by A. N. Wilson
—And tell me if you would be so kind – in what part of London does Warrington find itself?
Reinhold, when he first went to University in Berlin as an ambitious young student, had not imagined that at the age of thirty-eight he would become a schoolmaster in a small town near Liverpool. The pay was £60 per annum. It enabled him to bring Justina and the children over from Germany, and they lived as a family for five years. When he was in his late thirties – roughly the age that Reinhold had been when they went to Warrington – George would make a tour, with Alexander von Humboldt, written up and published as Views of the Lower Rhine, of Brabant, Flanders, Holland, England and France in April, May and June, 1790. Perhaps it was not until he made that journey, and made it in the company of an intelligent young German, that the mysterious phenomenon of England came into any kind of perspective. His father’s sharp eye made him a taxonomist of brilliance. The same mind which could master the complexities of Coptic grammar picked out grasses, flowers, butterflies and moths which even an astute countryman would have missed. (His A Catalogue of British Insects, Warrington, 1770, was a product of these times.) So observant of British flora and fauna, Reinhold noticed almost nothing about the social complexities in which the human organisms were working out their place in the scheme of things. He professed admiration for John Locke, whom he had scarcely read, for the Parliamentary system, which he had not mastered, but he remained at heart a conservative German, a citizen of the ancien régime. The intricate morphology of British life, the fundamental chemical changes brought about in the organization of its very existence by the expansion of manufacturing trade, a phenomenon at this date unseen anywhere else in the world, appeared not to interest Reinhold. He saw the way to advancement as crudely simple – to acquire the patronage of the aristocracy, and ultimately of the King. Had he been less successful less early, had he been able to see by what an astonishing series of chances he came to be sailing with Captain Cook, in 1772, as his chief naturalist, with George as his illustrator and assistant, he might have trod less clumsily at his setting forth, and been less crushingly disappointed by his failure, after the voyage, to achieve advancement.
As events turned out, with only a few throws of the dice, the obscure pastor of Nassenhuben turned schoolmaster of Warrington was ‘recognized’ in learned circles. True, Reinhold was a man of abilities, but he was naif enough – conceited enough, his enemies would say – to suppose that ability is always recognized. He did not see the role of luck which enabled him to become a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, a friend of Solander and Priestley, culminating in his becoming the naturalist on the most stupendous voyage in the history of world discovery. While he laboured as a teacher in Warrington translating Bougainville’s Voyage Autour du Monde into German, Reinhold yearned to follow in the wake of the great Frenchman, to explore the South Seas and to bring back to Europe exotic plants and birds. Like a child whose greedy list of wishes was gratified each 6th December by the arrival of St Nicholas bearing sugar-plums and toys, Reinhold took all his good fortune for granted, scarcely conscious of the fact that he and George owed their place on the Resolution to the chance that Joseph Banks – who had accompanied Cook on the first voyage to Tahiti and New Zealand in the Endeavour – was an even more difficult person than Forster himself.
When the Admiralty had agreed the scheme for Cook to sail, with two ships, to explore the southern hemisphere, in quest of the putative Southern Continent, it was assumed that the naturalist on board Cook’s sloop would be Banks, who was not yet thirty. Banks belonged to that robust species – deplored by Cook, never got into focus by Forster – an English gentleman. From a landed fortune in Lincolnshire he had been not merely to Harrow but also to Eton, followed by Christ Church, Oxford. There being no adequate lectures on botany in Oxford at that date, Banks had paid for the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to give a course at the more distinguished University in ’64. A couple of years later with his Eton chum Constantine Phipps – aristocratic naval officer and a future Lord of the Admiralty – Banks had sailed to Labrador and Newfoundland, thus forming a collection, and catalogue, of specimens which established him as a scientist of international repute. He was the natural choice to serve as naturalist on the Endeavour when they sailed to Tahiti to observe the passage of Venus. Upon their return to England, Banks had received more accolades than Cook himself.
