ABBREVIATIONS
CHA - Caroline Herschel’s Autobiographies, edited by Michael Hoskin, Scientific Publications Ltd, Cambridge, 2003
CHM - Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Hesrchel, edited by Mrs John Herschel, Murray, 1879
HD Archive - Humphry Davy Manuscripts and scientific instruments held at the Royal Institution, London
HD Mss Bristol - Humphry Davy Mss at Somerset Record Office, Bristol
HD Mss Truro - Humphry Davy Mss at the Cornwall Record Office, Truro
HD Works - Humphry Davy, Collected Works, edited by John Davy, 9 vols, 1839-40
JB Correspondence - The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks 1765-1820, edited by Neil Chambers, 6 vols, Pickering & Chatto Ltd, 2007
JB Journal - Joseph Banks, Manuscript of the Endeavour Journal 1768-1770, University of New South Wales (internet transcript). See also The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, edited by J.C. Beaglehole, Public Library of New South Wales, 2 vols, 1962; and Joseph Banks, Endeavour Journal Ms, 1768-70 (facsimile edition, London Library)
JB Letters - The Selected Letters of Sir Joseph Banks 1768-1820, edited by Neil Chambers, Imperial College Press, Natural History Museum and Royal Society, The Banks Project, 2000
JD Fragments - Humphry Davy, Fragmentary Remains, edited by John Davy, 1858
JD Life - The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, by John Davy, 2 vols, 1836
JD Memoirs - Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy, by John Davy, 1839 (included in vol 1 of HD Works)
Park Mss - ‘Letters and Papers relating to Mungo Park’s last Journey’, British Library Add Mss 37232.k and Add Mss 33230.f
WH Archive - Private archive, John Herschel-Shorland, Norfolk
WH Chronicle - The Herschel Chronicle, edited by his granddaughter Constance A. Lubbock, CUP, 1933
WH Mss - William Herschel Manuscripts, Cambridge University Library microfilm, from manuscripts held at the Royal Astronomical Society, London
WH Papers - The Collected Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel including Early Papers hitherto Unpublished, edited by J.L.E. Dreyer, 2 vols, Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society, 1912
Prologue
1 The notion of ‘Romantic science’ has been pioneered by Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture, 1760-1820, CUP, 1992; Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences, CUP, 1990; Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routledge, 2001; Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004; and Tim Fulford (editor), Romanticism and Science, 1773-1833, a 5-vol anthology, Pickering, 2002
2 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Philosophical Lectures 1819, edited by Kathleen Coburn, London, 1949; and The Friend 1819, ‘Essays on the Principles of Method’, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Princeton UP, 1969. See Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998, pp480-4, 490-4
3 Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1850, Book 3, lines 58-64
4 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 1825; see Holmes, op. cit., pp548-9
5 Plato’s wonder as interpreted by Coleridge in ‘Spiritual Aphorism 9’, Aids to Reflection, 1825, p236
Chapter 1: Joseph Banks in Paradise
1 JB Journal, 18 October 1768
2 Ibid., 11 April 1769
3 JB letter to Pennat, November 1768; from Harold Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, British Library, 1988, p76
4 JB Journal, 14 April 1769
5 Hector Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, 1952, p6
6 Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook, 2003, p158
7 JB Journal, 2 May 1769
8 James Cook, Journal, 2 May 1769
9 JB Journal, 2 May 1769
10 JB Journal, ‘On the Customs of the South Sea Islands’, pp120-50, essay dated August 1769
11 Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks, Harvill, 1989, p65
12 Ibid.
13 John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 1994, p17
14 Ibid., p88
15 Lady Mary Coke, Journals, August 1771, p437
16 JB letter to William Perrin, February 1768, from Gascoigne, p16
17 JB Journal, 10 September 1768
18 JB Journal, p23
19 O’Brian, p65
20 White, 8 October 1768; from Richard Mabey, Gilbert White, Century, 1986, p115
21 JB Journal, 16 January 1769
22 Ibid., 25 March 1769
23 Ibid., 17 April 1769
24 Sydney Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage in the South Seas, 1773, p15
25 JB Journal, 30 April 1769
26 Ibid., 29 April 1769
27 Ibid., 25 April 1769
28 Ibid., 22 April 1769
29 Ibid., 4 June 1769
30 James Cook, Journal, Tuesday, 6 June 1769
31 Parkinson, Journal, from Collingridge, p166
32 JB Journal, 10 May 1769
33 JB Journal, pp120-50, essay dated August 1769
34 JB Journal, 3 June 1769
35 Ibid., 28 April 1769
36 Ibid., 28 May 1769
37 Ibid., 29 May 1769
38 Ibid., 12 May 1769
39 Ibid., 10 June 1769
40 Ibid., 13 June 1769
41 Ibid., 14 June 1769
42 Ibid., 18 June 1769
43 Ibid., 24 June 1769
44 Ibid., 19 June 1769
45 Ibid., 22 June 1769
46 Parkinson, Journal, 1773, p32; and O’Brian, p101
47 James Cook, Journal, 30 June 1769
48 JB Journal, 28 June 1769
49 Ibid., 30 July 1769
50 Ibid., 29 June 1769
51 JB Letters, ‘Thoughts on the Manners of the Otaheite’, 1773, p332
52 JB Journal, 3 July 1769
53 Ibid., 12 July 1769
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 JB Letters, 6 December 1771, p20
57 Parkinson, Journal, 1773, p66
58 JB Journal, ‘On the South Seas’, August 1769, p124
59 Ibid., p128
60 Ibid., p132
61 Ibid.
62 JB Journal, (end) August 1770. Cook’s entry of the same date describes the natives as ‘in reality…far more happier than we Europeans’
63 JB Journal, 3 September 1770
64 O’Brian, pp145-6
65 JB Letters, 13 July 1771, p14
66 Gascoigne, p46
67 O’Brian, p66
68 Lady Mary Coke, Journals, August 1771, from Edward Smith, Joseph Banks, p22n
69 O’Brian, p151
70 Robert Thornton MD, Preface to An Introduction to Botany, by James Lee, 1810, ppxvii-iii
71 Gascoigne, p17
72 Thornton, 1810, ppxviii
73 Cameron, p44
74 Ibid., p 45
75 Ibid., p46
76 James Boswell, Journal, 22 March 1772
77 John Hawkesworth, ‘Tahiti’, in Voyages Undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, 1773; the section can also be found in Fulford, Romanticism and Science, vol 4, pp158-9
78 JB, ‘Thoughts on the Manners of the Otaheite’, 1773, JB Letters, p330
79 JB letter, 30 May 1772, from O’Brian, p158
80 Lord Sandwich to Banks, 20 June 1772, in JB Letters, Appendix V, p354
81 JB Letters, Appendix V, p355
82 Rev William Sheffield, letter to Gilbert White, 2 December 1772, from O’Brian, p168
83 Daniel Solander, 16 November 1776, Collected Correspondence, edited by Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand, Scandinavia University Press, 1995, p373
84 Carter, p153
85 Gascoigne, p50
86 Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004, p49
87 O’Brian, p181
88 Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Between Worlds: Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850, National Portrait Gallery, 2007
