WILLIAM HENRY HARVEY
William Henry Harvey came of the old Quaker stock that has given to Ireland several of her most enthusiastic naturalists. To this group belong Thomas Wright of Cork, Joseph Wright of Belfast, Greenwood Pim of Dublin; all of whom, immersed in affairs of business, devoted their leisure hours to science, and progressed far in the branches of zoology or botany to which they addressed themselves. Harvey's family belonged to Youghal, on the coast of Co. Cork. His father was a well-known merchant of Limerick, in which town he himself was born, the youngest of eleven children, just a hundred years ago—in February 1811. Even as a child, his love of natural history made itself apparent, and fortunately his schooling tended to foster this taste. After a few years at Newtown near Waterford, he went to the historic school of Ballitore, in the county of Kildare. These Irish Quaker schools have long favoured the teaching of science, and Ballitore at that time was no exception. The head master was James White, a keen naturalist, and himself a writer on Irish botany[108]; and probably the encouragement that young Harvey received at Ballitore had much to do with the shaping of his life. At the age of fifteen, we find him writing of his collection of butterflies and shells, and already referring to the group in which he subsequently achieved his greatest fame:—
"I also intend to study my favourite and useless class, Cryptogamia. I think I hear thee say, Tut-tut! But no matter. To be useless, various, and abstruse, is a sufficient recommendation of a science to make it pleasing to me. I don't know how I shall ever find out the different genera of mosses. Lichens I think will be easy" (he little knew them!) "but fungi I shall not attempt; not at all from their difficulty, but only because they are not easily preserved. But do not say that the study of Cryptogamia is useless. Remember that it was from the genus Fucus that iodine was discovered."
Another letter of this period, written when he was sixteen, contains so quaint a description of himself that I am tempted to quote from it:—
"In person I am tall, and in a good degree awkward. I am silent, and when I do speak say little, particularly to people of whom I am afraid, or with whom I am not intimate. I care not for city sports, or for the diversions of the country. I am equally unknown to any healthful amusement of boys. I cannot swim nor skate. I know nothing of the delight of these, and yet I can amuse myself and be quite happy, seemingly without any one to share my happiness. My botanical knowledge extends to about thirty of the commonest plants. I am very fond of botany, but I have not much opportunity of learning anything, because I have only to show the plant to James White, who tells me all about it, which I forget the next minute. My mineralogy embraces about twelve minerals, of which I know only the names. I am totally unacquainted with foreign shells, and know only about two hundred and fifty native ones. As to ornithology, I have stuffed about thirteen birds. In chemistry I read a few books, and tried some experiments. In lithography I broke a stone and a printing press. These are my pretensions to science."
The reference to lithography is interesting, in view of the fact that he became later on one of the most exquisite delineators of plants, and with his own hand drew on stone the greater part of the splendid plates which enrich his works on Phanerogams and Algae. In his confession of ignorance of sports and pastimes, we already see the result of the want of robust health which followed him through life, and brought about his premature death; and in spite of which he performed such monumental work.
Already Harvey's mind was quite made up as to what line in life he would prefer. He cannot hope, he says, to achieve success in commerce, by "buying cheap and selling dear." As regards professions, he is "neither fit to be a doctor nor a lawyer, lacking courage for the one, and face for the other, and application for both.... All I have a taste for is natural history, and that might possibly lead in days to come to a genus called Harveya, and the letters F.L.S. after my name, and with that I shall be content.... The utmost extent of my ambition would be to get a professorship of natural history."
His parents had thought of placing the boy with an eminent chemist in London, but his obvious antipathy to the prospect of city life led to his entering his father's office in Limerick instead. The quiet home life which ensued was well suited to his taste. All holidays were devoted to collecting. The family had a summer residence at Miltown Malbay, on the Atlantic coast, an excellent spot for Algae; and it was no doubt the time spent there that brought these plants prominently under his notice, and led to the noteworthy researches of later days. For the time, Mollusca still mainly occupied his mind, and in 1829, at eighteen years of age, we find him busily engaged in drawing the plates for a Testacea Hibernica—a book that never saw the light, though two years later he writes of being at work on his Bivalvia Hibernica, which was then half finished.
In the same year, he made his first excursion into "foreign parts" as he calls them, visiting Dublin, Liverpool, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. An account of a meeting of the Linnean Society, to which he was taken by his friend Bicheno, then secretary, and at which "if not edified I was amused," shows that the reverence he felt for science did not necessarily extend to constituted scientific authority. "The President wore a three-cocked hat of ample dimensions, and sat in a crimson arm-chair in great state. I saw a number of new Fellows admitted. They were marched one by one to the president, who rose, and taking them by the hand, admitted them. The process costs £25."