Читать книгу Faraday: The Life - James Hamilton - Страница 13

On the way to Rome Sir Humphry became more buoyant than he seems to have been on other parts of the journey, and he spoke with excitement about the geological features of the landscape. The double success of the iodine discovery and the burning of diamonds must have loosened his tongue, for the geological information that Faraday writes down in the Journal is fuller and more detailed than any earlier notes. They were also, now, well away from the French.

They spent the first night in Siena, where Faraday visited the cathedral, a building ‘of great magnitude and covered externally with black and white marble’.¹ Some of the designs in the mosaic floor were uncovered for him, and he also looked at illuminated missals in the Libreria Piccolomini. South of Siena, where they spent a second night, they passed through a volcanic ridge of the Apennines and stopped to climb one of the peaks.

The summit was lava & pumice of various kinds, below under the lava basalt occurred, split irregularly in a perpendicular direction. There were many cavities in the basalt, some of them contained very minute cubical crystals of a black colour and opaque. In others were larger semi-transparent white and prismatical crystals. These Sir H Davy thought to have been formed by the cooling of a substance rendered fluid by heat.²

They travelled on to Lago di Bolsena, the largest volcanic lake in Italy, past ‘mountains singularly ridged and rifted on their south and western sides, as if cut into their present form by enormous torrents’.³

As they made their way down into the Tiber valley, they looked out anxiously and with growing excitement for their first glimpse of Rome. Then, coming round a turn of a hill, there was the dome of St Peter’s and, surrounding it, gradually the eloquent panorama of Rome revealed itself. They clattered down into the city, through the Porta del Popolo, and took the Via del Babuino to their hotel in the Piazza di Spagna.

Faraday got away as soon as he could for his first stroll. He crossed the Ponte Sant’ Angelo and visited St Peter’s, ‘of which more anon if I am able’.⁴ This was Easter week, and the cathedral was being prepared for the celebrations. He went back to St Peter’s the next day, Thursday, 7 April, to see the spectacle.

Towards the evening the illumination of the churches for which preparations had been making for two days took place and St Peter’s presented a magnificent sight. A large cross was suspended over the middle of the aisle, nearly under the centre of the dome, and illuminated in a brilliant and perfect manner on all sides. The effect it produced on the mind on entering the church was singular and powerful. In the chapel of our saviour was an illumination consisting of above two thousand wax candles of great size, and everything was arranged for the reception of the pious or curious. The various religious societies in the city came in procession by turns with lighted tapers and chaunting to give homage, and the whole city appeared engaged in the service of religion. On the Saturday after at about 10 o’clock a general firing of all the pistols, guns &c &c in the town commenced, and continued for nearly two hours, the people taking this method of expressing their joy for the resurrection.⁵

Overwhelmed as he was by the religious spectacle, Faraday’s interest was taken more by the antiquities than by the buildings which he had described earlier as ‘modern work’.⁶ There is genuine amazement in his voice at the size, extent and magnificence of ancient Rome. Though he may have had ample opportunity in Riebau’s shop to read pre-war histories, such as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the perspective of Faraday’s generation as it reached adulthood was one of rebuilding, reconstruction, analysis and discovery. Michael Faraday was one of the first Englishmen to enter Rome after Napoleon’s abdication, and he saw the city with the eyes of a young subject of a newly triumphant nation. Travelling through France, he had been a licensed visitor to an enemy country; in Italy he was a welcomed and admired representative of a liberating power. This gave him an altered perspective, and as a young man of modest manner and enquiring outlook, he handled the change in viewpoint with courtesy and tact. There was also a new moral ingredient: Faraday’s generation looked at the ruins of ancient Rome in the light of their experience of the new Europe, which had itself suffered ruin during thirty years of war.

Faraday tended to set off on his sightseeing walks at about eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and to stay out until four in the afternoon. On one morning he started by climbing the Antonine Column ‘to trace out from it the route I wished to go’.⁷ He walked to the Piazza di Pietra, to the Church of the Gesù, and up the hill to the Capitol, where he saw the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius: ‘the air and energy of the horse is wonderful: it is considered as the most perfect work of its kind’.⁸ Then he slowly picked his way across the Forum, and walked on to the Colosseum, to the Campo Vaccino and the Palace of the Caesars to San Giovanni in Laterano, ‘a magnificent piece of architecture, and within abounds in riches paintings and statues’. He was now near the easternmost part of the city walls, approaching Porta Maggiore, ‘formerly part of the aqueduct of Tiberius Claudius, but being the part under which passed the public road it was formed in a more magnificent and imposing manner than the other arches’. Turning for home, Faraday noted the ruins of the Temple of Minerva Medica, and walked up Via Merulana to Santa Maria Maggiore. He was ‘astonished’ by the baths of Trajan,⁹ some of the finest of the baths which

