DAVY AND FARADAY--IODINE.
The year 1813 is memorable in the history of the Royal Institution,
from the fact that Faraday’s long and honourable association with it
dates from that time. The circumstances which led to this connection
were subsequently stated by himself in the following letter to Dr.
Paris:--
“Royal Institution, _Dec. 23rd, 1829_.
“MY DEAR SIR,--You ask me to give you an account of my first
introduction to Sir H. Davy, which I am very happy to do, as I
think the circumstances will bear testimony to his goodness of
heart.
“When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, I was very fond of
experiment and very averse to trade. It happened that a
gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear
some of Sir H. Davy’s last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took
notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto
volume.
“My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and
selfish, and to enter into the service of Science which I
imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at
last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy,
expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in
his way, he would favour my views; at the same time I sent the
notes I had taken at his lectures.
“The answer, which makes all the point of my communication, I
send you in the original, requesting you to take great care of
it, and to let me have it back, for you may imagine how much I
value.
“You will observe that this took place at the end of the year
1812, and early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me
of the situation of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal
Institution, then just vacant.
“At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to
scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the
prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh
mistress; and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding
those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my
notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and
said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me
right on that matter.
“Finally, through his good efforts I went to the Royal
Institution early in March of 1813, as assistant in the
laboratory; and in October of the same year went with him abroad
as his assistant in experiments and in writing. I returned with
him in April 1815, resumed my station in the Royal Institution,
and have, as you know, ever since remained there.
“I am, dear Sir, very truly yours
“M. FARADAY.”
The answer which Faraday characteristically says makes all the point of
the foregoing communication is as follows:--
“_December 24th, 1812._
“SIR,--I am far from displeased with the proof you have given
me of your confidence, and which displays great zeal, power of
memory, and attention. I am obliged to go out of town, and shall
not be settled in town till the end of January: I will then see
you at any time you wish.
“It would gratify me to be of any service to you. I wish it may
be in my power.
“I am, Sir, your obedient humble servant,
“H. DAVY.”
The immediate cause of the connection was very trivial and commonplace.
Mr. W. Payne, whose name may be recalled in connection with Davy’s
memorandum respecting the state in which the Laboratory of the
Institution was kept, in the latter part of February, 1813, had a
disagreement with Mr. Newman, the instrument-maker, and so far forgot
himself as to strike that gentleman. Whereupon the Managers immediately
resolved that Mr. Payne should be dismissed from the Royal Institution,
and that a gratuity of £10 should be paid him in consideration of his
long services. Davy appears then to have called to mind the modest,
bright-eyed, active youth with the pleasant smile, who had expressed
his desire to devote himself to science.
In the minutes of the meeting of Managers on March 1st, 1813, we read--
“Sir Humphry Davy has the honour to inform the Managers that he
has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation in the
Institution lately filled by William Payne. His name is Michael
Faraday. He is a youth of twenty-two years of age. As far as Sir
H. Davy has been able to observe or ascertain, he appears well
fitted for the situation. His habits seem good, his disposition
active and cheerful, and his manner intelligent. He is willing to
engage himself on the same terms as those given to Mr. Payne at
the time of quitting the Institution.
“_Resolved_--That Michael Faraday be engaged to fill the
situation lately occupied by Mr. Payne on the same terms.”
In the minutes of the general monthly meeting of the members on April
5th, 1813, for putting in nomination from the chair the professors for
the year ensuing, we read:--
“Sir H. Davy rose, and begged leave to resign his situation of
Professor of Chemistry; but he by no means wished to give up
his connection with the Royal Institution, as he should ever
be happy to communicate his researches in the first instance
to the Institution ..., and to do all in his power to promote
the interest and success of this Institution. Sir H. Davy having
retired, Earl Spencer moved That the thanks of this Meeting be
returned to Sir H. Davy for the estimable services rendered by
him to the Royal Institution. This motion was seconded by the
Earl of Darnley, and, on being put, was carried unanimously.
Earl Spencer further moved, That in order more strongly to mark
the high sense entertained by this Meeting of the merits of Sir
H. Davy, he be elected Honorary Professor of Chemistry; which,
on being seconded by the Earl of Darnley, met with unanimous
approbation.”
