John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist. His diaries, or memoirs, are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time.
Background
John Evelyn was born on October 31, 1619, in Wotton, Surrey, England. He was the grandson of George Evelyn, principal manufacturer of gunpowder under Queen Elizabeth, and the second son of Richard Evelyn, high sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1633-1634, and of Eleanor Stansfield.
Education
While living in Lewes, in Southover Grange, Evelyn was educated at Lewes Old Grammar School. He then was at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1637 to 1640. On account of the political situation in England he left the country in November 1643 and traveled through France and Italy for the next three years. From June 1645 to April 1646 he was mostly in Padua, studying anatomy and physiology. He brought back anatomical tables which he presented to the Royal Society; these are now in the Royal College of Surgeons.
In July 1646 Evelyn returned to Paris, where he attended courses in chemistry by Nicasius Le Fèvre. In 1649 he went through another course in chemistry at Sayes Court in England.
Evelyn's first work, Of Liberty and Servitude, a translation of the French treatise against tyranny of F. de la Mothe le Vayer, appeared in January 1649. It was during his last stay in Paris, from 1649 to 1652, that Nanteuil engraved his portrait (1650). Before leaving, he wrote a short treatise on The State of France, As It Stood in the IXth Yeer of This Present Monarch, Lewis XIIII (1652). In February 1652 he finally returned to England and settled at Sayes Court, his father-in-law’s estate at Deptford in Kent. This was to be his home for the next forty years. After the death of his brother George in 1699, he succeeded to the family estate of Wotton, where he took up residence in 1700.
During his travels Evelyn visited hospitals and was interested in their organization. He showed he had a notion of the importance of isolation during the plague by suggesting the construction of an infirmary. His Diary contains a description of touching for the king’s evil in 1660 and notices of treatments, medicinal springs, and surgical operations, particularly an amputation of the leg and cutting for the stone. He was present at several dissections and in 1683 attended Walter Charleton’s lecture on the heart. He was concerned with hygiene and in Fumifugium (1661), a work on the pollution of the air in London, he proposed removing certain trades and planting a green belt of fragrant trees and shrubs around the city. He also possessed some knowledge of zoology.
Horticulture was an enduring interest throughout Evelyn’s life and at the beginning of 1653 he started laying out the gardens at Sayes Court, which were to become famous. He began making notes for a vast projected work on horticulture, Elysium britannicum. The work, to which Sir Thomas Browne contributed, was never completed and only a synopsis was printed in 1659. But Evelyn continued adding to his notes throughout his life. He also offered valuable practical information to gardeners by publishing translations of important French works, particularly The Compleat Gard’ner from Jean de La Quintinie (1693).
Evelyn’s principal work, Sylva, was the outcome of his association with the Royal Society. Following inquiries made in September 1662 by the commissioners of the navy to the Royal Society concerning timber trees, he drew up a report which he enlarged and presented to the Royal Society on February 16, 1664. Sylva was the first book published by order of the Society. It was an immediate success, and more than a thousand copies were sold in less than two years. Evelyn received special thanks from the king and the work appears to have had considerable influence on the propagation of timber trees throughout the kingdom.
To Sylva was annexed Pomona, a discourse on the cultivation of fruit trees for the production of cider, and Kalendarium hortense, a gardener’s almanac, being a chapter of the unfinished Elysium britannicum. A Philosophical Discourse of Earth appeared in 1676; it was added to Sylua in 1679, as Terra. His Acetaria. A Discourse of Sallets, also part of Elysium britannicum, was published separately in 1699, then added to the 1706 edition of Sylua. Sylua was advertised in 1670 and 1671 in the autumn catalogue of books at the Frankfurt fair. Alexander Hunter popularized Sylua with an extensively annotated edition, collated from the five original editions, in 1776.
To familiarize his countrymen with the philosophy of Epicurus, Evelyn published his translation of the first book of Lucretius’ De rerum natura in 1656, followed by a commentary on the works of Gassendi and atomism. Evelyn had taken no part in the affairs of state during the Interregnum, but at the end of 1659 he published an anonymous pamphlet, An Apologie for the Royal Party, to induce Colonel Morley, later lieutenant of the Tower, to declare for the king. This proved unsuccessful but may have eased the way for the return of Charles II, to whom Evelyn presented a Panegyric on his coronation. In this he suggested that Charles should become the founder of a body for the furthering of experimental knowledge.
