The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 113

_Ibid._ xxi.

(19)

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

_Ibid._ xciv.

(20)

Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.

_Ibid._ xcviii.

"Of all the vain a.s.sumptions of these c.o.xcombical times, that which arrogates the pre-eminence in the true science of gardening is the vainest. True, our conservatories are full of the choicest plants from every clime: we ripen the Grape and the Pine-apple with an art unknown before, and even the Mango, the Mangosteen, and the Guava are made to yield their matured fruits; but the real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity, and strangeness, and variety." So, nearly forty years ago, wrote the author of "The Poetry of Gardening," a pleasant, though somewhat fantastic essay, first published in the "Carthusian," and afterwards re-published in Murray's "Reading for the Rail," in company with an excellent article from the "Quarterly" by the same author under the t.i.tle of "The Flower Garden;" and I quote it because this "vain a.s.sumption" is probably stronger and more widespread now than when that article was written. We often hear and read accounts of modern gardening in which it is coolly a.s.sumed, and almost taken for granted, that the science of horticulture, and almost the love of flowers, is a product of the nineteenth century. But the love of flowers is no new taste in Englishmen, and the science of horticulture is in no way a modern science. We have made large progress in botanical science during the present century, and our easy communications with the whole habitable globe have brought to us thousands of new and beautiful plants in endless varieties; and we have many helps in gardening that were quite unknown to our forefathers. Yet there were brave old gardeners in our forefathers' times, and a very little acquaintance with the literature of the sixteenth century will show that in Shakespeare's time there was a most healthy and manly love of flowers for their own sake, and great industry and much practical skill in gardening. We might, indeed, go much further back than the fifteenth century, and still find the same love and the same skill. We have long lists of plants grown in times before the Conquest, with treatises on gardening, in which there is much that is absurd, but which show a practical experience in the art, and which show also that the gardens of those days were by no means ill-furnished either with fruit or flowers. Coming a little later, Chaucer takes every opportunity to speak with a most loving affection for flowers, both wild and cultivated, and for well-kept gardens; and Spenser's poems show a familiar acquaintance with them, and a warm admiration for them. Then in Shakespeare's time we have full records of the gardens and gardening which must have often met his eye; and we find that they were not confined to a few fine places here and there, but that good gardens were the necessary adjunct to every country house, and that they were cultivated with a zeal and a skill that would be a credit to any gardener of our own day. In Harrison's description of "England in Shakespeare's Youth," recently published by the new Shakespeare Society, we find that Harrison himself, though only a poor country parson, "took pains with his garden, in which, though its area covered but 300ft. of ground, there was 'a simple' for each foot of ground, no one of them being common or usually to be had." About the same time Gerard's Catalogues show that he grew in his London garden more than a thousand species of hardy plants; and Lord Bacon's famous "Essay on Gardens" not only shows what a grand idea of gardening he had himself, but also that this idea was not Utopian, but one that sprang from personal acquaintance with stately gardens, and from an innate love of gardens and flowers. Almost at the same time, but a little later, we come to the celebrated "John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, the King's Herbarist,"

whose "Paradisus Terrestris," first published in 1629, is indeed "a choise garden of all sorts of rarest flowers." His collection of plants would even now be considered an excellent collection, if it could be brought together, while his descriptions and cultural advice show him to have been a thorough practical gardener, who spoke of plants and gardens from the experience of long-continued hard work amongst them. And contemporary with him was Milton, whose numerous descriptions of flowers are nearly all of cultivated plants, as he must have often seen them in English gardens.

And so we are brought to the conclusion that in the pa.s.sages quoted above in which Shakespeare speaks so lovingly and tenderly of his favourite flowers, these expressions are not to be put down to the fancy of the poet, but that he was faithfully describing what he daily saw or might have seen, and what no doubt he watched with that carefulness and exactness which could only exist in conjunction with a real affection for the objects on which he gazed, "the fresh and fragrant flowers,"

"the pretty flow'rets," "the sweet flowers," "the beauteous flowers,"

"the sweet summer buds," "the blossoms pa.s.sing fair," "the darling buds of May."

II.--GARDENS.

(1) _King_ (reads).

It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted Garden.

_Loves Labour's Lost_, act i, sc. 1 (248).

(2) _Isabella._

He hath a Garden circ.u.mmured with brick, Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd; And to that Vineyard is a planched gate That makes his opening with this bigger key: The other doth command a little door Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads.

_Measure for Measure_, act iv, sc. 1 (28).

(3) _Antonio._

The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine.

_Much Ado About Nothing_, act i, sc. 2 (9).

