Heroes of science

by P. Martin Duncan

Augustin Pyramus de Candolle was born at Geneva, in February, 1778, and his father, M. Augustine de Candolle, was descended from one of the oldest families of Provence. One of his ancestors, M. Pyramus de Candolle, became a Protestant, and left France for the freer air of Switzerland, and settled at Geneva in 1591. This gentleman became a citizen of the town, a member of the legislature, and took up the business of a printer. His presses gave forth translations of the works of Tacitus and Xenophon.

They were stirring times, and this energetic man once, in travelling through Grenoble into Switzerland, learned that the Duke of Savoy intended to take Geneva by surprise, with his army. When the attempt was made, Pyramus de Candolle fought as a citizen of his adopted town. Subsequently he went to Yverdun and established manufactories, but the jealousy of the Bernese ruined him, and he died broken-hearted. The family returned to Geneva to live on small means, and the father of De Candolle became a banker, and was much employed by the State during troublous political times.

An industrious, simple, loving, clever man was the father, and he married Mademoiselle Brière. De Candolle wrote of his mother: “She was an educated woman, good, fond of fun, and clever; she was gifted with all the graces and virtues of the mind, and she contributed by her amiable conversations and teachings to give me a taste for science and literature. She had only one fault, and it strangely enough influenced my character. She was proud of her family, which she considered was superior in station to that of my father, because her mother was a distant relation of La Fort, the minister of Peter the Great of Russia. She took every opportunity of making my father feel this pretended superiority, so that when he became forty-eight years of age, he thought that he would make himself known to his relatives and take up his nobility in Provence, and show his wife that his descent was better than hers. But my father took every opportunity of teaching me that ability alone was the real distinction amongst men, and that nobility by itself was nothing, and was a matter of accident. So that my mother’s exaggerated family notions, and my father’s wise precepts, coming as they did to me, during times of political change, developed in me a sincere love for freedom, and a contempt for all success except that which was deserved.” De Candolle was born when his father was in active office, and the earliest recollections of the future naturalist were about his father’s military command, and the endeavours of this good citizen to pacify the populace and the ruling powers, who were always in opposition. The little fellow was always ill, and lost much of the outdoor play of his companions; but there was compensation, for he learned to read fairly soon, and at five years of age he used to read and pretend to act plays; and his heart was in his studies, for when M. de Florian, an author, came to see the family, the child told him that he was going to write comedies, and had acted them. At seven years of age he was far in advance, and then came illness—scarlet fever, ear-ache, and threatening brain disease. He used to say in after years that he well remembered seeing everything looking double. His recovery was very slow, and he was taken to the country to a brisk air, and then he began to be robust, and for fifty years after he never spent a day in bed. But his father did not send him to the public school; he employed a tutor, and the child learned nothing during three years. Then came a little country life, and the friendship of a man, a distinguished naturalist, Mr. Charles Bonnet. His first start in science was homely enough. His mother used to collect the herbs and fruit out of the garden, and the boy used to arrange what she gathered, keeping the different kinds separate with an exactitude that made everybody amazed. He said that he ought to arrange the fruit according to their natures.

When eleven years of age, De Candolle was sent to the college at Geneva, and was placed in the fourth class, under a master of only moderate powers of teaching. No great progress was made in study, and the boy was rarely seen in the upper part of the class. One day his father came to the college to inquire how the boy was getting on, and being a Government official was, of course, well received. A little arrangement by the master, which excited the contempt of the boy, placed him at the head of the class, and so unfair did this seem that the little fellow told his father that he had no right to be there. However, he was removed to the third class, and fortunately came under a better master. Young De Candolle played hard and got more healthy, and his studies were not onerous. In fact, his mother did more for him than the school. She taught him his native language, and gave him a love for poetry. But this was almost crushed out by the foolish method of teaching in the school. If a boy wanted a holiday he had to write to the rector of the college for it in Latin verse, and of course children of twelve years of age could not compose sufficiently well. So they copied, and the result was that, year after year, the rector received a collection of Latin letters which resembled those of the year before, and this had gone on for several generations. However, the boy wrote to the rector in French verse, and in original verse. This was considered something out of the common, and the boy was praised, and his peculiar gift was fostered. He became very intimate with a school-fellow named Gaudy, who had the same tastes, and they used to spend much of their time in turning Latin prose and poetry into very bad French verse. Soon after his old fondness for acting returned, and he was successful in private theatricals. The boy worked hard at this amusement, and learned many of the great French tragedies and comedies, and although the time was apparently wasted, yet De Candolle used to say that it did his memory good, gave him a good style, and took away nervousness. Then his father gave him a good private tutor, and the boy entered the first class. There he found a master who insisted on regular and profitable study, besides Latin verse, and the result was that De Candolle began to distinguish himself and took prizes. One prize which he gained, made him think very deeply afterwards. It was an essay relating to the existence of God. De Candolle wrote his essay in four hours, and it consisted of from fifteen to twenty pages; it included all he had learned of his catechism, what he remembered of many sermons, and a host of quotations from the Bible. But although the youth got the prize, and was much applauded, he felt that he was a complete stranger to the spirit of the truths he had written, and that his heart had little to do with the sentences which came from his pen. He learned religion just as he learned Greek and Latin. In 1792 De Candolle left the college and began to study literature, and, released from the troublesome discipline of the class, worked as if he were a man. But things did not go on smoothly, for the political troubles of that age soon affected Geneva. A French army occupied Savoy and encamped near Geneva. The Government prepared to defend the town, and the fathers of families began to send their wives and children into the interior of Switzerland. De Candolle was in despair when his father told him and his brother to accompany their mother; he longed to fight for his country, but he had to leave, and they went to Champagne, a small village near Grandison, where the father, foreseeing the trouble, had bought an estate. There the summer and autumn were passed peaceably, and in superintending the vines, the gathering of the grapes, and managing the property with his mother. Montesquieu, the French general, did not care about crushing the little town of Geneva, and other matters called him away. So the immediate danger passed and the family returned to Geneva.

