Greenough vs Lyell
Ten years later, Maria Graham found herself the unwitting subject of a very public argument between two of the most eminent Fellows of the Society.
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| George Bellas Greenough. (GSL/POR/58/10). |
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In his speech at the Annual General Meeting of February 1834, the President George Bellas Greenough (1778-1855) took issue with Charles Lyell’s (1797-1875) assertion in his book ‘Principles of Geology’ (1830) that earthquakes could cause the elevation of land.
Yet instead of attacking Lyell directly, Greenough attempted to discredit the only female source cited by Lyell as evidence of the phenomena – Maria Graham, now Lady Callcott.
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| Greenough's heavily annotated copy of his Anniversary Address of 1834. (LDGSL/947/2/2). Greenough continued to add notes to this volume to at least 1850. Click to enlarge. |
Graham’s account, Greenough suggested, could not be trusted as her claim to have witnessed the elevation of land had “not been confirmed by Captain King, nor by any naval officer or naturalist who has since visited that region...” Instead he recommended his audience to another source written by a male witness “as a sensible straight-forward description of what actually took place without the high colouring in which ignorance and terror and exaggeration are apt to indulge.”
Greenough finished his critique of Graham’s untrustworthiness stating “that on comparing the times at which the successive shocks took place in Chili, as given by Mrs Graham, and the other authorities to which I have had occasion to refer, the discrepancy is extraordinary.”
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Charles Lyell. (GSL/POR/9). |
Charles Lyell was not present at the meeting, but heard from friends what had occurred. Far from feeling under attack by Greenough, Lyell was more concerned for those present who were new to the science of geology.
In a letter to his friend and Fellow of the Geological Society, Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), he remarked "...from what I heard at the British Museum yesterday from some of the folk who were at the GS [Geological Society] on Wednesday that the false impression made on the novices by the opposition of G [Greenough] is most injurious and that one cannot too often impress upon them, more especially when the P [President] is not in the chair, that the denier and doubter of all elevation is in a minority of one..."
Graham vs Greenough >>