Mr. Brande was subsequently elected Professor.
During the autumn Davy obtained permission from Napoleon to pass
through France in the course of an extended tour on the Continent which
Lady Davy and he now projected. He thus announced his intention to his
mother:--
“Andover, _Oct. 14, 1813_.
“MY DEAR MOTHER,--We are just going to the Continent upon a
journey of scientific inquiry which I hope will be pleasant to us
and useful to the world. We go rapidly through France to Italy,
and from there to Sicily; and we shall return through Germany.
We have every assurance from the governments of the countries
through which we pass, that we shall not be molested, but
assisted. We shall stay probably a year or two....
“As soon as I have settled a plan of correspondence abroad, I
will write to you, and shall hear of you from John as often as
possible. As I am permitted to pass through an enemy’s country,
there must be no politics in any letters to me; and you had
better not write except through the channel I shall hereafter
point out....
“When I return I shall peacefully fix my abode for life in my
own country. Pray take care of Betsy. When the wind is cold she
should not think of going out. Tell Grace not to be afraid,
though I am going through France. My love to Kitty, and to Grace
and Betsy. I am, my dear mother, wishing you all health and
happiness, your very affectionate son
“H. DAVY.”
On October 4th we find that he reported to the Managers that--
“Michael Faraday had expressed a wish to accompany him on his
scientific travels, but that he would not engage Mr. Faraday
if the Professor of Chemistry considered his services as at
all essential to the Institution, or if the Managers had the
slightest objection to the measure.”
Mr. Brande reported that arrangements could be made to allow Mr.
Faraday to leave,
“and that as he had shown considerable diligence and attention
in cleaning and arranging the mineral collection he recommended
his services to the Managers’ attention, as this was not his
immediate duty.”
A few days afterwards the party, consisting of Sir H. and Lady Davy,
Mr. Faraday, and Lady Davy’s maid, together with the chemical cabinet,
crossed in a cartel from Plymouth to Morlaix. Here they were arrested,
but after a week’s detention, allowed to depart for Paris, where they
arrived on October 27th. Nothing could exceed the cordiality and
warmth of Davy’s reception by the French _savants_. On November 2nd he
attended a sitting of the First Class of the Institute, and was placed
on the right hand of the President, who announced to the meeting that
it was honoured by the presence of “Le Chevalier Davy.” Each day saw
some reception or entertainment in his honour. On November 10th he
dined with Rumford at Auteuil. How much had happened in the ten years
since last they met, and how different their situations now! Davy at
the very summit of his scientific eminence, courted and caressed by
society, honoured and admired by his intellectual peers; Rumford, his
former patron, a broken-hearted, disappointed man about to sink into
the grave, worried to death, in fact, by his wife, and the victim of
the spiteful persecutions she instigated. Of the remarkable men of
science whom Davy met on these occasions he has left us some slight
sketches composed during his last illness, some of which are of
interest to the student who desires to know something of the men whose
names are as household words in the history of chemistry. Guyton de
Morveau--who played such a leading part in the political Revolution
of France, as well as in the revolution of its chemistry, and who,
with Fourcroy, popularised the doctrines of Lavoisier whilst bringing
his head to the scaffold--was found to be a gentleman of mild and
conciliatory manners.
Vauquelin gave him the idea of the French chemists of another age,
belonging rather to the pharmaceutical laboratory than to the
philosophical one.
“Nothing could be more singular than his manners, his life,
and his _ménage_. Two old maiden ladies, Mdlles. de Fourcroy,
sisters of the professor of that name, kept his house. I remember
the first time that I entered it, I was ushered into a sort of
bed-chamber, which likewise served as a drawing-room. One of
these ladies was in bed, but employed in preparations for the
kitchen; and was actually paring truffles.... Nothing could be
more extraordinary than the simplicity of his conversation;--he
had not the slightest tact, and even in the presence of young
ladies, talked of subjects which, since the paradisaical times,
never have been the objects of common conversation.”
