The Undertaker being desirous to make this Work more useful to such as are not furnished with other Herbals, is resolved (for their Sake) to give a short Description of each plant; the Place of Growth, and Time of Flowering with its common Uses in Physick, chiefly extracted from Mr. Joseph Miller’s Botanica Officinale, with his consent; and the ordinary Names of the Plant in different Languages.
Elizabeth Blackwell, Introduction, A Curious Herbal
Elizabeth put down her engraving tool and flexed her stiff fingers. The clock on the mantel told her that it was nearly midnight. The calendar on the wall over her drawing table told her that it was the fourth night she had worked late this week, driven by the desire to see the final installment finished.
And now, on the desk in front of her, lay the engraved copper plates for Number 125 of A Curious Herbal.
This last installment, the very last, contained detailed drawings of the native herb bugloss, yellow and white water lilies, and water lily tubers. Like the 496 plants before it, each of these was pictured on its own page, and there was a separate page with brief descriptions of all four. When this installment went to subscribers and to the booksellers and vendors and news agents who sold it on the street, her work would be done. She had reached a milestone. A Curious Herbal was finished.
All that remained was to hand over the engravings to the printer—Samuel Harding, at the sign of the Bible & Anchor in St. Martin’s Lane—and arrange the printing and sale of the second volume, which Mr. Harding was already advertising in newspapers across England and Scotland.
And there was one more task she was looking forward to with great pleasure: the creation of the large presentation copy she had decided to make for Sir Hans. It would contain both volumes—that is, all five hundred plates. It would be bound in the finest calfskin and would have eight decorated silver corners and a pair of elaborate silver clasps. She had already found a silversmith to make the corners and clasps and they had agreed on a design. She would color every plate herself, with the greatest of care. It was to be a very special book that would please and impress Sir Hans and be preserved for generations to come.
The journey had been an epic one and—if Elizabeth weren’t so exhausted—she would be celebrating. Three years, five months, and ten days ago, she had handed her draft agreement to Sir Hans. It retained the copyright and the ownership of the plates to herself and named a substantial advance to be paid by Sir Hans and repaid to him from the sale of the books. Sir Hans had added the stipulation that the book would include no fewer than five hundred herbs, described in plain English and drawn from life or from plants preserved in his herbarium.
The title was Elizabeth’s idea. It was to be called A Curious Herbal —“curious” in the sense of minutely accurate, exact, precise. In other words, scientific. It would not include any of the traditional old wives’ tales that clustered like flies around herbs, or the outmoded astrological attributes that Nicholas Culpeper had included in his popular The English Physitian and which still appeared in its many piracies. A Curious Herbal would be up-to-date, accurate, and specific, befitting the new age, which a Frenchman had recently called the Era of Lumières, or Enlightenment.
After Elizabeth and Sir Hans had signed the agreement, things had moved rapidly, for he was eager to see the work underway and she was desperate to begin earning money. As soon as she could, she had gone to the Physic Garden to meet Isaac Rand, the director, and Philip Miller, the head gardener, on whose botanical help she had to depend.
And the two of them were helpful. Mr. Rand offered to make a list of the plants she should draw for the first dozen numbers. Mr. Miller, who had something of a combative personality, treated her as a nuisance at first. But he grudgingly agreed to help with Mr. Rand’s list. He also took her to the garden’s new orangery to show her the collection of botanical reference books that she could consult for the descriptions of plants.
The next week, Mr. Rand—a skilled botanist and widely-admired apothecary with a shop between Piccadilly and Pall Mall in the Haymarket—introduced her at a meeting of the apothecaries’ guild, where he stressed Sir Hans’ sponsorship of the project. She showed four colored drawings (dandelion, poppy, melon, and cucumber), described the book, and began enlisting subscribers. Dr. Stuart, ever helpful, arranged a meeting with members of the Royal College of Physicians, whose endorsement she needed. Elizabeth even sent advance copies of two installments to her uncle, John Johnstoun, professor of medicine at the University of Glasgow. He responded by enlisting subscribers—apothecaries, physicians, and booksellers—in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
She was surprised and delighted when the subscription list passed the hundred-mark before the first number was published, most of them for the more costly hand-colored pages. She added another fifty after she met with the doctors. There were nearly two hundred booksellers in London and even more news agents. She couldn’t talk to each of them individually, but she visited the largest and left an advance copy with each, soliciting regular consignment sales. Of course, there would be cancellations, but with this kind of early support, she could hope that she might earn enough to pay Alexander’s creditors at least a pound a week, perhaps more.
