The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “How lovely to be a deer,” Retta mused. “Unless one were a deer in the rain, which would be unfortunate and uncomfortable. Tell me about these hornworts, Mr. George Hawkes. But tell it in such a way that an empty-headed little person such as myself might be made to understand.”

  This was unfair, for George Hawkes only had one manner of speaking, which was academic and erudite, and not at all tailored for empty-headed little persons.

  “Well, Miss Snow,” he began awkwardly. “They are among our least sophisticated plants—”

  “But that is an unkind thing to say, sir!”

  “—and they are autotrophic.”

  “How proud their parents must be of them!”

  “Well . . . er,” George stuttered. By now, he was out of words.

  Here, Alma stepped in, out of mercy for George. “Autotrophic, Retta, means that they can make their own food.”

  “So I could never be a hornwort, I suppose,” Retta said, with a sad sigh.

  “Not likely!” Alma said. “But you might like hornworts, if you came to know them better. They are quite pretty under the microscope.”

  Retta waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, I never know where to look, in the microscope!”

  “Where to look?” Alma laughed in disbelief. “Retta—you look through the eyepiece!”

  “But the eyepiece is so confining, and the view of tiny things is so alarming. It makes one feel seasick. Do you ever feel seasick, Mr. George Hawkes, when you look through the microscope?”

  Pained by this question, George stared at the floor.

  “Hush now, Retta,” Alma said. “Mr. Hawkes and I need to concentrate.”

  “If you continue to hush me, Alma, I shall have to go find Prudence and bother her while she paints flowers on teacups and tries to convince me to be a more noble person.”

  “Go, then!” Alma said with good cheer.

  “Honestly, you two,” said Retta, “I simply do not understand why you must always work so much. But if it keeps you out of the arcades and the gin palaces, I suppose it does you no permanent harm . . .”

  “Go!” Alma said, giving Retta a fond little push. Off Retta trotted on her hiddy-giddy way, leaving Alma smiling, and George Hawkes entirely baffled.

  “I must confess I do not understand a word she speaks,” George said, after Retta had vanished.

  “Take comfort, Mr. Hawkes. She does not understand you, either.”

  “But why does she always hover about you, I wonder?” George mused. “Is she trying to improve herself by your company?”

  Alma’s face warmed in pleasure at this compliment—happy that George might believe her company to be an improving force—but she said merely, “We can never be entirely certain of Miss Snow’s motives, Mr. Hawkes. Who knows? Perhaps she is trying to improve me.”

  * * *

  By Christmas, Retta Snow had managed to become such good friends with Alma and Prudence that she would invite the Whittaker girls over to her family’s estate for luncheons—thus taking Alma away from her botanical research, and taking Prudence away from whatever it was that Prudence did with her time.

  Luncheons at Retta’s home were ridiculous affairs, as befitted Retta’s ridiculous nature. There would be a gallimaufry of ices and trifles and toasts, supervised (if one could call it supervision) by Retta’s adorable yet incompetent English maid. Never once was a conversation of value or substance to be heard in this house, but Retta was always prepared for anything foolish, fun, or sportive. She even managed to get Alma and Prudence to play nonsense parlor games with her—games designed for much younger children, such as Post Office, Hunt the Keyhole, or, best of all, Dumb Orator. It was all terribly silly, but also terribly fun. The fact was, Alma and Prudence had never before played—not with each other, not alone, not with any other children. Till now, Alma had never particularly understood what play even was.

  But play was the only thing Retta Snow ever did. Her favorite pastime was to read aloud the accident reports in the local newspapers for the entertainment of Alma and Prudence. It was indefensible, but amusing. Retta would put on scarves, hats, and foreign accents, and she would act out the most appalling scenes from these accidents: babies falling into fireplaces, workers decapitated by falling tree limbs, mothers of five thrown from carriages into ditches full of water (drowning upside-down, boots in the air, while their children looked on helplessly, screaming in horror).