“CUVIER had even in his address and manner the character of a
superior man;--much general power and eloquence in conversation,
and a great variety of information on scientific as well as
popular subjects. I should say of him, that he is the most
distinguished man of _talents_ I have known; but I doubt if he is
entitled to the appellation of a man of genius.”
“HUMBOLDT was one of the most agreeable men I have ever known,
social, modest, full of intelligence, with facilities of every
kind: almost _too fluent_ in conversation. His travels display a
spirit of enterprise. His works are monuments of the variety of
his knowledge and resources.”
Of his great rival his comment is as follows:--
“GAY LUSSAC was quick, lively, ingenious, and profound, with
great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I
should place him at the head of living chemists of France.”
“BERTHOLLET was a most amiable man; when the friend of Napoleon
even, always good, conciliatory and modest, frank and candid.
He had no airs, and many graces. In every way below La Place
in intellectual powers, he appeared superior to him in moral
qualities. Berthollet had no appearance of a man of genius;
but one could not look on La Place’s physiognomy without being
convinced that he was a very extraordinary man.”
All accounts appear to show that Davy hardly treated his hosts with
the cordiality and respect they extended to him. His Chauvinism seemed
to get the better of his courtesy. There was, it is said, a flippancy
in his manner and a superciliousness and hauteur in his deportment
which surprised as much as they offended. Napoleon, with characteristic
bluntness, told one of the members of the Institute that he had
heard the young English chemist had a poor opinion of them all. Dr.
Paris, who could certainly speak from personal knowledge, states that
Davy’s unfortunate manner was not so much the expression of a haughty
consciousness of superiority as the desire to conceal a _mauvaise
honte_ and _gaucherie_--an ungraceful timidity he could never conquer,
and which often led him to force himself into a state of effrontery
and with a violence of effort which passed for a sally of pride or the
ebullition of temper.
Whatever Davy’s manner might have been, it was not allowed to affect
the admiration felt for his genius, and on December 13th, 1813, he was
with practical unanimity elected a Corresponding Member of the First
Class of the Institute.
During the last week of the preceding November Ampère had given Davy a
small quantity of a substance which he had obtained from Clement, and
which had been discovered by Courtois, a soap-boiler and manufacturer
of saltpetre in Paris, in kelp or the ashes of sea-weeds. The substance
had the extraordinary property of giving a violet-coloured vapour,
but its true nature and relations were unknown, and it was commonly
designated as X. Although actually known for some time previously, the
first public notice of its existence was made by Clement at a meeting
of the Institute on November 29th, 1813, and at the meeting on December
6th Gay Lussac presented a short note on the substance, to which he
gave the name _iode_, and stated that it had analogies to chlorine. A
week later--that is, on the day of Davy’s election to the Institute--a
letter from him to Cuvier was read, in which he gave a general view
of the chemical characters of the body; and on January 20th, 1814, a
paper by him, dated Paris, December 10th, 1813, and entitled “Some
Experiments and Observations on a new Substance which becomes a
violet-coloured Gas by Heat,” was read to the Royal Society.
After reciting the above facts he explains why he has ventured to take
up a subject on which Gay Lussac was still engaged. The explanation
was no doubt necessary; he had evidently not forgotten Gay Lussac’s
intrusion into his own field of work on the occasion of the discovery
of the metals of the alkalis. He first draws attention to the
peculiarities of the combination of the new substance with silver;
this, he shows, is markedly different from silver chloride. He then
forms this compound synthetically; forms also the combination with
potassium by direct union, and describes its properties; studies the
action of chlorine on the new substance, and notes the formation of
the yellow solid chloride and the mode of its decomposition by water;
prepares a number of metallic compounds; studies the action of the
new substance on phosphorus, the nature of the product, and its mode
of decomposition by water, with formation of the white crystalline
phosphonium iodide and hydriodic acid gas. By acting on this gas with
potassium he shows that it yields half its volume of hydrogen and forms
the same product as by the direct union of the alkali metal with the
new substance. He further finds that this gas is formed when the new
substance and hydrogen are passed through a heated tube; it has a very
strong attraction for water, which dissolves it to a large extent, and
the concentrated solution rapidly becomes tawny. When the new substance
is treated with potash solution it forms the same product as by its
direct union with potassium, together with a salt precisely similar to
potassium hyper-oxymuriate, and which, like that salt, is decomposed
when heated, with evolution of oxygen. He shows that the new substance
is expelled from its compounds when these are heated with chlorine.
