Old Time Gardens Part 19

Great bushes of Elder, another flower of witchcraft, grow and blossom near my Thyme bank. Old Thomas Browne, as long ago as 1685 called the Elder bloom "white umbrellas"--which has puzzled me much, since we are told to a.s.sign the use and knowledge of umbrellas in England to a much later date; perhaps he really wrote umbellas. Now it is a well-known fact--sworn to in scores of old herbals, that any one who stands on Wild Thyme, by the side of an Elder bush, on Midsummer Eve, will "see great experiences"; his eyes will be opened, his wits quickened, his vision clarified; and some have even seen fairies, pixies--Shakespeare's elves--sporting over the Thyme at their feet.

I shall not tell whom I saw walking on my Wild Thyme bank last Midsummer Eve. I did not need the Elder bush to open my eyes. I watched the twain strolling back and forth in the half-light, and I heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk as they walked toward me, and I lost the responses as they turned from me. At last, in a louder voice:--

HE. "What is this jolly smell all around here? Just like a mint-julep! Some kind of a flower?"

SHE. "It's Thyme, Wild Thyme; it has run into the edge of the lawn from the field, and is just ruining the gra.s.s."

HE (_stooping to pick it_). "Why, so it is. I thought it came from that big white flower over there by the hedge."

SHE. "No, that is Elder."

HE (_after a pause_). "I had to learn a lot of old Arnold's poetry at school once, or in college, and there was some just like to-night:--

"'The evening comes--the fields are still, The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again.

Deserted is the half-mown plain, And from the Thyme upon the height, And from the Elder-blossom white, And pale Dog Roses in the hedge, And from the Mint-plant in the sedge, In puffs of balm the night air blows The perfume which the day foregoes-- And on the pure horizon far See pulsing with the first-born star The liquid light above the hill.

The evening comes--the fields are still.'"

Then came the silence and half-stiffness which is ever apt to follow any long quotation, especially any rare recitation of verse by those who are notoriously indifferent to the charms of rhyme and rhythm, and are of another s.e.x than the listener. It seems to indicate an unusual condition of emotion, to be a sort of barometer of sentiment, and the warning of threatening weather was not unheeded by her; hence her response was somewhat nervous in utterance, and instinctively perverse and contradictory.

SHE. "That line, 'The liquid light above the hill,' is very lovely, but I can't see that it's any of it at all like to-night."

HE (_stoutly and resentfully_). "Oh, no! not at all! There's the field, all still, and here's Thyme, and Elder, and there are wild Roses!--and see! the moon is coming up--so there's your liquid light."

SHE. "Well! Yes, perhaps it is; at any rate it is a lovely night.

You've read _Lavengro_? No? Certainly you must have heard of it.

The gipsy in it says: 'Life is sweet, brother. There's day and night, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there is likewise a wind on the heath.'"

HE (_dubiously_). "That's rather queer poetry, if it is poetry--and you must know I do not like to hear you call me brother."

Whereupon I discreetly betrayed my near presence on the piazza, to prove that the field, though still, was not deserted. And soon the twain said they would walk to the club house to view the golf prizes; and they left the Wild Thyme and Elder blossoms white, and turned their backs on the moon, and fell to golf and other eminently unromantic topics, far safer for Midsummer Eve than poesy and other sweet things.

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

CHAPTER XIV

JOAN SILVER-PIN

"Being of many variable colours, and of great beautie, although of evill smell, our gentlewomen doe call them Jone Silver-pin."

--JOHN GERARDE, _Herball_, 1596.

Garden Poppies were the Joan Silver-pin of Gerarde, stigmatized also by Parkinson as "Jone Silver-pinne, _subauditur_; faire without and foule within." In Elizabeth's day Poppies met universal distrust and aversion, as being the source of the dreaded opium. Spenser called the flower "dead-sleeping" Poppy; Morris "the black heart, amorous Poppy"--which might refer to the black spots in the flower's heart.

Clare, in his _Shepherd's Calendar_ also asperses them:--

"Corn-poppies, that in crimson dwell, Called Head-aches from their sickly smell."

Forby adds this testimony: "Any one by smelling of it for a very short time may convince himself of the propriety of the name." Some fancied that the dazzle of color caused headaches--that vivid scarlet, so fine a word as well as color that it is annoying to hear the poets change it to crimson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Black Heart, Amorous Poppies."]

