Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 4: 269-289. With 2 plates
December 1972
Friedrich Welwitsch, 1806-72
A centennial memoir
T. D. V. SWINSCOW, F.L.S.
I03 London Road, Knebworth, Hertfordshire
A c c e p t e d for publication January 1972
The main events in the life of Friedrich Welwitsch are discussed and his achievements evaluated.
CONTENTS
The memoir . .
Summary
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Acknowledgements
References . .
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288
THE MEMOIR
Among a small group of scientists standing round an open grave on 2 4
October 1872 in Kensal Green Cemetery was a member of the Portuguese
embassy in London. Though autumn is not the season a southerner would
choose to be on parade in the cemetery of a London suburb, the discipline of
diplomatic representation would have been enough to give his thoughts some
composure. ‘What must have troubled him more than the discomfort of his
circumstance was doubt about the precise sentiments that he was expected to
symbolize on behalf of his country. For into the grave were about to be
lowered the last remains of Dr Friedrich Welwitsch, whom the Portuguese
Government had deprived of his stipend some years previously and whose
executors the King of Portugal was shortly to sue in the High Court. Altogether
it was a task that any patriotic citizen of that country would have found
distasteful and, as is so often the case in diplomatic life, ambiguous.
Yet among those competent to judge him Welwitsch was, and is, esteemed as
one of the greatest naturalist explorers of all time and known to every botanist
as the discoverer of the extraordinary plant species now called Welwitschia
bainesii. This “etonnant vegetal”, as C.-V. Naudin (1862) called it, was “the
most remarkable of all gymnospermic plants” according to F. 0. Bower (in
Huxley, 1918), and in the words of Joseph Hooker (1862a) was “out of all
question the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country-and the very
ugliest.’’ But as well as lacking beauty Dr Welwitsch’s plant had another fault:
it was of no use. And here lay a germ that multiplied and spread and fatally
269
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T. D. V. SWINSCOW
infected the relationship between the explorer and the government which had
sent him out to study the vegetation of its African possessions.
Over the years this same question has worried with ever greater urgency one
government after another in technically advanced countries as well as those still
dominated by a peasant economy. How can scientists be made to discover
things that governments and the people they represent-more or less
faithfully-will find profitable? The Portuguese Government had high
expectations of the discoveries their leading botanist would make in Angola.
And in the end so remarkable was Welwitsch’s fame that one family, six genera,
and over 300 species of plants and 29 species of animals were named after him
(Dolezal, 1960-61), an eponymous record that can scarcely be equalled in the
systematic classification of the earth’s flora and fauna. But, as the London clay
covered him at Kensal Green, Portugal could only have regretted that a man
who seemed to be so highly regarded by his fellow scientists in many countries
had been such a disappointing employee of his own.
Later Welwitsch’s admirers recorded their praise of the “eminent botanist”
and “foremost of explorers” in an inscription on his tomb-“botanicus eximius,
florae Angolensis investigatorum princeps” (Hiern, 1896). Sadly, no trace of
the epitaph remains. But a simple representation of the plant that so startled
the learned world was carved in low relief on the stone at the same time; and
that does still stand out, though softened by the corrosive smoke, to puzzle the
Londoners who walk past it on their way to those parts of the cemetery that
are in use today (Plate 1B).
*
*
*
Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch (Plate 1A) was born on the 5th of
February 1806, at Maria-Saal, near Klagenfurt, in Carinthia, Austria, the son of
a prosperous farmer. Despite having a large family his father was sufficiently
well off to give Friedrich a good schooling and to encourage him in the study
of botany from an early age. But like many men who want to do the best for
their sons and see them started on the road to independent prosperity
Welwitsch senior entered Friedrich in the faculty of law at Vienna University
despite the son’s leaning towards natural history, aptitude for its scientific
study, and, from early on, aversion to the law. In the clash of wills that
followed, Friedrich transferred to the medical faculty and his father cut off the
allowance that supported him. Undeterred by the lonely displeasure in which
he now found he must subsist, Friedrich continued his medical studies and is
said to have won a livelihood to do so by writing critiques of theatrical
productions. At the same time he continued to study botany both in the field
and in the library, making some of the earliest systematic contributions to
knowledge of the flora of lower Austria when he was 26 and still an
undergraduate student. Two years later he won a prize, offered by the mayor
of Vienna, for a paper on the cryptogamic flora of the region. Though it seems
odd to us now that the local fame he thus achieved should have persuaded the
Government that he was the right person to investigate a cholera epidemic in
Carinthia, it evidently had a high opinion of his ability, and employed him to
that end. This mark of official confidence restored him-such is the wayward
character of human feeling-to the embraces of his father, and so Friedrich
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
27 1
could continue his medical studies at the university with the support once more
of paternal affection and finance. For a time, however, he travelled as tutor
with a nobleman, and then in 1836 graduated in medicine.
Like many men before and since, and perhaps at a later age than most,
Welwitsch’s thoughts now turned to foreign travel, and having already proved
himself to be a capable field botanist he began to look for openings where his
skill might take him. A further period as a tutor occupied him for some time,
and he also furthered his studies at the Botanical Museum in Vienna. Then in
1839 his opportunity came.
A custom grew up in the 19th century whereby rich patrons, often
individuals but sometimes institutions, financed the exploration of some
little-known part of the world, and in return received specimens of plants,
animals, minerals, or handicraft. A group of individuals might club together and
buy shares in a journey of exploration to mountain or jungle, the spoils of
natural history being distributed in accordance with the share holdings, while
on the grand scale a body like the Royal Geographical Society might lay out
thousands of pounds on a single expedition. In this way it came about in 1839
that a natural history society with a European reputation, the Unio Itineraria
of Wurtemburg, commissioned Welwitsch to collect plants in the Azores and
Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. The members of the society
were offered shares in the expedition a t 24 florins ( E 2 10s.) apiece, and those
who wanted t o be sure of securing complete sets of Welwitsch’s specimens were
advised to take double or even quadruple shares; his collections were valued in
advance at 1 5 florins the hundred species (Unio Itineraria, 1840). This
opportunity to travel and study a foreign flora was the more welcome t o
Welwitsch because, according to a biographical memoir (Hiern, 1896) published
many years later “an act of youthful indiscretion on his part, in the course of
enjoying too freely the gaieties of Vienna, rendered it expedient for him to
leave Austria for a time.” N o other or more explicit record of this delinquency
seems to have survived, so, apart from the implication that it was of an
amorous nature, any speculation on it would be pointless. Yet one feature of it
must strike the reader today, and that is its description as “youthful”.
Welwitsch was 3 3 when he succumbed to Vienna’s temptations. In the context
of his life it was, and still seems, an appropriate epithet, for in many ways he
was what would now be called a “late developer”.
In June 1839 Welwitsch left Vienna and reached England. A month later he
was in Lisbon. He never again returned to his native country.
*
*
*
The Unio Itineraria retained an agent in London to handle the collection of
subscriptions and the distribution of specimens. He was a Mr W. Pamplin, Jr.,
and in September 1839 he received a disquieting letter from the society’s
commissioned traveller (Welwitsch, 1840). Welwitsch wrote t o him to say that
he had been unexpectedly detained in Lisbon because bad weather had
prevented his sailing for the Azores, but he had nevertheless after a six-weeks
stay in Portugal sent several thousand plants, insects, and shells to the society.
“At the same time,” he wrote, “1 have gained such proficiency in the
Portuguese language, as to be able to make myself easily understood by the
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T. D.