He studies the nature of the black fulminating compound discovered
by Desormes and Clement by acting on the new substance with solution
of ammonia, and concludes that it is analogous to the detonating oil
of Dulong. He attempts to determine the combining proportion of the
new substance, on the assumption that its compounds are analogous to
those of chlorine, but he has to admit that his experiments have been
made upon quantities too small to afford exact results. Nevertheless
they prove that the value is much higher than those of the simple
inflammable bodies, and higher even than those of most of the metals.
He further shows that the combination with hydrogen must be one of the
heaviest elastic fluids existing.
“From all the facts that have been stated, there is every reason
to consider this new substance as _an undecompounded body_. In
its specific gravity, lustre, colour, and the high number in
which it enters into combination, it resembles the metals; but
in all its chemical agencies it is more analogous to oxygen and
chlorine; it is a non-conductor of electricity, and possesses,
like these bodies, the negative electrical energy with respect
to metals, inflammable and alkaline substances, and hence when
combined with these substances in aqueous solution and electrized
in the voltaic circuit, it separates at the positive surface; but
it has a positive energy with respect to chlorine.... It agrees
with chlorine and fluorine in forming acids with hydrogen.
“The name _ione_ has been proposed in France for this new
substance from its colour in the gaseous state, from ῐον, viola;
and its combination with hydrogen has been named _hydroionic
acid_. The name _ione_, in English, would lead to confusion, for
its compounds would be called _ionic_ and _ionian_. By terming it
_iodine_, from ἱώδης violaceous, this confusion will be avoided,
and the name will be more analogous to chlorine and fluorine.”
The rapidity with which Davy ascertained the properties and relations
of the new substance was characteristic of him. A fortnight’s
work--done partly at his hotel and partly in the laboratory of the
young Chevreul, amidst a succession of interruptions caused by fêtes,
levées, and visits of ceremony--sufficed to accumulate the material for
his Royal Society paper, in which he gives with unerring precision, in
spite of the small quantity of the matter at his disposal, the broad
outlines of the chemistry of iodine. The paper shows him at his best:
he seems to have seized, as if by instinct, upon the central fact of
the analogy of iodine to chlorine, and he worked out the clue with a
perspicacity and insight worthy of his genius.
As may be surmised, Davy’s action hardly contributed to his popularity
with a certain section of the _savants_ of Paris. Gay Lussac and
Thenard were extremely angry with Ampère and Clement for having given
him the material for his investigation, and the feeling broke out after
the publication of Gay Lussac’s memoir in the Annales de Chimie in
1814. Davy in a note published in the Journal of the Royal Institution
says:--
“Who had most share in developing the chemical history of that
body [iodine], must be determined by a review of the papers
that have been published upon it, and by an examination of
their respective dates. When M. Clement showed Iodine to me, he
believed that the hydriodic acid was muriatic acid; and M. Gay
Lussac, after his early experiments, made originally with M.
Clement, formed the same opinion, and _maintained_ it, when I
_first_ stated to him my belief that it was a new and peculiar
acid, and that Iodine was a substance analogous in its chemical
relations to Chlorine.”
Davy left Paris towards the end of December, passing into Auvergne and
thence to Montpellier, where he resumed his work on iodine. He then
went to Genoa, where he made some experiments on the electricity of the
torpedo, and about the middle of March arrived at Florence. In a letter
to his brother John he says:--
“I have worked a good deal on iodine and a little on the torpedo.
Iodine had been in embryo for two years. I came to Paris;
Clement requested me to examine it, and he believed that it was
a compound, affording muriatic acid. I worked upon it for some
time, and determined that it was a new body, and that it afforded
a peculiar acid by combining with hydrogen, and this I mentioned
to Gay Lussac, Ampère, and other chemists. The first immediately
‘took the word of the Lord out of the mouth of His servant,’
and treated this subject as he had treated potassium and boron.