This regard of and aversion to the Poppy lingered among elderly folks till our own day; and I well recall the horror of a visitor of antique years in our mother's garden during our childhood, when we were found cheerfully eating Poppy seeds. She viewed us with openly expressed apprehension that we would fall into a stupor; and quite terrified us and our relatives, in spite of our a.s.sertions that we "always ate them,"

which indeed we always did and do to this day; and very pleasant of taste they are, and of absolutely no effect, and not at all of evil smell to our present fancy, either in blossom or seed, though distinctly medicinal in odor.

Returned missionaries were frequent and honored visitors in our town and our house in those days; and one of these good men rea.s.sured us and reinstated in favor our uncanny feast by telling us that in the East, Poppy seeds were eaten everywhere, and were frequently baked with wheaten flour into cakes. A dislike of the scent of Field Poppies is often found among English folk. The author of _A World in a Garden_ speaks in disgust of "the pungent and sickly odor of the flaring Poppies--they positively nauseate me"; but then he disliked their color too.

There is something very fine about a Poppy, in the extraordinary combination of boldness of color and great size with its slender delicacy of stem, the grace of the set of the beautiful buds, the fine turn of the flower as it opens, and the wonderful airiness of poise of so heavy a flower. The silkiness of tissue of the petals, and their semi-transparency in some colors, and the delicate fringes of some varieties, are great charms.

"Each crumpled crepe-like leaf is soft as silk; Long, long ago the children saw them there, Scarlet and rose, with fringes white as milk, And called them 'shawls for fairies' dainty wear'; They were not finer, those laid safe away In that low attic, neath the brown, warm eaves."

And when the flowers have shed, oh, so lightly! their silken petals, there is still another beauty, a seed vessel of such cla.s.sic shape that it wears a crown.

I have always rejoiced in the tributes paid to the Poppy by Ruskin and Mrs. Thaxter. She deemed them the most satisfactory flower among the annuals "for wondrous variety, certain picturesque qualities, for color and form, and a subtle air of mystery."

There is a line of Poppy colors which is most entrancing; the gray, smoke color, lavender, mauve, and lilac Poppies, edged often and freaked with tints of red, are rarely beautiful things. There are fine white Poppies, some fringed, some single, some double--the Bride is the appropriate name of the fairest. And the pinks of Poppies, that wonderful red-pink, and a sh.e.l.l-pink that is almost salmon, and the sunset pinks of our modern Shirley Poppies, with quality like finest silken gauze! The story of the Shirley Poppies is one of magic, that a flower-loving clergyman who in 1882 sowed the seed of one specially beautiful Poppy which had no black in it, and then sowed those of its fine successors, produced thus a variety which has supplied the world with beauty. Rev. Mr. Wilks, their raiser, gives these simply worded rules anent his Shirley Poppies:--

"1, They are single; 2, always have a white base; 3, with yellow or white stamens, anthers, or pollen; 4, and never have the smallest particle of black about them."

The thought of these successful and beautiful Poppies is very stimulating to flower raisers of moderate means, with no profound knowledge of flowers; it shows what can be done by enthusiasm and application and patience. It gives something of the same comfort found in Keats's fine lines to the singing thrush:--

"Oh! fret not after knowledge.

I have none, _and yet the evening listens_."

Notwithstanding all this distinction and beauty, these fine things of the garden were dubbed Joan Silver-pin. I wonder who Joan Silver-pin was! I have searched faithfully for her, but have not been able to get on the right scent. Was she of real life, or fiction? I have looked through the lists of characters of contemporary plays, and read a few old jest books and some short tales of that desperately colorless sort, wherein you read page after page of the printed words with as little absorption of signification as if they were Choctaw. But never have I seen Joan Silver-pin's name; it was a bit of Elizabethan slang, I suspect,--a cant term once well known by every one, now existing solely through this chance reference of the old herbalists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Valerian.]

No garden can aspire to be named An Old-fashioned Garden unless it contains that beautiful plant the Garden Valerian, known throughout New England to-day as Garden Heliotrope; as Setwall it grew in every old garden, as it was in every pharmacopoeia. It was termed "drink-quickening Setuale" by Spenser, from the universal use of its flowers to flavor various enticing drinks. Its lovely blossoms are pinkish in bud and open to pure white; its curiously penetrating vanilla-like fragrance is disliked by many who are not cats. I find it rather pleasing of scent when growing in the garden, and not at all like the extremely nasty-smelling medicine which is made from it, and which has been used for centuries for "histerrick fits," and is still constantly prescribed to-day for that unsympathized-with malady. Dr.

