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