The paper which I sent to the Royal Society on iodine I wrote
with Clement’s approbation and a note published in the ‘Journal
de Physique’ will vindicate my priority. I have just got ready
for the Royal Society a second paper on this fourth supporter of
combustion.
“The old theory is nearly abandoned in France. Berthollet, with
much candour, has decided in favour of chlorine. I know no
chemist but Thenard who upholds it at Paris, and he upholds it
feebly, and by this time, probably, has renounced it.
“I doubt if the organ of the torpedo is analogous to the pile
of Volta. I have not been able to gain any chemical effects by
the shock sent through water; but I tried on small and not very
active animals. I shall resume the inquiry at Naples, where I
hope to be about the middle of May. In my journey I met with no
difficulties of any kind, and received every attention from the
scientific men of Paris, and the most liberal permission to go
where I pleased from the government.
“I lived very much with Berthollet, Cuvier, Chaptal, Vauquelin,
Humboldt, Morveau, Clement, Chevreul, and Gay Lussac. They were
all kind and attentive to me; and, except for Gay Lussac’s last
turn of publishing without acknowledgement what he had first
learnt from me, I should have had nothing to complain of; but who
can control self-love?
“It ought not to interfere with truth and justice; but I will not
moralise nor complain. Iodine is as useful an ally to me as I
could have found at home.”
At Florence he worked in the laboratory of the Accademia del Cimento
on iodine and on the diamond. The results of his work on iodine he
embodied in a paper read to the Royal Society on June 16th, 1814, which
deals mainly with the iodates, or, as he preferred to call them, the
_oxyiodes_. The object of his work on the diamond was to determine
whether any peculiar matter separated from it during its combustion,
and whether the gas formed in the process was precisely the same in
its chemical nature as that produced by the combustion of plumbago and
charcoal. At Florence he made use of the great burning-glass originally
employed in the trials on the action of solar heat on the diamond
instituted by Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany; he completed the
research in the laboratory of the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome.
From the results of his different experiments, which were communicated
to the Royal Society on June 23rd, 1814, it appeared that the diamond
affords no other substance by its combustion in oxygen than pure
carbonic acid gas, and that the only chemical difference perceptible
between diamond and the purest charcoal is that the latter contains
a minute proportion of hydrogen. “But,” he asks, “can a quantity of
an element, less in some cases than 1/50000 part of the weight of the
substance, occasion so great a difference in physical and chemical
characters?” This he concludes is most unlikely, for, as he points out,
even when the minute quantity of hydrogen is expelled by heating the
charcoal in chlorine, the specific differences remain.
The doctrine at that time current, and which seemed indeed almost
axiomatic, “That bodies cannot be exactly the same in composition
or chemical nature, and yet totally different in all their physical
properties,” received its first great shock. Davy’s work, no doubt,
paved the way for the recognition of the fact of allotropy, and
thereafter of isomerism.
In May he went to Naples and made his first ascent of Vesuvius,
which he revisited on several subsequent journeys. He commissioned
one of the guides to inform him from time to time of the condition
of the volcano, and the man’s letters, in spite of their phonetic
address--“Siromfredevi-Londra”--duly found their way to Albemarle
Street. He also interested himself in the excavations at Pompeii
instituted by direction of Murat, then King of Naples, and he performed
a number of experiments on the colours used by the ancients in
painting, an account of which was communicated to the Royal Society on
February 23rd, 1815.
He then passed northwards with the intention of spending the summer at
Geneva. On his way he called at Milan to pay his respects to Volta. Of
this visit he wrote:--
“Volta I saw at Milan, in 1814, at that time advanced in
years,--I think nearly seventy and in bad health. His
conversation was not brilliant; his views rather limited, but
marking great ingenuity. His manners were perfectly simple. He
had not the air of a courtier, or even of a man who had seen the
world.”
If Dr. Paris’s story is to be credited, the lack of brilliancy in
the conversation of the great Italian physicist may be attributed to
the circumstances of this meeting. Davy, we are told, had written to
announce his intended visit, and on the appointed day and hour Volta,
in full dress, awaited his arrival.
“On the entrance of the great English philosopher into the
apartment, not only in _déshabille_, but in a dress of which an
English artisan would have been ashamed, Volta started back in
astonishment, and such was the effect of his surprise, that he
was for some time unable to address him.”