Holmes calls it, "Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms." It is a stately plant when in tall flower in June; my sister had great clumps of bloom like the ones shown above, but alas! the cats caught them before the photographer did. The cats did not have to watch the wind and sun and rain, to pick out plates and pack plate-holders, and gather ray-fillers and cloth and lens, and adjust the tripod, and fix the camera and focus, and think, and focus, and think, and then wait--till the wind ceased blowing. So when they found it, they broke down every slender stalk and rolled in it till the ground was tamped down as hard as if one of our lazy road-menders had been at it. Valerian has in England as an appropriate folk name, "Cats'-fancy." The pretty little annual, Nemophila, makes also a favorite rolling-place for our cat; while all who love cats have given them Catnip and seen the singular intoxication it brings. The sight of a cat in this strange ecstasy over a bunch of Catnip always gives me a half-sense of fear; she becomes such a truly wild creature, such a miniature tiger.

In _The Art of Gardening_, by J. W., Gent., 1683, the author says of Marigolds: "There are divers sorts besides the common as the African Marigold, a Fair bigge Yellow Flower, but of a very Naughty Smell." I cannot refrain, ere I tell more of the Marigold's naughtiness, to copy a note written in this book by a Ma.s.sachusetts bride whose new husband owned and studied the book two hundred years ago; for it gives a little glimpse of old-time life. In her exact little handwriting are these words:--

"Planted in Potts, 1720: An Almond Stone, an English Wallnut, Cittron Seeds, Pistachica nutts, Red Damsons, Leamon seeds, Oring seeds and Daits."

Poor Anne! she died before she had time to become any one's grandmother.

I hope her successor in matrimony, our forbear, cherished her little seedlings and rejoiced in the Lemon and Almond trees, though Anne herself was so speedily forgotten. She is, however, avenged by Time; for she is remembered better than the wife who took her place, through her simple flower-loving words.

I am surprised at this aspersion on the Marigold as to its smell, for all the traditions of this flower show it to have been a great favorite in kitchen gardens; and I have found that elderly folk are very apt to like its scent. My father loved the flower and the fragrance, and liked to have a bowl of Marigolds stand beside him on his library table. It was constantly carried to church as a "Sabbath-day posy," and its petals used as flavoring in soups and stews. Charles Lamb said it poisoned them. Canon Ellacombe writes that it has been banished in England to the gardens of cottages and old farm-houses; it had a waning popularity in America, but was never wholly despised.

How Edward Fitzgerald loved the African Marigold! "Its grand color is so comfortable to us Spanish-like Paddies," he writes to f.a.n.n.y Kemble in letters punctuated with little references to his garden flowers: letters so cheerful, too, with capitals; "I love the old way of Capitals for Names," he says--and so do I; letters bearing two surprises, namely, the infrequent references to Omar Khayyam; and the fact that Nasturtiums, not Roses, were his favorite flower.

The question of the agreeableness of a flower scent is a matter of public opinion as well as personal choice. Environment and education influence us. In olden times every one liked certain scents deemed odious to-day. Parkinson's praise of Sweet Sultans was, "They are of so exceeding sweet a scent as it surpa.s.ses the best civet that is." Have you ever smelt civet? You will need no words to tell you that the civet is a little cousin of the skunk. Cowper could not talk with civet in the room; most of us could not even breathe. The old herbalists call Privet sweet-scented. I don't know that it is strange to find a generation who loved civet and musk thinking Privet pleasant-scented. Nearly all our modern botanists have copied the words of their predecessors; but I scarcely know what to say or to think when I find so exact an observer as John Burroughs calling Privet "faintly sweet-scented." I find it rankly ill-scented.

The men of Elizabethan days were much more learned in perfumes and fonder of them than are most folk to-day. Authors and poets dwelt frankly upon them without seeming at all vulgar. Of course herbalists, from their choice of subject, were free to write of them at length, and they did so with evident delight. Nowadays the French realists are the only writers who boldly reckon with the sense of smell. It isn't deemed exactly respectable to dwell too much on smells, even pleasant ones; so this chapter certainly must be brief.