Old Time Gardens Part 28

I was the symbol of their happy married love. See! there they lie, under the gray stone beneath those cedars. Their children all are far away, but every year I grow fresh and green, though I find it lonely here now." To me, the Matrimony vine is ever a plant of interest, and it may be very beautiful, if cared for. On page 186 is shown the lovely growth on the porch at Van Cortlandt Manor.

With a sentiment of wonder and inquiry, not unmixed with mystery, do we regard many flowers, which are described in our botanies as Garden Escapes. This Matrimony vine is one of the many creeping, climbing things that have wandered away from houses. Honeysuckles and Trumpet-vines are far travellers. I saw once in a remote and wild spot a great boulder surrounded with bushes and all were covered with the old Coral or Trumpet Honeysuckle; it had such a familiar air, and yet seemed to have gained a certain knowingness by its travels.

This element of mystery does not extend to the flowers which I am told once were in trim gardens, but which I have never seen there, such as Ox-eye Daisies, Scotch Thistles, Chamomile, Tansy, Bergamot, Yarrow, and all of the Mint family; they are to me truly wild. But when I find flowers still cherished in our gardens, growing also in some wild spot, I regard them with wonder. A great expanse of Coreopsis, a field of Grape Hyacinth or Star of Bethlehem, roadsides of Coronilla or Moneywort, rows of red Day Lily and Tiger Lily, patches of Sunflowers or Jerusalem Artichokes, all are matters of thought; we long to trace their wanderings, to have them tell whence and how they came. Bouncing Bet is too cheerful and rollicking a wanderer to awaken sentiment. How gladly has she been welcomed to our fields and roadsides. I could not willingly spare her in our country drives, even to become again a cherished garden dweller. She rivals the Succory in beautifying arid dust heaps and barren railroad cuts, with her tender opalescent pink tints. How wholesome and hearty her growth, how pleasant her fragrance. We can never see her too often, nor ever stigmatize her, as have been so many of our garden escapes, as "Now a dreaded weed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bouncing Bet.]

One of the weirdest of all flowers to me is the b.u.t.ter-and-eggs, the Toad-flax, which was once a garden child, but has run away from gardens to wander in every field in the land. I haven't the slightest reason for this regard of b.u.t.ter-and-eggs, and I believe it is peculiar to myself, just as is Dr. Forbes Watson's regard of the Marshmallow to him. I have no uncanny or sad a.s.sociations with it, and I never heard anything "queer" about it. Thirty years ago, in a locality I knew well in central Ma.s.sachusetts, b.u.t.ter-and-eggs was far from common; I even remember the first time I saw it and was told its quaint name; now it grows there and everywhere; it is a persistent weed. John Burroughs calls it "the hateful Toad-flax," and old Mana.s.seh Cutler, in a curious mixture of compliment and slur, "a common, handsome, tedious weed." It travels above ground and below ground, and in some soils will run out the gra.s.s.

It knows how to allure the b.u.mblebee, however, and has honey in its heart. I think it a lovely flower, though it is queer; and it is a delight to the scientific botanist, in the delicate perfection of its methods and means of fertilization.

The greatest beauty of this flower is in late autumn, when it springs up densely in shaven fields. I have seen, during the last week in October, fields entirely filled with its exquisite sulphur-yellow tint, one of the most delicate colors in nature; a yellow that is luminous at night, and is rivalled only by the pale yellow translucent leaves of the Moosewood in late autumn, which make such a strange pallid light in old forests in the North--a light which dominates over every other autumn tint, though the trees which bear them are so spindling and low, and little noted save in early spring in their rare pinkness, and in this their autumn etherealization. And the Moosewood shares the mystery of the b.u.t.ter-and-eggs as well as its color. I should be afraid to drive or walk alone in a wood road, when the Moosewood leaves were turning yellow in autumn. I shall never forget them in Dublin, New Hampshire, driving through what our delightful Yankee charioteer and guide called "only a cat-road."

