Philip Henry Gosse
Encyclopedia
Philip Henry Gosse was an English
naturalist
and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium
, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology
. Gosse is perhaps best known today as the author of Omphalos
, an attempt to reconcile the immense geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell
with the biblical account of creation
.
After his death, Gosse was portrayed as a despotic and fanatically religious father in Father and Son (1907), the literary masterpiece of his son, poet and critic Edmund Gosse
.
, Dorset
, where his aunt, Susan Bell, taught him to draw and introduced him to zoology as she had her own son, Thomas Bell
, twenty years older and later to be a great friend to Henry.
At fifteen he began work as a clerk in the counting house
of George Garland and Sons in Poole
, and in 1827 he sailed to Newfoundland to serve as a clerk in the Carbonear premises of Slade, Elson and Co., where he became a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland entomology
, "the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology" of the island. In 1832 Gosse experienced a religious conversion
—as he said, "solemnly, deliberately and uprightly, took God for my God."
In 1835 he left Newfoundland for Compton
, Lower Canada
where he farmed unsuccessfully for three years, originally in an attempt to establish a commune
with two of his religious friends. Nevertheless, the experience deepened his love for natural history, and locals referred to him as "that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs." During this time he became a member of the Natural History Society of Montreal and submitted specimens to its museum.
In 1838 Gosse taught eight months for Reuben Saffold, the owner of Belvoir
plantation
, near Pleasant Hill, Alabama. Gosse studied and drew the local flora and fauna, assembling an unpublished volume, Entomologia Alabamensis on insect life in the state. He also recorded his negative impressions of slavery
, later published as Letters from Alabama (1859).
Gosse opened a "Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentlemen" while keeping detailed records of his microscopic investigations of pond life, especially cyclopidae
and rotifera. He also began to preach to the Wesleyan Methodists
and lead a Bible class. Nevertheless, in 1842, he became so captivated by the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ
that he severed his connection with the Methodists and joined the Plymouth Brethren
. These dissenters emphasized the Second Coming while rejecting liturgy and an ordained ministry—although they otherwise endorsed the traditional doctrines of Christianity as represented by the creeds of the Methodist and the Anglican Church.
In 1843, Gosse gave up the school to write a An Introduction to Zoology for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and to draw some of the illustrations. Writing the work inspired him to further his interest in the flora and fauna of the seashore and also revealed him to be a determined creationist, although this position was typical of pre-Darwinian naturalists.
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In October 1844 Gosse sailed to Jamaica
, where he served as a professional collector for the churlish dealer Hugh Cuming
. Although Gosse worked hard during his eighteen months on the island, he later called this period his "holiday in Jamaica." Gosse's study specialized in birds, and Gosse has been called "the father of Jamaican ornithology
." With no racial prejudice, he easily hired black youths as his assistants, and his Jamaican books are full of praise for one of them, Samuel Campbell. For Christian companionship he enjoyed the company of Moravian missionaries and their black converts and preached regularly to the Moravian congregation.
On his return to London in 1846, he wrote a trilogy on the natural history of Jamaica including A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica (1851), which was "written in a congenial style and firmly established his reputation both as a naturalist and a writer."
In the field of herpetology
he described several new species
of reptiles endemic to Jamaica
.
was Monuments of Ancient Egypt, a land he had never visited and never would.) As his financial situation stabilized, Gosse courted Emily Bowes
, a forty-one-year-old member of the Brethren, who was both a strong personality and a gifted writer of evangelical tracts
. They were married in November 1848, and their union was an extremely happy one. As D. J. Taylor
has written, "the word 'uxorious' seems to have minted to define" Gosse. Gosse's only son was born on 21 September 1849, an event Gosse noted in his diary with the words, "E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica"—an amusing conjunction which Edmund later described as demonstrating only the order of events: the boy had arrived first.
Gosse penned a succession of books and articles on natural history, some of which were (in his own words) "pot-boilers
" for religious publications. (At the time, accounts of God's creation were considered appropriate Sabbath reading for children.) As L. C. Croft has written, "Much of Gosse's success was due to the fact that he was essentially a field naturalist who was able to impart to his readers something of the thrill of studying living animals at first hand rather than the dead disjointed ones of the museum shelf. In addition to this he was a skilled scientific draughtsman who was able to illustrate his books himself."
