Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science

Donald L. Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Donald L. Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Donald L. Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, Brigitte Van Tiggelen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137492739
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

The history of the modern sciences has long overlooked the significance of domesticity as a physical, social, and symbolic force in the shaping of knowledge production. This book provides a welcome reorientation to our understanding of the making of the modern sciences globally by emphasizing the centrality of domesticity in diverse scientific enterprises.

Part I

The Estate of Knowledge: Domestic Sites and Scientific Authority

1

Botanizing at Badminton House: The Botanical Pursuits of Mary Somerset, First Duchess of Beaufort

Julie Davies

In the last decades of the seventeenth century, Mary Somerset, the third Marchioness of Worcester and first Duchess of Beaufort, actively collected, identified, and classified thousands of plants from around the world. She worked with her gardener, George Adams, and several famous botanists to grow, study, catalogue, distribute, dry, and paint her specimens. Friends, family, and colleagues from both Oxford and the Royal Society of London contributed to her collection. Yet she also obtained many plants and seeds through conventional garden suppliers, and she commissioned agents to hunt down and collect specimens within the British Isles and abroad. The report of just one such shipment, received in 1696, indicates that she had hundreds of seeds, leaves, cuttings, saplings, and even several large trees shipped to her from Barbados. This particular consignment was so large that the first 11 tubs were split between five ships, with eight more promised in the next fleet. Each tub was large enough to contain, in one instance, one fern tree, seven water common trees, and one white mangrove tree, and, in another, one great bay tree and 50 saplings.¹ In this way, Somerset amassed an exceptionally large and diverse collection of plants at the family estate of Badminton House in Gloucestershire, which provided the foundation for her botanical pursuits.

Somerset’s contributions to botanical knowledge have drawn limited attention until very recent years. Having lived to the impressive age of 84, Somerset passed away in January 1715, still some 20 years before the seminal works of Carl Linnaeus solidified the commonly recognized foundations of modern botanical science.² This chronological misfortune has contributed to the tendency to characterize Somerset as a gardener or collector of plants rather than giving her the recognition she deserves as pre-Linnaean botanist.

In her choice of discipline, Somerset foreshadows the fervour of the eighteenth century, which saw women encouraged to return to their ‘natural’ area of study.³ It was thought that, by engaging herself in botanizing, a lady would become more ‘favourable to reflection’ as ‘dispassionate reflection will turn anger into pity, and lend to sorrow itself a patience from which it may extract some portion of sweetness’.⁴ Indeed, such a sentiment appears to hold some truth in this case, for it seems that Somerset’s botanical pursuits were motivated, at least in part, by Joseph Glanvill. Glanvill recommended study of the natural world and, especially, training in the experimental methodologies of the Royal Society as a remedy for debilitating bouts of melancholy, which Somerset suffered from throughout the 1660s and 1670s.

The tendency to overlook Somerset’s contribution to early botanical history was seemingly supported by the limitations placed on her as a seventeenth-century woman: her options as a scientific figure were limited by her gender in many typical ways. Challenged by several severe bouts of melancholy and poor health, Somerset was not of the temperament to openly challenge many of the traditional limitations placed on women in this period. Not sharing Margaret Cavendish’s fiery personality and assertiveness, Somerset does not seem to have sought opportunities to publish works or teach, and she was excluded from membership of scientific organizations such as the Royal Society of London.

Even among those women hailed as important patrons and contributors to experimental science, these gendered limitations prevailed. Foreshadowing the norm which would emerge in the eighteenth century, Cavendish suggests that women are particularly suited to the role of assistant when she writes in her Observations on Experimental Philosophy (1666) that: ‘Woman was given to Man not only to delight, but to help and assist him; and I am confident, Women would labour as much with Fire and Furnace as Men.’⁵ Meanwhile, her contemporary Mary Evelyn turned her back on the philosophical engagements which inspired her friendship with Ralph Bohun, writing in 1674 that:

Women were not born to read authors, and censure the learned, to compare lives and judge of virtues, to give rules of morality, and sacrifice to the muses. We are willing to acknowledge all time borrowed from family duties is misspent; the care of children’s education, observing a husband’s commands, assisting the sick, relieving the poor, and being serviceable to our friends, are of sufficient weight to employ the most improved capacities amongst us; and if sometimes it happens by accident that one of a thousand aspires a little higher, her fate commonly exposes her to wonder, but adds little of esteem …⁶

Thus, despite their different lifestyles and opinions of the new science, it appears that Cavendish and Evelyn both agreed that women had only a secondary role to play in intellectual pursuits.

By basing her work in a sphere where she did have considerable control, the family estate that she managed during her husband’s frequent absences, Somerset was able to overcome these emerging beliefs about women’s capacities and actively contribute to the collaborative advancement of knowledge of the natural world as advocated by the Royal Society. She not only produced copious catalogues and records for personal use, but regularly collaborated with colleagues and friends to grow, understand, identify, and classify plant specimens. She had working relationships with several significant fellows of the Royal Society including Robert Southwell, Samuel Doody, James Petiver, John Ray, William Sherard, and Hans Sloane, and she was involved in botanical projects that were reported in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions.⁷ The tangible culmination of her work, which survives still in the Sloane collection in the British Natural History Museum, is her skilfully produced 12-volume herbarium.