V. SWINSCOW
inhabitants,” to which accomplishment he attached importance because
“nothing so much wins the favour of the proud and unsociable Portuguese, as
an acquaintance with their language.’’
Though, in the nature of things, the weather must in due course have
improved, Mr Pamplin have grown curious, and the Unio Itineraria of
Wurtemburg have become impatient, we hear no more of the expedition to the
Azores. On the contrary Welwitsch plunged into the scientific life of his
adopted country with a will, for 14 years exploring most of its territory and
making large collections of its flowering plants, ferns, mosses, seaweeds, and
fungi, and also of its molluscs and insects. From these gatherings he was able to
supply the Unio Itineraria with some 11,000 specimens, so its members
received ample return for their subscriptions even if the gatherings represented
a flora and fauna they had not sent their traveller to collect.
The range of his knowledge was as remarkable as the pains he took to collect
thoroughly. I t covered the flowering plants and the greater part of the
non-flowering plants from the ferns down to the algae and extending into the
larger fungi. He explored the mountains inland and the lowlands of the Algarve
in the south. In his zeal to collect algae, it is recorded, he was accustomed to
spend hours up to his waist in the waters of the River Tagus day after day.
During these years he had charge at various times of the Botanic Gardens of
Lisbon and Coimbra and supervised the Duke of Palmella’s gardens throughout
Portugal (Anon., 1872-73). With his central position in Portuguese botany that
these posts gave him, and the unrivalled knowledge he acquired of the
country’s vegetation, he came to be recognized as an outstanding authority on
the natural history of the region and on its plant life the leading expert.
Though Welwitsch was a ready linguist, adding in later life a considerable
fluency in English and French to his native German, the Portuguese he picked
up, and the Latin he learnt at school and university, he wrote little on his
botanical discoveries. Even by the standards of his time, so much more modest
than our own, Welwitsch proved to be reluctant throughout his life to publish
records of his work that are in any way commensurate with its magnitude. Rut
despite that his reputation for industry and scholarship was high-and was
recognized in high places.
While Portugal had occupied the territory now known as Angola since early
in the 16th century, it had done little to develop its resources. But with a
climate more tolerable to the European than some parts of Africa presented,
the colony seemed to deserve what it had never hitherto received-systematic
exploration. Consequently on 17 March 1851 a project was authorized by
statute enabling the Government to send a naturalist out there at a monthly
salary of 200 milreis (E44 18s.) and allowing a capital expenditure of 1200
milreis (E269) for the purchase of instruments and the expense of the voyage
(Government of Portugal, 1875).
The King himself had no hesitation in commending Welwitsch for the post,
for he valued the botanist’s friendship as well as the contributions he had made
to the study of Portugal’s vegetation. Nor was it only Welwitsch’s skill as a field
naturalist that won him support: as an administrator of noblemen’s gardens he
had proved exceedingly able, and as a man of learning and liberal culture he
was regarded as an adornment to the c o u n w he had now lived in for 12 years
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
273
and served with selfless industry. On 10 April 1852 he was therefore appointed
to the commission on the terms. fixed by the statute.
I t is worth noting that Welwitsch was now 46, a fairly advanced age for a
man about to set off alone t o explore a country much rougher than any he had
so far visited in a climate more arduous than he had ever experienced. Apart
from one “Englishman” (as the Scots were called there) and a few Portuguese,
he was to spend nearly nine years alone among people of primitive culture,
alien language, and, on occasions, warlike intention. The menace of the
equatorial climate and tropical diseases was well known and feared in Europe.
The relief that effectual medicines now give for malaria and bacterial infections
was not then available, nor could the food be anything but unfamiliar,
upsetting, and monotonous. Yet so far from having any qualms about the
venture Welwitsch set about preparing for the voyage even before the decree of
appointment was signed.
Armed with a letter from the King of Portugal to the Prince Consort,
Welwitsch visited London in 1851 to obtain advice from experts there, and in a
stay of several months received valuable guidance from the leading botanists.
But some delay followed in Portugal, so that despite his appointment to the
commission in 1852 it was not until 8 August 1853 that he finally set sail. On
30 September 1853 he reached St Paulo de Loanda, the capital of Angola.
*
*
*
To get a true appreciation of the value to botanical science of Welwitsch’s
labours in Angola during the next eight years, and t o enable the non-specialist
to understand the magnitude of his discoveries, the following passage is quoted
from the preface to the catalogue of his collections (Hiern, 1896) published
some 40 years later, by which time they could be seen in perspective.
“His herbarium is undoubtedly the best and most extensive ever collected in
Tropical Africa, whether regard.be had to the intrinsic interest of the plants
themselves, the care and judgment displayed in their selection and preservation,
or the extent of the collection both in number of species and series of
specimens. . .”
With his usual determination Welwitsch began to explore the Angolan flora
as soon as he set foot in the country, but be quickly ran into an obstacle that
has impeded many a traveller in an antique land. “Even the shortest excursion
of three or four days costs an enormous sum,” he found (Welwitsch, 1854), for
the fact is that reliable guides and porters are an expensive asset, and he rightly
insisted on being fully equipped on his collecting expeditions. His
Government’s allowance of E45 a month was too small, he declared. Messages
were sent off to Portugal, but to no avail. Consequently he dispatched cases of
plants, insects, and seeds to London for sale-‘‘my reliance is upon
England”-so that he could finance further trips down the coast and into the
interior.
In thus entering into commerce on his own account, even though it was t o
advance his exploration of Angola’s plants, Welwitsch undoubtedly sowed
suspicions in the minds of at least some members of the Portuguese Parliament
that he was not properly fulfilling his commission. Nothing was said at the
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T. D. V. SWINSCOW
time, but years later the accusation was to be made in another form. For what
in fact was his commission? This was something that official circles in Portugal,
no different from official circles anywhere, had constantly in mind. I t was “to
explore as a naturalist the African provinces” of Portugal:
“this exploration having for its object to obtain the most extensive
knowledge possible of the natural products of the same provinces and to
use the said knowledge in order to develop the riches and the well being of
its inhabitants and their relations with the metropolis” (Luis I, 1873).
Neither Welwitsch nor the Portuguese Government ever clearly understood
the other’s view on how this commission was to be carried out. To Welwitsch a
vast and novel vegetation lay before him in a part of the world hitherto
virtually unknown to botanists. I t promised hundreds of new species any of
which might prove to have commercial value as a food, a spice, a garden flower,
or a material for clothing. Moreover to gain any idea of what crops might be
cultivated in Angola a thorough knowledge of what already grew there was
essential. Nothing less than the investigation of as many species as could be
found would give the required picture of the country’s natural vegetation from
which inferences might be deduced about its possibilities for cultivated plants.
In the upshot Welwitsch did find several hundred species new to science. But
what the Government expected of its commissioned botanist was a man who
would quickly identify fruits and cereals of commercial importance growing
there, try out various crops known to thrive in the tropics, and immediately
prepare a report on his discoveries. As well as advising on the cultivation of
crops he was, according to the Royal Letter giving him instructions, to inform
the Governor-General of Angola on how to collect, prepare, pack up, and
transport samples of the country’s natural products. And he himself was to
send back samples “of any natural products which may be remarkable in
any way” (Luis I , 1873). Unfortunately the remarkable products he did send
back were not the kind of thing the Government had in mind.
