Linnaeus’s forced rationale for these terms can best be grasped from the picture he presents in illustration—for a species that he named Venus dione, no doubt as a fitting illustration for his terminology. The picture, with my added labels, shows the full crudity of Linnaeus’s supposed joke—for his terms record a complex analogy (not overly far-fetched, one must admit, in purely visual appearance) between a clamshell viewed from the top and the standard sleazy pose of pornography: a woman with legs widely spread and sexual parts viewed straight on, with buttocks surrounding two areas of external genitalia and anus.
Linnaeus was socially conservative and rather prudish. He did not, for example, allow his four daughters to study French, for fear that they would then learn the liberal values of that enlightened land. But his taxonomic systems and his writings reveal the sexual focus that so often accompanies personalities of such overwhelming vigor and force. Linnaeus based his most celebrated work, his new classification of plants, on what he called the “sexual system” (see the final section of essays in my previous book, Dinosaur in a Haystack). This scheme tends to be dry and functional, and not at all salacious—for the sexual system defines most orders by the numbers and sizes of stamens and pistils, the male and female organs of flowers. Basically, you just have to count—and Linnaeus’s system became all the rage for ease of application, not for titillation. But Linnaeus did follow out the metaphorical implications of his definitions. He referred to fertilization as an act of marriage, and he designated stamens and pistils as husbands and wives. Flower petals turn into bridal beds, and infertile stamens become eunuchs, guarding the wife (pistil) for other fertile stamens. Linnaeus wrote, in an essay of 1729:
The flowers’ leaves . . . serve as bridal beds which the creator has so gloriously arranged, adorned with such noble bed curtains and perfumed with so many soft scents that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials with so much the greater solemnity.
But these botanical images rank as sweet Arcadian romances compared with the overt salaciousness of his terminology for the parts of clams. Consequently, Linnaeus took a great deal of contemporary flak about his names for the top side of clamshells.
In 1776, a good year for reform, an obscure English naturalist, who lived a shadowy and troubled life (as we shall see), lit into the great master for his licentious malfeasance. In the preface to his Elements of Conchology: or, An Introduction to the Knowledge of Shells, the author wrote:
One subject, however I shall insist upon; that is to explode the Linnaean obscenity in his characters of the Bivalves; . . . Science should be chaste and delicate. Ribaldry at times has been passed for wit; but Linnaeus alone passes it for terms of science. His merit in this part of natural history is, in my opinion, much debased thereby.
Late in the book, as the author reaches his chapter on clams, his fury has not abated. This time he advances the explicit argument that Linnaeus’s terminology makes natural history appear hostile to females, thus discouraging intellectual women from pursuing one of the few areas then relatively open to study by all people:
I am the more desirous of fixing technical names, as the unjustifiable and very indecent terms used by Linnaeus in his Bivalves may meet their deserved fate, by being exploded with indignation; for
Immodest words admit of no defense,
And want of decency is want of sense.
These my terms being adopted, will render descriptions proper, intelligible, and decent; by which the science may become useful, easy, and adapted to all capacities, and to both sexes.
(I originally assumed that the author’s heroic couplet must represent a quotation from Alexander Pope, but my trusty Bartlett’s tells me that the lines belong to an obscure character named Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon [1633–1685]—a solid name indeed for poetic utterances of such unexampled propriety.)
The author of this book, Emmanuel Mendes da Costa, was a Sephardic Jew of Portuguese origin. He was born in London in 1717 and died there, in his lodgings on the Strand, in 1791. Although Mendes da Costa became one of England’s most respected naturalists on the undefmable borderline between amateur and professional status; although he maintained voluminous correspondence (much apparently preserved in the British Museum) with many of Europe’s greatest naturalists and with most major players in the widespread network of British amateurs, his name has almost entirely disappeared from the historical record—except for two lovely books that frequently appear on the antiquarian market: the 1776 treatise on conchology, and his 1757 work, titled The Natural History of Fossils (I base this essay largely on these two works). I may well have missed some secondary sources,1 but I was unable to find anything about Mendes da Costa’s life and works beyond a column entry in the British Dictionary of National Biography, a few bits and pieces in early-nineteenth-century volumes of The Gentleman’s Magazine, and, fortunately, about fifty pages of his fascinating letters reproduced in volume four of an 1822 series by John Nichols titled Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century Consisting of Authentic Memoirs and Original Letters of Eminent Persons.
