The Age of Wonder

by Richard Holmes

  Thou art speeding round the sun

  Brightest world of many a one;

  Green and azure sphere which shinest

  With a light which is divinest

  Among all the lamps of Heaven

  To whom light and life is given;

  I, thy crystal paramour

  Borne beside thee by a power

  Like the polar Paradise,

  Magnet-like of lovers’ eyes;

  I, a most enamoured maiden

  Whose weak brain is overladen

  With the pleasure of her love,

  Maniac-like around thee move

  Gazing, an insensiate bride,

  On thy form from every side … 34 ♣

  4

  As the impact of the new Romantic science spread through Regency England, Banks was much concerned with securing the reputation of the Royal Society. He had struggled to maintain its pre-eminence in British science, and had fought to prevent the splitting away of new, separatist bodies like the Geological Society (1807) and the Astronomical Society (1820). ‘I see plainly that all these new-fangled Associations will finally dismantle the Royal Society, and not leave the Old Lady a rag to cover her,’ he wrote in 1818.35 He accepted an honorary membership in the Geological, but pointedly resigned it two years later, making his displeasure at its independent policies known.

  Banks felt that the new Astronomical Society would certainly steal his thunder with new discoveries. When the Duke of Somerset accepted the first presidency, Banks called him to breakfast, and convinced him to resign even before he had taken up the presidential chair. Other Royal Society members were sufficiently intimidated to send Banks notification of their invitations to join the Astronomical Society, with copies of their refusals annexed.36

  But Banks was trying to hold back a tide of history. It was no coincidence that it was the young men from Cambridge, John Herschel and Charles Babbage, who were leading the astronomers away from the Royal Society. The increasing separation and professionalisation of the individual scientific disciplines had begun at the universities. It would become the general hallmark of Victorian science. Nor could Banks have imagined that it would be a woman who would first identify this development, and grasp its opportunities, in a short, incisive book, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834). It was written by Mary Somerville (1780– 1872), whose husband was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Though she lived to be ninety-one, and would have an Oxford college named after her posthumously, Somerville herself was never elected.

  Banks retained a noble Enlightenment vision of a unified science, but his Romantic instincts had steadily given way to conservative policies. Under him, the election of the Royal Society’s members had steadily ossified. Over 10 per cent were now clergymen (including a large number of bishops), and nearly 20 per cent were members of the landed aristocracy. The Council itself consisted of 40 per cent such members.37 Neither of these groups necessarily excluded true men of science, but among younger members there was a growing feeling of stifling consensus, cautious propriety and snobbish exclusion, which did not reflect the spirit of the age.

  This was particularly felt in the increasingly flourishing philosophical societies of the provinces, and especially the great manufacturing cities of the Midlands and the North. To John Herschel and Babbage it seemed astonishing that a chemist like John Dalton, from Manchester, should not have been elected, or that Michael Faraday should have received no medal for his work. Many younger members now referred scathingly to Banks as a ‘courtier’. This did not prevent Babbage from asking him for a personal recommendation when applying for the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh in 1819 (difficult because he was not a Scot). Banks ended his letter of reference with genuine warmth: ‘Adieu my dear Sir, believe me Anxious for your success & with real Esteem and Regard’.38

  Banks felt the pressures of age and unpopularity, and, increasingly weak and immobilised, wondered if he should continue. He secretly admitted that his eyes were no longer good enough even to look through a microscope. Gout inflamed his arm joints, and uric acid formed kidney stones which regularly passed through his urethra with agonising spasms. In November 1819 he wrote uncertainly to his confidant Blagden: Our Election approaches. I almost feel uneasy at again offering myself a Candidate. If I am again elected it will be the 42nd time. Enough I think to satisfy the ambition of any man.’ Blagden noted that the President’s arithmetic was also weakening: it would be his forty-first election.39

