The Invention of Nature

Like Germany, Italy had previously been composed of many independent states. After years of fighting, the Italian states had finally united, with the exception of Rome which was still under papal control and of Venetia in the north which was ruled by Austria. Since his first visit to Italy a decade previously, Marsh had been excited about Italy’s move towards unification. ‘I wish I was 30 years younger, and kugelfest’ – ‘bulletproof’ – he wrote to a friend because then he would have joined the fight. To become America’s envoy to this new nation was a thrilling prospect, as was the regular income. ‘I could not survive two more years,’ Marsh said, like ‘the past years’. The plan was to move to Turin, the temporary capital in northern Italy, where the first Italian parliament had assembled that spring. There was not much time to prepare but plenty to do. Within three weeks Marsh rented out his house in Burlington, packed up furniture, books and clothes, as well as his notes and draft sections for

Man and Nature.

With America about to descend into civil war, it was a good time to leave. Even before Lincoln was inaugurated on 4 March 1861, seven southern states had seceded and formed a new alliance: the Confederacy.¹

On 12 April, less than a month after Lincoln appointed Marsh, the first shots were fired by Confederates as they attacked the Union forces stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston’s harbour. After more than thirty hours of constant shelling, the Union surrendered the fort. It was the beginning of a war that would eventually kill over 600,000 American soldiers. Six days later Marsh bade his goodbye to a thousand of his fellow townspeople with an impassioned speech at Burlington town hall. It was their duty, he said, to provide money and men to the Union in their fight against the Confederates and slavery. This war was more important than the revolution of 1776, Marsh told them, because it concerned the equality and liberty of all Americans. Half an hour after his speech, sixty-year-old Marsh and Caroline boarded a train to New York from where they sailed to Italy.

Marsh left a country that was tearing itself apart to move to one that was in the process of uniting. With America deeply divided by war, Marsh wanted to help as much as he could from a distance. In Turin he tried to convince the celebrated Italian military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi to help and join the Union in the American Civil War. He also wrote diplomatic dispatches and bought weapons for the Union forces. All the while his mind was also on his manuscript, Man and Nature, for which he was still collecting more material. When he met the Italian Prime Minister, Baron Bettino Riscasoli, a man who was known for the innovative management of his family estate, Marsh questioned him about agricultural subjects – in particular about the drainage of the Maremma, a region in Tuscany. Riscasoli promised a full report.

This new diplomatic position, however, was a great deal more demanding than Marsh had hoped. Social etiquette in Turin required a constant round of visits and he also found himself having to deal with American tourists who treated him almost like a private secretary abroad: he had to find their lost luggage, organize passports and even advise them on the best sightseeing. There were incessant interruptions. ‘I have been entirely disappointed as to the rest and relaxation I looked for,’ Marsh wrote to friends back home. The idea of a job that demanded little but paid a lot quickly evaporated.

There was the occasional hour or two when he could visit the library or the botanical garden in Turin. Situated in the Po Valley, Turin was hugged by the majestic snow-capped Alps. Whenever they found a moment, Marsh and Caroline made short excursions and drives into the surrounding countryside. Marsh adored mountains and glaciers, and soon began calling himself ‘ice-mad’. He still had stamina and ‘considering my age and inches (circumferentially),’ Marsh boasted, ‘I am not a bad climber.’ If he continued like this, Marsh joked, he would be climbing the Himalaya at the age of one hundred.

As winter turned to spring, the countryside around Turin tempted them ever more. The Po Valley became a carpet of flowers. ‘We stole an hour,’ Caroline wrote in her diary in March 1862, to see thousands of violets competing with yellow primroses. The almond trees were in blossom and dangling willow branches were flushed green with their fresh leaves. Caroline enjoyed picking wildflowers but her husband thought it was ‘a crime’ against nature.