Sir Humphry Loves Anna

July 27, 1826

My dearest aunt, I wrote you at length, in my entry of July 10, news of Sir Humphry Davy. His visit to our estate was, as reported, most delightful. He has not been well having suffered a mild incident of apoplexy. He wished he might have visited you in Blackcastle but was concerned the journey would prove too taxing. I am sure he enjoyed the short summer rides throughout County Longford. Like yours, our countryside is so very verdant this time of year. This letter is a separate epistle for reasons that will become apparent. I would ask that you destroy it for the benefit of Anna’s memory and more importantly, for Charles Henry.

For years, you and I have suspected something more than platonic between Sir Humphry and Anna. It seems so very long-ago when Thomas Beddoes and father brought Humphry to the Bristol Pneumatic Institution as superintendent. My memory is Thomas and Anna had been married about four years. When they married, Anna was an immature twenty-one, the baby in the first of father’s four families. With mother’s complications and her passing with the fever from Anna’s birth, we siblings spoiled and protected our little Anna. I suppose father’s almost instant marriage after mother’s passing caused all of us to bond even closer. London was wonderful. We all loved living in the shadow of the “new” British Museum in Bloomsbury. We grew close to our aunts there, each who had, during mother’s difficult pregnancy and father’s sojourn to France, become a second mother. So many distressing events – mother’s death, a new stepmother, and then the uprooting to father’s estate in rural Ireland. We siblings leaned heavily on one another.

I remember you commenting at Anna’s wedding that as young as she was, Thomas seemed old, well beyond his thirty-four years. As those final years of the last century ticked away, we wondered if Anna would ever conceive. We dared to ponder how much effort either were putting into the deed. Thomas was a wonderful man, brilliant, industrious, but he never gave much love. Likely, Anna Seward and my stepmother infected Anna and me with ideas about a wife’s equality that are surely “right” thinking but too progressive and advanced for even our century. Anna wrote me that as patient as Thomas was when listening to her, his condescension was always evident. "He was older. He was wiser. He was more erudite. He was male."

When I first met Humphry Davy, he was a strapping young man. It was hard for me to imagine that father and Thomas had hired this youngster to lead the institute. That day I saw a burgeoning chemist, a decade my junior, with a Cornish accent delivering English that often rivaled the most unintelligible tenant from Edgeworthstown. We know now that he is a genius. My observations of that young man in no way detracts from the man we see today as baronet and President of the Royal Society. We both read often of the countless scientific medals he has received from across Europe for his inventions and discoveries. All the honors underscore how great his accomplishment rising from the humble origins of a woodcarver’s son.

Anna, in her letters to me, revealed something more. Not only was Humphry at his prime and virile, but she also discovered the romantic, the naturalist, and the poet. Verse and science feel incompatible. Evidently, not for Humphry. They took long walks along the River Avon, toured Bristol Cathedral, and explored the legends, caves, and footprints of the giants Goram and Ghyston. It was a difficult time for Anna in her marriage and I suppose Humphry provided a bit of escape. Thomas blamed Anna when no children were forthcoming. Men are such insecure creatures. She wrote to me often before that first baby was conceived that her “infertility” was the source of many squabbles and worse. You and I have often hypothesized where the trouble really lay those eight years.

Thomas and his clinic had offered so much hope to all those who suffered from consumption. He genuinely felt for their loved ones. In our family alone it is heartbreaking to think of stepmother Honora, and then her little Honora, and then our stepmother Elizabeth. All succumbed to the wasting disease. For Anna, Elizabeth’s sickness and death were a particularly hard blow. From the time Anna was seven, Elizabeth was the only mother she knew. The irony is Thomas was powerless to do anything. We had in the family a physician who specialized in revolutionary consumption treatment. Yet, we watched our stepmother die. It must have taken its toll on their marriage. Thinking back, how insane for us to believe in the quackery of nitrous oxide as a cure. However, it was hard to be objective when so many we loved were dying. Even the ever-rational James Watt worshiped at Beddoes’ altar of gaseous inhalation. He could not live with the helplessness of watching his little girl, Jessy, waste away. We were all, so many, drowning in tears and “grabbing at straws”. It was only two years for Humphry, cajoled by critics, to conclude the futility and abandon the mission. He left Bristol and moved on to London.

I wondered from time to time how this handsome man, increasingly a public figure, escaped the marital noose. You may remember, auntie, there was much gossip during his renowned lecture series. He had so many female admirers, or, suggested by cynics, his preferences were otherwise. Anna included few epistolary references to Humphry during those early years of our new century. She was finally pregnant. I believe, despite his expressed views, so forward-thinking, Thomas saw broodmare as her sole purpose. I must confess I am content with my “spinster” ways.

