on 9 Jan. 1815, concluding with the words that Rumford ‘by the happy choice of his subjects as well as by his works had earned for himself both the esteem of the wise and the gratitude of the unfortunate.’ According to Tyndall: ‘The German, French, Spanish, and Italian languages were as familiar to Rumford as English. He played billiards against himself; he was fond of chess, which, however, made his feet like ice and his head like fire. The designs of his inventions were drawn by himself with great skill; but he had no knowledge of painting and sculpture, and but little feeling for them. He had no taste for poetry, but great taste for landscape gardening. In late life his habits were abstemious, and it is said that his strength was in this way so reduced as to render him unable to resist his last illness’ (New Fragments, p. 154).
His heiress and only child (by his first wife), Sarah (1774–1852), known as countess of Rumford, chiefly resided at Concord in New Hampshire after her father's death, and founded there the Rolfe and Rumford asylum for poor motherless girls.
Portraits of Rumford are at Harvard College, Cambridge, U.S.A., and at the Royal Society's rooms in Burlington House, London. From the latter was engraved the head on the society's Rumford medal. Three other portraits (reproduced in George E. Ellis's memoir) were bequeathed by Sarah, countess of Rumford, to a relative, Mr. Joseph B. Walker. Besides the monument in the English garden at Munich, erected in 1795, a bronze statue was set up there in Maximilianstrasse in 1867. The first collected edition of Rumford's works began to appear in London in 1796 as ‘Essays Political, Economical, and Philosophical.’ The fourth and last volume was issued in 1802. A German edition (3 vols.) was published at Weimar in 1797–8; 2nd edit. 4 vols., 1802–5. An American edition (3 vols.) appeared at Boston, 1798–1804. The essays on ‘Food’ and ‘The Management of the Poor’ were reissued separately, the former at Dublin in 1847, and the latter in London in 1851. Of a new and exhaustive edition of Rumford's writings, which was undertaken by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first volume appeared at Boston in 1870, and the memoir by G. E. Ellis, forming the fifth and last volume, at Philadelphia in 1875.
[Life by George E. Ellis in Collective Works, vol. v. (Philadelphia, 1875; Chev. von Bauernfeind, Benjamin Thompson Graf von Rumford, Munich, 1889; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xi. 443, 8th ser. viii. 293; American Journal of Science (by Cuvier), 1831, xix. 28; Spark's American Biography, new ser. vol. v.; Sabine's American Loyalists; Quincy's Hist. of Harvard, 1840; Heat a Mode of Motion, and New Fragments by Tyndall.]
THOMPSON, BENJAMIN (1776?–1816), dramatist, born about 1776, was the son of Benjamin Blaydes Thompson, a merchant of Kingston-upon-Hull. He was educated for the law, but, disliking the profession, he was sent to Hamburg as his father's agent. He occupied his leisure by translating several of Kotzebue's dramas. On 24 March 1798 one of these, ‘The Stranger,’ was brought out at Drury Lane, Kemble taking the title rôle. It met with much success both there and in 1801 at Covent Garden (Genest, Hist. of the Stage, vii. 336, 513, 591, viii. 478, ix. 457). It was published in 1801 (London, 8vo), and has since been frequently reprinted. On 12 Oct. 1812 an original operatic drama by Thompson, entitled ‘Godolphin,’ was unsuccessfully produced at Drury Lane. A second piece, called ‘Oberon's Oath,’ at the same theatre on 21 May 1816, was not well received at first. The disappointment is said to have killed him. He died in Blackfriars Road, London, on 26 May 1816. In 1799 he married Jane, youngest daughter of John Bourne, rector of Sutton-cum-Duckmanton and of South Wingfield in Derbyshire. By her he had six children.
Besides the works mentioned, Thompson was the author of: 1. ‘The Florentines: a Tale,’ London, 1808, 8vo. 2. ‘An Account of the Introduction of Merino Sheep into the different States of Europe and at the Cape of Good Hope,’ London, 1810, 8vo. He also translated numerous German plays, which were published in a collective form under the title ‘The German Theatre’ in 1801, London, 8vo.