After thoroughly exploring the coastal region of Angola, Welwitsch turned
inland in 1854. For a few weeks in the autumn he enjoyed the company of
David Livingstone. The missionary doctor has recorded (Livingstone, 1857)
that he obtained the opinion of Dr Welweitsch (as he spelt it), “an able German
naturalist,” on the grasses that grew there, and he expressed the hope that
Welwitsch’s life might be spared “to give his researches to the world.” Whether
this was simply the pious hope of one African traveller on behalf of another in
a continent where lives were often not spared-where indeed Livingstone was to
leave his own-is impossible to decide with certainty from the context, but the
question is of importance to our understanding of the trials that Welwitsch
underwent, trials so little understood by his own government. For he was
probably by now beginning to show signs of impaired health. In the next two
years he explored mountains and forests with stubborn persistence despite
fevers, scurvy, and ulcerated legs.
At last he reached a place, Pungo Andongo, where conditions improved. “I
should call Pungo Andongo a botanical garden,” he wrote, “in form of an
extensive park, in which are found the most interesting treasures of vegetation,
from the various districts of tropical and sub-tropical Africa, judiciously
grouped together, with a considerable number of forms of vegetation quite
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
275
peculiar to itself” (Welwitsch, 1868-69). This rapture seems innocent enough,
but, after Welwitsch’s death, by quoting a paraphrase of it in a letter from
Welwitsch to Sir William Hooker at Kew an official of the Government of
Portugal (1875) was to make it seem that the explorer had enjoyed an idyllic
picnic in Angola instead of exerting himself on behalf of the country that was
paying his way for him. While the effect was not overemphasized, the hint of
undue dalliance was there. But, garden or not, Pungo Andongo could not
restore Welwitsch’s failing health, and though he continued to explore and
collect there he had to struggle against the debilitation of fever and dysentery.
From this period came one of his most important contributions to the botany
of Angola-“Apontamentos phytogeographicos sobre a Flora da Provincia de
Angola” (Welwitsch, 1859).
*
*
*
I t was in June 1859 that Welwitsch set off, though still in poor health, on
what botanists must always regard as one of the most momentous journeys ever
made. He travelled southwards down the coast to Benguela and then by sea to
near the frontier with South West Africa. At last his health improved in the
spring (October) of the subtropical climate, and on reaching the region of Cape
Negro he found a level plateau of some l 0 0 0 m altitude, composed of a
calcareous tufa scattered over with loose sandstone shingle. The aridity from
here down almost to the Cape of Good Hope is extreme. The coastal strip of
five to ten miles wide is absolute desert, in the sense that rain never waters it,
but it receives sufficient moisture from the Atlantic mists to support a
remarkable if restricted flora, including large sheets of various lichen species.
Just inland for some miles is much hotter desert, and though an inch or two of
rain may be expected to fall on it annually the evaporation is so rapid in the
heat of the burning sun that the vegetation is sparser and confined to fewer
species than near the coast.
A t the northern end of this arid zone and in the extreme south of Angola
Welwitsch found the extraordinary plant that has ever since been an object of
wonder to botanists and made his name familiar to them (Plate 2). Its isolated
systematic position in the plant kingdom, its bizarre structure of only two
leaves growing continually from the stem, a life span measured in hundreds of
years, the arduous environment over which it reigns, its restriction to a few
localities in the South-west African desert, and its inaccessibility to all but
determined travellers combine to make it as much an object of wonder to us
today as it was to Welwitsch’s contemporaries. The discoverer himself was so
overcome by his first inspection of the plant that “he could d o nothing but
kneel down on the burning soil and gaze at it, half in fear lest a touch should
prove it a figment of the imagination” (Trimen, 1873).
l h e excitement that Welwitsch felt over this astonishing find in the desert
quickly spread to Europe through letters he wrote to friends there-and
excitement as quickly turned to confusion. In the nomenclatural tangle that
followed, Welwitsch himself tied the first knot by assigning the plant to a new
genus, Turnboa, and providing a Latin description for it (Welwitsch, 1861a).
‘I’his odd name was derived from the language of the indigenous inhabitants of
that part of the world. Welwitsch communicated the name and description of
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T. D. V. SWINSCOW
the genus (but with no specific epithet) in a letter from St Paul0 de Loanda, 16
August 1860, to Sir William Hooker. On 17 January 1861 Hooker read the
letter to a meeting of the Linnean Society, and a report of the meeting
appeared in the Gardener’s Chronicle nine days later (Welwitsch, 186lb). This
is the first published mention of the name Tumboa. Soon afterwards a
translation of the letter, with the full Latin description, appeared in the
Proceedings of the Linnean Society in its own report of the meeting
(Welwitsch, 1861a). The letter itself is now in the library at Kew.
Later in the same year J . D. Hooker (1861), son of Sir William, reported that
he had received from Mr Thomas Baines, travelling in the Damara country, in
what is now South West Africa, specimens in a decayed state of this or a very
closely allied species and that he proposed to call it, if new, Turnboa bainesii.
This was the first publication of the specific epithet bainesii. A few weeks later,
on 16 January 1862, J . D. Hooker informed a meeting of the Linnean Society
that he proposed the name of Welwitschia mirabilis for the plant that
Welwitsch had discovered, though the discoverer himself had by now referred
to it in a letter to him as Tumboa strobilifera (Hooker, 1862b).
The nomenclature became stable for a time on the publication by J. D.
Hooker (1863) of his fine monograph, written with Welwitsch’s consent, on the
new genus and species Welwitschia mirabilis. Ignoring the prior publication of
Turnboa in favour of a name that would more fittingly commemorate the
discoverer was an act of friendship and appreciation. Nor can any criticism be
attached to this nomenclatural peccadillo, for the aptness of the name,
Hooker’s own prestige, and the superb quality of his monograph-by general
consent the best thing of the kind he wrote-all combined to make Welwitschia
mirabilis the accepted name for half a century.
The acclaim that Hooker’s monograph won and still retains was no more
than a just appreciation for the technical skill, unsurpassed knowledge of the
world’s flora, and many hours of dissection that he brought to the unfolding of
this strange plant’s mysteries. He spent over 70 h at the microscope, he told
Dr Thomas Anderson, botanist and medical man, and yet still had all the wood
and leaf anatomy to do. At least six times lately he had sat at the microscope
for over 5 h together (Hooker, J. D., in Huxley, 1918).
Though Hooker classified Welwitschia in the Gnetaceae, the modern view is
usually to place it in a separate family of its own in the Gymnosperms. After
germination of the seed two cotyledons, or seed leaves, form. Not having had
the opportunity of watching this process, Hooker provisionally accepted
Welwitsch’s belief that distinct cotyledons did not appear, but subsequent
culture of the plant has shown that they do. They are soon replaced by two
ribbon-like leaves opposite each other and at right-angles to the seed leaves. The
permanent leaves are thick and leathery, grow from a central plate that
gradually expands, and remain throughout the plant’s life for some hundreds of
years. As the two leaves slowly grow from the base, they rot away at the apex,
usually retaining a length of 2-3 m. The central plate from which they come is
the base of a cone that tapers down for about 1 m to the tap root. And as the
years, and ultimately the centuries, pass, the leaves edge their way outwards,
splitting up into ribbons some 25 cm or more wide, rotting in a dry fringe at
their ends, and defying the burning sun.
From the rim of the central plate in due course arise the stalks bearing
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
277
flowers in the form of reddish-green cones, male and female on separate plants.
The wind suffices to blow the pollen from the one to the other, and seeds are
set freely. These too are carried away in the wind until they lodge in a
favourable place and germinate, presumably after one of the showers of rain
that fall so rarely in that part of the world. Casting shadows as dense as soot
and rustling hoarsely in the breeze, the plants seem to repel the attentions of
predatory animals as successfully as they withstand extremes of heat and
drought. Many of those that Welwitsch saw, and possibly the one beside which
he knelt, are alive today.
