Old Time Gardens Part 18

I think Miskodeed a better name than Claytonia or Spring Beauty. The Onondaga Indians had a suggestive name for the Marsh Marigold, "It-opens-the-swamps," which seems to show you the yellow stars "shining in swamps and hollows gray." The name Cowslip has been transferred to it in some localities in New England, which is not strange when we find that the flower has fifty-six English folk-names; among them are Drunkards, Crazy Bet, Meadow-bright, Publicans and Sinners, Soldiers'

b.u.t.tons, Gowans, Kingcups, and b.u.t.tercups. Our Italian street venders call them b.u.t.tercups. In erudite Boston, in sight of Boston Common, the beautiful Fringed Gentian is not only called, but labelled, French Gentian. To hear a lovely bunch of the Arethusa called Swamp Pink is not so strange. The Sabbatia grows in its greatest profusion in the vicinity of Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, and is called locally, "The Rose of Plymouth." It is sold during its season of bloom in the streets of that town and is used to dress the churches. Its name was given to honor an early botanist, Tiberatus Sabbatia, but in Plymouth there is an almost universal belief that it was named because the Pilgrims of 1620 first saw the flower on the Sabbath day. It thus is regarded as a religious emblem, and strong objection is made to mingling other flowers with it in church decoration. This legend was invented about thirty years ago by a man whose name is still remembered as well as his work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fountain Garden at Sylvester Manor.]

CHAPTER XIII

TUSSY-MUSSIES

"There be some flowers make a delicious Tussie-Mussie or Nosegay both for Sight and Smell."

--JOHN PARKINSON, _A Garden of all Sorts of Pleasant Flowers_, 1629.

No following can be more productive of a study and love of word derivations and allied word meanings than gardening. An interest in flowers and in our English tongue go hand in hand. The old mediaeval word at the head of this chapter has a full explanation by Nares as "A nosegay, a tuzzie-muzzie, a sweet posie." The old English form, _tussy-mose_ was allied with _tosty_, a bouquet, _tuss_ and _tusk_, a wisp, as of hay, _tussock_, and _tutty_, a nosegay. Thomas Campion wrote:--

"Joan can call by name her cows, And deck her windows with green boughs; She can wreathes and tuttyes make, And trim with plums a bridal cake."

Tussy-mussy was not a colloquial word; it was found in serious, even in religious, text. A tussy-mussy was the most beloved of nosegays, and was often made of flowers mingled with sweet-scented leaves.

My favorite tussy-mussy, if made of flowers, would be of Wood Violet, Cabbage Rose, and Clove Pink. These are all beautiful flowers, but many of our most delightful fragrances do not come from flowers of gay dress; even these three are not showy flowers; flowers of bold color and growth are not apt to be sweet-scented; and all flower perfumes of great distinction, all that are unique, are from blossoms of modest color and bearing. The Calycanthus, called Virginia Allspice, Sweet Shrub, or Strawberry bush, has what I term a perfume of distinction, and its flowers are neither fine in shape, color, nor quality.

I have often tried to define to myself the scent of the Calycanthus blooms; they have an aromatic fragrance somewhat like the ripest Pineapples of the tropics, but still richer; how I love to carry them in my hand, crushed and warm, occasionally holding them tight over my mouth and nose to fill myself with their perfume. The leaves have a similar, but somewhat varied and sharper, scent, and the woody stems another; the latter I like to nibble. This flower has an element of mystery in it--that indescribable quality felt by children, and remembered by prosaic grown folk. Perhaps its curious dark reddish brown tint may have added part of the queerness, since the "Mourning Bride," similar in color, has a like mysterious a.s.sociation. I cannot explain these qualities to any one not a garden-bred child; and as given in the chapter ent.i.tled The Mystery of Flowers, they will appear to many, fanciful and unreal--but I have a fraternity who will understand, and who will know that it was this same undefinable quality that made a branch of Strawberry bush, or a handful of its stemless blooms, a gift significant of interest and intimacy; we would not willingly give Calycanthus blossoms to a child we did not like, or to a stranger.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hawthorn Arch at Holly House, Peace Dale, Rhode Island.