Suffering from headaches, perhaps the result of overwork, Gosse and his family began to spend more time away from London on the Devon
coast. Here along the sea shore Gosse began serious experimentation with ways to sustain sea creatures so that they could be examined "without diving to gaze on them." Although there had been attempts to construct what had previously been called an "aquatic vivarium" (a name Gosse found "awkward and uncouth"), Gosse published The Aquarium in 1854 and set off a mid-Victorian craze for household aquarium
s. The book was financially profitable for Gosse, and "the reviews were full of praise" even though Gosse used natural science to point to the necessity of salvation through the blood of Christ
. In 1856 Gosse was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which, because he had no university position or inherited wealth, gave him "a standing he otherwise lacked."
A few months before Gosse was honored, his wife discovered that she had breast cancer
. Rather than undergo surgery (a risky procedure in 1856), the Gosses decided to submit to the ointments of an American doctor, Jesse Weldon Fell, who if not a charlatan
, was certainly on the fringe of contemporary medical practice. After much suffering, Emily Gosse died on February 9, 1857, entrusting her husband with their son's salvation and thus perhaps driving Gosse into "strange severities and eccentric prohibitions."
between the evidence of God's Word and the evidence of His creation as expounded by such contemporary geologists as Charles Lyell
. In 1857, two years before the publication of Charles Darwin
's, Origin of Species, Gosse published Omphalos: an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot
and thereby created what has been called the Omphalos hypothesis.
In what Stephen Jay Gould
has called "glorious purple prose," Gosse argued that if one assumed creation ex nihilo
, there would necessarily be traces of previous existence that had never actually occurred. "Omphalos" is Greek for "navel
", and Gosse argued that the first man, Adam, did not require a navel because he was never born; nevertheless he must have had one, as do all complete human beings, just as God must have created trees with rings that they never grew. Thus, Gosse argued that the fossil record—even coprolites—might also be evidence of life that had never actually existed but which may have been instantly formed by God at the moment of creation.
The general response was "as the Westminster Review
put it, that Gosse's theory was 'too monstrous for belief.'" Even his friend, the novelist Charles Kingsley
, wrote that he had read "no other book which so staggered and puzzled" him, that he could not believe that God had "written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind." Journalists later sniggered that God had apparently hidden fossils in the rocks to tempt geologists to infidelity.
Omphalos sold poorly and was eventually rebound with a new title, Creation, "in case the obscure one had had an effect on sales." The problem was not with the title, and in 1869 most of the edition was sold as waste paper.
By this time Gosse and his son had moved permanently from London to St Marychurch
, Devon
. (Gosse refused to use the "St" and even gave his address as Torquay
so as not to have anything to do with the "so-called Church of England
.") He soon became the pastor and overseer of the Brethren meeting, at first over a stable but shortly, under Gosse's preaching and peacemaking, in finer quarters—which he perhaps financed himself.
During this period, Gosse made a special study of sea anemone
(Actiniae) and in 1860 published Actinologia Britannica. Reviewers especially praised the color lithographs made from Gosse's watercolors. The Literary Gazette said that Gosse now stood "alone and unrivalled in the extremely difficult art of drawing objects of zoology so as to satisfy the requirements of science" as well as providing "vivid aesthetic impressions."
In 1860 he also met and married Eliza Brightwen (1813–1900), a kindly, tolerant Quaker who shared Gosse's intense interest in both natural history and the well-being of his son. Gosse's second marriage was as happy as his first. In 1862 he wrote that Eliza was "a true yoke-fellow, in love, in spirit and in service."
By this time Gosse was "very comfortably off" with the earnings from his books and dividends from his investments, and in 1864 Eliza received a substantial legacy which allowed Gosse to retire from his career as a professional writer and live in "congenial obscurity." The Gosses lived simply, invested some of their income and gave more away to charity, especially to foreign missionaries
, including ones sent to the "Popish, priest-ridden Irish."
To Gosse's great grief, his son rejected Christianity—though almost certainly not as early or as dramatically as Edmund portrayed the break in Father and Son. Nevertheless, Henry sponsored the publication of Edmund's early poetry, which gave the younger man entrée to new friends of literary importance, and the two men "came out of the years of conflict with their relationship wary but intact." Henry and Eliza welcomed Edmund's wife to the family and enjoyed visits with their three grandchildren.
