Humphry Davy's sexual chemistry

Configurations

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 15-41

  Golinski, Jan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042541279     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.1999.0007     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
2. Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: Tlie World of High Energy Physicists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), chap. 3.
3. William Buckland to Roderick Murchison, Match 27, 1832, quoted in Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years oftlie British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 150.
4. Londa Schiebinger, Tlie Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).
5. Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), chap. 6.
6. For the "separate spheres" thesis, see, for example, Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of Hie French Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).
7. For critical discussion, see Dena Goodman, "Public Sphere and Private Life: Towards a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime," History and TlieoryZl (1992): 1-20;
8. Lawrence E. Klein, "Gender and the Public/Private Distinction in the Eighteenth Century: Some Questions about Evidence and Analytic Procedure," Eighteenth-Century Studies 29:1 (1995): 97-109.
9. For the connection with popular science, see Roger Cooler and Stephen Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture," History of Science 32 (1994): 237-267.
10. Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Säence, 1789-1979 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987).
11. For a discussion of connections between masculine scientific identity and domestic partnership, see Paul White, "Science at Home: The Space between Henrietta Heathorn and Thomas Huxley," History of'Science 34 (1996): 33-56.
12. Schiebinger, Mind Has No Sex? (above, n. 4);
13. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from tlie Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), chap. 5;
14. Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), chaps. 1, 2.
15. Lorraine Daston, "The Naturalized Female Intellect," Science in Context S (1992): 209-235.
16. Anne K. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender (New York: Routledge, 1993), chap 1;
17. Christine Battersby, "Genius and 'the Female Sex' in the Eighteenth Century," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 264 (1989): 909-912.
18. Malcolm Nicholson, "Historical Introduction," and Jason Wilson, "Introduction," in Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (London: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. ix-xxxiv, xxxv-Ixiv, esp. pp. xx, xxxix-xliv.
19. On masculine science, see also Michael Shortland, "Darkness Visible: Underground Culture in the Golden Age of Geology," History of Science 32 (1994): 1-61, esp. pp. 38-43.
20. David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992);
21. Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chaps. 6, 7;
22. Humphry Davy, Consolations in Travel: Or the Last Days of a Philosopher, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1838), chap. 4.
23. See, especially, Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," in idem. Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 28-50.
24. Alleen Douglas, "Popular Science and the Representation of Women: Fontenelle and After," Eighteentli-Century Life 18:2 (1994): 1-14;
25. Geoffrey Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995).
26. Humphry Davy, "An Account of Some Experiments on Galvanic Electricity Made in the Theatre of the Royal Institution," in The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, ed. John Davy, 9 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1839-40), 2: 211-213 (hereafter cited as Works of Davy).
27. Humphry Davy, "A Discourse Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry," in The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy ibid., 2:311-326 (quote on p. 319).
28. This argument is set out in much greater detail in Golinski, Science as Public Culture (above, n. 12), chap. 7.
29. [Louis Simond], Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 and 1811, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: George Ramsay, 1815), 1: 34.
30. See, for example, [Robert Southey], Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), 3: 284-285.
31. Works of Davy, 8: 353-355;
32. John Davy, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836), 1:210-211.
33. Leonard Homer toj. A. Murray, November 15,1804, quoted in Henry BenceJones, The Royal Institution: Its Founder and Its First Professors (London: Longmans, Green, 1871), p. 264.
34. [Jane Marcel], Conversations on Chemistry in Which the Elements of That Science are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1806), p. 2.
35. Conversations on Chemistry in which the Elements of that Science Are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments Ibid., p. 3.
36. Conversations on Chemistry in which the Elements of that Science Are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments Ibid., p. 2.
37. See also: Greg Myers, "Jane Marcel's Conversations on Chemistry: Fictionality, Demonslration, and a Forum for Popular Science," In Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, ed. Barbara Gales and Ann Shleir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 43-60.
38. Works of Davy, 2:325.
39. Works of Davy Ibid., p. 326.
40. For Davy's earlier flirtalion wilh materialism, see Golinski, Science as Public Culture (above, n. 12), p. 172.
41. Simond, Journal (above, n. 18), 2:151.
42. For Davy's self-modeling in relation to prevailing notions of "genius," see Trevor H. Levere, "Humphry Davy, The Sons of Genius,' and the Idea of Glory," in Science and the Sons of Genius: Studies on Humphry Davy, ed. Sophie Forgan (London: Science Reviews, 1980), pp. 33-57;
43. Molly Lefebure, "Humphry Davy: Philosophic Alchemist," in The Coleridge Connection: Essays for Thomas McFarland, ed. Richard Gravil and Molly Lefebure (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 83-110;
