Like a Flower in Bloom (31 page)

“Confound it!” He grabbed my hands and sank to his knees. “You are the most maddening, most vexing, most exasperating woman I have ever met. Let me make this very plain for you, Miss Withersby. I love you. I need you. I wish to marry you.”

“That’s all very nice for you, Mr. Trimble, but do you not wish to solicit my opinion on the matter?”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath in through his nostrils, and then opened his eyes and fixed that penetrating gaze on me. “Do you wish to marry me, Miss Withersby?”

“Yes.”

“Yes? Is that all you’re going to say?”

“Would you rather I said no?”

“No! It’s just that I’ve declared to you my love and . . . and my devotion, and I just . . .”

“Like a flower in bloom, I’ve discovered that it’s no good to try to adhere to some idealized type that has no basis in reality. I can only be what I am and offer up what petals I have, hoping that someone might look beyond what is supposed to be to what, in fact, actually is.”

He stood, grinning. “That’s altogether fanciful of you.”

“It’s meant to be poetical.”

He took my hands in his and brought them up to his chest, where he bent his head to kiss my knuckles. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to become a sheep farmer’s wife.”

“Or perhaps you’ll have to become a botanist’s husband.”

He smiled as he bent to kiss me once more. “Perhaps I shall.”

T
he Templeton-Stansbury marriage was the wedding of the century. At least, that’s what was claimed in Cheshire. The nuptials were held that May at the church, presided over by the rector. A reception was given afterward in the stumpery, which was disguised, by the bride, with a breathtaking array of ferns and flowers for the occasion. The couple repaired to the Continent for a yearlong honeymoon, from which I was sent a constant stream of letters. Though Mr. Stansbury had intended to spend the year acquiring specimens for his collections, Adah prevailed upon him to take her to Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. It was my understanding that a cargo hold of trunks containing stylish gowns, Wardian cases of exotic plants, and crates of fashionable new furniture awaited them at Overwich Hall upon their return.

Mr. Hopkins-Whyte fed the remains of his unfortunate specimens to the fire during the months of February and March and then made a visit to his beloved Northumberland for a fortnight in April while the children’s nurse and the cook put the rectory in order. To his great surprise, he got himself married to a third cousin while he was there. She has the makings of a very fine Mrs. Rector.

Out of respect for my father, Edward and I did not marry until he had settled himself in with the Admiral. And for the purposes of convention, we waited until Lady Caroline had found herself a suitable husband. With her family’s connections, however, it did not take long. Before the end of June I was being called Mrs. Trimneltonbury. And I must say, I delighted in hearing it.

That summer, I undertook a journey I had never imagined. It took a full two months to reach New Zealand, and another month of provisioning in Christchurch, and only then, once we reached Edward’s sheep farm in Canterbury, did I discover the parcel of letters awaiting me from home.

I confess that I will never fit with the Trimneltonbury family, but Edward and I have determined to cultivate our own species in a place that pleases us both, with a life we adore. I had not ever had the pleasure of acquainting myself with sheep, but I find they are not quite so dreadful as I had feared. And Edward himself is more wonderful than I had hoped. There is an abundance of flora just waiting to be discovered, and I conceive of at least several volumes that need to be written and illustrated in order to adequately represent them to the rest of the world. And on the whole, I find myself quite . . . happy.

I
have this great idea for a book about painting, and women, and botany!” I told my agent and my editor. It wasn’t until I planned my research that I started having second thoughts. Because to understand science, you actually have to
read
about science. And I did. I read about botany, about the history of botany, and about the histories of the botanists who comprise the history of botany. I started my research back in the 1700s and read about what happened well into the 1900s. What a challenge I set for myself with this book: to have a main character who lived and breathed science, yet make botany interesting to people like me who have no particular interest in it.

This book is based on the stories of the multitude of women whose contributions to the field of botany have largely been ignored. Women, like Charlotte, who wrote books and created illustrations that were credited, upon publication, to men. My writing was fueled by outrage at the knowledge that in spite of all of their hard work, they were not given credit for it.

The mid-1800s was a turning point in the study of botany.
That area of science had chiefly been the purview of women and clergy who had an interest in the classification of plants. It was a safe pursuit whose study was meant to illuminate God and enrich faith. It was wrested from them, however, by professional academics more interested in the patterns of the distribution of plants.

The opening up of the study of botany to the “why” instead of simply the “what” struck fear in the hearts of many religious people of the era. They believed that investigating the distribution of plants somehow diminished the role of God in His creation. Although the distributionists came up with some dubious theories, they were matched in their doubtful rationale by responses from the religious adherents of the science. In some ways, religion’s credibility was so damaged that it was effectively written out of the scientific debates of the period and, sadly, most of the scientific debates of today.

Botanists had a reputation during the era for being philosophic thinkers with hardy constitutions and a winsome sort of charm. In the wilds of the colonies, in search of rare specimens, they perpetuated a reputation much like that of Indiana Jones. Illustrating their discoveries was part of the job description, and many of them, like Edward Trimble, dashed off whimsical caricatures of flowers. From the world of botany sprang the genre of literary nonsense best exemplified by the works of artist/writers like Edward Lear and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who socialized with the era’s leading philosophers and amateur botanists such as John Ruskin (the famed patron of the pre-Raphaelite artistic movement).

Botany gave birth to a handful of dynastic families who often intermarried. The upbringing of members of those families was, much like Charlotte’s, eccentric in the extreme. But if you grew up with botanists and socialized with botanists and married
a botanist, how would you have known what was expected of you in society at large?

Victorians were known for their enthusiasms. They created stumperies and ferneries and all sorts of other overblown collections of objects both living and dead. And sometimes field clubs did come to blows over jurisdictions! It was not uncommon for a field club to sweep over a piece of property and leave nothing behind in its wake. Victorian collectors didn’t look far enough ahead to think of preserving the very things they were trying to collect. Many species nearly went extinct before conservationism came into vogue in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But that, as they say, is a whole other story.