inclosed temples, perystiles, games, the schools of philosophers, libraries, theatres, alleys, arbours &c, indeed everything that the arts could contribute to their magnificence, their convenience or their luxury … There were at Rome twelve public baths or therma, and 860 were counted which were private. In the reign of Nero their number was almost infinite.

That was about enough for one day, and ‘turning off took my road home hungry, thirsty and fatigued’. But at eight o’clock the next morning he was off again, this time in the other direction, towards the Pantheon, south to the Teatro di Marcello and, via the Arch of Janus Quadrifons and the Cloaca Maxima, to the Circus Maximus, the baths of Caracalla and the start of the Appian Way. The Journal breaks off in mid-sentence just as Faraday writes ‘I rambled along …’;¹⁰ and so he probably did for the rest of that day. These are entirely manageable expeditions for a man of his age, and it was early April, not high summer, but nevertheless the assiduity, energy and single-minded determination to get about on his ‘rambles’ reflects the importance to Faraday of seeing as much of Rome as he possibly could.

The letter to Abbott that Faraday began in Rome on 1 May he continued in Geneva nearly three months later. There he reflected on what he had seen in Italy, and with the benefit of distance wrote:

… the things [in Rome] would affect anyone, and that mind must be dull indeed that is not urged to think & think again on these astonishing remains of the Romans when they appear in sight at every corner … The two things here most striking are the Coliseum and St Peter’s, and one is not more worthy of the ancients than the other is of the moderns. The Coliseum is a mighty ruin & indeed so is Rome & so are the Romans, & it is almost impossible to conceive how the hardy warlike race which conquered the globe has degenerated into modern, effeminate, idle Italians. St Peter’s appears to have been erected on the plan of some fairy tale, for every luxury, every ornament and every embellishment & species of embellishment have been employed in its erection. Its size is mighty, it is mountainous, its architecture elegant, its materials costly. They consist of Marbles of every hue & every kind of mosaics, statues, casts, bronzes, Jewels, Gold & silver not spread [?] sparingly but shiny & glittering in every part.¹¹

There is a break in the record of Faraday’s weeks in Rome, because the first draft of the Journal is lost, and something must have distracted him when he was writing it up years later, for he never returned to finish it. His first biographer Bence Jones, however, who was working from the original draft, picks up the story fifteen days later on 5 May. There was not much science done in Rome by Sir Humphry and Faraday, by all accounts. After a long early-morning walk on 15 April from the Piazza di Spagna to the Colosseum, the Forum and the Campo Vaccino and back again, Faraday had breakfast and went with Sir Humphry to the Accademia dei Lincei in the Palazzo Corsini to experiment with charcoal. This was probably to continue ideas Davy had developed during the burning of the diamonds, but ‘in two experiments the globes burst and the results were lost’.¹² Just before they left Rome they went together to the home of Domenico Morichini, where they repeated his experiment which aimed to show that violet light, when isolated in the spectrum, had the property of magnetising a needle. From the Journal account, Faraday was convinced by what he saw, but Davy remained sceptical.

At about two o’clock in the morning of Saturday, 7 May they left Rome for Naples, driving past the Colosseum, ‘beautiful in the extreme’ in the moonlight.¹³ They had set out so early to avoid robbers, and at dawn met the party of gendarmes detailed to escort them through dangerous country. The Journal record now goes silent for a week, until we find Sir Humphry, Faraday and a boy servant at the foot of Mount Vesuvius preparing to climb. They paused halfway up to enjoy ‘the extensive view of both sea and earth’,¹⁴ and continued over ‘rough and hilly’ ground broken by lava streams, impeded by layers of ash, ‘a very bad foundation for the feet, continually receding as the foot advances; nevertheless, by the aid of strong sticks and two or three restings, we attained the top by about half past two o’clock’.

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.¹⁵

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.¹⁶

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.¹⁷ 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.¹⁸ 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.¹⁹

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’.²⁰ 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.²¹

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.²² 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.’²³

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.’²⁴

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.²⁵

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.²⁶ 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.’²⁷

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 …²⁸