The youth returned to his studies amidst popular discontent within the town. A revolution occurred, and a provisional committee occupied the position of the former Government. Strangely enough this occurred whilst De Candolle’s father was chief magistrate, and the Government fell whilst he was in office. Of course the man who had done so much for the town was obliged to go into exile, and he left for his little estate at Champagne, leaving his son behind to pursue his studies. The youth was left under the charge of his tutor, a young married man, and much good work was done, and in 1793 he rejoined his father. During the next year M. Vaucher gave some lectures on botany in the very modest little Botanical Garden of Geneva. He was a clergyman and Professor of Theology, but his amusements led him to study plants, and especially those which live in fresh water. His manner of teaching and the subject, attracted De Candolle, and indeed so much so that he felt that botany would be his special study through life. What he learned from M. Vaucher was about the principal organs of plants, and he began to get books describing plants and to endeavour to describe for himself. Singularly enough, the methodical courses of study which De Candolle had undergone assisted him; for although he obtained some botanical works of a very indifferent kind, which would have satisfied most youths, he began to see their errors of method. Knowing nothing of the labours of the great botanists, the youth managed to see his way to the most reasonable plan of describing plants, and he noticed the organs, one after the other, in the proper manner. Teaching himself the rudiments of the study of plants, and giving much time also to literature, young De Candolle remained much at home, for Geneva was in a horrible state of political revolution. Robespierre managed to send emissaries there, and most of the better class of citizens were imprisoned. De Candolle’s father was sentenced to death, but being away from the town the sentence had no effect. This state of things lasted for some time, until the good sense of the majority annulled the sentence and restored order. Many Genevese emigrated to America, and when De Candolle returned to his studies he found the town sad, and nearly all his old friends exiled or gone in disgust. He had no amusements and therefore his studies were prosecuted with vigour, and he began a course of natural philosophy. In 1796 he left his studies and spent the summer with his father, reading good botanical works on the natural philosophy of trees, the uses of leaves; and, what was of more importance, he wandered far and wide over the Jura Mountains, collecting plants to describe and study. He got Linnæus’s European Botany, and soon began to learn many plants by their proper names. But he used Linnæus’s book as a simple dictionary, for he saw that although the names of plants could be easily found out by it, there were plants grouped together in it that had no close resemblance in their most important parts. At this time his interest in his study was intensified by a terrible instance which he witnessed of the hidden powers of simple-looking plants. He saw three little children die who had eaten belladonna berries.