In 1654, at Oxford, Evelyn had met John Wilkins, the leader of an active group of men interested in science; he thus met Christopher Wren, with whom he collaborated several times during his life-time. In 1659 he sent Robert Boyle a suggestion for the foundation of a “Mathematical College,” or community for scientific study.
Evelyn was instrumental in obtaining royal patronage and the name of “Royal Society” for the group in 1662. He attended the meetings regularly, served on the council frequently, and was offered the presidency. In January 1661 he drew up a “History of Arts Illiberal and Mechanick.” He was appointed a member of several committees of inquiry, including that for agriculture, and contributed papers on various subjects. In 1665 he sat on the committee for the improvement of the English language.
The fourteen years following the king’s return were those of Evelyn’s greatest public activity, although the offices he held were only temporary appointments. He served on several commissions from 1660 to 1674 - for the improvement of London streets in 1662, for the Royal Mint in 1663, and for the repair of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1666, during which he worked with Christopher Wren. On September 13, 1666 Evelyn presented his plan for the rebuilding of the city, together with a discourse on the problems involved. But the entire replanning soon appeared impracticable.
During the two Dutch wars (1664-1667 and 1672-1674) he was commissioner for the sick and wounded mariners and prisoners of war, his most responsible appointment. From 1671 to 1674 he was a member of the Council for Foreign Plantations, later the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations. In 1674 Navigation and Commerce appeared, being the introduction to a history of the Dutch war that Charles had asked Evelyn to write, which was never finished.
In January 1667 Evelyn obtained for the library of the Royal Society the famous collection of books and manuscripts of the earl of Arundel. The collection of stones bearing Greek and Latin inscriptions was also secured through his good offices for the university of Oxford. Sculptura: or the History, and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper (1662) was the outcome of a paper read before the Royal Society. His artistic interests also led him to translate two books from the French of Roland Fréart de Chambray, A Parallel of the Antient Architecture with the Modern (1664) and An Idea of the Perfection of Painting (1668). To the Parallel Evelyn added an Account of Architects and Architecture, which he dedicated in the second edition to Christopher Wren. The book appears to have been an indispensable work for later architects. His Numismata: A Discourse of Medals, Antient and Modern (1697) closed with a discussion of character as derived from effigies.
Evelyn’s translations also include Instructions Concerning Erecting of a Library from the French of Gabriel Naudé and Jansenist writings against the Jesuits, for in spite of his tolerance he was hostile to Catholicism. In 1672 he formed a pious friendship with Margaret Blagge, later Mrs. Godolphin, a maid of honor to the queen, and wrote her Life to commemorate her virtues. Among his closest friends was Samuel Pepys, the diarist.
Evelyn was a staunch and devout Anglican and found a spiritual advisor in Jeremy Taylor.
He had strong moral and religious impulses, and believed that "the air and genius of gardens operate upon human spirits towards virtue and sanctity."
Politics
Evelyn was interested in politics and cultivated links with contemporaries across the spectrum of Stuart political life.
Having briefly joined the Royalist army and arrived too late for the Royalist victory at the Battle of Brentford in 1642, he went abroad to avoid further involvement in the English Civil War.
Views
Evelyn believed that the country was being rapidly depleted of wood by industries such as glass factories and iron furnaces, while no attempt was being made to replace the damage by planting. In his work "Sylva," Evelyn pleaded for afforestation and asserted in his preface to the king that he had induced landowners to plant millions of trees.
Quotations:
"Friendship is the golden thread that ties the hearts of all hearts of all the world."
"Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity."
"A gardener's work is never at an end; it begins with the year and continues to the next."
Membership
After the Restoration in 1660, Evelyn became a member of the group that founded the Royal Society.
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
1660
Personality
Evelyn was actively interested in what was happening around him; his sphere of interests included a wide variety of topics, including theology, numismatics, politics, gardening, architecture and vegetarianism. He also maintained correspondence with his contemporaries throughout the whole spectrum of political and cultural life in Stuart England.
In June 1647 Evelyn married Mary, the daughter of Sir Richard Browne, Charles I’s diplomatic agent in France. The marriage was a happy one. Of their five sons and three daughters, only one daughter survived her father.
His daughter Maria is sometimes acknowledged as the pseudonymous author of the book Mundus Muliebris of 1690.