The month of April, 1812, was an eventful one in Davy's life. It saw his retirement from the post of Secretary to the Royal Society; it saw him receive the honour of Knighthood, then rarely bestowed upon men of science;[110] and last, but not least, it saw him married to Mrs. Apreece, whose maiden name was Jane Kerr (of Kelso), a wealthy, amiable, and intellectual widow, to whom he appears to have been devotedly attached: he described her, in a letter to his mother, announcing the intended marriage, as 'a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talents, and accomplishments;' and to his brother as 'the most amiable and intellectual woman I have ever known.' To this tribute to her worth it may be added that, when Scott went on his tour to the Hebrides, his 'dear friend and distant relation,' Mrs. Apreece (afterwards Lady Davy), went with the family party: she had been, Scott says in one of his letters, 'a lioness of the first magnitude in Edinburgh' during the preceding winter. And when writing to Byron, inviting him to Abbotsford, Sir Walter mentions as one of the visitors who made his home attractive: 'The fair, or shall I say the sage, Apreece that was, Lady Davy that is, who is soon to show us how much science she leads captive in Sir Humphry.' But there are 'cabinet' portraits of the lady and her husband in 'The Life of George Ticknor' (p. 57, vol. i.) which may be introduced here. '_1815, June 13._--I breakfasted this morning with Sir H. Davy, of whom we have heard so much in America. He is now about thirty-three, but with all the freshness and bloom of twenty-five, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of vivacity--talks rapidly, though with great precision--and is so much interested in conversation that his excitement amounts to nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant motion. He has just returned from Italy, and delights to talk of it; thinks it, next to England, the finest country in the world, and the society of Rome surpassed only by that of London, and says he should not die contented without going there again. 'It seemed singular that his taste in this should be so acute, when his professional eminence is in a province so different and remote; but I was much more surprised when I found that the first chemist of his time was a professed angler; and that he thinks, if he were obliged to renounce either fishing or philosophy, that he should find the struggle of his choice pretty severe.