Faraday was again engaged as assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution and superintendent of the apparatus (at a salary of 30s. a week), and was accommodated with apartments at the top of the house.
In Dr. Bence Jones’s “Life of Faraday” we have more detailed information concerning this tour, derived from the journal which Faraday kept whilst he was abroad. Faraday describes in considerable detail the life in Paris and the work on Iodine; we have accounts of Chevreul’s laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes, and of Gay Lussac’s lectures at the École Polytechnique; of the work on the torpedo at Genoa; of the combustion of the diamond at the Accademia del Cimento, and a description of the great burning-glass, and how it was actually employed; of the experiments of Morichini on the alleged magnetisation of a needle by the solar rays; of his meeting Volta—“an hale, elderly man, bearing the red ribbon, and very free in conversation”; of the work at Rome on chlorous oxide and iodic acid, and on the pigments employed by the ancients.
“The constant presence of Sir Humphry Davy,” wrote Faraday to his friend Abbott, “is a mine inexhaustible of knowledge and improvement.” But he adds: “I have several times been more than half decided to return hastily home; but second thoughts have still induced me to try what the future may produce ... the glorious opportunities I enjoy of improving in the knowledge of chemistry and the sciences continually determine me to finish this voyage with Sir H. D. But if I wish to enjoy these advantages I have to sacrifice much, and though these sacrifices are such as an humble man would not feel, yet I cannot quietly make them.”
Faraday’s troubles arose from his anomalous position in the party. When Davy elected to go abroad, he arranged to take his valet with him; but at the eleventh hour this man, moved by the tears of his wife—to whom the “Corsican Ogre” was a kind of bogey—refused to proceed. “When Sir H. informed me of this circumstance,” says Faraday, “he expressed his sorrow at it, and said—that if I would put up with a few things on the road until he got to Paris, doing those things which could not be trusted to strangers or waiters ... he would get a servant.... At Paris he could find no servant to suit him,” nor was he more successful at Montpellier or at Genoa. It was, doubtless, difficult at this period to find a man in such places who understood English and was in other respects suitable. Faraday goes on to say:—
“Sir Humphry has at all times endeavoured to keep me from the performance of those things which did not form a part of my duty, and which might be disagreeable.... I should have but little to complain of, were I travelling with Sir Humphry alone, or were Lady Davy like him; but her temper makes it oftentimes go wrong with me, with herself and with Sir H....
“She likes to show her authority, and at first I found her extremely earnest in mortifying me. This occasioned quarrels between us, at each of which I gained ground and she lost it; for the frequency made me care nothing about them, and weakened her authority, and after each she behaved in a milder manner.”
How Davy and his wife appeared to the world at this time may be seen from the following extracts from Ticknor’s Life:—
“1815. June 13.—I breakfasted this morning with Sir H. Davy, of whom we have heard so much in America. He is now about thirty-three [he was actually thirty-seven], but with all the freshness and bloom of twenty-five, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of vivacity—talks rapidly, though with great precision—and is so much interested in conversation that his excitement amounts to nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant motion. He has just returned from Italy, and delights to talk of it; thinks it, next to England, the finest country in the world, and the society of Rome surpassed only by that of London, and says he should not die contented without going there again.”
“15 June.—As her husband had invited me to do, I called this morning on Lady Davy. I found her in her parlour, working on a dress, the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything since I left it. She is small, with black eyes and hair and a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile; and when she speaks has much spirit and expression in her countenance. Her conversation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady. But, then, it has something of the appearance of formality and display, which injures conversation. Her manner is gracious and elegant; and though I should not think of comparing her to Corinne yet I think she has uncommon powers.”
In Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary we read, under date May 31st, 1813:—
“Dined with Wordsworth at Mr. Carr’s. Sir Humphry and Lady Davy there. She and Sir H. seem to have hardly finished their honeymoon. Miss Joanna Baillie said to Wordsworth, ‘We have witnessed a picturesque happiness.’”
In 1815 it was very evident the honeymoon had waned and that the picturesque happiness was at an end. However fitted her ladyship might be to shine in salons, at routs and fashionable gatherings, she lacked the homelier, kindlier charms which grace the placens uxor. An accomplished woman, of fastidious taste, fond of study, upright in her dealings, and charitable to the poor, she was withal cold and unsympathetic, self-willed and independent, “fitted to excite admiration rather than love, and neither by nature happy in herself, or qualified to impart, in the best sense of the term, happiness to others.” Such is the character given of her by Dr. Davy; and he adds, “There was an oversight, if not a delusion, as to the fitness of their union”; and “it might have been better for both if they had never met.” It was, no doubt, from the fulness of his own experience that Davy once wrote to a friend:—