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:
“So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I love long life better than figs.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)