DECEMBER.
To be done
In the Orchard, and Olitory Garden.
Prune, and Nail Wall-fruit, and Standard-trees.
You may now plant Vines, etc.
Also Stocks for Graffing, etc.
Sow, as yet, Pomace of Cider-pressings to raise Nurseries; and set all sorts of Kernels, Stones, etc.
Sow for early Beans, and Pease, but take heed of the Frosts; therefore surest to defer it till after Christmas, unless the Winter promise very moderate.
All this Moneth you may continue to Trench Ground and dung it, to be ready for Bordures, or the planting of Fruit-trees, etc.
Now seed your weak Stocks.
Turn and refresh your Autumnal Fruit, lest it taint and open the Windows where it lyes, in a clear and Serene day.
Fruits in Prime, or Yet Lasting.
APPLES.
Rousseting, Leather-coat, Winter-reed, Chest-nut Apple, Great-belly, the Go-no-further, or Cats-head, with some of the precedent Moneth.
PEARS.
The Squib-pear, Spindle-pear, Virgin, Gascoyne-Bergomot, Scarlet-pear, Stopple-pear, white, red, and French Wardens (to bake or roast), etc.
DECEMBER.
To be done
In the Parterre, and Flower Garden.
As in January, continue your hostility against Vermine.
Preserve from too much Rain and Frost your choicest Anemonies, Ranunculus’s, Carnations, etc.
Be careful now to keep the Doors and Windows of your Conservatories well matted, and guarded from the piercing Air: for your Oranges, etc., are now put to the test: Temper the cold with a few Char-coal govern’d as directed in November, etc.
Set Bay-berries, etc., dropping ripe.
Look to your Fountain-pipes, and cover them with fresh and warm litter out of the stable, a good thickness lest the frosts crack them; remember it in time, and the Advice will save far both trouble and charge.
Flowers in Prime, or Yet Lasting.
Anemonies some, Persian, and Common Winter Cyclamen, Antirrhinum, Black Hellebor, Laurus tinus, single Prim-roses, Stock-gilly-flo., Iris Clusii, Snowflowers, or drops, Yucca, etc.
PART IV
GARDEN MOODS
I
TOWN GARDENS
Few people will deny the peace of mind a sheet of green grass can give, but few people, one imagines, trouble to think how they are preserved in large Towns and Cities. If it were not for Societies many little open spaces would years ago have been covered with streets of houses, many fair trees have fallen, none have been planted, and those growing have been neglected and allowed to die. Of the many Societies whose work has been to preserve for the Public pleasure grounds, good trees, parks, and flower gardens, not one deserves such praise as the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, whose great work has been carried on since 1882.
When one considers that in Hampstead over six hundred acres have been preserved by energetic Committees from the hands of builders it is easy to see how great is the debt of London to those who voluntarily work for this and other Open Space Societies.
It is not, however, by these large tracts of open country that the towns and cities alone benefit. Seats, fountains, flower beds, and pavements have been placed in old church-yards and disused burial-grounds opened for the benefit of the public. One has only to look at the map of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association to see how wonderful their work has been and still is.
To dwellers in Towns the sight of flowers in the streets is like a breath of the country. The long line of flower-sellers in the High Street, Kensington, one group of women in Piccadilly Circus, in Oxford Circus, in other spots where the place of their flower baskets brightens all the neighbourhood, are doctors, though they do not know it, of high degree. They bring the message of the changing year. They are a perpetual flower calendar, people to whom a reverence is due. One looks in Piccadilly Circus for the first Snowdrops, the little knots of their delicate white faces peering over the edge of the flower baskets. From the tops of omnibuses the first Violets are seen. Anemones have their turn, and Mimosa, and Cowslips, and Roses soon glow in the midst of the traffic, and elegant Carnations in their silver grass, and great piles of Asters. So we may read the year. All through the grey and desolate Winter these flower women hold their own, through cold and rain, and pale Winter sun they keep the day alive with the glowing colours of flowers. I often wonder, as I see them sit there so patiently, if they know the joy they give the passer-by, or if they are more like the rocks on whom flowers grow by nature. They are a curious race, these flower-women, untidy, with a screw of hair twisted up under a battered hat of black straw, with faded shawls wrapped round them, and the weapons of their craft arranged about them—jam jars of water, wire, bass, rows of little sticks on the end of which buttonholes are stuck. And they have wonderful contrivances for keeping their money, ancient purses rusty like many of themselves, in which greasy pennies and wet sixpences wallow in litters of dirty paper. I would not vouch for the truth of all they say, for it would appear from their words that every flower in their baskets is but just picked, or only that second from the market. And they regard such evidence as withered and wet flower stalks with half-humorous scorn. For all they may not be well favoured, and a pretty flower-woman is as rare as a dead donkey, still, for me, they have a certain dingy dignity, or rather a natural picturesque quality as of lichen on the pavements.
