Faraday: The Life

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There was a huge column of smoke, a foul and dangerous stink of sulphur, and flames licking out of the ground ahead of them. ‘When silence was made,’ Faraday writes, ‘the roaring of the flames came fearfully over the ear.’ Above the noise, Sir Humphry pointed out the yellowish iron chloride encrusting the lip of the crater. They scraped some away to take home, but had to run for their lives as the wind changed and brought the whole poisonous, suffocating cloud down upon them. From a place of safety Sir Humphry resumed his lecture, and explained that the steam which they could also see was water that in other circumstances would have run off down the mountainside as streams.

Their servant boy pulled some eggs from his bag, cracked them and fried them on a stone. Then he set out some bread, wine and glasses, and the travellers sat down together in this poisoned landscape to eat a hearty lunch. The ground shimmered in the heat; red, white and yellow salts danced in the wavering atmosphere around them. On this extraordinary mountain Faraday witnessed the action of a gigantic chemical retort, much as an ant, wandering across the Royal Institution laboratory bench, might observe a melting pot with Sir Humphry and his assistant in attendance.

They went back to their hotel that evening, but returned to the mountain late the next afternoon, to see the spectacle of a grumbling volcano at night. As they reached the summit, it became dark very quickly, and

the flames … issued forth in whirlwinds, and rose many yards above the mouth of the volcano. The flames were of a light red colour, and at one time, when I had the most favourable view of the mouth, appeared to issue from an orifice about three yards, or rather more, over.

The party was rather more organised on this second trip up Vesuvius. They had brought a good dinner with them, which they spread out in the sulphurous light.

Cloths were now laid on the smoking lava, and bread, chickens, turkey, cheese, wine, water and eggs roasted on the mountain brought forth, and a species of dinner taken at this place … Old England was toasted, and ‘God save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ sung; and then two very entertaining Russian songs by a gentleman, a native of that country, the music of which was peculiar and very touching.

As they picked their way back down the mountain, some of the locals who had attached themselves to the party skittered on ahead, sending lumps of lava and ash flying, shouting and yelling in the darkness as they bumped into one another and ran uncontrollably downhill. But Faraday could not leave so quickly. He paused and turned and looked back. There he was rewarded with the exquisite sight of the flaming mountain, and ‘the long black cloud, barely visible by the starlight, appeared as a road in the heavens’.

There is no record in Faraday’s Journal or letters of how the party spent the rest of their days in Naples, but we do know that they were entertained in the highest society, the Queen of Naples presenting Davy with a pot of ancient pigment for analysis.

The year was drawing on, and they wanted to escape the heat of Italy to summer in Switzerland. They headed quickly back to Rome, where on 24 May Davy may have witnessed Pope Pius VII entering Rome in triumph through the Porto del Popolo. Sir Humphry suggested he was present at the triumph when he wrote years later, in the voice of The Stranger in Dialogue III of Consolations in Travel, that he was ‘with almost the whole population of Rome’ as the Pope was welcomed back to his city.

But was this just Davy’s imagination at play? And was Faraday there too? This was a moment of great historical importance, and it is a curious coincidence that the missing pages of the Journal should straddle a day on which we might, perhaps vainly, hope for a clear reflection from Faraday of his attitude towards the Pope, Roman Catholicism and the cataclysmic events around him.

Heading further north, for Geneva, they next appear on 3 June at Terni, fifty miles from Rome. Faraday writes seductively about the two-hundred-foot-high waterfall at Terni, which, viewed from its lip,

calls the attention with an immense roaring. The rocks are perpendicular and the water falls nearly free in a stream of the purest white. The force with which it descends causes a considerable quantity to be dispersed in the air in mists and fine rain; and this produced the beautiful phenomena of a rainbow in the utmost perfection.

They walked up to Lake Velino through air scented with ‘woodbine, geraniums, myrtles, thyme, mint, peppermint etc’, and took a boat and rowed about on the lake, which was ‘surrounded by mountains of fine form and situation, and the views are delicious’. All the time the geology of the country was in their minds, and Sir Humphry gave his customary discourse: ‘the base of this part [of the lake] is travertine or calcareous matter deposited by water, which appeared in strata and as stalactites; in many places agates appeared in the limestone’. At the bottom of the falls ‘the masses of travertine were enormous, forming ledges over the present streams and appearing in various singular forms’.

Passing through Milan on 17 June Faraday met one of the giants of eighteenth-century science, Alessandro Volta, ‘a hale elderly man bearing the red ribbon, and very free in conversation’.

The red ribbon was the Légion d’Honneur, given to Volta by Napoleon. Davy’s account of Volta is at odds with Faraday’s. Davy remembered him as being

at that time advanced in years, – I think nearly seventy, and in bad health. His conversation was not brilliant; his views rather limited, but marking great ingenuity. His manners were perfectly simple. He had not the air of a courtier, or even of a man who had seen the world. Indeed, I can say generally of the Italian savants, that, though none of them had much dignity or grace of manner, yet they were all free from affectation.

Although we have a graphic description of the party crossing the Alps on their first arrival in Italy, there is no note of their second crossing. This was the much longer journey over the Simplon Pass, clear of snow by now, to Geneva, where they were to spend the summer.

For three months they lived in a villa on the banks of Lake Geneva, the guest of Charles de la Rive, Professor of Chemistry at Geneva, and there Sir Humphry spent the days fishing, writing and enjoying ‘the charm of the best society (chiefly English)’: ‘Our time has been employed lately in fishing and shooting and many a Quail has been killed in the plains of Génève and many a trout and grayling have been pulled out of the Rhône.’

Faraday performed the valet’s job of loading Sir Humphry’s gun, but when not out hunting they became scientist and assistant, working together on iodine and the prism: ‘[Davy] has lately been making experiments on the prismatic spectrum at Mr Pictet’s. These are not yet perfected but from the use of very delicate air thermometers it appears that the rays producing most heat are certainly out of the spectrum and beyond the red rays.’

During this stay de la Rive noticed the special genius of the young man who accompanied Sir Humphry. Lady Davy expected Faraday to eat with the servants, and sent him down to do so; but de la Rive refused to allow him to go, said he would also eat with the servants if Faraday did, and brought him back upstairs to share his conversation.

For his own pleasure, Faraday wrote extensive notes, of which only the part about his experiments on glow-worms to determine the nature of their light survives.

His letters home give the clearest account of his feelings and activities in Geneva during the summer. To his mother he reflected on the celebrations in London following the fall of Napoleon: ‘Things run irregularly in the great world; and London is now I suppose full of feasting and joy and honoured by the presence of the greatest personages in Europe.’

To Robert Abbott he describes the patriotic feelings he holds as an Englishman abroad at a time of victory:

I valued my country highly before I left it, but I have been taught by strangers how to value it properly, and its worth has been pointed out to me in a foreign land … Englishmen are considered every where as a band of brothers, actuated by one heart, and one mind and treading steadily & undeviating in the path of honour, courage & glory … [T]he English are respected, received & caressed every where for the character of their country; may she ever deserve that character …