Elizabeth’s most important meetings, however, were with the printers, where her experience in Alex’s shop stood her in good stead. She interviewed and considered several men and one woman before she settled on Samuel Harding. She had worked with him earlier—he and Alex had referred print jobs to one another—and knew him to be experienced and reliable.
She needed someone who was both, for this project would continue for over two years. To include all five hundred of the herbs that Sir Hans wanted would require 125 numbers, as they were usually called. They should be published weekly, on the same day (she thought Friday best). Once published, the installments had to be delivered, either by courier or, if going a distance, by the post. Mr. Harding made the arrangements and saw that they were carried out.
Also, experience in Alex’s shop had taught Elizabeth that supplies of paper and ink could be unpredictable. For a job like this both should be purchased ahead of time so all was at hand when needed. Since she knew the suppliers, it made sense to buy these herself (thereby increasing the profit) and have them delivered to Mr. Harding. Planning ahead, she had included this in the initial advance she had requested from Sir Hans.
Elizabeth paid Mr. Harding to place advertisements in the newspapers, and as the replies came in they were added to the subscription or consignment lists. But while the subscription list provided some predictability, it was hard to know how many more copies might be sold on consignment to booksellers and street vendors. And when it came to vendors, there were (in addition to hundreds of London newsboys and broadsheet and pamphlet sellers) the many herb ladies as well, selling fresh herbs in the markets and on the streets.
When Sir Hans paid over his agreed-to advance, Elizabeth and the children had moved into a rented three-room apartment to the west of the Fleet Ditch and not far from Newgate, so Sunday afternoon family visits to Alex could be managed. She had hired a maid-of-all-work to live in—a sensible young woman named Janet Proctor—who cared for the children while she was working. Between the organizing meetings and the sketching, drawing, engraving, printing, and coloring—not to mention the brisk foot travel required to manage all of this—the demands had been unrelenting. Elizabeth ended every day footsore, bone-weary, and always with a stack of sketches on her worktable, still to be turned into finished drawings and engravings.
And then something quite wonderful happened. Mr. Rand met her one morning when she came to sketch and told her that the house at Number 4 Swan Walk, just across the lane from the east gate of the Physic Garden, was to let. He had the key and would like to show it to her.
Isaac Rand, a stout, gray-wigged man of sixty, had been reserved at their first meeting. But he had unbent when she brought the children to the garden with her. Blanche amused herself by making full-skirted dolls of frilly pink hollyhock blossoms and green ferns, while William, on his hands and knees at the edge of the mint bed, collected shiny beetles in a small box.
“They will be my friends and live under my bed until I am big enough to go to school,” he told Mr. Rand gravely. “And then I shall bring them back and they can be your friends.”
The towheaded little boy had won Mr. Rand’s heart, and he asked Elizabeth how far she and the children had come that morning. He frowned when she said that they had walked from their apartment—a good three miles, through a very muddy lane.
“So difficult for the children,” he murmured.
On her next visit, Mr. Rand had met her with the key. Number 4 was one of a block of narrow red brick row houses, set back a little from the lane, with a walled garden for the children and an expansive north window that let in the purest and most wonderful light, perfect for her drawing and engraving. There was even a bedroom for Janet, so she would no longer have to sleep in the scullery.
The children had taken great delight in their new home. On a quiet lane, away from London’s smoke-laden fogs, the air was cleaner and healthy. If they went south, Swan Walk led them to the busy Thames, where they could wave to the boats moving slowly along the river, fully laden as they moved downstream, empty as they made their way back upriver. Small boats with one or two fishermen, out to catch tonight’s supper. Large boats heavy with coal or sacks of milled flour and butts of beer, or crates of live chickens and ducks bound for market.
