The Physic Garden

by Catherine Czerkawska

An Uncommon Gardener

  I believe some of the complaints about me were instigated by Professor Jeffray and, looking back, I sometimes wonder if his disapproval of my friendship with Thomas Brown lay at the root of them. He had noticed the familiarity between us. Who would not have noticed it? Thomas never hid it. I think Jeffray found it incomprehensible that a man of Brown’s standing in the college as well as in the town should be on friendly terms with a mere gardener. That Thomas thought I was no common gardener (as he was often at pains to tell me and anyone who would listen) only served to irritate Jeffray the more. He could not understand it, and I think it inspired a kind of revulsion in him. But perhaps the fact that Thomas could be on such easy terms with everyone – scholars, professors, gardeners – irritated him even more.

  ‘Would it not be better to send one of the common gardeners foraging for specimens?’ Thomas remarked. ‘That’s what the professor said, William. And I said a common gardener would be quite ignorant of the places where he might find the wild plants necessary and that such a man – quite unlike yourself, William – would be unqualified for the task of field botanist. I said that I needed an uncommon gardener.’

  ‘Well, thank-you for your kind words. But I don’t want to antagonise the man.’

  ‘And neither have you. You can leave all that to me! I admire him in many ways, but I am not afraid of him.’

  I had no option but to neglect the college gardens at times. More than ever, I was feeling that there were not enough hours in a day. I was overstretched and not quite in full health yet. Moreover, I was always trying to supplement my meagre income with the sale of crops from a few plots of land leased from the college, plots which I was supposed to tend in my spare time, but I had none.

  Besides, I had constant troubles with the younger scholars, who seemed to be intent on making my life a misery, marauding about the gardens when they should have been studying, particularly during the winter months. In winter, the rule was now that the students were allowed to use the gardens. This had been introduced in an effort to encourage them to take air and exercise, but they were – not to put too fine a point on it – a rabble, or so it seemed to me who had the job of curbing their unruly behaviour, without having any real authority over them. When they had over-indulged in ale or, much worse, in rum punch or whisky toddies, they were uncontrollable. They would start fires and fights in about equal measure and the damage to trees and plants was extensive. Besides all that, I knew I was fighting a losing battle with the type foundry, and so I swung between the two extremes of pleasure and despair.

  Things came to a head in the summer of 1806, when Thomas took it upon himself to write a letter to Professor Jeffray on my behalf. I think he was alarmed by some of the vitriol that had been coming my way. I must say I was both grateful to him and touched by his obvious regard for me. Mind you, when I first read the opening – he let me see the missive before he sent it to Jeffray – I almost lost my temper. And I can quote it, because it is here yet, in the commonplace book which he sent to me but a short while before he died.

  I am very sorry, he had written, to start with, that the College is dissatisfied with William Lang’s behaviour and I am much afraid that it has been improper in many respects.

  ‘Improper?’ I said, indignantly. ‘Improper?’

  We were in his library at the time. He had just finished drafting out a fair copy. He blotted the letter and handed it to me to read. ‘Why don’t you read on?’ he said, mildly.

  ‘In what respects has my behaviour been improper? What have I ever done that was improper in your eyes?’

  He had the good grace to colour up. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘In my eyes, you have done nothing improper, not could you. And I’ve asked you to read on.’

  ‘So why say it?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand all too well. You, even you, have to give them …’

  ‘… what they want to hear, my friend. Precisely.’

  ‘Even if it means stretching the truth?’

  ‘Even then. But with the best of intentions, I assure you.’

  ‘I once thought the college was a place of truth. A place where great men of learning sought the truth. That was what my father used to tell me. That was why he so admired the place.’

  ‘Well so it is.’

  ‘But only when expedient.’

  ‘William,’ he said, ‘My dear Will, come down off your high horse for a moment and read the rest of the letter for God’s sake.’

  So I did. And very kindly he spoke of me as well, for it went on in this vein: I can only say that I have no fault to find but every reason to be completely pleased with him. The Botanic Garden is so very barren that its produce can scarcely be of any advantage to a lecturer on Botany such as myself. William is therefore under the necessity both of collecting plants himself in the fields and in neighbouring gardens, (‘To say nothing of helping lassies with swarms of bees,’ he added, with a smile) and of trusting to the exertions of the under-gardeners. William has always been active and intelligent and you must know that a common gardener, ignorant of the names and places of growth of the wild plants, would be entirely unqualified for the office of assistant to the Botanical lectureship.

  I hardly knew what to make of it. It was not what I expected and I found myself moved by it.

  ‘So that’s what I am?’ I asked. ‘Assistant to the Botanical Lectureship.’

  ‘Aye, you are.’

  ‘Well all I can say is, I’m very upset that it isn’t a paid position.’

  ‘It would be if I had my way. But you will take nothing from me!’ he said, indignantly.

  ‘I know. I know.’ I carried on reading.

  William unfortunately engaged in the business of an apothecary but this imprudence is now over and I know that he has lost so considerably by the speculation that he will not again engage in a similar one.