  “This should not be entertaining!” Prudence would protest, but Retta would not cease until they were all gasping with hilarity. There were occasions when Retta was so overtaken by her own laughter, in fact, that she could not stop herself. She would fall quite out of control of her own spirits, overly possessed by a riotous panic of revelry. Sometimes, alarmingly, she would even roll about on the floor. It would appear at these times as though Retta were being driven by, or ridden by, some external demonic agency. She would laugh until she started gasping in great, riotous heaves, and her face would darken with something that closely resembled fear. Just when Alma and Prudence were about to become quite worried for her, Retta would regain mastery of her senses. She would jump back up to her feet, wipe her damp forehead, and cry out, “Thank heavens we have an earth! Otherwise, where would we sit?”

  Retta Snow was the oddest little miss in Philadelphia, but she played a special role in Alma’s life, and in Prudence’s too, it appeared. When the three of them were together, Alma very nearly felt like a normal girl, and she had never felt that way before. Laughing with her friend and her sister, she could pretend that she was any regular Philadelphia lass, and not Alma Whittaker of the White Acre estate—not a wealthy, preoccupied, tall, and unlovely young woman full of scholarship and languages, with several dozen academic publications to her name, and a Roman orgy of shocking erotic images floating through her mind. All that faded in Retta’s presence, and Alma could be merely a girl, a conventional girl, eating a frosted tart and giggling at a buffoonish song.

  Moreover, Retta was the only person in the world who ever made Prudence laugh, and this was a supernatural marvel, indeed. The transformation this laughter brought upon Prudence was extraordinary: it turned her from icy jewel to sweet schoolgirl. At such times, Alma nearly felt as though Prudence could be a regular Philadelphia lass, as well, and she would spontaneously embrace her sister, delighting in her company.

  Unfortunately, though, this intimacy between Alma and Prudence existed only when Retta was present. The moment that Alma and Prudence left the Snow estate to walk back to White Acre together, the two sisters would return to silence once more. Alma always hoped they could learn how to sustain their warm rapport after leaving Retta’s presence, but it was useless. Any attempt to refer, on the long walk home, to one of the jokes or jests of the afternoon would bring on nothing but woodenness, awkwardness, embarrassment.

  During one such walk home in February of 1820, Alma—buoyed and heartened by the day’s capers—took a risk. She dared to mention her affection for George Hawkes one more time. Specifically, Alma revealed to Prudence that George had once called her a brilliant microscopist, and that this had pleased her immensely. Alma confessed, “I would like to have a husband like George Hawkes someday—a good man, who encourages my efforts, and whom I admire.”

  Prudence said nothing. After a long silence, Alma pushed on. “My thoughts of Mr. Hawkes are nearly constant, Prudence. I sometimes even imagine . . . embracing him.”

  It was a bold assertion, but wasn’t this what normal sisters did? All over Philadelphia, weren’t regular girls talking to their sisters about the suitors they wished for? Weren’t they disclosing the hopes of their hearts? Weren’t they sketching dreams of their future husbands?

  But Alma’s attempt at intimacy did not work.

  Prudence replied merely, “I see,” and added nothing more to the discussion. They walked the rest of the way home to White Acre in their customary wordlessness. Alma returned to her study, to finish off the work that Retta had interrupted that mo
rning, and Prudence simply vanished, as was her tendency, to tasks unknown.

  Alma never again attempted such a confession with her sister. Whatever mysterious aperture Retta pried open between Alma and Prudence, that aperture closed itself up tightly again—as always—as soon as the sisters were once more alone. It was hopeless to remedy. Sometimes, though, Alma could not help but imagine what life might have been like if Retta had been their sister—the littlest girl, the third girl, indulged and foolish, who could disarm everyone, and whisk them all into a state of warmth and affection. If only Retta had been a Whittaker, Alma thought, instead of a Snow! Maybe everything would have been different. Maybe Alma and Prudence, under that familial arrangement, might have learned to be confidantes, intimates, friends . . . sisters!

  It was a thought that filled Alma with terrible sadness, but there was nothing to be done for it. Things could only be what they were, as her mother had taught her many times.

  As for things that could not be changed, they must stoically be endured.

  Chapter Ten

  Now it was late July of 1820.

