JOHN LINDLEY (1848)
The commanding position to which these men attained in the world of science was of course due, primarily, to their ability and—equally of course—to circumstance. The great wars were over and in the peaceful years men were free to turn their energy to constructive purposes. Horticulture—ever a British art—became unreservedly popular. Explorers and collectors, encouraged and assisted by Banks and others, sent home rich supplies of new or rare plants and thus provided British systematists with a vast array of material for their work of reconstructing the flora of the world. Such brilliant use was made of opportunity that our country took the lead in systematic botany.
The activity of the collector, the generosity of the patron and the labour of the systematist led not only to a general advance in methods of classification but also to a very special advance in the knowledge of what is, in many ways, the most interesting group of plants on the face of the earth—the Orchidaceae. Among the plant-treasure from India, Australia and Malaya were large numbers of epiphytic orchids. The problem of cultivating such strange and fascinating plants challenged the skill of the gardener. The "fancying" instinct, latent in every Englishman and curiously characteristic of the race, was evoked by the bizarre form of these plants. Orchid-growing became the hobby of the well-to-do. Gardeners with no knowledge of science and regardless of text-book dicta on sterility, proceeded to raise the most marvellous series of hybrids—bi-generic, tri-generic, multi-generic—which any sane and scholastic botanist would have declared to be impossible.
Brown, Blume and above all Lindley threw themselves with enthusiasm into the task of discovering the clues to the classification of these plants, the form of whose flowers transgress so glaringly the rules of morphology—dimly surmising perhaps that if the key to evolution is ever to be found it will be discovered by the study of the group of plants which appear to represent evolution's latest prank.
In building up the new system of classification of the vegetable kingdom in general and of orchids in particular, Lindley bore a conspicuous part; and were these his only contributions to the advancement of botanical science, his biographer might find the task of writing his life one of no very great difficulty. When however he discovers the many other varied aspects of Lindley's activities, the biographer may well despair of presenting a fair picture of the scientific life of this remarkable man. Professor of Botany in University College, London, "Præfectus Horti" to the Society of Apothecaries, officially attached to the Royal Horticultural Society and responsible for the management of its gardens, and in no small measure for its very existence, Lindley yet found time to become easily the greatest scientific journalist of his age. For nearly 25 years he edited the Gardeners' Chronicle and did more than any other man to keep the science and practice of horticulture on good terms with one another. To those of us who know how generally the cares of organisation give excuse for slackness in research, Lindley's indomitable activity, both in administration and in investigation, becomes indeed impressive and inspiring. Lecturing, drawing and describing new genera and species, revising the vegetable kingdom, writing memoirs, text-books, articles, directing the gardens at Chiswick, fighting officialdom and obstruction, building up a great herbarium and discharging a dozen other duties would seem to have made up the daily life of this man of amazing vigour. Till he was 50 years of age Lindley never knew what it was to feel fatigue; at 52 he took his first holiday; but the continuous strain of half a century had exhausted him beyond recuperation. He rallied, set to work again, again broke down and died at the age of 67.
To sketch in rapid outline and to admire to the full, John Lindley's life is not difficult even to the modern botanist whose life is passed in the cloistered calm of the laboratory; but to give a discriminating account of the chief of Lindley's services to science is well-nigh impossible for any one man: certainly I could not have undertaken it unaided. Good fortune and friends however rendered the attempt unnecessary. In the first place, Lord Lindley, when he knew of this project, put at my disposal in the kindest manner possible an outline of John Lindley's career which he had written under the title of "Sketch of my Father's Life: written for my sons, daughters and grandchildren." In what follows I have made free use of Lord Lindley's manuscript. In the second place, Mr W. Botting Hemsley has had the great kindness not only to supply me with much valuable information of which he was possessed concerning Lindley's scientific work but to examine manuscripts, letters, etc. at Kew bearing thereon and to allow me to make use of the results of his interesting investigations.
Hence my task has become merely that of an editor whose chief duty is to fit the material provided by two distinguished contributors into the prescribed space. Whatever credit is due to this first attempt to sketch the career of Lindley, belongs to these two gentlemen whose remarkable kindness I have great pleasure in acknowledging.
Outline of Career.
John Lindley was born on February 5, 1799, in Catton near Norwich. His father, George Lindley, who came of an old Yorkshire family, conducted a large nursery and fruit business in Catton. To the facts that John Lindley became in early years an accomplished field botanist and also learned much of practical horticulture may be ascribed the close touch which he maintained throughout his botanical career with the practical side of botany. It is not too much to say that John Lindley was the unique representative of a class of man which he himself declared had never existed, namely one which combined the qualities of a good physiologist with those of a practical gardener of the greatest experience. John Lindley's youthful ambition was however to be not a savant but a soldier, and though, owing to the inability of his father to buy him a commission, that ambition was not fulfilled, the instinct which prompted it found frequent expression throughout Lindley's life. As his career demonstrates, he was a first class fighting man. The curious may find in the pages of the Gardeners' Chronicle records of the combats which he waged on behalf of horticulture and we shall have occasion presently to refer to the most important of all his campaigns in the cause of science.