However, in execution, the domestic setting of Somerset’s operation enabled her to overcome many of the obstacles posed by the emerging gendered norms faced by women at the turn of the eighteenth century and evidently expounded by Cavendish and Evelyn. For example, while it became relatively common for women to work as assistants throughout the eighteenth century, such women typically remained spinsters or stopped working once they wed.⁸ In contrast, the many extant papers, correspondences, notes, and diaries documenting her contributions clearly demonstrate that Somerset was the driving force behind this work.⁹ Somerset was actively working with, overseeing, and often training the male workers in her self-funded operation, all with the full cooperation of her family.

Interestingly, Somerset’s gardening became a serious botanical pursuit while the children from her second marriage, born in 1660 and 1684, were still young. Nevertheless, Somerset proceeded with the family’s involvement. She conferred with her husband, the Duke of Beaufort, on designs for the garden, and she received plants, cuttings, and seeds from friends and family.¹⁰ For a time, she shared her passion with her children, particularly her eldest son, Charles. Charles held a particular interest in his mother’s pursuits and in 1673, at the tender age of 13, was the youngest nominee to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a distinction he still holds.¹¹

This familial cooperation seems to be the key factor that enabled Somerset to overcome any stereotypical gender restrictions and take charge of her botanical programme. Somerset’s botanical endeavours also depended on both the networks and influence that accompanied a titled family and its country estate. Badminton provided many resources, including money, staff, and space necessary to house such a collection, with the Beauforts spending some £29,760 on the house and gardens by 1690.¹² In this chapter, I will analyse Somerset’s botanizing at Badminton as a case in which a gentlewoman leveraged her class privilege in defiance of the emerging gender norms that typically circumscribed women’s independent scientific pursuits, and how the household, including the family and the estate, played a critical role as a resource in the production of botanical knowledge.

A little family history

Mary was the second of six children born to Arthur Capel, first Baron Capel of Hadham, and Elizabeth Morrison, in 1630. Cornelius Johnson painted the couple and five of their children in 1640 (Figure 1.1). A large formal garden provides the backdrop for the portrait, reflecting the family’s interests in gardening. The young Mary draws the viewer’s attention by being the only figure in the painting who is provided with a prop, handing a rose from a small basket to the young child on her mother’s lap.¹³ This passion for plants was not, however, limited to the female line. Indeed, Mary’s brother Henry, first (and last) Baron Capel of Tewkesbury, has been most widely acknowledged for his horticultural skill, having been first to cultivate a garden at a particular location in Kew, a garden which received much praise in his time and which would eventually develop into the Royal Botanic Garden.¹⁴

In 1648 Mary married Henry Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, and they had two children together. However, their reportedly happy and affectionate marriage ended with Seymour’s unexpected death in 1654. There is little indication of Somerset’s interest in gardening in this period; however, three years later, in 1657, Mary married into another family renowned for, among other things, their gardening prowess. Mary’s new husband was Henry Somerset, then Marquess of Worcester, who would, in 1682, be named the first Duke of Beaufort. The famous Somerset estate garden at Raglan Castle had been abandoned after the castle was severely damaged while under siege by the Parliamentarians in 1646, prompting the family to move to Badminton House.¹⁵ Then, in 1664, Mary and Henry embarked upon a programme to revitalize the house and expand the gardens, a project which would help induce Mary to expand the scale of her horticultural interests.¹⁶

Figure 1.1 The Capel Family, oil painting on canvas by Cornelius Johnson, c.1640. From left to right: Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex; Charles Capel; Arthur Capel, 1st Baron Capel; Elizabeth, Lady Capel; Henry Capel, 2nd Baron Capel; Mary Capel, Duchess of Beaufort; Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon. ©National Portrait Gallery, London.

Nevertheless, the association of both families with exceptional gardening in no way guaranteed the level of support for botanical endeavour that Mary received. Henry and Mary had taken great measures to protect the Badminton Estate from Henry’s parents. His father Edward, the second Marquess of Worcester had a passion for mechanical invention which brought the family near to bankruptcy in pursuit of a perpetual motion machine.¹⁷ In contrast to Edward’s money-making schemes, Mary Somerset’s botany seems to have grown from a deeply emotional place, and this is likely the reason why her botanizing was embraced by her family and friends, despite the financial burden.¹⁸ Furthermore, Somerset’s personal motivations seem to have shaped her botany in several ways, and offer a viable explanation for the freedom she enjoyed to undertake her pursui...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Domesticity and the Historiography of Science
• Part I: The Estate of Knowledge: Domestic Sites and Scientific Authority
• Part II: Constructions of Domestic Science and Technology
• Part III: Familial Science: Sustaining Knowledge across Generations and Distances
• Part IV: Afterword
• Select Bibliography
• Index