The Lasting Presence of Gerard's Herball

The Lasting Presence of Gerard’s Herball
Carrie Bowman
December 2004
Contents
I. Introduction (pp.1-3)
II. Gerard and two herbals (pp.3-5)
III. The Herball and botany (pp.5-7)
IV. Observation and woodcuts (pp.7-10)
V. Herbs and medicine (pp.10-16)
VI. Gerard and me (pp.16-19)
VII. Bibliography (pp.20-21)
When Sandra Kroupa first brought me a copy of the 1636 edition of John Gerard’s
The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, I was astonished at the size of the book. It
weighs over ten pounds and is the size of a small (but thick) briefcase. Not exactly a
field guide, I thought. I was looking at a work in a genre about which I knew little. I
imagined a noisy print shop, filled with men in smudged aprons, carefully arranging
woodcuts and Roman type, occasionally dropping a letter or two on the floor. The 1636
edition of the Herball has six leaves per gathering. At more than 1600 pages…that is
over 260 printed sheets for this edition. And Thomas Johnson “very much enlarged and
amended” the 1597 edition to produce this edition in one year? Wow. And what,
exactly, is an “herbal”?
I. Introduction
Agnes Arber (1953) defines an herbal as a “book containing the names and
descriptions of herbs, or of plants in general, with their properties and virtues” (p.14).
Many of the oldest uses of plants are medicinal, but they have always been used for food
and valued for their aroma, to enhance beauty, as dyes, and for their hygienic properties.
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde (1971) reminds us that Gerard’s Herball embodies the “old
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simple belief in the efficacy of herbs to cure not only physical ills, but also those of the
mind and even of the heart” (p.105). I began to construct a picture of an enduring genre,
for in the 21 st century, people grow, gather, and use plants for the same reasons.
John Gerard is considered the most famous of the English herbalists. His herbal was
carried to America and a copy owned by Dorothy Rolfe (mother-in-law of Pocahontas)
now resides at Oxford (Gunther, 1922, p.57n2). As I poked around, I found an essay
written about Gerard in the 19 th century. In the 20 th century, W.H. Hudson muses about
Gerard and compares reading his Herball to “the delight of flowers themselves” (1932,
p.49). The 1998 edition of Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs quotes Gerard and
includes an entry about him.
Opinions about Gerard, however, are not universally enthusiastic. Penelope
Hobhouse, in Plants in Garden History (1997), introduces him unceremoniously, stating,
“John Gerard has assumed an importance in England beyond his true significance”
(p.105). Others have offered similar pronouncements, and some facts provide
justification for this point of view. For example, Gerard’s book is not the first printed
herbal in the English language [that distinction is bestowed by Arber (1953, p.41) upon
an anonymous quarto published by Rycharde Banckes in 1525]. In some ways Gerard’s
work is not the most notable herbal of its period, either. The woodcut illustrations are not
original to his work. And he has been accused of plagiarizing the text. Yet, most people
asked to name an herbal will mention Gerard’s Herball.
This paper is a study of the interesting fact that the Herball is known today (and has
remained popular since its publication) in spite of its supposed shortcomings. I attempt
to provide a context for the passage of the book from person to person for nearly 400
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years. I say “person to person” because I think that is the essence of the preservation of
this work. On the face of it, such hand-to-hand transfer is obvious and trivial. Yet, why
and how does it occur? And what magic, if any, lies between the pages of Gerard’s
Herball? Why have people pored over this herbal, shared it, talked about it, written about
it, and hauled it into the woods?
Edmund Gosse makes an astute observation in Gossip in the Library (1891) as he
remarks on two characteristics of Gerard’s writing. Gerard is universally acclaimed for
his skilled use of language and for his charming insertion of personal anecdote about the
places where various plants can be found. The first characteristic is somewhat bound by
time—most of us are unfamiliar with Elizabethan English and find it awkward to read.