When eighteen years of age, De Candolle went to Paris and lived in the same house as Dolomieu, a very distinguished mineralogist, a wise and moderate man whose simplicity charmed the young man. This wise friend did not press his special study on De Candolle, but advised him to follow his fondness for botany, giving him, however, some little insight into the nature of crystals and their laws of form. De Candolle then learned that there was a philosophy in stones, and he always stated in after life that this instruction made him think about the philosophy which linked plants together in the scheme of creation. He had an instructive conversation with a well-known botanist, about the structure of the stems of palms and grapes—which differ so much from those of the oak, plane, willow—and of ordinary shrubs; and this distinction of two great groups of plants gave him an insight into some of the grand distinctions between plants, and which enabled hundreds of species or genera to be grouped and separated. Unfortunately, at the time of his arrival at Paris, the botanical courses at the college were not being given, so he began to attend the lectures on chemistry, physics, and mineralogy. He often went to hear Cuvier, the great comparative anatomist, whose great ability and dignity of manner impressed everybody, and he made the acquaintance of the still greater Lamarck in a very curious manner. De Candolle had seen M. de Lamarck at the French Academy of Sciences, but he did not know anybody who could introduce him to the great man. However, he found out that Lamarck used to dine at the same little restaurant which he patronized. So a little plan was adopted to draw the celebrated zoologist and botanist into conversation. De Candolle asked his friend Pictet, who afterwards became a professor at Geneva and a great man, to come by chance as it were and sit beside him at the same table as Lamarck, and they began a conversation about botany. De Candolle especially stated how useful he had found a book called the “Description of the French Plants” in his studies. This was overheard by Lamarck, who was the author of it, and he joined in the conversation. Lamarck asked the young man to come and see him, and a friendship commenced; and although they did not have at that time much to say to one another about botany, still the distinguished French naturalist gave good advice, and, when De Candolle left Paris, presented him with a letter and a book to give to M. Sénebier, of Geneva, whose friendship probably decided the future career of the rising young botanist. Certainly the acquaintance of Lamarck stimulated De Candolle to study the physiology of plants—how they grow, breathe, how the sap circulates, how the colours are produced, and how the young seeds are formed. The happy circumstances which surrounded the young man at Paris enabled him to see the great comedies of the day and to admire the splendid acting at the theatres. But he was a philosopher then, and he could not but be struck with the furious gaiety of society and the great frivolity of the day, and with that careless method of living and thinking which followed as a kind of revulsion on the awful scenes of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In the spring of 1797, De Candolle returned to Geneva. There he studied the physiology of plants with M. Sénebier, going to his father’s house in the holidays, which were spent in botanical excursions. In one of these, on the Jura Mountains, De Candolle discovered a new fungus of a beautiful red colour, and his adventure in obtaining the specimen was very characteristic of the man. On the sides of those hills are many very precipitous trough-like paths, down which the wood-cutters pass the fir trees they cut high up on the mountains, to the valleys. They are rugged at the sides, and have really been worn out of the hills by running water and the rushing downwards of the trees. Active people can slide down these “couloirs” by sitting on a stick placed between one’s legs, and down went young De Candolle in that fashion. As he rushed along, he saw a beautiful red plant on a branch of a tree overhanging the couloir, and as he slid down he managed to cut the branch and obtain his prize—his first new plant to describe. But it was done at the expense of his clothes, which got torn off from him in many parts, by the rocks, so that he had to slink home to avoid being seen. Working hard at botany, the young enthusiast had very agreeable hours of relaxation. He was in the midst of a charming homely society; and there is no doubt that his purity of character and thorough honesty of disposition were fostered and intensified, by his having the friendship of several young married and single women of good education and position. They made him a polished gentleman, and he used to say that that was the happy time of his life; he had no cares or anxieties, everything smiled on him, yet he was conscious that it must end, and that he must prepare for work and the struggle of life.

Politics were always the trouble of the De Candolle family, and they settled the future career of the young botanist. Geneva was about to become a portion of the French Republic, the father of De Candolle lost one-half of his fortune, and the young man went to Paris to learn how to earn his bread after preliminary study. He had a sad parting from the father who had been so good to him, and who loved him so well, and arrived at Paris, being received by an uncle, in March, 1798. After a few days of quietude, which he spent in calling on his former friends, he determined to go into lodgings near the Jardin des Plantes, and to work, leaving pleasure behind him, and to be sought for when he could afford it. He began to study medicine, and led the odd life of a medical student, attended to by old crones in their second childhood, and witnessing all the sad sights of the hospitals. Whenever he could, he made his way to the Botanical Garden, and yet he did not attend the lectures on botany. He found them not consistent with what he knew. But he was ever studying, describing, and observing plants, and, knowing nobody at the gardens, sought out Lamarck, who offered him some articles in his Encyclopædia to write. The articles were written, and mistakes were naturally made, and in after years they were readily acknowledged and set right. But the work did not advance the young botanist in his studies, although it confirmed him in the necessity of examining all the parts of a plant in classifying it, and in paying especial attention to those organs which are the most important to the life and reproduction of the kind. Leaving his lodgings to board with a friend, De Candolle was robbed, as was usual in those days, by his housekeepers; but he got into a worse scrape by being inveigled into a gambling-house, where he lost nearly all the money he had earned. It cured him of that folly. At work he began to make experiments on the action of different gases on the roots of plants, and obtained some curious results; and M. Desfontaines, the Professor of Botany, gave him hints about the correct method of describing plants, so as to enable him to write the letterpress to the plates of a work on those succulent plants called Crassulaceæ, of which the houseleek and stonecrops are familiar examples. Medicine was quite given up; and, in fact, it was hateful to De Candolle, who used to say, “If I make a mistake in naming a plant, I can set it right, but if I had made mistakes as a medical man, who knows how many dear little children I might not have killed?” He became a friend of the Delessert family, and met at their house all those rising naturalists who were forming the great French school, and this society was of great importance to him. Botanical excursions to Fontainebleau were made by him, with Brongniart, Cuvier, and Dumeril, all great men in their day, and then he went botanizing into Normandy, and nearly got drowned collecting seaweeds. Returning to Paris, he was fortunate enough to be again kindly looked after by some good families, and he became attached to Mdlle. Fanny Torras, one of a bright circle of ladies who liked the brilliant conversation and good manners of the rising young man. Going to Holland for a trip, De Candolle was struck with the curious vegetation of the hills or dunes of sand near the coast, and this appears to have attracted his attention to the geographical distribution of plants. Nevertheless, and in spite of all those attractions, he studied human anatomy and zoology. In course of time he went home to Champagne, and his future marriage was agreed upon. On his return to Paris, he was received as the future husband of Mdlle. Torras.

He studied the “sleep of plants,” the classification of the Vetches, was presented at the Institute, and elected a member of the Société Philomathique, where he met and became the associate of his old botanical companions at Fontainebleau.