Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, September 27, 2013, Home & Design section, Page D1:
Earthy pleasures in Gilbert's new novel
Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, "The Signature of All Things," is her first novel in 13 years. It's due out Tuesday. (DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer)
GALLERY: Earthy pleasures in Gilbert's new novel
VIRGINIA A. SMITH, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Friday, September 27, 2013, 2:02 AM
The Woodlands, the once-grand 18th-century estate on the west bank of the Schuylkill, is one of Philadelphia's lesser-known historic spots.
Yet, novelist Elizabeth Gilbert found her way to 40th Street and Woodland Avenue and chose the run-down mansion, carriage house, and stables, and the surrounding Victorian-era cemetery, as the setting for her new book, The Signature of All Things.
"It was so obvious as soon as we drove up. That's it! Everything about the Woodlands was right," says Gilbert, forever to be remembered for what she calls "the freakishly successful" Eat, Pray, Love. Her 2006 memoir has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and was made into a 2010 movie starring Julia Roberts.
Gilbert's latest work, due out Tuesday from Viking, is her first novel in 13 years. Be forewarned: Signature is no Eat, Pray, Love, which was well-padded with humor, wish-fulfillment, and garlicky bucatini all'amatriciana. But, Gilbert says, "I think readers will recognize my themes: travel, exploration, curiosity, mysticism, adventure, and what is a woman's life."
Signature is a deeply researched, historical tale that unfolds from 1760 to 1880 - "the most fascinating moment in botanical history," she calls it - in Philadelphia, the nation's horticultural hot spot, and points beyond, including Amsterdam, Hawaii, Peru, London, and Tahiti.
Equally vast is the emotional landscape of the fictional Whittakers, a collection of memorable, if not especially likable, characters who live at White Acre (a play on the family name). The Woodlands, where a restoration plan is in the works, snagged the role over Bartram's Garden, which Gilbert found too Quakerly and modest, and Lemon Hill mansion, which "didn't feel right."
In real life, the Federal-style Woodlands, built in 1788, was the country home of William Hamilton, a gentleman intensely interested in architecture, landscape design, and botany. He traded seeds with Thomas Jefferson, another talented plantsman, and William Bartram, son of John, the noted Philadelphia botanist.
Presiding over the fictional White Acre, Philadelphia's grandest estate, is patriarch Henry Whittaker, a crude, self-made adventurer whose world revolves around botanical exploration and the accumulation of money, by whatever means. Daughter Alma, Gilbert's protagonist, lives a rarefied and repressed existence until age 50, when her narrative spikes in surprising directions.
More than 6 feet tall and solidly built, Alma is described as "a big homely pine cone." She's a botanist with a moss obsession, able to hold her own in esoteric debate with the scholars and adventurers - men, all - who flock to the Whittaker dinner table.
But Alma is lonely, aching with lust, and the solitary manner in which she alleviates this predicament is among the more arresting features of Gilbert's book. Relief comes in a tiny, dark room off the Whittaker library called "the binding room," where Alma ostensibly retreats to care for the family's fragile book collection.
Gilbert, 44, modeled this hideaway after a closet on the Woodlands' first floor. And she wanted Alma, she says, to be "very carnal, because women's desire has just not been written about from that time.
"You know they had that desire . . . . It's not like we just invented it in the 20th century."
Alma's dowdiness also serves as counterpoint to modern heroines, often portrayed as "dangerously gorgeous with flashing eyes, heaving bosoms, and auburn hair," Gilbert says. "All sorts of women feel desire, even homely women who don't incite desire in others."
Signature is quite a page-turner, in other words, with lots of pages to turn (499).
Gilbert drew inspiration from a 1784 illustrated edition of Captain James Cook's voyages, Cook's Journeys, which belonged to her great-grandfather, a Philadelphia lawyer. (Henry Whittaker joins Cook on a botanical expedition to Tahiti and Hawaii.)
Gilbert, who grew up on a Christmas tree farm in northwest Connecticut, tapped another strand of DNA for her novel - from her mother, a master gardener who grew all the family's vegetables.
"When I grew up, I ran away from the soil as fast as I could, moved to New York, Philadelphia, traveled the world," Gilbert recalls. "But once I moved to Frenchtown [N.J.], all I wanted to do was garden."
Gilbert lived for a time in West Philadelphia and upper Roxborough and still has family in the area. In 2009, she settled in Frenchtown, a picturesque borough on the Delaware River, with husband Jose Nunes, known to readers of Eat, Pray, Love as Filipe.
At her new home, Gilbert planted vegetables, like her mother, but soon abandoned that for a sprawling flower garden and native plant meadow, which she calls "my bird and butterfly disco."
The gardens "never fail to delight me," she says. They also fueled the botanical fascination that led to Signature.
Another writerly influence was Gilbert's desire to avoid "the standard two endings that every novel about women in history has had, until very recently."
She describes them this way: "You either got the happy ending, meaning you had a good marriage to landed gentry and you settled down in the fine estate and had a bunch of children - or you had the unhappy ending. You made a sensual error and you're ruined, bankrupt, impoverished, or killed by yourself or somebody else.
"There aren't just two possible endings. Most of us survive all kinds of mistakes and can look back and say, 'That was a really interesting life.' "
Gilbert is eager to help raise money for the Woodlands, which recently got a $300,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation to devise a master plan for restoration. An author event of some kind - tea and a tour of Woodlands-inspired scenes from the book, perhaps - is planned for the spring.
The tour could include the infamous first-floor "binding room," the housekeeper's bedroom (underground passageway), Alma's studio (stable), and the grounds, where Alma collected her moss specimens.
Already, a few first-time visitors have discovered the Woodlands, having heard of its influence on Gilbert.
"We really hope to use the book to help elevate the Woodlands' profile," says executive director Jessica Baumert.
Meanwhile, Gilbert contemplates her next move: "a very naughty novel."
'SIGNATURE' EVENT
Elizabeth Gilbert
will speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., on
Oct. 3 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15.
Gilbert will autograph copies
of her new book,
The Signature
of All Things.
For information,
go to freelibrary.org/calendar or call 215-567-4341.
vsmith@phillynews.com.
215-854-5720
Virginia A. Smith
Inquirer Staff Writer
Articles | Email
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