The second characteristic, on the other hand, is everlasting. Gosse mentions that he “was
examining fresh varieties of auricular in ‘the gardens of Mr. Tradescant and Mr. Tuggie’
[quoting Gerard]” (p.73). Then he remarks, “It is wonderful how modern the latter
statement sounds…the garden seems the one spot on earth where history does not assert
itself…” (pp.73,74). Gosse has noticed a thread stretching from Gerard into his time; we,
the reader, can pick up the frayed end again in our own day. On that thread hangs the key
to beloved garden writing: the sharing of personal observation. My intention is to
explore the ways in which the sharing of personal observation figures in the lasting
presence of Gerard’s Herball. I believe a blending of influence occurs, as people over
the centuries have impacted Gerard’s work as much as the other way around.
II. Gerard and two herbals
John Gerard was born in Nantwich in Cheshire in 1545 and died in London in 1612.
Most British herbalists were either physicians (barber-surgeons) or pharmacists
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(apothecaries); Gerard was a member of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company for much of his
life. Rohde (1971) notes that we know little of the details of his life, but she and others
point to his knowledge of plants and his gardening skill. He served as head gardener for
Sir William Cecil Knight, Baron of Burghley, for many years, and was probably a well-
known plant expert by the end of his life. He had his own garden in Holborn for twenty
years, publishing a catalogue of his plants in 1596 (Rohde, 1971). This catalogue is one
of the first known published lists of the plants in a single garden (Gunther, 1922).
John Norton published the first edition of Gerard’s Herball in 1597. Norton
commissioned a Dr. Priest to translate Dodoens’ herbal, Pemptades, from Latin into
English, but unfortunately, Priest died before the translation was complete. Gerard
picked up the project and finished with the help of Mathias de l’Obel, who was
apparently more proficient in Latin. L’Obel corrected numerous mistakes—Gerard
frequently mismatched the woodcut illustrations and botanical descriptions. These
efforts to complete Priest’s translation of Dodoens’ work are the source of much of the
criticism of Gerard. He is accused of plagiarizing Priest (he gives Priest no credit in the
introductory passages of the Herball). He is further criticized, rightly or wrongly, for
lacking the requisite botanical knowledge to undertake the task of translation in the first
place (Arber, 1953).
According to Martyn Rix (1990, p.43), the 1597 edition of the Herball was a financial
success. Perusing Arber’s Appendix I—a list of herbals and related botanical works
published between 1470 and 1670—one can see that no English botanical works were
published between 1597 and 1629, when John Parkinson’s Paradisi was printed. Perhaps
the publication of a competing work prompted Thomas Johnson, a London apothecary
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and botanist, to undertake the project of updating Gerard’s Herball. R. T. Gunther (1922)
credits one of the finest British botanists of the day, John Goodyer, with significant
contribution to the effort. Goodyer “made the fullest use of the [1597] Herbal” and
sometime between 1621 and 1622 he sent Johnson 27 pages of notes for inclusion in an
updated edition. The first revision of Gerard’s work was published in 1633. (A second
edition, unchanged, was published in 1636. I examined copies of both editions. I spent
most of my time studying the 1636 edition and quote from it.)
Historical claims that Johnson produced the revised edition by himself in a single year
are probably exaggerated. More noteworthy is the collaboration between Johnson and
Goodyer. The Hon. Mrs. Evelyn Cecil (1910) states, “It is refreshing to see the way in
which [the] old herbalists wrote to each other, and helped one another. Johnson, even
more than Gerard, worked in harmony with other botanists and physicians, and they went
on expeditions together in search of rare flowers” (p.149). Johnson’s collaboration with
Goodyer is an event highlighting the impetus for an improved herbal coming from the
maturing science of botany.
