The Signature of All Things

While waiting for Alma to grow enough to be of interest, the narrator describes how Henry Whittaker, the richest man in Philadelphia, first came by his wealth. Henry was born in London, England, in 1760 to poor parents who already had many children. His father worked at Kew Gardens and was famous for saving the king’s favorite apple tree. The narrator describes how Henry learns his father’s trade but despises his father’s lack of ambition, instead admiring Sir Joseph Banks, a botanical explorer who has traveled the world and is the new superintendent of Kew Gardens. Henry steals plants from the gardens, sells them to visiting botanists, and then buries the money to hide it. When his father catches him stealing, Henry boldly asks Banks not to turn him in but to put him to use.

In 1776, Henry is sent with Captain Cook on his third voyage, during which he endures bullying, illness, a poor diet, and bad weather, all without complaint. He visits Tenerife, Tasmania, New Zealand, and Tahiti, working for the ship’s botanist, Mr. Nelson, and observing everything. They sail north to the Bering Strait but are unable to locate a Northwest Passage. Their next destination is Hawaii, where Cook is killed by the Hawaiians. Under a new captain, they try and fail again to find the Northwest Passage and then sail to Macao and Sumatra. In many places, Henry finds settlements dominated by the austere Dutch, who generally avoid vice and focus on making money.

In 1780, Henry returns to London and presents himself to Banks. Banks, aware that “Great Britain produced naturalists like flaxseed, but most of them were blockheads and dilettantes” (26), realizes he can take advantage of Henry’s knowledge. Banks sends Henry to Peru to find the cinchona tree, also called the fever tree, the source of what is known as Jesuit’s bark.

Henry makes it to Lima, Peru, though the leader of his expedition dies along the way. The bark of the cinchona tree is used to treat malaria and is one of the most valuable exports to the “Old World.” Ambitious and determined, Henry locates the cinchona groves and nurtures the trees back to health. After four years of working with and studying these plants, Henry returns to London and suggests to Banks that they set up a British plantation of cinchona trees. He also wants Banks to make him a Fellow of the Royal Society. When Banks laughs at the idea of this hard-scrabble young man becoming a gentleman, Henry digs up his buried money, retrieves the seeds and cuttings he brought from Peru, and goes to the Dutch East India Company to enlist their support for his idea.

Henry establishes a cinchona plantation in the Dutch colony on Java, and it thrives, making him rich. Henry admires the Dutch:

these industrious, tireless, ditch-digging, beer-drinking, straight-speaking, coin-counting Calvinists, who had been making order out of trade since the sixteenth century, and who slept peacefully every night of their lives with the certain knowledge that God wanted for them to be rich (40).

At 31, Henry decides it is time to settle down. He will build a business in medicinal plants and pharmacy. He decides to move to Philadelphia and find a Dutch wife. He selects Beatrix, a daughter of the van Devender family, the members of which have served as custodians of the botanical gardens in Amsterdam for generations. Beatrix’s parents disapprove of the match, so she cuts ties with them and marries Henry, leaving behind her 10-year-old brother, Dees. She takes her nursemaid, Hanneke de Groot, a few botanical books, and tulip bulbs.

Beatrix and Henry arrive in Philadelphia in 1793. He buys land, names his estate White Acre, and builds a grand mansion. During a yellow fever epidemic, Henry’s medicinal business makes him wealthier still. He builds greenhouses and ships plants all over the world. By the time Alma is born, Henry is “a mighty and newly minted American sultan” (47).