Botanical exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland

Abstract

In 1766 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in exile from France and Switzerland, came to England, where he made the acquaintance of Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. The two began to botanise together and to exchange letters about botany. These letters contain salient statements about Rousseau's views on natural theology, gardens, botanical texts and exotic botany. This exchange entailed not only discussions about plant identifications and other botanical matters, but most important, reciprocal gifts of books and specimens in the manner of gentlemanly scientific correspondence of the period. Rousseau volunteered his services as the Duchess's 'herborist' or plant collector, and collected specimens and seeds in her behalf; these were destined for her own extensive herbaria and other natural history collections. Rousseau, who elsewhere denied female talent for science, admired the Duchess's knowledge of natural history, acknowledging his own as inferior. Their correspondence ended when the Duchess sent him the Herbarium amboinense of Georg Rumpf (Rumphius), an important work of exotic botany. Rousseau considered exotic botany to be the antithesis of the domination-free nature from which he derived solace and inspiration. r

Retour à l’Élysée : le jardin anglais revisité

“…Dans la première lettre qu'il écrivit, de Wootton, le 20 octobre 1766 (CC XXXI, lettre 5482), à la duchesse de Portland, compagne d'herborisation qui allait devenir l'une de ses correspondantes en matière de botanique (Cook 2007 Il y a donc dans La Nouvelle Héloïse plusieurs modèles de jardins qui sont en rapport les uns avec les autres, faisant système, dessinant ensemble un discours sur le jardin. Rousseau marque les grandes époques de l'évolution des styles, en présentant la description de la métamorphose des jardins au XVIII e siècle, et en exposant les principes qui ont présidé à leurs transformations.…”

John Lightfoot (1735–1788) and the lichens ofFlora Scotica(1777)

“…Like so many churchmen, Lightfoot used his spare time for the observation of nature and in botanical study and research. Resulting from this avocation, Lightfoot was chosen in 1767, at the age of 31, to become chaplain and librarian to the Dowager Duchess of Portland (Cook 2007) at Bulstrode Park, her country estate near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. As a collector of natural history objects in Britain, none could compare: “… either in scale or munificence … with Lady Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, the wife of the second Duke of Portland, whom she married at the age of 20 in 1734.…”