On October 4th we find that he reported to the Managers that—
“Michael Faraday had expressed a wish to accompany him on his scientific travels, but that he would not engage Mr. Faraday if the Professor of Chemistry considered his services as at all essential to the Institution, or if the Managers had the slightest objection to the measure.”
Mr. Brande reported that arrangements could be made to allow Mr. Faraday to leave,
“and that as he had shown considerable diligence and attention in cleaning and arranging the mineral collection he recommended his services to the Managers’ attention, as this was not his immediate duty.”
A few days afterwards the party, consisting of Sir H. and Lady Davy, Mr. Faraday, and Lady Davy’s maid, together with the chemical cabinet, crossed in a cartel from Plymouth to Morlaix. Here they were arrested, but after a week’s detention, allowed to depart for Paris, where they arrived on October 27th. Nothing could exceed the cordiality and warmth of Davy’s reception by the French savants. On November 2nd he attended a sitting of the First Class of the Institute, and was placed on the right hand of the President, who announced to the meeting that it was honoured by the presence of “Le Chevalier Davy.” Each day saw some reception or entertainment in his honour. On November 10th he dined with Rumford at Auteuil. How much had happened in the ten years since last they met, and how different their situations now! Davy at the very summit of his scientific eminence, courted and caressed by society, honoured and admired by his intellectual peers; Rumford, his former patron, a broken-hearted, disappointed man about to sink into the grave, worried to death, in fact, by his wife, and the victim of the spiteful persecutions she instigated. Of the remarkable men of science whom Davy met on these occasions he has left us some slight sketches composed during his last illness, some of which are of interest to the student who desires to know something of the men whose names are as household words in the history of chemistry. Guyton de Morveau—who played such a leading part in the political Revolution of France, as well as in the revolution of its chemistry, and who, with Fourcroy, popularised the doctrines of Lavoisier whilst bringing his head to the scaffold—was found to be a gentleman of mild and conciliatory manners.
Vauquelin gave him the idea of the French chemists of another age, belonging rather to the pharmaceutical laboratory than to the philosophical one.
“Nothing could be more singular than his manners, his life, and his ménage. Two old maiden ladies, Mdlles. de Fourcroy, sisters of the professor of that name, kept his house. I remember the first time that I entered it, I was ushered into a sort of bed-chamber, which likewise served as a drawing-room. One of these ladies was in bed, but employed in preparations for the kitchen; and was actually paring truffles.... Nothing could be more extraordinary than the simplicity of his conversation;—he had not the slightest tact, and even in the presence of young ladies, talked of subjects which, since the paradisaical times, never have been the objects of common conversation.”
“Cuvier had even in his address and manner the character of a superior man;—much general power and eloquence in conversation, and a great variety of information on scientific as well as popular subjects. I should say of him, that he is the most distinguished man of talents I have known; but I doubt if he is entitled to the appellation of a man of genius.”
“Humboldt was one of the most agreeable men I have ever known, social, modest, full of intelligence, with facilities of every kind: almost too fluent in conversation. His travels display a spirit of enterprise. His works are monuments of the variety of his knowledge and resources.”
Of his great rival his comment is as follows:—
“Gay Lussac was quick, lively, ingenious, and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of living chemists of France.”
“Berthollet was a most amiable man; when the friend of Napoleon even, always good, conciliatory and modest, frank and candid. He had no airs, and many graces. In every way below La Place in intellectual powers, he appeared superior to him in moral qualities. Berthollet had no appearance of a man of genius; but one could not look on La Place’s physiognomy without being convinced that he was a very extraordinary man.”
All accounts appear to show that Davy hardly treated his hosts with the cordiality and respect they extended to him. His Chauvinism seemed to get the better of his courtesy. There was, it is said, a flippancy in his manner and a superciliousness and hauteur in his deportment which surprised as much as they offended. Napoleon, with characteristic bluntness, told one of the members of the Institute that he had heard the young English chemist had a poor opinion of them all. Dr. Paris, who could certainly speak from personal knowledge, states that Davy’s unfortunate manner was not so much the expression of a haughty consciousness of superiority as the desire to conceal a mauvaise honte and gaucherie—an ungraceful timidity he could never conquer, and which often led him to force himself into a state of effrontery and with a violence of effort which passed for a sally of pride or the ebullition of temper.