Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a "parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist. He is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.
White was born on 18 July 1720 in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. His grandfather, also Gilbert White was at that time vicar of Selborne. Gilbert White's parents were John White (1688–1758) a trained barrister and Anne Holt (d. 1740). Gilbert was the eldest of eight surviving siblings, Thomas (b. 1724), Benjamin (b. 1725), Rebecca (b. 1726), John (b. 1727), Francis (b. 1728/29), Anne (b. 1731), and Henry (b. 1733). Gilbert's family lived briefly at Compton, Surrey, before moving into 'The Wakes' in 1728, that was to be his home for the rest of his long life.
Gilbert White was educated in Basingstoke by Thomas Warton, father of Joseph Warton and Thomas Warton, who would have been Gilbert's school fellows. There are also suggestions that he may have attended the Holy Ghost School [1] before going to Oriel College, Oxford in December 1739. He took his degree as Bachelor of Arts in June 1743. In March 1744 he was elected fellow of the college. In October 1746 he became Master of Arts.
White obtained his deacon's orders in 1746, being fully ordained in 1749, and subsequently held several curacies in Hampshire and Wiltshire, including Selborne's neighbouring parishes of Newton Valence and Farringdon, as well as Selborne itself on four separate occasions. In 1752/53 White held the office of Junior Proctor at Oxford and was Dean of Oriel. In 1757 he became non-resident perpetual curate of Moreton Pinkney in Northamptonshire. After the death of his father in 1758, White moved back into the family home at The Wakes in Selborne, which he eventually inherited in 1763. In 1784 he became curate of Selborne for the fourth time, remaining so until his death. Having studied at the more prestigious Oriel, at the behest of his uncle, he was ineligible to be considered for the permanent living of Selborne, which was in the gift of Magdalen College.
White died in 1793 and was buried in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Selborne.
White has often been seen as an amateur 'country writer', especially by the scientific community. However, he has been called 'the indispensable precursor to those great Victorians who would transform our ideas about life on Earth, especially in the undergrowth – Lyell, Spencer, Huxley and Darwin.'[21] He is also under-rated as a pioneer of modern scientific research methods, particularly fieldwork.[22] As Mabey argues, the blending of scientific and emotional responses to Nature was White's greatest legacy: 'it helped foster the growth of ecology and the realisation that humans were also part of the natural scheme of things'.
The White family house in Selborne, The Wakes, now contains the Gilbert White Museum.[24] The Selborne Society was founded in 1895 to perpetuate the memory of Gilbert White.[citation needed] It purchased land by the Grand Union Canal at Perivale in West London to create the first Bird Sanctuary in Britain, known as Perivale Wood. In the 1970s, Perivale Wood became a Local Nature Reserve. This initiative was led by a group of young naturalists, notably Edward Dawson and Peter Edwards, Kevin Roberts and Andrew Duff. It was designated by Ealing Borough Council under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949.[25] Flora Thompson, the countryside novelist, said of White: "It is easy to imagine him, this very first of English nature writers, the most sober and modest, yet happiest of men."
White is quoted by Merlyn in The Once and Future King by T.H. White and in The Boy in Grey by Henry Kingsley, in which White's thrush appears as a character. A documentary about White, presented by historian Michael Wood, was broadcast by BBC Four in 2006.[27][28] White is commemorated in the inscription on one of eight bells installed in 2009 at Holybourne, Hampshire[29] and in the Perivale Wood Local Nature Reserve, which is dedicated to his memory. The Reserve is owned and managed by the Selborne Society, named to commemorate White's Natural History. White's frequent accounts of a tortoise inherited from his aunt in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne form the basis for Verlyn Klinkenborg's book, Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006), and for Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Portrait of a Tortoise (1946).
A stained glass window portraying St Francis of Assisi in Selborne church commemorates Gilbert White. It was designed by Horace Hinckes and was installed in 1920.
White's influence on artists is celebrated in the exhibition 'Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists' taking place in spring 2020 at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to mark the 300th anniversary of his birth, and including artworks by Thomas Bewick, Eric Ravilious and John Piper, amongst others.
White is credited with perhaps the earliest written record of the word 'golly', in a journal entry from 1775.
Finally, the OED gives White credit for first having used x to represent a kiss in a letter written in 1763.
Courtesy-wikipedia
- Gilbert White