III. The Herball and botany
The herbal tradition is closely tied to both the history of botany and the history of
medicine. As defined by Arber (1953), the study of plants since classical times has
pursued two paths: the first, a path of inquiry aligned with natural philosophy and
emphasizing plant form and structure; the second, a pragmatic path subservient to the
needs of medicine and agriculture. The first path suffered in antiquity from a lack of
attention to the plant itself. The second path has been driven more or less by direct
observation, since understanding the virtues and uses of plants requires experiment and
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intimate knowledge of the plants. At the same time, according to Arber (1953), in
antiquity “…herb gatherers evidently aimed at creating a monopoly by fencing their craft
about with all manner of superstitions handed down by word of mouth, most of which
[warned] that herb collecting was too complicated and dangerous a pursuit for the
uninitiated” (p.7). Throughout its history, the herbal has included a mix of myth, fantasy,
and fact.
In many ways, Gerard’s Herball sits at a meeting place between the paths described
above. In this section and the next, I explore the ways in which botanists affected change
in the Herball and suggest that the Herball in turn gave a nudge to botanists.
Gunther (1922) notes that the 1597 edition of Gerard’s Herball was problematic from
a botanical point of view. Botanists at the time were interested in scientific accuracy, and
while Gerard’s work was popular, the woodcuts and descriptions were not always
properly matched. In addition, the woodcuts were from Christophe Plantin’s famous
collection in Belgium, created in the 16 th century and used to illustrate the herbals of
l’Obel, Dodoens, and de l’Ecluse (Arber, 1953). Gerard’s text, recall, is largely a
translation of Dodoens’ work. Thus, comprised of woodcuts and descriptions of plants
from other places, the Herball of 1597 was not necessarily useful for identifying plants in
England. Both John Goodyer and Thomas Johnson left their own gardens to look at
native plants growing wild. Goodyer, who contributed plant descriptions and names to
the revised edition of Gerard’s work, placed important emphasis on the locations and
proper identifying characteristics of plants found in England. Gunther (1922) points to
the notes Goodyer sent to Johnson as examples of Goodyer’s attention to detail.
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At the same time, Gerard’s Herball quite possibly impacted the study of botany
throughout Britain in the early 17 th century. Gunther’s survey of several British botanists
of this period provides interesting evidence of Gerard’s influence:
Some few years ago I had the satisfaction of finding in the Library of Christ
Church a copy of Gerard’s Herbal, with a few dated marginal notes of plants
found in 1606-1608 in North Wales, and with notes on the medicinal properties of
others. The Herbal is inscribed ‘Sir John Salusbury his booke,’ and the notes are
evidently in his own handwriting. They illustrate the manner in which Gerard’s
work encouraged the practice of recording exact plant-localities at the time when
Goodyer was a boy, even in quite remote parts of the country. (1922, p.238)
Thus, one hesitates to suggest that the botanists influenced the herbal more than the other
way around. Botanists, after all, were referring to the herbal and taking lessons in
observation, as well as in plant location, from it. This point is clarified further upon
examination of the changes in botanical illustration occurring in conjunction with the
advent of printing.
IV. Observation and woodcuts
Herbals were a vehicle of expression for new developments in botanical illustration.
In the centuries before print, scribes laboriously copied illustrations of plants by hand in
order to transfer them from manuscript to manuscript. The emphasis was on the original
drawing on the paper, rather than on an accurate depiction of the plant itself. Illustrations
were primarily used for decoration, or as symbols, rather than as a way to complement
and augment text. During the 16 th and 17 th centuries, a change in the purpose of
illustrations is evident and is on display in the herbals. Artists of the period—Durer, da
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Vinci, and Weiditz, for example—must have influenced the work of botanical illustrators
and possibly contributed to a change in focus (Arber, 1953). Surely the work of these
men was known. They produced exquisite, realistic images of plants. Botanists
embarking on exploratory adventures began to take artists with them to record their
discoveries accurately.
Again, the influence probably moves the other way as well: one can easily imagine
the printed woodcuts in herbals encouraging a botanist’s attention to detail and thus
possibly improving his skills in observation. Compared to hand drawn depictions of
plants, woodcuts were crude, one step removed from the freshness of pen and paper.