Cook, who was the son of a Yorkshire farm labourer and who had learnt the sailor’s craft working on the ‘colliers’ – the ships which brought coal from Newcastle to Hull to London – could admire Banks’s intelligence while refusing to be impressed by his ‘side’. No one in the history of the Navy had a more practical grasp of equipping and packing a ship. He knew precisely what sort of ships were required for this voyage – small sloops, not great men of war, which could negotiate the inlets and coves of South Sea islands and, when more southerly latitudes were explored, withstand the snow and ice. Two neat merchant ships, built relatively recently at Whitby, were purchased – it being decided that the journey was so hazardous, a consort ship was needed as back-up in the event of one vessel meeting with calamity. Cook was to command the Resolution and Lieutenant Tobias Furneaux the Adventure.
The Resolution was taken to the dockyard at Sheerness – and Banks followed Cook down to Kent with his list of requirements. There must be room for his ‘staff’ – Dr Lind, the Edinburgh scientist; Zoffany, the painter; secretaries; his ‘valet’ (known to be his floozy, a woman in disguise); and two horn players – damn it, a man wanted a concert in the evening when his work was done.
—Mr Banks, this is a ship of discovery, not a floating music room.
Ignoring Cook’s raised eyebrows, Banks had further insisted that a huge cabin be built for his use on the upper deck, above which there was to be constructed a fully equipped laboratory with a roundhouse to accommodate the Captain. Perhaps Cook knew what he was doing when he actually acceded to these requests. By the time the carpenters had finished their work, the Resolution resembled a floating Tower of Pisa. There was laughter and mockery as she sailed out of Sheerness for a trial. Banks was on board. He had invited Sandwich – First Lord of the Admiralty – and the French Ambassador. It was as much as any of them could do to stand upright as soon as they got out to open sea for the imbalance caused by Banks’s towering additions. Though the sea was not especially choppy the swell was prodigious – and the dinner provided for the French Ambassador was soon spewed on to the main deck. At the trial sailing, the pilot declared that the ship was so top heavy she could hardly carry a sail without capsizing. Clerke, Second Lieutenant, exclaimed,
—By God, I’ll go to sea in a grog tub if desir’d, or in the Resolution as soon as you please, but I must say I think it by far the most unsafe ship I ever saw or heard of.
The vessel, through the pilot’s skill, made it back to Sheerness. The next day, when Banks went down to the deck, he saw that Cook had already instructed the carpenters to demolish the laboratory, the luxurious cabins and all the other additions considered essential by the gentleman scientist.
—Cook? Cook!
The inscrutable Cook was himself capable of eruptions of volcanic rage, but on this occasion he controlled his temper.
—Mr Cook, I’d thank you, sir – Mister Cook . . .
—What in the name of fucking HELL do you think you are DOING?
—I am making the Resolution seaworthy, sir. I have removed four of her guns – if we are going to carry that weight it had better be barrels of Sauer Kraut to prevent the men getting scurvy – thirty deaths we had in Endeavour – I’m not having that again on any ship under my command.
—But my laboratory, my fucking CABIN – you – you—
—Ay, Mr Banks? As I told you when you demanded these things, the Resolution is a ship of discovery – not a floating laboratory, nor a floating concert hall where flute players can entertain the island lasses, nay, nor a lady’s boudoir neither.
—We
’ll see about this! We’ll see, Cook! What my Lord Sandwich . . .
But of course, neither Sandwich nor his colleagues at the Admiralty wished to send out a ship for the southern hemisphere which would capsize before it reached the Bay of Biscay. The Resolution was to be seaworthy. It was to be packed as no ship was ever before packed. Cook never allowed officers or crew to witness the packing – he alone, with the stevedores, would fill every available space with barrels of drinking water, barrels of Sauer Kraut, supplies of salt beef, salt pork, biscuits, ropes, sails, spare masts, Baron von Storisch’s marmalade, spirits, stockfish, winter clothing. The crew and officers assembled. It was nearly ready to sail. All that was lacking was the team promised by Banks – for not only had he withdrawn his services as a naturalist, but Mr Zoffany had withdrawn as the artist. They engaged William Hodges as the painter. William Wales was to be the astronomer. Who could be found who would do the work of a naturalist? No one of Banks’s wealth or fame, that was for sure. Banks, Solander, Lind, had all left Cook in the lurch. The Admiralty had to act swiftly. There was no time to be choosy. Banks and Solander both knew the Forsters through Daines Barrington, a lawyer and amateur scientist whom Reinhold had befriended. Their name was put up. Sandwich accepted it. A hastily drafted agreement, which would be the source of rancorous dispute when they returned home, was drawn up between the Admiralty and the Forsters, father and son. Parliament, at the behest of the Prime Minister Lord North, granted Reinhold the £4,000 which had been assigned to Dr Lind. Until the money was forthcoming, the King granted Reinhold £1,795 out of the Civil List.