  The United States of America was in economic recession, the first period of decline in its short history, and Henry Whittaker, for once, was not enjoying a glittering year of commerce. It was not that he had fallen upon hard times—not by any means—but he was feeling an unaccustomed sense of pressure. The market in exotic tropical plants was saturated in Philadelphia, and Europeans had grown bored of American botanical exports. Worse, it seemed that every Quaker in town these days was opening his own medical dispensary and manufacturing his own pills, ointments, and unguents. No rival had yet surpassed the popularity of Garrick & Whittaker products, but soon enough they might.

  Henry longed to have his wife’s advice on all this, but Beatrix had not been well all year. She suffered spells of dizziness, and with the summer so hot and uncomfortable, her condition worsened. Her capacity was lagging, and her breath was always short. She never complained, and she tried to keep up with her work, but she was not healthy, and she refused to see a doctor. She did not believe in doctors, pharmacists, or medicines—an irony, given the family trade.

  Henry’s health was not so capital, either. He was sixty years old now. His bouts of the old tropical maladies lasted longer these days. Dinner gatherings had become difficult to plan, as one could never be certain if Henry and Beatrix would be in the proper condition to receive guests. This made Henry angry and bored, and his anger made everything more difficult at White Acre. His temperamental outbursts were increasingly vitriolic. Somebody must pay! That bastard’s son is finished! I will see him destroyed! The maids ducked around corners and hid whenever they saw him coming.

  There was bad news from Europe, too. Henry’s international agent and emissary, Dick Yancey—the tall Yorkshireman who frightened Alma so much as a child—had recently arrived at White Acre with a most disturbing piece of intelligence: a pair of chemists in Paris had recently managed to isolate a substance they were calling “quinine,” found in the bark of the cinchona tree. They were claiming that this compound was the mysterious ingredient in Jesuit’s bark that was so effective at treating malaria. With this knowledge in hand, French chemists might soon be able to manufacture a better product from the bark—a more lightly powdered, more potent, more efficient product. They could easily undermine Henry’s dominance of the fever trade forever.

  Henry was berating himself (and berating Dick Yancey a bit, too) that they had not seen this coming. “We should have discovered this ourselves!” Henry said. But chemistry was not Henry’s field. He was an unrivaled arborist, a ruthless merchant, and a brilliant innovator, but try as he might, he could not stay abreast of every new bit of scientific progress in the world. Knowledge was advancing too quickly for him. Another Frenchman had recently patented a mathematical calculating machine called an arithometer, which could perform long division on its own. A Danish physicist had just announced that a relationship existed between electricity and magnetism, and Henry didn’t even understand what the man was talking about.

  In short, there were too many new inventions these days, and too many new ideas, all so complex and far-flung. One could no longer be an expert in generalities, making a handsome pudding of profit in all sorts of fields. It was enough to make Henry Whittaker feel old.

  But things were not all bad, either. Dick Yancey brought Henry one stunning piece of good news during this visit: Sir Joseph Banks was dead.

  That daunting figure, who had once been the handsomest man in Europe, who had been the darling of kings, who had circled the globe, who had slept with heathen queens on open beaches, who had introduced thousands of new botanical species to England, and who had sent young Henry out into the world to become Henry Whittaker—that very man was dead.

  Dead and rotting in a crypt somewhere in Heston.

  Alma, who was sitting in her father’s study copying letters when Dick Yancey arrived and delivered this news, gasped in shock, and said, “May God rest him.”

  “May God curse him,” Henry corrected. “He tried to ruin me, but I beat him.”

  Without a doubt, Henry did seem to have beaten Sir Joseph Banks. At the least, he had matched him. Despite Banks’s wounding humiliations so many years earlier, Henry had prospered beyond all imagination. He had not merely been victorious in the cinchona trade, he maintained business interests in every corner of the world. He had become a name. Nearly all his neighbors owed him money. Senators, ship owners, and merchants of every sort sought his blessing, and longed for his patronage.

