The Physic Garden

by Catherine Czerkawska

  I cannot let it alone.

  I turn to the last few pages. I find myself at once curious and apprehensive. But Thomas seems to have conceived an interest in the mineral world in his later years, and I am disappointed to find that there are only inventories of various specimens along with their prices and very little else. I learn from these that he paid eighteen pounds for a seven-ounce specimen of gold and one pound twelve shillings and sixpence for a meteorite from Sowerby. Twenty-one specimens of red stilbite (‘a most magnificent collection,’ he adds, ‘perhaps unrivalled’) cost him all of thirty pounds. In 1851 he had his whole mineral collection valued at one thousand seven hundred and fifty-one pounds. The precision of this – I must confess – astonishes me, but the lists of glistening chunks of rock, for which he had acquired such a passion, fall dry as dust upon my eyes and make my head ache. How did he come to this? How did my Thomas come to this? In much the same way as I came to books, perhaps? And were we both taking refuge in something safer and more predictable than the world of living trees and plants?

  Hesitantly, I make my way back through the book, back through time, through those years of our estrangement. Many of the entries are concerned with life in the countryside. From some ten years ago, dated 1845, there is news of the death of the local minister’s wife. ‘Mrs Kennedy died at six o’clock on the morning of 27th March and was buried on the following Friday.’ There is a copy of a note to the ‘Directors of the Farmer’s Annual Ball’ from 1836, to the effect that Thomas is ‘exceedingly sorry that it is out of his power to do himself the honour of attending the ball this night’. There are requests for subscription funds. One for a ‘subscription for a monument to Robert Burns’ catches my eye as does another for ‘Alexander McKinnon, in Spring Row, who has suffered from having his machinery destroyed by accidental fire on the night of 29th June last and from a consideration of the honest and upright character he has uniformly maintained, and of his enterprise in establishing and carrying on the bleaching business to the satisfaction of the public, we deem it is our duty to assist him in the expense of repairing his machinery.’ Fire seems to be a regular hazard in the country, as it is here in the town, for only a few months later a lady has had her ‘two good cows consumed by fire’ and seeks his help, which seems to have been readily given. As why would it not? A kindly man still, you see.

  There are lists, some of them land values, some of them to do with the finances of the school, which Thomas is obviously helping to support. There is a piece of correspondence concerning a poor woman who is ‘evidently in indigent circumstances and will in all probability soon become an object of charity’ and another seeking written permission to travel unhindered about the parish so long as the bearer shall ‘keep the straight or postroad’. That one, in particular, gives me pause for thought, brings back unpleasant memories, but I pass over it, moving back through the pages.

  There are many references to the weather. ‘This day snowed from the north and covered the earth four inches deep. More snow during last night. I rose about nine o’clock this morning. There is a strong wind from the north east with a very thick snow and drift, which continued until the evening incessantly. I never saw so deep a snow in general, although I have seen much greater weather.’ And earlier, much earlier than the lists of mineral specimens, but dating perhaps from his first years in the countryside, there are a few lists of plants and trees acquired for the gardens of his uncle’s house. But they seem half-hearted at best, or am I imagining things? Well, perhaps not, for I turn over a leaf and see another list, which includes various interesting specimen trees. Beneath it, he has drawn two broad, dark lines, the pen digging into the paper, and there I see the words, ‘Such as William might have appreciated.’

  My own name, boldly written down there, comes as a great shock to me, even more perhaps than I would have anticipated. I have to pour myself a small glass of whisky. I sip it slowly and when my heart has stopped racing I go back to the book with shameful eagerness, but there are few other references to me. I find copies of such letters as he wrote on my behalf with his own neat corrections. I find the letter that I wrote at his behest, with similar, more extensive corrections overlying my own scrawl, tethering my flights of fancy to the page like Lunardi’s balloon in the cathedral, but I find nothing else either to excite or sadden me. There is, incautiously I’m sure, a quotation from a document which appeared all over Glasgow in 1820, a call for men to ‘rouse from that state in which we have sunk for so many years, we are at length compelled from the extremity of our sufferings and the contempt heaped upon our petitions for redress to exert our rights at the hazard of our lives’, but it is copied without comment of any sort, as a historical curiosity merely, although it was a call to arms for which many suffered the extreme penalty.

  There had been a series of terrible harvests throughout the whole country, the Corn Laws had affected the price of bread and many poor working people were destitute. There had, of course, been riots. Those in authority were so alarmed by the threat of revolution that punishments were severe and repressive. Glasgow had attracted destitute people from the Highlands, from the Western Isles and from Ireland, people who had some fixed idea – or should that be desperate hope? – that a man prepared to work hard might make his fortune here. Well, some did. I can’t deny it. But many of them were soon disillusioned. Those who managed to secure employment in the burgeoning mills and manufactories were housed, fed and clothed but they were also physically exhausted in a way that the likes of Sandy Caddas seldom had been, and they were often injured by the new machinery. For those who could not find work, more often through age and infirmity than from any idleness on their part, conditions were even worse. The minister might preach against the vice of slothfulness, but I was aware of a kind of widespread and abject poverty that, even throughout my most difficult times, I could hardly have dreamed of.