Readers in the 16 th and 17 th centuries were perhaps more aware of this distinction than we
are today, they more in awe of the new capacity to replicate painstakingly drawn images,
than we (Eisenstein, 1979, vol.I, pp.263,264). The contrast quite probably enhanced a
tendency toward detailed examination in some and encouraged it anew in others.
In his introduction (1636), Johnson mentions a change in the habits of people studying
the natural world, claiming that people in the Middle Ages simply transcribed from the
Ancients, “never endeavoring to acquire any perfect knowledge of the things
themselves.” In the 1630’s (according to Johnson), “men began to be somewhat more
curious.” Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979, vol.I) notes that the botanists prior to this period
lacked “plant guides,” with accurate drawings complementing text (vol.I, p.264).
Botanists, herbalists, and gardeners probably used herbals to compare illustrations and
text with their own experience and to plants in the field. They could consult an herbal
(like Gerard’s) to confirm or amend conclusions about their observations and to find
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additional information. Or perhaps a botanist simply looked through Gerard’s Herball,
browsing and admiring the skill of 16 th century draftsmen on display.
The observations and skill of these draftsmen were evidently admired in the 19 th
century, even while some woodcuts may be inaccurate from a botanical point of view.
Gosse remarks in Gossip in the Library (1891),
The great charm of [Gerard’s Herball] at the present time consists in the copious
woodcuts. Of these there are more than two thousand, each a careful and original
study from the plant itself. In the course of two centuries and a half, with all the
advance in appliances, we have not improved a whit on the original artist of
Gerard’s and Johnson’s time. The drawings are all in strong outline, with very
little attempt at shading, but the characteristics of each plant are given with a truth
and a simplicity which are almost Japanese. (p.70)
I turned to the Herball to gain insight into the charm of the woodcuts.
As I turned the pages of the Herball, a wash of memories spread over me. The tissue-
paper fragile pages are the perfect medium for preserving my memory of the anemone,
for example. Called the “winde flower,” it is as fresh in the Herball as in a garden. I
remembered the day I learned the name of the delicate Anemone japonica, a book about
perennials balanced on my knee. This particular windflower blooms in the fall, and that
day a clump of tall white flowers was bobbing graciously as pedestrians strolled in the
sun. I eagerly read more. “…[it is] slow to establish, but once Japanese anemone takes
hold it can be invasive, requiring digging out to keep plants in their intended space and to
control spread.” Hmm. Sounds like a recipe for caution. Gerard (1636) concurs,
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writing, “…the root champed or chewed procureth spitting, and causeth water and flegme
to run forth of the mouth, as Pellitorie of Spain doth” (p.378).
In the worn pages of Gerard, I came upon another “old fashioned” plant, Jupiter’s
Beard. With a head of flowers atop an erect, stiff, and bristly stalk (all in relief on the
block and thus captured in detail in the print), this was not the Jupiter’s beard I knew
(Centranthus ruber). Then I remembered a plant my mother-in-law gave me, from her
rock garden. I called Catherine on the phone. Did she remember how she acquired it?
“Well,” she said. “Edward took care of the garden, and you know, he was a great one for
walking around the neighborhood, and if he saw something he liked, he’d take a sample
of it.” Edward had collected Gerard’s Sempervivum, from the Latin semper, “always,”
and vivo, “live.” The woodcut image of a plant, alive on the pages of Gerard’s Herball,
had transformed into the memory of a man, alive forever in my garden.
As I looked again at the anemone, considering the 17 th century observations of the
same plant, I was reminded that the influence of the medicinal branch of plant study is
also evident in the woodcuts used to illustrate Gerard’s herbal. Herbalists are concerned
with all parts of a plant that are useful, including the roots. The woodcuts in the herbal
almost always present plants singly and in isolation, and all potentially useful parts of
each plant are included in a drawing.