I regard this erasure of Mendes da Costa as most unfortunate for at least two reasons: because he must have led a fascinating life, and because his history illustrates several social and scientific issues of general importance, including the role of amateurs in natural history, and the status of Jews in eighteenth-century England. I shall focus this essay on another theme in the category of general messages well displayed: Mendes da Costa’s role as a leading collector at the crux of a defining transition in natural history. For he practiced at both ends of the passage from primary concern for weird specimens and star items (the biggest, the most colorful)—the summum bonum of the seventeenth-century baroque age, as embodied in the tradition of constructing natural-history collections as Wunderkammern, or chambers of curiosities—to the eighteenth-century passion for order in the classical world of the Enlightenment. Linnaeus’s new system acted as a prerequisite for Darwin’s revised explanation of causes. But the older love of oddity continued to fan public enthusiasm (and still does so, quite appropriately, today).
Mendes da Costa was an ordinary man in the midst of this great transition. And ordinary people often record patterns of history with maximal fidelity and interest—for Mendes da Costa made no attempt to innovate on a grand scale, and he therefore becomes a standard for his age. In Linnaeus we grasp the thrust of change. By studying Mendes da Costa, we can best understand the fixed beliefs, the impact of novelty introduced by innovators, and, particularly, the intellectual impediments that his age posed to better comprehension of the natural world. We must learn to view these impediments with proper sympathy—not in the old style of condescension for an intellectual childhood to compare with our stunning maturity, but as a set of consistent and powerful beliefs, well suited to the culture of another time, and held by reasonable people with raw intellects at least as good as ours. If we can achieve such fairness and equipoise, the history of science will become the greatest of all scholarly adventures—and also the most utilitarian, for the foibles of the past can only help us to grasp our own equally constraining present prejudices.
So ordinary, and yet so different! Partly for reasons of self-definition, but mostly from the contumely of others, Jews have lived apart within most Western nations, often with cruel restrictions attached (see chapter 13). Emmanuel Mendes da Costa grew up in Britain at an interesting time, probably more favorable than most, for his people.
Jews had dwelled in England from the Norman Conquest until their expulsion under Edward I in 1290. After banishment from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497, Sephardic Jews (named from the Hebrew word for Spain) dispersed widely, but still could not settle in England. Some small communities of conversos or Marranos (officially converted Jews, but many still practicing their old religion secretly) lived in England from time to time, but when Shakespeare wrote the The Merchant of Venice, and created the anti-Semitic character of
Shylock, no openly practicing Jews inhabited England. A new group of Marranos began to enter Britain from Rouen in the 1630s. This community, hoping for more toleration from Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate than from the previous monarchy, petitioned for the right to practice their religion openly—and their plea received favorable action in 1656. The restored monarchy of 1660 did not rescind the permission, and a few Jews therefore continued their tenuous tenancy. They could not, for example, engage in retail trade in London until 1822, and could not sit in Parliament until 1858 (Disraeli was a Christian convert).
As part of this history, very few Jews inhabited England in Mendes da Costa’s day—about two thousand Sephardim by the end of the eighteenth-century, and perhaps somewhat more Ashkanazim, or Jews of German and eastern European origin. In a potentially prejudiced society, just a few folks from an alien culture may appear exotic and fascinating, rather than threatening and despised—and the rarity of Jews seemed to work in Mendes da Costa’s favor, as he often encountered philo-Semitism among his noble and gentleman correspondents.