The specimens on which Hooker based his monograph came from several
hands. The first person to send material was not Welwitsch but the Thomas
Baines referred to above, an English explorer and artist who had left his home
country for South Africa, and thence had taken to travelling in Damaraland. He
sent material via C. J. Andersson, a Swedish trader of English upbringing, who
was likewise exploring the Namib Desert. At Hooker’s request Welwitsch sent
specimens from Angola, and then Hooker obtained more from a friend in
Loanda who had previously sent seeds to Kew, Joachim Monteiro. Finally
Andersson sent more material from Damaraland.
The relative paucity of material and the inaccessibility of the living plants
helped to perpetuate the idea that there might be two species and not merely
the one. As late as 1867 E.-A. Carriere (1867) was writing on Welwitschia
mirabilis as having two leaves and a doubtful species Welwitschia bainesii as
having four. But later exploration has shown that it is indeed only the one
species, which by the internationally accepted rule of priority must bear the
earliest validly published epithet, namely bainesii. Having lost the mirabilis it so
aptly merited, though commemorating in bainesii one who helped in
discovering it to European botanists, Welwitschia was still haunted by Tumboa,
the first and validly published name for the genus. Consequently at Hooker’s
instigation the International Botanical Congress at Brussels in 1910 conserved
the name Welwitschia as the valid one and finally laid Tumboa to rest.
Welwitsch was 5 3 when he made his great discovery. A year remained to him
in Angola before he returned to Portugal, and during that time he continued his
collecting of the rich and unusual flora that lay before him in the southern part
of the country. But now in addition to the discomfort of the dysentery and
fever that afflicted him he had to suffer attack by a local tribe. Some 15,000
Munanos besieged the settlement of Lopollo where he was staying, and for two
months the garrison, Welwitsch among them, held the attackers at bay, finally
disappointing them of their objective. The Munanos were compelled to
withdraw to the mountains, taking with them what flocks they could seize.
Wounded as well as weakened by illness, Welwitsch at last gathered up his
specimens and crossed the mountains to the coast. With his vast and unique
collection of plants, insects, and some animal skins he set sail for Lisbon, and
reached port safely at the end of January 1861.
*
*
*
During the following year Welwitsch endured a fate common to Government
servants who have acquired special knowledge of some kind: he was put on
various committees. His task was partly to advise on the cultivation of cotton
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in Angola, partly to prepare an exhibit for the London Great Exhibition of
1862. Mostly concerned with useful products of the colony, the exhibit was
sufficiently meritorious to win him a gold medal from the commissioners of the
exhibition. Any doubts the Government may have felt that its paid explorer
had been wasting his time on botanical work of little value to the economy of
the country seem to have disappeared entirely at this stage of their relationship.
Welwitsch for his part had no cause to complain about the adequacy of the
salary being paid him or the respect with which his opinion was sought over the
exhibition. But on 1 1 November 1861 a national event befell that was also of
some personal significance to him. His royal patron and friend Dom Pedro V
died and was succeeded by Dom Luis I . As his subsequent quarrels with the
Portuguese Government became increasingly troublesome Welwitsch was apt to
believe that Dom Pedro would have restrained his persecutors (as he believed
them to be) through an informed interest in his botanical studies that Dom
Luis did not share.
At any rate, an entirely new phase in Welwitsch’s life now began with his
obtaining permission to transport his collections t o London, since facilities in
Lisbon were inadequate for their examination. Kew and the British Museum
were at that time stocked with the richest collections from the tropics t o be
found in any of the world’s herbaria, for owing to Great Britain’s long colonial
connections overseas travellers had been bringing back specimens for some
decades, and several of the world’s leading experts were to be found there,
among them J. D. Hooker himself, then the director of Kew. The Portuguese
Government passed a decree enabling Welwitsch to go on this journey, take the
specimens with him, and receive a salary of E 2 a day in London. So just as
nearly a quarter of a century before he had left his native country, Austria,
never to return, now he was to leave his adopted country, Portugal, for the last
time. Going with him were upwards of 5000 species of plants and 3000 species
of insects and animals, “a very large proportion of which were wholly new to
science” (Hiern, 1896), and he had numerous specimens of most of them.
I t was 20 October 1863 when Welwitsch reached London after a five-day
journey from Lisbon, and there he was to remain for the following nine years
until his death. After a short time he took lodgings at 1 5 Fitzroy Street, which
leads off Fitzroy Square and is ten minutes walk from the British Museum,
where the botany department was located before its removal to South
Kensington in 1880. (All trace of his house has now disappeared under a steel
and glass office at the foot of the Post Office Tower.)
Welwitsch at once began to sort out his specimens and consult the
authorities on special groups whom he was able to meet in London, at the same
time corresponding with experts on the Continent and sending them material
to examine. That he was a difficult person to deal with may be accepted. The
man who had broken with his father when a student, who had left his native
country never to return to it, who had spent nine rather lonely years in a
desolate part of the world, who had struggled on through chronic and recurring
illness and acquitted himself bravely when besieged by an enemy in vastly
superior numbers, who despite some evidence of having enjoyed the drama and
life of Vienna had never married nor had a settled home, who had knelt for half
an hour in amazement beside the Welwitschiu plant in the desert-the man who
had dedicated his life in this manner to natural history may have been
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
279
impatient and tactless to well-wishers as well as to trouble-makers. But he
certainly had firm friends too, and many societies, British and Continental,
made him an honorary member.
Immersed as he was in the enormous task of sorting out his collections,
Welwitsch gave little if any thought to the officials in Portugal who were
expecting a stream of reports from him on how to enrich both the home
country and the African colony by the application of botanical science to the
tropical environment. His silence was worse than a nullity; it was aggravating.
Letters from government officials went unanswered, and clearly his failure to
reply could not be excused by devotion to work because nothing had yet come
out of that either. He must therefore be idling away the time in enjoying the
gaieties of London. Matters came to a head when what he called “a false and
calumnious attack” was made upon him in the Portuguese Parliament, a
member of it asserting that he was selling the Angolan collections and “living in
splendour on the proceeds” (Trimen, 1873). No proof of this wholly untrue
accusation was sought by the people who made it, but to a government already
disappointed with Welwitsch it seemed plausible enough. The many dealers,
societies, and clubs waiting on the side to buy rare specimens from returned
travellers gave credibility to the charge. And had not Welwitsch himself reached
Portugal in the first place as the emissary of just such a society?
The result was a decree from the Portuguese Government, dated 28
December 1864, requiring him to suggest at once “what may be needful for the
publication of the result of his scientific labours.” Welwitsch’s response was
considered unsatisfactory, and another decree followed on 20 December 1865
ordering him either to return to Portugal or to state without delay the time
necessary for him to remain out of Portugal in order to complete the
arrangement of his collections. In complying with neither alternative Welwitsch
must understandably have upset his Portuguese employers, and the result was a
final decree dated 16 February 1866 cutting off his salary (Luis I, 1873).
At this time Welwitsch was living in Fitzroy Street, visiting the British
Museum and Kew, consulting experts in this country and corresponding with
those abroad, and studying his collections with a view to publishing papers on
them. In fact he published few and rather slight ones himself (for a
bibliography of his published works see Dolezal, 1960-61), the most substantial
being the Sertum Angolense, an account of many new genera and species
beautifully illustrated by Fitch (Welwitsch, 1869). For this Welwitsch had to
find El30 out of his own pocket despite the absence by then of any support
from the Portuguese Government.
