In his boyhood we find it difficult to trace any germs of that talent for experimenting and inventing that distinguished him in later life. He scooped turnips hollow, and lighted up the insides with candles—but what boy has not experimented in the same way? He made squibs, or “thunder-powder,” that exploded on a stone with a loud report that delighted his companions. But there is no trace of an unusual bent of mind here—just an example of an ardent, eager English boy, full of life and spirits.
In 1793 he went to school in Truro, not far from Penzance. He was quick, but that was all—a clever boy, not a prodigy. His master, writing long years after, when the boy’s name had become a household word in England, said:—
“I did not at that time discover any extraordinary abilities.”
It must have been a school of the old sort that Mr. Davy had lighted upon for his son, for the story goes that young Humphrey, at times in scrapes like other boys, while punishment hung over him, had these doggrel lines fired off by his master at his head—
“Now, Master Dávy,
Now, sir, I háve ’e,
No one shall save ’e;
Good Master Dávy.”
And with the end of the rhyme down came the flat ruler on the open palm of the culprit! School, while it may not have done him a great deal of good, at least did not do him much harm. His own frank, buoyant mind prevented his being twisted into a cut-and-dried shape, or pressed into any special mould. Long years after he gave thanks that in those young days he was left very much to his own bent.
“What I am I have made myself,” he said. “I say this without vanity, and in pure simplicity of heart.”
So passed the long, sunshiny days of school-time, and when he was sixteen he left school finally. After that, for one short, blissful year he shot and fished and lived chiefly in the open, surrounded by the beauties of Cornish scenery, for which in after years his heart always kept a tender memory, when the bustle and din of a city, and the whirl of city life, had well-nigh drowned for him Nature’s softer tones. He grew then to know familiarly bird and beast, and rock and flower. In after years, when his life was more fully filled than most men’s, a chance word or reference would seem to waft him a whiff of the sea off the Cornish shore, and a great longing would seize him for the loved scenes of his childhood. Then, in the midst of his work, he would take a hurried run home. During this year of holiday, which he enjoyed with the whole-heartedness of a careless, happy boy, he collected a number of birds, and stuffed them with his own hands—and with not a little skill.
Almost to the end of life he kept his love of shooting. As in fishing he tried to efface himself and deceive the wily fish, so in shooting he was strangely beset by fear of an accident, and he would study to make himself as conspicuous as possible in a scarlet hat! Almost at the end, when his strength was failing, it is pathetic enough to find him ask to be driven to the field, that he might still fire a shot.
But already over his young life there brooded its first great shadow. In 1794 his father died. It may have been this which helped to change young Humphrey from the happy, careless boy to something more serious, more thoughtful, that fixed his mind on the responsibilities life was so full of, that helped to turn it from mere sport and pleasure to the improvement of his mind—to the gaining of knowledge. At any rate, about this time the boy laid hold of life, and, as a rower in a boat-race might do, steadied down to his responsibilities.