of palsy,’ she travelled day and night, joining him at Rome on 30 March 1829. They journeyed together to Geneva, and she was with her husband when he died there on 29 May 1829. Ticknor called on the Davys in 1815, and described her as ‘small, with black eyes and hair, a very pleasing face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and when she speaks, has much spirit and expression in her countenance.’ Her conversation he deemed somewhat formal, and though he recognised her great powers of mind he could not repeat Madame de Staël's praise, ‘that she had all Corinne's talents without her faults and extravagances.’ Lady Davy was a brunette of the brunettes, and her devoted friend, Sydney Smith, who addressed to her many of his most amusing letters, used to say that she was as brown as a dry toast. She figured in society at Rome and London for many years after Davy's death, and in the eternal city she loved to act the part of cicerone to her friends, among whom Tom Moore was numbered. With the antiquities and classical remains of Rome she was well acquainted, and she had read much of the literature of the Latin and the principal modern languages, but in her knowledge of Italian as a living tongue she was sadly deficient, and many amusing anecdotes of her blunders were long current in society. Sir Walter Scott was one of her distant connections, in the language of the border they were ‘Kerr cousins,’ and he wrote her two of his most interesting letters. She had been an early friend of the mother of J. R. Hope, and in the summer of 1834, when Hope was studying law in London, he accompanied Lady Davy in a tour through Holland. She subsequently introduced the young man to Lockhart, and this led to his marriage with Lockhart's daughter and to his becoming the head of the family as J. R. Hope-Scott. In 1838 she was described as ‘haggard and dried up,’ but she retained long after that date her extraordinary physical activity and her absorbing love of London gaiety. She died in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, London, on 8 May 1855. Sir Humphry Davy appointed her the sole executrix of his property, and she presented his portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence to the Royal Society.
[Gent. Mag. April 1812, p. 386, July 1855, pp. 92–3; Jones's Faraday, i. 184, 197; Ticknor's Life, i. 57, 128, ii. 179; Lockhart's Scott, ii. 403, vi. 2–4, 221–2, vii. 126–7; Ornsby's Hope-Scott, i. 62–5, ii. 132; Moore's Memoirs, passim; Sir Henry Holland's Recollections, 87–8; Lady Holland's Sydney Smith, i. 203, ii. 91, &c.; Mrs. Fletcher's Autobiography, 102–3; Mrs. Somerville's Recollections, 252; Last Leaves of Journal of J. C. Young, 120–1; John Davy's Sir H. Davy, i. 133–5, 424–5; Burke's Landed Gentry (1886) sub ‘Kerr;’ Betham's Baronetage, iv. 114.]
DAVY, JOHN (1763–1824), musical composer, was born on 23 Dec. 1763, at Creedy Bridge, in the parish of Upton Helions, eight miles from Exeter, the illegitimate son of Sarah Davie or Davy, and was baptised two days later (parish register). He was brought up by his maternal uncle, a blacksmith of Upton Helions, who also played the violoncello in the church choir. When under five years of age he could play on the fife any simple tune after once or twice hearing it. Before he was quite six years old, Davy appropriated between twenty and thirty horseshoes from the house of a neighbouring smith. He selected as many horseshoes as formed a complete octave, hung each of them by a single cord clear from the wall, and with a small iron rod imitated upon them the chimes of the neighbouring church of Crediton ‘with great exactness.’ James Carrington, then rector of Upton Helions and chancellor of the diocese, hearing of the story, showed Davy a harpsichord, on which he soon learned to play easy lessons. He also began the violin. In his twelfth year he was introduced by Carrington to the Rev. Richard Eastcott of Exeter, a well-known amateur, who afterwards, in his ‘Sketches of the Origin, Progress, and Effects of Music’ (8vo, Bath, 1793), gave some account of Davy's extraordinary musical faculties. Eastcott set the lad down to the pianoforte, and recommended his friends to article him to William Jackson [q. v.], the organist of Exeter Cathedral. Davy's progress in the study of composition was rapid, and he soon became a capable performer on the organ, violin, viola, and violoncello. After completing his articles he continued to live for some years at Exeter as organist and teacher. A passion for the stage, which had once led him to essay the rôle of Zanga to Dowton's Alonzo at the local theatre, was probably the reason of his coming, about 1800, to London, where he obtained employment as a violinist in the orchestra of Covent Garden Theatre, and as a teacher. His talent as a writer of songs and dance music soon brought him more lucrative work, and for nearly a quarter of a century he was regularly engaged by the theatres royal to supply music for the light English opera and pantomime then in fashion. But giving way to habits of intemperance he fell into difficulties, and died neglected and penniless in a wretched lodging in May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane, on 22 Feb. 1824. He was