Nor was he altogether at ease in his relationship with some of the British
botanists. According to Professor Daniel Oliver (1868), one of the authors of
the FZoru of Tropical Africa, Welwitsch “With rare liberality, has freely granted
us the opportunity of inspecting his collections, which, in respect of judicious
selection and admirable preservation, are without rival.” But the access he
granted with such courtesy did not seem to Welwitsch to meet with due
acknowledgement from the botanists at Kew who benefited from it.
After publication of the Sertuin Angolense the financial resources left to
Welwitsch were so reduced that on 8 May 1870 he wrote to the Portuguese
Colonial Minister asking to be allowed to resume official relations with the
Government. Once more he was told he must return to Lisbon with all his
280
T. D. V. SWINSCOW
collections and publish there the results of his study, and E60 was paid to him
on account of sums that might be due to him (Luis I, 1873). Brought to
compliance by his poverty rather than any fresh view of his obligations to the
Portuguese Government, Welwitsch at last packed up most of his herbarium in
readiness for shipment. But by then he still lacked sufficient means to make the
journey. He therefore remained on at 15 Fitzroy Street, persevering with his
studies despite debilitation from tropical diseases which he had never fully
shaken off and living alone at the level of bare subsistence. All communication
with the Portuguese Government ceased. But his botanical friends continued to
visit him, while he devoted his days without rest or recreation to the study of
his specimens until the summer of 1872.
A fire then broke out in the house where he lodged, and though his
collections escaped harm except for some scorching he was seriously upset by
the mishap, so that his health began to deteriorate. Characteristically working
until it was no longer possible for him to do so, Welwitsch sank during the last
six weeks of his life beneath the attack of a painful illness. On the evening of
20 October 1872 he died.
*
*
*
As the last remains of Friedrich Welwitsch were lowered into the grave at
Kensal Green (Plate 1B) the official from the Portuguese embassy could
reasonably hope that the explorer’s contentious spirit would melt away with
his bones. The time had surely now come when the country that had given him
a home, opportunity, and employment would be honoured for having nurtured
one of the great naturalists of the century. Though his contribution to
improving the economy of Portugal’s African possession had been less than that
country hoped and expected, he had won renown among the most respected
scientists of the day for his unique contributions to knowledge. Fame of this
kind was everywhere esteemed, and some of its lustre should properly shine,
the official may well have thought, on the country that had given Welwitsch so
much encouragement, on the kings who had lent him their influence, on the
government that had supported him until he ceased to follow its reasonable
requests. But the contentious spirit was far from going to its rest in suburban
London, for shortly before his death Welwitsch had made a will.
The date of the will was 17 October 1872, three days before he died. This
was a matter of some importance because the Portuguese Government claimed
that his mind must by then have been so clouded as to impair his judgement.
No other charitable explanation, it believed, could justify so aberrant a
document. In two respects at least the will must be unique: it disposed of
nothing but natural-history specimens, and in doing so it led to a legal action
between a reigning monarch and its executors.
Beginning with a description of himself as “botanist and naturalist”,
Welwitsch went on to bequeath his collections to a variety of institutions,
ordering sets of specimens to be sorted out for this purpose. His first
instruction was: “My study copy of African plants to be offered to the British
Museum at the rate of E 2 10s. per century (100 species) subject to one set of
Mosses being first selected thereout and given to Mons. Duby of Geneva.” Two
sets were then to go free to the Portuguese Government, others to various
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
281
Continental herbaria, and one “to the English Government for the use of Kew
Gardens gratis.” The insects were then disposed of to several foreign museums,
and finally he bequeathed his general herbarium and Portuguese herbarium at
Lisbon to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Lisbon.
Why he should have sought payment from the British Museum for the
“study copy” is hard to say, but a reasonable conjecture is that he thought
some expenses might fall on his estate after his death which it would otherwise
be unable to meet. The specimens were in one sense worth vastly more than the
price asked, for they were and still are one of the most important contributions
ever made to our knowledge of Africa’s flora. Certainly the museum would
have paid up with gratitude. But the question that immediately troubled some
readers of the will, and above all those at the Portuguese embassy, was whether
Welwitsch had the right to dispose of his collections at all.
I t is possible that some of his executors may have had doubts about this also,
for two out of the four of them withdrew from the obligations of their
appointment. The two who remained to see it through deserve the thanks of
botanists everywhere, and not only in Great Britain, for preserving in the
British Museum a complete set of Welwitsch’s collections (though not, in the
end, the “study” set) under better conditions than obtained anywhere else.
They were William Carruthers, F.R.S., then head of the department of botany
at the British Museum, and Frederick Justen, a bookseller and publisher who
lived near Welwitsch and was a close personal friend. In the legal battle that was
soon to break over the will they defended Welwitsch’s intentions to the limits
of the law and propriety, and did so at great personal risk financially.
More will be said of Carruthers below. Here it may be noted that Justen had
come to England from his native Bonn when he was aged 19 and entered the
natural history trade. In due course he was established on his own, and then he
took over the business of William Pamplin when that gentleman retired. But
Justen was more than a simple dealer in books and the specimens collected by
naturalists, for his appreciation of the arts and his profound knowledge of the
books in his line of business brought him the friendship of some of the leading
biologists of his time. Adviser to the Natural History section of the British
Museum when it moved to South Kensington, and entrusted with the
formation of the new library there, Justen often put commercial considerations
aside and made many handsome donations to it. The Linnean Society also
enjoyed his generosity. To this cultured and knowledgeable man, whose native
tongue was German, Welwitsch was drawn soon after his arrival in London
from Portugal, and their firm friendship until Welwitsch’s death evolved into
the fidelity with which Justen thereafter endeavoured to carry out the
naturalist’s intentions as executor of his will.
The two executors who withdrew were Georg Schweinfurth, a renowned
German naturalist and traveller in equatorial Africa, and William Philip Hiern,
mathematician, botanist, and country gentleman, of whose possible motives for
acting thus something will be said below.
Since the Portuguese Government had all along regarded Welwitsch as its
paid explorer and botanist sent out to obtain knowledge of Angola’s natural
products “in order to develop the riches and well being of its inhabitants and
their relations with the metropolis” (Luis I, 1873), it naturally laid claim to the
fruits of his exploration. Consequently, within three months of Welwitsch’s
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T. D. V. SWINSCOW
death, finding that the executors were adamant in holding to the terms of the
will, the King of Portugal, Dom Luis I, acting on behalf of the Portuguese
Government, had filed a Bill of Complaint in the Chancery Division of the
English High Court. Here the argument was developed a t length that Welwitsch
had throughout his travels been the paid employee of the Portuguese
Government. He had received frequent and explicit instructions, or at least
(and the point was made) so explicit as would be appropriate to a highly
qualified scientist, and these instructions had all been devoted to the
advancement of Portugal’s welfare through his labours. Since London offered
the best facilities in the world for the study of his collections, he had been
allowed to take them there-at the Portuguese Government’s expense. These
were collections of specimens which, so that Government was able to show by
quoting from the letter (referred to above) sent by Welwitsch to Sir William
Hooker, were gathered in idyllic surroundings (Government of Portugal, 1875):
“It is a garden, if not an extensive park, where we meet the most interesting
treasures of the vegetation of the different African tropical and subtropical
districts. . .” and so on. Thus by quotation in the Bill of Complaint was the
traveller’s joy in his field work given the implication that he had been having a
fairly easy time at Government expense.
