The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
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, pl78
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, pl68
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 JA. 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 eighteenth-century 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, Nonesuch, 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
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) pi 18
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, pi 19
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, ppl-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
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