I\u2019m working on the 1828 letters again now (after far too long a break doing other things) and I\u2019m right back in the swing of it. It hasn\u2019t been easy \u2013 I\u2019ve had to tell work that I\u2019m only answering emails after the working day has ended because I need to get on with the Davy letters work while I\u2019m here in this library.
\nDavy is at the end of his life \u2013 he\u2019s going to die in June 1829 but for the moment, June 1828, he seems quite happy, travelling in Slovenia and making experiments on eels and the salmon found in the Danube and theorising on their reproduction and migration. It\u2019s been really difficult to find the lakes and rivers that he fishes in near Ljubljana, which he calls Laybach; he often uses the German or Italian names for these Slovenian places. He often writes the word phonetically, making a stab at how it\u2019s spelled; you can imagine what that\u2019s like for me to work out.
\n\tI\u2019ve also found out almost exactly when Davy started his last \u2013 very weird, philosophical book \u2013 Consolations in Travel (between 9 and 12th July 1828 in case anyone\u2019s interested). He writes this about it in a letter to his wife on 12th July: \u2018I amuse myself as much as I can by literary composition [I have] just finished a \u2018vision on the history of human existence\u2019 of which the scene is laid in the Colliseum [sic] & in which I endeavour to establish the progressive nature of intellect & the infinite possibility of spiritual natures. My dream is as good as another & happy are those that dream most in life & most agreably.\u2019 On the 20th July, he writes to his wife again: \u2018I think you will be amused by my Vision which is philosophical poetry though not in metre.\u2019
\n\tIn other news I found a new letter when I went to the New York Public Library in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle and it\u2019s to the playwright Joanna Baillie! It\u2019s the only letter we have to her though I knew that they were friends. It\u2019s only dated \u2018Thursday evening\u2019 but it talks about consoling her sister in law so I think it\u2019s written following the death of the physician Matthew Baillie on 23 September 1823. Amazing eh? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m working on the 1828 letters again now (after far too long a break doing other things) and I\u2019m right back in the swing of it. It hasn\u2019t been easy \u2013 I\u2019ve had to tell work that I\u2019m only answering … Continue reading