The unhappy relations between Welwitsch and his Government while he
stayed in England formed a substantial section of the complaint. From the time
of his arrival in England to the suspending of his salary (two and a half years)
Welwitsch did little, the court was told, towards the proper arrangement or
classification of his specimens. Parts of his collections were made over to
experts at Kew for use in the Flora o f Tropical Africa being prepared there, and
while they were toiling hard on that project, it is implied, “Dr Welwitsch
employed himself in the preparation of a work of his own”--the Sertum
Angolense. And the complaint gives the credit even for this work to Dr J. D.
Hooker, who is said to have examined, determined, and briefly described the
plants for it. No mention is made of the poverty to which the production of
this work brought Welwitsch by his having to find E l 3 0 to finance it, and the
attribution of the main work to Hooker is misleading.
But of course Portugal had an excellent case. Welwitsch unquestionably was
in its employment throughout his travels, and he himself had acknowledged the
fact in several letters and documents. More than that: he had spoken and
written of his collections as having been made on behalf of the Portuguese
Government. Nor had he ever really severed the relationship with that country
which began when he was storm-bound to it in 1839 on his way to the Azores,
for only two years before his death he had received further funds from it to
finance his return. Only his continuing poverty and ill-health then held him in
England, though he may also have faltered at the thought of leaving his London
friends and the superb reference collections at the British Museum and Kew.
Thus the quarrel between the King of Portugal and the champions of
Welwitsch’s will struggled along in the Chancery Division despite several
proposals for compromise. And now another conflict began to appear on the
stage, a conflict of opinions, interests, and perhaps above all of personalities.
The two titans of the London botanical scene, the department of botany at the
British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, were undoubtedly
jostling each other-not angrily or in any unseemly fashion and not in public.
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
283
But beneath the surface a certain amount of bumping was going on. For the
Portuguese Government had found some powerful allies in England, and chief
among them was Joseph Hooker, by then, 1873, both director of Kew and
president of the Royal Society.
*
*
*
In an affidavit backing Dom Luis’s Complaint against the will Hooker’s
testimony is remarkable both for the persistence with which he supports the
Portuguese arguments and for the absence of any acknowledgement of the real
difficulties hampering Welwitsch. Ever faithful to the memory of his father Sir
William, J. D. Hooker declared in his affidavit that it was mainly in
consequence of his father’s recommendation to the Portuguese Count Lavradio
and Dom Pedro that Welwitsch was sent to England. The implication of J.D.’s
statement of filial piety was that Welwitsch would hardly on his own have had
the botanical standing to come to England as an independent scientist, and
furthermore that his being able to make the journey at all was at the direction
of Portugal’s king and highly placed officials. Hooker (1873) then went on to
substantiate Portugal’s indictment of Welwitsch’s conduct in London by
making this damning criticism:
“There was in my judgment and belief sufficient time from the arrival of
Doctor Welwitsch in England to the month of February 1866 for the
classification and arrangement of his said botanical collections and rendering
the scientific results thereof fit for publication even without the assistance of
my late father and myself and our associates at Kew whose assistance was
frequently proffered both by my father and myself and my said father during
his life and I myself were always ready and willing to afford and did extensively
afford such assistance as far as Doctor Welwitsch would permit throughout the
whole period. ”
The bleakness of this utterance unalleviated by any punctuation cannot, of
course, be blamed on Hooker, for it is the work of a lawyer and is a paragraph
in a legal document. But the implication that Welwitsch wasted his time needs
examining for several reasons. The Portuguese Government had contended that
its servant was idling away his time in London, and here indeed was ample
confirmation of its view from a man who knew Welwitsch intimately, who had
produced his finest monograph on Welwitsch’s most remarkable discovery, and
whose presidency of the Royal Society showed him to be one of the world’s
most esteemed botanists.
Why in the first place was this charge made at all?It had no bearing on the
ownership of Welwitsch’s specimens. Yet that is what the legal action was
about. What the Portuguese Government wanted to do was to show that its
servant had no right to bequeath the specimens he had collected while in its
employment. Whether or not he was a diligent employee had no direct bearing
on the case.
But what may have troubled the Government was the construction that its
opponents might put on the financial severance in 1866. If this withdrawal of
support could be shown to have any finality about it, Welwitsch might
reasonably be regarded as left free to dispose of his collections in accordance
with his own wishes. Portugal was therefore constrained to show that though it
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T. D. V. SWlNSCOW
had cut off financial relations with the explorer it still had a claim on his
specimens.
That Hooker should have lent his authority to supporting the complaint that
Welwitsch lacked diligence is one of the several distressing misjudgements he
made in his relations with this no doubt irritating and a t times irascible man.
The circumstances in which Welwitsch was supposed to have neglected his duty
are worth recalling. He reached London on 20 October 1863. Unfamiliar with
the language and with no close friends in the country, he had to obtain suitable
lodgings for the accommodation of himself and many thousands of specimens,
lodgings that must be inexpensive and should preferably be near one of the
great botanical institutions. For he had no allotted laboratory or office space at
the British Museum or Kew or any university such as would nowadays be made
available to such a visitor. Certainly he received a friendly and helpful reception
from the staffs of those two institutions, but they were of necessity busy
people who had their own work to do. Having established himself near the
British Museum, and despite chronic ill health from tropical disease, he then
promptly entered into correspondence over some of his specimens with
Continental experts on special groups, and permitted the botanists in London
working on the Flora of Tropical Africa to make extensive use of others. At the
same time he himself was studying them. The fact that in the two and a half
years between his arrival in London and the suspension of his salary by the
Portuguese Government he published nothing is not merely to be excused by
the circumstances in which he worked; rather his silence is greatly to his credit,
for such a vastly varied contribution to botanical science had never before
come out of Africa. It included many hundreds of new species in scores of new
or little known genera, and the research required to ascertain whether even one
supposedly new species has in fact escaped prior description, perhaps in an
obscure journal, can be exceedingly time-consuming. Every botanist knows
this, so that Hooker’s criticism of Welwitsch’s cautious diligence, as slighting of
the man as it was extraneous to the real case, is hard to comprehend, the more
so in coming from a botanist whose knowledge of the world’s flora was
unsurpassed in his time and who had always been on friendly terms with
Welwitsch.
Moreover Welwitsch’s supporters presented an exactly contrary picture.
According to the affidavit from Carruthers & Justen (1873), “he laboured
incessantly at the said collections from early morning till late a t night allowing
himself little or no relaxation and scarcely even time for his meals and this
notwithstanding that his health had been much enfeebled through his long
sojourn in a tropical climate in the service of the Portuguese Government.”
Here despite the same unpunctuated mode of utterance is not only a warmer
but from the facts an evidently juster appreciation of Welwitsch’s work, for at
every stage of his life the same could be said of him. In other words the picture
that Carruthers and Justen drew was in character; Hooker’s sketch bears the
distortions of a caricature.
The passages in Hooker’s affidavits-and a second followed the first-that
now seem almost to have been intended to destroy Welwitsch’s reputation
cannot have appeared to a man of Hooker’s integrity in that light. What seems
more likely is that in response to a request that the Portuguese Government
quite reasonably made to him as a leading botanist and the director of Kew he
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
285
agreed to support its cause because on balance he believed it to be just.
Hooker’s judgement was unquestionably judicious. Moreover, he was about to
occupy the most prominent position in British science as president of the
Royal Society when the Portuguese approached him, and he did so during the
Complaint’s course through the Chancery Court. He would naturally have been
more responsive to official than to unofficial attitudes to the Portuguese affair,
and though far from feeling any subservience to the bureaucracy that was then
growing up in Whitehall in the offices of the reformed civil service he could
well have felt that this was an occasion when his public face should be
displayed. But if his support for Portugal drew its strength from his sense of
equity, the acerbity with which he expressed it had a more private source as
well. This was his relationship with Carruthers.
