Part 17

The eldest son in a family of five children, Humphrey Davy was born at Penzance, Cornwall, England, December 17, 1778, the year in which Carl Linnaeus died. He was a bright, active child, making rhymes when he was five years old, and reciting them at the Christmas gatherings. In consequence of his retentive memory, he could repeat a great part of "Pilgrim's Progress" before he could read it. This book and "AEsop's Fables" were his favorites.

When Humphrey was six, he was sent to a grammar school kept by Rev. Mr. Coryton, a man who had the vicious habit of punishing by pulling the pupils' ears. On one occasion, Humphrey came to school with a large plaster on each ear. Upon being asked what was the matter, he said, with a grave face, that he had "put the plasters on to prevent a mortification!"

As he grew older, he composed Latin and English verses easily, and was in great demand among the boys as a writer of valentines and love-letters. Though shy in manner, with his vivid imagination and flow of language, he told stories remarkably well, and might have been seen, often, in a cart at the Star Inn, addressing a most attentive audience.

Says his brother, Dr. John Davy, "Humphrey, when a boy, was fond of declaiming, and indulged in it in his solitary walks and rambles. On one occasion it is recorded of him, that, on his way to visit a poor patient in the country (during his apprenticeship), in the fever of declamation, he threw out of his hand a vial of medicine which he had to administer, and that when he arrived at the bedside of the poor woman he was surprised at the loss of it. The potion was found the next day in a hay-field adjoining the path."

When Humphrey was fourteen he attended the Truro Grammar School for a year, where he was greatly liked for his good-humor, affectionate disposition, and originality. Says Mr. Nicholls, a school friend, "I can never forget that as boys we knew and loved each other. I recollect a visit he paid in company with his aunt at my father's, who then resided at Lanarth. He was a great favorite; but there was even then an original mode of thinking and acting observable in him,--one instance of which I well remember;--it was on rather a hot day, when my father, mother, your aunt, Humphrey, and myself, were to walk to a place a mile or two distant, I forget for what purpose. Whilst others complained of the heat, and whilst I unbuttoned my waistcoat, Humphrey appeared with his great-coat close-buttoned up to his chin, for the purpose, as he declared, of keeping out the heat. This was laughed at at the time, but it struck me then, as it appears to me now, as evincing originality of thought and an indisposition to be led by the example of others."

At fifteen his school education was considered complete. The next year he studied French, gave a good deal of time to fishing, of which he was always fond, and apparently had little definite purpose. About this time his father died, and the straitened circumstances of the family now seemed to awaken all the energy and nobility of his nature. Seeing his mother in deep affliction, he begged her not to grieve, saying that "he would do all he could for his brothers and sisters." And he never forgot this promise.

The following year he was apprenticed to Mr. Bingham Borlase, practising surgeon and apothecary in Penzance. Young Davy now seemed destined to become a physician, but his note-books show that he intended to know other things besides medicine. He laid out a plan for study: theology, logic, astronomy, mathematics, Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew.

He said later, "Almost all great deeds arise from a plenitude of hope or desire. No man ever had genius who did not aim to execute more than he was able." And all his life he planned to do twice as much as he was ever able to do. And yet he knew that he must bind himself to a few things, if he would succeed. He said, "In minds of great power, there is usually a disposition to variety of pursuits, and they often attempt all branches of letters and science, and even the imitative arts; but if they become truly eminent, it is by devotion to one object at a time, or at most two objects. This sort of general power is like a profusion of blossoms on a fruit tree, a symptom of health and strength; but if all are suffered to become fruit, all are feeble and bad; if the greater portion is destroyed by accident or art, the remainder, being properly nourished, become healthy, large, and good." In these early note-books, he began to show an unusual and mature mind. He wrote essays: "On the Immortality and the Immateriality of the Soul," "On Governments," "On Moral Obligation," and the like. Of Friendship, he wrote at seventeen: "It is a composition of the noblest passions of the mind; a just taste and love of virtue, good-sense, a thorough candor and benignity of heart, and a generous sympathy of sentiment and affections, are the essential ingredients of this nobler passion. When it originates from love and esteem, is strengthened by habit, and mellowed by time, it yields infinite pleasure, ever new and ever growing. It is the best support amongst the numerous trials and vicissitudes of life, and gives a relish to most of our enjoyments. What can be imagined more comfortable than to have a friend to console us in afflictions, to advise with us in doubtful cases, and share our felicity?... It exalts our nobler passions, and weakens our evil inclinations; it assists us to run the race of virtue with a steady and undeviating course. From loving, esteeming, and endeavoring to felicitate particular people, a more general passion will arise for the whole of mankind."

He finishes this essay with an allegory. God is described as deliberating with the angels on the propriety of creating woman. Justice, Peace, and Virtue plead against her creation, as through her Adam will be driven out of Paradise. Then Divine Love stands before Jehovah, her countenance covered with smiles. "Create her," she says, "for Paradise itself will afford no delight to man without woman. She will be the cause of his misery, but she will likewise be the cause of all his happiness. She will console him in affliction; she will comfort and harmonize his soul; she will wipe the tears from his eyes, and compose the fury of his passions. Her friendship shall make him virtuous, and her love shall make him happy; and, lastly, the tree of their transgression, and the plant of immortality, nourished by the blood of her son, shall flourish, and grow out of Paradise, and overspread the earth: man shall eat of their fruit, and be immortal and happy."

All through these early note-books are scattered his poems, showing a passion for the blue sea at Penzance, and an unbounded love of nature.

