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The Wonderful Mr Willughby

Page 5

by Tim Birkhead


  To foster their students’ chymical expertise Trinity hosted scholars from abroad. These included the Greek, Constantine Rhodocanacis, who later patented a general remedy called ‘true spirit of salt’, which is hydrochloric acid and was thought to be useful, therefore, in restoring the balance between acid and alkali humours.

  As this suggests, chymistry involved the production of medicines, but it also involved the transmutation of elements, and it seems that Francis Willughby and John Ray were involved in both. Medical tinctures, which were taken orally, were made by bruising or crushing plants and dissolving their extracts in alcohol. An additional method, referred to as palingenesis, involved bruising and burning a plant and ‘calcinating’ the ashes to ‘reveal’ a volatile salt, which when heated, grew – uncannily – in a ghost-like three-dimensional replica of the plant that had just been burned. The salt that emerged was assumed to contain the ‘essential virtue’ of the plant, which could then be used as a remedy.

  In January 1659 John Ray wrote to Peter Courthope to say that he and Thomas Pockley were performing all the ‘easie & useful chymicall experiments wch wee find in bookes’.24 Willughby was also involved, for his commonplace book contains numerous references to experiments under the general heading ‘Praeparationes et Experimenta Chimica’. Some of these, as he knew, were blatant nonsense, like mixing ‘Two partes of the fat of a goose mingled with one of the salt of a goose’ as an ‘arcanum [an elixir] to make hair growe’ – hardly one that Willughby needed anyway, judging from his portrait. Of the more ‘serious’ remedies, one included the making of ‘salt of tartar’, which was variously used as an aperitive (‘ten to thirty grains’ was the dose),25 a cosmetic or as a treatment for cancer.

  A heading in Willughby’s commonplace book, ‘Mr Wray’s Experiments’, included tests with antimony, which in various forms such as antimony cups, drinking glasses and tinctures, had been used as an emetic since at least the first century ad as a way of restoring the supposed balance between the humours. After the publication in 1604 of Basil Valentine’s book, The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, the popularity of antimony increased still further.

  The idea of humours was ancient, dating back to the fifth century bc when Hippocrates decided that our four humours – blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm – provided a framework for understanding human health. Each was linked, not only with heat, cold, dryness and moistness, but also with the elements: air (blood), fire (yellow bile), earth (black bile) and water (phlegm). We shouldn’t be too surprised by the Hippocratics’ obsession with bodily fluids since sick individuals typically exhibit one or more of the following symptoms: a runny nose; sweating; a change in urine colour; or coughing up phlegm or blood – clear evidence that the humours were out of alignment. Physicians sought therapies that would rebalance the humours, by purging, vomiting, sweating or bleeding.26

  On 28 November 1658 Willughby noted his success in creating metallic antimony, known as ‘regulus of antimony’, that is, ‘the little king’, and so-called because antimony combines readily with the king of metals, gold. Creating regulus of antimony was difficult and Willughby and Ray made several attempts with different combinations of chemicals before succeeding. Its production was important because, through the doctrine of signatures, its star-like structure suggested that antimony’s enduring medicinal powers were drawn directly from the enduring light emanating from the celestial stars. Regulus was a vital step in creating the elusive philosopher’s stone, knowledge of which God had first given to Adam. If acquired, the philosopher’s stone would allow one to transform base metals into gold, to become immortal, and also to create a universal medicine. Since the transformation of any metal into gold was strictly illegal in the 1650s and 1660s, I like to think that Willughby and Ray’s quest was for a universal medicine.

  Rhodocancis was experimenting with different tinctures of antimony at this time. In a letter to Willughby dated 17 March 1660, Peter Courthope wrote: ‘Constantinus Rodocanasis [sic] salutes you … This morning he was in my chamber, and gave me a taste of a Tincture of Antimony, which had no acrimony at all, yet deep and strong, which he prizes very much: He only told me it was prepared of the Glass of Antim[ony]. But how I know not yet.’

  In the same letter Courthope went on:

  Yesterday he brought his materials into the Combination [dessert], and shew’d the Experiment of the Tree, which suddenly arose, and within less than an hour reached the top of the liquor: [It] especially was of a quick growth, which sent forth a long shoot above the liquor, which was much bigger at the top than the bottom, that the weight of it brake it off.27

  The ‘Experiment of the Tree’ was the brainchild of the German alchemist Johann Rudolf Glauber. He is better remembered for having discovered sodium sulphate in Austrian spring water, which he called sal mirabilis – miraculous salt – because of its wonderful laxative properties and was later named Glauber’s salt. Glauber had discovered the Experiment of the Tree – also known as the silica garden – in the 1640s. This is a remarkable phenomenon and one I still have a vivid memory of from my early schooldays. It consists of placing crystals of metal salts such copper sulphate, cobalt chloride or iron sulphate into a solution of potassium or sodium silicate (that is, waterglass). Within minutes the crystals start to grow into remarkable plant-like forms, an effect enhanced by the fact that different salts produce trees of different colours: copper sulphate, blue; cobalt chloride, purple; iron sulphate, orange. Glauber described the forms that slowly surged and branched upwards through the clear viscous fluid as ‘metallic trees’ and ‘mineral vegetation’. The chemical changes that result in this rapid tree-like growth are now understood.28 In Willughby’s time it was a spectacle of beauty and wonder, but significantly, also a link between botany and chymistry indicative of some kind of ‘life force’ within metals. It was the possibility of a life force within minerals that – as we shall see – later fuelled confusion in the debate about the origin of fossils.

