The Signature of All Things

glasshouses. At Beatrix’s suggestion, he started cultivating native American flowers, trees, and bushes for export to Europe. It was a worthy idea; America’s meadows and forests were filled with botanical species that looked exotic to a European eye, and could easily be sold overseas. Henry had grown weary of sending his ships out of the Philadelphia harbor with empty holds; now he could make money on both ends. He was still earning a fortune out of Java, processing Jesuit’s bark with his Dutch partners, but there was a fortune to be made locally, too. By 1796, Henry was dispatching collectors into the Pennsylvania mountains to gather ginseng root for export to China. For many years to come, in fact, he would be the only man in America who ever figured out how to sell something to the Chinese.
    By the end of 1798, Henry was filling his American greenhouses with imported tropical exotics, as well, to sell to new American aristocrats. The United States economy was in steep and abrupt ascent. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both had opulent country estates, so everyone wanted an opulent country estate. The young nation was suddenly testing the limits of profligacy. Some citizens were getting rich; others were falling into destitution. Henry’s trajectory soared only upward. The basis of every one ofHenry Whittaker’s calculations was “I shall win,” and invariably he did win—at importing, at exporting, at manufacturing, at opportunism of all kinds. Money seemed to love Henry. Money followed him around like a small, excited dog. By 1800, he was easily the richest man in Philadelphia, and one of the three richest men in the Western Hemisphere.
    So when Henry’s daughter Alma was born that year—just three weeks after the death of George Washington—it was as though she were born to a new kind of creature entirely, such as the world had never before seen: a mighty and newly minted American sultan.

Dicranaceae / Dicranum

PART TWO
    The Plum of White Acre

Chapter Five
    S he was her father’s daughter. It was said of her from the beginning. For one thing, Alma Whittaker looked precisely like Henry: ginger of hair, florid of skin, small of mouth, wide of brow, abundant of nose. This was a rather unfortunate circumstance for Alma, although it would take her some years to realize it. Henry’s face was far better suited to a grown man than to a little girl. Not that Henry himself objected to this state of affairs; Henry Whittaker enjoyed looking at his image wherever he might encounter it (in a mirror, in a portrait, in a child’s face), so he always took satisfaction in Alma’s appearance.
    “No question who spawned that one!” he would boast.
    What’s more, Alma was clever like him. Sturdy, too. A right little dromedary, she was—tireless and uncomplaining. Never took ill. Stubborn. From the moment the girl learned to speak, she could not put an argument to rest. If her millstone of a mother had not steadfastly ground the impudence out of her, she might have turned out to be frankly rude. As it was, she was merely forceful. She wanted to understand the world, and she made a habit of chasing down information to its last hiding place, as though the fate of nations were at stake in every instance. She demanded to know why a pony was not a baby horse. She demanded to know why sparks were born when she drew her hand across her sheets on a hot summer’s night. She not only demanded to know whether mushrooms were plants or animals, but also—when given the answer—demanded to know why this was certain .
    Alma had been born to the correct parents for these sorts of restless inquiries; as long as her questions were respectfully expressed, they would be answered. Both Henry and Beatrix Whittaker, equally intolerant of dullness, encouraged a spirit of investigation in their daughter. Even Alma’s mushroom question was granted a serious answer (from Beatrix in this case, who quoted the esteemed Swedish botanical taxonomist Carl Linnaeus on how to distinguish minerals from plants, and plants from animals: “Stones grow. Plants grow and live. Animals grow, live, and feel”). Beatrix did not believe a four-year-old child was too young to be discussing Linnaeus. Indeed, Beatrix had commenced Alma’s formal education nearly as soon as the child could hold herself upright. If other people’s toddlers could be taught to lisp prayers and catechisms as soon as they could speak, then, Beatrix believed, her