White Cottage

The ravings of genius

As we trace Underwood’s friendship with Davy we shall have to acknowledge that Davy was a friend who sometimes found it hard to make and sustain social relationships; when he was ill at ease it was not difficult to detect; his adherence to friends could not always be counted on. This was something his younger brother John could not acknowledge and he felt it was his role in life to protect his brother’s image from any hint of frailty and never to admit that he was only human. Davy’s first biographer, JA Paris [John Ayrton Paris, FRS (1785-1856)], who sought help from many who had known Davy, approached Underwood. He was able to supply him with anecdotes from his memory, and sometimes from his journal, and from copies of letters. Paris included many of them in his biography [John Ayrton Paris: The Life of Sir Humphry Davy 2vol (1831) These anecdotes in no way detract from Davy’s genius as a poet, a naturalist or, most importantly, as a leading scientist of his generation. But John Davy was, nevertheless, very angry and in his own biography of his brother [John Davy: Memoirs of The Life of Sir Humphry Davy 2 vol (1839)]  takes both Underwood and Paris severely to task for revealing the details of his brother’s life that are recorded by Paris. Such loud protestations proclaim the partisanship of his work and warn the reader that he will have to decide carefully what credence to give to these anecdotes. On this occasion, many of the anecdotes included by Paris are a chief source of information about the early years of Underwood’s life and I shall issue no further health warnings about their veracity except to support them when there is evidence from elsewhere. I shall try not to present Underwood as the complete paragon of virtue, which he was not; and we all must keep in mind the temptation for Underwood to represent himself in as good a light as possible by the way he tells Ayrton Paris his part in the story of Humphry Davy. But Underwood was an important source for Davy’s early life up to his start at the Royal Institution and, later, for Davy’s first ‘Grand Tour’ of the continent which he began in 1813. The works of Ayrton Paris, and to a lesser extent of John Davy, provide details of Underwood’s life not to be found elsewhere.