  So it was that groups of self-styled United Scotsmen sprang up, advocating reform. The pamphlet or proclamation that Thomas had incautiously copied out was in the nature of a call to arms, although most would now judge that it was a false and deliberate provocation on the part of the authorities. It allowed them to charge any who responded to it with high treason. Many Glasgow weavers, unaware of the duplicity, answered the call, among them two young men, Andrew Hardie and John Baird. They were ultimately sentenced to be hanged, beheaded and quartered, their bodies mutilated far beyond the doubtful ministrations of the anatomists, a savagery that even now revolts me.

  Two things there are that further disturb me on this quiet afternoon. At the very end of the book, there is a letter, folded and tucked in upon itself and addressed to me. ‘For William, to be read after I am gone,’ it says. But I have read enough and I put it away for the moment, sliding it into the private drawer at the back of my desk. Besides, I can hear the house coming to life around me, the sound of pots and pans in the kitchen, Jenny’s light footsteps on the stair with the pup scurrying in her wake, its toenails slithering and scratching on bare wood. Then, in my haste to close the book, I cause a draught of air, and a few dried leaves float from between the pages and settle on my table. They are skeletons, light as thistledown, all colour and goodness long gone from them, leached away from them by time. At first, I don’t know what they are, or where they are from, but I think their presence among the pages of this book is no accident. Suddenly, the sight of them gives me such a pang of sadness, such regret, that it is all I can do to contain it. I want to cry aloud with the pain of it. But, of course, I do no such thing. I scoop them carefully together, fold them among the loose sheets of one of the letters and replace them from whence they came.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Perpetual Motion

  The physic garden was dying. Thomas Brown and I were in agreement about that. When he asked if I would gather specimens for him, the state of the physic garden lay at the heart of his request. In fact, the state of the physic garden lay at the root of all that occurred over those next few years. Th
ere had been a slow but steady decline for a long time past and the miserable end of this once beautiful and productive garden was inevitable.

  It all began with Alexander Wilson who was made professor of astronomy in 1760, but he was already the official type founder to the university. This was his main trade; astronomy was but a pastime with him. These academic disciplines were often hobbies for men who made their real living elsewhere. Much, I suppose, as Thomas would have said that his real work was medicine, even while he was lecturing in botany. Professor Wilson soon petitioned Faculty for permission to build a type foundry in the grounds, a convenience for himself, since he was about to become resident in the college. Without reference to the gardener – for who ever would think to consult a common gardener on such a matter? – they allowed the foundry to be built on a small plot of land next to the physic garden.

  The type foundry was much more important than the physic garden. The university needed printing of all kinds and it was an expensive business, as I now know only too well. I always feel that there is a certain irony in the nature of my later profession: fate winking at me from behind her hand, so to speak. But life does sometimes seem to throw these strange coincidences our way. The first venture must have been very successful because they quickly allowed it to be expanded, and a second foundry was built beside the first. From that time onwards the garden deteriorated a little more each year.

  My father had been working as college gardener while I was toddling about the place and getting up to all kinds of mischief. I spent my childhood running about the gardens, paddling in the burns with the other lads, guddling for the wee silvery fish that swam there, or catching them with nets and letting them go again. I was supposed to be helping my father, although perhaps hindering might be a better way of describing it. But he tolerated me and encouraged me in about equal measure. He was a good, God-fearing man, if a little dour.

  I remember one time when I was running like the wind on an imaginary errand of my own. Oh I was well away, my feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground. I think I had some vague idea, without knowing anything save that these countries lay beyond the great river and the sea, that I might run to Africa or the Americas or some such place, that my legs might carry me over the water and beyond. I was brought down to earth from this engaging fantasy when I collided with a professor, who was donnering down one of the pathways, deep in thought, his black gown flapping behind him. He was a small man and I ran right into his belly and for all that he was small of stature, his belly wasn’t that wee, I’m telling you. They were well fed, those professors.

  I fairly bounced off him, and the collision released a cloud of snuff from his waistcoat. The impact took the breath from him and from myself too, and I fell over. I remember sitting there with my arse paining me, and my hands digging into the cold grit of the pathway, looking up at him staggering backwards with his mouth in a round ‘o’ of astonishment. I don’t know which of us was the more surprised. My father had seen the whole thing and he came galloping over with his spade in his hand, brandishing it like a weapon. He was all for giving me a beating there and then, and I think he might have been tempted to use the flat of the spade to do it, so great was his wrath, compounded by embarrassment at his own son for being the perpetrator of such a crime. I expected it and thought my arse would be sore all over again. But the old man wouldn’t have it.

  ‘Na, na, na. Leave the wee man alane, Mr Lang,’ he said. ‘Let him be. He was merely doing what boys do.’

