Dear blog,
I have just – like, just this second – written what may be the final note to The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy. Fittingly, it was a note identifying a daughter of the railway engineer, Robert Benson Dockray, to whom John Davy (Humph’s brother) was sending his regards; she turns out to be the mother of the Lancaster-born poet Laurence Binyon (1869-1943). That has a nice circular feel to it. Mind, when I began this project in 2008 I hadn’t even started work at Salford University let alone Lancaster. As ever, this last file – letters written by Jane (the wife) and John (the brother) about Humph, his legacy, and his publications, has taken longer than I expected, and I still need to read it through once again before sending to my eagle-eyed associates for their help with some niggling things I haven’t been able to identify/read etc etc.
It’s been a good fortnight, nonetheless, with a number of various satisfying discoveries. For example, I have been astonished and amazed by a discovery made by Sam Illingworth at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sam has found out that in 1806 Davy published a revised version of his ‘Spinosist’ poem in the Gentleman’s Magazine. This is the same version that Davy published separately with the Royal Institution publisher Richard Savage (and there survives a copy of this tipped into Faraday’s copy of his Life of Humphry Davy) in the RI. I know now (because I have finished these later letters) that John Davy used this version – sent to him by Humph’s cousin, Edmund Davy – in his Memoirs (1836) and it seems increasingly likely that John gave it the title by which it is now often referred, ‘Written After Recovery from a Dangerous Illness’. What Sam’s discovery proves is that the revised poem has nothing to do with Davy’s illness of 1807 and that Davy was publishing his work (with his name attached!) at this period in his life.
I’ve enjoyed reading some of John Davy’s works these last few weeks, including a discussion of that famous bit in Wordsworth’s ‘Preface’ to the Lyrical Ballads on the difference between the poet and the man of science, published in John Davy’s Lectures on the Study of Chemistry (1849), p. xxi. I’ve also needed to establish who John Davy’s family are; his later letters refer to the death of a daughter and other family members. It’s been surprisingly difficult to get any authoritative statement on this: the internet tells me that John Davy had anything between one and eight children. In fact, he had three, one of whom died in her early twenties; of the other two, Grace went on to marry George Rolleston, a regius professor of medicine in Oxford (and have a famous son, Sir Humphry Davy Rolleston!), and Archibald, who went into the church, lived in near Lancaster and thereabouts (with a connection to the mother of Binyon, above), and whose daughter, Helen Mary I haven’t yet been able to follow after 1871.
Finally, it is clear that there are still mysteries to be solved. One such is that we haven’t been able to find a painting of Lady Jane Davy, which has always seemed odd. In a letter to the still elusive ‘Miss Talbot’ in 1837, Jane Davy writes: ‘My precious physiognomy has for my inconvenience often been painted; but luckily for the beau ideal these portraits have never been engraved, & therefore your M.S. must forego in this instance the positive representation of me.’ So, there may well (surely?) be paintings of Jane Davy out there, but where are they???

Best,

Sharon

Dear blog,

The main thing I have to tell you today is that the free, online course on Humphry Davy: Laughing Gas, Literature, and the Lamp is now enrolling students. Please do sign up! Send this link out to any friends or family who might be interested too! https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/humphry-davy/1

I’m really pleased with the way the course has turned out; there are some big names involved, for example, films presented by the biographer Richard Holmes, a (really quite dangerous) Davy experiment recreated by the Cambridge chemist Peter Wothers, and some excellent tasks. The course will consider the relationships between science, poetry, politics, culture and society. We’ll use the lens of Davy’s fascinating life and career but will also be asking learners to reflect on what life is like now. Is it still the case that there are two cultures of the arts and the sciences? For the first time, a number of Davy’s own poems can be read and heard; these only existed in manuscript form in some cases, in the archives of the Royal Institution. The videos were filmed in the gorgeous rooms of the Royal Institution with access to Davy’s notebooks, the lecture theatre in which he made his name, and Michael Faraday’s laboratory. And, did I mention that it’s entirely free? The course starts 30 October and will run for four weeks but you can register your interest in it now.
In the last fortnight I’ve been working on the letters we are going to include from the period after his death. These have been quite poignant with people recording their memories of Davy as a young boy. I particularly liked the story his sister told his wife about how ‘At home he would shut himself up in his room, arrange the chairs & lecture them by the hours.’ I’ve found out some things I might never have known, such domestic details as that he liked tea in the morning and coffee in the evening. And his cousin, Edmund Davy, who worked with him in the RI when he was making some of his most important discoveries remembered this about his everyday practice in the lab: ‘He composed with great facility, but was seldom satisfied with the expression of his first thoughts but would go on reading aloud, altering and expanding what he had written. In composing he commonly spoke aloud, modulating his voice according to the nature of the subject. It was easy to know when he had discovered new or important facts, for his countenance naturally expressive would then become more animated, and he would adopt some expressive action or gesture, as a jump, a hearty laugh or he would hum a bit of a tune, or utter a few words of a Greek declension.’ (Edmund Davy to John Davy 15/9/1831).
It’s sad that Davy’s own voice has gone now but the fight over his legacy and reputation is becoming quite fierce and I’m enjoying trying to get to the bottom of all of this.