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Meanwhile, the ever active Gosse had taken up the study of orchids and exchanged a number of letters on the subject with Darwin, though he never published on it himself. His penultimate enthusiasm was with the genitalia of butterflies about which he published a paper in the Transactions of the Linnean Society But before his death he returned to rotifera, much of his research appearing in a two-volume study with another zoologist, C.T. Hudson.
His wife recalled that Gosse's final illness was triggered by his enthusiasm to adjust his telescope at an open window on a winter night. Gosse had prayed regularly that he might not taste death but meet Christ in the air at his Second Coming, and he was bitterly disappointed when he realized that he would die like everyone else.
suggested to Edmund that it contained "the germ of a great book," which Edmund Gosse first published anonymously as Father and Son (F&S) in 1907. It has never gone out of print in more than a hundred years. The reaction of readers to Henry's personality and character as represented in F&S has included phrases such as "scientific crackpot," "bible-soaked romantic," "a stern and repressive father," and a "pulpit-thumping Puritan throwback to the seventeenth century."
Even a modern editor of F&S has rejected this portrait of Philip Henry Gosse on the grounds that his "writings reveal a genuinely sweet character." The biographer of both Gosses, Ann Thwaite
, has established just how inaccurate Edmund's recollections of his childhood were, that Edmund indeed, as Henry James
remarked, had "a genius for inaccuracy." Although Edmund went out of his way to declare that the story of F&S was "scrupulously true," Thwaite cites a dozen occasions on which either Edmund's "memory betray[ed] him—he admitted it was 'like a colander'"—or he "changed things deliberately to make a better story." Thwaite argues that Edmund could only preserve his self-respect, in comparison to his father's superior abilities, by demolishing the latter's character.
dramatised Father and Son in the television play Where Adam Stood
, first broadcast on BBC One
in 1976. Gosse was played by Alan Badel
and portrayed more sympathetically than in Edmund Gosse's book.
Father and Son was also adapted for BBC Radio 4
in 2005 by Nick Warburton
. Roger Allam
played Gosse and Derek Jacobi
, Edmund.
}}
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...
, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology
Marine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...
. Gosse is perhaps best known today as the author of Omphalos
Omphalos (book)
Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot is a book by Philip Gosse, written in 1857 , in which he argues that the fossil record is not evidence of evolution, but rather that it is an act of creation inevitably made so that the world would appear to be older than it is...
, an attempt to reconcile the immense geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
with the biblical account of creation
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
.
After his death, Gosse was portrayed as a despotic and fanatically religious father in Father and Son (1907), the literary masterpiece of his son, poet and critic Edmund Gosse
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...
.
Early life
Gosse was born in Worcester in 1810 of an itinerant painter of miniature portraits and a lady's maid. He spent his childhood mostly in PoolePoole
Poole is a large coastal town and seaport in the county of Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester, and Bournemouth adjoins Poole to the east. The Borough of Poole was made a unitary authority in 1997, gaining administrative independence from Dorset County Council...
, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
, where his aunt, Susan Bell, taught him to draw and introduced him to zoology as she had her own son, Thomas Bell
Thomas Bell
Thomas Bell may refer to:*Thom Bell , record producer*Thomas Bell Dean of Guernsey 1892-1917*Thomas Bell Thomas Bell may refer to:*Thom Bell (born 1943), record producer*Thomas Bell (Anglican priest) Dean of Guernsey 1892-1917*Thomas Bell (Catholic priest) Thomas Bell may refer to:*Thom Bell...
, twenty years older and later to be a great friend to Henry.
At fifteen he began work as a clerk in the counting house
Counting house
A counting house, or compting house, literally is the building, room, office or suite in which a business firm carries on operations, particularly accounting. By a synecdoche, it has come to mean the accounting operations of a firm, however housed...
of George Garland and Sons in Poole
Poole
Poole is a large coastal town and seaport in the county of Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester, and Bournemouth adjoins Poole to the east. The Borough of Poole was made a unitary authority in 1997, gaining administrative independence from Dorset County Council...
, and in 1827 he sailed to Newfoundland to serve as a clerk in the Carbonear premises of Slade, Elson and Co., where he became a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland entomology
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
, "the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology" of the island. In 1832 Gosse experienced a religious conversion
Religious conversion
Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religion that differs from the convert's previous religion. Changing from one denomination to another within the same religion is usually described as reaffiliation rather than conversion.People convert to a different religion for various reasons,...
—as he said, "solemnly, deliberately and uprightly, took God for my God."
