MAKING BRITISH BOTANY
Arthur Tansley
In the decade since publication of Shaping Ecology. The Life of Arthur Tansley, I have learned more about the great man (for example, see here, ‘Elizabeth Dale’, one of the ‘Women Inspired by Marshal Ward’). Supplementing Shaping Ecology, what follows presents new information about people who influenced his early years.
James Harvey Bloom
Bloom has emerged as someone who had an influence on the direction of Arthur Tansley’s life which was much greater than I had appreciated. He was a teacher at Westbury House, the preparatory school in Liverpool Gardens, Worthing, founded by Miriam Billing (see picture below). Tansley was a pupil from 1883-6 (aged approx. 12 to 15). Bloom was still in his early twenties yet he possessed already a remarkable knowledge of natural history. His daughter, the prolific author Ursula Bloom, is not always reliable in recounting her father’s life (see Parson Extraordinary, The Quality Book Club, 1963) but what is clear is that he had an extraordinary ability to master a range of disparate subjects, including natural history.
In passing: Harvey was an energetic Lothario. In 1887 he was awarded a B.A. degree from the University of Cambridge, though he is listed as a non-collegiate student (Alumni Cantabrigiensis, John Venn and JA Venn, 1922, CUP) and in February 1888 was ordained a Deacon of the Church of England. Before long, however, he was suspended for two years by his bishop for having extramarital relations; many years later he was officially defrocked because of his unreformed lifestyle (living in the vicarage with his mistress rather than his own family). “The Warwick Podcastle - episode 4 -The Life and Loves of Reverend J Harvey Bloom” makes amusing viewing.
By 1883, Bloom had become Principal of Westbury and Editor of its magazine, Ephemeris, which dealt primarily with natural history, especially that of Sussex and the neighbouring South Downs. Plants and fungi appear to have been his special interest; thus, the March issue containing “Elementary Lessons in Phanerogamous Botany” was followed by “Plants found by members of the school during March”. (As Tansley was to find when he launched the New Phytologist many years later, the editor of a young publication had to write much of the copy himself.) Field trips with pupils, including young Tansley, were an integral part of Bloom’s teaching. Tansley was inspired to make his own plant collections during school holidays, even corresponding with Bloom about his finds.
It appears that Bloom was keen to build the school library. This may, in part, have been for his own benefit as much as for the boys’. An impressive familiarity with the contemporary literature is often revealed in his writing, not least in his extensive account (Ephemeris, October 1883) of the genus Puccinia (rust fungi infecting wild and crop plants). Like every good teacher, Bloom mixed theory with practice for, as he notes, 15 of the 40 known British species ‘have been detected at Worthing’.
Ephemeris was not solely devoted to natural history. It found room to record a range of events in school life. Thus, we find that on Monday 1st November a football match was played against Giddinap Football Club. The Westbury team, which lost 3-0, included a certain A. Tansley. The same young man was Curator of the grandly named Westbury House Science Institute and was collector of subscriptions for Ephemeris. Clearly, he was Bloom’s able adjutant.
Miriam Billing with, sitting to her right, Arthur Tansley. His elbow appears to rest on the back of her chair.
Why Worthing?
Clues as to why young Arthur was sent to a boarding school, far from his home in London, lie in the life of his parents. George, who had inherited a business as a ‘ball and rout furnisher’ (providing furnishing and food for large social events) was hard working, ambitious, and had a deep love of scholarship – all characteristics that would be recognizable in his son. Probably too dedicated to his work, leaving the upbringing of his children to his wife, Amelia, George’s fault was one common among fathers of the late-Victorian age. In addition to the demands of running a business, George had become involved with The Working Men’s College ever since 1855 when he enrolled as a student. Soon he became a teacher, and then an administrator. It was not until 1884 that he sold his business in order that he could devote himself full-time to the College. When he did manage to get away from business and college affairs in London, he escaped to the family’s holiday home in the Malvern Hills*. There, he was able to show Arthur an exceptionally unspoiled part of the country, with a vegetation distinct from that of the South Downs which the young man had encountered through his schooling in Sussex.
* On the webpage, here, ‘Elizabeth Dale, one of the ‘Women Inspired by Marshal Ward’, the Tansleys are seen on holiday in the Malverns.