89 British Academy Conference, 2006, my correspondence
90 William Cowper, 6 October 1783
91 William Cowper, The Task, 1784, Book 4, ‘The Winter Evening’, lines 107-19
92 Ibid., Book 1, lines 654ff
93 John Byng, quoted in Beaglehole, Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, 2 vols, 1962, p114
94 Gascoigne, p52
95 Collingridge, Cook, 2002, pp405-15
96 Gascoigne, p46
97 Daniel Solander, 5 June 1779, Collected Correspondence, op. cit.
98 Gascoigne, p18
99 O’Brian, p308
100 Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne, 1989, p161
101 Patricia Fara, Joseph Banks: Sex, Botany and Empire, 2003, pp136-7
102 Coleridge to Samuel Purkis, 1 February 1803, Collected Letters vol 2, p919
103 JB Correspondence I, p331
104 JB Letters, 16 November 1784, pp77-80
105 Carter, p121
106 Gascoigne, p32
107 Baron Cuvier, ‘Éloge on Sir Joseph Banks’, 1820, from Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society, anonymous booklet, Royal Society, 1854, pp66-7
Chapter 2: Herschel on the Moon
1 WH Chronicle, p1
2 Account from Herschel’s Journal in CHM, p42
3 WH Chronicle, p73
4 Account from CHA
5 WH Papers 1; Armitage, p24
6 Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900, CUP, 1986, p63
7 WH Mss 6279; also WH Chronicle, p76
8 WH Papers 1, pxc; also WH Chronicle, p77
9 Herschel to Maskelyne, 12 June 1780, WH Papers 1, ppxc-xci
10 CHM, p41
11 CHM, p149
12 CHA, pp14-15
13 CHA, pp19-20
14 CHA, p14
15 WH Papers 1, pxiv
16 CHA, p24
17 CHA, p112
18 CHM, p24
19 CHA, p23
20 CHA, p21
21 CHA, p24
22 CHM, p7
23 CHM, p6
24 CHA, p41
25 CHA, p25
26 CHA, p30
27 CHA, p136
28 CHA, p26; CHM, p10
29 CHM, p12
30 CHM, p11
31 WH Papers 1, pxix
32 Angus Armitage, Herschel, 1962, p19
33 CHM, p11; also CHA, p108
34 CHA, p110
35 CHA, p109
36 Armitage, p19
37 CHA, p33
38 Helen Ashton, I Had a Sister, 1937, pp153-61
39 CHA, p33
40 CHA, p34; Ashton, p161
41 CHA, p37
42 CHM, p20
43 CHA, p37
44 CHA, pp29, 34
45 CHM, p17
46 WH Papers 1, pxvii
47 WH Archive, William and Jacob Mss Letters 1761-63
48 WH Archive Mss Letters March 1761; also WH Chronicle, p18
49 WH Archive Mss Letters May 1761; also WH Chronicle, p26
50 WH Archive Mss Letter October 1761; also WH Chronicle, p28
51 WH Chronicle, p24
52 WH Archive Mss Letter October 1761; also WH Chronicle, p28
53 WH Papers 1, pxc, letter to Nevil Maskelyne
54 Armitage, p21
55 Ibid., p22
56 Ibid., p20
57 CHA, p7
58 CHA, p113; CHM, p18
59 CHA, p36
60 Ian Woodward, ‘The Celebrated Quarrel between Thomas Linley and William Herschel’, pamphlet printed Bath (British Library catalogue L.409.c.585.1); also WH Chronicle, pp42-3
61 WH Papers 1, ppxx-xxi
62 Armitage, p22
63 Crowe, 1986, pp124-9
64 James Gleick, Isaac Newton, 2003
65 Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne, 1989, pp70-1
66 Howse, pp66-72
67 Michael Hoskin, The Herschel Partnership, p21
68 CHM, pp22-3
69 CHA, p24
70 CHM, p25
71 CHM, p27
72 CHM, p32
73 CHA, p53
74 CHA, p123
75 CHM, p33
76 CHA, p51; CHM, p35
77 WH Mss 6278 1/8/8, dated 1784. But the use of the diminutive ‘Lina’ first becomes evident in manuscripts dating from 1779
78 WH Mss 6290
79 CHA, p52; CHM, p35
80 CHA, p55
81 CHA, p52; CHM, pp36-7
82 CHM, pp37-8
83 CHA, p55
84 WH Papers 1, Introduction
85 WH Mss 6290
86 JB Correspondence 1; Hoskin, p46
87 I owe these acute observations to Dr Percy Harrison, Head of Science, Eton College
88 WH Mss, H W.2/1. 1f.i
89 WH Mss, ‘Herschel’s First Observation Journal’, Ms 6280
90 Michael Crowe, Extraterrestrial, 1994, pp42, 74-5. Herschel eventually increased it to 2,500 by 1820, and Edwin Hubble to 17,000 by the mid-twentieth century.
91 Armitage, p22
92 WH Mss 6290 7/8, dated January 1782; also WH Chronicle, p73
93 WH Chronicle, p72
94 WH Mss 6278 1/8/5
95 CHA, p127
96 CHA, p128
97 CHA, p129
98 CHM, p40
99 WH Mss 6290
100 Michael Crowe, Theories of the Universe, 1994
101 James Ferguson, Astronomy Explained, 1756, p5; and discussed by Michael Crowe, Extraterrestrial, 1986, p60
102 Crowe, Extraterrestrial, p170; also Crowe, Theories of the Universe, 1994, p73
103 CHM, p42
104 CHA, p61
105 CHA, p61
106 WH Papers vol 1, plxxxvii
107 WH Mss W.3/1.4, drafted 1778-79; discussed Crowe, 1986, pp64—5
108 WH Mss 6280, Observation Journal, 28 May 1776; and Crowe, 1986, p63
109 WH Mss W.3/1.4, drafted 1778-79, from Crowe, 1986, p65
110 CHA, p61
111 WH Mss 6280, First Observation Book
112 CHA, p61
113 WH Mss 6280, First Observation Book
114 Ibid., pp31ff, 170ff
115 CHA, p62
116 Simon Schaffer, Journal of the History of Astronomy, vol 12, 1981
117 Howse, p147
118 Schaffer, ‘Uranus and Herschel’s Astronomy’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol 12, 1981, p12
119 WH Papers 1, p36
120 WH Mss 6279; also WH Chronicle, p79
121 WH Mss 6279; WH Chronicle, p81
122 WH Papers 1; WH Chronicle, pp81-2
123 Howse, pp147-8
124 See WH Chronicle, pp78-80
125 WH Chronicle, p86, from Schaffer, Journal of the History of Astronomy, vol 12, 1981, ‘Uranus and Herschel’s Astronomy’, p14
126 Watson, letter to Herschel 25 May 1781, in WH Chronicle, p85
127 Howse, Maskelyne, p149
128 WH Chronicle, p95
129 ‘A Letter to Sir Joseph Banks Bart. PRS’, 1783, in WH Papers 1, pp100-1
130 WH Mss 6278 1/7, letter 19 November 1781; also JB Correspondence 1, p292
131 JH Mss 6278 1/1/57
132 JH Mss 6278 1/1/63
133 ‘Account of My Life to Dr Hutton’, 1809, from WH Chronicle, p79
134 WH Chronicle, p95
135 John Bonnycastle, Introduction to Astronomy in Letters to a Pupil, 1786 (expanded edition 1811), pp354-7
136 Ibid., p241
137 Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural History and the Theory of the Heavens, 1755 (translation 1969, British Library catalogue 9350.d.649), Part I, p67. Kant also wrote: ‘There is here no end but an abyss of real immensity, in the presence of which all the capability of human conception sinks exhausted, although it is supported by the aid of the science of mathematics.’ Part I, p65
138 Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1791, Canto 1, lines 100-14, and Note to line 105; see also Canto 2, lines 14-82, and Canto 4, line 34
139 WH Chronicle, p102
140 JB Correspondence 1, p299
141 WH Chronicle, p101
142 JB Correspondence 1, p307
143 WH Chronicle, pp103-4
144 CHM, p45
145 CHM, p46; Howse, p148
146 WH Chronicle, pp115-16
147 Peter Sime, William Herschel, 1890, pp259-61
148 WH Chronicle, p116
149 WH Mss 6278 1/8/6, 20 May 1782
150 CHA, pp66-7
151 CHM, pp48-9
152 Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 1994, pp18-19
153 Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, Part IV, lines 263-71
154 Andrew Motion, Keats, Faber, 1997, pp27, 39, 121
155 WH Papers 1, pxix
156 Herschel to Johann Bode at Berlin, 20 July 1785, WH Mss 6278/11, p134
157 WH Mss 5278 1/4
158 Lucien Bonaparte, Wikipedia
159 WH Papers 1, pxix
160 CHA, p82
161 Samuel Johnson, Collected Letters, edited by Bruce Redford, vol III, 25 March 1784, p144
162 CHM, pp50-5
163 Hoskin, pp74-5
164 WH Mss 6281, Observation Journal No. 5, 1782
165 WH Chronicle, p105
166 WH Mss 6268 3/11
167 Ibid.
168 CHM, p52
169 Ibid.
170 WH Archive
171 CHM, p52
172 WH Papers 1, pp261-2; and WH Chronicle, pp222-3
173 CHM, p52
174 CHA, p77
175 CHA, p76
176 CHA, p77
177 Ibid.
178 Ibid.; and CHM, p55
179 WH Chronicle, pp190-5: a risky claim perhaps
180 WH Papers 1, pp157-66
181 Ibid. Illustrated in Armitage and Crowe, 1996, excerpts
182 Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe from Herschel to Hubble, Chicago UP, 1994
183 WH Papers 1, p265
184 WH Papers 1, p223
185 WH Papers 1, p225, a phrase repeated at end of this paper, at p259. Other extraordinary descriptions of galaxies evolving like plants growing or humans ageing occur in ‘Catalogue of a Second Thousand of new Nebulae’, 1789, WH Papers 1, pp330 and 337-8. Also in ‘On Nebulae Stars, properly so called’, 1791, WH Papers 1, pp415ff. See discussion in Edwin Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae, 1933; and Michael Crowe, Theories of the Universe, 1996