  The flourishing of the new science at Trinity during Willughby’s undergraduate days had its origins in Oxford – the ‘other’ university – in the late 1640s, when ‘Several diverse ingenious persons … used to meet at the lodgings of the excellent person, and zealous promoter of learning, the late Bishop of Chester, Dr Wilkins.’29 Inspired by the teachings of Francis Bacon, Wilkins – then warden of Wadham College, Oxford – encouraged a group of like-minded individuals to perform experiments to better understand the natural world. These were exciting times for philosophy, but following the execution of Charles I in 1649, difficult and complicated times politically. A decade later, around the time the monarchy was being restored, key members of the group reformed in London at Gresham College. And it was here, on 28 November 1660, following a lecture by Christopher Wren, that twelve of them – with John Wilkins as chairman – agreed to form ‘an association for the promoting of experimental philosophy’. Among those present were Wren, Robert Boyle, Mr Bruce, Lord Brouncker, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile, Dr Goddard, Dr Petty, Mr Ball(e), Mr Rooke and Mr Hil(l).30

  Proposed by John Wilkins and John Ray, Francis Willughby was admitted in December 1661 and formally elected as a Fellow of the Society on 20 May 1663: he was twenty-seven. Willughby is listed in the Society’s records as an ‘Original Fellow’, that is, one of those elected before the Society received its Royal Charter later that year, when it became ‘The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’. The Society was to play an essential role in Willughby’s development as a scientist.

  What was Francis Willughby like? We don’t have a great deal to go on, mainly a portrait and a eulogy, but enough, I think, to create a sense of who he was and how his friends saw him. Physically, we have an undated portrait attributed to Gerard Soest, a prolific and popular portrait painter of seventeenth-century minor gentry. Judging from Willughby’s appearance, the portrait could have been completed at any time between his twenties and his death at thirty-six. However, since Soest was based in Lon
don it seems likely that the portrait was painted when Willughby was also there – on and off – between 1657 and 1660, that is, aged between twenty-two and twenty-five. The image, in which Francis is holding a book and marking a page with his index finger, also implies that the painting was made after he had decided on a life of study. With long, fair locks – which were then fashionable – and a short fringe, he is clean-shaven, with dark eyes and a handsome nose. In terms of his expression, it is a pleasant portrait, but not one of Soest’s best (nor worst), for the artist has given him a slightly vacant countenance, and overall, as one might expect, Francis appears somewhat serious; but then he was more than somewhat serious about his work. The portrait is hardly a Velázquez, sadly. Had it been, and given the dates it could have been (just), we would have a psychological portrait in paint. Through the proficiency of his penetrating analysis, palette and brushes, Diego Velázquez would have given us the painterly equivalent of a photograph snapped at the instant that Willughby’s personality, aspirations and motivation were apparent. Instead, we have Soest’s mere likeness. Others, more imaginative, have seen more in it than I can, and viewing this portrait in the early 1800s, the ornithologist William Jardine, a Willughby devotee, declared it the ‘beau ideal of a naturalist’s countenance’.31

  This aspect of Willughby’s personality is very clear from John Ray’s generous memoir in the preface to their ornithology volume, penned just a year or two after Francis’s death. Ray records a heart-warming set of attributes, starting with the fact that, notwithstanding Willughby’s inherited social position, he strove through his studies to create his own modest identity. As Ray says, ‘God had given him quick apprehension, piercing wit and sound judgement’, which by ‘his great industry he did highly improve and advance’. Willughby’s industry defines him to a large extent, for he was ‘since childhood addicted to study’ and ‘detested no vice more than idleness’. James Duport recognised Willughby’s energetic, goal-orientated approach to life. So did John Wilkins, who when staying with Willughby at Middleton wrote to a colleague saying that Francis was ‘as much in love with study & experiments, as ever any man was with a mistress’.32 As is now apparent, once Francis had discovered natural history his enthusiasm and diligence knew no bounds. He took to heart the advice Duport gave to his tutees about living each day as though it was their last. The result was, as Ray says, that no one else he knew was as knowledgeable about ‘birds, beasts, fishes and insects’.33

  Somewhat remarkably for someone so obviously driven, he seems also to have been extraordinarily humble. Ray tells us that Francis was:

  … endowed with excellent gifts and abilities both of body and mind, and blessed with a fair estate. Howbeit, as he did duly prize these advantages of birth, estate, and parts, so did he not content himself therewith, or value himself thereby, but laboured after what might render him more deservedly honourable, and more truly be called his own, as being obtained by the concurrence at least of his endeavours.34

  Francis also respected men of all persuasions, regardless of their wealth or position; he was sober, temperate and ‘never tempted to excess, scrupulously just, true to his word and loyal to his friends’.35

  Even allowing for the fact that Ray was honouring his dead friend and may have exaggerated for the family’s benefit, if only half of what he says is true, Willughby was evidently a nice man. I’d love to know more. I’d like to think that in addition to his industry he was sufficiently relaxed, at least at times, to laugh and joke with his friends. We know from a few comments in Ray’s writings that Ray had a sense of humour and it is difficult to believe that two men would work so closely together and for so long without enjoying a few laughs.