Emmanuel Mendes da Costa was trained in law, but chose to devote himself to natural history. He built a fine collection and published several articles, leading to his election as a fellow of the Royal Society (England’s premier association of scientists) in 1747, and to the Society of Antiquities in 1751. But his troubled and shadowy side also surfaced amid his successes. The Dictionary of National Biography remarks: “Although he early obtained the reputation of being one of the best fossilologists at his time . . . his life appears to have been a continual struggle with adversity.” He was imprisoned for debt in 1754. After his release the next year, he began to prepare, and finally published in 1757, his major treatise The Natural History of Fossils.
Mendes da Costa received his biggest opportunity in 1763 when he became clerk of the Royal Society, in charge of their collections and library, then in a state of neglect and disrepair. He wrote to a friend in September 1763:
I immediately proceeded to work, but such was the state of the said libraries and museum, that I am inclined to think the Augean stable was but a type of them [a reference to Hercules’ most unpleasant labor, far more taxing than killing the Lernaean Hydra, of clearing thirty years of manure from the stable of Augeas, King of Elis] . . . After many weeks’ work, amidst the repeated curses of myriads of spiders and other vermin, who had held peaceable possession for a long series of years, I accomplished, so that, thank God, now both libraries and museum are accessible, and in a state fit to be consulted by the curious.
Nonetheless, Mendes da Costa took great joy in the good fortune of his new job. He wrote to another friend: “Whenever you come to town, pray let me see you. Our Museum here, I assure you, has many fine things, and our library is very numerous and scientific. I am very happy in my places, and henceforward my whole life will be devoted to study.” But four years later, in December 1767, he was dismissed for “various acts of dishonesty,” arrested at the suit of the Society, and committed to the King’s Bench prison, where he remained until 1772. His library and collections were also seized and sold at auction.
Mendes da Costa continued his work under confinement, aided by the support and patronage of several well-placed friends. On January 3, 1770, he wrote to a Dr. Francis Nicholls:
I received your much esteemed letter, which honors me with an invitation to your house at Epsom, to review some fine minerals you have lately collected in Cornwall . . . But I am so unfortunate at present as not to be able to embrace the much desired and respected offer you make me; as I am under confinement in this King’s Bench . . . However, the Almighty who had afflicted me with the confinement, has through His mercies granted me the call of my reason, and I apply myself as much as ever, and assiduously to my studies.
Four years later, Nicholls still remembered, and wrote:
It is with pleasure I hear you are restored to liberty and philosophy; and that you should like to see my collection of Cornish fossils . . . My son will come down next Sunday morning; so, if you will be at his house in Lincoln’s Inn-fields by nine, he will bring you down, and render your journey less tedious.
Mendes da Costa soldiered on, writing increasingly more obsequious letters in hopes of selling specimens or delivering lectures for a fee. His worst debacle and embarrassment occurred in 1774, when his petition to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford was not only summarily rejected, but scorned with the overt politeness often used by powerful patricians before they squish a plebeian favor-seeker like an insect. Apparently, Mendes da Costa made the mistake of submitting a formal proposal, when he needed to work through channels and secure the verbal permission of the Vice-Chancellor (the boss of the university). (I doubt, in any case, whether a Jewish jailbird would have received such sanction under any circumstances at the time.) Mendes da Costa did finally prevail upon a professor to visit the Vice-Chancellor, who promptly spurned the idea: “The course of lectures proposed to be read by Mr. Da Costa could not be read here with propriety. I hope the disappointment will sit easy upon Mr. Da Costa.” In fact, the rejection weighed most heavily, as Mendes da Costa wrote to the professor:
I am very certain my attempt has not succeeded by means of some unfriendly and sinister misrepresentations, as well as through mismanagement on my side, for want of proper advice how to proceed. I unluckily had not a friend who chose by a single line to set me right, or inform me what to do . . . Thus left forlorn, absent from the scene of action, and ignorant how to proceed, I became shipwrecked, and my hopes were blasted.
