The Flowers of Pulter’s Library: Myths

A funeral sermon praises Lady Anne Clifford for dressing up her chamber with the “flowers of a library” written on papers and pinned up all over the room (Edward Rainbowe, Lord Bishop of Carlile, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honorable Anne, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery [London, 1677], sig. E4r–v). Here are what might have been some of the flowers of Hester Pulter’s library, the books that informed the histories, temperaments, and voices she assigns her flowers. Although Pulter might have been able to write “The Garden” without actually having a garden, it’s hard to imagine she could have written it without a library. Indeed, it’s hard to separate the two sources of inspiration. Books were regularly called gardens or bouquets; they inspired, described, and stood in for gardens (see, for instance, Leah Knight, Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture [Ashgate, 2009]). Gardens were valued as books of nature; Pulter makes her book a garden of talking, vibrant flowers. Flowers might even be embroidered onto book bindings, as here.

Embroidered binding on an English translation of the Old Testament (1638). Folger Digital Image Collection. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Story of Aphrodite and Anchises

In Pulter’s poem, the Woodbine or honeysuckle tells the story of Aphrodite and Anchises. This ancient vase combines a double honeysuckle motif around the neck with the figures of Aeneas, his father Anchises, and Aphrodite.

Black-figured amphora: the escape of Aineias.

The Trustees of the British Museum. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

The Story of Diana and Acteon

George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis

The Woodbine also refers to the story of Diana and Acteon. Here is Ovid’s version. —Dolan

A vale there was with pines and cypress crowned,
Gargaphie called; for Diana’s love renowned.
A shady cave possessed the inward part,
Not wrought by hands; there Nature witty Art
Did counterfeit: a native arch she drew,
With pumice and light tophuses*that grew.
*porous stones
A bubbling spring, with streams as clear as glass,
Ran chiding by, enclosed with matted grass.
The weary huntress usually here laves
Her virgin limbs, more pure than those pure waves.
And now her bow, her jav’lin, and her quiver
Doth to a nymph, one of her squires, deliver;
Her light impoverished robes another held;
Her buskins two untie. The better skilled
Ismenian Crocale, her long hair wound
In plaited-wreaths: yet was her own unbound.
Neat Hayle, Niphe, Rhanis, Psecas (still
Employed) and Phiale the lavers fill.
While here Titania bathed (as was her guise),
Lo, Cadmus’s nephew, tired with exercise,
And wand’ring through the woods, approached this grove
With fatal steps: so destiny him drove!
Ent’ring the cave with skipping springs bedewed,
The nymphs, all naked, when a man they viewed,
Clapped their resounding breasts, and filled the wood
With sudden shrieks. Like ivory pale, they stood
About their goddess; but she, far more tall,
By head and shoulders overtops them all.
Such as that color, which the clouds adorns,
Shot by the sunbeams or the rosy morns:
Such flushed in Dian’s cheeks, being naked ta’en.
And though environed by her virgin train,
She sidelong turns, looks back, and wished her bow.
Yet, what she had, she in his face did throw.
With vengeful waters sprinkled, to her rage
These words she adds, which future Fate presage.
“Now, tell how thou hast seen me disarrayed;
Tell if thou canst. I give thee leave.” This said,
She to his neck and ears new length imparts;
T’his brow the antlers of long-living harts;
His legs and feet with arms and hands supplied;
And clothed his body in a spotted hide.
To this, fear added. Autonoëius* flies,
*Acteon
And wonders at the swiftness of his thighs.
But when his looks he in the river viewed,
He would have cried, “Woe’s me!”—No words ensued.
His words were groans. He frets, with galling tears,
Cheeks not his own; yet his own mind he bears.
What should he do? Go home? Or in the wood
Forever lurk? Fear, this; shame, that withstood.
While thus he doubts, his dogs their master view:
Blackfoot and Tracer, opening first, pursue:
Sure Tracer, Gnossus, Blackfoot, Sparta bore.
Then all fell in, more swift than forced air:
Spy, Ravener, Climb-cliff: these Arcadia bred.
Strong Fawn-bane, Whirlwind, eager Follow-dread;
Hunter—for scent; for speed, Flight went before;
Fierce Salvage, lately ganched* by a boar;
*gashed
Greedy, with her two whelps; grim Wolf-got Ranger;
Stout Shepherd, late preserving flocks from danger;
Gaunt Catch, whose race from Sicyonia came;
Patch, Courser, Blab, rash Tiger, never tame;
Blanch, Mourner, Roister, Wolf surpassing strong;
And Tempest, able to continue long;
Swift, with his brother Churl, a Cyprian hound;
Bold Snatch, whose sable brows a white star crowned;
Cole, shag-haired Rug, and Light-foot, wondrous fleet,
Bred of a Spartan bitch, his sire of Crete;
White-tooth, and Ring-wood (others not to express):
O’er rocks, o’er crags, o’er cliffs that want access,
Through straitened ways, and where there was no way,
The well-mouthed hounds pursue the princely prey.
Where oft he wont to follow, now he flies;
Flies from his family! in thought he cries:
“I am Actaeon, servants, know your Lord!”
Thoughts wanted words. High skies the noise record.
First, Collier pinched him by the haunch: in flung
Fierce Kill-dear; Hill-bred on his shoulder hung.
These came forth last; but crossed a nearer way
A-thwart the hills. While thus their Lord they stay,
In rush the rest, who gripe him with their fangs.
Now is no room for wounds. Groans speak his pangs,
Though not with humane voice, unlike a hart
In whose laments the known rocks bear a part.
Pitched on his knees, like one who pity craves,
His silent looks, instead of arms, he waves.
With usual shouts their dogs the hunters cheer;
And seek, and call “Actaeon.” He (too near!)
Made answer by mute motions, blamed of all
For being absent at his present fall.
Present he was, that absent would have been;
Nor would his cruel hounds have felt, but seen.
Their snouts they in his body bathe; and tear
Their master in the figure of a deer.
Nor, till a thousand wounds had life disseised*,
*deprived
Could quiver-bearing Dian be appeased.
’Twas censured variously, for many thought
The punishment far greater than the fault.
Others so sour a chastity commend,
As worthy her: and both, their parts defend.

