Thomas Whately

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Thomas Whately (born December 1726 near Epsom , † May 26, 1772 in London ) was a British politician and publicist . He was instrumental in shaping the American Stamp Act that sparked the American Revolution . He wrote the first theoretical work on English landscape gardens . The city of Whately , Massachusetts , was named after him.

Origin and education

Thomas Whately was the eldest son of Thomas Whately (c.1685-1765) and his wife Mary (née Thompson), a merchant and director of the Bank of England and the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Several members of the ramified family with Puritan roots repeatedly held influential positions.

The young Thomas attended Clare College in Cambridge until 1745, then he studied in London at the Middle Temple . In 1751 he received his license as a barrister .

Political career

Through family ties, Whately managed to lay the groundwork for a political career within ten years. In 1761 he became a member of the House of Commons. In 1762 he held the post of private secretary to George Grenville , in 1763 he was undersecretary of state in the Treasury.

Whatelys area of ​​responsibility was colonial affairs, so he was instrumental in the creation of the American Revenue Act ( Sugar Act , " Sugar Act ") and the American Stamp Act ("Stamp Act"). By maintaining his stance on both laws, he made many enemies, especially among Americans living in London.

Whately as a garden theorist

Thomas Whately was also active as a garden designer and theorist. As a gardening amateur, he laid out two gardens: in an abandoned chalk pit on the Nonsuch Mansion ( Cheam , Surrey), which he shared with his brother , and the garden of William Gilpin , his friend. Both gardens no longer exist.

His garden theory book Observations on Modern Gardening, Illustrated by Descriptions, however, outlived his garden creations. It was published in London in 1770 and had six editions by 1801, followed by translations into French and German. Whately described various gardens and parks in this book, arranged and evaluated them based on their furnishings and structures. He opposed a majority of staffage buildings and advocated a sensitive, romantic landscape design. His ideas had a great influence on the development of landscape gardens in the rest of Europe; in the German-speaking area they were recorded by Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld .

How accurate and reliable Whately's descriptions were is evidenced by the almost contemporary account of the polymath and future President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson . As early as 1783, he recorded a copy of the treatise in his library in Monticello . During his stay in Europe as envoy to France, he also visited England. Thirsty for knowledge and for the benefit of his own gardening projects, he undertook a tour of some of the gardens described by Whately in the company of his close friend and also future American President John Adams in April 1786. He began the resulting, concise Notes of a Tour of English Gardens with the following words:

“ Memoranda made on a tour of some of the gardens in England that Whateley describes in his book on horticulture. If his descriptions are models of perfect elegance and classical correctness in terms of style, they are equally remarkable for their accuracy. I always strolled through the gardens with his book in hand, carefully examined the individual passages he had described, found them really characterized by him, as if they were easily recognized, and saw with astonishment that it was his exquisite imagination was never able to lure him away from the truth. "

Death and scandal

Whately was unmarried, no descendants are known. He died unexpectedly in 1772 without leaving a will. His younger brother William took over the administration of the estate. The theft caused the deceased's correspondence with Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson to Benjamin Franklin and caused a scandal. His brother Joseph published an unfinished literary study of the dead on stage characters by Shakespeare .

literature

  • Michael Symes: Whately, Thomas . In: The dictionary of art , ed. by Jane Turner. Volume 33. Macmillan, London 1996. ISBN 1-884446-00-0 , pp. 132-133.
  • Rory T. Cornish: Whately, Thomas (1726-1772) . In: Oxford dictionary of national biography. From the earliest times to the year 2000 , ed. by HCG Matthew and Brian Harrison. Volume 58. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004. ISBN 0-19-861408-X , pp. 400-401.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening (Online Edition) .
  2. ↑ Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1783 Catalog of Books, [circa 1775-1812 , p. 174]
  3. ^ John Adams, Charles Francis Adams: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography, continued. Diary. Essays and controversial papers of the Revolution  (= The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States), Volume 3. Little, Brown, 1851. , p. 394
  4. ^ Translation based on Jefferson's original text: "Memorandums made on a tour to some of the gardens in England described by Whateley in his book on gardening. While his descriptions in point of style are models of perfect elegance and classical correctness, they are as remarkeable for theirs exactness. I always walked over the gardens with his book in my hand, examined with attention the particular spots he described, found them so justly characterized by him as to be easily recognized, and saw with wonder, that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him from the truth. " The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008, pp. 369. Online edition accessed 14 Aug 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Whately, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Whateley, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician and author of a garden theory book
DATE OF BIRTH December 1726
PLACE OF BIRTH at Epsom
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1772
Place of death London