Section XIII A Brief Notice of Linnæus’s Son
Unnatural Conduct of the Mother of the Younger Linnæus—His Birth and Education—In his eighteenth Year he is appointed Demonstrator of Botany, and, three Years after, Conjunct Professor of Natural History—He visits England, France, Holland, Germany, and Denmark—On returning engages in the Discharge of his Duties; but at Stockholm is seized with Fever, which ends in Apoplexy, by which he is carried off—His Character and Funeral.
Although the younger Linnæus has been considered as a botanist rather than a zoologist, a brief notice of him may be suitably appended to the biography of his father, more especially as he can scarcely be said to have possessed an independent existence, either as a man or as a naturalist. The victim of domestic tyranny, he seems to have lost whatever energy he might originally have possessed, and to have passed through life without being influenced by those powerful motives which usually impel ambitious men in their career. His mother, who in her conduct towards him bore some resemblance to the infamous mother of Savage the poet, entirely broke his spirit, which perhaps was never of the most ardent or aspiring description. Not content with making his home as uncomfortable as she could, she conceived a positive hatred for her only son, which she displayed by every affront and persecution that her situation gave her the means of inflicting on his susceptible and naturally amiable mind.L
Charles Linnæus was born on the 20th January 1741, at the house of his maternal grandfather, Moræus, at Fahlun. From his earliest childhood he was encouraged by his father in the attachment which he manifested to natural objects, especially plants; and when only ten years old, he knew by name most of those which were cultivated in the botanic garden at Upsal. A stranger, however, to the “stimulus of necessity,” which had urged his parent to surmount every obstacle, he appears not to have exhibited any indications of enterprise or enthusiasm. Notwithstanding this, in his eighteenth year, he was appointed demonstrator in the botanical garden, and at the age of twenty-one commenced authorship by publishing a decade of rare plants. Within twelve months another decade was produced, but the work was discontinued, for what reason is not known. In 1763, he was nominated conjunct professor of botany, with the promise that after his father’s death he should succeed him in all his academical functions. In 1765, he took his degree of doctor of medicine, and began to give lectures; but, owing to the causes already alluded to, his fondness for science soon degenerated into disgust.
When he was thirty-seven years of age his father died, and he succeeded to his offices; but his mother forced him to pay for the library, manuscripts, herbarium, and other articles, which he ought to have inherited. However, a stimulus was thereby imparted which roused him from his lethargy, and he began in earnest to discharge the duties that were imposed upon him, among which were the arrangement of his father’s papers, and the superintendence of new editions of several of his works. A third mantissa or supplement to the Systema Vegetabilium, left in manuscript by Linnæus, and enlarged by his son, was published at Brunswick in 1781, under the care of Ehrhart.
The young lecturer had long been desirous of travelling, but during his father’s life had found it impossible to gratify his inclination. Being now his own master, he prepared to visit the principal countries of Europe; and, as Thunberg had been appointed demonstrator of botany, the government granted him permission. Want of money, however, presented an obstacle; to overcome which he found it necessary to borrow a sum of his friend Baron Alstrœmer, to whom he resigned his juvenile herbarium in pledge. At London, where he arrived in May 1781, he was received with enthusiasm, and treated with every possible attention by his father’s friends and correspondents, especially Sir Joseph Banks, in whose house he principally resided. Here he occupied himself in preparing several works, such as a System of the Mammalia, and a Treatise on the Liliaceæ and Palms; but an attack of jaundice interrupted his pursuits, and his happiness was further diminished by the death of his friend Solander.
On recovering from his illness, he proceeded to Paris in the end of August, accompanied by M. Broussonet. In that capital he was loaded with all the attentions which were due to the son of Linnæus, and passed the winter among a circle of learned and ingenious persons. In the spring of 1782, he visited Holland, where he inspected the gardens and museums, and received, as in England and France, the most valuable contributions to his collections. He next proceeded to Hamburg, from whence he went to Kiel to visit his friend Fabricius, the great entomologist. At Copenhagen he experienced the same respectful kindness as in the other great cities. In January 1783, he went to Gottenburg, to render his homage of gratitude to Baron Alstrœmer, and in February returned to Upsal.
By this journey he had increased his knowledge, established useful connexions, collected many valuable specimens, and emancipated himself from the state of listlessness into which he had previously fallen. Hopes were entertained that he might prove a worthy successor to the legislator of natural history; and there is no reason to doubt that he would at least have acquitted himself honourably in the discharge of his duties.
But in the month of August he had occasion to go to Stockholm, where he was seized with a bilious fever, which, however, soon abated, so that he was able to return home. There he experienced a relapse; and having imprudently exposed himself to the cold and damp of the apartment in which his collections were kept, a third accession of fever came on, accompanied with apoplexy, which carried him off on the 1st of November 1783, in the forty-second year of his age.
He is said to have possessed a vigorous frame of body, and even to have inherited his father’s looks, but without his energy, his activity, his consciousness of talent, or his love of adulation. He was, on the contrary, gentle and retired. Had he really been endowed with genius similar to that of his parent, he must have distinguished his career, brief as it was, by some meritorious performance. But it is no doubt wisely ordered that superiority of intellect should not, like the distinctions conferred by birth and fortune, be hereditary.
His remains were solemnly deposited, on the 30th of November, in the cathedral at Upsal, close to those of his father. A funeral oration was pronounced by M. Von Schulzenheim; and as the male line of the family had become extinct, his coat of arms was broken in pieces. The gardener of the university then strewed flowers over the grave “of a generation that,” to use the words of one of its historians, “will remain great and imperishable as long as the earth, and Nature, and her science shall exist!”
After the death of this young man, the collections, library, and even the manuscripts, of his father, were offered for sale, and purchased by Sir James Edward Smith, the founder of the Linnæan Society of London. They are now in the possession of that illustrious body, whose labours have tended so much to forward the progress of natural history in general, and of botany in particular. The herbarium, which is contained in two deal presses, similar to the model described in the Philosophia Botanica, is to the botanist an object of great interest, and has been the means of elucidating many doubtful points. The building in which his museum was kept at Hammarby, although it now contains only the chair in which he sat when delivering his lectures, and a stuffed crocodile suspended from the roof, continues to attract the notice of strangers, who generally carry away with them a specimen of the Linnæa, which grows profusely in the neighbourhood.
It may be mentioned, in conclusion, that the widow of the great Swedish naturalist survived him fourteen years, having died in 1806, after attaining the 94th year of her age.
Footnotes
K A singular objection, remarks Sir James E. Smith, from the great sharp-eyed cryptogamist!
L Life by Sir J. E. Smith.
The End
Edinburgh, June 1834.
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