  His election was, in the event, a triumph. Confirmed by acclaim, he was ‘unanimously replaced in the Chair’. But it was not a good winter. ‘The cold Weather disagreed with me & I think paralysed all the activity of Science. Now the death of the late King [George III] & the dangerous indisposition of Geo IV has brought all things to a Stand Still.’40

  Yet still Banks schemed and dreamed with his protégés. He had arranged for young Lieutenant William Edward Parry to mount a polar expedition through Baffin Bay, to make one more attempt on the elusive North-West Passage, from the Arctic to the Pacific oceans. The twenty-eight-year-old Parry, manfully suppressing his unseamanlike nerves, had been summoned to one of the by-now legendary breakfasts at 32 Soho Square, and left a vivid record of the event and Banks’s bluff and hospitable style.

  At ten precisely Lady and Mrs [Sophia] Banks made their appearance, to whom I was introduced in form, and without waiting for Sir J (who was wheeled in, five minutes after) we sat down to breakfast. Sir J shook hands with me very cordially, said he was glad to become acquainted with a Son of Dr Parry’s, for whom he entertained the highest respect, and was glad to find I was nominated to serve on the Expedition to the North West. Having breakfasted, I wheeled Sir J into an anteroom which adjoins the library, and, without any previous remark, he opened the map which he had just constructed, and in which the situation is shown, of that enormous mass of ice which has lately disappeared from the Eastern coast of Greenland … He desired that I would come to him as often as I pleased (‘the oftener the better’) and read or take away any books I could find in his library that might be of service to me. He made me take his map with me … Having obtained carte blanche from Sir J, I shall of course go to his library without any ceremony, whenever I have occasions … 41

  Throughout his last spring Banks waited anxiously for reports of ‘our Polar adventurers’, and news of their progress. Parry’s specially constructed ship HMS Hecla, ‘fitted as strong as wood & Iron can make her’, would take two years to pass through the ice, and Banks was dead before this young protégé returned. Parry was the first to sail right through the perilous Lancaster Sound, and had named a remote and icy promontory at the far end, adjacent to the Beaufort Sea, Banks Island, after his patron.42

  One of Banks’s last pet projects was to find some brilliant young astronomer to set up a major observatory in South Africa, at the Cape, so the southern sky could be explored as William Herschel had explored the northern. He never gave up looking for this man, although in fact he was close by all the time.43

  Banks became very ill with jaundice in the spring of 1820. His last letters were written from Soho Square to Blagden in Paris. In one of them, very brief and signed ‘in haste’, he showed that he had lost none of his ranging interests. He commented on a new thermometer used to calculate the strength of alcoholic spirits; on the notorious ‘Lancashire Black Drop’ opium, ‘said to resemble Morphium very much and produce the same effects of Depression’; and on two delightful Newfoundland puppies he was sending to Blagden on the Paris mail coach, very eager to meet him, but waiting for a suitable passenger to take them over.

  They may never have met their new master. To Banks’s dismay and grief, Charles Blagden died, while drinking coffee with Berthollet and Laplace, a fortnight later. It was perhaps the greatest professional blow Banks had sustained since the death of his old shipmate and scientific comrade Daniel Solander.44

  In late May 1820 Sir Joseph Banks wrote in a firm hand from Soho Square to offer his resignat
ion to the Royal Society, being ‘so far impaired in sight and hearing’ as to be unable to carry out his presidential duties. The Society unanimously rejected his resignation. Possibly the last letter he read was from the Director of the Botanic Gardens at Glasgow. It enclosed a list of their most sought-after rare plants, including no fewer than ten in the family of Banksia. If he was childless, yet he had a numerous offspring.

  Sir Joseph Banks died on 19 June 1820, nursed by his faithful and long-suffering wife.45 With his death, after over forty years as President of the Royal Society, there was the sense that a distinctive era in British science had come to an end. Within a decade this had sharpened into a growing feeling of uncertainty and crisis.