In 1835 he left Newfoundland for Compton
Compton County, Quebec
Compton County is an historical county in southeastern Quebec, Canada on the western flanks of the Appalachian Mountains on the US-Canadian border. It is in the Estrie region of the province and was named in 1793 after a town in Surrey, England by British officers who were convinced of the...
, Lower Canada
Lower Canada
The Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
where he farmed unsuccessfully for three years, originally in an attempt to establish a commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
with two of his religious friends. Nevertheless, the experience deepened his love for natural history, and locals referred to him as "that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs." During this time he became a member of the Natural History Society of Montreal and submitted specimens to its museum.
In 1838 Gosse taught eight months for Reuben Saffold, the owner of Belvoir
Belvoir (Saffold Plantation)
Belvoir, also known as the Saffold Plantation, is a historic plantation and plantation house near Pleasant Hill, Alabama, United States. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on November 2, 1990.-History:...
plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
, near Pleasant Hill, Alabama. Gosse studied and drew the local flora and fauna, assembling an unpublished volume, Entomologia Alabamensis on insect life in the state. He also recorded his negative impressions of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, later published as Letters from Alabama (1859).
Young naturalist and lay preacher
Returning to England in 1839, Gosse was hard pressed to make a living, subsisting on eightpence a day ("one herring eaten as slowly as possible, and a little bread"). His fortunes began to improve when John Van Voorst, the leading publisher of naturalist writing, agreed, on the recommendation of Thomas Bell, to publish his Canadian Naturalist (1840). The book, set as a conversation between a father and his son (a son Gosse did not yet have), was widely praised and demonstrated that Gosse "had a practical grasp of the importance of conservation, far ahead of his time."Gosse opened a "Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentlemen" while keeping detailed records of his microscopic investigations of pond life, especially cyclopidae
Cyclopidae
Cyclopidae is a family of copepods. It contains more than half of the 1,200 species in the order Cyclopoida in over 70 genera.-Genera:The following genera are accepted as valid:*Abdiacyclops Karanovic, 2005*Acanthocyclops Kiefer, 1927...
and rotifera. He also began to preach to the Wesleyan Methodists
Methodist Church of Great Britain
The Methodist Church of Great Britain is the largest Wesleyan Methodist body in the United Kingdom, with congregations across Great Britain . It is the United Kingdom's fourth largest Christian denomination, with around 300,000 members and 6,000 churches...
and lead a Bible class. Nevertheless, in 1842, he became so captivated by the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ
Second Coming
In Christian doctrine, the Second Coming of Christ, the Second Advent, or the Parousia, is the anticipated return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, where he sits at the Right Hand of God, to Earth. This prophecy is found in the canonical gospels and in most Christian and Islamic eschatologies...
that he severed his connection with the Methodists and joined the Plymouth Brethren
Plymouth Brethren
The Plymouth Brethren is a conservative, Evangelical Christian movement, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. Although the group is notable for not taking any official "church name" to itself, and not having an official clergy or liturgy, the title "The Brethren," is...
. These dissenters emphasized the Second Coming while rejecting liturgy and an ordained ministry—although they otherwise endorsed the traditional doctrines of Christianity as represented by the creeds of the Methodist and the Anglican Church.
In 1843, Gosse gave up the school to write a An Introduction to Zoology for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and to draw some of the illustrations. Writing the work inspired him to further his interest in the flora and fauna of the seashore and also revealed him to be a determined creationist, although this position was typical of pre-Darwinian naturalists.
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, where he served as a professional collector for the churlish dealer Hugh Cuming
Hugh Cuming
Hugh Cuming was an English collector who was interested in natural history, particularly in conchology and botany. He has been described as the "Prince of Collectors"....
. Although Gosse worked hard during his eighteen months on the island, he later called this period his "holiday in Jamaica." Gosse's study specialized in birds, and Gosse has been called "the father of Jamaican ornithology
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
." With no racial prejudice, he easily hired black youths as his assistants, and his Jamaican books are full of praise for one of them, Samuel Campbell. For Christian companionship he enjoyed the company of Moravian missionaries and their black converts and preached regularly to the Moravian congregation.
On his return to London in 1846, he wrote a trilogy on the natural history of Jamaica including A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica (1851), which was "written in a congenial style and firmly established his reputation both as a naturalist and a writer."
In the field of herpetology
Herpetology
Herpetology is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians and reptiles...
he described several new species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of reptiles endemic to Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
.