V. Herbs and medicine
A question arises for me at this juncture. Who else read Gerard’s Herball? Who
might have plucked a flower, brought it into the house, and confirmed its medicinal
properties in this book? My account so far indicates that the botanists and physicians left
records—did rural people, women tending gardens, and working farmers read Gerard?
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The short answer is that we do not really know. Eisenstein reminds us that literacy rates
for the period are difficult (if not impossible) to confirm (1979, vol.I). A lack of recorded
information inhibits study in this area. Even when records of private book collections are
available, often only the number of books, and not their titles, are noted. Further, these
collections were recorded only for a limited population of book owners. And book
owners were not necessarily book readers. But we can speculate.
In his remarks “To the courteous and well willing Readers” (1636), Gerard expresses
a genuine respect for the practice of collecting and using plants:
…I thought it a chief point of my duty, thus out of my poor store to offer up these
my far fetched experiments, together with myne own country’s unknown treasure,
combined in this compendium Herball (not unprofitable though unpolished) unto
your wise constructions and courteous considerations. The drift whereof is a ready
introduction to that excellent art of Simpling, which is neither so base nor
contemptible as perhaps the English name may seem to intimate: but such it is, as
altogether hath been a study for the wiseth, an exercise for the noblest, a pastime
for the best.
Gerard is speaking to members of his social class. Because he acknowledges the
limitations of his expertise, I suspect he hopes the audience includes people who will not
criticize his omissions and mistakes. He also seems sensitive to the fact that the “art of
Simpling,” or collecting and using single herbs, may not be pursued by those who believe
it is an unsophisticated practice for the uneducated. Gerard clearly believes the opposite.
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In his dedication to “Sir William Cecil Knight, Baron of Burghley” (1636), Gerard
indicates a desire that his efforts be available to all, that treasures kept to oneself are often
neglected, forgotten, and therefore wasted:
…because gardens are private, and many times finding an ignorant or a negligent
successor, come soon to ruin, there be that have solicited me, first by my pen, and
after by the Press to make my labors common, and to free them from the danger
whereunto a garden is subject…
He includes an appendix of plant names “gathered out of ancient written and printed
copies, and from the mouths of plaine and simple country people” at the back of the
book. Gerard’s comments and the index remind us that many people in both urban and
rural regions of England at this time grew herbs and would appreciate a book describing
their characteristics and virtues.
Most people could not afford a physician. Those in the middle and lower classes who
did seek outside medical advice used apothecaries. By the end of the 16 th century, most
physicians preferred homegrown herbs to the drugs imported by the apothecaries (Hill,
1975). Thomas Johnson was perhaps acting as a medical professional earning a living, as
well as a botanist, when he updated Gerard’s Herball. He was quite possibly responding
to public demand for information. In his preface to the 1633 and 1636 editions, Johnson
notes in closing that “…this knowledge [of the virtues of plants] amongst us in this city
was almost lost, or at least too much neglected, especially by those to whom it did chiefly
belong, and who ought to be ashamed of ignorance, especially in a thing so absolutely
necessary to their profession.” He is speaking to “my loving friends and fellow
Travellers…of the same profession”—apothecaries, barber surgeons, botanists, and the
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like. Wright (1935) notes that in the late 16 th and early 17 th centuries, popular
consciousness valued information for increasing knowledge, “however curious and
heterogeneous” that information might be (p.562).
For example, the works of Nicholas Culpeper in the mid 17 th century were intended to
satisfy the public’s desire for information. Culpeper spent his life translating medical
texts from Latin into English. He states that his Pharmacoepia Londinensis (1649)
“’tends towards the furtherance of a Commonwealth and the pulling down a monopoly’”
(Hill, 1975, p.164). Culpeper’s Herbal of 1652 was published in at least thirteen
additional editions or translations; the last English edition was printed in 1820 (Rohde,
1971, p.215). His work is a manifestation of the belief that the works of scholars should
be made available to all, especially as concerned their practical application.
