Raised with Dutch discipline and immersed in intellectual salons, Alma-botany explorations paralleling 19th-century natural philosophers becoming true scientists-develops a "Theory of Competitive Alteration" in near concurrence with Darwin and Wallace. The dense, descriptive writing seems lifted from pages written two centuries past, yet it’s laced with spare ironical touches and elegant phrasing-a hummingbird, "a jeweled missile, it seemed, fired from a tiny cannon." Characters leap into life, visible and vibrant: Henry-"unrivaled arborist, a ruthless merchant, and a brilliant innovator"-a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution. Gilbert’s descriptions of Henry’s childhood, expeditions and life at the luxurious White Acre estate are superb. They move to Philadelphia, build an estate and birth Alma in 1800. Henry marries Beatrix van Devender, daughter of Holland’s renowned Hortus Botanicus’ curator. Instead, Henry trades cultivation secrets to the Dutch and earns riches in Java growing chinchona. Even after discovering chinchona-quinine’s source-in Peru, Henry’s snubbed for nomination to the Royal Society of Fellows by Banks. Banks employs Whittaker to gather botany samples from exotic climes. Gilbert’s sweeping saga of Henry Whittaker and his daughter Alma offers an allegory for the great, rampant heart of the 19th century.Īll guile, audacity and intelligence, Whittaker, born in a dirt-floored hovel to a Kew Garden arborist, comes under the tutelage of the celebrated Sir Joseph Banks.
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