The party remained at Geneva until the middle of September, partaking
freely of the intellectual life which that charming city afforded. Here
he met Saussure Pictet, De la Rive, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant,
Necker, and Talma, whose society he greatly enjoyed. With the approach
of winter he returned to Italy _viâ_ the Brenner and Venice, and on
November 2nd arrived at Rome, where he remained until March 1st, 1815,
occupying himself with his inquiry into the composition of ancient
colours. In this he was greatly assisted by the kindness of his friend
Canova, the celebrated sculptor, who was then charged with the care
of the works connected with ancient art in Rome, and who supplied
him with material from the colours found in the Baths of Titus and of
Livia, and other palaces and baths of ancient Rome and Pompeii. Davy’s
memoir, which appears in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1815,
displays considerable antiquarian and bibliographical research, and,
considering his limited means, much analytical skill and ingenuity. The
ancient reds he found to consist of minium, several varieties of iron
ochre, and vermilion or cinnabar. The yellows were mixtures of ochres
and chalks, or of ochre with minium. He was unable to discover that
orpiment was used; a deep orange yellow on stucco in the ruins near
the monument of Caius Cestius consisted of a mixture of massicot and
minium. The blues were mainly mixtures of the Egyptian or Alexandrine
blue, with more or less chalk. This Egyptian blue, he found, was a
_frit_, made by heating soda, sand, and copper, either used as an ore
or as metal. He gives a method of making it, and speaks highly of its
permanence and beauty. The greens were, as a rule, compounds of copper.
The exact nature of the purples he was unable to determine; they were
probably organic, but whether obtained from shell-fish or madder could
not be ascertained. The purplish reds in the Baths of Titus were found
to be mixtures of red ochres, and the blues were copper compounds. The
blacks and browns were mixtures of carbonaceous matter with oxides of
iron or manganese. The whites were mainly chalk, or occasionally clay;
cerusse, or white-lead, was apparently not used.
Before leaving Italy he again went to Naples, for the purpose of
witnessing Vesuvius in eruption, and on several occasions he was as
near the crater as he could get. He left Naples on March 21st, and came
home by way of Verona, Innsbruck, Ulm, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and
the Rhine, arriving in London April 23rd, 1815. A few days after his
arrival he wrote to his mother:--
“We have had a very agreeable and instructive journey and Lady
Davy agrees with me in thinking that England is the only country
to _live_ in, however interesting it may be to _see_ other
countries.
“I yesterday bought a good house in Grosvenor Street, and we
shall sit down in this happy land.
“I beg you to give my best and kindest love to my sisters, and to
remember me with all affection to my aunts.”
Faraday was again engaged as assistant in the laboratory of the Royal
Institution and superintendent of the apparatus (at a salary of 30s. a
week), and was accommodated with apartments at the top of the house.
In Dr. Bence Jones’s “Life of Faraday” we have more detailed
information concerning this tour, derived from the journal which
Faraday kept whilst he was abroad. Faraday describes in considerable
detail the life in Paris and the work on Iodine; we have accounts of
Chevreul’s laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes, and of Gay Lussac’s
lectures at the École Polytechnique; of the work on the torpedo at
Genoa; of the combustion of the diamond at the Accademia del Cimento,
and a description of the great burning-glass, and how it was actually
employed; of the experiments of Morichini on the alleged magnetisation
of a needle by the solar rays; of his meeting Volta--“an hale, elderly
man, bearing the red ribbon, and very free in conversation”; of the
work at Rome on chlorous oxide and iodic acid, and on the pigments
employed by the ancients.
“The constant presence of Sir Humphry Davy,” wrote Faraday to
his friend Abbott, “is a mine inexhaustible of knowledge and
improvement.” But he adds: “I have several times been more than
half decided to return hastily home; but second thoughts have
still induced me to try what the future may produce ... the
glorious opportunities I enjoy of improving in the knowledge
of chemistry and the sciences continually determine me to
finish this voyage with Sir H. D. But if I wish to enjoy these
advantages I have to sacrifice much, and though these sacrifices
are such as an humble man would not feel, yet I cannot quietly
make them.”