  ‘Aye,’ said my father drily. ‘Cause naethin but trouble! Will ye let me hammer the deil oot o’ him Master? Will ye?’

  He was hovering there, wondering whether to drag me to my feet or brush the professor down or what to do next. The professor surprised us both by letting out a wheezy chuckle, like a laugh that has gone rusty from lack of use. As perhaps it had.

  ‘Na, na, Mr Lang,’ he said again, shaking his head. ‘Leave the lad alane! It’s whiles a pleasure to see a wee lad runnin’ within the walls of this solemn auld place – and doin’ it for the joy of movement!’ he added. ‘My, my, but it’s the closest thing to perpetual motion we’ll ever see, for all their wild propositions and experiments with wheels and vast quantities of mercury! Look to the lads, that’s what I say! Look to the lads!’ and off he went, still chuckling to himself.

  I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying about perpetual motion and mercury, neither of us did, although I found out all about it later, when I had more books in my possession, and how it was a sort of holy grail among scholars. But he seemed to be in high good humour, as though he had enjoyed the whole incident. While my father was gazing after him in some astonishment, I scrambled to my feet and took myself off before he could change his mind and give me a beating anyway for the good of my immortal soul.

  * * *

  My father’s predecessor, Sandy Adams, had been a fine gardener who had taught my father all that he knew. Adams’s enterprising wife had set up a shop in one of the rooms of their house in Blackfriars Wynd, just outside the college. There, she would make herb ale (said to be a great tonic for the blood) and would sell it, along with all kinds of medicinal herbs, both dried and fresh, and distillations of these herbs, including cinnamon and peppermint as aids to digestion, lime flowers for the apoplexy and vertigo, elder with all kinds of curative properties, as well as common mint and pennyroyal, which, although its oil is very poisonous, will keep the flies away from your larder if you but place a pot by the door in summer. We still do that here in this house. There would, of course, be seasons when the produce of the physic garden was abundant, and I think Adams must have sought and gained the permission of Faculty to use the surplus as he saw fit in the service of his other business.

  By the time of Sandy Adams’s death, however, the type foundry was already exerting its malign influence and the garden was in decline. My father was a young married man by that time, steady and reliable, but already with considerable experience in the college gardens, and Faculty had no hesitation in appointing him in Sandy Adams’s place. When I grew old enough to become a real help to him, my father never tired of telling me that he judged the physic garden to be in a dreadful state. After his appointment as head gardener, he had attempted to remedy it and immediately ordered forty cartloads of dung for dressing the soil. I mind the stink of it yet for I played my part in shovelling it into and out of wheelbarrows. You could shovel all day long and the heaps never seemed to get any smaller or smell any sweeter.

  Throughout my childhood, the botanical garden, as my father called the physic garden, became a constant cause for complaint. It was the focus for all his woes, a sad accompaniment to a thousand conversations. I would sometimes be sent to fetch him in when his supper was on the table – invariably broth, bannocks, a little crowdie with salt, since he was a man of regular, even monotonous habits – and more often than not, I would find him foraging among the herbs, studying leaves and blossoms for signs of injury. But you didn’t need to look too closely to see that the garden was sickly, leaves yellowing and falling before their time or shrivelled, their growth stunted, so many plants afflicted with some dreadful malaise. It was a vegetable plague and just as deadly as the epidemics that from time to time would ravage the human population of the town.

  Professor Hamilton, although I have small recollection of him, must have begun lecturing in botany around that time. He had studied under the celebrated anatomist William Hunter, in London, and so came with a reputation for an interest in dissection, that is, slicing into real, albeit dead human bodies, to find out what goes on beneath the skin. Professor Hamilton was a good friend to my father and when the post of college gardener became vacant, he thought that my father would be a very suitable person to fill it and recommended him to Faculty.

  My father and Professor Hamilton used to have frequent discussions about remedies for the problem, much as Thomas Brown and I would later spend many hours wrestling with possible solutions for what was becoming an intract
able state of decay. But I doubt if their relationship was anything other than formal. My father was the kind of man who knew his place and would offer due deference to men whom he thought of as his superiors in intellect and station, if not in the eyes of God. All men were equal in the eyes of the Lord. He would say that and I must suppose that he believed it. But although Professor Hamilton was youthful and gracious, he would have expected nothing less than respectful compliance with all his wishes, and my father would have thought this right and proper.

  I have seen some of Professor Hamilton’s lecture notes. Like many another before him, he was convinced that plants gave off noxious substances by night, vapours inimical to the human frame, a belief which has persisted to this day. My late wife herself believed it, my daughter-in-law still does, and my grand-daughter is not even allowed her posy of wild flowers in her room at night, although I myself remain unconvinced of it, perhaps because I slept in close proximity to all kinds of vegetable matter for a very large part of my youth, and apart from the occasional twinge of rheumatism and a little deterioration of my eyesight, have remained as active and healthy a man as it is possible to be.