Dear blog,

I had a wonderful few days in Valencia last week attending the Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) conference. I gave the plenary lecture for the literature and science symposium, which ran for the first time at the conference. It was very enjoyable, lovely to make new friends working on similar topics in another country.

Since then I’ve been back in the Royal Institution, working on the Davy letters project. I’m still reading letters to Jane Davy though I think I will finish these today. There have been lots of gaps between letters in this correspondence after reading quite a few in the early days of their courtship and marriage. It makes me wonder what happened to the ones that we don’t have, unless Davy didn’t write to her much during that time, or was it that Jane selected those that have survived when she gave them to Davy’s brother John for use in his biography? I’ve had a number of difficult questions raised in these letters, which I’m putting out to anyone who actually reads this blog to see whether you can help…

In a letter dated 27th April 1813, Davy writes to his wife: ‘Geo Knox’s two communications fidgeted me — I have always quoted him as free from any taint of the American plant yet it certainly displays itself in both his letters. — It was unworthy of him to suppose of you & of me any want of confidence & to attribute to me the paltry feeling of fear of anticipation.’ I have no idea which ‘American plant’ it is that he refers to here. If anyone has any ideas, or even better, knows that the issue is with George Knox’s ‘two communications’, I’d be delighted to know.

Now one for the literary among you… In a letter dated 7th April 1827, Davy writes: ‘As I know the effect of civility, I wish you would send one to Jeffrey the Edinburgh “Index” Mag (the Man who would have done me justice is with the good & great of other times[)].’ Index is very difficult to read and I may have gotten this word wrong. Does it make sense to anyone reading this?

From 1827 onwards Davy begins signing his letters to Jane ‘God bless you’, which is a new thing that I haven’t noticed before. I wonder whether it’s a sign of a growing religious belief? He certainly, from 1827 onwards (he died in 1829) is preoccupied with his health and the letters I’ve read this week have been written on his travels abroad for his health. Does anyone know what the stamp ‘L. A.’ means for letters from abroad? In one letter he writes ‘this paper is stained by a leech which has fallen from my temples whilst I am writing’. He mentions Byron’s poem ‘Euthanasia’ in another, saying ‘it is the only case probably where my feelings perfectly coincide with what his were’.

There are new difficulties in reading the letters too; he has begun to use full stops instead of commas (but where, I think, he clearly means commas). Since we’re doing a diplomatic transcription, I’m following his usage but this doesn’t really convey the meaning well. Also, as he has always done, Davy uses the end of lines or the start of a new line as punctuation, often in lieu of a full stop. We can’t show this on the page since we’re not following the shape of his lines exactly, so this will be lost…

Anyway, I have two weeks left and still many, many more letters to check. I wrote a piece for The Lancet last week, which should be published in January 2013; I have a book to review by this Monday for the THES, and a PhD report to write by next Monday, along with a proposal for an article and another article to submit. Not quite sure how I’m going to get all of this done…

Since writing this I’ve received the long-awaited reader’s report on my book and it’s really good! I’m totally chuffed. Full steam ahead!

Best,

Sharon

Dear Blog,

I’ve had a week away from the Royal Institution archive, travelling around for a PhD viva in Newcastle University (congratulations Leanne Stokoe!) and then giving a paper at the Literature and Science seminar in the University of Oxford. The week before that I made some fabulous finds in the archive though, some of which I’ll share with you here.

I’m still reading the letters from Davy to his wife-to-be Jane (then Mrs Apreece). The letters are lovely; they’re often written when he’s away from home and he very clearly misses her, which is not what most critics think of this relationship. Perhaps as I read on, I’ll find the cold formality that I had been led to expect, but for now, Davy’s letters are full of anxious solicitude and concern. There are some questions raised by the letters, which I can’t answer, such as in his letter of New Year’s Day 1812, when he writes: ‘Indeed I never in the whole course of our social converse ever intended to offend you or give you a moment of uneasiness & I do not think I should feel any thing long painful that I thought would promote your happiness, even though it should require from me the greatest of all sacrifices. You know what this is & I trust you will never oblige me to make it.’ I wonder what is referred to here; what would be considered ‘the greatest of all sacrifices’? It might be chemistry of course, that would make some sense. On questions like this I guess we will never know the truth for certain.

These are letters that are personal and intimate: they have never been published before. Jane gave them to John Davy but still most weren’t published in his Fragmentary Remain (1858) whether on her orders or due to his sensitivity, we’ll probably never know. Though this all happened such a long time ago, and ethical approval is not needed in such cases, it still remains a fact that these were real people with real lives. The subject of a note sent to Jane on their wedding day (2^nd March 1812) remains obscure but it strongly suggests that they may have slept together the night before and this raises these issues. This is salacious stuff and I know that Davy and Jane wouldn’t have wanted such matters aired in public but also, they illuminate their relationship as well as giving us some sense perhaps of how such relationships developed between people of their class and position.

Davy’s penchant for self-experimentation is still present in 1812, well after the nitrous oxide experiments early in the century. On 1^st November 1812, Davy writes to Jane, worried that she’ll hear this story from some other source: ‘Yesterday I began some new experiments to which a very interesting discovery & a slight accident put an end. I made one of those compounds more powerful than gunpowder destined perhaps at some time to change the nature of war & influence the state of Society, an explosion took place which has done me no other harm than that of preventing me from working this day & the effects of which will be gone tomorrow & which I should not mention at all, except that you may hear some foolish exaggerated account of it for it really is not worth mentioning’.

I go this week coming to Valencia, to give a plenary lecture to the Literature and Science Symposium of the Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) conference. Then I have three, final weeks in the Royal Institution to finish transcribing the letters there and then it’s back to Manchester.

More soon,

Sharon