186 ‘On the Construction of the Heavens’, 1785, WH Papers 1, pp247-8
187 Ibid., p27
188 Ibid., p25. See J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol 7, 1976
189 Bonnycastle, pp341-2
190 WH Papers 1, p256
Chapter 3: Balloonists in Heaven
1 JB Correspondence 2, p299
2 Exchange of Banks-Franklin letters, 1783, Schiller Institute, ‘Life of Joseph Franklin’ (internet)
3 WH Letters, p62, to Franklin, 13 September 1783
4 Ibid.
5 L.T.C. Rolt, The Aeronauts, 1966, p29
6 ‘Dossier Montgolfier (1)’, Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris
7 Rolt, p 30
8 Schiller Institute, ‘Life of Joseph Franklin’ (internet)
9 Auduin Dollfuss, Pilâtre de Rozier, Paris, 1993, p26
10 Ibid., pp17-22
11 Marquis d’Arlandes’s original account given in ibid., pp27-42; ‘la redingote verte’, p41. Discussed in Rolt, pp46-9
12 Rolt, p50
13 Dr Robert Charles’s original account appears in Raymonde Fontaine, La Manche en Ballon, Paris, 1980
14 Dr Charles’s original account in ibid. (photocopy)
15 ‘Dossier Montgolfier (1)’, Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris
16 David Bourgeois, Recherches sur l’Art de Voler, Paris, 1784, pp1-3
17 Ibid., p3
18 J.E. Hodgson, History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, OUP, 1924, p103
19 Rolt, p31
20 WH Letters, p67, to Franklin, 9 December 1783
21 Ibid., p62, to Franklin, 13 September 1783
22 Ms Album of balloon accounts, British Library catalogue 1890.e.15. See also WH Correspondence 2, p304, Blagden to Banks, 16 September 1784; and Hodgson, p97, footnote
23 Hodgson, p66
24 Samuel Johnson to Hester Thrale, 22 September 1783, Collected Letters, vol 4, pp203-4
25 WH Mss 6280, Watson, letter 9 November 1783
26 Horace Walpole, letter to H. Mann, 2 December 1783; see Rolt, p159 and Hodgson, p190
27 Joseph Franklin, letters to Banks, 21 November 1783 and 16 January 1784; see Rolt, p158
28 Gilbert White, 19 October 1784, in Life and Letters of Gilbert White, vol 2, pp134-6. See also Richard Mabey, Gilbert White, pp195-6. The solo pilot was in fact the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard
29 Charles Burney, letter, September 1783. See Roger Lonsdale, Charles Burney, p385
30 Rolt, p60
31 Horace Walpole, June 1785, from Hodgson, p203
32 Rolt, p65
33 Sophia Banks Ms album, BL 1890.e.15. See also Hodgson, p97, footnote, and broadsheet poem ‘The Ballooniad’ (1784)
34 Portrait of Lunardi reproduced in Catalogue of Well-Known Balloon Prints and Drawings, Sotheby’s, 1962, p42. See also ‘Le triomphe de Lunardi’, a series of six allegorical paintings by Francesco Verini, c.1787, held at Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget
35 Account assembled from Vincent Lunardi, My First Aerial Voyage in London, 1784; see also Lunardi, Five Aerial Voyages in Scotland, 1785
36 Lesley Gardiner, Vincent Lunardi, 1963, pp53-60
37 Amanda Foreman, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, HarperCollins, 1998, p173
38 Gardiner, p56
39 Charles Burney, letter 24 September 1784, in Lonsdale, 1965, p365
40 Gardiner, p59
41 Johnson, 13 September 1784, Collected Letters of Samuel Johnson, edited by Bruce Redford, vol 4, p404
42 Johnson, 18 September 1784, ibid., p407
43 Ibid., p408
44 Johnson, 29 September 1784, ibid., pp408-9
45 Johnson, 6 October 1784, ibid., p415
46 The glamorous threesome were celebrated in a famous coloured lithograph by John Francis Rigaud, Captain Vicenzo Lunardi, Assistant Biggin and Mrs Sage in a Balloon, now held in the Yale Center for British Art. In the event, only two actually took off.
47 Mrs Sage, A Letter by Mrs Sage, the First English Female Aerial Traveller, on Her Voyage in Lunardi’s Balloon, 1785. British Library catalogue 1417.g.24
48 Gardiner, p60
49 Ibid., p44. On p77 she also describes ascending through a snow cloud
50 Tiberius Cavallo, History and Practice of Aerostation, 1785
51 Gardiner
52 Kirkpatrick to William Windham, in Hodgson, pp147-8
53 Hodgson, pp143-4
54 Johnson, 17 November 1784, Letters, p438
55 Johnson’s gift is confirmed in James Sadler’s memoir, Balloon: Aerial Voyage of Sadler and Clayfield, 1810. See also Hodgson, pp150, 403n
56 See Foreman and Hodgson
57 John Jeffries, Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with M. Blanchard as Presented to the Royal Society, 1786. ‘The First Voyage’, pp10-11 (the ‘Second Voyage’ being the historic Channel Crossing). British Library catalogue 462.e.10 (8)
58 Jeffries, Two Aerial Voyages, pp55-65
59 Ibid.; but also drawn from a slightly racier account published exclusively for American readers as ‘The Diary of John Jeffries, Aeronaut: The First Aerial Voyage across the English Channel’, in The Magazine of American History, vol XIII, January 1885, and supplied to me as a pamphlet reprint (1955) by the Wayne County Library, USA
60 Photograph supplied by Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris
61 Jeffries, Diary, p16
62 Jeffries, Two Aerial Voyages, p69
63 Jeffries, Diary, p21
64 Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1791, Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 143-76, footnote on Susan Dyer
65 Rolt, p91
66 Darwin, The Botanic Garden, Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 143-76
67 Rolt, pp 99-104
68 James Sadler, An Authentic Account of the Aerial Voyage, 1810; see Hodgson, p150
69 Reproduced in Henry Beaufoy, ‘Journal Kept by HBHS during an Aerial Voyage with Sadler from Hackney’, British Library catalogue B.507 (1); see also Hodgson, fig 36
70 James Sadler, Across the Irish Channel, 1812, p16
71 Ibid., p23
72 See Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, 1974, p149
73 Windham Sadler, Aerostation, 1817. British Library catalogue RB.23.a.23973
74 Windham Sadler, ‘Progress of Science, while Ballooning neglected’, an Appendix to Aerostation, 1817, p16
75 Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds, 2000, which includes beautiful illustrations of Howard’s cloud paintings. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter’s Guide, 2006, suggests cloud study as both a science and an entire philosophy of life
76 Carl Grabo, A Newton Among Poets: Shelley’s Use of Science in Prometheus Unbound, North Carolina UP, 1931
77 Erasmus Darwin, ‘The Loves of the Plants’, 1789, from Part II of The Botanic Garden
78 Coleridge Notebooks I, entry for 26 November 1799; see Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, pp253-4
79 Wordsworth, Peter Bell, 1819, stanza 1, lines 5-6
80 Shelley at University College, Oxford in 1811, as recalled by T.J. Hogg in ‘Shelley at Oxford’, New Monthly Magazine, 1832; republished in his Life of P.B. Shelley, 1858
Chapter 4: Herschel Among the Stars
1 WH Mss W.1/5.1; and see ‘Description of a Forty-Foot Reflecting Telescope’, 1795, WH Papers 1, pp485-527 (with magnificent engravings of the telescope, the gantry, the moving mechanisms and the zone clocks and bells)
2 Michael Hoskin, The Herschel Partnership as Viewed by Caroline, Science History Publications, Cambridge, 2003, p79
3 J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’ (with illustrations), Journal for the History of Astronomy, 7, 1976
4 Hoskin, p79
5 WH Mss W.1/5.1; further details in ‘Astronomical Observations’ (1814), WH Papers 2, p536, footnote
6 Hoskin, p81
7 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, in WH Chronicle, p174
8 WH Chronicle, p145
9 WH Chronicle, p152
10 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, in WH Chronicle, pp145-6
11 Ordinance Survey map, Royal Berkshire, 1830, reproduced in Hoskin, p58
12 CHA, p81
13 WH Chronicle, p172
14 John Adams, April-May 1756, Diaries and Autobiography, edited by L.H. Butterfield, 1964
15 CHA, p83
16 Ibid.
17 CHA, p86
18 CHA, p89
19 Sketch of ‘small’ sweeper in CHA, p70
20 Michael Hoskin, ‘Caroline Herschel’s Comet Sweepers’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 12, 1981; and CHA, p70
21 WH Mss C1/1.1, 34-5; and CHA, p88
22 CHA, pp89-90
23 James Thomson, ‘Summer’, lines 1,724-8, from The Seasons, 1726-30
24 Claire Brock, The Comet Sweeper, Icon Books, Cambridge, pp150-1
25 WH Mss 6267 1/1/3, for 2 August 1786
26 WH Mss 6267 1/1.1. Memorandum made 2 August 1786
27 Hoskin, p85
28 CHM, p68
29 WH Papers 1, pp309-10
30 Howse, Maskelyne, p155
31 Hoskin, p83
32 Fanny Burney, Diary, September 1786, from WH Chronicle, p169
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., pp169-70
35 Ibid.
36 Sophie von La Roche, Diary, 14 September 1786, from Brock, pp154-5
37 WH Chronicle, p252
38 Nevil Maskelyne, 6 December 1793; see CHA, p70
39 Pierre Méchain, 28 August 1789; see WH Chronicle, p219
40 Hoskin, pp103-7
41 WH Chronicle, p171
42 CHA, p91
43 CHM, p209
44 CHM, p309
45 Hoskin, p87
46 WH Mss 6278 1/5; and Hoskin, p88
47 CHM, p274; see Patricia Fara, Pandora’s Breeches, 2004
48 Hoskin, p88
49 Ibid., p90
50 CHM, p209
51 WH Mss 6280; and Hoskin, p89
52 CHM, p211
53 Hoskin, pp88-90
54 CHA, p94
55 Ibid.
56 CHM, p308
57 WH Chronicle, p172
58 OS map from Hoskin, p58
59 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, WH Chronicle, p174
60 WH Archive: miniature on ivory of Mary Herschel by J. Kernan, 1805; also reproduced in Hoskin, p97
61 Hoskin, pp91-4
62 WH to Alexander, 7 February 1788, from WH Chronicle, p178
63 Hoskin, p92
64 Journal of Mrs Papendiek, WH Chronicle, p174
65 Ibid.
66 CHM, p178
67 WH Chronicle, p175
68 CHM, p79
69 CHA, p96
70 CHM, p79
71 WH Mss 6268 4/3
72 CHA, p57
73 CHM, pp78, 96
74 WH Chronicle, p177
75 Simon Schaffer, ‘Uranus and Herschel’s Astronomy’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 12, 1981, p22
76 Hoskin, p106
77 CHM, p83
78 CHM, p82
79 ‘Description of a Forty Foot reflecting Telescope’ (June 1795), WH Papers 1, pp486, 512-26