  Young Humphry Davy

  Davy, recently arrived in London and beginning to make a stir as the new Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, and its star lecturer. Portrait by Henry Howard, oil on canvas, 1803.

  Rival safety lamps

  Coloured diagrams of rival safety lamps designed by George Stephenson and Sir Humphry Davy, modified versions c.1816-18. Though the shapes appear very similar, the glass chimney and ventilation perforations of the Stephenson are clearly different from the simple gauze cowl of the Davy.

  Sir Humphry Davy, President of the Royal Society

  Davy as the new young PRS, still the working man of science, immersed in his papers, and proudly displaying his safety lamp on the right. Portrait by Thomas Phillips, oil on canvas, 1821.

  Sir Humphry Davy, PRS

  The confident, dashing figure of the established President now outshines his safety lamp, which is set back in shadow on the left-hand side of the picture. Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, c.1821–22 or later.

  Scientific Researches! New Discoveries in PNEUMATICKS! or An Experimental Lecture on the Powers of Air

  Gillray cartoon of a lecture at the Royal Institution, demonstrating the supposed effects of laughing gas (nitrous oxide). On the podium are Dr Garnett administering gas, an impish Davy holding the bellows, and to the right Count Rumford eagerly observing proceedings. Unidentified figures in the audience may include Banks, Cavendish, Coleridge and members of Davy’s female fan club, several of whom are taking notes. Published by Hannah Humphrey, 1801.

  Dr Thomas Beddoes

  Beddoes was about to launch his great philanthropic research project, the Bristol Pneumatic Institute. Miniature by Sampson Towgood Roche, 1794.

  Edgeworth family portrait

  Detail from a group portrait of the extensive Edgeworth family by Adam Buck, 1787. Anna Beddoes aged sixteen, the only figure in right profile, is characteristically isolated from the rest of her family. Immediately below her are her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth and her stepmother; on the right her pretty brunette half-sister Honoraria.

  The Davy safety lamps

  Analytic drawings, based on those made by Michael Faraday, to illustrate Davy’s historic presentation of his safety lamp to the Royal Society in January 1816. They also show his later design of the platinum ‘self-lighting’ wick, and his protective refinements to the gauze cowl, in 1817. Published in Collected Works of Humphry Davy, Volume 6 (1840).

  John Buddle, mining engineer, with Davy lamp

  Picture published with Buddle’s newspaper obituary in Newcastle, still holding Davy’s lamp after thirty years.

  Three prototype safety lamps

  These rough prototype safety lamps, constructed in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, 1815–16, show the beautiful simplicity of Davy’s invention. Photograph, The Royal Society.

  An anonymous author

  A mysterious and glamorous unidentified female author, painted in the year of the reissue of the novel Frankenstein, when Mary Shelley was thirty-three and had published three other novels and several collections of essays. The locket indicates the precious memory of a loved one: Percy Shelley had been drowned nine years previously Portrait by Samuel John Stump, oil on canvas, 1831.

  Frankenstein and his Creature

  Frontispiece engraved for the 1831 edition of Frankenstein. Note the electrical apparatus above the Creature’s head, which is nowhere mentioned in the original novel but was inspired by the subsequent stage adaptations.

  Mary Shelley

  Portrait by Richard Rothwell, 1840, at the time when she was editing Shelley’s Collected Poems.

  Young John Herschel

  Portrait by Muller of John Herschel aged about seven in 1799, shortly before being sent to Eton. With the kind permission of John Herschel-Shorland.

  Caroline Herschel’s gold medal

  The Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal presented to Caroline Herschel in 1828. The medallion shows William Herschel’s forty-foot telescope, and the Society’s motto – ‘Let Whatever Shines be Noted’.

  Michael Faraday

  Faraday’s wide-eyed look of wonder particularly irritated Lady Davy, and delighted Coleridge. Drawing by William Brockedon, 1831.

  John Herschel

  Drawing by Henry William Pickersgill, c.1835.

  David Brewster

  Lithograph after Daniel Maclise, c.1830.