This was to me a new use of the word cat as a praenomen, though I knew, as did Dr. Holmes and Hosea Biglow, and every good New Englander, that "cat-sticks" were poor spindling sticks, either growing or in a load of cut wood. I heard a country parson say as he regarded ruefully a gift of a sled load of firewood, "The deacon's load is all cat-sticks." Of course a cat-stick was also the stick used in the game of ball called tip-cat. Myself when young did much practise another loved ball game, "one old cat," a local favorite, perhaps a local name. "Cat-ice," too, is a good old New England word and thing; it is the thin layer of brittle ice formed over puddles, from under which the water has afterward receded. If there lives a New Englander too old or too hurried to rejoice in stepping upon and crackling the first "cat-ice" on a late autumn morning, then he is a man; for no New England girl, a century old, could be thus indifferent. It is akin to rustling through the deep-lying autumn leaves, which affords a pleasure so absurdly disproportioned and inexplicable that it is almost mysterious. Some of us gouty ones, alas! have had to give up the "cat-slides" which were also such a delight; the little stretches of glare ice to which we ran a few steps and slid rapidly over with the impetus. But I must not let my New England folk-words lure me away from my subject, even on a tempting "cat-slide."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Overgrown Garden at Llanerck, Pennsylvania.]

Though garden flowers run everywhere that they will, they are not easily forced to become wild flowers. We hear much of the pleasure of sowing garden seeds along the roadside, and children are urged to make beautiful wild gardens to be the delight of pa.s.sers-by. Alphonse Karr wrote most charmingly of such sowings, and he pictured the delight and surprise of country folk in the future when they found the choice blooms, and the confusion of learned botanists in years to come. The delight and surprise and confusion would have been if any of his seeds sprouted and lived! A few years ago a kindly member of our United States Congress sent to me from the vast seed stores of our national Agricultural Department, thousands of packages of seeds of common garden flowers to be given to the poor children in public kindergartens and primary schools in our great city. The seeds were given to hundreds of eager flower lovers, but starch boxes and old tubs and flower pots formed the limited gardens of those Irish and Italian children, and the Government had sent to me such "hats full, sacks full, bushel-bags full," that I was left with an embarra.s.sment of riches. I sent them to Narragansett and amused myself thereafter by sowing several pecks of garden seeds along the country roadsides; never, to my knowledge, did one seed live and produce a plant. I watched eagerly for certain plantings of Poppies, Candytuft, Morning-glories, and even the indomitable Portulaca; not one appeared. I don't know why I should think I could improve on nature; for I drove through that road yesterday and it was radiant with Wild Rose bloom, white Elder, and Meadow Beauty; a combination that Th.o.r.eau thought and that I think could not be excelled in a cultivated garden. Above all, these are the right things in the right place, which my garden plants would not have been. I am sure that if they had lived and crowded out these exquisite wild flowers I should have been sorry enough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fountain at Yaddo.]

The hardy Colchic.u.m or Autumnal Crocus is seldom seen in our gardens; nor do I care for its increase, even when planted in the gra.s.s. It bears to me none of the delight which accompanies the spring Crocus, but seems to be out of keeping with the autumnal season. Rising bare of leaves, it has but a seminatural aspect, as if it had been stuck rootless in the ground like the leafless, stemless blooms of a child's posy bed. Its English name--Naked Boys--seems suited to it. The Colchic.u.m is a.s.sociated in my mind with the Indian Pipe and similar growths; it is curious, but it isn't pleasing. As the Indian Pipe could not be lured within garden walls, I will not write of it here, save to say that no one could ever see it growing in its shadowy home in the woods without yielding to its air of mystery. It is the weirdest flower that grows, so palpably ghastly that we feel almost a cheerful satisfaction in the perfection of its performance and our own responsive thrill, just as we do in a good ghost story.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Avenue of White Pines at Wellesley, Ma.s.s., the Country-seat of Hollis H. Hunnewell, Esq.]

Many wild flowers which we have transplanted to our gardens are full of magic and charm. In some, such as Thyme and Elder, these elements come from English tradition. In other flowers the quality of mystery is inherent. In childhood I absolutely abhorred Bloodroot; it seemed to me a fearsome thing when first I picked it. I remember well my dismay, it was so pure, so sleek, so innocent of face, yet bleeding at a touch, like a murdered man in the Blood Ordeal.

