I happened upon the George Peabody Library quite by chance, really.
I had the opportunity to accompany my husband to a professional conference held at the Hilton in Baltimore, and was looking about for something to occupy my two days of waiting around for the programs to be done. Luckily, the library is located in a stunning building -- enough draw in and of itself! -- that was well represented in the "Sights to see around Baltimore" articles that I'd looked at.
It was a grey and dreary late-start sort of a day, perfect for a couple of hours in the library. I had no appointment. While I had tried to make the requisite appointment, with some confusion and just a little humiliation, the day before,
I had never really gotten ahold of anyone, nor figured out exactly where to go to see the recipe manuscript and the Culpepers Herbal that I wanted to see. I called sheepishly in the morning, and was invited in, but then I got carried away at Lafayette Market, a slightly sketchy rabbit-warren of a market, serving soul food lunches to a crowd gathering for a
lunchtime band.
By then
it was after 2 pm.
On Fridays
The Peabody
usually
closes at 3.
was an unspecified
cab-ride away and
was beginning to seem like a lot of trouble.
Plus, I was more than a little reluctant to seem completely unprofessional by arriving late on a Friday afternoon, though in all likelihood I would never be here again, and who cares, anyway?
Sometimes
these library adventures have an aspect to them
of
a
grand
quest.
Here the dragon guarding the treasure was my own inertia.
My sense that there wasn't enough time.
I almost didn't go.
The Peabody Library is a wonderment: tiers upon tiers of stacks are arranged around an airy atrium, lit by high skylights. Fancy ironwork bannisters rise into the heights, illuminated by touches of gold: highlighting the layers upon layers of pattern: scalloping and friezes and columns; the coffered ceilings in each of the alcoves, the rows and rows and rows of books. It makes one quite dizzy, this temple to books. The quiet hum of a heater somewhere below rumbles reassuringly. The desks are are set apart from one another in two long rows, for those of us who choose to settle in the middle of the room. Elsewhere, people have tucked themselves into the alcoves on either side where, perhaps, the redundant card catalogs once resided.
The flourishes in the tiny balustrade repeat a pattern of faintly Moorish onion arches & Christian crosses in relief. I sketch it while I wait for my books.
As I wait, there is plenty of time to admire the scenery and soak in the ambiance.
A kind of awe settles in for the sheer elaborate magnificence of the library, made more approachable by its weathered shabbiness. All this knowledge! All stacked here systematically categorized,
open for my inspection.
They bring a stack of foam wedges to rest the precious books on, and two strings of weighted cord, filled with ball bearings. These are to hold the pages down as gently as possible. They unroll a great long extension cord and fix me a light, while up on the fifth tier a student is looking for my books.
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| When they bring the books, I open the earliest first: 1689 … 1740 …1787 …1847 |
Culpeper
The English Physician, Enlarged 1740
Originally published in 1652 as The Englifh Phyfitian, Culpeper's work has been enlarged and improved, and published in multiple editions almost continuously right through the next three and a half centuries.These posthumous productions are among the hundreds of works to which his name is attached, and you will find seemingly endless variations of the title, including an edition from Exeter NH in 1825 that blithely changed "made of English Herbs" to "made of American Herbs" and spelled Culpeper's name wrong!
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| This 1740 edition, published 86 years after Culpepers death, contains beautifully colored plates, some oversized and folded repeatedly, that jump out of the pages. |
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| Notice the beautiful ghost image of the lily on the opposite page. |
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| The hellebores are as splendid and popular now as they were in the past. They bloom very early in the spring, and were featured in many exhibits at this year's 2014 Philadelphia Flower Show. Unfortunately, the hellebores are a deadly bunch, and have been implicated in the death of Alexander the Great, among others. Its a particularly nasty demise, too, though most people are put off by the acrid burning taste, and thereby avoid a toxic dose. |
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| This was the most glorious rendering of Coltsfoot -- Tussilago farfara Another dennison of the early spring, the flowers and the mature leaves, as shown here, do not bloom at the same time. Instead, the flowers erupt now out of the leaf-litter, looking like little dandelions on felted stalks, and are only followed much later by the leaves. These have a lush downy underside that the artist has tried to show here, too. This was a very well-known plant in the 17th c, apparently, and tales of it being painted on the doors or apothecaries as an advertisement to the illiterate in France have underscored its fame as a cough remedy. I love that its latin name quite sounds like a cough: farfara. The tiny early leaves should be admired but are not to be used, as they contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids, that dissipate as they age. I have never much used any of it, preferring thyme and elecampane and horrid horehound for coughs. The artist has captured perfectly the elegant nodding habit of the coltsfoot, and then the final exuberant gesture, as it flings its seeds aloft, each with its own silken parachute, right out of the bounds of the page! |
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| Like thyme, borage has a reputation for stimulating courage. The beautiful pale line-drawing set behind these luminous borage blossoms, hints at its prickly nature. Although it has a lovely cucumber-y flavor, the prickles are prohibitively unpleasant for most people. An annual, easily and enthusiastically grown from seed, it prefers quite warm soil to germinate on its own, but can be coaxed early in the greenhouse, where it gets a robust start. When happy, one tiny seed can give rise to a prodigious plant fully three feet across, each succulent stem an inch or more thick. Let to luxuriate in its blue abundance, it managed to dwarf and kill a couple of the lavender in the row next door, much to my chagrin. |
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| Thyme has an ancient reputation as a specific for throat strain caused by overuse or strenuous singing. A strong decoction of fresh or dried thyme, stabilized with brandy and sweetened with honey, makes a delicious cough syrup. Though Culpeper demurs to describe an herb so commonly known, the artist has rendered a loving and precise portrait of this garden favorite, trailing beautifully across the page. |
