The Biographer's Tale by A. S. Byatt Read Free Book Online Page B

animal had, and
ubi
, I think I could devise a
methodum naturalissimum omnium quadripedum.”
    T HE MENTION of dugs and teeth suggests he was thinking of clarifications beyond the simple quadruped, though he had not, at this early point, conceived of the mammal. He noted it in his little notebook and continued on his way north. He was wearing, he tells us, “a little unpleated coat of West Gothland cloth with facings and a collar of worsted shag, neat leather breeches—purchased secondhand at an auction—a pig-tailed wig, a cap of green fustian, a pair oftop boots and a small leather bag, nearly two feet long and not quite so wide, with hooks on one side so it can be shut and hung up.” In this bag he carried a shirt, two pairs of half-sleeves, two nightcaps, an inkhorn, a pen-case, a magnifying glass and a small spy-glass, a gauze veil as protection from midges, his journal and a stock of sheets of paper stitched together, to press plants between (both in folio), a comb, and his manuscripts on ornithology, his
Flora Uplandica
, his
Characteres Generici
. He had a short sword, and a small fowling-piece between his thigh and the saddle. It was Friday, 12 May 1732. He was twenty-five years old, all but about half a day.
    He travelled north round the Gulf of Bothnia on the coastal route to UmeÃ¥ (about 400 miles), dismounting frequently to study a flower or a stone, or to snatch a young horned owl from its nest. Then he turned inland, travelling now due west into the country inhabited by the Lycksele Lapps. He set off up the River UmeÃ¥ by boat, in perfect weather, noting:
    â€œIt was an immense joy to observe at sunrise the tranquil stream, disturbed neither by the Naiads with their floods and torrents, nor by the soughing of Aeolus, and to see how the woods on either side of it were reflected to provide for the traveller a subterranean kingdom below the surface … Such of the giant firs as still defied Neptune smiled in the waters, deceptive in their reflection; but he and his brother Aeolus had taken revenge on many of them, Neptune devouring their roots and Aeolus casting down their summits.”
    He was disposed at times to think of the Lapps as innocent inhabitants of a primitive paradise, or of the latepastoral simplicity of Ovid’s Silver Age. “Their soil is unwounded by the plough, their lives by the clash of arms. They have not found their way into the bowels of the earth; they do not wage wars to establish territorial boundaries. They wander from place to place, live in tents, lead the patriarchal life of the shepherds of old.” He took note, when he managed to reach the Lapp people, of their relations with the reindeer, “their estate, their cow, their companion and their friend.” He solved the problem of the clacking sound their hooves made on snow (their hooves were hollow) and correctly ascribed the pattern of small holes on most reindeer skins to the amorous activities of the gadfly,
Oestrus tarandi
, who deposits her eggs under their skins, and causes their frequent shifting flights across the snow. He observed that the gadfly was completely covered with hairs—a providence of the Creator, so that she could survive in the icy mountains.
    He was himself a genuinely devout Christian, and made considerable efforts to reach the scattered churches in these remote lands, where, he remarked, churchgoers often had to “wade up to the armpits through icy water, arriving half dead from cold and exhaustion.” The parish priests at UmeÃ¥ punished their parishioners, who had to travel two whole days, if they missed major festivals. He arrived at Granön church to find it empty, as the pike had chosen that day to rise. At Jokkmokk he took against the ignorant priest and schoolmaster, who assured him that clouds in Lapland sweep over mountains, bearing away stones, trees and animals. CL tried to explain that it was the violent winds that moved the