"English Pupil, The" in Ship Fever (1996)
By Andrea Barrett
An aging Linnaeus attempts to retain his memories through a classificatory system.
In December 1777, Linnaeus is approaching the end of his life, and on an afternoon ride on a sled, he contemplates the assistants that passed through his life. Because of a series of strokes that have ravaged his memory, he is largely unable to organize the memories flickering through his mind; with the help of mnemonic devises and the classification system for which he became famous, Linnaeus can temporarily distinguish between the family and friends, past and present. In some respects, these men were a part of Linnaeus as they acted as his global emissaries during the times he was finalizing his classification system. He can access these people, filed away in memory, only by navigating the labyrinth of his memories with the “thread of Ariadne” that once provided him the key to nature.
Linnaeus lives in a world constantly slipping away from him, and his inability to control memories mimics a scientific world mushrooming beyond his capacity. Where once he was cheered with “Vivat scientia! Vivat Linnaeus!”, he is now greeted with protest, and where once everything was named, now he finds himself unable to identify his children properly. While his assistant Rotteram is the future of his work, Linnaeus is burdened by a complete immersion in the past. The engine of scientific discovery continues without his input, evolving beyond him even as it incorporates his influence. What this story illustrates is that with a proliferation of information, Linnaeus’s system allows for glimpses of order in a world of chaos. At the same time, it seems somewhat arbitrary and individual; he names some plants, for instance, for how they remind him of people he knows.
Evaluation: The relationship between science, scientists and those who study the discoveries is subtly illustrated in this collection. Rather than focusing on specific genetic issues, Barrett forces us to consider the impact of these theorists in nontraditional, seemingly non-scientific scenarios.
– Natalie Champ