BOOKSHELF 



By Laurence A. Marschall 



"Tlie Busiest Man in England": 

 A Life of Joseph Paxton, Gardener, 

 Architect, and Victorian Visionary 



by Kate Colquhoun 

 David R. Godine, Publisher, 2006; 

 $30.00 



Among the great engineering mar- 

 vels of the 1800s, surely the Crys- 

 tal Palace ranked supreme. Erected to 

 house London's Great Exhibition of 

 the Works of Industry of All Nations 

 in 1 85 1 , it was the largest building built 

 to date, a third of a mile long, 450 feet 

 wide, and enclosing an area of almost 

 twenty-one acres. Like the Brooklyn 

 Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, the other 

 iconic structures of the age, the Crys- 



Arched transept of the Crystal Palace soars over an elm tree in 

 Hyde Park, London, during the Great Exhibition of 1851, as 

 shown in a contemporary engraving. 



tal Palace celebrated new technology. 

 Its skeleton was made of cast iron, not 

 timber, and its outer walls and roof 

 were sheathed in plate glass, more than 

 200,000 panes held in place by 205 

 miles of sash bars. During the six 

 months of the exhibition 6 million 

 people passed through its galleries, and, 

 when it was later reconstructed on a 

 permanent site in south London, the 

 huge building continued to attract and 

 delight weekend crowds until it was 

 gutted by fire in 1936. 



It was no coincidence that the Crys- 

 tal Palace resembled a giant green- 

 house. Its architect was Joseph Paxton, 

 chief gardener and landscape designer 



for the Duke of Devonshire. In the pre- 

 ceding twenty-five years, Paxton had 

 transformed Chatsworth, the Duke's 

 estate, into the most advanced and 

 most spectacular botanical park in Eu- 

 rope. At Chatsworth, a variety of in- 

 novative structures housed plants from 

 all over the globe. In one great green- 

 house, heated by solar power and sub- 

 terranean boilers, the temperature was 

 regulated so that one end was temper- 

 ate and the other end subtropical. From 

 a surrounding gallery, visitors could 

 gaze down at a jungle of exotic trees — 

 coconut palms and date palms, banana 

 and cinnamon. Birds flitted above car- 

 pets of ferns, and fish swam in artificial 

 lagoons. In an age obsessed with nat- 

 ural history, Paxton's gardens were a 

 collector's dream, and 

 his fame, even before 

 the Crystal Palace, was 

 nearly universal. 



Paxton promoted 

 his innovative ideas 

 through a series of pe- 

 riodicals which he 

 founded and edited — 

 Horticultural Register, 

 begun in 1831, and 

 Magazine of Botany, be- 

 gun in 1834 — along 

 with several popular 

 gardening books. He 

 succeeded not simply 

 through the cleverness 

 of his ideas, according 

 to writer Kate Colquhoun, but also 

 through the power of his personality. 

 Paxton's industry, clarity of expression, 

 and fundamental sense of decency made 

 him an ideal manager. Everyone who 

 met him admired him, and the many 

 friendships he made during his lifetime 

 were deep and enduring. 



Y; 



"et that same industriousness and 

 friendliness made Paxton the ar- 

 chetypal workaholic of the Victorian 

 Age. He was the "busiest man in Eng- 

 land," according to Charles Dickens, 

 who worked for him briefly as editor 

 of the Daily News, a liberal newspaper 

 Paxton founded in 1846. As Paxton's 



fame grew, the demands on his time 

 grew enormously, and it seemed he 

 could never say no to an appealing idea. 

 He accepted commissions to design 

 municipal parks and private estates, de- 

 veloped railway lines, planned munic- 

 ipal waste sewage systems, and even 

 served in Parliament, all the while car- 

 rying on the duties of gardener, editor, 

 and family man. When he died at age 

 sixty-one in 1865, prompting an effu- 

 sion of public adulation, the editor of 

 Punch simply wrote in his diary, "More 

 fatal overwork." 



Kate Colquhoun's masterful biogra- 

 phy of Paxton more than doesjustice to 

 this remarkable overachiever. She traces 

 his rise from humble farm-laborer's son 

 to pillar of society by providing a per- 

 ceptive portrait of the culture that cel- 

 ebrated his talent. Like many self-made 

 men, Paxton was also a product of his 

 time, caught up by the unrestrained cu- 

 riosity and entrepreneurialism of the 

 Victorian Age. If his name, like that of 

 the great Crystal Palace, is no longer a 

 household word, this book will serve as 

 a handsome memorial, and should stand 

 the test of time. 



Tasmanian Devil: A Unique 

 and Threatened Animal 



by David Owen and David Pemberton 

 Allen & Unwin, 2006; $24.95 



Whoever coined the phrase "big 

 things come in small packages" 

 may have been thinking of the Tas- 

 manian devil. Although the little mar- 

 supial weighs no more than about 

 twenty-five pounds, its ferocity is the 

 stuff of legend. They say its teeth are 

 sharp enough to devour a horse, bones 

 and all. They say it hunts in packs, re- 

 lentlessly chasing down even the largest 

 prey, and leaves nothing behind. They 

 say it reeks of death, and that those who 

 have encountered a devil in the wild — 

 if they live to tell about it — never for- 

 get its awful smell. 



But don't believe everything "they" 

 tell you. According to David Owen, a 

 Tasmanian novelist, and David Pem- 



natukai his tory September 2006 



