Invasive Plants in British Literature, 1669-1800

University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2016 Strangers Among Us: Invasive Plants In British Literature, 1669-1800. Thomas Lance Bullington University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Bullington, Thomas Lance, "Strangers Among Us: Invasive Plants In British Literature, 1669-1800." (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 554. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/554 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “STRANGERS AMONG US”: INVASIVE PLANTS IN BRITISH LITERATURE, 1669-1800. A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English In the Department of English The University of Mississippi by THOMAS LANCE BULLINGTON May 2016 Copyright Thomas Lance Bullington 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Exotic flora in the long eighteenth century (1666-1800) embodied a point of contact between the natural and imaginary worlds, bearing witness to the ways that ideology relocates living things according to human desire. Most accounts view these exotics through the lens of ecological imperialism and “invasive” species. Both of these terms are twenty-first century metaphors that materialize the role of imperialism in circulating exotics, applying the narrative of invading British empire to the behavior of foreign plants. However, such accounts do not fully acknowledge the cultural work that images of foreign plants do. I opt instead for an ecocritical reappraisal of the idea of “invasive species,” one that acknowledges imperialism while accounting for the ways in which these flora act as more fluid and adaptable symbols that can endorse conflicting ideologies as the era progresses. Chapter 1 uncovers this cultural work in the Restoration using the writings of Abraham Cowley and John Evelyn, arguing that these writers celebrate the return of Charles II through the Royalist oak and the tropical orange, employing both trees as symbols of a British landscape that praises the monarch by welcoming exotic flora from across the globe. Chapter 2 tracks the ways in which exotic flora represent the masculine aesthetic of the “genius of the place,” formulated by Alexander Pope and the Royal Society botanist Richard Bradley. As exotic flora take root in a new market of gardening women in the midcentury, male writers, as Chapter 3 observes, use the rhetoric of the virtuoso to cast aspersions on women who garden as a way to announce their literacy, as exemplified in the writings of Eliza Haywood. Chapter 4 extends these trends into the picturesque and botanical cults of the late eighteenth century to trace the emergence of the greenhouse not only to display tropical rarities, but also to stage anxieties about the economy that circulated these living commodities, charting this anxiety through James Thomson's portrayal of the tropic zone in The Seasons , and in William Cowper's greenhouse in The Task . ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to My parents Debi and Scott, who always let me know how proud they are; My partner Jeff, who always propped up my dejected spirits; My friends, who always commiserated and celebrated. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I send my deepest gratitude to my committee: Dr. Jason Solinger, Dr. Karen Raber, Dr. Erin Drew, and Dr. Theresa Levitt. Without financial support from the Department of English, none of this would have been possible. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION .............................................................................................................................................. III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................ IV LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................................... VI INTRODUCTION: “STRANGERS AMONG US” .................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: THE OAK AND THE ORANGE: NATURALIZING EXILE AND THE RESTORATION IN ABRAHAM COWLEY’S SIX BOOKS OF PLANTS AND JOHN EVELYN’S SYLVA ....................................................................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER 2: THE VIRTUOSO, THE GENTLEMAN, AND THE CARNATION: ELITE MASCULINITY AND BOTANICAL VARIETY IN THE AUGUSTAN GARDEN .................... 49 CHAPTER 3: ROMANCERS OF THE GARDEN, AND GARDENING FOR THE LADIES NATURALIZING EXOTIC FLORA IN THE FEMALE SPECTATOR . ........................................ 81 CHAPTER 4: THE FRAGILE GREENHOUSE: RETAINING AND RELEASING THE TROPICS IN JAMES THOMSON’S SEASONS , AND WILLIAM COWPER’S THE TASK ... 112 CONCLUSION: THE GREENHOUSE BREAKS .............................................................................. 142 WORKS CITED .......................................................................................................................................... 147 VITA ............................................................................................................................................................... 153 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Frontispiece of Johannes Commelin’s Nederlantze Hesperides (1676) . ........................................ 33 Figure 2. John Serle, A Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden as it was Left at his Death (1745). .................................. 76 Figure 3. Richard Bradley, The Flower Garden Display’d (1734).. ................................................................... 97 Figure 4. The Dunmore Pineapple.(1761) .................................................................................................. 127 vi INTRODUCTION: “STRANGERS AMONG US” I. The Amiable Foreigner It is not enough that trees should be naturalized to the climate, they must also be naturalized to the landscape, and mixed and incorporated with the natives. A patch of foreign trees planted by themselves in the out-skirts of a wood, or in some open corner of it, mix with the natives, much like a group of young Englishmen at an Italian conversazione: But when some plant of foreign growth appears to spring up by accident, and shoots out of its beautiful, but less familiar foliage among our natural trees, it has the same pleasing effect, as when a beautiful and amiable foreigner has acquired our language and manners so as to converse with the freedom of a native, yet retains enough of original accent and character, to give a peculiar grace and zest to all her words and actions. –Sir Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque (1796). Imagine that Sir Uvedale Price is leading us through one of his “picturesque” landscapes. He pauses every now and then to explain to us what we ought to see in this perspective, or how this grove of trees balances that charming crag, or how this turn of the path affords a charming view of the hills, and so on. Along the way he offers instructions on how to properly plant one of these landscapes on our own grounds. In the midst of such discussions, he passingly remarks on how to properly naturalize a foreign tree. He informs us that such a tree ought not only match the climate of where it is planted, but it also must seem as though it sprang up there naturally. He compares the poorly naturalized tree to a group of Englishmen huddled at the corner of a continental salon, awkward, incapable of mingling. He then reverses the analogy, explaining that a properly naturalized tree will behave like an “amiable foreigner” who has so thoroughly adapted as to “converse with the freedom of a native,” yet still retain its “peculiar grace and zest” as a guest in this well-designed landscape. He is critical not of the exotic tree, but of those who plant it to ill effect. His idealized landscape might resemble the rural English countryside, yet he is all too pleased to introduce into 1 this environment plants that do not biologically originate from it. His tone is welcoming. To us, over 200 years later, in our time of ecological crisis, when we have altered the very seasons that people in previous centuries could take for granted, and when we have spread into nearly every environment organisms that do not biologically “belong,” Price’s remark sounds problematic. The “amiable foreigner” he admires for naturalizing can easily become too amiable, too acclimated to its new environment. On the one hand, this stranger might be some innocuous species that happens to come from somewhere other than England. Or, on the other, this strange new tree might be something aggressive or threatening—something like the Rhododendron ponticum introduced by the horticulturalist Conrad Loddige in his nursery in the 1760s. This rhododendron is a flowering shrub that, according to Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica , “has escaped from gardens and built up impenetrable, obstinately rooted, evergreen thickets at the expense of almost all other species,” and is thus “regarded as a menace” (158). Indeed, as Mabey notes, the eighteenth century, the “Age of Improvement,” saw many such invasive species introduced into England, and the Rhododendron ponticum in particular was a favorite among picturesque gardeners (158). We might imagine, then, that Price’s

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