Wallace Notestein (1954) provides a description of English country people by
consulting public records, the journals of local societies, letters, diaries, and other
primary source material. Hard working, self-sufficient people populate his rural villages
and the countryside. Women did most of the gardening (including raising herbs), and
these women used medicinal herbs for members of the community as well as for
themselves and their families. A doctor’s fee might be one-third the yearly wage for a
laborer. Not only were doctors expensive; they had poor reputations. Many people
believed that doctors knew little about disease and even less about remedies:
…the less affluent in towns and the yeomen in the country would hesitate to spend
so much unless in a great emergency. They were the more reluctant when they
had been told by neighbors that the apothecary had a wonderful remedy. A
knowing woman in the next village was reported to have been successful with an
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infusion of certain plants in hot water. Why be at the expense of securing a
learned doctor? (p.103)
People experimented, talked about new knowledge and experience, and probably shared
any written information available, either through conversation or by passing a book
around. Such openness to learning was a necessary consequence of living conditions at
the time. Indeed, apothecaries like Johnson may have gathered information from their
rural, or urban, herbalist patients. Gerard himself, as head gardener for Lord Burghley,
worked with laborers who may have known as much about plants as he. Wright (1935)
suggests that inexpensive herbals were common household books, studied with a
“diligence” comparable to study of the Bible (p.574).
Openness to learning is also evident in 17 th century urban culture. Peter Burke
provides a vivid description of London in chapter 1 of Popular Culture in Seventeenth-
Century England. London was a somewhat unusual European city during this period.
Almost twice the size of other large cities (with a population of 200,000 people), London
was a diverse mix of classes, nationalities, and religions. Many people immigrated to
London because the city was Protestant and relatively tolerant. More than half the
population lived outside the city proper.
The traditional calendar festivals (and fairs) were open to all and did not revolve
around religious practice. Such festivals ran continuously for days and shops remained
open. Burke suggests that the religious festivals were in decline, allowing popular
culture to flourish (because “unlike learned culture [popular culture was] open to all,”
p.38). He notes that printers served as “intermediaries between learned and popular
culture” because of their involvement in the craft of putting together books (p.52). Thus,
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a great mixing of people and ideas was taking place. One can easily imagine an
apothecary making conversation with a farmer selling herbs at a market outside London.
Perhaps the farmer would be offered a chance to look through Gerard’s Herball.
The rural and urban conditions briefly described exemplify some of the same blending
of influence seen between the botanists and the Herball. Botany pushed people to be
more observant and to seek information; practicing botanists influenced Johnson’s work
updating the Herball. And the Herball, with its delightful language, anecdote, and fine
woodcuts encouraged people to observe and carefully describe plants and to record their
locations. So, too, the imperative to care for oneself (while driven by economic
necessity) endowed urban and rural people with stores of knowledge and experience, ripe
for exchange with the “learned” and others exposed to printed information. In this
manner, person-to-person, through conversation, experience, and shared observation, the
“jewels” of Gerard have passed through nearly 400 years of history. While we cannot
forget the practical motivation for much of that journey, I often return to some of
Gerard’s most passionate prose for inspiration, addressed “to the courteous and well
willing Readers”:
Easy therefore is this treasure to be gained, and yet precious…nothing can be
confected, either delicate for the taste, dainty for the smell, pleasant for sight,
wholesome for body, conservative or restorative for health, but it borroweth the
relish of an herb, the savor of a flower, the color of a leaf, the juice of a plant, or
the decoction of a root. And such is the treasure that this my Treatise is furnished
withall; wherein though myne art be not able to countervail Nature in her lively
portraitures, yet have I counterfeited likeness for life, shapes and shadows for
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substance, being ready with the bad Painter to explain the imperfections of my
pencil with my pen, choosing rather to score upon my pictures such rude marks as
may describe my meaning, than to let the beholder to guess at random and miss.
