II.--THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTION, BRISTOL: 1798-1801 26
III.--THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTION, BRISTOL: 1798-1801 (_continued_) 54
V.--THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 90
VI.--THE ISOLATION OF THE METALS OF THE ALKALIS 110
VIII.--MARRIAGE--KNIGHTHOOD--“ELEMENTS OF CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY”--NITROGEN TRICHLORIDE--FLUORINE 155
XI.--DAVY AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY--HIS LAST DAYS 213
Humphry Davy, the eldest son of “Carver” Robert Davy and his wife Grace Millett, was born on the 17th December, 1778.[A] His biographers are not wholly agreed as to the exact place of his birth. In the “Lives of Philosophers of the Time of George III.” Lord Brougham states that the great chemist was born at Varfell, a homestead or “town-place” in the parish of Ludgvan, in the Mount’s Bay, where, as the registers and tombstones of Ludgvan Church attest, the family had been settled for more than two hundred years.
[A] In some biographical notices--e.g. in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, xcix. pt. ii. 9--the year is given as 1779.
Mr. Tregellas, in his “Cornish Worthies” (vol. i., p. 247), also leaves the place uncertain, hesitating, apparently, to decide between Varfell and Penzance.
According to Dr. John Davy, his brother Humphry was born in Market Jew Street, Penzance, in a house now pulled down, but which was not far from the statue of him that stands in front of the Market House of this town. Dr. Davy further states that Humphry’s parents removed to Varfell some years after his birth, when he himself was taken charge of by a Mr. Tonkin.
The Davys originally belonged to Norfolk. The first member of the family that settled in Cornwall was believed to have acted as steward to the Duke of Bolton, who in the time of Elizabeth had a considerable property in the Mount’s Bay. They were, as a class, respectable yeomen in fairly comfortable circumstances, who for generations back had received a lettered education. They took to themselves wives from the Eusticks, Adamses, Milletts, and other old Cornish families, and, if we may credit the testimony of the tombstones, had many virtues, were not overgiven to smuggling or wrecking, and, for the most part, died in their own beds.
The grandfather of Humphry, Edmund Davy, was a builder of repute in the west of Cornwall, who married well and left his eldest son Robert, the father of the chemist, in possession of the small copyhold property of Varfell, to which reference has already been made. Robert, although a person of some capacity, seems to have been shiftless, thriftless, and lax in habits. In his youth he had been taught wood-carving, and specimens of his skill are still to be seen in and about Penzance. But he practised his art in an irregular fashion, his energies being mainly spent in field sports, in unsuccessful experiments in farming, and in hazardous, and for the most part fruitless, ventures in mining. At his death, which occurred when he was forty-eight, his affairs were found to be sadly embarrassed; his widow and five children were left in very straitened circumstances, and Varfell had to be given up.