"The Busiest Man in England": A Life of Joseph Paxton, Gardener, Architect & Victorian Visionary (review)

It is surprising that, until now, no one has produced a full-scale biography of Joseph Paxton. George Chadwick died before completing the long-awaited second edition of his account of Paxton's architecture, The Works of Sir Joseph Paxton: 1803–1865 (1961), which focused almost entirely on the different kinds of buildings, both in masonry and glass, that Paxton either pioneered or developed while the head gardener to the sixth Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire. For a personal account of Paxton's life, we have had only an adulatory portrait from his granddaughter, Violet Markham, in Paxton and the Bachelor Duke (1935). Much has been written on the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its Crystal Palace; we have full-length biographies of prominent, but not more important, men associated with Paxton, like the sixth duke, or George Hudson, or I. K. Brunel, but until the first edition of Kate Colquhoun's biography was published in the UK in 2003 as A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton, no book conveyed the broad scope of the life of one of the most remarkable men in nineteenth-century Britain.

Colquhoun has written the first comprehensive, nonspecialist biography of Paxton, one that takes advantage of primary materials (at Chatsworth and elsewhere), as well as a substantial range of secondary sources. Perhaps it takes a journalist (as Colquhoun is) to integrate the many strands of Paxton's frenetic life without becoming distracted by expertise in his other professions: horticultural innovation; glass house design and engineering; the design and construction of parks and cemeteries as well as mansions; railway investing; national politics; even visionary proposals for using glass to ameliorate the evils of urban life. She does not write for academics, still less for theorists of culture, but rather for anyone interested in a man who exemplifies the energy, optimism, and upward social mobility of his era: born to a semiliterate farm worker, Paxton rose inexorably to be knighted, elected to Parliament, and celebrated throughout the English-speaking world as the designer of the Crystal Palace. Again and again, Paxton's achievements were first and best. His Great Conservatory at Chatsworth was the largest glass structure in the world in 1836; his Crystal Palace was larger still twenty years later; his Emperor Fountain threw the tallest jet of water; he was the first gardener in Britain to bring the famous amazonian water lily, Victoria regia (as it was then known), into flower in 1849. No other head gardener came close in a profession noted for its growing expertise and prestige. Paxton was spectacular, and Colquhoun captures the excitement and glamour of his life by organizing its many facets into a fast-paced, compelling narrative.

Because of its comprehensive scope, Colquhoun's account integrates the personal with Paxton's public life. The sixth duke's diaries and letters, as well as the correspondence between Paxton and his wife Sarah, allow Colquhoun to trace the growth of the fascinating triangular relationship among these three protagonists, beginning with the duke's surprising decision to entrust the gardens at Chatsworth to an unproven twenty-three-year-old gardener and ending only with the duke's death in 1858. The mutually supportive relationship between Paxton and his employer was remarkable. The duke supplied unparalleled resources of money, space, and admiration; Paxton provided intelligent diligence, strong willpower, and endless ambition. Together they renovated Chatsworth, already one of the premier estates in Britain, demonstrating how new technologies could transform garden art. Paxton's responsibility for the duke's business affairs increased with his administrative skill, leading him away from Chatsworth's gardens more and more over time. Colquhoun uses the primary sources to show that he never resented his original status as, essentially, a servant, nor tried to outgrow it. Especially in the last years of the duke's life, when Paxton was a public figure involved...