44. Christopher Lawrence, "The Power and the Glory: Humphry Davy and Romanticism," in Romanticism and the Sciences, ed. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 213-227.
45. Henry Brougham, review of Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture, Edinburgh Review 11 (1807-8): 390-398 , esp. p. 390;
46. Henry Brougham, idem, review of Davy's 1807 Bakerian Lecture, Edinburgh Revinv 12 (1808): 394-401, esp. p. 399.
47. Thomas Paine, Tlie Rights of Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), p. 80.
48. Tunes (London), October 19, 1813, p. 3.
49. John Bull Magazine and Literary Recorder 1 (1824): 89.
50. J. Davy, Memoirs of Davy (above, n. 20), 1: 136.
51. Memoirs of Davy Ibid., 2: 387.
52. C. P. Snow, Tlie Search, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 20.
53. J. G. Crowther, British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1940), 1: IS.
54. British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century Ibid., pp. 72, 71.
55. British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century Ibid., p. 65.
56. Trevor H. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Early NineteentliCentury Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 20-35.
57. Coleridge to Davy, February 3, 1801, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71), 2: 671. Also see letter of May 20, 1801, pp. 733-735.
58. Coleridge to Davy, Februarys, 1801, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ibid., p. 671.
59. Coleridge to Robert Southey, July 22,1801, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ibid., p. 745. Also see letter of August 12, 1801, pp. 750-752.
60. Coleridge to Samuel Purkis, February 17, 1803, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ibid., p. 927.
61. Coleridge to Southey, January 13, 1804, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ibid., p. 1028.
62. In letters from 1799, Southey had described Davy as "a miraculous young man," whose discovery of nitrous oxide had invented a new pleasure and who was destined to achieve the first rank among chemists. (I am grateful to Professor Margaret C.Jacob for these references from the Southey correspondence in the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif, [manuscripts HM 4821-4827].)
63. Coleridge to Southey, December 14, 1807, in Letters of Coleridge, 3: 41-43.
64. J. J. Tobin, Journal of a Tour Made in the Years 1828-1829 through Styria, Carniola, and Italy, whilst Accompanying the Late Sir Humphry Davy (London: W. S. Orr, 1832), pp. iv-v, 9, 59, 241-242.
65. Coleridge to Southey, October 21, 1801, in Letters of Coleridge, 2:768.
66. Letters of Coleridge Ibid., p. 768.
67. It is perhaps worth noting the parallel here with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), whose eponymous hero is based, at least partly, on Davy. Recent-especially feminist-critics have noted how Frankenstein's obsession with his experimental researches and their product (the monster) is destructive of his prospects for reproduction through the normal route of sexual relations. See, especially, Anne K. Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Routledge, 1989), esp. chap. 6.
68. Another friend of Davy's from this period, Gregory Watt, was the center of a circle of male friends whose letters indicate that they were engaged in homosexual activities. This is the subject of a chapter in a forthcoming study of British radicalism in the 1790s by Margaret Jacob and Lynn Hunt. I thank Professors Jacob and Hunt for allowing me to read their work.
69. John Bull Magazine 1 (1824): 89-92 (quote on p. 90).
70. Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: J. M. Dent, n.d.), p. 204.
71. Ellen Moers, The Dandy: Bmmmell to Beerbohm (New York: Viking, 1960), esp. chaps. 1,2.
72. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (above, n. 51), 205.
73. James Eli Adams, "The Hero as Spectacle: Carlyle and the Persistence of Dandyism," in Victorian Literature and the Victorian Visual Imagination, ed. Carol T. Christ and John O. Jordan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 213-232.
74. Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," in Selected Writings, ed. Alan Shelston (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 66.
75. Examiner, no. 304, October 24, 1813, p. 675.
76. Examiner Ibid. See also Times (London), October 19,1813, p. 3; April 5,1814, p. 3.
77. John Bull Magazine 1 (1824): 89.
78. John Bull Magazine Ibid., p. 91.
79. Tunes (London), October 19, 1813, p. 3.
80. See Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Carol H. Poston (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. 204-212, 235-237.
81. Moers, Dandy (above, n. 52), pp. 36-37.
82. John Bull Magazine 1 (1824): 91.
83. Humphry Davy to John Davy, October 30, 1823, and January 30, 1824, in John Davy, Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy (London: John Churchill, 1858), pp. 242-243.
84. Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, 1816, quoted in W. M. Parker, "Lady Davy in Her Letters," Quarterly Review 300 (1962): 82.
85. J. Davy, Fragmentary Remains (above, n. 64), pp. 142-143.
86. John Ayrton Paris, Tlie Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols. (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1831),
87. as quoted in Humphrey Jennings, Patidaemonium: Tlie Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 134.
88. Innuendo of this kind may be evidence of the prevailing climate of "homophobia," which some scholars have inferred from a high rate of prosecutions for buggery and some celebrated scandals. On this topic, see Louis Crompton, Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), chap. 1;
89. Arthur N. Gilbert, "Sexual Deviance and Disaster during the Napoleonic Wars," Albion 9 (1977): 98-113.
90. For more on the scandals, see lain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chap. 10.
91. Letter by "I. S.," Tunes (London), October 21,1813, p. 2.
92. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
93. On the connection between these cultural changes and the portrayal of fops on the stage, see Susan Staves, "A Few Kind Words for the Fop," Studies in English Literature 22 (1982): 413-428.