Home of Rowland G. Hazard, Esq.]

A rare perfume floats from the modest yellow Flowering Currant. I do not see this sweet and sightly shrub in many modern gardens, and it is our loss. The crowding bees are goodly and cheerful, and the flowers are pleasant, but the perfume is of the sort you can truly say you love it; its aroma is like some of the liqueurs of the old monks.

The greatest pleasure in flower perfumes comes to us through the first flowers of spring. How we breathe in their sweetness! Our native wild flowers give us the most delicate odors. The Mayflower is, I believe, the only wild flower for which all country folk of New England have a sincere affection; it is not only a beautiful, an enchanting flower, but it is so fresh, so balmy of bloom. It has the delicacy of texture and form characteristic of many of our native spring blooms, Hepatica, Anemone, Spring Beauty, Polygala.

The Arethusa was one of the special favorites of my father and mother, who delighted in its exquisite fragrance. Hawthorne said of it: "One of the delicatest, gracefullest, and in every manner sweetest of the whole race of flowers. For a fortnight past I have found it in the swampy meadows, growing up to its chin in heaps of wet moss. Its hue is a delicate pink, of various depths of shade, and somewhat in the form of a Grecian helmet."

It pleases me to fancy that Hawthorne was like the Arethusa, that it was a fit symbol of the nature of our greatest New England genius. Perfect in grace and beauty, full of sentiment, cla.s.sic and elegant of shape, it has a shrinking heart; the sepals and petals rise over it and shield it, and the whole flower is shy and retiring, hiding in marshes and quaking bogs.

It is one of our flowers which we ever regard singly, as an individual, a rare and fine spirit; we never think of it as growing in an expanse or even in groups. This lovely flower has, as Landor said of the flower of the vine, "a scent so delicate that it requires a sigh to inhale it."

The faintest flower scents are the best. You find yourself longing for just a little more, and you bury your face in the flowers and try to draw out a stronger breath of balm. Apple blossoms, certain Violets, and Pansies have this pale perfume.

In the front yard of my childhood's home grew a Larch, an exquisitely graceful tree, one now little planted in Northern climates. I recall with special delight the faint fragrance of its early shoots. The next tree was a splendid pink Hawthorn. What a day of mourning it was when it had to be cut down, for trees had been planted so closely that many must be sacrificed as years went on and all grew in stature.

There are some smells that are strangely pleasing to the country lover which are neither from fragrant flower nor leaf; one is the scent of the upturned earth, most heartily appreciated in early spring. The smell of a ploughed field is perhaps the best of all earthy scents, though what Bliss Carman calls "the racy smell of the forest loam" is always good.

Another is the burning of weeds of garden rakings,

"The spicy smoke Of withered weeds that burn where gardens be."

A garden "weed-smother" always makes me think of my home garden, and my father, who used to stand by this burning weed-heap, raking in the withered leaves. Many such scents are pleasing chiefly through the power of a.s.sociation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Thyme-covered Graves.]

The sense of smell in its psychological relations is most subtle:--

"The subtle power in perfume found, Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound No censer idly burned.

"And Nature holds in wood and field Her thousand sunlit censers still; To spells of flower and shrub we yield Against or with our will."

Dr. Holmes notes that memory, imagination, sentiment, are most readily touched through the sense of smell. He tells of the a.s.sociations borne to him by the scent of Marigold, of Life-everlasting, of an herb closet.

Notwithstanding all these tributes to sweet scents and to the sense of smell, it is not deemed, save in poetry, wholly meet to dwell much on smells, even pleasant ones. To all who here sniff a little disdainfully at a whole chapter given to flower scents, let me repeat the Oriental proverb:--

"To raise Flowers is a Common Thing, G.o.d alone gives them Fragrance."

