Article by Anna Goebel, MA student of Professor Ayesha Mukherjee’s course ‘Global Voices: Shakespeare and the Early Modern World’
The Herball: or, Generall historie of plantes (1597) by John Gerard is a collection of entries about plants which follows the form of a commonplace book, a popular form of writing in the early modern period. Commonplace books collect together short quotations from other texts, combined with personal observations and anecdotes. It also introduces the author, with the work not written but “Gathered by John Gerarde” (Gerard 1), presenting Gerard like a collector, which hints at the beginning of British exploration and expansionism which had just started at the end of the 16th century. The Herball is a large quarto of almost 1500 pages divided into three books. The title page is what immediately catches the eye, which makes sense, as they were often printed in multiples and used by booksellers to advertise the book and give an impression of its contents. It shows an array of people and plants, everything from flowers to reeds, referring to dignitaries at the time: “ancient figures of botanical authority, to New World plants, to plants from the Ottoman Empire, and to England’s own flora” (Rickmann 105) alongside a structured garden with individual beds. Not only is this title page beautiful, but engraved title pages were rare in the late sixteenth century which makes the herbal a luxury good.
Unusually, the chapters are not in alphabetical order, as was customary for herbals at the time, rather, Gerard groups them by physical structure, starting with grasses and ending with corals. Each chapter on the plants is similar to encyclopedic entries we know today, with the English name of the plant; the kinds of plant and its relatives; a description of each kind; the place and conditions in which the plant usually grows; its timing; its classic and vernacular names; and its common uses or “vertues”. I specifically want to focus on the entry about cotton, “Of the Bombaste, or Cotton plant”, on pages 753 to 754, which follows this structure of plant description. There is one woodblock illustration for cotton (every entry has up to four) that shows the whole plant including roots, leaves and flowers, with the names “Goßipium fiue Xylon” and “The Cotton bush” inscribed on top (Gerard 753). For the names of the plants, Gerard includes colloquial names used by occupational groups, national language groups, and women, with special attention to “metaphorical etymologies” (Knight 86). We can see this in the entry about cotton when Gerard comments on the German word “Baumwoll, that is, wooll of a tree: Whereas in truth it is rather a small shrub” (753) as he dissects the truth content of the metaphoric name. The entry about cotton is especially interesting to me because, Gerards exoticizes the cotton plant, focusing on it being especially used for ritual garments in other countries, which gives it a more mystical and exotic air, even though he also says that a detailed description of cotton is “superfluous” because it is a “common experience” and in “daily use” (Gerard 754). With this, I believe, he anticipates the mindset that underlies British exploration. Its common use also becomes clear from the use of the name “Bombast” which is an obsolete word for the fibrous part of the cotton plant, taking on a more general meaning of “padding something out, to adding superfluous material, or to forming a layer of protection or insulation,” (OED) which cotton was commonly used for.
When it comes to his description of the plants, he does not use Latin terms to describe the parts of the plant, but relies on similes like flowers being “the bignesse of a Tenisse ball,” leaves being “not unlike to the leafe of the Vine” and “black seede (…), in shape like the (…) dung of a conie” (Gerard 735). Gerard relies on figurative language to create a sensory understanding of the plants, especially when it comes to exotic plants his readers could never experience for themselves (Knight 88, 89, 92, 94), as is the case with cotton as it was imported from India and the middle east and did not grow in England. These vivid descriptions are also useful to memorize and apply the information. Gerard intended his work as a reference book, asking “courteous and well-willing Readers” for “men of deeper judgement to polish; and to adde to [his] large additions.”
The Exeter special collections hold another edition of The Herbal from 1636, a second edition “very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson,” while this edition does not have the impressive title page, it does have other treasure. Annotations in this copy show that it was owned by William Okes, who in the very first page of the copy wrote about cross-referencing this herbal with other plant books especially for the plates which he found “useful”. Okes draws on William Hudson’s Flora Anglica (1762) for the Linnean names of plants. Linnean names are a form of biological classification that was established in the 18th century after the Herbal was written and because of that, in several entrances Okes added these alternate Latin names. An example of this is on “Chap 16 Of Sea Spike-Grasse” where he adds the name “Triglochin marinum. Salt water Marsh near Belton. Suffulk” (20): not only does he add names for the plants, but he has recorded for some of them where he found them. Unlike Gerard, Okes was not interested in the exotic but focused on English plants in his efforts to work with the herbal.
I even found in the entry about “Aromaticall Reeds” that Okes planted reeds “about Exeter in the River Exe. 1790” (62). For some plants he not only added names and places, but also little illustrations and more precise descriptions like for “Friers Cowle or hooded Cuckowpint” (835) and “Water Crow-foot” (829). Even plant specimens can be found with the places on where he got them like “Rocket” (248-249) and “stinking ground Pine” (622-623) from “Lowestofft Suffolk”, and “English Cudweed” from “Grove, Wheatacre Rest Norfolk 7.Sept. 1837” (639). The herbal’s interactive design was so successful that nearly 250 years after its publication it was still used by Okes bringing together traditional book learning and practical field botany, like Gerard intended.
Sources
John Gerard, The Herball: or, Generall historie of plantes. Hughan Collection 1636/GER/X and Syon Abbey 1597/GER/X