Sociability in the Early Royal Institution: Thomas Richard Underwood, Humphry Davy and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

During its first decade the Royal Institution, founded 1799, has tended to be seen by historians as a place of chemical research or of lecturing on various aspects of culture to socially elite, aristocratic, audiences, or as an institution endeavouring to apply scientific knowledge for practical purposes. But the hundreds of men and women, most of whom were not aristocrats, who attended lectures at the Royal Institution during its early years also interacted socially, forming small networks. Focussing on the interactions of the watercolourist and later geologist Thomas Richard Underwood, this essay will reconstruct, as far as the evidence allows, one of these loose groupings, which also included Davy, Coleridge, Thomas Webster, Benjamin Hooke and William Day. This will not only exemplify the sort of sociability that occurred at the Royal Institution, but also cast new light on crucial events in its history, most notably Davy’s appointment there in 1801, as well as illustrating the long-term legacies that such largely hidden coteries can have.