  Over the past three decades, Henry had created greenhouses in West Philadelphia that rivaled anything to be seen at Kew. He’d coaxed orchid varieties to bloom at White Acre that Banks had never found success with along the Thames. When Henry first heard that Banks had acquired a four-hundred-pound tortoise for the menagerie at Kew, he promptly ordered a pair of them for White Acre, secured in the Galapagos and personally delivered by the tireless Dick Yancey. Henry had even managed to bring the great water lilies of the Amazon to White Acre—water lilies so big and strong they could support a standing child—while Banks, at the time of his death, had never even seen the great water lilies.

  What’s more, Henry managed to live his life as richly as Banks ever did. He had conjured for himself a far larger and grander estate in America than anything Banks ever inhabited in England. His mansion shone on the hill like a colossal signal fire, casting its impressive light over the entire city of Philadelphia.

  Henry had even dressed like Sir Joseph Banks for many years now. He had never forgotten how dazzling that clothing had appeared to him as a boy, and he had made a point—over the course of his life as a rich man—to both imitate and surpass Banks’s wardrobe. As a result, by 1820, Henry was still wearing a style of clothing that was much out of date. When every other man in America had long ago turned to simple trousers, Henry still wore silk stockings and breeches, elaborate white wigs with long queues, gleaming silver shoe buckles, deep-cuffed coats, blouses with broad ruffles, and brocaded vests in vivid shades of lavender and emerald.

  Dressed in this lordly yet antique manner, Henry looked positively quaint as he strode about Philadelphia in his colorful Georgian finery. He had been accused of looking like a waxwork exhibit from Peale’s Arcade, but he did not mind. This was precisely how he wanted to look—exactly as Sir Joseph Banks had first appeared to him in the offices of Kew, in 1776, when Henry the thief (thin, hungry, and ambitious) had been summoned before Banks the explorer (handsome, elegant, and sumptuous).

  But now Banks was dead. He was a dead baronet, to be sure, but he was still dead. Whereas Henry Whittaker—the poor-born, well-dressed emperor of American botany—was alive and prosperous. Yes, his leg ached, and his wife was ill, and the French were catching up to him in the malaria business, and the American banks were failing all around him, and he had a closetful of aging wigs, and he had never borne a son—but, by God, Henry Whittaker had defeated Sir Joseph Banks at last.<
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  He instructed Alma to go down to the wine cellar, to procure him the finest available bottle of rum, for celebratory purposes.

  “Make it two bottles,” he said, in afterthought.

  “Perhaps you ought not drink overly much this evening,” Alma warned, carefully. He had only recently recovered from a fever, and she did not like the look on her father’s face. It was a look of frightful emotional distortion.

  “We shall drink as much as we wish tonight, my old friend,” said Henry to Dick Yancey, as though Alma had not spoken at all.

  “More than we wish,” said Yancey, giving Alma a warning look that chilled her. Lord, she did not like this man, though her father much admired him. Dick Yancey, Alma’s father had told her once in a tone of real pride, was a useful fellow to have around in the settling of arguments, as he settled them not with words, but with knives. The two men had met on the docks of Sulawesi in 1788, when Henry had watched Yancey beat a pair of British naval officers into politeness without speaking a single word. Henry had immediately hired him as his agent and enforcer, and the two men had been plundering the world together ever since.

  Alma had always been terrified of Dick Yancey. Everybody was. Even Henry called Dick “a trained crocodile,” and had once said, “It’s difficult to say which is more dangerous—a trained crocodile or a wild one. One way or another, I would not leave my hand resting in his mouth for long, God bless him.”

  Even as a child, Alma innately comprehended that there were two types of silent men in the world: one type was meek and deferential; the other type was Dick Yancey. His eyes were a pair of slowly circling sharks, and as he stared at Alma now, those eyes were clearly saying: “Bring the rum.”

  So Alma went down to the cellar and obediently brought up the rum—two full bottles of it, one for each man. Then she went out to her carriage house, to disappear into her work and escape the drunkenness in store. Long after midnight, she fell asleep on her divan, uncomfortable as it was, rather than return to the house. She awoke at dawn and walked across the Grecian garden to take her breakfast in the big house. As she approached the house, though, she could hear that her father and Dick Yancey were still awake. They were singing sailors’ songs at top volume. Henry may not have been to sea in three decades, but he still knew all the songs.