Anne Treneer - The Mercurial Chemist: A Life of Sir Humphry Davy

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Volume 9

THE MERCURIAL CHEMIST

THE MERCURIAL CHEMIST

A Life of Sir Humphry Davy

ANNE TRENEER

First published in 1963 by Methuen & Co Ltd

This edition first published in 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1963 Anne Treneer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-39006-5 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02175-6 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-02454-3 (Volume 9) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-39949-7 (Volume 9) (ebk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

The Mercurial Chemist

by the same author

CHARLES M. DOUGHTY
SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE WIND
CORNISH YEARS
A STRANGER IN THE MIDLANDS

The Mercurial Chemist

A LIFE OF SIR HUMPHRY DAVY

by

ANNE TRENEER
M.A., B.Litt.

First published 1963
1963 by Anne Treneer
Printed in Great Britain
by Butler &Tanner Ltd
Frome &London
Cat No 2/2587/1

TO

MY FRIENDS
IN THE HUNDRED
OF PENWITH

Wisemen all wayes of knowledge past

To th shepheards wonder come at last:

SIDNEY GODOLPHIN

contents

Plates

Acknowledgements are due to the following for permission to reproduce the illustrations: Plate I, the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall Plate 2, the City Art Gallery, Bristol Plates 36, the Royal Institution; Plate 7, the Penzance Borough Museum; Plate 8, Mrs M. E. Rolleston

This book had its origin in a paper, Sir Humphry Davy and the Poets, read before a small Cornish Society, and broadcast, in part, in the West Region. Davys early life was as intensely and vividly local as his later life was cosmopolitan.

I came to have an abiding interest. From reading Davy as my taste directed in the successive volumes of his collected Works, which his brother edited, and which a friend gave me, I came to the early biographies, to later studies, and to pursuing Davy and Lady Davy through the memoirs and letters of their time. Davy was living in what he called the dawn of modern chemistry. His expositions are always lucid and often elegant. He sought unweariedly for unequivocal terms. He used no formulae. Towards the close of his life he sometimes contemplated writing the Memoirs of H. D., to which he would have given a title used by his favourite, Smollett, The Adventures of an Atom.

Many rhymes were made up about Davy in his lifetime. As late as 1905, E. C. Bentley wrote the well-remembered clerihew in Biography for Beginners:

Sir Humphry Davy

Abominated gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered sodium.

I have relied mainly on printed sources, as indicated in the Select Bibliography appended to this volume. In addition, I have been kindly permitted to examine manuscript material in the library of the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street. To the Managers acknowledgement is due for permission to print the draft of a poem by Davy on p. 4; drafts of letters on pp. 37 and 70; the letter from Davy to Coleridge on p. 60; Davys parody of Wordsworth on p. 63, and other extracts from the notebooks as indicated in the text. The autograph letters from Coleridge to Davy, which I was allowed to read and copy from the originals in possession of the Royal Institution, are now included in the first four volumes of Professor Earl Leslie Griggs great edition of Coleridges Letters. From this edition, by courtesy of the Oxford University Press, I have quoted.

To Sir John Murray I am indebted for showing me letters in his possession, addressed to the John Murray of Davys day, from Sir Humphry Davy, from Dr John Davy, and from Lady Davy. Acknowledgement is here made for permission to quote from Lady Davys letter on p. 229.

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