80 Ibid.
81 WH Chronicle, p168
82 Ibid.
83 CHM, p168
84 Hoskin, p111
85 Ibid.
86 WH Papers 2 (1815), pp542-6
87 ‘Catalogue of a Second Thousand Nebulae’, 1789, WH Papers 1, pp329-37
88 Simon Schaffer, ‘On the Nebular Hypothesis’, in History, Humanity and Evolution, edited by J.R. Moore, 1988
89 Hoskin, p167
90 Broadsheet cartoon by R Hawkins, Soho, February 1790; reproduced in Hoskin, p107
91 CHM, p95
92 Ibid.
93 CHM, p96
94 Ibid.
95 CHM, p98
96 CHA, p123
97 Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, Travels in England and Scotland for the Purpose of Examining the Arts and the Sciences, vol 1, 1799, pp65-78; see Brock, p173
98 WH Papers 1, p423
99 Erasmus Darwin, Botanic Garden, Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 371-88
100 Ibid., note to line 398
101 Crowe, 1986, pp79-80
102 Pierre Laplace quoted in Simon Schaffer, ‘On the Nebular Hypothesis’, op. cit.
103 Quoted in Crowe, 1986, p78
104 ‘On the Nature and Construction of the Sun’, 1795, WH Papers 1, pp470-84; and ‘Observations tending to investigate the Nature of the Sun’, 1801, WH Papers 2, pp147-80. See also discussion in Crowe, 1986, pp66-7
105 See Vincent Cronin, The View of the Planet Earth, 1981, p173
106 ‘On the Solar and Terrestrial Rays that occasion Heat’, 1800, WH Papers 2, pp77-146; see Hoskin, p99
107 Humphry Davy to Davies Giddy, 3 July 1800, in J.A. Paris, Davy, vol 1, p87
108 Hoskin, p101
109 British Public Characters of 1798, 1801, British Library catalogue 10818.d. I
110 WH Chronicle, pp309-11; Beattie, Life of Campbell, 1860, vol 2, pp234-9; Sime, pp206-9
111 Hoskin, p106
112 CHM, pp259-60
113 CHM, p259
114 Gunther Buttman, Shadow of the Telescope, 1974, p8
115 This wooden plane can be seen in the Herschel House Museum, Bath
116 Buttman, op. cit., p11
117 WH Chronicle, p281
118 Michael Hoskin, William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens, 1963, p130
119 WH Chronicle, pp278-9
120 WH Papers 2, ‘On the Proper Motion of the Solar System’
121 WH Papers 2, pp460-97, with illustrations of different nebulae shapes
122 WH Papers 2, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 1811, p460; and discussed by Armitage, Herschel, pp117-20; and Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 1982, p152
123 WH Papers 1, ‘The Construction of the Heavens’, 1785; and WH Chronicle, p183
124 Byron, Detached Thoughts, 1821
125 Byron, Letters, to Piggot, December 1813; and Crowe, Extraterrestrial, p170
126 Bonnycastle, Astronomy, 1811, Preface, ppv-vi
127 Charles Cowden Clarke, Recollections, 1861; see also Andrew Motion, Keats, pp108-12
128 I owe this vivid suggestion to Dr Percy Harrison, Head of Science, Eton
129 The idea of a sacred, piercing moment of vision into the true nature of the cosmos is also traditional in earlier eighteenthcentury poetry. See the strange prose poem by the Northumberland rector James Hervey, Contemplations on the Night, 1747
130 Simon Schaffer, ‘Herschel on Matter Theory’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, June 1980
131 WH Papers 2, pp520-41; and WH Chronicle, p287
132 WH Papers 2, p541
133 William Whewell, On the Plurality of Worlds, 1850, edited by Michael Crowe, 2001
134 Herschel to Banks, 10 June 1802, in JB Correspondence 5, p199, where Herschel offers the term ’asteroid’ reluctantly - ‘not exactly the thing we want’ - from a suggestion by the antiquary Rev Steven Weston, though fully aware that the recently discovered Pallas and Ceres were not ‘baby stars’. The usage is nonetheless dated to Herschel 1802 by the OED.
135 Thomas Campbell quoted in WH Chronicle, p335
136 David Brewster, Life of Sir Isaac Newton, 1831
Chapter 5: Mungo Park in Africa
1 Sir Harold Carter, Sir Joseph Banks 1743-1820, British Museum, Natural History, 1988, p425; and Gascoigne, Banks and the Enlightenment, p19
2 JB Letters, p609n; and Hector Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, 1952, p144
3 Cameron, p88
4 As described in Anthony Sattin, The Gates of Africa: Death, Discovery and the Search for Timbuktu, HarperCollins, 2003
5 The Life of Mungo Park, by HB (anon), 1835, p284
6 Sattin, pp134-6
7 Ibid., pp136-7
8 Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, 1799, 1860. The edition used here is Travels, Nonsuch, 2005, p16
9 Sattin, p140
10 Travels, p19
11 Ibid., p31
12 Sattin, p143
13 Banks to Park, winter 1795, in ibid., p141
14 Travels, p95
15 Ibid., p98
16 Ibid., p138
17 Ibid., p141
18 Ibid.
19 The Life of Mungo Park, by HB (anon), 1835, pp289-90; also Sattin, p168
20 Travels, pp168-9
21 Ibid., p169
22 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, 1798, Part IV
23 Joseph Conrad, Geography and Some Explorers, 1924, pp28-9
24 JB Correspondence 4, Banks to Sir William Hamilton, 14 March 1798, p540
25 Ibid., no.1484, Banks to Johann Blumenbach, 19 September 1798, p554
26 Ibid., no. 1513, Blumenbach to Banks, 12 June 1799, p590
27 Walter Scott’s meeting with Park 1804; described in The Life of Mungo Park, by HB (anon), 1835, ‘Addenda’; and Sattin, p235
28 JB Letters, no. 78, Banks to Lord Liverpool, 8 June 1799, p209
29 Kenneth Lupton, Mungo Park African Traveller, OUP, 1979, p146. Lupton was the one-time District Officer at Boussa, and knew the African locations well
30 Ibid., p158
31 Travels, ‘Journal of Second Journey’, pp264-5
32 Ibid., p271
33 Park Mss, Martyn to Megan, 1 November 1805, BL Add Mss 37232.f63
34 Travels, ‘Journal of Second Journey’, p272
35 Park Mss, Park to Lord Camden, 17 November 1805, BL Add Mss 37232.f65; see also Park’s letter to Allison Park’s father, 10 November 1805, BL Add Mss 33230.f37; and Lupton, p175
36 Travels, p274
37 Park Mss, Park to Joseph Banks, 16 November 1805, BL Add Mss 37232.k.f64
38 Alfred Tennyson, ‘Timbucto’ (poem), 1827
39 Lupton, ‘Appendix of Later Accounts’ from Isaaco, Amadi Fatouma, Richard Lander and several subsequent Niger explorers
40 Thomas Park to Allison Park, dated Accra September 1727, from Joseph Thomson, Mungo Park and the Niger, 1890, pp241-2
41 Richard Lander’s report 1827, reprinted in Stephen Gwynn, Mungo Park and the Quest for the Niger, 1932, p233
42 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, 1815, lines 140-9
43 Thomas Love Peacock, Crotchet Castle, 1830; see Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, 1974, p292
44 See William Feaver, The Art of John Martin, Oxford, 1975; and discussion in Tim Fulford (editor), Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, 2004, pp97-107
45 ‘[Ritchie] is going to Fezan in Africa there to proceed if possible like Mungo Park’, John Keats to George Keats, 5 January 1818; ‘Haydon showed me a letter he had received from Tripoli…Ritchie was well and in good spirits, among Camels, Turbans, Palm trees and sands…’, Keats to George Keats, 16-31 December 1818
Chapter 6: Davy on the Gas
1 Described in Davy’s letters to his mother Grace Davy, in June Z. Fullmer, Young Humphry Davy, American Philosophical Society, 2000, pp328-32
2 JD Fragments, pp2-5
3 Thomas Thorpe, Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher, 1896, p10
4 Anne Treneer, The Mercurial Chemist: A Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 1963, p6
5 Local sources, author’s visit to Penzance, May 2006
6 Ibid.
7 JD Memoirs, p68
8 There are various versions of this early poem in the HD Archive: see Paris, vol 1, p29; Treneer, pp4-5; or Fullmer, p13
9 Treneer, p16
10 John Davy quoted in ibid., p21
11 Ibid.
12 Introduction to Humphry Davy on Geology: The 1805 Lectures, pxxix, British Library catalogue X421/22592
13 HD Archive Box 13 (f) pp41-50, Mss notebook dated 1795-97
14 HD Archive Box 13 (f) p61
15 The whole poem, no fewer than thirty-two stanzas, is given in JD Memoirs, pp23-7
16 HD Works 2, p6
17 Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain 1760-1820, CUP, 1992, pp133-42
18 Ibid., p109
19 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Maxims and Reflections’, from Goethe, Scientific Studies, edited by Douglas Miller, Suhrkamp edition of Goethe’s Works, vol 12, New York, 1988, p308
20 Reprinted in HD Works 9
21 See Madison Smartt Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in the Age of Revolution, Atlas Books, Norton, 2005. See also J.-L. David’s famous romantic portrait, Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier et sa Femme (1788)
22 Preface to Traité Élémentaire, translated by Robert Kerr, 1790
23 Consolations, Dialogue V, in HD Works 9, pp361-2
24 JD Memoirs, p34
25 For the Watt family, see Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends who Made the Future, 1730-1810, Faber, 2002
