ORIGINS OF THE NATURALIST
“The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds,” wrote naturalist Gilbert White, illustrated below circa 1750, of Selborne in Hampshire ilbert White (1720–1793) was a one-off. There’s little about him that isn’t at least highly idiosyncratic, but pleasantly so. This mild, inquiring and gloriously unambitious man inadvertently inspired generations of naturalists, including Charles Darwin and WH Hudson, and was admired by writers such as Virginia Woolf and Edward Thomas. Gilbert, as he is affectionately known, is the wellspring of a mighty river. He has no detractors, though some readers may need to wait awhile before being grabbed. I couldn’t read him as a teenager, when I devoured William Henry Hudson and others. Richard Mabey took even longer, but went on to produce a highly lauded biography (1986). Great naturalists are born, not made. White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is one of only four books that have remained continuously in print since publication, in 1789. It was, and remains, a game-changer. The sheer wonder in the natural history section grabs the reader, even those with little interest in nature, and even though it is written in an archaic letter-format. Copies are regularly encountered in guest rooms and downstairs loos. Sadly, it stuttered during Gilbert’s lifetime and only took off during the 1830s. The second section, on the antiquities of Selborne, is a
Gdetailed parish history, containing much medieval and ecclesiastical Latin.
Gilbert’s first calling was in horticulture, for he threw his considerable energies into transforming the gardens of his indolent father, at The Wakes, in the centre of Selborne in east Hampshire. This might have been because he had little else to do at the time. He became a pioneer in productive horticulture, in an era when landscape gardens and the picturesque were all the rage. There is much his writings can teach the modern gardener, notably about hotbeds and the growing of melons, with which he was obsessed. Gilbert was the first to grow potatoes, maize and rice in his district.
He also got sucked into landscape gardening fashion, cutting a ha-ha to separate the main garden from his (small) park, creating a vista through six gates, at the end of which he erected a grossly eccentric wooden statue of Hercules. He even met a guru of the picturesque movement, the poet Alexander Pope. But his main passion was for vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers that could be used purposefully.
Gilbert was the eldest son of a large family, local to the Selborne area. This had drawbacks, as towards the end of his life he had more than 60 nephews and nieces in need of birthday remembrance, most of them residing locally – some challenge for an ageing curate obsessed with ornithology. He was educated privately, before being admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, of which he was to become a junior fellow. He was ordained and became a curate, though for much of his early life he was out of work or functioning as a locum. White spent five years, from 1745 to 1750, roaming around southern England, and passed a year as a provost at Oriel. Then, for a lengthy era he was curate of the neighbouring parish of Farringdon.
Selborne was his place of birth, and became his home for his last 60-odd years. Eventually, in 1784, he became Selborne’s curate-in-charge, which may have been all he ever wanted from life. Truthfully, though, he had little interest in