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grubstlodger's review
4.0
I hadn’t heard of Gilbert White or The Natural History of Selborne until his biography was put on the booklist for my reading group. I then read the Natural History and found it peculiarly charming and also rather peculiar. I was keen to find out about the man behind the book.
A myth has since grown up about Gilbert White as an ‘Adam in Eden’, an almost thoughtless, animal-like man, tied resolutely to his little parish, open to natural experience in a completely unreflective way. This book creates the character of a person slightly more troubled, both tied to his place but oddly rootless, open to experience but thoughtfully perfectionist over his book that it took him over twenty years and almost didn’t come out.
One of the big sources behind the book is White’s college friend John Mulso. Gilbert did not deserve a friend like John; always supportive, always lightly joshing, always keeping up correspondence and visits, even as White was slow to reciprocate. He reminded me of the fat best-friend in a romantic comedy and we all need someone like that. Mulso also spotted White’s talents and was convinced he was going to make something of himself, even as he evidently didn’t.
White finished university at Oriel College in Oxford, drifted around a few curacies but kept finding himself back at his family home in Selborne. He never progressed in his career, never became the full vicar of anywhere, and never properly pursued positions anywhere else, getting more and more rooted in his Selborne soil. He flirted a little with Mulso’s sister (who later became the bluestocking, Mrs Chapone) but like he never committed to his career, he never committed to a relationship, living as a life long bachelor. Mulso tries to egg him into dating but he’s diffident, never having his own family but becoming a really good uncle to his nearly 60 nephews and nieces. To be honest, I sympathise with him, I’ve been a teaching assistant for nearly 15 years and am pretty confirmed in my own bachelordom, as I see it, he just wanted to live his pleasant uncomplicated life and he did.
The biggest drama in his life seems to have been his melon farming, which is described in this book as a nail-biting drama. One of the reasons he didn’t travel far was that he got coach sick (though he seemed fine on a horse). At one point his personal expenses note that he gave a woman a soup tureen to pay back a coach fair and Richard Mabey makes the supposition that it was a joke about his vomiting.
I suppose it was inevitable he’d write a book about nature, all his family were clergyman-naturalists or booksellers, but he attacked the project with the same lack of energy he gave his career or his love life, but he did finish it and it’s a charming book, as is this biography. Gilbert White doesn’t seem to have been the most dynamic person to have lived, especially in the eighteenth century, but he took his pleasures where he could and gave a lot of people pleasure.
A myth has since grown up about Gilbert White as an ‘Adam in Eden’, an almost thoughtless, animal-like man, tied resolutely to his little parish, open to natural experience in a completely unreflective way. This book creates the character of a person slightly more troubled, both tied to his place but oddly rootless, open to experience but thoughtfully perfectionist over his book that it took him over twenty years and almost didn’t come out.
One of the big sources behind the book is White’s college friend John Mulso. Gilbert did not deserve a friend like John; always supportive, always lightly joshing, always keeping up correspondence and visits, even as White was slow to reciprocate. He reminded me of the fat best-friend in a romantic comedy and we all need someone like that. Mulso also spotted White’s talents and was convinced he was going to make something of himself, even as he evidently didn’t.
White finished university at Oriel College in Oxford, drifted around a few curacies but kept finding himself back at his family home in Selborne. He never progressed in his career, never became the full vicar of anywhere, and never properly pursued positions anywhere else, getting more and more rooted in his Selborne soil. He flirted a little with Mulso’s sister (who later became the bluestocking, Mrs Chapone) but like he never committed to his career, he never committed to a relationship, living as a life long bachelor. Mulso tries to egg him into dating but he’s diffident, never having his own family but becoming a really good uncle to his nearly 60 nephews and nieces. To be honest, I sympathise with him, I’ve been a teaching assistant for nearly 15 years and am pretty confirmed in my own bachelordom, as I see it, he just wanted to live his pleasant uncomplicated life and he did.
The biggest drama in his life seems to have been his melon farming, which is described in this book as a nail-biting drama. One of the reasons he didn’t travel far was that he got coach sick (though he seemed fine on a horse). At one point his personal expenses note that he gave a woman a soup tureen to pay back a coach fair and Richard Mabey makes the supposition that it was a joke about his vomiting.
I suppose it was inevitable he’d write a book about nature, all his family were clergyman-naturalists or booksellers, but he attacked the project with the same lack of energy he gave his career or his love life, but he did finish it and it’s a charming book, as is this biography. Gilbert White doesn’t seem to have been the most dynamic person to have lived, especially in the eighteenth century, but he took his pleasures where he could and gave a lot of people pleasure.
muninnherself's review
4.0
We went to Gilbert White's house in Selborne (he's a local hero round these parts) and I bought this in the gift shop afterwards. I love Mabey's nature writing and this is a nicely written and well researched biography of a man who was fascinated by everything in the natural world. Nice to read it when you've just been to the place where it all happened, as well. Good stuff.
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