  Charles Babbage

  Detail from a daguerreotype by Antoine Claudet, c.1847-51.

  Charles Darwin

  Albumen print by Maull & Polyblank, c.1855.

  Mary Somerville

  Drawing by Sir Francis Leggatt Chantre, 1832.

  Louis de Bougainville

  A commemorative postage stamp to remind us that the French got there before Captain Cook.

  Charles Waterton

  The Yorkshire explorer Waterton brought back the stuffed bird (a Guiana red cotinga) and the distinctly resentful wild cat from his wanderings in South America. Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, 1824.

  Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science

  Nature – beautiful but increasingly vulnerable? Two bronzes by Louis Ernest Barrias, 1890.

  Isaac Newton

  Bronze statue by Eduardo Paolozzi, 1995, installed in the main courtyard of the new British Library, Euston Road, London. Based on an image by William Blake, and perhaps a memory of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

  Andromeda

  Image from the Hubble Telescope showing Andromeda, the nearest spiral galaxy or ‘island universe’, which is steadily approaching our Milky Way.

  5

  At first it seemed that Sir Humphry Davy, called back from his European wanderings, was the likeliest successor. Davy arrived in London on 16 June 1820, three days before the death of Banks. The presidency of the Royal Society was now vacant, and Davy saw this as the natural summit of his professional ambitions, as he told his mother in a confidential letter. He sent her a beautiful Italian shawl, posted down to Cornwall, and coral necklaces to his sisters. At this critical juncture he was alone in London, for Jane had remained in Paris. They were both aware that the second Continental tour had not healed the rifts in their marriage.

  Yet it was now more than ever important to establish a workable modus vivendi with Jane. Davy urged her to return, and never considered divorce, largely because of the Royal Society. In a curious way they were both trapped by the requirements of their public lives. They agreed to accompany each other to official events, but to travel and entertain separately as far as possible. With this in mind, they sold the house in Grosvenor Street early that summer, and bought an even larger one in Park Street, on the more fashionable side of Grosvenor Square, nearer Hyde Park. Here, with large suites of rooms and separate staircases, Jane and Davy could conduct more independent lives, but still present themselves as the first scientific couple of the nation.

  Davy threw all his energy into lobbying Fellows to support his candidature for the presidency, with private letters and discreet dinner invitations. His old friend Davies Giddy acted as his unofficial party manager. His high public profile, his knighthood and his reputation at home and abroad as the inventor of the safety lamp attracted what appeared to be an unassailable majority. Yet there were rumours of dissent. Ar
istocratic members were uneasy at Davy’s Cornish background (so different from Banks’s Eton and Oxford), while younger members, on the contrary, wondered if his social ambitions had overtaken his scientific ones.

  An alternative candidate emerged. The shy, mild, supremely dedicated and meticulous chemist Dr William Hyde Wollaston (who had been appointed caretaker President) found himself being championed by the young Turks, and especially the group of Cambridge men including Babbage, Whewell and John Herschel. It was felt that Wollaston represented British science at its purest, while Davy, for all his fame, was a contentious figure. John Herschel expressed this view vigorously in a private letter to Babbage in June 1820: ‘The reasons for wishing that Davy should be opposed are grounded solely on his personal character, which is said to be arrogant in the extreme, and impatient of opposition in his scientific views, and likely, if power were placed in his hand to oppose rising merit in his own line, and not patronise it in others, and in particular to involve the Royal Society in controversies of much personal acrimony with other learned European bodies.’

  These caveats made clear reference to Davy’s treatment of Faraday, and the awkward priority dispute with Gay-Lussac and the French Académie des Sciences.46 As Herschel did not know Davy personally at this stage, much of this was hearsay and gossip. Yet it was precisely the sort of thing that Wollaston dreaded, and, appalled at the notion of open wrangling between scientific men, he abruptly withdrew his candidature in favour of Davy. The vote was set for November 1820.