t deal of the fine gentleman about the
great chemist,--almost too fine for the quiet tenor of a working-life.
Those first brilliant successes of his professional career at the Royal
Institution of London, before he was turned of thirty, and in which his
youth, his splendid elocution, his happy discoveries, his attractive
manner, all made him the mark for distinguished attentions, went very
far, I fancy, to carry him to that stage of social intoxication under
which he was deluded into marrying a wealthy lady of fashion, and a
confirmed blue-stocking,--the brilliant Mrs. Apreece.

Little domestic comfort ever came of the marriage. Yet he was a
chivalrous man, and took the issue calmly. It is always in his
letters,--"My dear Jane," and "God bless you! Yours affectionately." But
these expressions bound the tender passages. It was altogether a
gentlemanly and a lady-like affair. Only once, as I can find, he forgets
himself in an honest repining; it is in a letter to his brother, under
date of October 30, 1823:[30]--"To add to my annoyances, I find my
house, as usual, after the arrangements made by the mistress of it,
without female servants; but in this world we have to suffer and bear,
and from Socrates down to humble mortals, domestic discomfort seems a
sort of philosophical fate."

If only Lady Davy could have seen this Xantippe touch, I think Sir
Humphry would have taken to angling in some quiet country-place for a
month thereafter!

And even when affairs grow serious with the Baronet, and when, stricken
by the palsy, he is loitering among the mountains of Styria, he
writes,--"I am glad to hear of your perfect restoration, and with health
and the society of London, _which you are so fitted to ornament and
enjoy_, your '_viva la felicita_' is much more secure than any hope
belonging to me."

And again, "You once _talked_ of passing _this_ winter in Italy; but I
hope your plans will be entirely guided by the state of your health and
feelings. Your society would undoubtedly be a very great resource to me,
but I am so well aware of my own present unfitness for society that I
would not have you risk the chance of an uncomfortable moment on my
account."

The dear Lady Jane must have had a _penchant_ for society to leave the
poor palsied man to tumble into his tomb alone!

Yet once again, in the last letter he ever writes, dated Rome, March,
1829, he gallantly asks her to join him; it begins,--"I am still alive,
though