The Age of Wonder (50 page)

These lectures opened with Davy’s masterly ‘Discourse Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry’, which became famous as a Romantic statement of the progressive role of science in society.
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He began by claiming a central place for chemistry in the development of scientific knowledge: botany, zoology, medicine, physiology, agriculture, all ultimately depended on knowledge of chemical processes. He even included the ‘sublime’ science of astronomy, with a salute to Herschel and his superb telescopes and metal alloy mirrors: ‘The progress of the astronomer had been in some measure commensurate with that of the chemical artist, who, indeed, by his perfection of materials used for astronomical apparatus, has afforded the investigating philosopher the means of tracing the revolution of the planets, and of penetrating into space, so as to discover the forms and appearances of the distant parts of the universe.’
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But Davy wished to make even bigger, philosophical claims for the scientific spirit and imagination. Drawing on his previous exchanges with Coleridge about the ‘hopeful’ nature of scientific progress, he put before his audience a vision of human civilisation itself, brought into being by the scientific drive to enquire and create. Science had woken and energised mankind from his primal ignorance and ‘slumber’. This was in effect Davy’s version of the Prometheus myth: ‘Man, in what is called a state of nature, is a creature of almost pure sensation. Called into activity only by positive wants, his life is passed either in satisfying the cravings of the common appetites, or in apathy, or in slumber. Living only in moments he calculates little on futurity.
He has no vivid feelings of hope,
or thoughts of permanent and powerful actions.
And unable to discover causes, he is either harassed by superstitious dreams, or quietly and passively submissive to the mercy of nature and the elements.’

But once woken by science, man is capable of ‘connecting hope with an infinite variety of ideas’. He can provide for his basic needs, and anticipate future enjoyments. Above all science enables him to shape his future,
actively.
‘It has bestowed on him powers which may almost be called creative; which have enabled him to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations, but rather as a master, active with his own instruments.’
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Davy announced to his spellbound audience that they were witnessing the dawn of ‘a new science’, and it would be wonderful: ‘The dim and uncertain twilight of discovery, which gave to objects false or indefinite appearances, has been succeeded by the steady light of truth, which has shown the external world in its distinct forms, and in its true relations to human powers. The composition of the atmosphere, and the properties of gases, have been ascertained; the phenomenon of electricity has been developed; the lightnings have been taken from the clouds; and lastly, a new influence has been discovered, which has enabled man to produce from combinations of dead matter effects which were formerly occasioned only by animal organs.’
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Davy was deliberately proposing a revolutionary view of science, and for a moment his audience must have believed that the wild young man from Bristol was going to propose political revolution as well. Banks, and others in the front row of the theatre, held their breath when Davy launched into the following declaration: ‘The guardians of civilization and of refinement, the most powerful and respected members of society, are daily growing more attentive to the realities of life; and, giving up many of their unnecessary enjoyments in consequence of the desire to be useful, are becoming the friends and protectors of the labouring part of the community.’
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What French, insurrectionary sentiment would follow from Beddoes’s erstwhile protégé?

Yet Davy knew very well that it would be fatal to raise any suggestion of social revolution, anything that smacked of ‘Continental’ ideology. With a skilful change of pace and direction, he hastened to dispel any vision of a democratic future. On the contrary, ‘the unequal division of property and of labour, the difference of rank and condition amongst mankind, are the sources of power in civilized life, and its moving causes, and even its very soul’.
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The final version of this passage stands out as deliberately aimed at the aristocratic supporters of the Institution, and must have greatly relieved Banks. Nonetheless, Davy found his own way of emphasising the radical nature of scientific progress, and this too Banks must have liked. He returned to the image of dawning light, but he used it with deliberate British understatement. Science did not deal in extravagant republican dreams, utopian nonsense, or dangerous French political abstractions. It was plain, reasonable, empirical, patriotic: ‘In this view we do not look to distant ages, or amuse ourselves with brilliant, though delusive dreams concerning the infinite improveability of man, the annihilation of labour, disease, and even death. But we reason by analogy with simple facts. We consider only a state of human progression arising out of its present condition. We look for a time that we may reasonably expect, for a bright day of which we already behold the dawn.’
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But this was not quite all. Davy’s final claim for science was an extraordinary one, and must have much struck Coleridge. Science was psychologically, even spiritually, therapeutic. ‘It may destroy diseases of the imagination, owing to too deep a sensibility; and it may attach the affections to objects, permanent, important, and intimately related to the interests of the human species.’ The value of science was, in this sense, universal, ‘even to persons of powerful minds’, whose primary interests were ‘literary, political or moral’. It strengthened the habit of ‘minute discrimination’, and encouraged a language of ‘simple facts’. But perhaps Coleridge would have felt that Davy was on less certain ground when he added that science tended ‘to destroy the influence of terms connected only with feeling’.
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Among other crucial ideas in the body of the lectures, Davy further explained and popularised the concept of the ‘carbon cycle’, as originally discovered by Priestley and Lavoisier. He presented it as the key to life on earth, a continuous universal recycling of carbon and oxygen between plants and humans. The metaphysical emphasis he gave to this law of harmony in nature may well have influenced Coleridge’s letters and poems on ‘the One Life’, written during the spring and summer of 1802.