If they went to the north, Swan Walk led them into the quaint little village of Chelsea and beyond, where they could wander in the quiet orchards and market gardens that supplied the city with fresh fruits and vegetables. They could fill their baskets with apples and pears that Janet would turn into fruit pies and potatoes and peas and carrots and cabbage that would become soup. Along the lane, Elizabeth could point out wild herbs—mullein and wood sage and nettle and plantain—and tell the children how they were used. Overhead, they could watch the harriers and fork-tailed kites as they dipped and turned and soared and listen to the raucous cries of the gulls that fished along the river.
Just across the way, the garden offered many delights. There was the daily pleasure of drawing, the work she liked best and which she enjoyed in the early morning, when the plants were at their freshest. Plants arrived every week, so many that there was always something new to notice and admire and puzzle over—unusual and exotic plants from the Americas and Africa and the Orient. There were interesting books to be read in the library and discussions with the gardeners, especially Mr. Rand and Mr. Miller, who (now accustomed to her regular visits) seemed to appreciate her questions and observations, for there was always something more to learn. And there were visitors from everywhere in England and Europe, many of them naturalists or explorers who were bringing plants.
But perhaps the most important visitor was the accomplished Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who was engaged in the extraordinary work of identifying, naming, and classifying every living thing in the entire world. Each plant and animal received two Latin names: for example, Homo sapiens for the human species, Rosa gallica for the French rose, which in the garden was variously called “the apothecary’s rose” or sometimes the “damask rose” or “the red rose of Lancaster.” Linnaeus’ system was based on the sexual structures of plants: the number and arrangement of stamens and pistils in the flowers. If it was widely adopted, it could clear up a great deal of confusion. Elizabeth wished that he were far enough in his work so that she could use his classification system in the Herbal.
For the sake of the children, she also wished that Alexander could be with them. Did she wish it for her own sake, too? Did she miss him and the always dramatic twists and turns he had brought into her life, or had she grown content—and even happy—with the quietness of the days and nights without him? Although she resented the recklessness that had created his debts, she was certainly bending all her efforts toward repaying them. But was that because she truly loved him or because she was his wife and therefore obligated?
Search her soul as she might, she couldn’t find the answers. And since she didn’t know what she would do with the answer if she found it, she felt she might fare better if she did not know.
But now she could at least glimpse the end of that journey. The first half of the Herbal had been bound and published as Volume One, and the sale of those copies had allowed her to pay off the larger and most demanding of Alex’s creditors. If this had been a usual case, the rest might have relented and freed him on condition of future payment. But they had been offended by what they saw as his arrogant flouting of the Stationers’ Guild apprenticeship rule and intended to see him pay whatever price they could exact.
Fortunately (or unfortunately; Elizabeth was not sure which) his confinement had not troubled Alexander overmuch. He had settled comfortably into Newgate, where he had become the hub of a group of educated, well-read bankrupts, professional men and a few gentry who had spent themselves into debt. Elizabeth gave him a portion of the weekly book sales that enabled him to pay for his meals, his wine and ale and tobacco, and his laundry. In return, his nominal task was to provide the names by which the plants were known in various languages: Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Dutch. This allowed him to proudly tell people that he was one of his wife’s “chief contributors,” which he did, without reservation. He even gave them to believe that he was expert in the subject of medicinal plants and that the project had been his idea from the beginning.
The truth was, however, that Alex was not as much of a botanist as he liked to claim. He had known only a few of the names, so Elizabeth usually went to the orangery and looked them up in the garden’s library. That’s where she also found the botanical descriptions of the plants and their preferences for light and soil. Mr. Joseph Miller (no relation to the head gardener) had given her permission to use descriptions from his recent book, Botanica Officinale. She always asked Mr. Rand to read what she had done to be sure it was correct, and he was glad to comply. He also looked over her drawings and made suggestions.
Thus, with or without contributions from Alex, the work had gone forward successfully. When it began, Elizabeth had been a modestly skilled artist; she became more skilled as time went on and she grew to love her subjects, which seemed always patient and cheerful and ready to share their small green secrets with her. Already an engraver, she learned how to do the work more expertly—and her copperplate handwriting improved. The weekly issues of the Herbal had sold well, exceptionally well, according to Mr. Harding’s accounting. Fifteen months after the very first issue was released, Elizabeth arranged to have the first sixty-three issues printed, bound, and published as a book. In another few months, she would arrange for the publication of the last sixty-two issues in Volume Two. She was still a troubling distance from repayment of her husband’s full debt, and one of the creditors was getting restive. But she would have to deal with that later. Her first task was to complete the book and to do it well.
