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The beginning |
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To de Hartecamp |
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The time after 'de Hartecamp' |
The beginning
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Carl Linnaeus was born as a son of a gardener, and Lutheran vicar, in Stenbrohult, Sweden. Even as a child he showed great interest for plants and their names. He studied medicine in Lund and later in Uppsala, where he collected and studied, primarily, plants. In 1732 Linnaeus went on a botanical and ethnographic expedition to Lapland. In 1735 Linnaeus arrived by boat in Amsterdam and after a short stay travelled on to Harderwijk where he studied the theory of ‘wisselkoortsen’ (‘reoccurring maladies’). This immediately endowed him with a PhD. At that time it was quite usual for people from Sweden to go abroad, to the United Netherlands in particular, to undertake a PhD degree. |
Linnaeus took with him the manuscript of his first work, Systema Natura , and gave it to the botanist Jan Frederik Gronovius. Gronovius decided to finance the printing of the manuscript. It was at this time that Linnaeus also came into contact with the ‘grand old man’ of botany in the Netherlands, Leiden professor Herman Boerhaave. Through Boerhaave, Linnaeus met a range of people both scientific and amateurs who all shared a passion for the natural world in all its guises.
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To de Hartecamp
The first time that Linnaeus visited ‘De Hartecamp’ was on 13th August 1735 as a guest of Johan Burman.
Linnaeus was greatly impressed with the collections of exotic plants and animals that Clifford had amassed for himself. Clifford, in turn was greatly impressed with Linnaeus’s knowledge of plants. Therefore Clifford asked Linnaeus whether he would come and work for him in order to describe the enormous number of plants, look after them and, because he was trained as a medical doctor, to be Clifford’s personal physician. Clifford was in effect somewhat of a hypocondriac. Clifford is therefore overjoyed by the thought that he can have one person to satisfy these two valuable roles. Linnaeus was already working for Burman in Amsterdam and he didn’t want to let Burman down. Clifford solved the difficulty by giving Burman a extremely rare copy of the Natural History of Jamaica by Sir Hans Sloane, which Burman had wanted to possess. So Linnaeus was exchanged for a book and five days after his first visit became employed at de Hartecamp on 18th August 1735.
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The time after de Hartecamp
Linnaeus stayed at de Hartecamp until 7 October 1737. The first letters written by Clifford after Linnaeus’s departure, date from 19 October 1737. These letters are now at the Linnean Society, London.
In 1737 Linnaeus’s book Hortus Cliffortianus was published - it contained a description and classification of the Clifford collection. Initially Linnaeus had intended to return to Sweden after his departure from de Hartecamp with the intention of getting married. However, in Leiden Linnaeus was persuaded by Adriaan van Royen to stay another winter and to rearrange the Botanic Garden in Leiden in accordance to his new systematic classification. Clifford was somewhat annoyed by this. A letter by Clifford, dated 23 November 1737, described his feelings: “Quote”. To read the letter (written in Dutch from the 18th century), click here.
For more information about Linnaeus, see links.
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