For the schoolmaster on £60 per annum, it looked as if his fortune was made. With a part of his brain Reinhold was unable to grasp the simplest financial statistic – he knew and could not quite appreciate that the £1,795 was an advance on £4,000, not an addition to it. He knew that out of this money he must collect clothing and equipment, buy books, provide for his wife and family. To be a ‘natural philosopher’ was a rich man’s game. Priestley could never have advanced as a chymist without the help of rich businessmen like Matthew Boulton or Josiah Wedgwood. In one crazy month, scrambling to prepare for their voyage round the world, Reinhold managed to spend more than £1,795, and to leave England as a debtor.
The scientific instruments, colours, sketch-books, portfolios, paper, herbals and three years’ clothing cost him £1,200. On their travelling library he spent a prodigious £300. He had to leave £750 behind for his wife – for he and George would be at sea for three years at least. Almost the first thing that confronted him, on coming aboard the Resolution at Plymouth, was that he was expected to pay one of the sailors to be a personal servant to himself and George – in charge of their laundry, and cleaning the two little cabins which Cook had had hastily constructed for them, nearly abreast of the mainmast.
And thus it had come to pass, that in the month of August and the year of grace 1772, George Forster found himself on the deck of the Resolution, patiently capturing an exquisite likeness of a green monkey. Nally was right. It was impossible to look at the monkey-face and not to feel the presence of a personality. George felt the same about dogs, about quite a lot of animals, actually. He must have said something to that effect, for Reinhold was putting him right.
—The ratiocinative capacity, where is that in your monkey? The gift of tongues – why, even the language of a baby or of the most primitive savage is more complex than the squeaks and grunts put forth by your – oh I say, but oh I say! This is too much!
George’s unnamed monkey was innocent. Indeed, only an hour or so before he’d dropped a tail-like turd over the side, neatly plopping into the salt ocean. Some other monkey, aloft, possibly Plunkett, possibly another, had scored this very palpable hit on the natural philosopher.
—But ever since they came aboard, I have said! But . . . lice, fleas. They are . . . but only yesterday a man, I saw a man tread in . . .
—I’ll take your coat, Vati. I’ll take it back to your cabin.
—He trod, he could have slipped. A man could have slipped, I find. But look – the shoulder. All down the sleeve of this coat – and is Nelly here? When you need him? Is Nelly?
George wondered at his father’s capacity to think, after four weeks at sea, that their personal servant bore this name.
—I’ll see if I can find Nally, Vati. But I can fetch your other coat.
—Hundreds of pounds each year. And the coat. You remember that tailor in London? Three identical coats and he charged the same for all of them!
While George was in the cabin fetching a clean coat for his father, the bells sounded. Twice an hour, at each turning of the glass they rang, marking the division of the ship’s day, always inducing, as they had during his brief periods of schooling – though George seldom had specially assigned tasks – the sense that he should be somewhere else, trying a little harder.
—You give it to me, George . . .
Nally had somehow been found in the lower deck and told that ‘the professor’ – one of the politer nicknames bestowed by the men on Reinhold – was in a ‘paddy’.
—It’s just down that sleeve, I can . . .
—Not at all, George, no trouble at all.