  ‘I had to say that for the simple reason that they have mentioned it on every possible occasion since, heaven help me!’ he remarked, as though to pre-empt my objections, but I was beyond objecting. In fact I was touched by his obvious partiality and the fact that he did not mind declaring as much to Faculty.

  The college ought to calculate whether the emoluments derived from the office of College Gardener be sufficient to maintain a man with his family in this city where the expense of living is so high. If the college should make the situation comfortable I have little doubt that William Lang would be much better qualified for it than any common gardener that it could employ.

  ‘I am hoping,’ he observed,’ that they might be persuaded to pay you for your endeavours as my assistant. But read on to the end.’

  His health has been bad for some time past but it will probably be soon completely restored. Since his father’s death he has maintained a mother and educated or supported his brothers and sisters, which unquestionably ought to have some influence on the College in his favour.

  ‘So what do you think?’ he asked when I had finished. I set the letter down on his writing table.

  ‘I think it is the most amazing mixture of reason and appeal. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or angry.’

  ‘Oh William. Make up your mind to be flattered. I have to do the best I can for you and it’s no use appealing to their better natures for I am not at all sure that they have any. I am simply trying to make your case as best I can.’

  So that’s what I did. I made up my mind to be both grateful and flattered, and for a little while at least, the letter seemed to appease them, much as a bag of bones will appease a pack of hungry dogs. I went on collecting plants for the botanical lectures and visiting Jenny whenever I could. Her father welcomed me. Her sister had so far unbent towards me that she would creep up beside me and take my hand now and then. Sometimes she would say, ‘Can you fetch me some paper, William?’ Paper was at a premium in our house as well, but I would beg it from Thomas, who always had a ready supply. Anna wanted it so that she cou
ld draw pictures on it, which she was exceedingly fond of doing, not just flowers and landscapes and suchlike female pursuits but little sketches of her sister, her father, even myself when she could get me to sit still for long enough. I have them still. I am not inclined to look at them very often. But all the same, fate had taken a hand. I had not the slightest inkling that my carefully constructed castles in the air, all my dreams of a bright future, were about to come tumbling down around my ears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Christening Cape

  It was during the summer of 1806, that I first introduced Jenny to Thomas and his family. Thomas and Marion already had one daughter, but Marion had not long given birth to their second child, a son this time, naturally enough named Thomas for his father. Thomas was to be his only son, although there were two more girls.

  However, at the time I am writing about, Thomas and Marion must have anticipated the birth of a succession of strong sons, and they wished to have a fine christening cape made for this new and precious infant who had almost died, but had been brought back from the brink of death by his father’s care, and was now a very bonny, thriving baby. There was already a gown in the family, inherited from the Edinburgh side, perhaps the work of one of Mr Ruffini’s many orphan girls, but Thomas had promised his wife something new for the baby, an heirloom for the future. Marion was no great hand with her needle, but Thomas was prepared to pay handsomely and, through me, engaged Jenny to undertake the task. They had not yet met at that time, although I had spoken so often about Jenny to Thomas and Thomas to Jenny that they must have felt as though they already knew each other. I had certainly shown Thomas one or two examples of Jenny’s beautiful work: an embroidered muslin handkerchief that she had made for my mother and a sprigged waistcoat that she had asked me to deliver to the city merchant who had commissioned it.

  That spring, when I was just recovering from my illness, Jenny came to the college with her father, who left her at our house while he went off on business about the city. He often did this nowadays and it was, so my mother said, a mark of the growing trust and respect that lay between us. Thomas had bought silk fabric in blue and cream and a selection of brightly coloured silken threads for the project, on Jenny’s explicit instructions and at great expense. I believe such excellent fine silks and gossamer thread for embroidering come from the land of China, although I had only the sketchiest notion of where that was at the time.

  I looked for it on the globe of the world in Thomas’s library and I was quite stunned by the size of the place. It caused an instant’s dizziness, while my head was transported to wide foreign landscapes where unknown flowers and plants grew, flowers and plants that Jenny told me were used to dye the silks with colours which were quite unknown in Scotland, where the woollen cloth was more likely to be coloured with the natural subtleties of the Scots landscape: heather, whin and the dun of peat bog.

  ‘Is she telling me the truth?’ I asked Thomas.

  He smiled at me. ‘She’s no fool, your Jenny Caddas, but then what else would you expect from a weaver’s daughter? They aye know what’s what! And she’s right. The silkworms, which are not worms at all, but insects, make the thread that makes the silk, and flowers and plants are used to make the most wonderful dyes. There are many interesting plants, medicinal and otherwise, that come from the land of China. They were a highly civilised people when we were still living in caves!’

  ‘Can that be true?’

  I sometimes think I must have seemed such a simpleton to him but my innocence never seemed to annoy him.

  ‘Oh, as true as I’m standing here.’

  And then he remarked, as he invariably did, ‘One day we might go there together!’ and I could picture us travelling the many miles across the world in company, as other collectors had done before us, bringing back a thousand magical plants to enrich the botanical collections of Scotland and England. Some of these collectors, so he told me, had even started out as gardeners, very much like myself.