George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis (London, 1632), Book 3, sigs. K 4v-L1v, modernized.

The Story of Adonis

Myrrha, as she transforms into a myrrh tree, gives birth to Adonis.

Engraving by M. Faulte, 16--. Wellcome Collection. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0).

George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis

After an incestuous relationship with her father Cinyras, Myrrha was transformed into a myrrh tree and gave birth to Adonis simultaneously. Here is Ovid’s version. —Dolan

Charged with her womb, not knowing what to crave,
Between the hate of life, and fear of death,
Those thoughts she utters with her fainting breath.
“You Powers! If penitency pierce your ear,
I have deserved, nor refuse to bear,
Your just inflictions: yet lest I profane
Or those who live, or who in death remain,
O banish me from either monarchy,
That, changed by you, I may nor live, nor die!”
Confession some celestial pity found;
Those wishes had their gods. Even then, the ground
Covered her legs: a downward-spreading root
Burst from her toes, whose ever-fixed foot
Sustained the lengthful bole.* Bones turn to wood,
*stem or trunk
To pith her marrow, into sap her blood:
Her arms great branches grow, her fingers spine
To little twigs; her skin converts to rine.*
*bark
Now her big womb the rising tree possessed,
Her bosom folds, and now her neck oppressed:
When she, delay ill-brooking, downward shrunk
And veils her visage in the closing trunk.
Though sense, with shape, she lost, still weeping she
Sheds bitter tears, which trickle from her tree:
Tears of high honor; these their mistress name
As yet preserve, and still shall bear the same.
This ill-got infant, now at perfect growth
Within the tree, endeavors to get forth.
The strict embracing bark, her belly wrung,
With torment stretched; nor had that grief a tongue,
Nor could she call Lucina* to her throes:
*goddess of childbirth
And yet the tree like one in labor shows;
Bows down with pain, and groans and weeps a flood.
Lucina by her trembling branches stood;
Her hand imposed, and uttered powerful words.
The yawning tree the crying babe affords
A passage; whom those nymphs receive with joy,
And in his mother’s tears anoint the boy.

George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis (London, 1632), Book 10, sigs. Ss2v-Ss3r, modernized.

As Adonis was born from a tree, so he became a flower in the story to which Pulter refers. Venus has warned Adonis against hunting but he did so anyway and was gored by a boar. She transforms him into a flower, both preserving him and commemorating the ephemerality of youth, beauty, and love. Here is the story of Adonis’s transformation, from Sandys’s translation of Ovid.

George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis

But when she saw him welt’ring in his gore,
Down jumping from the skies, at once she tore
Her hair and bosom; then her breast invades
With bitter blows, and destiny upbraids.
“Not all,” said she, “is subject to your waste:
Our sorrows’ monument shall ever last.
Sweet Boy! thy death’s sad image, every year
Shall in our solemnized complaint appear;
But be thy blood a flower. Had Proserpine
The power to change a nymph to mint? Is mine
Inferior? Or will any envy me
For such a change?” This having uttered, she
Poured nectar on it, of a fragrant smell.
Sprinkled therewith, the blood began to swell
Like shining bubbles, which from drops ascend.
And ere an hour was fully at an end,
From thence a flow’r, alike in color, rose.
Such as those trees produce, whose fruits enclose
Within the limber rine their purple grains.
And yet their beauty but a while remains:
For those light-hanging leaves, infirmly placed,
The winds, that blow on all things, quickly blast.

George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis (London, 1632), Book 10, sig. Tt1r, modernized.

Here is Shakespeare’s take on Adonis’s transformation into a flower.

From Shakespeare, “Venus and Adonis”

By this, the boy that by her side lay killed
Was melted like a vapor from her sight;
And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled,
A purple flower sprung up, checkered with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath,
And says within her bosom it shall dwell,
Since he himself is reft from her by death,
She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears
Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

‘Poor flower,’ quoth she, ‘this was thy father’s guise,
Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire,
For every little grief to wet his eyes.
To grow unto himself was his desire,
And so ’tis thine; but know it is as good
To wither in my breast as in his blood.

‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast,
Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right.
Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest;
My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night.
There shall not be one minute in an hour
Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.’

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,
And yokes her silver doves, by whose swift aid
Their mistress, mounted through the empty skies
In her light chariot, quickly is conveyed,
Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
Means to immure herself and not be seen.

William Shakespeare, “Venus and Adonis” (1593), lines 1165-1194 (conclusion), Norton third edition.