But Mendes da Costa never gave up. He published his conchology book in 1776 to good notices, rebuilt his collections, kept up his correspondences, and died in reasonable honor.
Throughout this various life, one theme keeps circulating in constancy: Mendes da Costa’s Judaism, and the fascination thus inspired among his philo-Semitic Anglican friends. Mendes da Costa must have become a semiofficial source on Jewish matters for the British intelligentsia, at a time when very few English Jews could have traveled in these circles, neatly balancing enough assimilation to find acceptance with sufficient practice of Judaism to be regarded as authentically exotic. In 1751, a physician inquired of him “whether there is extant any where a print or drawing, or any account of the dress and arms of a Jewish soldier, or whether the Jewish Soldiers did not wear the same dress as the Roman Soldiers.” Mendes da Costa replied that he did not know, since Jewish sources do not permit representation of human images:
In regard to any drawing, etc., we never permitted any in our books, apparel, etc., it not being agreeable to the religion . . . yet I do not find that drawings were at all used in books, etc., even by the Greeks and Romans.
In 1747, Mendes da Costa had to forgo a ducal invitation in order to celebrate the High Holidays at home. But His (philo-Semitic) Grace understood very well and hastened to reassure poor Mendes da Costa, who greatly feared that he had offended a high potential patron. The Duke’s secretary wrote:
His Grace is very sorry the duties of your religion, which every good man is well attached to, prevent your coming hither just at this time . . . The Duke being the most humane and the best man living, you need be in no difficulty about your eating, here being all sorts offish, and every day the greatest variety of what you may feed on without breach of the Law of Moses, unless the lobsters of Chichester should be a temptation by which a weaker man might be seduced.
In 1766, Mendes da Costa hears of some Hebrew inscriptions at Canterbury, and he writes to an acquaintance there:
In a MS of Dr. Plot’s dated June 10, 1674, I find this notice: ‘Antient inscriptions on ruinous buildings—such as the Hebrew exquisitely written on the old walls of the Castle of Canterbury.’ Is there such a Hebrew inscription now extant? If there is, can a copy be procured? or can I have permission to employ some Jew (of Canterbury) to copy it, and decypher it.
His friend passed the request to an Anglican scholar who knew Hebrew, for a Jew would not be able to gain access. This
scholar wrote directly to Mendes da Costa:
The Hebrew inscription you inquire after was written on the walls of one of the stone stair-cases in the old castle at Canterbury, in the 13th century, by the captive Jews, during their imprisonment there, and contained some few versicles of the Psalms . . . It is, I do suppose, no very difficult task to get admittance to this inscription, by any gentleman of the County, or one supported by proper recommendations; but I think they would make great objections to admit a stranger and a Jew to search for it.
Amid these signs of both philo- and anti-Semitism, we may also complete the gamut with purely benevolent ignorance. A correspondent writes to Mendes da Costa in 1755, offering payment in goods for services rendered in identifying specimens of natural history: “It is said by most people that Yorkshire hams are very much admired, and if you should think so, will send you some up.” The editor appends a telling footnote at this point: “Mr. Knowlton seems not to have recollected that he was writing to a Jew.”
Most telling for the history of science, we learn from the correspondence how Mendes da Costa stood on the cusp of a transition between two great sequential worlds of natural history—from the baroque passion for gathering oddities, to the classical urge to order and classify in a single comprehensive system. The quest for oddities certainly emerges in this offer from a correspondent on December 9, 1749:
I have some natural curiosities to present you with . . . I have the tooth, or tusk, of the sea-lion, . . . part of a young elephant’s tooth, in the section of which is an iron bullet, which had been shot into it when younger, and the ivory grown over the bullet; a hair-ball, found in the stomach of a calf; and a fossil or two; which shall all find their way to your Cabinet if you think them worthy a place in it.
Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms Page 8