(4) _Iago._

Our bodies are our Gardens, &c.

(_See_ HYSSOP.) _Oth.e.l.lo_, act i, sc. 3 (323).

(5) _1st Servant._

Why should we, in the compa.s.s of a pale, Keep law and form and due proportion, Showing as in a model our firm estate, When our sea-walled Garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruin'd, Her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars?

_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 4 (40).

The flower-gardens of Shakespeare's time were very different to the flower-gardens of our day; but we have so many good descriptions of them in books and pictures that we have no difficulty in realizing them both in their general form and arrangement. I am now speaking only of the flower-gardens; the kitchen-gardens and orchards were very much like our own, except in the one important difference, that they had necessarily much less gla.s.s than our modern gardens can command. In the flower-garden the grand leading principle was uniformity and formality carried out into very minute details. "The garden is best to be square,"

was Lord Bacon's rule; "the form that men like in general is a square, though roundness be _forma perfectissima_," was Lawson's rule; and this form was chosen because the garden was considered to be a purtenance and continuation of the house, designed so as strictly to harmonize with the architecture of the building. And Parkinson's advice was to the same effect: "The orbicular or round form is held in its own proper existence to be the most absolute form, containing within it all other forms whatsoever; but few, I think, will chuse such a proportion to be joyned to their habitation. The triangular or three-square form is such a form also as is seldom chosen by any that may make another choise. The four-square form is the most usually accepted with all, and doth best agree with any man's dwelling."

This was the shape of the ideal garden--

"And whan I had a while goon, I saugh a gardyn right anoon, Full long and broad; and every delle Enclosed was, and walled welle With high walles embatailled.

I felle fast in a waymenting By which art, or by what engyne I might come into that gardyne; But way I couthe fynd noon Into that gardyne for to goon.

Tho' gan I go a fulle grete pas, Environyng evene in compas, The closing of the square walle, Tyl that I fonde a wiket smalle So shett that I ne'er myght in gon, And other entre was ther noon."

_Romaunt of the Rose._

This square enclosure was bounded either by a high wall--"circ.u.mmured with brick," "with high walles embatailled,"--or with a thick high hedge--"encompa.s.sed on all the four sides with a stately arched hedge."

These hedges were made chiefly of Holly or Hornbeam, and we can judge of their size by Evelyn's description of his "impregnable hedge of about 400ft. in length, 9ft. high, and 5ft. in diameter." Many of these hedges still remain in our old gardens. Within this enclosure the garden was accurately laid out in formal shapes,[343:1] with paths either quite straight or in some strictly mathematical figures--

"And all without were walkes and alleyes dight With divers trees enrang'd in even rankes; And here and there were pleasant arbors pight, And shadie seats, and sundry flowring bankes, To sit and rest the walkers' wearie shankes."

_F. Q._, iv, x, 25.

The main walks were not, as with us, bounded with the turf, but they were bounded with trees, which were wrought into hedges, more or less open at the sides, and arched over at the top. These formed the "close alleys," "coven alleys," or "thick-pleached alleys," of which we read in Shakespeare and others writers of that time. Many kinds of trees and shrubs were used for this purpose; "every one taketh what liketh him best, as either Privit alone, or Sweet Bryer and White Thorn interlaced together, and Roses of one, two, or more sorts placed here and there amongst them. Some also take Lavender, Rosemary, Sage, Southernwood, Lavender Cotton, or some such other thing. Some again plant Cornel trees, and plash them or keep them low to form them into a hedge; and some again take a low p.r.i.c.kly shrub that abideth always green, called in Latin Pyracantha" (Parkinson). It was on these hedges and their adjuncts that the chief labour of the garden was spent. They were cut and tortured into every imaginable shape, for nothing came amiss to the fancy of the topiarist. When this topiary art first came into fashion in England I do not know, but it was probably more or less the fashion in all gardens of any pretence from very early times, and it reached its highest point in the sixteenth century, and held its ground as the perfection of gardening till it was driven out of the field in the last century by the "picturesque style," though many specimens still remain in England, as at Levens[344:1] and Hardwicke on a large scale, and in the gardens of many ancient English mansions and old farmhouses on a smaller scale. It was doomed as soon as landscape gardeners aimed at the natural, for even when it was still at its height Addison described it thus: "Our British gardeners, instead of humouring Nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids; we see the mark of the scissors upon every plant and bush."