Balmier far, and more stimulating and satisfying than the perfumes of most blossoms, is the scent of aromatic or balsamic leaves, of herbs, of green growing things. Sweetbrier, says Th.o.r.eau, is thus "thrice crowned: in fragrant leaf, tinted flower, and glossy fruit." Every spring we long, as Whittier wrote--

"To come to Bayberry scented slopes, And fragrant Fern and Groundmat vine, Breathe airs blown o'er holt and copse, Sweet with black Birch and Pine."

All these scents of holt and copse are dear to New Englanders.

I have tried to explain the reason for the charm to me of growing Thyme.

It is not its beautiful perfume, its clear vivid green, its tiny fresh flowers, or the element of historic interest. Alphonse Karr gives another reason, a sentiment of grat.i.tude. He says:--

"Thyme takes upon itself to embellish the parts of the earth which other plants disdain. If there is an arid, stony, dry soil, burnt up by the sun, it is there Thyme spreads its charming green beds, perfumed, close, thick, elastic, scattered over with little b.a.l.l.s of blossom, pink in color, and of a delightful freshness."

Thyme was, in older days, spelt Thime and Time. This made the poet call it "pun-provoking Thyme." I have an ancient recipe from an old herbal for "Water of Time to ease the Pa.s.sions of the Heart." This remedy is efficacious to-day, whether you spell it time or thyme.

There are shown on page 301 some lonely graves in the old Moravian burying-ground in Bethlehem, overgrown with the pleasant perfumed Thyme.

And as we stand by their side we think with a half smile--a tender one--of the never-failing pun of the old herbalists.

Spenser called Thyme "bee-alluring," "honey-laden." It was the symbol of sweetness; and the Thyme that grew on the sunny slopes of Mt. Hymettus gave to the bees the sweetest and most famed of all honey. The plant furnished physic as well as perfume and puns and honey. Pliny named eighteen sovereign remedies made from Thyme. These cured everything from the "bite of poysonful spidars" to "the Apoplex." There were so many recipes in the English _Compleat Chirurgeon_, and similar medical books, that you would fancy venomous spiders were as thick as gnats in England.

These spider cure-alls are however simply a proof that the recipes were taken from dose-books of Pliny and various Roman physicians, with whom spider bites were more common and more painful than in England.

_The Haven of Health_, written in 1366, with a special view to the curing of "Students," says that Wild Thyme has a great power to drive away heaviness of mind, "to purge melancholly and splenetick humours."

And the author recommends to "sup the leaves with eggs." The leaves were used everywhere "to be put in puddings and such like meates, so that in divers places Thime was called Pudding-gra.s.s." Pudding in early days was the stuffing of meat and poultry, while concoctions of eggs, milk, flour, sugar, etc., like our modern puddings, were called whitpot.

Many traditions hang around Thyme. It was used widely in incantations and charms. It was even one of the herbs through whose magic power you could see fairies. Here is a "Choice Proven Secret made Known" from the Ashmolean Mss.

How to see Fayries

"Rx. A pint of Sallet-Oyle and put it into a vial-gla.s.se but first wash it with Rose-water and Marygolde-water the Flowers to be gathered toward the East. Wash it until teh Oyle come white. Then put it in the gla.s.se, _ut supra_: Then put thereto the budds of Holyhocke, the flowers of Marygolde, the flowers or toppers of Wild Thyme, the budds of young Hazle: and the time must be gathered neare the side of a Hill where Fayries used to be: and take the gra.s.se off a Fayrie throne. Then all these put into the Oyle into the Gla.s.se, and sette it to dissolve three dayes in the Sunne and then keep for thy use _ut supra_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "White Umbrellas of Elder."]

"I know a bank whereon the Wild Thyme blows"--it is not in old England, but on Long Island; the dense cl.u.s.ters of tiny aromatic flowers form a thick cushioned carpet under our feet. Lord Bacon says in his essay on Gardens:--

"Those which perfume the air most delightfully, not pa.s.sed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed are three: that is, Burnet, Wild Thyme, and Water-Mints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."

Here we have an alley of Thyme, set by nature, for us to tread upon and enjoy, though Thyme always seems to me so cla.s.sic a plant, that it is far too fine to walk upon; one ought rather to sleep and dream upon it.