VI. Gerard and me
Although I spent a great deal of time reading Gerard’s Herball as well as reading
about it, I did not really look at the book until the end of this project. I had already turned
every page at least twice, mostly looking at woodcuts and reading. I experienced the
thrill of looking at an image of Lotus ornithopodioides (possibly our L. corniculatus),
printed from a woodcut based on a drawing that dates to the first century before Christ.
At that moment I was sharing an observation over 2000 years old! What observations did
I have to share with someone else? I thought I was getting to know this work, but I felt
that I was missing something. Then I began trying to count signatures in the 1636
edition.
At first I made the mistake of trying to count the leaves in a gathering instead of
looking for signature markings. Sandra Kroupa eventually came to my aid, reminding
me about the way the book was put together. But before seeking her expertise, I
examined the book on my own. I found vertical chainlines on one of the free endsheets; I
found a small and delicate watermark on the other half, pasted to the cover. (The
watermark identifies the paper, and in this case indicates that the book was rebound
around 1750.) I was familiar with the musty smell of soil on the pages, but now I noticed
faint evidence of beautiful marbling on the top edge of the book.
But I couldn’t quite understand the way the gatherings were sewn together—I could
not see the threads. I found the threads of the headband, mistaking them for the threads
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inding the signatures. I looked for conjugate leaves, and then counted the number of
leaves between two sets of conjugate leaves…thirty. What?! That must be too many. I
imagined folding a printed sheet. How many folds are reasonable? How many leaves
can a needle penetrate? This is a large volume, after all—was anyone concerned about
the time required for this process?
I put my nose on the edge of the table so that I was looking right through the space
between the spine and the cover. Then I shifted focus to the stitched gatherings
themselves and began to turn the pages slowly. A brittle remnant of what looked like a
leaf fell out of a fold in Book One, from the section on grasses. Then I found some
chocolate-brown seeds the size of the hole in a lower case ‘o’. A shiver ran up my arm.
Plants and pages were acquainted in ever more exciting ways. The threads of this
binding protected more than paper. I continued turning pages, still investigating the
stitching and gathering of the leaves. In the middle of the chapter about poppies,
something moved, set free by the loosened signatures. A beautiful, straw-colored
inflorescence of grass was wedged in the fold. I pinched the stem between thumb and
forefinger, wary not to touch the brittle florets, and considered all that was passing from
the hand of one curious gardener into the hand of another. I thought of Gusso’s insight
that “the garden seems the one spot on earth where history does not assert itself.” Time
was standing still. My impulse was to jump up and tell someone.
Then I noticed that a conscientious reader had crossed out the numbers of the pages
between which the grass flower lay—400 was changed to 370, 401 to 371. Swirling with
history, I imagined a gardener who wanted to be certain she could find her flower sample
again. Noticing the mistakenly numbered pages, she neatly corrected them. Maybe her
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goal was identification, and discovery of the grass’s virtues. Perhaps she had intentions
for the seeds. I remembered Johnson’s observation about the connection between flax
seeds and these very pages, between which the preserved flower rested:
…this paper whereon I write, that first from seed became flaxe; then after much
vexation thread; then cloth, where it was cut and mangled to serve the fashions of
the time, but afterward rejected and cast aside; yet unwilling so to forsake the
service of man for which God had created it, again it comes (as I may term it) to
the hammer, from whence it takes a more noble form and aptitude to be imployed
to sacred, civil, foreign, and domestic uses.
I closed the book and contemplated the many transformations of plants, ideas, images,
and people that came together to create it and pass it along. The tooling on the cover, a
single unbroken indentation, was impressed with a roller rather than a stamp, according
to Sandra. To me it was a delicate symbol of continuity, nothing particularly remarkable,
almost unnoticeable, tracing the edge of a calf hide cover. Inside someone wrote, “an
unusually fine copy.”
