“I return the ticket. I begin to like the opera from association. The same association would, I think, make me love a desert, and perhaps, in a long time, might make me an admirer of routs.”
Again:
“To avoid studiously what other people seek would have the semblance of affectation and though sincerely I have no ambition to shine in courts or to become a courtier; yet I have sympathy more than enough to wish to be where you like to go.”
On another occasion he wrote:
“I find an invitation from Mr. T—— on my return last night for Wednesday. Pray do you go to the Miss Ch——’s to-night or to Miss S——’s to-morrow night? I wish to know as you are my magnet (though you differ from a magnet in having no repulsive point) and direct my course. Your society always delightful to me is really at this moment balm to a wounded mind.”
The following is a New Year’s Day letter written to arrive on January 1st, 1812:—
“I hope the cold weather has not increased your indisposition and that the foggy sky has not made you melancholy. I trust you are now well and happy: I give myself pleasure by believing that you are.
“I have a motive for writing this day besides that of doing what I like. I find that Friday the 10th is a Royal Society Club day and that I ought to dine with the Club. All other days are yours and that shall be yours if you command it, but I know you wish me to do what I ought to do, and you now cannot doubt the exclusive nature of your influence and the absolute nature of your power.
“I spent the last two days very pleasantly at Wilderness, Lord Camden’s; there was a very agreeable social party and a Christmas country ball: a fine park had lost its beauty from the old age of the year and everything was white; the circle round the fire had in consequence more charms and my friend and I left it this morning very well amused.
“To-day we celebrate the old Mr. Children’s birthday who is 70. He bears his years healthfully and joyfully. Such winter’s days as his are rather to be desired than feared—sunny, calm and warm.
“I hope, my darling friend, that you bear no uneasiness in your kind and good heart and that you give its true meaning to my unlucky sentence. Indeed I never in the whole course of our social converse ever intended to offend you or give you a moment of uneasiness and I do not think I should feel anything long painful that I thought would promote your happiness even though it should require from me the greatest of all sacrifices. You know what this is and I trust you will never oblige me to make it.
“I go on Thursday to a wild part of Kent to shoot pheasants: the house is Mr. Hodges, the post-town Cranbrook. I shall accompany Children to town on Sunday; and I hope you will permit me to see you that evening if I come in time, or Monday morning. I am going on steadily for three hours a day with Radiant Heat and Light. I might petition for one of your distant beams of light. You know it would delight me; but whether it comes or no you shall not cease to be my sun.”
These letters, with many others addressed by him to the lady, are now before me. They had been carefully tied up and preserved, and are all dated by her on the back—even down to the little missives sent across from Albemarle Street to Berkeley Square, where she resided. From the number and frequency of these it is evident that the porter suffered from no lack of exercise. After her death in 1855 these letters came into the possession of Dr. John Davy, together with other papers, and some have been published already in his “Fragmentary Remains.” The correspondence is of especial interest from the sidelight it throws on Davy’s disposition and character. Many of the letters are delightful in tone and feeling; not even Amadis de Gaul, that cream and flower of gentility, or that mirror of chivalry, the Knight of the Woful Figure, could have been more courteous in bearing, or have shown a warmer and at the same time a more deferential admiration of the lady he wooed. But the world, after all, has no concern with their tender confidences. It is sufficient to say that Davy’s letters are such as might be expected from his ardent temperament and active imagination; from his love of natural scenery, his faculty of happy expression, and graphic power of description.
Early in 1812 Sir Joseph Banks, whose constant thought was of and for the Royal Society, thus wrote to his friend Sir George Stanton:—
“The Royal Society has been well supplied with papers, and continues to be so. Davy, our secretary, is said to be on the point of marrying a rich and handsome widow, who has fallen in love with Science and marries him in order to obtain a footing in the Academic Groves; her name is Apreece, the daughter of Mr. Carr, [Kerr] who made a fortune in India, and the niece of Dr. Carr, [Kerr] of Northampton. If this takes place, it will give to science a kind of new éclat; we want nothing so much as the countenance of the ladies to increase our popularity.”