26 Treneer, p24
27 From Beddoes notes made 1793, quoted in Golinski, p171
28 HD Mss Truro, Beddoes letter in Davies Giddy Mss DG 42/1
29 Ibid.
30 Dorothy A. Stansfield, Thomas Beddoes MD: Chemist, Physician, Democrat, Reidel Publishing, Boston, 1984, pp162-4
31 HD Mss Truro, Davies Giddy Mss DG 42/8
32 HD Mss Truro, Davies Giddy Mss DG 42/4
33 See Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions
34 John Ayrton Paris, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols, 1831, vol 1, p38
35 See David Knight, Humphry Davy: Vision and Power, Blackwell Science Biographies, 1992
36 Richard Lovell Edgeworth 1793, quoted in Fullmer, p106
37 Treneer, pp30-1
38 HD Archive Notebook 20a; and Fullmer, p169
39 HD Works 2, p85
40 HD Works 2, p84
41 HD Works 2, pp85-6; see HD Archive Ms Notebook B (1799)
42 HD Archive Mss Box 13(h) pp15-17 and Box 13(f) pp33-47
43 See Fullmer, pp163-6
44 From author’s visit and photographs, May 2006. See also John Allen, ‘The Early History of Varfell’, in Ludgvan, Ludgvan Horticultural Society, no date
45 Golinski, pp157-83
46 Reply from James Watt, Birmingham, 13 November 1799, in JD Fragments, pp24-6
47 HD Works 3, pp278-9
48 HD Works 3, pp278-80; on Davy’s impetuosity and courage see Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Picador, 2001
49 Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences, vol 1, 1847, p264
50 HD Works 3, pp246-7; James Watt, Birmingham, 13 November 1799, in JD Fragments, pp24-6; equipment partly illustrated in Fullmer, p216
51 Treneer, p72
52 Fullmer, p213
53 Ibid., p214
54 HD Works 3, p272
55 HD, Researches Chemical and Philosophical chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, London, 1800, p461. See HD Works 3
56 JD Life 1, pp79-82
57 HD Archive Mss Box 13 (c) pp5-6; and Fullmer, p215
58 Treneer, p47
59 HD Archive Mss Box 20 (b) p118
60 HD Archive Mss Box 20 (b) p120
61 HD, Researches, 1800, p491
62 Ibid., p492; discussed in Cartwright, pp237-8
63 HD Works 9, pp74-5; comments by Physicus, Day 4, in Salmonia, 1828
64 Fullmer, p218
65 Cartwright on Anaesthetics, 1952, pp100-23; Treneer, pp40-8
66 HD Archive Mss Box 20(b) p208
67 HD Archive Mss Box 20 (b) p209
68 HD Researches, 1800, pp100-2
69 A premonition of Frankenstein! HD Researches, 1800, p102
70 Southey to Tom Southey, 1799, from Treneer, p44
71 A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, edited by her children, 1867, vol 1, p97
72 Treneer, p45
73 Ibid., p43
74 Ibid., p54
75 Southey to William Wynn, 30 March 1799
76 ‘Unfinished Poem on Mount’s Bay’, in Paris, vol 1, pp36-9
77 JD Fragments, pp34-5
78 Ibid., pp37-9
79 JD Life 1, p119
80 Treneer, p44
81 Holmes, ‘Kubla Coleridge’, in Coleridge: Early Visions, 1989
82 ‘Detail of Mr Coleridge’, Researches, 1800, and HD Works 3, pp306-7
83 Coleridge to Davy, 1 January 1800, Coleridge Collected Letters, edited by E.L. Griggs, vol 1; and see Treneer, p58
84 JD Memoirs, pp58-9
85 JD Fragments, p24; Fullmer, pp269-70
86 HD Works 3, pp289-90; and compare Fullmer, pp269-70
87 HD Archive Mss Box 20 (b) pp129-34, dated 26 December 1799
88 HD Archive Mss Box 20 (b) p95
89 JD Memoirs, pp59-66
90 Ibid., pp66-7
91 HD Works 3; Fullmer, p211
92 HD Works 3, pp1-3
93 JD Memoirs, pp54-5
94 Preface to Researches, 1800, HD Works 3, p2
95 Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge and Robert Southey, 1847
96 Treneer, p48
97 The Sceptic, anon, 1800, British Library catalogue Cup.407.gg.37
98 Golinski, p173
99 Ibid., p153
100 Treneer, p63
101 Paris, vol 1, p58
102 Trevor H. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Coleridge and Early Nineteenth Century Science, CUP, 1981, p32
103 See Coleridge to Davy, six letters, 9 October 1800-20 May 1801, Coleridge Collected Letters, edited by E.L. Griggs, vols 1-2; see Treneer, pp67-8
104 Coleridge to Davy, 9 October 1800
105 Holmes, p247
106 Coleridge, letter to Davy, 15 July 1800, Collected Letters, vol 1, p339. He also added in a chemical vein: ‘I would that I could wrap up the view from my House [Greta Hall] in a pill of opium, & send it to you!’
107 Southey to William Taylor, 20 February 1800; from Fullmer, p148
108 Southey to Coleridge, 3 August 1801; from ibid., pp148-9
109 JD Fragments, pp29-30
110 ‘On the Death of Lord Byron’, 1824, Davy, Memoirs, pp285-6
111 HD Works 8, p308
112 Fullmer, pp328-32
113 The most revealing evidence is the unpublished letter Anna Beddoes wrote to Davy on 26 December 1806, HD Archive Mss Box 26 File H 9
114 Fullmer, p82
115 Ibid., p281
116 Verse fragments from HD Archive, Ms Notebook 13 J; Box 26 File H; and Fullmer, pp 106-8
117 HD Archive Mss Box 26 File H 7
118 HD Archive Mss Box 26 File H 6, 13 and 14
119 HD Mss Bristol, Davy to John King, 14 November 1801, Ms 32688/33
120 HD Archive Mss Box 13 (g) p116
121 HD Archive Mss Box 13 (g) p158
122 See Stansfield, pp 234-5. Some more light is thrown on Anna’s enigmatic and volatile character by A.C. Todd, ‘Anna Maria, Mother of Thomas Lovell Beddoes’, in Studia Neophilologica, 29, 1957
123 ‘Glenarm, by moonlight, August 1806’, HD Archive Mss Box 13 (g) p166; printed in JD Memoirs, pp50-1
124 HD Archive Mss Box 26 File H 9 and 10
125 JD Fragments, p150
126 Coleridge to Southey, 1803; see Treneer, p114
127 Treneer, p78
128 JB Correspondence 4, letters 1290-6, cover an exchange between Banks, James Watt and the Duchess of Devonshire about the viability of Dr Beddoes’s scheme in December 1794
129 HD Works 3, p276
130 F.F. Cartwright, The English Pioneers of Anaesthesia, 1952, p311
131 HD, Researches, 1800, p556; and HD Works 3, p329
132 Holmes, pp222-7
133 Coleridge to Davy, 2 December 1800, Collected Letters, vol 1, p648
134 Paris, vol 1, p97
135 Cartwright, p320
136 Bristol Mirror, 9 January 1847, from ibid., p317
137 JD Memoirs, pp80-1
138 Philosophical Magazine, May-June 1801, from Treneer, p78
139 David Knight, essay in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. It is curious that no essential improvement has taken place in the design of chemical batteries since the nineteenth century, and this is currently the greatest single obstacle to the efficient global use of solar energy from solar panels. (Conversation with Richard Mabey on the banks of the river Waveney, midsummer’s day 2008.)
140 Dorothy A. Stansfield, Thomas Beddoes MD: Chemist, Physician, Democrat, Reidel Publishing, Boston, 1984, pp120, 234-42; also J.E. Stock, Memoirs of Thomas Beddoes, 1811