Popular nature writer
Back in England, Gosse wrote books in his field and out. (One quick volume for the SPCKSPCK
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge is the oldest Anglican mission organisation. It was founded in 1698 by Thomas Bray , and a small group of friends. The most important early leaders were Anton Wilhelm Boehm and court preacher Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen...
was Monuments of Ancient Egypt, a land he had never visited and never would.) As his financial situation stabilized, Gosse courted Emily Bowes
Emily Bowes
Emily Bowes Gosse was a Victorian painter and illustrator, and writer of evangelical Christian poems and tracts.-Biography:...
, a forty-one-year-old member of the Brethren, who was both a strong personality and a gifted writer of evangelical tracts
Tract (literature)
A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They are...
. They were married in November 1848, and their union was an extremely happy one. As D. J. Taylor
D. J. Taylor
David John Taylor is a British critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his biography of George Orwell. His novel Derby Day was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker...
has written, "the word 'uxorious' seems to have minted to define" Gosse. Gosse's only son was born on 21 September 1849, an event Gosse noted in his diary with the words, "E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica"—an amusing conjunction which Edmund later described as demonstrating only the order of events: the boy had arrived first.
Gosse penned a succession of books and articles on natural history, some of which were (in his own words) "pot-boilers
Potboiler
Potboiler or pot-boiler is a term used to describe a poor quality novel, play, opera, or film, or other creative work that was created quickly to make money to pay for the creator's daily expenses . Authors who create potboiler novels or screenplays are sometimes called hack writers...
" for religious publications. (At the time, accounts of God's creation were considered appropriate Sabbath reading for children.) As L. C. Croft has written, "Much of Gosse's success was due to the fact that he was essentially a field naturalist who was able to impart to his readers something of the thrill of studying living animals at first hand rather than the dead disjointed ones of the museum shelf. In addition to this he was a skilled scientific draughtsman who was able to illustrate his books himself."
Suffering from headaches, perhaps the result of overwork, Gosse and his family began to spend more time away from London on the Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
coast. Here along the sea shore Gosse began serious experimentation with ways to sustain sea creatures so that they could be examined "without diving to gaze on them." Although there had been attempts to construct what had previously been called an "aquatic vivarium" (a name Gosse found "awkward and uncouth"), Gosse published The Aquarium in 1854 and set off a mid-Victorian craze for household aquarium
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...
s. The book was financially profitable for Gosse, and "the reviews were full of praise" even though Gosse used natural science to point to the necessity of salvation through the blood of Christ
Blood of Christ
The Blood of Christ in Christian theology refers to the physical blood actually shed by Jesus Christ on the Cross, and the salvation which Christianity teaches was accomplished thereby; and the sacramental blood present in the Eucharist, which is considered by Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and...
. In 1856 Gosse was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which, because he had no university position or inherited wealth, gave him "a standing he otherwise lacked."
A few months before Gosse was honored, his wife discovered that she had breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
. Rather than undergo surgery (a risky procedure in 1856), the Gosses decided to submit to the ointments of an American doctor, Jesse Weldon Fell, who if not a charlatan
Charlatan
A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception....
, was certainly on the fringe of contemporary medical practice. After much suffering, Emily Gosse died on February 9, 1857, entrusting her husband with their son's salvation and thus perhaps driving Gosse into "strange severities and eccentric prohibitions."
Omphalos
In the months following Emily's death, Gosse worked with remarkable diligence on a book that he may have viewed as the most important of his career. Although a failure both financially and intellectually, it is the book by which he is best remembered. Gosse believed that he had discovered a theory that might neatly resolve the seeming contradiction in the age of the earthAge of the Earth
The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples...
between the evidence of God's Word and the evidence of His creation as expounded by such contemporary geologists as Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
. In 1857, two years before the publication of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's, Origin of Species, Gosse published Omphalos: an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot
Omphalos (book)
Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot is a book by Philip Gosse, written in 1857 , in which he argues that the fossil record is not evidence of evolution, but rather that it is an act of creation inevitably made so that the world would appear to be older than it is...
and thereby created what has been called the Omphalos hypothesis.
In what Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
has called "glorious purple prose," Gosse argued that if one assumed creation ex nihilo
Ex nihilo
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...
, there would necessarily be traces of previous existence that had never actually occurred. "Omphalos" is Greek for "navel
Navel
The navel is a scar on the abdomen caused when the umbilical cord is removed from a newborn baby...