I returned to pages “370 and 371” and the fragile grass florets. I did not want to touch
them again, and it occurred to me that picking a spikelet of grass in order to identify it
was a particularly American thing to do. The Puritans’ need for an herbal was especially
urgent, and Gerard’s Herball was one of three English herbals that were carefully
transported across the Atlantic. (Gerard’s Herball, John Parkinson’s Paradisi, and
Nicholas Culpeper’s Herbal are discussed at length in Ann Leighton’s Early American
Gardens.) While the Puritans had these reference books, they had left the place—and the
plants—upon which the herbals were based. They needed a field guide, and an herbal of
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their own. People like John Josselyn, who wrote some of the first descriptions of plants
in New England, “quite literally nibbled and tasted his way about the wilderness,"
carrying a copy of the 1633 edition of Gerard’s Herball with him (Leighton, 1986, p.51).
I cannot imagine carrying a 1600-page, eleven-and-a-half-pound book into the woods.
My bathroom scale, and my experience, declare that my Pojar and Mackinnon is
weightless by comparison. And that is precisely the point: I have another option, in part
because Gerard provided the means and the inspiration—again—in the new world. John
Josselyn and others pushed the genre to new, American horizons, evidence of which sits
on my bookshelf under the title, Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs. I, too, can
pick up the thread of shared observation, drawn through centuries of conversation
between people, impressed by the woodcuts or desiring information, curiously studying
or lovingly poring over the pages of Gerard’s Herball.
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References
Arber, Agnes. (1953). Herbals: Their origin and evolution. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
Barry, Jonathan. (1985). Popular culture in seventeenth-century Bristol. In Barry Reay
(Ed.), Popular culture in seventeenth-century England (pp.59-90). London: Croom
Helm.
Burke, Peter. (1985). Popular culture in seventeenth-century London. In Barry Reay
(Ed.), Popular culture in seventeenth-century England (pp.31-58). London: Croom
Helm.
Cecil, the Hon. Mrs. Evelyn (the Hon. Alicia Amherst). (1910). A history of gardening in
England. London: John Murray.
Clark, Peter. (1976). The ownership of books in England, 1560-1640: The example of
some Kentish townsfolk. In Lawrence Stone (Ed.), Schooling and society (pp.95-111).
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
DiSabato-Aust, Tracy. (1998). The well-tended perennial garden: Planting and pruning
techniques. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change:
Communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe, Vol. I.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Gosse, Edmund. (1891). Gossip in a library. London: William Heinemann.
Gerard, John, & Johnson, Thomas. (1636). The herball or generall historie of plantes.
Gathered by John Gerarde of London master in chirurgerie very much enlarged and
amended by Thomas Johnson citizen and apothecarye of London. London: Adam Islip,
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Ioice Norton, and Richard Whitakers.
Gunther, R. T. (1922). Early Botanists and their gardens: Based on unpublished writings
of Goodyer, Tradescant, and others. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hill, Christopher. (1975). Change and continuity in seventeenth-century England.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Hobhouse, Penelope. (1997). Plants in garden history: An illustrated history of plants
and their influence on garden styles—from ancient Egypt to the present day. London:
Pavilion Books Limited.
Hudson, W. H. (1932). Nature in downland and an old thorn. New York: E. P. Dutton &
Co., Inc.
Leighton, Ann. (1986). Early American gardens: “For meate or medicine”. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press.
Notestein, Wallace. (1954). The English people on the eve of colonization: 1603-1630.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
Rodale’s illustrated encyclopedia of herbs. (1998). Claire Kowalchik & William H.
Hylton (Eds.). Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press.
Rohde, Eleanour Sinclair. (1971). The old English herbals. New York: Dover
Publications, Inc.
Rosenberg, Charles E. (1998). The book in the sickroom: A tradition of print and
practice. Retrieved November 11, 2004, from
http://www.librarycompany.org/doctor/rosen.html .
Wright, Louis B. (1935). Middle-class culture in Elizabethan England. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
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