141 HD Mss Bristol, Davy to John King, 22 June 1801, Ms 32688/31
142 HD Mss Bristol, Davy to John King, 14 November 1801, Ms 32688/33
143 Ibid.
144 Coleridge, Letters, 1802
145 HD Works 2, pp311-26
146 Ibid., p314
147 Ibid. pp318-19
148 Ibid., p321
149 Ibid., p323
150 Ibid.
151 Ibid., p326
152 Preface, Lyrical Ballads, 1802. See discussion in Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routledge, 2001
153 Maria Edgeworth, letter, 8 October 1802; from Lamont-Brown, p59
154 HD Archive Mss Box 13c p32; and Golinski, pp194-7
155 Coleridge to Southey, 17 February 1803, Collected Letters, vol 2, p490
156 Davy to Coleridge, March 1804; see Holmes, p360
157 Paris, vol 2, pp198-9
158 Ibid., p199
159 See Nicholas Roe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life, 2001, pp142-4
160 Partly reprinted in HD Works 5 and 8; lucidly discussed in Harold Hartley, Humphry Davy, Open University, 1966, pp50-74; and Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten
161 JD Memoirs, pp116-17
162 ‘Introduction to Electro-Chemical Science’, originally delivered March 1808, HD Works 8, pp274-305
163 HD Works 8, p281
164 HD Works 8; see Hartley, pp50-4
165 Treneer, p111
166 HD Works 5, pp59-61
167 Hartley, p56
168 Beddoes, 17 November 1808, from Stansfield, p239
169 Henry Brougham, ‘Three essays on Humphry Davy’, Edinburgh Review, 1808, vol 11: first pp390-8; second pp394-401; third pp483-90
170 Coleridge to Tom Poole, 24 November 1807
171 Treneer, p104
172 JD Memoirs, p117; HD Works 8, p355
173 HD Archive, quoted in Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, p119
174 ‘Written after Recovery from a Dangerous Illness’, printed in JD Memoirs, pp114-16
175 Consolations in Travel, 1830, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5
176 Ibid., p255
177 JD Memoirs, pp394, 397
178 Consolations, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5. The story of Josephine Dettela, 1827-29, will be continued in my Chapter 9
179 Stansfield, pp194-5
180 Davy to Coleridge, December 2008, Collected Letters, vol 3, pp170-1; Treneer, p113
181 Stansfield, p 247
182 HD Archive Mss Box 14 (i), note dated February 1829, Rome. See also Stansfield, p249
183 British Public Characters, 1804-5 (1809), British Library catalogue 10818.d. 1
184 Anna Barbauld, ‘The Year 1811’ (1812)
185 Coleridge’s note, 1809, in Notebooks, vol 2, entry no. 1855
186 HD Works 8, p354
Chapter 7: Dr Frankenstein and the Soul
1 Fanny Burney, ‘A Mastectomy’, 30 September 1811, in the The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay), vol 6, edited by Joyce Hemlow, Oxford, 1975, pp596-616
2 Ibid., p600, footnote
3 Druin Burch, Digging up the Dead: The Life and Times of Astley Cooper, Chatto & Windus, 2007, p179. Besides much else, Burch has a chastening section on concepts of pain endurance, anaesthesia and surgery at this period, pp172-82
4 JB Correspondence 5, no. 1616
5 Sharon Ruston, Shelley and Vitality, Palgrave, 2005, p39
6 See Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998
7 John Hunter, 1794, from Ruston, p40
8 John Abernethy, Enquiry into Mr Hunter’s Theory of Life: Two Lectures, 1814 and 1815, p38; and Ruston, p43
9 Abernethy, Enquiry, pp48-50
10 Ruston, p45
11 Gascoigne, Banks and the English Enlightenment, pp157-9
12 See Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, ‘Exploration, Headhunting and Race Theory’, in Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004
13 Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, p 290
14 See Shelley’s Prose, edited by David Lee Clark
15 Holmes, Shelley, pp286-90; also Ruston, pp91-100
16 Ruston, p193
17 William Lawrence, Natural History of Man, 1819, pp6-7
18 William Lawrence, Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, 1816, pp169-70; and Ruston, p50
19 William Lawrence: The Natural History of Man (Lectures on Physiology and Zoology), 1819, p106
20 Ibid., p8; and Ruston, pp15-16
21 Lawrence, Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, p174; and Ruston, p16
22 In his letters of 1797-98, and later Notebooks. See Holmes, ‘Kubla Coleridge’, in Coleridge: Early Visions
23 Hermione de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats, OUP, 1991, pp66-73
24 Holmes, ‘The Coleridge Experiment’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol 69, 1998, p312
25 Nicholas Roe, ‘John Thelwall’s Essay on Animal Vitality’, in The Politics of Nature, Palgrave, 2002, p89
26 Burch, Digging up the Dead, 2007
27 Thelwall, ‘Essay towards a Definition of Animal Vitality’, 1793, quoted in Nicholas Roe, The Politics of Nature, pp89-91
28 Blagden to Banks, 27 December 1802, JB Correspondence 5, no. 1704
29 G Aldini, An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism…Containing the Author’s Experiments on the Body of a Malefactor Executed at Newgate, London, 1803; see Fred Botting (editor), New Casebooks: Frankenstein, Palgrave, 1995, p125
30 Quarterly Review, 1819, from Frankenstein, Oxford World Classics, pp243-50
31 B.R. Haydon, Diary, 1817; Penelope Hughes-Hallett, The Immortal Dinner, 2000; Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, pp50-5
32 Quoted by Burch, pp154-5. For a darker view of dissection see Helen MacDonald, Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories, Yale UP, 2006
33 Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, pp360-1
34 ‘Theory of Life’ (1816), in Coleridge: Shorter Works and Fragments, edited by H.J. and J.R. Jackson, vol 1, Princeton, 1995, p502
35 Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998, p479
36 Hermione de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats, p102
37 Coleridge to Wordsworth, 30 May 1815, Coleridge Collected Letters 4, pp574-5
38 Richard Burton quoted in Andrew Motion, Keats, p430
39 John Keats, ‘Lamia’ (1820), lines 229-38
40 Ibid., lines 47-60
41 Ibid., lines 249-53
42 Ibid., lines 146-60
43 Davy’s ‘Discourse Introductory to Lectures on Chemistry, 1802, HD Works 2, pp311-26
44 Frankenstein, 1818, Chapter 2, Penguin Classics
45 Mary Shelley’s Journal, 25 August-5 September 1814
46 In September 1815 at Great Marlow; see Holmes, Shelley, p296
47 Mary Shelley, ‘Introduction’ to Frankenstein 1831 text
48 Frankenstein, 1818, Chapter 1, Penguin Classics
49 JB Correspondence 5, no. 1804
50 J.H. Ritter as featured in www.CorrosionDoctors
51 Walter Wetzels, ‘Ritter and Romantic Physics’, in Romanticism and the Sciences, edited by Cunningham and Jardine, 1990. The best account of the extraordinary writer Novalis appears in Penelope Fitzgerald’s inspired novel The Blue Flower, 1995
52 JB Correspondence 5, no. 1748, pp316-17
53 Ibid., no. 1790, p368
54 Ibid., no. 1799, p387
55 For a wider perspective see ‘Death, Dying and Resurrection’, in Peter Hanns Reill, Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment, California UP, 2005, pp171-6
56 Frankenstein, 1818, vol 1, Chapter 5, Penguin Classics, p56
57 These connections are further traced by Ruston, pp86-95
58 Lawrence, Lectures, 1817, pp6-7
59 Frankenstein, 1818, vol 2, Chapter 3, Penguin Classics, pp99-100
60 Ibid., Chapter 8, p132
61 Ibid., Chapter 9, pp140-1
62 Ibid., Chapter 9, p141
63 Ibid., vol 3, Chapter 2, p160
64 Ibid., Chapter 3, p160
65 Ibid., pp164-5
66 Frankenstein, 1831 text, pp178, 180, 186. My italics
67 Ibid., p189
68 Text from 1823 leaflet about Presumption; see Fred Botting (editor), New Casebooks: Frankenstein, Palgrave, 1995. The evolution and impact of the novel is brilliantly disclosed by William St Clair in The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, OUP, 2004
69 Mary Shelley, The Letters of Mary Shelly, vol 1, edited by Betty T. Bennett, Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, pp369, 378
70 Frankenstein, 1818, vol 2, Chapter 5, Penguin Classics, pp116-17
71 Lawrence, On the Natural History of Man, 1819, p150
72 Ruston, p71
73 Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Medicine in Radical London, Chicago, 1989, p112
Chapter 8: Davy and the Lamp
1 Jane Apreece to Walter Scott, 4 March 1811, in ‘Lady Davy’s Letters’, edited by James Parker, The Quarterly Review, January 1962; also Lamont-Brown, p94
2 For example: ‘Whene’er you speak, Heaven! how the listening throng/ Dwell on the melting music of your tongue!…’ (Valentine’s Day 1805), HD Archive Box 26 File H II
3 Treneer, p119
4 See ‘iconography’ for Lady Davy (Jane Apreece) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. At the time of going to press I am still searching for a portrait, having exhausted all leads kindly provided by the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; and Christie’s, London
5 HD Archive Mss Box 25, containing ninety letters from Lady Davy 1811-22
6 HD Archive Mss Box 25/1
7 HD Archive Mss Box 25/3
8 HD Archive Mss Box 25/2
9 Raymond Lamont-Brown, Humphry Davy: Life Beyond the Lamp, Sutton, 2004, p94
10 HD Archive Mss Box 25/3; 13; 18; 20
11 HD Archive Mss Box 25/6
12 Coleridge letter of 28 May 1809; also Treneer, p113
13 HD Archive Mss Box 25/5 (1 November 1811)
14 HD Archive Mss Box 25/11; and Treneer, p124
15 HD Archive Mss Box 25/25 (March 1812)
16 HD Archive Mss Box 25/4; also Lamont-Brown, pp96-7
17 HD Archive Mss Box 25/4
18 ‘Lady Davy’s Letters’, edited by James Parker, The Quarterly Review, January 1962, p81