Sharon

Dear blog,

I had a bit of a break from Davy (for two whole days!) because I finished annotating the 1828 letters – the first draft at least though I’m sure there will be plenty of revision needed – and, it was the 4th July so the library was shut for Monday and Tuesday.
I really have enjoyed doing 1828 even if it has taken me some time. I must have started it early this year but it wasn’t until I was here working in the library 9-5 that I’ve been able to really get to it and finish it. It seems to me like another exciting year, even though it’s so close to Davy’s death in 1829. He’s travelling with a young companion, John James Tobin, who he clearly hates: he calls him ‘the Savage’ or the ‘the Wild Man’ throughout these letters. Amusingly though, Tobin wrote his own account of their travels – through Austria, Slovenia, and Italy – and it’s very funny to compare the two accounts. Davy’s is of course private and Tobin’s is public, but even in the latter you can see the cracks beginning to form in their relationship.
One episode that really tested the relationship occurred when the otherwise unknown servant ‘George’ became horribly unwell (even ‘deranged’!), much to Davy’s annoyance since he wants to be the patient in this situation. Eventually Davy learns that George had been treating a venereal disease with the poisonous and caustic ‘corrosive sublimate’, Mercuric chloride (HgCl2). There are lots of letters about this and it’s fun to see the story unfold; Davy doesn’t know what’s happening at first. I think that George’s wife works in Jane Davy’s entourage because Humph asks Jane not to tell George’s wife at one point. I thought it was interesting though that he did tell Jane about the source of George’s illness. John Davy prints some of these letters but entirely cuts out all of this juicy stuff.
Another thing I’ve learned is that Tobin did the drawings for the second edition of Davy’s Salmonia that were made into engravings in London. This is interesting because Davy’s first biographer, John Ayrton Paris, told us: ‘I am informed by Lady Davy, that the engravings of the fish, by which the work is illustrated, are from drawings of his own execution’ (ii, 315). I’m not sure how this rumour got about but it certainly is Tobin’s work that we see in Salmonia. I hadn’t realised either that Davy was planning to publish his own poetry in Salmonia. Even though this doesn’t happen, the idea is really quite illuminating. He clearly was pleased and proud of his poems and contemplated publishing them at this late stage in his life.
Davy begins Consolations in Travel in 1828; he increasingly feels as though he has some preternatural insight into the human condition now that he is close to death. I really enjoyed reading Consolations, it’s a bonkers, cosmic journey through time and space, written, as Davy puts it, in ‘philosophical poetry though not in metre’. As Davy gets more ill, he is desperate to finish it. After his second stroke in February 1829, his doctor writes to Jane: ‘I am afraid he has occupied himself rather too assiduously in intellectual employment of late, but of this he will not bear to be told. Certain it is however that during the exercise of mind requisite in dictating to Mr Tobin it was that he first discovered his right leg and arm were affected and spite of all remonstrance he has continued to pursue the same occupation every day since.’ Davy definitely knows he has little time left – he turned 50 in 1828 – but as he also puts it, if he doesn’t write, he will ‘vegetate’.
Right, I’m now looking at post 1829 now. We are including letters from after Davy’s death that have direct relevance to him. And, today the Humphry Davy, free, online course went live! You can enrol now even though the course won’t start until 30 September: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/humphry-davy/1 .

Best,

Sharon