River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [48]
‘Pray sir,’ she said one day, ‘may I ask what it was that first took you to China?’
‘That ee may,’ said Fitcher, with a twitch of his eyebrows. ‘And I’ll answer as best I can. It came about while I was sailing for a living, on a Cornish fruit-schooner …’
One summer, when the schooner was in London for a few days, it came to Fitcher’s ears that a certain Gent had made it known that he was looking for sailors who had some experience of dealing with plants. On making further inquiries, he was astonished to learn that the man in question was none other than Sir Joseph Banks, the Curator of the King’s Garden at Kew.
‘Sir Joseph Banks?’ cried Paulette. ‘Why sir, do you mean he who first described the flora of Australia?’
‘Exactly.’
Fitcher had not neglected his scientific interests during his years at sea: the leisure hours that other sailors spent in smoking, gossiping and catchum-killala, he had devoted to reading and self-instruction. He did not need to be told that Sir Joseph had served as the naturalist for Captain Cook’s first voyage, or that he was the President of the Royal Society, from which post he reigned unchallenged over a veritable empire of scientific institutions.
Such indeed was Fitcher’s awe of the Curator that his first encounter with him got off to an unfortunate start. Sir Joseph was as grand a gent as ever he had set eyes on, dressed to death, from the powdered curls of his wig to the polished heel of his shoe. On being shown into his presence, Fitcher became acutely aware of the shortcomings of his own appearance: the patches on his jacket seemed suddenly to become more visible, as did the attack of acne that had caused his shipmates to compare his face to a pot of bubbling skillygale. He was at the best of times a shy man, and in moments of awkwardness his tongue grew so heavy that even his siblings had been known to joke that he could say neither bee nor baw without sounding awful broad.
But Fitcher need not have worried. Sir Joseph guessed immediately that he was from Cornwall and proceeded to ask a couple of questions about Cornish flora – the first was about the ‘bladder-seed’ plant, and the second about the flower called the ‘coral necklace’ – and Fitcher was able to describe and identify both of them correctly.
This was enough to satisfy the Curator, who rose from his seat and began to pace the floor. Then suddenly he came to a stop and said he was looking for someone to go to China – a sailor with some horticultural experience. ‘Do you think you might be the man?’
Fitcher, ever stolid, scratched his head and mumbled: ‘It hangs on the pay and the purpose, sir. Can’t say nothing till I know a little more.’
‘All right then: listen …’
It was well known, said Sir Joseph, that the gardens at Kew possessed sizeable collections of plants from some of the remotest corners of the earth. But there was one region which was but poorly represented there, and this was China – a country singularly blessed in its botanical riches, being endowed not only with some of the most beautiful and medicinally useful plants in existence, but also with many that were of immense commercial value. Just one such, Camellia sinensis – the species of camellia from which tea was plucked – accounted for an enormous proportion of the world’s trade and one-tenth of England’s revenues.
The value of China’s plants had not been lost on Britain’s rivals and enemies across the Channel: the major physick gardens and herbariums of both Holland and France had also been endeavouring to assemble