The Scotney Castle Estate in Kent provides a wonderful
example of an English Romantic landscape. The original
castle was modified extensively in the early Nineteenth Century
(below, upper) and a new house, in a quite different
style (below, lower), built on the hill overlooking it. The grounds are beautiful,
but the old castle and its moat are the dominant features and can be seen from
all the best rooms in the new house, completed on the instructions of Edward
Hussey III in 1843.
When visiting large houses owned by the National Trust, I
always make a point of looking at the titles of the books in their libraries. It
is clear that Edward Hussey III, like many of his class in the mid-Nineteenth
Century, was interested in Science and Natural History. Among the books in the new
house were Jabez Hogg's The Microscope:
it's History, Construction and Application (published in 1854), James F. Johnston's
The Chemistry of Common Life (published
in 1855) and Mrs T. J. Hussey's Illustrations
of British Mycology (published in two parts in 1847 and 1855). Hogg's book was
very popular at the time, selling over 50,000 copies, and it describes the physics of microscopy;
the construction of microscopes; how to prepare materials for microscopy; and
descriptions of animals, plants and their parts. It was a comprehensive guide
for those indulging in this Victorian passion, and Johnston's work gave
some answers to questions about the biology of organisms that were observed, with sections on air and odours; water; soil; foodstuffs and
digestion; liquors; and narcotics (!).
However, it was Mrs Hussey's book that most attracted my attention,
as she had a family connection to Scotney Castle. Anna Maria was married to Thomas
John Hussey, the son of the Reverend John Hussey, who was the younger brother
of Edward Hussey, the grandfather of Edward III who built the
new house. Maria (the name by which she was known in the family) was the
daughter of the Reverend J. T. A. Reed and the Reed family, like the Husseys,
were acquainted with many leading figures of the day in science, including
Babbage, Herschel, Fox Talbot and Graves. Both families knew the Darwins of
Downe and Maria's younger brother George Varenne Reed was tutor to Charles
Darwin's sons [1].
Maria had three younger sisters, all of whom were interested
in botany and in collecting plants [2], and she wrote a wonderfully personal
journal during a visit that she made to Dover with her youngest sister Kate
(Catherine) in 1836 [2]. At the time, Maria was 31 years old, with two young
children, and Kate 19 years old. In addition to many visits to the shore to
observe marine life, the two collected
plants, fossils and other geological specimens during walks in the Dover area,
some of which required short trips by boat. There is no mention of her interest
in fungi in the journal.
In Illustrations of
British Mycology, Maria describes fungi (funguses to her) that can be
collected in Britain; the means of collecting them; and how to identify them.
It is detailed, accurate and scholarly, with many plates that show the skill of
both Maria and her sister Fanny (Frances) as illustrators - montages of some of
the lithographs in the book are shown below. We learn from Elizabeth Finn that Maria
was not happy with the work of the lithographers [1] and one can only wonder at
how good the originals must have been:
In addition to its value in allowing accurate
identifications, the book also conveys Maria's enthusiasm for the subject. Here
are two examples of her descriptions, first of toadstools and then of mushrooms
[3]:
This splendid Agaric lifts its
head boldly, the "observed of all observers", even the most careless
so that it is oftener kicked to pieces, and other attentions of the kind
bestowed on it, than most "Toadstools" receive: I have mourned over
specimens nearly a foot across, their pure ivory gills and glowing scarlet
pileus crushed in the dusty road.
The English "Mushroom"
proper takes two different forms, according to soil and other conditions of
site. The first case is that of rich cool loam districts, such as the extensive
grazing pastures where the dairymen of Bucks herd their cows, and which have
not been ploughed or mowed within the scope of the remotest tradition; the
herbage is kept down by the cattle, and neither rude gravel below, not rank matted
grass above, offers obstacles to the regular development of the fairest and
most fragile of mushrooms, the very perfection of the thing! no freckles deface
the white silky pileus, no thick cottony screen swathes a clumsy stem betokening
coarse over-feeding; a light soft veil is all the protection the gills ever
had, and they have expanded so rapidly even that has disappeared, or left only
a few lacerated fragments on the stem; tender, succulent, friable and
digestible, nourished on pure earth, in air redolent of wild thyme and the breath
of kine, by dew which might be Fairies' nectar it is so free from the
impurities of city miasma..
I do not know if Maria visited Scotney, but I would like to
think that she did, as the estate must have been a splendid place for hunting
fungi. The presence of her book in the Library indicates that Edward III was
likely to have had an interest in this activity, and perhaps in looking at details
of fungi using a microscope, and who better than a relative (by marriage) to
act as a guide? Judging from her descriptions in the book and in her journal,
she would have made a fascinating companion on Nature rambles and she deserves
to be ranked alongside Margaret Gatty, Anna Atkins, and Amelia Griffiths, all
eminent Victorian Natural Historians.
[1] Elizabeth A Finn (2009) Hussey, Anna Maria (1805-1853). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
[2] Elizabeth Finn Botany,
Boats and Bathing Machines: Anna Maria Hussey's Holiday in Dover 1836.
Available as an e-book from Kent Archives Service -
Ref U3754.
[3] Mrs T. J. Hussey (1847) Illustrations of British Mycology, containing Figures and Descriptions
of the Funguses of Interest and Novelty Indigenous to Britain. London,
Reeve Brothers.
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