", and Gosse argued that the first man, Adam, did not require a navel because he was never born; nevertheless he must have had one, as do all complete human beings, just as God must have created trees with rings that they never grew. Thus, Gosse argued that the fossil record—even coprolites—might also be evidence of life that had never actually existed but which may have been instantly formed by God at the moment of creation.
The general response was "as the Westminster Review
Westminster Review
The Westminster Review was a quarterly British publication. Established in 1823 as the official organ of the Philosophical Radicals, it was published from 1824 to 1914. James Mill was one of the driving forces behind the liberal journal until 1828....
put it, that Gosse's theory was 'too monstrous for belief.'" Even his friend, the novelist Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
, wrote that he had read "no other book which so staggered and puzzled" him, that he could not believe that God had "written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind." Journalists later sniggered that God had apparently hidden fossils in the rocks to tempt geologists to infidelity.
Omphalos sold poorly and was eventually rebound with a new title, Creation, "in case the obscure one had had an effect on sales." The problem was not with the title, and in 1869 most of the edition was sold as waste paper.
Later career
According to Edmund Gosse, his father's career was destroyed by his "strange act of wilfulness" in publishing Omphalos; Edmund claimed his father had "closed the doors upon himself forever." In fact, during the next three years Gosse published more than thirty scientific papers and four books.By this time Gosse and his son had moved permanently from London to St Marychurch
St Marychurch
St. Marychurch in Devon, England, is one of the oldest settlements in South Devon. Its earliest documentary record dates from around 1050 AD.It is a former English urban district, abolished in 1900 when it was incorporated into the neighbouring borough of Torquay...
, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
. (Gosse refused to use the "St" and even gave his address as Torquay
Torquay
Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...
so as not to have anything to do with the "so-called Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
.") He soon became the pastor and overseer of the Brethren meeting, at first over a stable but shortly, under Gosse's preaching and peacemaking, in finer quarters—which he perhaps financed himself.
During this period, Gosse made a special study of sea anemone
Sea anemone
Sea anemones are a group of water-dwelling, predatory animals of the order Actiniaria; they are named after the anemone, a terrestrial flower. Sea anemones are classified in the phylum Cnidaria, class Anthozoa, subclass Zoantharia. Anthozoa often have large polyps that allow for digestion of larger...
(Actiniae) and in 1860 published Actinologia Britannica. Reviewers especially praised the color lithographs made from Gosse's watercolors. The Literary Gazette said that Gosse now stood "alone and unrivalled in the extremely difficult art of drawing objects of zoology so as to satisfy the requirements of science" as well as providing "vivid aesthetic impressions."
In 1860 he also met and married Eliza Brightwen (1813–1900), a kindly, tolerant Quaker who shared Gosse's intense interest in both natural history and the well-being of his son. Gosse's second marriage was as happy as his first. In 1862 he wrote that Eliza was "a true yoke-fellow, in love, in spirit and in service."
By this time Gosse was "very comfortably off" with the earnings from his books and dividends from his investments, and in 1864 Eliza received a substantial legacy which allowed Gosse to retire from his career as a professional writer and live in "congenial obscurity." The Gosses lived simply, invested some of their income and gave more away to charity, especially to foreign missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
, including ones sent to the "Popish, priest-ridden Irish."
To Gosse's great grief, his son rejected Christianity—though almost certainly not as early or as dramatically as Edmund portrayed the break in Father and Son. Nevertheless, Henry sponsored the publication of Edmund's early poetry, which gave the younger man entrée to new friends of literary importance, and the two men "came out of the years of conflict with their relationship wary but intact." Henry and Eliza welcomed Edmund's wife to the family and enjoyed visits with their three grandchildren.
His wife recalled that Gosse's final illness was triggered by his enthusiasm to adjust his telescope at an open window on a winter night. Gosse had prayed regularly that he might not taste death but meet Christ in the air at his Second Coming, and he was bitterly disappointed when he realized that he would die like everyone else.
Father and Son
After his father's death, Edmund Gosse published a typical Victorian biography, The Life of Philip Henry Gosse (1890). Nevertheless, after reading the latter, the writer George MooreGeorge Moore (novelist)
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s...
suggested to Edmund that it contained "the germ of a great book," which Edmund Gosse first published anonymously as Father and Son (F&S) in 1907. It has never gone out of print in more than a hundred years. The reaction of readers to Henry's personality and character as represented in F&S has included phrases such as "scientific crackpot," "bible-soaked romantic," "a stern and repressive father," and a "pulpit-thumping Puritan throwback to the seventeenth century."