If Elizabeth had thought that life without Alex would be grim, she was wrong. Janet had become a friend and companion as well as a helper. The house was a calm retreat, the green and ever blooming Physic Garden a daily delight, and the children the joy of her heart. Elizabeth’s life was so blessedly full and busy and comfortable that she sometimes wondered if such contentment could last.
It didn’t. There was a cruel sweep of disease across the land during the wet early weeks of May, and little William had died of a fever—just one of many children who died that month. Blanche followed her brother two years later, almost to the day. The only blessing was that they had been taken suddenly, both of them lively and laughing one day, feverish the next, and gone the day after that.
The sadness still sat in Elizabeth’s bones, like a fatal infection that could be neither banished nor born. She thought of William and Blanche constantly, even allowing herself to pretend that they were simply asleep in their little beds just down the hallway from her drawing studio, telling herself that tomorrow they would walk to the river and wave at the boatmen or across the lane to the garden, where she would sketch while Blanche played with the hollyhocks and William made friends with the beetles. But these were just sweet stories, to comfort her grief. The children lay in the sweet green quiet of the parish churchyard, near enough that each Sunday she and Janet could take fresh flowers and herbs to them.
And now she had thought of a way to manage the publication of the second volume and the rest of Alexander’s debt, both at the same time. There was still £150 owing—a debt that might take her another year to repay. But she had discussed the matter with John Nourse, a bookseller and printer near Temple Bar. Mr. Nourse had agreed to publish the second volume of the Herbal and she had agreed to sell him a one-third share of the book for £150.
The money from the rights’ sale would go to pay off the debt. There was enough coming in regularly from the book to allow her to keep the Swan Walk house, which she loved. Alexander would be home at last, and they could pick up their life together. Elizabeth was still young and had been quite fertile: Blanche was conceived within a few months of their marriage and William even before Blanche was weaned. There would likely be more children to fill the empty space in her heart.
But how would she feel, sharing her life again with her husband? Before the Newgate years, he had been headlong and impulsive, unwilling to do the hard work of preparation or the mundane work of routine tasks. One of his closest friends had said that while Alex was a “natural genius,” his brilliance was marred by “want of principle and unsoundness of judgment”—and Elizabeth agreed. Had he changed? Had he learned the importance of patience and persistence? Would he be willing to take up the task of earning the family’s living?
But if Alex hadn’t changed, she had. The years she had worked on the Herbal had given her a new confidence in herself. She made her own decisions, conducted business as she thought best, earned enough to support herself and the children, spent money carefully, incurred reasonable debts and promptly repaid them, and developed a group of helpers, allies, and friends that she could count on. While the years had been full of challenge and darkened by grief, there had been joys, too, and the satisfaction of recognized achievement. And she had grown accustomed to living alone, with only Janet to keep her company. Would Alex step back into her life and attempt to direct it, as he had before?
And what would he do for a living, once he was released? He couldn’t go back to the printing trade—no one would hire him. With the bankruptcy on his record, it would be difficult to start any new business. He had become intrigued with her reports of the new plants coming in from around the globe and had said that he might like to work with some kind of agricultural project. He had asked her for books about estate and farm management and had been reading about modern methods of drainage and the improvement of soils.
This puzzled Elizabeth, for Alex had no firsthand understanding of plants or farming. But she didn’t doubt that he could turn his hand to anything he wanted, if he wanted it badly enough and if he had the patience to prepare himself.
Anyway, it wasn’t up to her to decide what her husband would do. He had rarely taken direction or suggestions from her, even when it was her dowry they were spending. Thus, she executed the agreement with Nourse, took the money he paid her, and handed it over—with a great deal of satisfaction—to Alex’s last two creditors.
There. That was done. She had achieved what she set out to do: earn enough money to buy her husband’s freedom from debtors’ prison. No one could say she had not done her wifely duty.
At last, on a bright day in late September, Alexander walked free. In celebration, she met him at Newgate’s entrance, and they went to a small tavern where they had dined often when they were first married. And then hired a coach to take them to Chelsea, where they would begin their life together, again.
And then . . .