The Trillium, Wake-robin, is a wonderful flower. I have seen it growing in a luxuriance almost beyond belief in lonely Canadian forests on the Laurentian Mountains. At this mining settlement, so remote that it was unvisited even by the omnipresent and faithful Canadian priest, was a wealth of plant growth which seemed fairly tropical. The starry flowers of the Trillium hung on long peduncles, and the two-inch diameter of the ordinary blossom was doubled. The Painted Trillium bore rich flowers of pink and wine color, and stood four or five feet from the ground. I think no one had ever gathered their blooms, for there were no women in this mining camp save a few French-Indian servants and one Irish cook, and no educated white woman had ever been within fifty, perhaps a hundred, miles of the place. Every variety of bloom seemed of exaggerated growth, but the Trillium exceeded all. An element of mystery surrounds this plant, a quality which appertains to all "three-cornered"

flowers; perhaps there may be some significance in the three-sided form. I felt this influence in the extreme when in the presence of this Canadian Trillium, so much so that I was depressed by it when wandering alone even in the edge of the forest; and when by light o' the moon I peered in on this forest garden, it was like the vision of a troop of trembling white ghosts, stimulating to the fancy. It was but a part of the whole influence of that place, which was full of eerie mystery. For after the countless eons of time during which "the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the earth," the waters at last were gathered together and dry land appeared. And that dry land which came up slowly out of the face of the waters was this Laurentian range. And when at G.o.d's command "on the third day" the earth brought forth gra.s.s, and herb yielded seed--lo, among the things which were good and beautiful there shone forth upon the earth the first starry flowers of the white Trillium.

CHAPTER XXII

ROSES OF YESTERDAY

"Each morn a thousand Roses brings, you say; Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?"

--_Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, translated by EDWARD FITZGERALD, 1858.

The answer can be given the Persian poet that the Rose of Yesterday leaves again in the heart. The subtle fragrance of a Rose can readily conjure in our minds a dream of summers past, and happy summers to come.

Many a flower lover since Chaucer has felt as did the poet:--

"The savour of the Roses swote Me smote right to the herte rote."

The old-time Roses possess most fully this hidden power. Sweetest of all was the old Cabbage Rose--called by some the Provence Rose--for its perfume "to be chronicled and chronicled, and cut and chronicled, and all-to-be-praised." Its odor is perfection; it is the standard by which I compare all other fragrances. It is not too strong nor too cloying, as are some Rose scents; it is the idealization of that distinctive sweetness of the Rose family which other Roses have to some degree. The color of the Cabbage Rose is very warm and pleasing, a clear, happy pink, and the flower has a wholesome, open look; but it is not a beautiful Rose by florists' standards,--few of the old Roses are,--and it is rather awkward in growth. The Cabbage Rose is said to have been a favorite in ancient Rome. I wish it had a prettier name; it is certainly worthy one.

The Hundred-leaved Rose was akin to the Cabbage Rose, and shared its delicious fragrance. In its rather irregular shape it resembled the present Duke of Suss.e.x Rose.

One of the rarest of old-time Roses in our gardens to-day is the red and white mottled York and Lancaster. It is as old as the sixteenth century.

Shakespeare writes in the _Sonnets_:--

"The Roses fearfully in thorns did stand One blushing shame, another white despair.

A third, nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both."

They are what Chaucer loved, "sweitie roses red, brode, and open also."

Roses of a broad, flat expanse when in full bloom; they have a cheerier, heartier, more gracious look than many of the new Roses that never open far from bud, that seem so pinched and narrow. What ineffable fragrance do they pour out from every wide-open flower, a fragrance that is the very spirit of the Oriental Attar of Roses; all the sensuous sweetness of the attar is gone, and only that which is purest and best remains. I believe, in thinking of it, that it equals the perfume of the Cabbage Rose, which, ere now, I have always placed first. This York and Lancaster Rose is the _Rosa mundi_,--the rose of the world. A fine plant is growing in Hawthorne's old home in Salem.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Violets in Silver Double Coaster.]

