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