AZALEAS IN BLOOM, ROTTEN ROW.
These people are the town’s gardens of odd corners, while another tribe of them are perambulating gardens bringing sudden colour into the soberest of streets. There are those who carry enormous baskets on their heads, and cry in some incomprehensible tongue words intended to convey a message such as “All fresh.” To see a gorgeous glowing mass of Daffodils sway down the street borne triumphantly aloft like the litter of some Princess is one of those sights to repay many grey days. Then the brothers to this tribe are those who carry from street to street Ferns and Lilies on carts, drawn often by a patient ass. I own feeling a distrust for these men, they do not dispense their goods with much love. They are not eloquent, as are many flower women in praise of the beauties of the India plant, or the Shuttle-cock Ferns. I feel that they are interlopers in the business, and have failed at the hardware trade, or have no capacity for the selling of rush baskets, or the grinding of scissors. At the heels of all those who sell flowers in the streets are the out-cast members of the tribe, men with brutal faces who follow lonely women in unfrequented streets trying to thrust dead plants upon them, and cursing if they are not bought. And there are the aged crones who sit by the railings of little squares and hold out a tray of boot laces, matches, a few very suspicious-looking Apples, and, in the corner, a bunch of dead flowers—a kind of æsthetic appeal.
Your true flower-lover will search as carefully among their baskets for the object of his desire as will the collector the musty curiosity shops for prizes for his collection. There comes the time when the first Snowdrops, their stalks tied with wool, appear here and there and may be brought home as rare prizes. A word here of flower vases. Clear glass is the only form of vessel for any kind of flower. I feel certain of that. No crock, no form of pottery gives out greater the real value to your cut flowers. The stalks are part of the beauty of the flower, the submerged leaf as lovely as the leaf above. And, above and beyond all things, glass shows at once if your water is pure, and if your vase is full. Nowadays beautiful striped glass vases are made and sold so cheaply that there is no excuse for the old, and often ugly, pot vases so many people use. I own to a certain liking to seeing roses in old China bowls, but have a lurking suspicion that I am Philistine in this.
There is, of course, a distinction between Town Gardens and gardens in Towns. The one being the open free spaces dedicated to the pleasure of Duke and tramp alike: the other the hidden and hallowed spots where the town dweller fights soot, grime, smoke, and lack of sun, and fights them in many cases wonderfully well. One finds, though, that many people fancy that only Ivy, cats, and dustbins will flourish in the heart of a smoky City. This is not the case. Broom, Lilac, Trumpet Flower, Traveller’s Joy, many kinds of Honeysuckle, Passion Flower, Tulip Tree, many kinds of Cherry and Plum Trees bearing beautiful blossoms, Barberry, and Almond Trees—all these will grow well and strongly even in the worst parts of London. Five kinds of Honeysuckle will flourish; they are:
| Lonicera | Lepebouri |
| „ | Flexuosam |
| „ | Brachypoda aurea |
| „ | Serotinum |
| „ | Belgicum |
Besides these, pink and white Brambles, Meadowsweet, Weigela, and Rhododendrons all grow fairly easily.
One of the first sights the traveller notices on approaching any large town is the numerous and gay back gardens of the little houses. The contents of these gardens are a true index to the inhabitants of the houses. Where one garden boasts little but old packing-cases, drying linen, a few stalks of hollyhocks, and one or two giant sunflowers, the very next will show borders full of all varieties of flowers in season, an eloquent picture of what may be done with a little trouble. The consolation and pleasure these little town gardens give is out of all proportion to their size. The man who can come home to a villa, however badly built and hideous, and it often appears that some competition in ugliness has won suburban prizes, can find a delight all good gardeners know in working his plot of land.