  Willughby died when his daughter Cassandra was just two, so her description of her father’s character in her essay on the family’s history is based almost entirely on an account of Cambridge alumni and on what Ray said in the preface to the Ornithology, and sadly, almost nothing directly from her mother. As though to emphasise this, Cassandra says she wished Ray ‘had been more particular in his account of my father, for doubtless many remarkable things of his life had been very well worth his notice, and he, by spending severall [sic] years with him, might have noted down to posterity such useful examples of his life, as now I have in vain endeavoured to recover’. The only things she reports via her mother were: her father’s regular hours of study; his ability – as a result of studying physic (medicine) – to provide medications to all his neighbours; and his ‘compassion and goodness to the poor’. As a sheriff, Willughby was expected to uphold the law and could not officially tolerate beggars or vagabonds. To avoid having to take action against them when they came to the Middleton kitchen in search of food, he simply arranged not to ‘see’ them.36

  Francis Willughby’s formal Cambridge education was extended and complemented by botanical fieldwork, bird dissection and chymical experiments. As is so often the case, it was these extra-curricular activities with their sense of novelty and risk, and their being part of something ground-breaking, that appealed to Francis Willughby. This rich and stimulating mix, undertaken with the guidance and companionship of John Ray and a cluster of close friends, set Francis on a course he would pursue for the rest of his short life.

  3

  A Momentous Decision

  During Francis Willughby’s last few weeks in Cambridge in January 1660, Trinity College appointed the clergyman and natural philosopher John Wilkins as the new Master. Wilkins arrived with an idea that would change the way Willughby thought about the natural world.

  Even though his appointment at Cambridge was a gift from Oliver Cromwell, Wilkins was both politically and religiously tolerant and had been instrumental in calming the considerable political tensions prevalent during the interregnum. A lover of mankind, Wilkins was described by a contemporary as ‘the wisest of clergymen’.1 In the portrait that now hangs in Wadham College, Oxford, where he presided as Warden between 1648 and 1659, Wilkins appears pious and reliable, yet the flowing locks, chubby cheeks and steady stare reveal little of the man himself. Intelligent and passionate about the new science, Wilkins was considered more as a facilitator than an innovator. He had, however, a great sense of fairness, and, although married to Cromwell’s widowed sister, both Roundheads and Royalists alike respected him. Wilkins’s marriage to Robina in 1659 was an improbable union, for she was sixty-two and Wilkins forty-two, but it seemed to be based in part at least on genuine affection, and, crucially, it helped to protect the universities of Oxford and Cambridge from ‘the ignorant, sacrilegious commander and soldiers’ (Cromwell and his army) who would have otherwise destroyed them.2 As a key player in the founding of the Royal Society, Wilkins ensured that it accepted Fellows regardless of their Christian views. Robert Hooke, with whom Wilkins worked closely at the Royal Society, and who shared his passion for science, summed up Wilkins in these fine words:

  A man born for the good of mankind, and for the honour of his country, in the sweetness of whose behaviour, in the calmness of his mind, in the unbounded goodness of his heart, we have an evident instance, what the true and primitive unpassionate religion was, before it was soured by particular factions.3

  As someone who thought deeply about science and was excited by the ‘new philosophy’, Wilkins also recognised that there was a problem. It was that there was no universal language of science, and since the 1630s he had been interested in creating an artificial language that everyone everywhere would understand; one that avoided ambiguity and allowed for the ever-expanding lexicon necessitated by new methods and new discoveries in science.

  The notion of a universal language was not new, however. Italian scholars during the Renaissance had thought about it, and the idea had also been popular among French savants. When it eventually reached England in the early 1600s, Francis Bacon quickly became a devotee. He could see the obvious advantage of a system in which one word represented one thing, rather than multiple words for a single thing, or different things k
nown by the same name. Bacon’s motivation was clarification. Not only did the new science need to be increasingly precise in what was meant by specific terms; new knowledge, including new species, also needed new words. In their current state, Bacon recognised, language and terminology were in a mess. Not only were different terms needed for different things (such as the different feathers on a bird’s body), but some things, such as insect species, which had no names, needed names. Central to all this was precision; more precision required more words. For Bacon, ignorance about the world created linguistic inaccuracy and this inhibited understanding of the world. If society was to move forward and take advantage of new scientific knowledge, a universal language was an essential first step.

  Like Bacon, Wilkins was religiously motivated and believed the need for a universal language to be deeply rooted in the past. Specifically, that man’s arrogance – epitomised by the construction of the Tower of Babel – had been punished by God who confounded people by creating separate languages across the world rather than the one spoken by Adam. The consequence was that although people were able to form a mental image of something – for example, a honey-buzzard – in different regions or countries, they used different arbitrary sounds (words) to identify it.

 

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