The Signature of All Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

years quite as much as Henry Whittaker had been thinking about him.
    Nonetheless, as he began to recall the orchardman’s son, he permitted Henry entry into his personal study and offered him a glass of port, whichHenry refused. He bade the boy to tell him all about the journey. Of course Banks already knew that the Resolution had safely arrived in England, and he had been receiving letters from Mr. Nelson along the way, but Henry was the first live person Banks had encountered straight off the ship, and so Banks welcomed him—once he’d remembered who the boy was—with penetrating curiosity. Henry spoke for nearly two hours, in full botanical and personal detail. He spoke with more liberty than delicacy, it must be said, which made his account a treasure. By the end of the narrative, Banks found himself most deliciously informed. There was nothing Banks loved more than knowing things that other people did not realize he knew, and here—long before the official and politically polished logs of the Resolution would be made available to him—he already knew all that had occurred on Cook’s third expedition.
    As Henry spoke, Banks grew impressed. Banks could see that Henry had spent the past few years not so much studying as conquering botany, and that he now had the potential to become a first-rate plantsman. Banks would need to keep this boy, he realized, before someone else filched him away. Banks was a serial filcher himself. He often used his money and éclat to pinch young men of promise away from other institutions and expeditions, and to bring them into the service of Kew. Naturally, he had lost some young men over the years, as well—lured away to safe and lucrative posts as gardeners at wealthy estates. Banks would not lose this one, he decided.
    Henry may have been ill-bred, but Banks did not mind an ill-bred man, if he was competent. Great Britain produced naturalists like flaxseed, but most of them were blockheads and dilettantes. Meanwhile, Banks was desperate for new plants. He would gladly have embarked on expeditions himself, but he was nearing fifty years old and suffering awfully from gout. He was swollen and pained, trapped most hours of the day in his desk chair. So he needed to dispatch collectors in his stead. It was not as simple a task as one might think, to find them. There were not as many able-bodied young men as one might hope—young men who wanted to earn wretched salaries in order to die of the ague in Madagascar, or be shipwrecked off the Azores, or assaulted by bandits in India, or taken prisoner in Grenada, or simply to vanish forever in Ceylon.
    The trick was to make Henry feel as though he were already destinedto work for Banks forever, and not to give the boy any time to ponder things, or to have someone warn him off, or to fall in love with some saucily dressed girl, or to make his own plans for his future. Banks needed to convince Henry that the future was prearranged, and that Henry’s future already belonged to Kew. Henry was a confident young fellow, but Banks knew that his own position of wealth, power, and fame gave him the advantage here—indeed, gave him the appearance, at times, of being the hand of divine providence itself. The trick was to use the hand unblinkingly and swiftly.
    “Fine work,” Banks said, after Henry had relayed his stories. “You’ve done well. Next week I shall send you to the Andes.”
    Henry had to think for a moment: What were the Andes? Islands? Mountains? A country? Like the Netherlands?
    But Banks was talking forward, as though all were decided. “I’m funding a Peruvian botanical expedition, and it departs Wednesday next. You’ll be led by Mr. Ross Niven. He’s a tough old Scot—perhaps too old, if I may be candid—but he’s as hardy as anyone you’ll ever meet. He knows his trees and, I daresay, he knows his South America. I prefer a Scotsman to an Englishman for this sort of work, you know. They are more cold-minded and constant,