One thing we can see at a glance, that the good influence of one well-kept garden in a row will very soon have its effect. There is one street I know within the bounds of London, a street of new houses with little gardens in front of them running down to the pavement. I watched this street with interest from its very beginning. At first it was a thing of beauty, the men at work on the buildings, the scaffolding against the sky, the horses and carts waiting with loads of brick, the gradual growth of the houses from foundation to roof. Even the ugliest building is beautiful in the course of construction, the poles and ladders hiding the coarse design. Then there came a day when the street was finished. It is not an entire street, but about half, being a row of twenty or so houses built in flats, three flats in each house. When the men left and the houses stood naked, after the plan of the builder, looking pitiful and commonplace, the new red brick was raw, the little balconies very white and staring, the windows like blind eyes. Every ground-floor flat had the disadvantage of less light and air than the others, but it was the possessor of about nine feet of land between the door and the pavement. For a long time I waited to see what would become of this tenant-less row of houses. I gained a kind of affection for them, and walked past the white signboards once or twice a week reading always “To Let” written on the windows, painted on the notice board, pasted on papers across the doors. The melancholy aspect of these houses appealed to me; they had a look of dumb anxiety as if they longed to hear the sound of voices in their empty rooms. At last I saw one day three huge furniture vans drawn up in front of the houses, and during the next two weeks more vans arrived and there was a sound of hammering in the street, and a smell of unpacking. Men came there with boxes and parcels, and tradesmen began to drive up in carts and motor-cars. I felt that those houses still standing empty had a jealous look in their windows, like little girls who had been left to sit out at a dance. The notice boards were all shifted to their front gardens, their bell wires still hung unconnected from holes by the front door.
The thing I was really waiting to see happened at Number Two. The builder, after finishing the houses had, I suppose, come to the conclusion that a little help from Nature would do no harm. Some good fairy prompted him to plant Almond and May Trees alternately in the front gardens. To each house an Almond and a May. I had waited eagerly, determining by some fantastic twist that the spirit of the new houses would first make her appearance in one of these trees. So far the street had possessed no character except that vague rawness that all new places wear. The great event occurred at Number Two. Very delicately an Almond tree put out the first blossom. The life of the street began. I did not wonder about the favoured owners of the ground floor of Number Two. I knew.
Not long after the Almond tree had bloomed a cart drew up before Number Two, and three men began to wheel barrow loads of earth into the front garden. They were directed by a gentleman of some age, but of cheerful countenance. He smiled as each load of earth was neatly placed. He looked at the earth as if he already saw it covered with flowers. In his mind’s eye he was arranging a surprise for the street.
The next event of notice in the street was the appearance of Number Two garden, a blaze of flowers set in a desert of red brick. A balcony of Number Sixteen, far down the road, entered into friendly competition. Numbers Five and Nine worked like slaves. Three followed suit with carpet-bedding on a tiny scale. A Laburnam and a Lilac sprang like magic from the soil of Number Ten. Then, one day, the whole of Number One burst into flower from top to toe. The tenant of each floor having apparently been secretly at work to surprise the rest. Two, who had started, and was indeed the father of the street, put forth more strenuous efforts.
To-day I am certain of a pleasant walk, and can come out of a wilderness of bricks and mortar to my charming oasis flowering in the land. I wonder if the people who live in those flats and who compete with each other in a friendly rivalry of blossom realise what they are doing for the hundreds who pass by in the day and are cheered.
The Association I have named before, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, give in their statement for 1907 a list of their window garden competitions for that year. One sees that many of the poorer parts of London have taken the idea, and this note I quote from South Hackney shows the result: “Twelve entries. Eight prizes of the total amount of One Pound, Ten Shillings. Remarks: Clean, fresh-looking, more creepers than last year; example set is improving character of roads, as others, not competitors, have started gardens.”
Any one who knows the dreary and desolate appearance of town streets, especially in those parts where life is lived at the hardest, and surroundings are of the most sordid, will encourage a work which induced in one year over five hundred people in London slums to take an interest in growing flowers.
The Spectator, of September 6, 1712, contains a charming essay upon the English Garden, and the writer draws attention to Kensington Gardens in the following words:
“I shall take notice of that part in the upper gardens at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a Gravel Pit. It must have been a fine Genius for gardening, that could have thought of forming such an unsightly Hollow into so beautiful an Area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a Scene as that which it is now wrought into. To give this peculiar spot of ground the greater effect, they have made a very pleasing contrast; for as on one side of the Walk you see this hollow Bason, with its several little Plantations lying so conveniently under the Eye of the Beholder; on the other side of it there appears a seeming Mound, made up of trees rising one higher than another in proportion as they approach the Centre. A Spectator who has not heard this account of it, would think this Circular Mount was not only a real one, but that it had been actually scooped out of that hollow space which I have before mentioned. I never yet met with anyone who has walked in this Garden, who was not struck with that Part of it which I have mentioned.”