19 HD Archive Mss Box 25/26
20 HD Archive Mss Box 25/24; further details Lamont-Brown, pp90-105
21 Thorpe, p162
22 Banks to John Lloyd FRS, 31 March 1812; from June Z. Fullmer, ‘The Poetry of Sir Humphry Davy’, in Chymia, 6, 1960, p114
23 Treneer, p126
24 HD Works 2
25 JD Fragments, p158
26 Holmes, Shelley, p153
27 Thomas De Quincey, ‘The Poetry of Pope’, 1848. He gave Newton’s Principia as an example of Knowledge, and Milton’s Paradise Lost as example of Power. De Quincey also published a number of essays on scientific subjects, notably ‘Animal Magnetism’ (1833), ‘Kant and Dr Herschel’ (1819) and ‘The Planet Mars’ (1819)
28 HD Works 4, pp1-40
29 Ibid., p20
30 Ibid., ppl-2
31 Golinski, p262
32 Consolations, Dialogue V, ‘The Chemical Philosopher’, HD Works 9
33 Coleridge in Notebook 23 (1812), quoted by Trevor H. Levere, Chemists in Society 1770-1878, 1994, pp363-4
34 Coleridge’s Marginalia on Jakob Boehme (c.1810-11), from ibid., p357
35 See Coleridge’s letter to Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817, discussing Davy versus Dalton (’atomist’), Collected Letters, vol 4, p760
36 JD Fragments, p174
37 Ibid., p175
38 HD Archive Mss Box 25/31
39 Treneer, p134
40 Ibid., p133
41 Ibid., p137
42 Hamilton, pp119, 207
43 Jane Marcet, Conversations in Chemistry, 2 vols, 1813, vol 1, p342
44 Treneer, p138
45 HD Archive Mss Box 25/33
46 HD Archive Mss Box 25/27
47 HD Archive Mss Box 25/28
48 HD Archive Mss Box 25/36
49 Kerrow Hill, The Brontë Sisters and Sir Humphry Davy, Penzance, 1994, p16
50 HD Archive Mss Box 25/34
51 Paris, vol 2, pp59-72
52 JD Memoirs, p163
53 Michael Faraday, ‘Observations on Mental Education’, 1859; quoted in James Hamilton, Faraday: The Life, HarperCollins, 2002, p1. See also striking portraits and photographs of Faraday dated 1829, 1831 and c. 1850 (National Portrait Gallery)
54 Lamont-Brown, pp110-26
55 Paris, vol 1, p261
56 Leigh Hunt, Examiner, 24 October 1813
57 JD Fragments, p190
58 Michael Faraday, Correspondence 1811-1831, vol 1, edited Frank A.L.J. James, Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1991, p127
59 Maurice Crosland, ‘Davy and Gay Lussac’, in Sophie Forgan (editor), Science and the Sons of Genius (essays), 1980, pp103-8
60 Faraday, Correspondence, p124
61 JD Memoirs, pp172-7; and Hartley, p107
62 Hartley, pp107-8
63 Faraday, Correspondence, p101
64 HD Works 1, p218
65 Ibid., p217
66 Ibid., p220
67 Faraday, Correspondence, p117
68 Ibid., 23 February 1815, p126
69 Treneer, p175; from Ticknor, Memoirs
70 HD Works 1, p235
71 Paris, vol 2, p79
72 J.H. Holmes, Accidents in Coal Mines, London, 1816, pp141-2
73 ‘Report of the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines’, in Parliamentary Papers, 1835, vol 5, September 1835
74 Faraday, Correspondence, p136
75 Bence Jones, Life and Letters of Faraday, vol 1, p361
76 Paris, vol 2, p95
77 Ibid., p82
78 JB Letters, p317
79 Paris, vol 2, p97
80 Letter to John Hodgson, 29 December 1815, Northumberland Record Office; from Frank A.J.L. James, ‘How Big is a Hole? The Problems of the Practical Application of Science in the Invention of the Miners’ Safety Lamp by Humphry Davy and George Stephenson in Late Regency England’, in Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 75, 2005, p197
81 Frank James, pp185-93
82 HD, On the Safety Lamp, with Some Researches into Flame, 1818; and HD Works 6, pp12-14
83 HD Works 6, p4
84 Coleridge, The Friend (1818 edition), in The Friend, vol 1, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Routledge, 1969, pp 530-1
85 Coleridge, The Friend (1809 edition), no. 19, 1809; in The Friend, vol 2, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Routledge, 1969, pp251-2
86 Frank James, p197
87 John Buddle’s evidence (2nd day), Report of the Select Committee, 1835, ppl53-4
88 HD Works 6, pp116-17
89 Lamont-Brown, p112
90 Thorpe, p203
91 Paris, vol 2, p111
92 ‘Igna Constructo Securitas…’ Davy’s coat of arms illustrated in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1829
93 John Playfair, ‘Sir Humphry Davy’s Lamp’, in Edinburgh Review, no. LI, 1816, p233; also Thorpe, p204
94 HD Works 6, pp6-7
95 Ibid., p22, footnote
96 Ibid., p4
97 Hamilton, pp121-5; Lamont-Brown, pp128-33
98 James Heaton demonstration at the Society of Arts, 1817, described in Report of the Select Committee, 1835, p213
99 A Collection of all Letters in Newcastle papers relating to Safety Lamps, London, 1817. See British Library catalogue Tracts 8708.i.2
100 Letter from George Stephenson, ibid., Tracts 8708.i.2(5)
101 Treneer, p172
102 Lettter to Lord Lambton, October 1816, in Paris, vol 2, p120
103 Frank James, p203
104 Paris, vol 2, p123
105 See Hamilton, pp122-3
106 Frank James, pp183-95
107 HD Works 6
108 Paris, vol 2, p122
109 Ibid., p124-5; and from David Knight, Davy, p113
110 HD Works 1, pp209-10
111 Paris, vol 2, p129
112 Treneer, pp 173-4; Thorpe, p208
113 Minute Book of Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, December 1817, from Frank James, p211
114 ‘Report of the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines’, in Parliamentary Papers, 1835, vol 5, September 1835
115 Ibid., pviii
116 Ibid.
117 Davy boys described in ibid., pp97-108, 165-7. See also Samuel Smiles, Life of George Stephenson, 1859; and Newcastle Public Record Office
118 Walter Scott, Journals 1, 1826, p109
119 JD Fragments, pp141-3
120 Sun Fire Office insurance document, 4 June 1818, found through internet UK Archives Network
121 HD, On the Safety Lamp for Preventing Explosions, London, 1825, p151
122 Consolations, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5
123 Ibid., p255
124 JD Life 2, pp114-15; and JD Memoirs, pp251-3
125 Shelley, Epipsychidion, 1820, lines 190-221 (extract)
126 Byron, letter to John Murray, April 1820; see Treneer, p182
127 Byron, Don Juan I (1819), stanza 132
Chapter 9: Sorcerer and Apprentice
1 JB Correspondence 6, p286
2 JB, August 1816, ibid., pp208-9
3 Ibid., p382
4 JB, November 1814, ibid., p152
5 Gunther Buttman, In the Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel, Lutterworth Press, 1974, p13
6 JB Correspondence 6, p375
7 Ibid.
8 JB Correspondence 6, 1819
9 Coleridge ‘Youth and Age’ (1825), in Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, p215
10 November 1817, JB Correspondence 6, p252
11 Byron, ‘Darkness’, written at the Villa Diodati, July 1816. See Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend, John Murray, 2002, p69; and discussed in New Penguin Romantic Poetry, edited by Jonathan and Jessica Wordsworth, Notes to Poems, p909
12 JB Correspondence 6, September and November 1819, pp355, 367
13 Gascoigne, p52
14 JB Correspondence 6, March 1818, p276
15 Ibid., November 1818, p325
16 Ibid., September 1819, p359
17 Byron, Don Juan (1821), Canto 10, lines 1-24. The ‘glass and vapour’ refer to telescopes and steamships, and also possibly balloons. The ringing phrase ‘In the Wind’s Eye’ was used by modern editors as the title of vol 6 of Byron’s Collected Letters
18 JB Correspondence 6, August 1816, p209
19 Gascoigne, p41
20 Ibid.
21 Buttman, p13
22 CHM, pp119-21
23 John Herschel to Babbage, October 1813, quoted in Buttman, p14
24 William Herschel to John, 10 November 1813, WH Mss 6278 1/11
25 Lady Herschel to John, 14 November 1813, ibid.
26 John Herschel to Babbage, March 1815, quoted by Buttman, p16
27 JB Correspondence 6, p375
28 Shelley, ‘Notes to Queen Mab’ (1812)
29 Ruston, p154
30 Further discussion in Ruston p208, and Crowe, Extraterrestrial, p171
31 Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Act I, lines 163-6
32 Ibid., Act II, lines 52-9
33 Ibid., Act IV, lines 238-44
34 Ibid., lines 457-72
35 Gascoigne, pp257-9
36 JB Correspondence 6, various letters, 1820
37 Gascoigne, pp249-55
38 JB Correspondence 6, August 1819, p352
39 Ibid., November 1819, p367
40 Ibid., February 1820, p379
41 William Edward Parry to ‘My Dearest Parents’, December 1817; from O’Brian, p300
42 JB Correspondence 6, asking for news of Parry, 1818, pp251, 326, 377
43 Ibid., 20 December 1819, p374. The man was of course John Herschel
44 Ibid., Berthollet to Banks, 27 March 1820, pp383-4
45 See his Will, described in O’Brian, Chapter 12
46 Marie Boas Hall, All Scientists Now, 1984, p18
47 Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol 2, 1838, pp40-3
48 HD Works 7, pp5-15
49 Ibid., p21
50 JD Life 2, p126
51 Paris, vol 2, p185
52 Faraday, Correspondence 1, p183
53 Ibid., pp244-80 passim
54 Hamilton, p192
55 Faraday to Phillips, May 1836, Bence Jones, Michael Faraday, 1870, vol 1, pp335-9
56 Discussed in Bence Jones, pp335-9, and James Hamilton, pp186-9
57 Holmes, Shelley, p410
58 Hartley, p129
59 Ibid., p130
60 Humboldt, ‘Lecture to the Berlin Academy of Sciences’, 1805, quoted in Steven Ruskin, Herschel’s Cape Voyage, 2004
61 Ibid., pp20-2
62 Ibid., p16
63 Many of these instruments, including the ‘mountain barometer’, in WH Archive; and see Ruskin, p21
64 ‘The Garden Days: Marlow 1817’ in Holmes, Shelley. If I had been a novelist I would have described Shelley and Mary making a night visitation to the great forty-foot, and getting Caroline to show them Andromeda and other distant constellations, and planning a comet-flight into deep space. See ‘The Witch of Atlas’, 1820
