Dear blog,

It’s been a funny few weeks. Last week was mainly good: I really enjoyed going to John Goodridge’s seminar on the Wednesday and hearing about his new book, John Clare and Community (out in January  http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6933563/John%20Clare%20and%20Community/?site_locale=en_GB). I also enjoyed the Keats-Shelley Awards Ceremony on Thursday night, particularly finding out who had won the essay prizes that Prof Simon Bainbridge and I had judged: congratulations to Ruth Scobie, Adam White, and Catherine Redford. But, by then, I already had a sore throat and was properly ill from Friday through to Thursday of this week. I’ve only had two days in the archive this week, which makes me nervous of getting everything done in time; there are only six weeks left of my time here in London and lots of travelling to take me away from the archive over the next few weeks.

That said, the letters I have looked over the last two days have been a real pleasure. They are all love letters, from Humphry Davy to his soon-to-be wife Jane (then, the widowed Mrs Apreece). Much has been written about their relationship; they chose to live apart later in life and she did not accompany him on his later travels. It is generally thought that the marriage was a bad one and that they did not get along. Here though, in the first flush of their romance, they really do seem to be in love, and it is so odd to get a glimpse of Davy as a real person, with his anxieties, pettish annoyances, and full-throated passionate declarations. These letters, which I have now checked against the originals, can be read online on our website (http://www.davy-letters.org.uk/); just use the advanced search function, to search by recipient name and enter ‘Apreece’. These early letters, written when Davy goes to Dublin in 1811, are lovely. We get lengthy descriptions of Ireland’s landscape; often patronizing descriptions of Irish people and the society over there; descriptions of a visit to Edgeworthstown and of Maria Edgeworth (‘the perfect model of a Woman of great powers & literary habits’). Meanwhile, Jane is staying with the Ladies of Llangollen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_of_Llangollen), two upper-class women who eloped from Ireland to live together causing great scandal. Jane is apparently also learning chemistry, in an attempt to please Davy, no doubt. Davy uses a wonderful metaphor from Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia on sight to describe his feelings on her absence. Presumably, showing how much the Edinburgh Review periodical had entered public consciousness as a source of criticism, Davy writes in one letter dated 20 November 1811: ‘You have attacked me a little in the style of the Edinburgh School’. Anna Beddoes is still around at this date too, now no longer competing for Davy’s heart I assume; he escorts her from Ireland when he visits Llangollen himself.

There are some hilarious bits too, signing off one letter, dated 14th October, Davy writes ‘Adieu My charming friend my dear grandmama or by whatever tender or kind name you will permit me to call you’. This clearly doesn’t go down well (and I’m not surprised!), since the next letter opens with an apology: ‘Grandmama was a style & title applied by yourself, & not one that I was bold enough to invent; & notwithstanding all your dignity & all your indulgence, I do not think I could ever bring myself to consider you with any of the feelings of a grandchild’ (1 November 1811). After this letter, he doesn’t receive a letter for some time and writes in the utmost abjection (‘I am not conscious of having written any thing that ought to have offended you’) on 17th November. It all seems to turn out well, but I’m interested to find out how the relationship, as lived through these letters, continues and develops. In the letters of late November, Davy reports that he has a cold (‘I have a dreadful cold which makes me very stupid‘), which given my own dreadful cold, makes me feel that we have something in common.
Finally, I’m giving a lecture for the Manchester Science Festival  on the subject of Literature and Drugs: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater this coming Tuesday at the City Library on Deansgate. It’s now fully booked, so I hope that you were able to get a ticket if you wanted one.

Best,

Sharon