The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent].

  • Josiah Charles Trent
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Through Fothergill, Waterhouse became acquainted with one of the rising botanists of the day, William Curtis, “under whose tuition he herbarized in the environs of London two years in succession” (p. 112, n.). Curtis was at that time and until his death lecturer and demonstrator in the Physic Garden at Chelsea, which was supplied with plants by the regular excursions of a society of London apothecaries. He neglected his own lucrative practice as an apothecary to devote his time to botanizing and, in 1777, to the publication of an elaborately illustrated account of all the plants in or about London, his Flora Londine?isis. Fothergill at this point withdrew his patronage from Curtis rather than encourage him in what the physician believed to be an extravagant proceeding (pp. 134-135), but Dr. Lettsom gave regular and generous aid to Curtis.16 As each new and splen¬ did number of the Flora Londinensis appeared, Fothergill woefully pre¬ dicted to Waterhouse that the expense of the work would result in the ruin of its author. The error of these prophecies Waterhouse later recorded: . . . Fothergill, though possessed of the “perspicax oculus” in a preeminent degree, did not then see, that the mild and silent Curtis was imbued with the persevering spirit of Linnaeus. He little thought, that this meek and quiet man would finally effect all that he meditated; and that to the Flora Londinensis he would add the Monthly Botanic Magazine, and to both a Botanic Garden! . . . Under a mild and playful disposition, William Curtis was animated with a persevering spirit, that, in a different walk of life, might have wearied out the patience of a Xenophon, and discouraged Hannibal himself, (p. 13 5) Waterhouse goes on to describe in much detail, and as if he had seen it, the botanical garden of Curtis at Brompton; this garden, however, was not planted until after the departure of Waterhouse for America. Other botan¬ ical acquaintances whom Waterhouse may have met at the house of Fothergill were Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Daniel Solander, who had carried their botanizing as far afield as Iceland and the South Sea Islands. Botany was the subject principally dealt with in the natural history lectures which Waterhouse later gave in America; a series of these was published in the Monthly Anthology (1804-1808), and in book form in 1811 (see Fig. 2). Experimental philosophy, in which he attended the lectures of James Ferguson, and mineralogy also occupied Waterhouse, at least briefly, in London. His introduction to the latter subject came through the lectures of the eccentric Emanuel Mendes Da Costa, who was assisted by Fother¬ gill throughout these years.17 Waterhouse evidently had little lasting profit 16 Pettigrew, op. cit., I, 162. Ferguson died in 1776; Waterhouse probably 17 Polyanthos, May, 1806, p. 76; R. Hing- heard a few of his lectures in the summer of ston Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends, 1775. London, Macmillan, 1919, pp. 212-213.
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