Hemlock

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “That’s a great idea.” Jenna’s eagerness suggested that she thought this would be fun. “I’ll do it this afternoon.”

  “But there’s still no word about the Herbal?” Dorothea’s tone was not hopeful.

  “It hadn’t turned up by the time I left,” I said. “The storm may slow things down, but I’m sure that the chief has already gotten a search warrant for Jed’s place and has a team searching there. The bookstore, too.” I paused. “And even if he’s sold it, there’s still hope.”

  “You think?” Jenna’s question was tinged with sarcasm.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “Not long ago, the Carnegie Library got its four-hundred-year-old Geneva Bible back. It had been stolen by the library’s archivist and sold by a local bookseller to a museum in Germany. The museum director saw it on a list of stolen rare books and returned it.”

  Dorothea’s forehead wrinkled. “But to make that happen, the board would have to . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  “Publicize the theft,” Jenna said firmly, topping off my hot chocolate and then her own. “Dorothea, you’re just going to have to push them.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “In a few weeks, the county attorney will announce charges against Jed Conway. The board could announce the theft then.” I gave Dorothea a direct look. “Of course, it would be much, much better if they publicized it earlier—like today. Tomorrow wouldn’t be bad, either.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Dorothea pulled her sweater around her. “Well, I have a trolley-load of books to catalog. I’d better get to it.”

  I sighed. It didn’t look like Dorothea was ready to challenge her board of directors. Which meant that if the police didn’t find the Herbal at Jed’s house or his shop—and if he didn’t name the person he sold it to—it would likely never be found.

  Jenna got up. “I’ll work on those screenshots,” she said. “Oh, and I’ve emailed you another part of the novel, China—the last one that’s finished.”

  I opened my tablet to look for her email with the file attachment. “How many more after this one?”

  “I wish I knew.” She looked troubled. “Actually, I’m kind of stuck. There are a couple of ways the book could end. I have my preferences, but I’m not sure I’m right. Maybe you’ll have some ideas.”

  I looked up. “Far as I can remember, nobody’s ever asked me how a book should end. And anyway, this is biographical fiction, isn’t it? Don’t you have to stick to the real story?”

  Jenna chuckled. “You’re assuming that we know the real story, which may not be entirely true. There are facts, yes—or what seem to be facts. But there are ambiguities, too. After all this time, it’s not easy to know what really happened.”

  I thought of Amelia’s suicide. “It’s not easy to know what really happened even when all the facts are right in front of you,” I said.

  I pulled my chair close to the fire and propped my feet on the brass fireplace fender. It was a perfect place to read, with my tablet on my lap and a cup of hot chocolate on the table beside me. Outside the French doors, the patio was knee-deep in snow, completely blanketing the fringe of spring wildflowers that had bloomed so promisingly just the day before. Beyond, the palisade of tall trees loomed darkly behind a curtain of blowing snow.

  A few minutes later, Jenna put on a CD and the sounds of Pachelbel’s “Canon” filled the room. After the events of the morning and the high-tension anxiety of the drive up the mountain, I was glad for the soft music, and I dove into Jenna’s chapter with pleasure.

  The Curious Tale of Elizabeth Blackwell

  Part Five

  July, 1738

  Number Four, Swan’s Walk

  Opposite Chelsea Physic Garden

  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, p
oppy, 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 sh
e 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.