Fairchild's Mule
Jan. 30th, 2012 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguist(an LJ Idol entry)
God created the world, and everything in it. And God was perfect, so it followed that his creation was perfect.
Therefore, it followed that Thomas shouldn't have been here. He shouldn't have carefully closed the door of his garden shed behind him, he shouldn't have been sizing up the two vivid pink flowers in front of him. And he certainly shouldn't have been delicately applying the pollen of the sweet william to the pistil of the carnation.
Living things had never been made to cross this way before, not successfully. And little wonder, most would think, as this proved that we have the plants and animals we do for a reason. If there should have been such a flower as this combination he wondered about now as he looked from the sweet william to the carnation and back again, then God would have made it. And he didn't.
With a tiny brush, Thomas swept up pollen from the sweet william flowers, and delicately deposited it on the pistils of the other plant.
He didn't realize he was holding his breath until he finished the act, and slowly sighed out the air in his lungs. Perhaps an observer would've thought it sounded like a sigh of relief, but Thomas knew he was breathing out the last air he would ever draw in as an innocent man.
What God didn't make, he would.
In Hoxton, Thomas kept a vineyard with more than fifty varieties of grapes. People came to his nursery to wonder at all the exotic plants he grew from overseas, including one of the first banana trees seen in England.
But these wonders of nature didn't come easily. Lost in the post, his suppliers told him. You'll have it next month, they told him. Oh, unlucky, a disease struck down all those rare beautiful blooms you paid me so highly for, Mr. Fairchild, they told Thomas before he saw another nurseryman showing of those very plants, for a handsome price naturally!
But he wasn't going to get too dramatic about this. He had to be patient.
He waited until he could plant the seeds that this carnation now produced, and then he waited for them to grow.
Some days he could hardly wait, such was his excitement at his anticipated accomplishment. Some days he was very solemn, wondering why he thought his experiment would work better than previous attempts to cross one kind of flower with another. Some days, he wasn't even sure whether he wanted his new plant to grow or not.
A flower grew.
He carefully pressed it between sheets of paper to preserve it, and looked for a large book in which to place his paper-wrapped plants in. Not his Bible. He couldn't bear that. he reached for another weighty tome.
Thomas should have been exultant at the existence of his flower, but he lived in dread. It was no miracle, but blasphemy. His audacious act weighed heavily upon him.
With that pink flower, that beautiful abomination, in his mind he made an offering to St Leonards in Hackney Road, his parish church, so that a sermon would be delivered every Whitsun on the wonderful works of God and the certainty of the creation.
Even if his thoughts wandered during those sermons, he couldn't have imagined all the implications of what human endeavors could be traced back to his little experiment with the pink flowers. When he created the first man-made hybrid in 1717, it would be a century before people would have the metaphor of Frankenstein for meddling in the creation of life. Now the same unease ascribed to Thomas Fairchild that led him to commission the Whitsun "Vegetable Sermon" is evident in wariness toward genetically modified food.
All of this can be traced back to Thomas Fairchild, and the paradigm shift from "Nature: created in perfection" to "Nature: some assembly required."
God created the world, and everything in it. And God was perfect, so it followed that his creation was perfect.
Therefore, it followed that Thomas shouldn't have been here. He shouldn't have carefully closed the door of his garden shed behind him, he shouldn't have been sizing up the two vivid pink flowers in front of him. And he certainly shouldn't have been delicately applying the pollen of the sweet william to the pistil of the carnation.
Living things had never been made to cross this way before, not successfully. And little wonder, most would think, as this proved that we have the plants and animals we do for a reason. If there should have been such a flower as this combination he wondered about now as he looked from the sweet william to the carnation and back again, then God would have made it. And he didn't.
With a tiny brush, Thomas swept up pollen from the sweet william flowers, and delicately deposited it on the pistils of the other plant.
He didn't realize he was holding his breath until he finished the act, and slowly sighed out the air in his lungs. Perhaps an observer would've thought it sounded like a sigh of relief, but Thomas knew he was breathing out the last air he would ever draw in as an innocent man.
What God didn't make, he would.
In Hoxton, Thomas kept a vineyard with more than fifty varieties of grapes. People came to his nursery to wonder at all the exotic plants he grew from overseas, including one of the first banana trees seen in England.
But these wonders of nature didn't come easily. Lost in the post, his suppliers told him. You'll have it next month, they told him. Oh, unlucky, a disease struck down all those rare beautiful blooms you paid me so highly for, Mr. Fairchild, they told Thomas before he saw another nurseryman showing of those very plants, for a handsome price naturally!
But he wasn't going to get too dramatic about this. He had to be patient.
He waited until he could plant the seeds that this carnation now produced, and then he waited for them to grow.
Some days he could hardly wait, such was his excitement at his anticipated accomplishment. Some days he was very solemn, wondering why he thought his experiment would work better than previous attempts to cross one kind of flower with another. Some days, he wasn't even sure whether he wanted his new plant to grow or not.
A flower grew.
He carefully pressed it between sheets of paper to preserve it, and looked for a large book in which to place his paper-wrapped plants in. Not his Bible. He couldn't bear that. he reached for another weighty tome.
Thomas should have been exultant at the existence of his flower, but he lived in dread. It was no miracle, but blasphemy. His audacious act weighed heavily upon him.
With that pink flower, that beautiful abomination, in his mind he made an offering to St Leonards in Hackney Road, his parish church, so that a sermon would be delivered every Whitsun on the wonderful works of God and the certainty of the creation.
Even if his thoughts wandered during those sermons, he couldn't have imagined all the implications of what human endeavors could be traced back to his little experiment with the pink flowers. When he created the first man-made hybrid in 1717, it would be a century before people would have the metaphor of Frankenstein for meddling in the creation of life. Now the same unease ascribed to Thomas Fairchild that led him to commission the Whitsun "Vegetable Sermon" is evident in wariness toward genetically modified food.
All of this can be traced back to Thomas Fairchild, and the paradigm shift from "Nature: created in perfection" to "Nature: some assembly required."
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-31 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-05 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-30 05:17 pm (UTC)He did finally present his work to the Royal Society four years after his initial experiment, to no great fuss. They noted that his flower could not reproduce, which is where the name "Fairchild's mule" came from.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-30 09:36 pm (UTC)i do always like reading your writing :)
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Date: 2012-01-30 10:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-31 08:45 pm (UTC)What a great way to end this. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-01 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-31 10:21 pm (UTC)I find myself wanting to see the results of his cross-pollination experiment. Was the flower pretty, or not?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-01 09:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-01 05:45 pm (UTC)You're right, it is kind of ordinary-looking. Not as many petals as carnations, with funny sawed edges on the flowers.
I wonder if he had better success with other hybrids?
It was a great subject for a story, regardless, and very well told. :)
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Date: 2012-02-01 01:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-02-01 05:35 pm (UTC)Good job.
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Date: 2012-02-02 12:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-02-02 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-02 01:48 am (UTC)I love the way you walked us through his dilemma of his mind in cross pollinating a flower.
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Date: 2012-02-02 01:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-02-02 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-03 02:07 am (UTC)You know, the guy who decided that by analyzing God's creation, he could figure out what God was thinking.
I'll let you decide which is more blasphemous/egotistical: meddling in God's domain, or trying to read God's mind.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-04 12:50 am (UTC)