Life
Gerard was born at Nantwich, where he received his early and only schooling. Around the age of 17 he was apprenticed as a barber-surgeon. Although he claimed to have learned much about plants from travelling to other parts of the world, his actual travels appear to have been limited. For example, at some time in his later youth, he is reputed to have made one trip abroad, possibly as a ship’s surgeon on a merchant ship sailing around the North Sea. In 1577, he began to supervise the London gardens of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. By 1595, Gerard had become a member of the Court of Assistants in the Barber-Surgeon's Company. By 1595, he was spending much time commuting from the court to his gardens in the suburb of Holborn, and attending to his duties for Burghley. In 1597, he was appointed junior warden of the Barber-Surgeons, and in 1608, master of the same. Gerard was a doer, not a thinker, and an outsider in relation to the community of Lime Street naturalists in London at the time. His somewhat flawed (from the perspective of some of his contemporaries) Herball is dedicated to Burghley.
Read more about this topic: John Gerard
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The life of the wealthy is one long Sunday.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)
“We [actors] are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was.... My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.”
—Helen Hayes (1900–1993)
“...all enjoyment is dependent upon the frailty of human life and human desires ... if we were to have all we want and to live forever, all enjoyment would be gone.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)