River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [59]
‘But it’s for the camellia that Cuninghame most deserves to be known.’
Never had he understood, said Fitcher, why Linnaeus had chosen to name the camellia after Dr Kamel, an obscure and unimportant German physician. By rights the genus ought to have been called Cuninghamia, in honour of Cuninghame, for whom camellias had been a passion, a quest: it was he who sent back the first camellia leaf ever to be seen in Britain.
It was not merely because of their flowers that camellias were of special interest to Cuninghame: he believed that next to the food grains this genus was possibly the most valuable botanical species known to man. This was not a far-fetched notion: the camellia family had, after all, given the world the tea bush, Camellia sinensis, which was already then the fount of an extensive and lucrative commerce. Cuninghame’s interest in its sister plants was sparked by a Chinese legend, about a man who fell into a valley that had no exit: he was said to have lived there for a hundred years eating nothing but a single plant. This plant, Cuninghame was told, was of a rich golden colour and yielded an infusion that could turn white hairs into black, restore the suppleness of aged joints, and serve as a cure for ailments of the lungs. Cuninghame named it the ‘Golden Camellia’ and came to believe that it might surpass the tea bush in value if it could be found and propagated.
‘And did he find it, sir?’
‘It’s possible, but no one knows …’
On his way back to England, after his second visit to China, Cuninghame had vanished without trace, off the coast of southern India. His collections had perished with him, and it came to be whispered later that he might have met an untimely end because of certain protected plants that were in his possession. Those rumours were further fuelled when a packet of his papers reached England intact: they had been mailed shortly before he embarked on his last voyage and they included a small picture of an unknown flower.
‘The Golden Camellia?’
‘Ee can see for eerself,’ said Fitcher, in his laconic way. Reaching for a folder he extracted a card-like square of paper and handed it to Paulette.
The card was not large, and the picture inside was only about six inches square: it was painted with a fine brush, on paper that was covered with a faint yellow wash. In the background, lightly etched, was a landscape of mist-covered mountains; in the foreground was a twisted cypress tree, and under it, the seated figure of an old man with a bowl cupped in his hands. Next to him lay a branch with a few brilliantly coloured blossoms. The scale was too small for the precise shape of the petals to be outlined in any detail, but the blossom’s colouring was strikingly vivid: a mauve that turned gradually into a sunburst of gold.
Facing the picture, on the opposite leaf of the card, were two columns of Chinese characters, running from top to bottom.
Paulette pointed to the writing: ‘Is the meaning of these lines known, sir?’
Fitcher nodded and turned the card over. Written on the other side, in a faint but distinctive copperplate hand, was an English translation:
The petals on their green tinged stem shine like the purest gold.
A purple eye looks up from the centre, setting the bloom aglow,
It remedies the pain of ageing bones and quickens the memory and mind,
It puts to flight the death that festers in the lungs.
Inscribed under these lines were the words: Hsieh Ling-yun, Duke of Kang-lo.
The Duke of Kang-lo, said Fitcher, was apparently a real person, not some mythical hero. He had lived in the fifth century of the Christian era and was regarded