65 CHM, p131. The note is actually dated 4 July 1819
66 CHM, p137
67 WH Chronicle, p363. The second translation is mine
68 Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1822
69 Ibid.
70 Holmes, Shelley, p730
71 Sime, pp259-61
72 WH Chronicle, p359
73 CHM, p163
74 CHM, p171
75 WH Chronicle, p366
76 CHM, p167
77 Caroline Herschel to John, April 1827, British Library Ms Egerton 3761.f45/60; and see J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’, in Journal for the History of Astronomy, 7, June 1976
78 CHM, p163
79 CHM, p 180
80 CHM, p193
81 CHM, p161
82 David S. Evans (editor), Herschel at the Cape: Letters and Journals of John Herschel, Texas, 1969, pxxi
83 CHM, p168
84 Thorpe, p222
85 Treneer, p208
86 Ibid., pp206-12
87 Ibid., p208
88 The Harringtonian System of Chemistry, 1819, quoted in Golinski, p217
89 ‘The Humbugs of the Age’, in John Bull Magazine, 1, 1824, British Library catalogue PP.5950
90 Evans, pxxx
91 Treneer, p207
92 JD Memoirs, p346
93 JD Fragments, p289
94 JD Memoirs, pp334-6
95 HD Works 9, pp13-14
96 Salmonia, Day 4, HD Works 9, pp66-7
97 JD Fragments, p258
98 Salmonia, Day 4, HD Works 9, p66
99 HD Archive Mss Box 25/51
100 HD Archive Mss Box 25/61
101 Consolations, Dialogue IV, HD Works 9, pp314-15
102 Paris, vol 2, p306
103 Tom Poole to John Davy, c. 1835, in Paris, vol 2, p307
104 Paris, vol 2, p309
105 HD Archive Mss Box 25/73, 74, 75. On 25 January 1829: ‘I hope I may wear on till the spring & see May in Illyria. I have now constant pain in the region of the heart.’ Box 25/84
106 HD Archive Mss Box 25/73; and Lamont-Brown, pp157-63
107 HD Archive Mss Box 25/90
108 HD Archive Mss Box 25/74, letter, 2 November 1828
109 HD Archive Mss Box 25/75, letter, 3 December 1828
110 HD Archive Mss Box 26, File B/17
111 HD Archive Mss Box 25/83
112 JD Fragments, p265
113 Davy’s two unpublished poems to Josephine Dettela can be found in HD Archive Mss Box 14 (e) pp128-30
114 Based on local information provided by Professor Dr Janez Batis of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, for David Knight, Humphry Davy: Vision and Power, Blackwell Science Biographies, 1992, pp180, 260
115 JD Fragments, p293
116 Thorpe, p232
117 HD Archive Mss Box 25/87a
118 Fullmer, p350
119 Consolations, Dialogue I, HD Works 9, p233
120 Ibid., pp233-6
121 Ibid., pp237-8
122 Ibid., p240
123 Ibid., pp239-47
124 Ibid., pp236-47, 266, 274
125 Ibid., Dialogue II, p266
126 Ibid., pp274, 254-6
127 Ibid., Dialogue III, pp302-3
128 Ibid., Dialogue II, pp304-8
129 Ibid., Dialogue III, p309
130 Ibid., p308
131 Ibid., Dialogue IV, p316
132 Ibid., pp320-1
133 Undated extract from Davy’s lecture notebooks, JD Memoirs, p147
134 Consolations, Dialogue V, HD Works 9, pp361-5
135 Ibid., pp364-6
136 Ibid., pp365-6
137 Ibid., Dialogue VI, p382
138 Janet Browne, Charles Darwin, vol 1, 2003, p30
139 JD Memoirs, 1839
140 John Tobin, Journal of a Tour whilst accompanying the late Sir Humphry Davy, 1832, p5
141 JD Fragments, p268
142 JD Fragments, to Jane, September 1827, p296
143 HD Archive Mss Box 25/80, to Jane, 1 September 1828
144 John Herschel, On the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1830, pp342-4 and footnote
145 HD Archive Mss Box 14 (M) pp105-6
146 JD Fragments, Jane to Davy, late March 1829, p313
147 John Davy’s affectionate account, in JD Memoirs, p412
148 JD Memoirs, p408
Chapter 10: Young Scientists
1 In a series of gloomy articles, e.g. The Times, 28 June 1832. See Marie Boas Hall, All Scientists Now, CUP, 1984
2 Edinburgh Review, 49, 1829, pp439-59; and Hamilton, p270
3 Thomas Carlye, Sartor Resartus, 1833
4 Anthony Hyman, ‘Charles Babbage: Science and Reform’, in Cambridge Scientific Minds, edited by Peter Harman and Simon Mitton, CUP, 2002
5 Charles Babbage, The Decline of Science in England, 1830, p102
6 Ibid., p152
7 Ibid., p44
8 Ibid., p102
9 Ibid., p174
10 Ibid., pp203-12
11 Ibid., p210
12 Ibid., p200
13 Hamilton, p229
14 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, 1870, p124
15 John Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1831, p4
16 Ruskin, pp117-21
17 Natural Philosophy, 1830, Part II
18 Ibid., p191
19 Ibid., p4
20 Ibid., p20
21 Ibid., pp14-15
22 Ibid., p55-6
23 Ibid., pp299-303
24 Ibid., pp329-40
25 Ibid., p340
26 Faraday to John Herschel, 10 November 1832, Correspondence, vol 1, p623
27 Charles Darwin to W.D. Fox, 15 February 1831, in Correspondence Volume I, 1821-1836, CUP, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, 1985, p118 footnote 2. See also Charles Darwin, Autobiography
28 Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence, Camden Society, 1984, p26
29 Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years, OUP, 1981, pp12-17
30 Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence, pp85-6
31 Ibid., pp55-8
32 Morrell and Thackray, pp180-201
33 The Times, 23 June 1832, p4, columns 3-4
34 The Voyage of the Beagle, June 1833
35 Coleridge, 29 June 1833; Table Talk, edited by Carl Woodring, 1990, vol 1, p392 and footnote
36 Ibid., pp394-5
37 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817, Chapter 4
38 Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, p555
39 Quarterly Review, 51, 1834, pp54-68. James Secord, Victorian Sensation, University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp404-5; see also Richard Yeo, ‘William Whewell’, in Cambridge Scientific Minds, 2000
40 Hamilton, p261
41 Unpublished comment by Mrs Margaret Herschel, in the holograph Introduction to the manuscript of Caroline Herschel’s Memoirs, in WH Archive, John Herschel-Shorland. It is interesting that this comment was suppressed from the printed Introduction by her publisher John Murray
42 James Secord, Vestiges of Natural Creation, Chicago UP, 2000, p47
43 ‘Fragment of Bridgwater Treatise’, Charles Babbage, Collected Works, vol 11
44 William Sotheby’s poem is reprinted in Tim Fulford (editor), Romanticism and Science, 1773-1833
45 The Times, 4 September 1835, p3
46 Gentlemen of Science, p543
47 Bentley’s Miscellany, IV, 1838, p209
48 The whole series of experiments is dramatically described in James Hamilton, Faraday, 2002, pp245-52, which beautifully explains the construction of early coils and dynamos
49 On the Chemical History of a Candle, 1861; Faber Book of Science, edited by John Carey, 2003, p90
50 Darwin, Correspondence 1, p324
51 Knight, Humphry Davy, pp176-7
52 Brewster, Life of Newton, 1831, Chapter XI, pp 148-50; and contrast 1860 edition
53 Ibid., Chapter III, pp35-7, and Chapter XI, p336
54 Ibid., Chapter XIX, p388
55 John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 10, lines 743-5
56 ‘Author’s Introduction to the 1831 Standard Edition’, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, 1831, px. Introduction dated 15 October 1831
57 Mary Somerville, The Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 1834, p4
58 Ibid., p260
59 Ibid., ‘Section 24’
60 Ibid., p432
61 Ibid., p2
62 Ibid., p432
63 Ibid., pp260-1
64 Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence, Camden Society, 1984, p137
65 ‘Report on the British Association for the Promotion of Science’, in The Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1834
66 Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: Volume 1: Voyaging, Pimlico, 2003, p137
67 John Herschel, Natural Philosophy, pp350-3; and Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, Penguin, 1992, p91
68 Browne, vol 1, p135
69 Letter to John Lubbock FRS, 13 May 1833, quoted in Steven Ruskin, John Herschel’s Cape Voyage, p51
70 Ibid., p47
71 WH Archive: John Herschel’s notebooks, drawings and equipment are still preserved by John Herschel-Shorland, Norfolk
72 WH Chronicle, p177
73 Darwin, Correspondence 1, p498
74 Ibid., p500
75 Charles Lyell to Darwin, 26 December 1836, ibid., p532
76 Caroline Herschel, letter to John Herschel, British Library Ms Egerton 3761-2; also Claire Brock, The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s Astronomical Ambition, Icon Books, Cambridge, 2007, p205
77 The Times, Friday, 27 June 1834, quoted in Evans, Herschel at the Cape, p88
78 New York Sun, 25-30 August 1835, internet file
79 Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Great Balloon Hoax’, 1836
80 Ruskin, Herschel’s Cape Voyage, p97
81 Evans, pp236-7
82 Ibid., pxix