George had felt an instant rapport with Nally. He had never had a personal servant before, not one specially set aside to attend to his needs, and the needs of only one other. Though an ordinary seaman who, in the intervals of attending to the Forsters, did his bit, cleaning the decks or mending the rigging, and, though popular with his mates, not the least standoffish, Nally appeared a little apart from them. Though he maintained his smiling appearance while those around him swore or raged, it was unimaginable that he would himself ever use ‘sailor’s language’. Nothing appeared to ruffle him. His smile suggested some quiet secret which he was in no hurry to share with the rest of the world. George wondered whether this secret was not simply Nally’s superior intelligence.
He took Reinhold’s coat. Only hours later it was hanging in its closet again, odourless, as clean as the day it was made.
—My father will want to wear this for dinner.
—Naturally, Mr George. What about his shirt?
—Untouched, thanks, Nally.
—So, limited damage.
They both allowed themselves a little laugh.
—Well, Jem’s been enjoying himself down in the kitchens after yesterday’s sport.
Jem was Pattinson, the ship’s cook, with whom Nally enjoyed discussing receipts. Two of the Lieutenants had shot seabirds – an albatross and a booby – and, to the general rejoicing, the master had supervised the netting of a shark.
—It’s going to be a fine albatross pie and shark steaks with gull egg sauce.
Very occasionally the Forsters ate in the gun-room with the officers but normally the ‘gentlemen’ – the surgeon, the astronomer, the naturalists – ate at the Captain’s table in the ‘cabin’.
Mr Wales, the dry-skinned, cold-eyed astronomer, to whom both Forsters had taken, from their first coming aboard, an instant dislike, quizzed George, while they gnawed their way through the pie, about his mathematical exercises. The man was not his schoolmaster. How could he imagine this was dinner conversation – quadratic equations! The two officers brought in to leaven the talk of the gents talked to the Captain of ship’s business – but the Captain was a taciturn fellow and had a Boswell or a Plato been commissioned to write down the table talk of the hero, they would not have covered half a page. As was often the case, Reinhold’s was the voice which dominated the table.
—I do not say that, like the rat, the monkey actually carries disease – but it was a mistake – I should say most definitely. A mistake. Allowing the sailors in such numbers to buy these creatures. I mean one or two as, so to say, specimens. One who could perhaps be killed and stuffed. But you see only yesterday, a man stepped in . . .
Captain Cook’s silences were impenetrable. Did he not hear? Did he consider the defecatory habits of monkeys an unsuitable topic fo
r the dinner table? George could not decide, though it seemed to the boy, as his father talked and talked, that the Captain was always on the verge of a reply, as though his firm lips were closed, lest words escape them which he might later regret. The filthy habits of the monkeys had not gone unremarked. Later that afternoon, the second mate, during a breezy swell, made a precipitous stride across the main deck. Concentrating upon holding his balance, and not seeing that he had planted his shoe in monkey-dung, he fell backwards, cracking his head against a sharp corner near the masthead. He did not lose consciousness but the incident was witnessed by the Captain who had been standing, as he so often did, staring out towards the limitless sea and the unknown horizons.
—Mr Clerke.
—Ay, ay, sir.
—Call for Mr Patten to dress Mr Marra’s head.
—Ay, ay, sir.
—And, Mr Clerke.
—Sir?
—Order the men to throw every monkey overboard.
—I beg your pardon, sir.
—I think you heard me, Mr Clerke. Throw the little shitters overboard. Bekoss enoofs enoof.
It took not much more than quarter of an hour for the order to be passed around the ship. George’s unnamed monkey was one of the first to be grabbed by an able seaman who was kind enough to say ‘I’m sorry, boy’ as he took the elongated black hand of the monkey and hurled it into the air as if it had been a ball. It happened so fast, George did not see his face, though he heard the creature shriek as it flew into the sky and then hurled downward into the foaming green of the seawater. More terrible was the fate of Plunkett. A tearful angry Nally tried to hold on to him.
—You’re not taking Plunkett, you’re not, you can’t—
—It’s orders, you fucking fool. Give o’er – Nally, let go the fucking monkey.
—No. No.
Plunkett was gibbering and squeaking as the sailor grabbed him. George saw his large eyes. Years later, a memory of that terrorstricken expression would return to George when, among the stinking baying crowds of Paris, he watched the chemist Lavoisier being trundled in a tumbril to the guillotine.