The Ranunculaceae family includes over a thousand species of plants, like ranunculus, clematis, larkspur, delphinium, and hellebore. The Orchidaceae family is the largest family of flora, numbering over 20,000 species. Some of them, like those Charlotte sought, grow as wild flowers in England and are treated as weeds. One gardener’s nuisance can be a botanist’s treasure.

Miss Templeton’s extreme fear of childbirth may seem odd in our era of modern medicine, but in the nineteenth century the maternal mortality rate was 50 of 1000 births. If Victorians generally had five or six children, then the chance of dying during childbirth can be calculated at 20 to 25 percent. The monogram is often thought of as a symbol of status and wealth, but its origin is actually quite chilling. A woman would take care to place her monogram on items she brought to her marriage. After she died, were her husband to remarry, she could then be assured that her possessions would be passed on through the line of her own children instead of being given to her successor’s.

The first Opium War took place from 1839 to 1842, as a reaction to an international trade imbalance. As the popularity of Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain grew in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, the Chinese found little of interest to import from Britain. That forced the British to pay for their imports with silver. By the early 1800s about 40 percent of the world’s silver supply had been shipped to China.

By the 1830s, however, the British found something the Chinese were willing to pay for: opium. With the relatively cheap cost of opium and its highly addictive nature, the trade imbalance reversed to such an extent that Chinese silver was soon pouring into Britain. But the opium trade exacted heavy social losses, and it quickly grew too lucrative for the emperor to contain. From a single, approved port in Guangdong, the opium trade soon jumped official boundaries and was overtaken by corrupt officials, local merchants, and smugglers as it worked itself into the rhythms of daily life. Even missionaries came to rely upon opium smugglers for the delivery and posting of their letters and packages. The emperor was an opium addict, and so were nearly 30 percent of his officials.

Merchants and local officials supported legalization of opium and, therefore, taxation as a method of control. Opponents of the drug and those worried about the trade imbalance, however, argued for outright prohibition.

The emperor, deciding for prohibition, seized all opium in China and in international waters and burned it. British merchants, who were left with heavy losses, appealed to Parliament to reimburse them. When the conflict burst into war, although its basis was in the struggle to release trade from the emperor’s authoritarian control, in effect British soldiers fought for the right to supply millions of Chinese opium addicts with the drug. As the Admiral himself stated, it was both the best thing and worst thing to happen to international trade.

At least a third of the world’s population are introverts. While they can pretend to be extroverts for a while, frankly, the task is
exhausting. I hope Charlotte accurately portrayed the complexities of this personality. Contrary to common belief, introverts are not necessarily shy. They are not misanthropists. Though they gain energy from solitude and quiet, they don’t always like to be by themselves. They are, however, wonderful observers of the world around them, are quite self-aware, and prefer deep conversations to small talk. They are also inclined to think that there’s something seriously wrong with them. Many times they desperately hope that if they just try hard enough, they’ll be able to be like everyone else. I should know. I am one. Perhaps my novels always speak to questions of worth because so often I doubt my own.

As Mr. Trimble suggested to Charlotte, Eve’s designation in the Bible as a
helper
should not consign women to a fate of eternal servitude. That word,
ezer
, is used only twenty-one times throughout the Bible. The first two are in reference to Eve. The other specific references are used when God refers to himself. Perhaps you are familiar with this one: “
I lift up my eyes
to the hills. From where does my help [ezer] come
? My help [ezer]comes from the Lord, who made heaven
and earth
” (Psalm 121:1–2
ESV
). It’s a shame that the vitality and strength of that descriptor has been lost in translation. It lends a different slant to the idea of Woman to think that God gave that trait, that strength of His, specifically to the female of our species.

In the Victorian era, when you could be a man-scientist-professional
or
a woman-wife-mother,
or
was a safe though limiting word. It still is.
And
is much more dangerous because it requires more complexity.

Grace
and
mercy, faith
and
works, love
and
wrath.

Illustrator
and
female. Botanist
and
wife.

You
and
all the talents and abilities you were born with.

In the writing of this book, I’ve come to believe that God is much bigger than we often give Him credit for, just as people are so much more than their gender. In a world filled with questions, we shouldn’t be afraid to articulate them. When we look for answers, I don’t think it possible that we can find any less of God when there’s so much more of Him to be discovered.

To my agent, Natasha Kern, for loving Charlotte just as much as I do and for understanding her even better than I did! To my editors, Dave Long and Karen Schurrer, for their wise advice and their generous encouragement. To Maureen Lang, who made me feel a lot less insecure about the grade I earned in high school biology when she said she loved this story.

To my street team members for their enthusiastic support of this book: Jamie Lapeyrolerie, Denise Harmer, Jaquelyn Scroggie, Kathleen E. Belongia, Amy Putney, Brenda Veinotte, Kelsey Shade, Debbie Wilder, Beth Bulow, Lindsey Zimpel, Melissa Tharp, Julianna Rowe, Lorraine Hauger, Martha Artyomenko, Nancy McLeroy, and Pattie Reitz read my sample chapters and provided feedback on the cover. Several of them even slogged through the manuscript. Thank you, ladies! It’s been such a pleasure creating this book with you.

And to Tony. Thanks for seeing me. For looking beyond what’s supposed to be to what, in fact, actually is. I love you.

Siri
Mitchell
is the author of over a dozen novels, three of which were named Christy Award finalists. A graduate of the University of Washington with a degree in business, she has worked in many different levels of government and lived on three continents. She and her family currently reside in the D.C. metro area. Visit her at
www.sirimitchell.com
.