But this is a digression: I must return to the Elizabethan garden, which I have hitherto only described as a great square, surrounded by wide, covered, shady walks, and with other similar walks dividing the central square into four or more compartments. But all this was introductory to the great feature of the Elizabethan garden, the formation of the "curious-knotted garden." Each of the large compartments was divided into a complication of "knots," by which was meant beds arranged in quaint patterns, formed by rule and compa.s.s with mathematical precision, and so numerous that it was a necessary part of the system that the whole square should be fully occupied by them. Lawn there was none; the whole area was nothing but the beds and the paths that divided them.

There was Gra.s.s in other parts of the pleasure grounds, and apparently well kept, for Lord Bacon has given his opinion that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green Gra.s.s kept finely shorn," but it was apparently to be found only in the orchard, the bowling-green, or the "wilderness;" in the flower-garden proper it had no place. The "knots"

were generally raised above the surface of the paths, the earth being kept in its place by borders of lead, or tiles, or wood, or even bones; but sometimes the beds and paths were on the same level, and then there were the same edgings that we now use, as Thrift, Box, Ivy, flints, &c.

The paths were made of gravel, sand, spar, &c., and sometimes with coloured earths: but against this Lord Bacon made a vigorous protest: "As to the making of knots or figures with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side on which the garden stands they be but toys; you may see as good sights many times in tarts."

The old gardening books are full of designs for these knots; indeed, no gardening book of the date seems to have been considered complete if it did not give the "latest designs," and they seem to have much tried the wit and ingenuity of the gardeners, as they must have also sorely tried their patience to keep them in order; and I doubt not that the efficiency of an Elizabethan gardener was as much tested by his skill and experience in "knot-work," as the efficiency of a modern gardener is tested by his skill in "bedding-out," which is the lineal descendant of "knot-work." In one most essential point, however, the two systems very much differed. In "bedding-out" the whole force of the system is spent in producing ma.s.ses of colours, the individual flowers being of no importance, except so far as each flower contributes its little share of colour to the general ma.s.s; and it is for this reason that so many of us dislike the system, not only because of its monotony, but more especially because it has a tendency "to teach us to think too little about the plants individually, and to look at them chiefly as an a.s.semblage of beautiful colours. It is difficult in those blooming ma.s.ses to separate one from another; all produce so much the same sort of impression. The consequence is people see the flowers on the beds without caring to know anything about them or even to ask their names.

It was different in the older gardens, because there was just variety there; the plants strongly contrasted with each other, and we were ever pa.s.sing from the beautiful to the curious. Now we get little of quaintness or mystery, or of the strange delicious thought of being lost or embosomed in a tall rich wood of flowers. All is clear, definite, and cla.s.sical, the work of a too narrow and exclusive taste."--FORBES WATSON. The old "knot-work" was not open to this censure, though no doubt it led the way which ended in "bedding-out." The beginning of the system crept in very shortly after Shakespeare's time. Parkinson spoke of an arrangement of spring flowers which, when "all planted in some proportion as near one unto another as is fit for them will give such a grace to the garden that the place will seem like a piece of tapestry of many glorious colours, to encrease every one's delight." And again--"The Tulipas may be so matched, one colour answering and setting off another, that the place where they stand may resemble a piece of curious needlework or piece of painting." But these plants were all perennial, and remained where they were once planted, and with this one exception named by Parkinson, the planting of knot-work was as different as possible from the modern planting of carpet-beds. The beds were planted inside their thick margins with a great variety of plants, and apparently set as thick as possible, like Harrison's garden quoted above, with its 300 separate plants in as many square feet. These were nearly all hardy perennials,[347:1] with the addition of a few hardy annuals, and the great object seems to have been to have had something of interest or beauty in these gardens at all times of the year. The principle of the old gardeners was that "Nature abhors a vacuum," and, as far as their gardens went, they did their best to prevent a vacuum occurring at any time. In this way I think they surpa.s.sed us in their practical gardening, for, even if they did not always succeed, it was surely something for them to aim (in Lord Bacon's happy words), "to have _ver perpetuum_ as the place affords."

Where the s.p.a.ce would allow of it, the garden was further decorated with statues, fountains, "fair mounts," labyrinths, mazes,[347:2] arbours and alcoves, rocks, "great Turkey jars," and "in some corner (or more) a true Dial or Clock, and some Antick works" (Lawson). These things were fitting ornaments in such formal gardens, but the best judges saw that they were not necessaries, and that the garden was complete without them. "They be pretty things to look on, but nothing for health or sweetness." "Such things are for state and magnificence, but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden."

Such was the Elizabethan garden in its general outlines; the sort of garden which Shakespeare must have often seen both in Warwickshire and in London. According to our present ideas such a garden would be far too formal and artificial, and we may consider that the present fashion of our gardens is more according to Milton's idea of Eden, in which there grew--

"Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plaine."