Later that year Coleridge worked with Wordsworth on the Preface to the third edition of
Lyrical Ballads,
describing the function and future of poetry. They collaborated on a famous passage connecting the ‘discoveries of the men of science’ with the imaginative work of the poet. Davy was clearly the inspiring figure behind this declaration: ‘If the labours of Men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will sleep no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the Man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side,
carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself.
The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet’s art as any upon which it can be employed.’
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Davy’s success gave him new confidence. When Anna Beddoes came up to London with her sister Maria Edgeworth, he proudly showed them round the Institution in a way that much struck Maria, her sharp novelist’s eye seeing a new character emerging. ‘He was much improved since I saw him last-talking sound sense and has left off being the “cosmology” man. After we had seen all the wonders of the Royal Institution, Mr Davy walked with us and got into the depths of metaphysics in the middle of Bond Street. I don’t know whether he or the Bond Street Loungers amused me most.’
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Davy’s ‘metaphysics’ and charismatic lecture style increased the Institution’s annual subscriptions dramatically, and began to stabilise its problematic finances, much to Count Rumford’s satisfaction (since he had been the Institution’s major private donor). By 1803 Albemarle Street had been designated the first one-way in London, to avoid the traffic jam of carriages on Davy’s lecture days. It was also noticed that he was especially popular with young women, and a cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson shows a commanding, romantic figure holding his mixed audience entranced, with a clutch of young women crowded into the left-hand balcony seats. They are gazing down attentively at Davy, while themselves being ogled by an ancient academic. This was the new science as sexual chemistry.

Another cartoon by James Gillray, ‘New Discoveries in Pneumaticks!’, played on the less romantic but equally popular notion of chemistry as ‘stinks’, and the idea that laughing gas could produce a truly roomshaking fart. Professor Thomas Garnett, Count Rumford and Sir Joseph Banks are all identifiable in this cartoon, and again nearly half Davy’s audiences are women, many of them scribbling notes (or possibly
billets-doux
).

A French tourist, Louis Simond, described Davy’s electrifying lecture technique, with its special appeal to young students and women. Though his ideas were so radical, he noted that Davy was careful to make conventional references to the beauties of divine creation. Meanwhile he staged spectacular and often dangerous chemical demonstrations, that produced gasps of amazement and bursts of applause. Though some were critical of these performances as mere showmanship, they were skilfully designed as genuine scientific demonstrations, and Davy believed that surprise and wonder were central to a proper appreciation of science. Banks heartily approved.
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Davy’s advancement now became rapid, not to say meteoric. In June 1802 he was promoted from Assistant to full Lecturer. The following year, after another brilliant series on Agricultural Chemistry, he was appointed to the Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, replacing Garnett, who had found himself eclipsed by the young star and quietly resigned. Davy’s salary increases were also rapid. In 1803 he received £200 per annum. In November 1804 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and his professorial salary at the Institution was doubled to £400 per annum. He soon began to receive invitations to give summer lectures in other university cities, notably Dublin, receiving payments that quickly trebled his annual income.

Coleridge, marooned in Keswick in the Lake District and suffering increasingly from opium addiction and marital unhappiness, could still take genuine delight in Davy’s success. ‘I rejoice in Davy’s progress. There are three Suns recorded in Scripture-Joshua’s, that stood still; Hezekiah’s, that went backwards; and David’s that went forth and hastened on his course, like a bridegroom from his chamber. May our friend’s prove the latter!’ Continuing in scriptural mood, he prophesied that Davy in London would have to battle ‘two Serpents at the cradle of his genius’, Dissipation and Devotees, which might degrade true scientific Ambition into Vanity. ‘But the Hercules will strangle both the reptile monsters.’ He still felt a powerful belief in Davy’s scientific mission. ‘I have hoped, and do hope, more proudly of Davy than of any other man…he has been endeared to me more than any other man, by being a Thing of Hope to me (more, far more than myself to my own self in my most genial moments).’
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Davy was proud to play that role. The following year, hearing that Coleridge was about to take ship to the Mediterranean, an exile which he secretly believed would be permanent, Davy sent him a magnificent, hyperbolic letter of valediction and encouragement: ‘In whatever part of the World you are, you will often live with me, not as a fleeting Idea but as a recollection possessed of Creative energy, as an IMAGINATION winged with fire, inspiriting and rejoicing. You must not live much longer without giving to all men the proof of your Power…You are to be the Historian of the Philosophy of feeling.-Do not in any way dissipate your noble nature. Do not give up your birthright.’
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The original West Country group of friends was gradually being scattered. Davy continued to write to Southey, now settled in the Lake District, and to Tom Poole, busy with his tanning in Nether Stowey; but he steadily lost touch with Beddoes and King in Bristol. One of the sharpest breaks with his Penzance past came with the news of Gregory Watt’s lingering death from consumption in October 1804, at the age of thirty-two. Watt had delivered a paper on Cornish geology at the Royal Society only the previous spring, and had recently written to Davy, ‘full of spirit’ about his future scientific work. The loss of his old friend shook Davy strangely. He was shocked into writing one of his most reflective and bleak speculative letters, his feelings giving ‘erring wings’ to his religious doubts and his rarely expressed scepticism.

For an uncharacteristic moment, individual ambition and achievement seemed meaningless to Davy: ‘Poor Watt!-He ought not to have died. I could not persuade myself that he would die…Why is this in the order of Nature, that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil which is capable of nourishing the moss and lichen. When moss and lichen die and decompose, they produce a mold which becomes the bed of life to grass, and to a more exalted species of vegetable…But in man, the faculties and intellect are perfected: he rises, exists for a little while in disease and misery, and then would seem to disappear, without an end, and without producing any effect.’
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