Head of the botany department a t the British Museum, a distinguished
palaeobotanist, and like Hooker a Fellow of the Royal Society, William
Carruthers was in temperament, professional interests, and historical role
almost the converse of Joseph Hooker. A Scot from Dumfriesshire, Carruthers
had been brought up in the Presbyterian tradition.
While Hooker had been born “into the botanical purple,” as L. Huxley
(1918) put it, Carruthers was the son of a merchant and had made his way to
Edinburgh University at the age of 15. This early fending for himself, the
capacity for fair administration that many of his countrymen share, and the
sound education he received no doubt fostered the clear expression of his
thoughts that enabled him in later life to hold the interest of audiences and
excel as chairman of committees. Endowed with a good presence and a pleasing
voice, he could command the attention of a meeting as well as win admiration
and applause for his lectures. As confident in public as Hooker was diffident,
Carruthers was yet sympathetic and helpful to private inquirers-more so it was
said, than Hooker and his staff, who were apt to give visitors to Kew a cooler
reception than they received at the British Museum (Britten, 1922). Though he
was to devote his professional life to botany he never lost his interest in the
Presbyterian Church, and after retiring from the British Museum devoted all his
time to its history.
I t was with this formidable but courteous head of the British Museum’s
department of botany that Hooker as director of Kew twice came into collision
at about the time when Welwitsch’s will was in dispute, and on both occasions
Carruthers carried the day.
Together with his colleagues George Bentham and John Ball, Hooker took
the occasion of an inquiry being held in 1871 by a Royal Commission on
Scientific Instruction to revive a claim that had been made some time before
that the Banksian Herbarium should be removed from the British Museum to
Kew. Carruthers resisted the attack with complete success, in particular
dissecting Ball’s evidence, as James Britten (1922) recorded, “in merciless
style.” A second setback to Hooker then came during extraordinary scenes at
the Linnean Society in 1874 under Bentham’s presidency (Trimen, 1874a).
Complex issues on the running of the society divided the council from a
substantial number of the Fellows, among whom was Carruthers. At a meeting
on 5 February 1874 Carruthers rose to propose a motion but was called to
order by the president, Bentham. Then appealing to the byelaws for his right to
put the motion, Carruthers “in the midst of great confusion succeeded in
286
T. D. V. SWINSCOW
stating it.” I t was seconded, and the president appealed to the meeting whether
any discussion should be permitted. On a show of hands appearing to be in
favour, he vacated the chair and left the room. Hooker and other members of
the council followed him (Trimen, 1874b). The upshot of all this was a
requisition, a further meeting, the cooling of tempers, and conciliation. But the
general approach to the society’s affairs that Carruthers and his associates had
championed was in the end conceded to have been beneficial to it.
These were the stormy days in which Hooker received the King of Portugal’s
request to support his Government’s claim to Welwitsch’s specimens-the best
set of which were bequeathed in a will executed by Carruthers to go to a
herbarium presided over by Carruthers. N o wonder that Hooker’s judgement of
what might be better said or left unsaid was upset.
*
*
*
After three years’ intermittent litigation and hesitant progress by each party
towards but not actually reaching agreement, a compromise was finally
attained with the sanction of the Vice-Chancellor in November 1875. It
declared that the King of Portugal was entitled to Welwitsch’s collections and
his notes but that the British Museum should receive the “best next set after
the study set” together with a copy of the notes. The plaintiff was also to pay
Carruthers and Justen A500 “in full of all demands”. Thus in defending this
action at great financial risk to themselves the two executors obtained for the
British Museum, if not all that Welwitsch had hoped, at least an excellent set of
one of the most remarkable collections ever made in the tropics. Their courage
and wisdom have enabled later botanists to make use of the specimens to an
extent that would not have been possible if all had gone back to Portugal.
*
*
*
Owing to the divisions among the botanists in London at that time and the
contentious nature of Welwitsch’s bequest the process of dividing his specimens
in accordance with the High Court judgement was entrusted to two people.
One of these was Hooker himself; the other was a person who had so far played
no part in the dispute, in fact had withdrawn from the scene perhaps in
anticipation of it, namely, William Philip Hiern. An old friend of Welwitsch’s,
and one of the executors of the will, Hiern had declined to take on that duty.
He probably did so because he was on the staff at Kew helping Professor Oliver
with the Flora o f Tropical Africa, and the foreseeable conflict would have been
an insupportable strain on the loyalties of a man so placed. But after the
judgement he set to work on the collections and himself carried out the
division in the British Museum to the general satisfaction.
A mathematician in his earlier years, and a Fellow of St John’s College,
Cambridge, Hiern turned to botany when he was about 25 and three years later
moved to Kew. It was presumably about this time (1868) that he first met
Welwitsch and the attachment grew up between them. For it was not only on
Welwitsch’s side that a warm cordiality existed. Hiern’s life too had an unusual
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
287
course, partly it would seem out of regard for Welwitsch. The mathematician
who became an expert botanist began to compile a catalogue of Welwitsch’s
plants when he was entrusted with the separation of the stuay sets in 1875. But
two years later he suddenly retired to his family estates at Barnstaple and took
on all the obligations of a Devonian country gentleman, becoming a lord of the
manor, a governor of Barnstaple grammar school, president of the Devonshire
Association, alderman of the County Council, and so on. There he remained
with the exception of one short break until he died at the age of 82 in 1925.
But the short break was exceedingly fruitful, for in 1892 he returned to
London and worked on Welwitsch’s specimens again at the British Museum.
The result was an elaborate account of the Dicotyledons in 1035 pages,
published in four parts between 1896 and 1900, prefaced by a sympathetic,
informed, and respectful account of Welwitsch’s life. In recognition of this
work he was elected F.R.S. in 1903.
*
*
*
In any century Welwitsch would have seemed an oddity, something of a
misfit, troublesome to his colleagues and well-wishers, an unreliable servant to
public officials.
In the Portuguese view he had “a most irritable self-love, and a most
exaggerated mistrust of everyone and every thing” (Government of Portugal,
1875)-but this opinion of his character was addressed to the High Court rather
than to posterity. To his friends and colleagues he seemed a devoted worker
with no thought for anything but the advancement of his studies, generous in
the loan of material to experts in particular families of plants and insects,
neglectful only of his own comfort and status.
Dedicated from an early age to the study of natural history, he followed
its call to the extent of parting from his father, his native land, and his adopted
country. His passion for it sustained him through years of loneliness in Africa
and destroyed his health with the hardships and diseases of the tropics. But
there was nothing strident in the zeal with which he carried out his’purpose,
nothing histrionic in the breaking of his relationships. The severance from his
father gave way to reconciliation as soon as the father recognized that
Friedrich’s aptitude was for natural history rather than the law. Though he left
Austria never to return, he maintained communications with the people he had
known there and with his countrymen whom he met abroad.
Despite his exasperation with the Portuguese Government he remained in
friendly correspondence with some of its officials and acknowledged his
dependence on it to the end. But the core of his life was his great collection
from Africa, and in opposition to Hooker’s scathing dismissal of Welwitsch’s
labours on it Carruthers (1974) expressed a more generally held view.