A mother’s influence
How George Tansley met his future wife, Amelia (nee Lawrence), is not known but in September 1863 the couple were married at St Marylebone church, Westminster. They had two children, Maud, born in 1865, and Arthur, born in 1871. Amelia had been born in 1841 in Islington, north London, where her father, Charles, was a linen draper. Her mother, Asenuth (nee Garrod, or Ganard) was a milliner from Laxfield, Suffolk. Amelia’s childhood home was 5 Norfolk Place (aka 196 Essex Road) until - sometime between the censuses of 1851 and 1861 – her parents appear to have separated. At the latter date, Asenuth (still classed as ‘married’ rather than ‘widowed’) was living at 5 Bedford Row. However, Amelia, aged 20, had left home about three year earlier and was working as governess to the children of the Rev. Courtney Bulteel in Holbeton, Devon.
It was Amelia who was familiar with Worthing and it may well have been her who chose Arthur’s preparatory school. She knew the town long before her son entered Westbury House. Only one month after he was born, in August 1871, she was writing to George from 12-14 Montague Place, only 400m from Westbury House. Over the following 15 years she would often stay in Montague Place, so it is likely she was aware of the school, or maybe even its founding Principal, Miss Billing. Preparatory (or ‘Dame’) schools abounded in Worthing at the time. There was at least one more in Liverpool Terrace, so Amelia’s choice would have been a difficult one, unless it was influenced by personal knowledge.
It was Amelia who helped Arthur choose his Cambridge College. In July 1889, she and Arthur stayed with Rev. Robert Sinker and his family at 10 Maids Causeway, Cambridge. Sinker was a Fellow of Trinity College and its Librarian. It was that college which Arthur entered in the autumn of 1890. If only in understanding better the Cambridge admissions process, he benefitted from his mother’s friendship with the Sinkers. Amelia’s Christian faith and church attendance were important throughout her life, though Arthur was to revolt against them both. From a study of archives associated with a Tansley-family home in Branscombe, Devon, local historians Barbara Farquharson and John Torrance concluded that Amelia became keenly interested in the sort of intellectual and devotional Christianity advocated by the Rev. Alfred Ainger, a well-known preacher and literary figure of the 1880s. They write, “Amelia seems to have been a bit soft on Ainger, she keeps his letters in a special box, writes endless notes on his sermons, attends his courses on English literature, keeps cuttings, writes occasional fairly awful religious poems, and sends him flowers each Christmas”. Farquharson and Torrance also concluded that Arthur was Amelia’s favourite child; poor, mentally-limited Maud was often viewed by her mother as frustrating and disappointing.
A different cache of family letters reveals more. It was Amelia who accompanied Arthur to the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s meeting in Nottingham in 1893, from where they subsequently went to stay at Elizabeth Dale’s home in Buxton (see Dale’s web page, this site). Mother and son also travelled together to Bayreuth’s Wagner Festival in 1896 (both Amelia and George were regular concert-goers both before and after their marriage).
Most letters are from Amelia to George, who typically remains working in London. They come from a variety of addresses, often from Worthing but one letter dated 1874 and three in 1877 are from, or to, Pelham Place in the nearby seaside town of Seaford. This is the same Sussex town in which Miriam Billing’s brother, John, redesigned St Lawrence’s church (1860-62) and where he died in 1863, leaving his widow, Catherine Elizabeth, living at Clifton (or Clinton) Place. The two Seaford addresses are less than a mile apart, suggesting Amelia may have been familiar with this branch of the Billing family. However, again, there is no supporting evidence and in the 1871 census Elizabeth Catherine is recorded as living at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, although the latter could have been a temporary address at which she was recuperating following the death of her son earlier in 1871.
In many of the letters that Amelia wrote to George, both before and after their marriage, she refers to her own ill health. The causes are not specified, although weakness and an inability to walk far are often mentioned. Doctors were occasionally consulted but, in the main, visits to the spa-town of Tunbridge Wells, or to the south coast, are the usual remedies. George is invariably sympathetic and supportive. Sadly, he died in 1902, just one year before Arthur married and, also, published the first edition of the New Phytologist. He was aged 66. Amelia survived him by 6 years, dying in 1908.
Freudian analysis
In the 1920s, Arthur Tansley underwent psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud in Vienna (see Shaping Ecology). What little has emerged from those sessions concerns his relationships with his wife and his mistress. It would be fascinating to know what Freud made of Arthur Tansley’s relationship with his mother.