Even a modern editor of F&S has rejected this portrait of Philip Henry Gosse on the grounds that his "writings reveal a genuinely sweet character." The biographer of both Gosses, Ann Thwaite
Ann Thwaite
Ann Thwaite has written five major biographies. "AA Milne: His Life" was the Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990. "Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape" was described by John Carey as "magnificent - one of the finest literary biographies of our time"...
, has established just how inaccurate Edmund's recollections of his childhood were, that Edmund indeed, as Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
remarked, had "a genius for inaccuracy." Although Edmund went out of his way to declare that the story of F&S was "scrupulously true," Thwaite cites a dozen occasions on which either Edmund's "memory betray[ed] him—he admitted it was 'like a colander'"—or he "changed things deliberately to make a better story." Thwaite argues that Edmund could only preserve his self-respect, in comparison to his father's superior abilities, by demolishing the latter's character.
In popular culture
Dennis PotterDennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
dramatised Father and Son in the television play Where Adam Stood
Where Adam Stood
Where Adam Stood is a television play by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on BBC2 in 1976. It is a free adaptation of Edmund Gosse's autobiographical book Father and Son .-Synopsis:...
, first broadcast on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
in 1976. Gosse was played by Alan Badel
Alan Badel
Alan Fernand Badel was a distinguished English stage actor who also appeared frequently in the cinema, radio and television and was noted for his richly textured voice which was once described as "the sound of tears".-Early life:...
and portrayed more sympathetically than in Edmund Gosse's book.
Father and Son was also adapted for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
in 2005 by Nick Warburton
Nick Warburton
Nick Warburton was a primary school teacher for ten years before deciding to become a full-time writer. He writes plays for stage, television and radio and scripts for television series including Doctors, Holby City and EastEnders. He has been part of the regular writing team on Holby City since...
. Roger Allam
Roger Allam
Roger Allam is an English actor, known primarily for his stage career, although he has performed in film and television. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of the stage musical Les Misérables....
played Gosse and Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
, Edmund.
Select list of Gosse's books
- The Canadian Naturalist: a series of conversations on the natural history of Lower Canada (1840).
- An Introduction to Zoology (1844).
- The Ocean (1844), edition of 1874 under the title The Wonders of the Great Deep; or, the physical, animal, geological and vegetable curiosities of the ocean.
- The Birds of Jamaica (1847)
- The Monuments of Ancient Egypt, and their relation to the Word of God (1847).
- Natural History. Mammalia (1848).
- British Ornithology; containing a familiar and technical description of the Birds of the British Isles (1849).
- Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica (1849).
- Natural History. Birds (1849).
- The Ancient and Modern History of the Rivers of the Bible (1850).
- Natural History. Reptiles (1850).
- A Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica (1851).
- Natural History. Fishes (1851).
- The History of the Jews, from the Christian era to the dawn of the Reformation (1851).
- A Text-book of Zoology for schools (1851).
- Assyria: her manners and customs, arts and aims. Restored from the monuments (1852).
- Naturalist Rambles on the Devonshire Coast (1853).
- The Aquarium: an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea (1854).
- Natural History. Mollusca (1854).
- A Handbook to the Marine Aquarium: containing Instructions for constructing, stocking, and maintaining a tank, and for collecting plants and animals (1855).
- Manual of Marine Zoology for the British Isles (1855–1856).
- Tenby: a seaside holiday (1856).
- A Memorial of the Last Days on Earth of Emily Gosse (1857)
- Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot. (1857), modern editions in 1998 and 2003.
- Life in its Lower, Intermediate, and Higher Forms; or, manifestations of the divine wisdom in the natural history of animals (1857).
- Actinologia Britannica: a history of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals. (1858-60).
- Evenings at the Microscope: or, researches among the minute organs and forms of animal life (1859).
- Letters from Alabama, chiefly relating to Natural History (1859).
- The Romance of Natural History (1860–61).
- A Year at the Shore (1865).
- Land and Sea (1865).
- The Revelation. How is it to be interpreted ? (1866).
- Imperial Bible-Dictionary (104 articles) (1866)
- The Mysteries of God: a series of expositions of Holy Scripture (1884).
External links
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