Just as he was entering his nineteenth year, young Davy began the study of chemistry, as a branch of his profession. He read "Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry," and "Nicholson's Dictionary of Chemistry." Suddenly a new world seemed to open before him. He began to think for himself, and to make experiments. As his means were limited, his apparatus consisted of vials, wine-glasses, tea-cups, tobacco-pipes, and earthen crucibles.

His first experiments were the effects of acids and alkalies on vegetable colors, the kind of air in the vesicles of common seaweed, and the solution and precipitation of metals. These were made in his bedroom in Mr. Tonkin's house, or in the kitchen, when he required fire. This old gentleman had brought up his mother and her two orphan sisters, and now was like a father to Humphrey. He said, "This boy, Humphrey, is incorrigible. Was there ever so idle a dog! He will blow us all into the air." He was at this time probably making a detonating composition, which he called "thunder power," his sister Kitty being his assistant.

At this time, a young man came to board at the house of Mrs. Davy, Gregory Watt, the only child of James Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine. He was the idol of his parents; possessed of a mind so unusual in its passionate love for knowledge, and a nature so companionable, that everybody loved him. He was twenty-one, and Humphrey nineteen.

Between these two young men there grew a most ardent and lasting friendship; lasting because it had the only sure foundation, moral and mental worth. They were always together. They visited the neighboring mines and mountains, and came home with their pockets filled with minerals.

The brilliant Gregory died at twenty-eight, but Davy lived to show the fruits of one of the most beautiful things in life, the affinity of two noble and intellectual souls, with similar tastes and aspirations. This death was a great loss to Humphrey. He wrote to a friend: "Poor Watt! He ought not to have died. I could not persuade myself that he would die: and until the very moment when I was assured of his fate, I would not believe he was in any danger.

"His letters to me only three or four months ago were full of spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increased strength of mind. 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 the lichen; when the moss and the lichen die, and decompose, they produce a mould, which becomes the bed of life to grasses, and to more exalted species of vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals; the less perfect animals of the more perfect; 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.

"We are deceived, my dear Clayfield, if we suppose that the human being, who has formed himself for action, but who has been unable to act, is lost in the mass of being; there is some arrangement of things which we can never comprehend, but in which his faculties will be applied.... Gregory was a noble fellow, and would have been a great man. Oh! there was no reason for his dying--he ought not to have died."

This death broke the spirit of James Watt, the father, who ever after kept beside him, in the attic at Heathfield, the little, old-fashioned hair trunk of his beloved Gregory, full of his school-books, letters, and childish toys. It stands to-day, where it did eighty years ago, beside the mouldering beams of the sculpture machine. That life is not short, however few the years, which leaves such an undying influence and such beautiful memories.

Humphrey was now twenty-six, and much had come into his young life. He had applied himself with zeal to his professional studies, had read Locke, and Rollin, and Gibbon, and Shakspeare, and at twenty had been appointed to take charge of the Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, established by Dr. Beddoes. It had been founded to give an opportunity of trying the medicinal effects of various gases, and was supported by liberal men of science. So distressed was his old friend, Mr. Tonkin, that he should give up the idea of being a surgeon in Penzance, that he revoked a legacy he had made him in his will!

Davy's life was now an extremely busy one. He published, when he was twenty-one, his "Essays on Heat and Light," beginning his work, like Sir Isaac Newton, when but a youth. He discovered silica in the epidermis of the stems of weeds, corn, and grasses. He found the intoxicating effects of breathing nitrous oxide, April 9, 1799, and his experiments on this subject were published the following year. He spent ten months of incessant labor in them, often endangering and once nearly losing his life from breathing carburetted hydrogen. He made experiments on galvanic electricity, increasing the powers of the Galvanic Pile of Volta. He also planned and partly wrote an epic poem on the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt.

Worn with overwork, he returned to see his widowed mother at Penzance. He had been absent a year. How glad were all to greet the rising young scientist! Not least glad was Davy's water spaniel, Chloe. When very small, and about to be drowned, he begged her as a gift, and with great care reared her to be his hunting and fishing companion. At first she did not know him, but when, with his peculiarly musical voice, he called her by name, "she was in a transport of joy."

Davy never forgot his early life at Penzance. In his will he left a sum of money to be paid annually to the master of the grammar school, "on condition that the boys may have a holiday on his birthday."

One secret of Davy's early success was, no doubt, his ambition. He used to say that he had been kept largely from the temptations of youth by "an active mind, a deep ideal feeling of good, and a look towards future greatness." The young man or woman who definitely plans to be somebody seldom finds any obstacles along the road too great to be overcome.

He wrote in his note-book: "I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth to recommend me; yet, if I live, I trust I shall not be of less service to mankind, and to my friends, than if I had been born with these advantages."

At the Pneumatic Institution he found in Mrs. Beddoes "the best and most amiable woman in the world," a helper in the development of his genius. Like the wife of William Humboldt, and like any other woman who combines heart and intellect, Mrs. Beddoes gathered about her, in her home, Coleridge and Southey, and other bright minds of Clifton. Here Davy, scarcely more than a boy, with his soft brown curling hair, his beautiful smile, and his "wonderfully bright eyes, which seemed almost to emit a soft light, when animated," in the midst of congenial friends, was stimulated to do his best.

Years after this, Wordsworth gave Dr. John Davy a letter to Coleridge, on the back of which he had written: "This from Davy, the great chemist. It is an affectionate letter."

"MY DEAR COLERIDGE,--My mind is disturbed, and my body harassed by many labors; yet I cannot suffer you to depart, without endeavoring to express to you some of the unbroken and higher feelings of my spirit, which have you at once for their cause and object.

"Years have passed away since we first met; and your presence, and recollections with regard to you, have afforded me continued sources of enjoyment. Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your converse, and thoughts which you have nursed have been to me an eternal source of consolation.