  I am not sure that I ever believed in the possibility of even one such voyage. But like the heavenly paradise that the minister preached about each Sunday, the very idea of it was a constant incitement to work hard, to win his praise. I would go so far as to say that the biblical paradise seemed a pallid and colourless place by comparison.

  That day, he had left the parcel of silks at our house from where Jenny was to pick it up. Although I was still acting as intermediary, it was a matter of chance, merely, that they had not yet met. Her visits to my house and to the college garden had not yet coincided with Thomas’s. Even working through the light spring and summer nights it might take her a few months to complete the cape. Thomas had left her a sum of money as a deposit and had said that there would be a handsome payment once the garment was completed. She didn’t want to accept even that small payment in advance until she was sure that he was satisfied with her work, but he insisted, and her father – ever the realist – had told her to ‘haud her whisht and tak’ the siller’. What good was pride when they needed bread for the table?

  That day, Jenny took the silks and a neat new pair of shears away with her. She had particularly asked for these because she feared that the big shears that her father used for trimming off the long floaters at the back of the cloth, when his weaving was finished, might mark the delicate fabric. While the days were long and light, she commenced work on the exquisite garment, which was intended to become an heirloom for the whole family, and which did indeed become a family treasure for all I know. They may have it still, for how could it be otherwise? But I can imagine that Thomas would not care to have looked at it very often. I can imagine that Thomas would not like to have looked at it at all, although it would have been too precious to be destroyed or even given away, and it may have been that he had to smile at his wife and dissemble and pretend that he still valued it as much as ever.

  How often have I blamed myself for what happened? Times without number. I know it is not rational to think so. I know that things happen as they must. What’s for you won’t go by you, as my mother, with her auld wife’s wisdom, used to say. I wish it had not been so. I wish things could have been entirely different. But they weren’t. And if they had been different, I would not be the man I am today. Which is a disturbing thought, as though the minister is right when he stands up and declares that God’s plan is laid out before us, and we are powerless to change it. It is only how we respond to events, that alone is what we can alter, in that alone resides our free will.

  I sometimes wonder, as I sit here in the enforced idleness of old age, what my life might have been like if I had indeed become a famous plant collector and botanist, the esteemed friend of Dr Thomas Brown. But that thought too induces a kind of dizziness in me at the largeness of it, much as the map of China did all those years ago, and I cannot bear to think about it for very long.

  * * *

  If the truth be told, I spent a couple of weeks of that summer of 1806 on rather poor terms with Thomas, even though I carried on finding plants for him. It might never have happened if I hadn’t got into the habit, especially while I was recovering from my illness, of spending as much time as I could in the library at his house, reading mostly about plants and their properties, but sometimes indulging in my growing taste for traveller’s tales. The servants, all except the fearsome housekeeper, had grown used to me and let me in without a murmur, showing me to the library and leaving me to spend my time as I saw fit.

  Marion was either with her children or out and about in the town, paying visits to her friends. Thomas would be teaching or seeing patients, although sometimes he would come and sit with me in friendly silence and read or write, and those were the most congenial times of all. The first time this happened, I made as if to leave him in peace. Our arrangement was that I would use his library when he was absent.

  He smiled and said, ‘No, no. I have come to keep you company. It’s good to read and study in friendly company.’

  I found tha
t he was right. We were at ease with each other and I think we both welcomed the occasional interruption when one or other of us had discovered something of interest or, more frequently, when I had questions for him. He was a good teacher and seemed pleased to give me the benefit of his wisdom.

  He was one of the best respected doctors in the town and the ladies of fashion flocked around him. It must have been a very lucrative trade for him, although it didn’t strike me at the time. But I had seen it with my own eyes. Or at least heard it with my own ears. Sometimes when I was at his house, which was also where he had his consulting rooms, I would sit beside the library fire, in the threadbare armchair that was Thomas’s favourite. It actually had the scent of him, his tobacco, his hair oil, on it. From time to time the family cat, a fat and indiscreet tabby, would come and drape itself round my shoulders like a warm cloak. Thomas had named her Messalina after some strange, classical fancy. ‘Deadly’ was all he would say when I asked him who the original had been, although I later found out a good deal more about her, none of it very savoury. This shoulder hugging was a dubious favour the animal also tried to bestow on Thomas himself, although he was a less compliant victim and would wrestle the cat to the floor, where it would roll about with claws extended in protest.

  I think Thomas’s female patients envied the cat. I would be sitting there with my mind on a favourite volume of botanical studies, memorising the properties of plants, absorbing all these wonderful illustrations, when I would hear a pair of young ladies or even a twittering group of them, like a flock of fieldfare, descending on the house, arriving to ‘see the doctor’.

  Often enough he would visit them in their own homes, but they seemed to like to visit him as well. I think they made excuses to see him because the excursion provided them with some much-needed excitement. They were the wives and daughters of merchants, men of consequence in the city. They were invariably dressed in the height of fashion, fantastic costumes that Jenny and my sisters would have been ashamed to wear, topped by the most foolish hats you ever saw, with immensely tall feathers in them, more foolish even than my mother’s Lunardi bonnet. They never looked remotely unwell.