Faraday’s troubles arose from his anomalous position in the party. When
Davy elected to go abroad, he arranged to take his valet with him; but
at the eleventh hour this man, moved by the tears of his wife--to whom
the “Corsican Ogre” was a kind of bogey--refused to proceed. “When Sir
H. informed me of this circumstance,” says Faraday, “he expressed his
sorrow at it, and said--that if I would put up with a few things on
the road until he got to Paris, doing those things which could not be
trusted to strangers or waiters ... he would get a servant.... At Paris
he could find no servant to suit him,” nor was he more successful at
Montpellier or at Genoa. It was, doubtless, difficult at this period
to find a man in such places who understood English and was in other
respects suitable. Faraday goes on to say:--
“Sir Humphry has at all times endeavoured to keep me from the
performance of those things which did not form a part of my duty,
and which might be disagreeable.... I should have but little to
complain of, were I travelling with Sir Humphry alone, or were
Lady Davy like him; but her temper makes it oftentimes go wrong
with me, with herself and with Sir H....
“She likes to show her authority, and at first I found her
extremely earnest in mortifying me. This occasioned quarrels
between us, at each of which I gained ground and she lost it; for
the frequency made me care nothing about them, and weakened her
authority, and after each she behaved in a milder manner.”
How Davy and his wife appeared to the world at this time may be seen
from the following extracts from Ticknor’s Life:--
“1815. June 13.--I breakfasted this morning with Sir H.
Davy, of whom we have heard so much in America. He is now
about thirty-three [he was actually thirty-seven], but with
all the freshness and bloom of twenty-five, and one of the
handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of
vivacity--talks rapidly, though with great precision--and is so
much interested in conversation that his excitement amounts to
nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant motion. He has just
returned from Italy, and delights to talk of it; thinks it, next
to England, the finest country in the world, and the society of
Rome surpassed only by that of London, and says he should not die
contented without going there again.”
“15 June.--As her husband had invited me to do, I called this
morning on Lady Davy. I found her in her parlour, working on a
dress, the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and
looking more like home than anything since I left it. She is
small, with black eyes and hair and a very pleasant face, an
uncommonly sweet smile; and when she speaks has much spirit and
expression in her countenance. Her conversation is agreeable,
particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and
has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before
from a lady. But, then, it has something of the appearance of
formality and display, which injures conversation. Her manner is
gracious and elegant; and though I should not think of comparing
her to Corinne yet I think she has uncommon powers.”
In Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary we read, under date May 31st, 1813:--
“Dined with Wordsworth at Mr. Carr’s. Sir Humphry and Lady
Davy there. She and Sir H. seem to have hardly finished their
honeymoon. Miss Joanna Baillie said to Wordsworth, ‘We have
witnessed a picturesque happiness.’”
In 1815 it was very evident the honeymoon had waned and that the
picturesque happiness was at an end. However fitted her ladyship
might be to shine in salons, at routs and fashionable gatherings, she
lacked the homelier, kindlier charms which grace the _placens uxor_.
An accomplished woman, of fastidious taste, fond of study, upright
in her dealings, and charitable to the poor, she was withal cold
and unsympathetic, self-willed and independent, “fitted to excite
admiration rather than love, and neither by nature happy in herself,
or qualified to impart, in the best sense of the term, happiness to
others.” Such is the character given of her by Dr. Davy; and he adds,
“There was an oversight, if not a delusion, as to the fitness of their
union”; and “it might have been better for both if they had never met.”
It was, no doubt, from the fulness of his own experience that Davy once
wrote to a friend:--
“Upon points of affection it is only for the parties themselves
to form just opinions of what is really necessary to ensure
the felicity of the marriage state. Riches appear to me not at
all necessary, but competence, I think is; and after this more
depends upon the _temper_ of the individual than upon personal,
or even intellectual circumstances. The finest spirits, the most
exquisite wines, the nectars and ambrosias of modern tables, will
be all spoilt by a few drops of bitter extract; and a bad temper
has the same effect in life, which is made up, not of great
sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and
kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what win
and preserve the heart, and secure comfort.”