As fast as Humphry’s star was rising, Thomas’ was falling. Thomas, once so gracious and kind, was increasingly irritable and sickly. The marriage was like too many, loveless, held together by duty. Anna had hoped that the arrival of the baby would bring joy and brightness into their dull existence at Clifton. Briefly, Thomas was delighted in his new son with shared visage, but according to Anna, he quickly returned to his melancholy ways.

My dearest auntie, the baby’s naming carried two important elements. Thomas Lovell is an obvious tribute to the baby’s father, and your mother’s prestigious family. Also, our half-brother, Lovell was Anna’s favorite. She, who was everyone’s baby sister, could be his “big sister”. Her two-year advantage was enough for her to make that claim, even if he chafed from time to time. Lovell was living in London in 1808, lecturing on botany and waiting for our very healthy father to die. Biding his time to return to Ireland as lord of the manor seems so much the waste. I have criticized primogeniture often for its “maleness” or should I say “femalelessness”? The best criticism of this inheritance practice knows no gender. Primogeniture promotes laziness in the heir and resentment from all the others. I have heard the argument that the single heir whether designated by custom or law motivates industry in the other siblings. Alternatively, I would suggest, inspires poisoning. I digress, auntie. [Reader: It is worth noting Maria would have inherited all if females were eligible.]

The coincidence of both being in England, Lovell invited Anna to his Mayfair home. Unbeknownst to any of us, revealed by Sir Humphry in our most recent discussion, Anna and Humphry had been sharing a poetic correspondence for a decade. He may have left Bristol, but he never left Anna, nor she him. He maintains he was a perfect gentleman during the Bristol years, too naïve and conventional to be otherwise. London would prove a different venue.

Lovell’s London residence was one of those neat brick four-story dwellings just off St. James Street. It is a short carriage ride from his house to the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street. Auntie, I do not know if you recall, but Albemarle was one of the first streets in the world to be designated a one-way street to deal with traffic congestion. The congestion’s cause was our same Sir Humphry Davy, whose lectures were so well attended as to bring carriage traffic to a halt, coming or going. There were no lectures the day Anna boarded Lovell’s coach on a chilly afternoon. Sir Humphry said he gave Anna a tour of the entire Institution. He then dismissed his laboratory research assistants for the rest of the day. Anna and Humphry shared a pot of tea. He remembered talking more than she. He was so excited about all he had achieved in the past few months. He told her about the wonders of electrolysis and splitting compounds into their elements. It sounded like alchemy when he was telling me his story. I imagine it was the same for Anna. Yet, she had shared a home with a man of science for fifteen years, so perhaps, she was less amazed. Sir Humphry sensed she was bored. He stopped talking and walked to the cabinet. He pulled out a lead box, opened the box, and pulled out an object wrapped in a simple cloth. He carefully unfolded the cloth, which revealed to Anna a lump of white metal. He picked up the chunk with a pair of tongs and carefully laid it on one of the asbestos mats that father’s friend, Mr. Wedgewood, had donated to the Royal Society. Sir Humphry then proceeded to pour what was left in the teapot onto the piece of metal. It began to burn the most brilliant emerald green. Anna gasped and told him that it was magical. She felt transported back to Ireland and those greenest hills that surround our home in Edgeworthstown. He left it burning. Anna continued to take it all in. He was beginning to explain that it was the element barium, he had most recently isolated. She silenced him with the longest, deepest kiss he had ever received. He remembers everything from that afternoon, but shared only what made the apparent, obvious.

Anna left London and returned to Bristol. Humphry and Anna continued their correspondence, exchanging their love poetry. 1808 turned out to be a bittersweet year. You recall, her pregnancy went smoothly. Charles Henry was born without incident. Thomas, ill and increasingly despondent, died on Christmas Eve. Whether he knew the truth of Charles Henry, I cannot discern. I asked Sir Humphry why he did not pursue Anna, now a widow. I am certain I saw a tear come to his eye. His simplest of replies, “I did. For four years, I did. And then I didn’t.” You will recall he married Jane in 1812. Theirs has always been a difficult marriage. I suppose it is impossible to love someone as much as he loved Anna and then be a good husband to another.

Since Sir Humphry’s confiding, I have wondered why Anna did not accept his proposals. My theories are as useless as unprovable. However, this is what I believe. From her first toddler’s step, Anna was exposed to ideas about a woman’s equality in marriage. The women who advocated these radical proposals, heresy to so many, are, with few exceptions, unmarried. Anna brought these theories to her own alliance with Thomas. Mostly it netted her misery. In Sir Humphry, she had loved a man and expressed that love in every way she thought possible – poetry, companionship, intimacy. They had been happy. Charles Henry was the fulfillment of that love. She was unwilling to compromise happiness for a social arrangement where even the most open-minded of men, Thomas, for example, cannot rise above norms. Her experience proved that marriage and love are very different concepts. She was unwilling to forfeit the latter by reliving the former.

Your devoted niece,

Maria