The writer finishes his essay with a simple and rather delightful passage:
“You must know, Sir, that I look upon the Pleasure which we take in a Garden, as one of the innocent Delights in human Life. A Garden was the Habitation of our first Parents before the Fall. It is naturally apt to fill the mind with Calmness and Tranquillity, and to lay all its turbulent Passions at rest. It gives us a great Insight into the Contrivance and Wisdom of Providence, and suggests innumerable subjects for Meditation. I cannot but think the very Complacency and Satisfaction which a man takes in these Works of Nature, to be a laudable, if not a virtuous Habit of Mind.”
Our opinion has not altered in these two hundred years. The enjoyment of a garden is certainly one of the most innocent delights in human life, the enjoyment of the garden he mentions in particular is one of the most innocent pleasures in London. Kensington Gardens have inspired many people, the classic of them is undoubtedly Mr. J. M. Barrie’s “Little White Bird.” The patron Saint of them is, and I think ever will be, “Peter Pan.” One has only to walk down the Babies Mile to hear games from Peter Pan going on in all directions. This peculiar spirit haunted the Gardens long before the days of Mr. Barrie, and whispered much of his charming story in the ears of a bewigged gentleman—Mr. Tickell, by name—who, in a poem of some considerable length, sang Kensington’s praises. Those tiny fairy trumpets sounding in the walks of Kensington sounded a tune which has never left the air, and one fancies the creator of Peter Pan catching sight of a dim ghost now and again, the ghost of Mr. Tickell, Joseph Addison’s friend, as he walks in full-bottomed wig, his wide skirted coat, and sees the fairies too. He begins:
Where Kensington high o’er the neighb’ring lands
’Midst greens and sweets, a regal fabric stands,
And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers,
A snow of blossoms, and a wild of flowers,
The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
To groves and lawns, and unpolluted air.
Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
They breathe in sunshine, and see azure skies;
Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread,
Seems from afar a moving tulip-bed,
Where rich biscades and glossy damasks glow,
And chints, the rival of the show’ry bow.
* * * * *
Their midnight pranks the sprightly fairies play’d
On every hill, and danced in every shade.
But, foes to sunshine, most they took delight
In dells and dales conceal’d from human sight:
There hew’d their houses in the arching rock;
Or scoop’d the bosom of the blasted oak;
There is no doubt about it that these are the very same fairies who are still at work in the Gardens, and who have admitted Mr. Barrie into their confidence. All gardens have ghosts, and Kensington Gardens, I think, more ghosts than any other. What a club it must be to belong to, to visit when all London is asleep. Here’s Mr. Tickell with his version of the Peter Pan story:
No mortal enter’d, those alone who came
Stolen from the couch of some terrestrial dame
For oft of babes they robb’d the matron’s bed.
But beyond these, the vaguest hints, Mr. Tickell does not carry. His story has no likeness to the immortal tale of Peter Pan, but has, in common with it, the same knowledge that there are fairies in the Gardens living just as both he and Mr. Barrie know so well under the roots of trees. And then there are the children. It is they who are the sweetest flowers of the town gardens.
IN HYDE PARK.
If any man wants an argument in favour of keeping every available space open in towns and cities let him go into some crowded neighbourhood and watch the children playing in the gutters of the streets. Then let him find one of those places, a disused burial ground, or the garden of an old square, which has been preserved, and kept open, and laid out for the benefit of the children, and he will see the difference at once. There are two such places easy for the Londoner to visit, the one Browning Hall Garden, now a garden, once the York Road Burial Ground, Walworth, the other Meath Gardens, eleven acres of public garden, once The Victoria Park Cemetery, Bethnal Green.
They say that one half of London doesn’t know how the other half lives. They do not know, but worse still they don’t care. It is equally true that half the people who profess to care for flowers are ignorant of the wonderful flower-beds carefully grown for their pleasure within a two-penny ’bus ride of most parts of London. The row of beds facing Park Lane; the flower walk (where the babies walk, too) in Kensington Gardens; the flower walk in Regent’s Park, the Houses at Kew, are sights as well worth an afternoon’s excursion as any other form of amusement. Most people almost unconsciously absorb the colour of cities, vaguely realising grey streets, red streets, white streets, spaces of grass and trees, big blots of colour—like the huge beds of scarlet geraniums in front of Buckingham Palace, but they do not trouble to get the value of their impressions. People look on the way from Hyde Park Corner to the Marble Arch as a convenient means of crossing London instead of one of the most interesting and delightful experiences to be had. They go crazy over trees and sky in the country, when they have at their doors sights the country can never equal. The sun in late autumn setting behind the trees of Hyde Park and glowing over the murky smoke-laden skies is a sight for the gods. Smoke has its disadvantages, but it certainly gives one æsthetic joys unknown in clear skies, for instance alone the reflection of the lights of Piccadilly on the evening sky.
