They lumbered late into Rennes and put up at the cold and desolate post house, which Faraday describes in the tones of a gothic novelist, reminiscent of Mrs Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho: ‘from being built of stone, from containing long galleries, winding stone stairs, narrow passages, deserted rooms &c [it] strongly reminded me of the interior of a romantic castle, and a black man as cook, attendant &c wonderfully assisted the fancy’.27
They carried on through Laval, Alençon and Dreux, picking up bread and wine in villages on the way, putting up at post houses and huddling in front of miserable fires. Faraday noticed that travellers were provided with firewood in the bedrooms, but the wood was always green, and needed bellows to keep it alight – and of course, there were never any bellows to be had. Late on the seventh day after leaving Morlaix, the party approached Paris. Thirty or forty miles out, the roads began to improve, practical signs of the effects of Napoleon’s public works strategy. The roads were straight, and for four or five miles would stretch ahead in a line, and then, with a slight bend would stretch on again. ‘The eye,’ Faraday writes, ‘is enabled to perceive at once all it will see for the next hour [and] the expectation slackens and a monotonous effect is produced.’28
They had their last change of horses in the square in front of the Palace of Versailles, and then off they went for Paris, rolling up outside the Hôtel d’Autriche, ‘where I cannot imagine we shall stop. It is deficient in common accommodation, and yet withal it bears a very respectable character.’29
As quickly as they reasonably could, the party moved on to the Hôtel des Princes, a highly fashionable and well-appointed hotel at the northern end of the rue de Richelieu. The Hôtel des Princes was one of the most sumptuous in Paris, brightly lit, panelled and furnished throughout with marble-topped furniture which, perhaps after conversation with Davy, Faraday identified:
One beautiful slab is valued at 800 livres. It is formed of various minerals arranged mosaically and contains between four and five hundred specimens, among which are Porphyry, Serpentine, Marble, Sulphate of Baryta, Carcareous Spar, Fluor Spar, Lapis Lazuli, Jasper, Agate &c &c &c. The appearance of the whole being very beautiful. There are also in these apartments three fine large slabs of black encrina marble, in one of which was the head of an animal.30
The expectations Faraday had had when he set off for France were that he would act as Sir Humphry’s valet until they reached Paris, where a replacement would be hired. He would attend Sir Humphry at his scientific work ‘as his assistant in experiments and in writing’,31 at meetings with men of science, and would continue to learn from him as he had at the Royal Institution in London. But from the evidence of the diaries he was left much to his own devices in Paris, and during the thirty-one days they remained there on only six does he note that he was attending Sir Humphry on scientific duties. He must have been working with him as a secretary or accompanying him on other days, but he was fairly well lost, ignored and depressed on his first full day in Paris, Friday, 29 October.
I am here in the most unlucky and irritating circumstances possible … I know nothing of the language or of a single being here, added to which the people are enemies & they are vain … I must exert myself to attain their language so as to join in their world.32
His spirits perked up the next day when he accompanied Davy to meet Davy’s old friend Thomas Underwood. Described by John Davy as ‘an artist of some talent, with a fondness for science’,33 Underwood had been a proprietor of the Royal Institution in its early days, and indeed had recommended in 1800 that Davy be appointed as Lecturer. He and Davy had travelled in England together, making a geological tour to Cornwall in 1801.34 But Underwood was a republican, and had made too many approving noises in England about the French Revolution. He went to France in 1802, but after the Peace of Amiens had ended the following year, was arrested by the French. Napoleon, however, tolerated him, and licensed him to stay as a ‘détenu’ in Paris, where he patrolled the fringes of the Emperor’s court, and appears to have been on good terms with the Empress Josephine.
As a foreigner, Underwood had a pass to enter the Louvre at will, and he took Davy and Faraday to see the treasures that Napoleon’s armies had amassed during their victorious years in Europe. This was a special concession, given so that foreign visitors could enjoy and take back good reports of the riches of the imperial museums, and of how well the looted treasures were being cared for. Works of art and antiquities had been removed as spoils of war from the Vatican, from Italian Papal and city states, and from the Netherlands, Flanders and other subject nations, to be displayed in the Louvre.35 Since the first haul had arrived in 1797 French people and foreigners had flocked to see them at the Musée Napoleon, the shiny new revolutionary name for the former palace.
I saw the Galerie Napoleon today but I scarcely know what to say of it. It is both the Glory and the disgrace of France … [W]hen memory brings to mind the manner in which the works came here and views them only as the gains of violence and rapine she blushes for the people that even now glory in an act that made them a nation of thieves.36
Sir Humphry Davy had a rather different response to seeing the treasures. He remarked with a sniff, ‘What an extraordinary collection of fine frames,’37 and stalked out, unable to stomach the injustice of the cull of works of art from vanquished nations. Faraday, however, showed no such political instinct, and took his opportunity to see as much as he could of ‘the works of the old and most eminent masters’. He noted the ancient Greek statues, including the Apollo, Laocoön, Venus de Medici, Hercules and the Dying Gladiator, and the paintings ‘in a gallery of enormous length … some thousands of pieces’. Walking out of the Louvre, Faraday passed the multi-coloured Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, raised eight years earlier in honour of Napoleon in ‘the rarest and most valuable marbles’, and crowned with the four bronze horses sequestered from St Mark’s, Venice. He carried on through the Tuileries and turned north across the rue de Rivoli to the place Vendôme. Taking a candle, he climbed to the top of the column erected to Napoleon, and looked out wide over Paris.
For the next eleven days, Faraday seems to have explored the centre of the city very thoroughly, walking about on his own.38 He was dismissive of the Seine, ‘a very poor dirty river, not at all what I expected to find it. It has of course no tide, and is therefore almost unfit for navigation, at least such as is required by a large city. Scarcely anything moves on it but charcoal barges and washing houses.’39
The grandeur of imperial Paris also struck him – the statues, fountains and gardens of the Tuileries – ‘It is the Parisian lounge and is much frequented’ – and the programme of ‘sticking up N’s in every spot central and lateral where they can. This is a principle scrupulously attended to in every public work. The Museum and the Gallery &c abound with N’s and silently recall the Emperor to mind at every step and turn.’40
But as a natural-born analyst, Faraday is engaged most of all by observing how the city works as an organism – the generous public water supply, the way wood is brought in for fuel from the north by barge, the washerwomen working in their dozens in the fountains and from barges on the river, and above all the Parisian road systems. Encircling the city at different distances from the centre, he noted, were ‘two circles of boulevards … two great circumscribing roads’, the inner and outer tree-lined rings shaded in the summer and autumn, with ‘shops, stalls, coffee houses and various places of public amusement’ presenting ‘a light, airy, pleasant and inviting variety’. How different this all was from London, where there were no gushing fountains, no broad encircling boulevards, no wide roads at all to speak of except the new Portland Place, and no embankments on the river. Paris, however, was built for the fierce heat of summer and for public show, it is a summer and autumn city, at its best when the people dress up and spill out onto the walks and pavés. But beyond the imperial façade, ‘the streets of Paris are in general narrow. At the same time there are many of great length and width and noble appearance,