Opposite page 462 is an unusual depiction of the century-old York and Lancaster Rose still growing and flourishing in the old garden at Van Cortlandt Manor. It is from one of the few photographs which I have ever seen which make you forgive their lack of color. The vigor, the grace, the richness of this wonderful Rose certainly are fully shown, though but in black and white. I have called this Rose bush a century old; it is doubtless much older, but it does not seem old; it is gifted with everlasting youth. We know how the Persians gather before a single plant in flower; they spread their rugs, and pray before it; and sit and meditate before it; sip sherbet, play the lute and guitar in the moonlight; bring their friends and stand as in a vision, then talk in praises of it, and then all serenade it with an ode from Hafiz and depart. So would I gather my friends around this lovely old Rose, and share its beauty just as my friends at the manor-house share it with me; and as the Persians, we would praise it in sunlight and by moonlight, and sing its beauty in verses. This York and Lancaster Rose was known to Parkinson in his day; it is his _Rosa versicolor_. I wonder why so few modern gardens contain this treasure. I know it does not rise to all the standards of the modern Rose growers; but it possesses something better--it has a living spirit; it speaks of history, romance, sentiment; it awakens inspiration and thought, it has an ever living interest, a significance. I wonder whether a hundred years from now any one will stand before some Crimson Rambler, which will then be ancient, and feel as I do before this York and Lancaster G.o.ddess.

[Ill.u.s.tration: York and Lancaster Rose.]

The fragrance of the sweetest Roses--the Damask, the Cabbage, the York and Lancaster--is beyond any other flower-scent, it is irresistible, enthralling; you cannot leave it. You can push aside a Syringa, a Honeysuckle, even a Mignonette, but there is a magic something which binds you irrevocably to the Rose. I have never doubted that the Rose has some compelling quality shared not by other flowers. I know not whether it comes from centuries of establishment as a race-symbol, or from some inherent witchery of the plant, but it certainly exists.

The variety of Roses known to old American gardens, as to English gardens, was few. The English Eglantine was quickly established here in gardens and spread to roadsides. The small, ragged, cheerful little Cinnamon Rose, now chiefly seen as a garden stray, is undoubtedly old.

This Rose diffuses its faint "sinamon smelle" when the petals are dried.

Nearly all of the Roses vaguely thought to be one or two hundred years old date only, within our ken, to the earlier years of the nineteenth century. The Seven Sisters Rose, imagined by the owner of many a Southern garden to belong to colonial days, is one of the family _Rosa multiflora_, introduced from j.a.pan to England by Thunberg. Its catalogue name is Greville. I think the Seven Sisters dates back to 1822. The cl.u.s.ters of little double blooms of the Seven Sisters are not among our beautiful Roses, but are planted by the house mistress of every Southern home from power of a.s.sociation, because they were loved by her grandmothers, if not by more distant forbears. The crimson Boursaults are no older. They came from the Swiss Alps and therefore are hardy, but they are fussy things, needing much pruning and pulling out. I recall that they had much longer p.r.i.c.kles than the other roses in our garden.

The beloved little Banksia Rose came from China in 1807. The Madame Plantier is a hybrid China Rose of much popularity. We have had it about seventy or eighty years. In the lovely garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, author of _Flowers and Trees in their Haunts_, I saw, this spring, a giant Madame Plantier which had over five thousand buds, and which could scarcely be equalled in beauty by any modern Roses. Its photograph gives scant idea of its size.

What grat.i.tude we have in spring to the Sweetbrier! How early in the year, from sprouting branch and curling leaf, it begins to give forth its pure odor! Gracious and lavish plant, beloved in scent by every one, you have no rival in the spring garden with its pale perfumes. The Sweetbrier and Shakespeare's Musk Rose (_Rosa moschata_) are said to be the only Roses that at evening pour forth their perfume; the others are what Bacon called "fast of their odor."