Dr Welwitsch, he said, was a laborious and indefatigable worker. “He brought
with him to England probably upwards of 5000 species of plants and 3000
species of insects and animals a very large proportion of which were wholly
new to science and of most of which he had numerous specimens. To
determine and arrange these enormous collections was to my knowledge the
one object of his life.”
288
T. D. V. SWINSCOW
SUMMARY
A hundred years ago Friedrich Welwitsch, the naturalist-explorer whose
name is commemorated in the monotypic genus Welwitschia, died in London.
The collection he made in Angola was acclaimed, even 20 years after his death,
as the best ever to have come out of tropical Africa, and to this day it remains
of unique value.
As well as a contentious spirit Welwitsch had an inflexible devotion to any
task he undertook. The Portuguese Government did not clearly comprehend
the nature of the investigation it should have invited Welwitsch to carry out in
Angola or the character of the man himself. The consequent misunderstanding,
discord and severance between Welwitsch and the Government sprang partly
from their divergence of purpose and partly from an earlier pattern set between
Welwitsch and his father.
But, disappointed as it was with Welwitsch’s achievement, the Portuguese
Government recognized the scientific value of his collections and successfully
contested his attempt to bequeath the best part of them to the British Museum.
An action in the English High Court between the King of Portugal and the
executors of Welwitsch’s will followed, and became tangled with extraneous
animosities between the British Museum and Kew before it was finally settled
in a compromise.
Welwitsch’s life, and especially his quarrel with the Portuguese Government,
foreshadowed many disputes of a now unfortunately familiar kind between
governments and the scientists they employ. And the nature of his
achievement, both its success and its failure, provokes thought on problems of
contemporary importance to the advancement of developing countries.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the Librarian, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for access to
Welwitsch’s correspondence and to the legal documents relating to the
Chancery Court case between Dom Luis I, King of Portugal, and William
Carruthers and Frederick Justen. To the Librarians of the British Museum
(Natural History) and the Linnean Society of London I am also grateful for
copies of letters and documents. Dr H. Riedl, of the Naturhistorisches Museum,
Vienna, kindly gave me some information on Welwitsch’s time in Vienna.
REFERENCES
ANON. [ H . Trimen]. 1874. Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond., 1872-73: xxxvii-xliv.
BOWER, F . 0..1918. In L. Huxley, Dalton Hooker, 0. M., 2: 4 4 2 .
BRITTEN, J., 1922. In memory of William Carruthers. J. Bot., Lond.. 60: 249-256.
CARRIERE, E.-A., 1867. Traiti giniral des Conif&es. ed. nouv.. Pt. 2: 780-787. Paris, published by the
author.
CARRUTHERS, W. & JUSTEN, F., 1873. In Chancery: Between Dom Luis I King of Portugal, Plaintiff,
and William Carruthers and Frederick Justen, Defendants, the Joint and Several Answer of William
Carruthers and Frderick Justen, filed 1 May 1873.
CARRUTHERS. W., 1874. In Chancery: Between Dom Luis I, King of Portugal, Plaintiff, and William
Carruthers and Frederick Justen, Defendants, Affidavits filed on behalf of the Defendants on 3
October 1874.
DOLEZAL, H . , 1960-61.Friedrich Welwitsch: Leben und Werk, 11. Portugaliae Acra Biologira (B), 7:
250-276.
Biol. J . Linn. Soc., -I (1972)
‘r. D. v. SWINSCOW
Plate 1
(Facing p. 288)
Biol. J. Linn. SOC.,
4 (1972)
T. D. V. SWINSCOW
Plate 2
FRIEDRICH WELWITSCH, 1806-1872
289
GOVERNMENT OF PORTUGAL. 1875. As Colleccoes da Expedicao Scientifica Africana Ordenade pelo
Govern0 d e Portugal em I85 I (with parallel English translation). Lisbon: National Printing Office.
HIERN, W. P., 1896. Catalogue of rhe African plants collecred by DrFriedrich Welwitsch in 1853-61,
I ( 1 ) : xvii. London: British Museum (Natural History).
HOOKER, J . D., 1861. The Tumboa of West Africa, Gdner’s Chron.. 1861: 1007-1008.
HOOKER, J . D., 1862a. Letter to T. H. Huxley, 20 January 1862, quoted in L. Huxley, 1918, 2: 25.
HOOKER, J . D., 1862b. Report of meeting of Linn. SOC.on 16.i.1862. Gdnr’s Chron., 1862: 71.
HOOKER, J. D., 1863. On Welwirschia, a new genus of Gnefuceae. Trans. Linn. SOC.Lond., 24: 1 4 8 .
HOOKER, J. D., 1873. In Chancery: Between Dom Luis I, King of Portugal, Plaintiff. and William
Carruthers and Frederick Justen, Defendants. affidavit filed on the part of the Plaintiff, 6 February
1873.
HUXLEY, L., 1918. Life and lerrers o f Sir Joseph Dalron Hooker, O.M., G.C.S.I. London: John Murray.
LIVINGSTONE, D., 1857. Missionary rravels and researches in Sourh Africa: 415. London: John Murray.
LUIS 1, 1873. Bill of Complaint between Dom Luis, King of Portugal, and William Carruthers and
Frederick Justen.
NAUDIN, C.-V.. 1862. Dbcouvertes du Docteur Welwitsch en Afrique. Revue horr.: 185-187.
OLIVER, D., 1868. Flora of Tropical Africa, I : 9.. London: L. Reeve.
TRIMEN, H., 1873. Friedrich Welwitsch. J. Bor., Lond., 1 1 : 1-11.
TRIMEN. H., 1874a. Botanical news. J. Bot., Lond., 12: 63.
TRIMEN, H., 1874b. Botanical news. J. B o f . , Lond., 12: 96.
UNIO ITINERARIA. 1840. Letter to W. Pamplin, Jnr. J. Bof. (Hooker), 2: 32.
WELWITSCH, P., 1840. Letter to W. Pamplin, Jnr. J. Bot. (Hooker), 2: 119.
WELWITSCH, F., 1855. Letter dated 2 March 1854 t o R. Kippist. Proc. Linn. SOC.Lond., 2: 327.
WELWITSCH. P., 1859. Apontamentos phytogeographicos sobre a Flora da Provincia d e Angola na
Africa Equinocial servindo d e relatorio preliminar icerca d a exploracao botanica d a mesma provincia.
Annaes d o Conselho Llltramurino (Ser. I ) : 527-593 (dated 1858).
WELWITSCH, F., 1861a. Letter dated 16 August 1860 to Sir W. Hooker. J. Linn. SOC.Bor., 5 : 182-187.
WELWITSCH, F.. 1861b. Letter dated 16 August 1860 to Sir W. Hooker. Gdnr’sChron., 1861: 74.
WELWITSCH, F., 1868-69. The Pedras Negras of Pungo Andongo in Angola. J. Trav. Nut. Hisr., I : 22.
WELWITSCH, F . , 1869. Sertum Angolense, sive Stirpiurn quarundam novarum vel minus cognitarum in
itinere per Angolam e t Benguelam observatarum Descriptio, Iconibus illustrata. Trans. Linn. Soc.
Lond., 27: 1-94. tt. 1-25.
EXPLANATION O F PLATES
PLATE 1
A. Friedrich Welwitsch, aged 59 (from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, Dedications Volume,
1827-1927 (1931). facing p. 147).
B. Welwitsch’s tomb in Kensal Green cemetery (author’s photograph).
PLATE 2
A. Female plant of Welwirschia bainesii in Namib Desert (author’s photograph).
B. Male plant of Welwirschia bainesii in Namib Desert (author’s photograph).