At the Conversazione

'Some of the Guests at the Conversazione' runs the title of this photograph, but what is the occasion has been captured for posterity? Who are these ladies and gentlemen, dressed impeccably in their best evening wear?



Let's zoom in a little closer, to some figures in the front row:







The gentleman with the drooping moustache - and seemingly drooping features - is William Bateson, born on this day in 1861. He's seated between his wife Beatrice and the Rev. William Wilks, Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society.



The date is the 30th July 1906 and the occasion is the opening Conversazione of the third international conference on hybridization and plant breeding. Like the first of these Conferences in 1899, it was held in London and organised through the Royal Horticultural Society.



Our focus on Bateson is due to the Inaugural Lecture he delievered to the Conference the morning after this photograph was taken. Bateson began his Lecture by recalling the first Conference in 1899, then considering the work of Gregor Mendel which had been re-discovered in Western Europe around the turn of the century, and how this research was turning the study of hybridisation and plant-breeding into a "developed science" (indeed, Bateson was carrying out reseach along these lines in Cambridge, with the aid of ladies from Newnham College). Bateson's next paragraph, however, is worth quoting in full:



"Like other new crafts, we have been compelled to adopt a terminology, which, if somewhat deterrent to the novice, is so necessary a tool to the craftsman that it must be endured. But though these attributes of scientific activity are in evidence, the science itself is still nameless, and we can only describe our pursuit by cumbrous and often misleading periphrasis. To meet this difficulty I suggest for the consideration of this Congress the term Genetics, which sufficiently indicates that our labours are devoted to the elucidation of the phenomena of heredity and variation: in other words, to the physiology of Descent, with implied bearing on the theoretical problems of the evolutionist and the systematist, and application to the practical problems of breeders, whether of animals or plants. After more or less undirected wanderings we have thus a definite aim in view" [1].



It's fair to say then, that the term Bateson suggested to his audience succeeded in its aim. It certainly replaced the need for "cumbrous and often misleading periphrasis" - so much so that the published proceedings were titled Report of the Third International Conference on Genetics: hybridisation (the cross-breeding of genera or species), the cross-breeding of varieties, and general plant-breeding.



The next time then, you hear the word 'genetics' ponder not just the modern imagery associated with the term, nor the scientists of the twenty first century unravelling the secrets of the human body, but the term's creator William Bateson - captured by the camera, attired in the formal evening wear of Edwardian England.



[1] Report of the Third International Conference 1906 on Genetics : hybridisation (the cross-breeding of genera or species), the cross-breeding of varieties, and general plant-breeding (ed. W. Wilks), p91. Whilst Bateson had used the word 'genetics' in a personal letter in 1905, this was a public outing for his new term.

Sun, Sea and Seeds

As the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual jamboree opens this week in Chelsea it is timely to remember the man who not only donated land at Wisley in Surrey in 1903 for the Society's new national gardens, but also with his brother Daniel, an unassuming pharmacologist and amateur botanist from south London, played a vital role in the construction of the visual landscape of one of the world’s most characteristic pleasure grounds.

The role of the British in the creation of the French and Italian Riviera as health resort and tourist destination is well known. Celebrity visitors such as Edward VII and Winston Churchill, or residents like Somerset Maugham, jostle with the innumerable hotels Windsor and Bristol in the public perception of the pre-war Riviera as the playground of the English upper classes. Less well-known is the part played by altogether more sober Britons who, equally drawn south by the Riviera’s equable winter climate, devoted themselves not so much to fleshly pleasures and the gaming tables of Monte Carlo but to study, horticulture and good works.

One of these was - shown above - Sir Thomas Hanbury (1832-1907), a Quaker merchant in the China Trade, who was so entranced by the area round Menton when travelling on the Continent that in 1867 he bought a ruined palazzo and its extensive grounds at La Mortola on the Franco-Italian border with the aim of restoring it and constructing a botanical garden. In 1871 Hanbury and his wife settled at La Mortola permanently.

So began the Hanbury Gardens, the most famous botanical destination on the Riviera by the time of Hanbury’s death.

‘’A visit should be paid to the late Sir Thomas Hanbury’s beautiful Botanic Garden and Saracenic Tower, an interesting restoration of a 9th century building, converted into a villa, situated at La Mortola, about 2 miles east from Garavan, open to the public Monday and Friday from noon to sunset. Admission 1 fr, for the benefit of local charities. The charming grounds of 100 acres slope down to the beach in terraces amidst orange and lemon tress and palms. A feature of the garden in the Pergola, a delightful walk covered with trellis work, up the supporting pillars of which climb a hundred varieties of creeping plants. The house is built in the Italian style on the site of an ancient Saracen castle, with white marble terraces and loggias, affording superb views of the Mediterranean.’’ The Traveller’s Handbook for the Riviera and the Pyrenees (Thomas Cook & Son, 1912), p.12.

The Hanbury Gardens were not merely a pleasure garden however. From the first the project embodied an urge to investigate how foreign species acclimatized, with the subtext of learning more about the pharmacological qualities of exotic plants, as befitted the interests of a scion of the house of Allen & Hanburys, the pharmaceutical chemists.

In this Thomas was assisted by, or more properly left the greater part to his eldest brother Daniel (1825-1875), a pharmacologist whose primary research focus was on vegetable material medica. His principal method of investigation was via a world-wide correspondence, often with British merchants, consuls and other government officials overseas, who supplied Daniel Hanbury with information about the local flora, and sometimes seeds and other botanical specimens. This correspondence is preserved in the Wellcome Library, in Daniel’s series of copy letter and notebooks dating from 1858 to his death (MSS.5304, 8353-8367).

The correspondence and papers show that Daniel was a frequent visitor to La Mortola and was instrumental in introducing many exotic varieties to the garden, from the Americas, and especially Australia and South Africa, mainly from seed. An entry for May 1869 lists in detail the succulents growing on the various terraces at the villa (MS.8361, ff.42-43) – the gardens today are still noted for their agaves and aloes.

Elsewhere in the notebooks are lengthy inventories of seeds obtained from the botanic gardens in Cape Town and Adelaide, with notes on the success of planning at La Mortola. It is tantalizing to speculate not only how many of the present occupants of the Hanbury Gardens, but also the denizens of more homely villa gardens all along the Riviera, owe their existence to these packages of seeds transported half way round the world to Daniel’s house in Clapham and then forwarded or carried by him by rail to Menton.

Author: Richard Aspin