The June Rose, called by many the Hedgehog Rose, was, I think, the first Rose of summer. A st.u.r.dy plant, about three feet in height; set thick with briers, it well deserved its folk name. The flowers opened into a saucer of richest carmine, as fragrant as an American Beauty, and the little circles of crimson resembling the _Rosa rugosa_ were seen in every front dooryard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cinnamon Roses.]

In the Walpole garden from whence came to us our beloved Ambrosia, was an ample Box-edged flower bed which my mother and the great-aunt called The Rosery. One cousin, now living, recalls with distinctness its charms in 1830; for it was beautiful, though the vast riches of the Rose-world of China and j.a.pan had not reached it. There grew in it, he remembers, Yellow Scotch Roses, Sweetbrier (or Eglantine), Cinnamon Roses, White Scotch Roses, Damask Roses, Blush Roses, Dog Roses (the Canker-bloom of Shakespeare), Black Roses, Burgundy Roses, and Moss Roses. The last-named sensitive creatures, so difficult to rear with satisfaction in such a climate, found in this Rosery by the river-side some exact fitness of soil or surroundings, or perhaps of fostering care, which in spite of the dampness and the constant tendency of all Moss Roses to mildew, made them blossom in unrivalled perfection. I remember their successors, deplored as much inferior to the Roses of 1830, and they were the finest Moss Roses I ever saw blooming in a garden. An amusing saying of some of the village pa.s.sers-by (with smaller gardens and education) showed the universal acknowledgment of the perfection of these Roses. These people thought the name was Morse Roses and always thus termed them, fancying they were named for the family for whom the flowers bloomed in such beauty and number.

Among the other Roses named by my cousin I recall the White Scotch Rose, sometimes called also the Burnet-leaved Rose. It was very fragrant, and was often chosen for a Sunday posy. There were both single and double varieties.

The Blush Rose (_Rosa alba_), known also as Maiden's blush, was much esteemed for its exquisite color; it could be distinguished readily by the glaucous hue of the foliage, which always looked like the leaves of artificial roses. It was easily blighted; and indeed we must acknowledge that few of the old Roses were as certain as their st.u.r.dy descendants.

The Damask Rose was the only one ever used in careful families and by careful housekeepers for making rose-water. There was a Velvet Rose, darker than the Damask and low-growing, evidently the same Rose. Both showed plentiful yellow stamens in the centres, and had exquisite rich dark leaves.

The old Black Rose of The Rosery was so suffused with color-principle, so "color-flushing," that even the wood had black and dark red streaks.

Its petals were purple-black.

The Burgundy Rose was of the Cabbage Rose family; its flowers were very small, scarce an inch in diameter. There were two varieties: the one my cousin called Little Burgundy had clear dark red blossoms; the other, white with pink centres. Both were low-growing, small bushes with small leaves. They are practically vanished Roses--wholly out of cultivation.

We had other tiny roses; one was a lovely little Rose creature called a Fairy Rose. I haven't seen one for years. As I recall them, the Rose plants were never a foot in height, and had dainty little flower rosettes from a quarter to half an inch in diameter set in thick cl.u.s.ters. But the recalled dimensions of youth vary so when seen actually in the cold light of to-day that perhaps I am wrong in my description. This was also called a Pony Rose. This Fairy Rose was not the Polyantha which also has forty or fifty little roses in a cl.u.s.ter.

The single Polyantha Rose looks much like its cousin, the Blackberry blossom.

Another small Rose was the Garland Rose. This was deemed extremely elegant, and rightfully so. It has great corymbs of tiny white blossoms with tight little buff buds squeezing out among the open Roses.

Another old favorite was the Rose of Four Seasons--known also by its French name, _Rose de Quartre Saisons_--which had occasional blooms throughout the summer. It may have been the foundation of our Hybrid Perpetual Roses. The Bourbon Roses were vastly modish; their round smooth petals and oval leaves easily distinguish them from other varieties.

Among the several hundred things I have fully planned out to do, to solace my old age after I have become a "centurion," is a series of water-color drawings of all these old-time Roses, for so many of them are already scarce.