After all, the time to see the wonder of town gardens is at night. The streets are empty of people. Here and there a few night workers walk the lonely streets, a policeman tramps his beat, the huge carts bringing the provisions for the city lumber along with sleepy carters swaddled in sacks perched high among the heaps of baskets. Here and there men with long hoses are washing down the roads. The Parks and Gardens lie bathed in peace, mysterious shadows make velvet caves sheltered by leaves. Those trees standing close to the road are lit by the electric lamps and fringe the street with vivid green. Only the flowers seem really awake, alive, in a tremendous dream city. Along the lines of houses, blinds down, shutters closed, a window box here and there breaks the monotony and seems to be the only real thing there. If it is Spring, then from Hyde Park Corner to the Kensington High Street, all along the side of the Park, behind the railings are regiments of Crocus flowers, spikes of Narcissus, and of Daffodil. Their sweetness fills the air, their very presence fills the town with gentleness, and purifies and softens its grimness. Far above, in some citadel of flats, a solitary light burns, some one is at work, or ill, or watching. Above all hang the blazing stars.
II
THE EFFECT OF TREES
Of the pleasure and affect of trees no one speaks so wisely as Bacon. Although those who have a feeling for garden literature know his essay on Gardens as the classic of its kind, still many do not recall his thoughts when the planning of a garden is on hand. Too much, I think, is given by the man who is about to make a garden, to his own particular hobby, and many a man wonders why his garden gives him not all the pleasure he expected. You will hear of a man talk of his new Rose beds, of the nursery for Carnations he is in the process of making, of the placing of his Violet frames, of his ideas for a rock garden (I think the distressful feeling for a rockery of clinkers is dead), but you will seldom hear of a man who deliberates quietly for effects of trees, or who thinks of planting fruit trees as ornaments, but always he places them in his kitchen garden, and ignores their value in their other proper places.
Bacon rejoices in his arrangement of gardens for every month of the year, and dwells, rightly, just as much on the pleasure of his trees as in the ordering of his flower beds. Naturally he had not such a large selection of flowers from which to choose as we have to-day, but to-day we neglect the beauty of many trees, and especially the beauty of hedges.
Are there sights in any garden more beautiful than the Almond tree and the Peach tree in blossom, or the sweet trailing Sweetbriar? Bacon would have us notice these, make a feast of these. Also he recommends the beauty of the White Thorn in leaf, the Cherry and the Plum trees in blossom, the Cherry tree in fruit, the Lilac tree, the wonder of the Apple tree, and the Medlar.
Then, again, Bacon touches on a point all too little counted: the perfume of the garden. He says: “And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of musick) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.
“Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow; Rosemary little; nor Sweet Marjoram.
“That which above all others yield the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet, especially the White Double Violet which comes twice a year; about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the Musk Rose; then the Strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flowers of the Vines; it is a little dust, like the dust of a Bent, which grows upon the cluster, in the first coming forth: then the Sweet Briar, then Wallflowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window. Then Pinks and Gilly-flowers, especially the matted Pink and Clove Gilly-flower: then the flowers of the Lime tree; then the Honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar off.
“Of Bean flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers.
“But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed 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. I would add to these one or two more flowers whose perfume is easily yielded. The Heliotrope, which at night will scent a garden; and Stocks, very rich and sweet scented; Tobacco Plant, a heavy sensuous smell; Madonna Lilies, seeming almost to breathe; Evening Primroses; and, after rain when the sun is warm, the leaves of Geraniums, a faint musky smell, very attractive. But of all these the garden holds one perfume more delicious, a scent that, to me at least, is the Queen of Garden scents since it is the breath of the whole garden herself. After a Summer’s day when it has been hot and the lawn has been cut, and the Sun has well baked the earth, if there should come rain in the evening, a soft warm rain pattering at first so that it seems each leaf of flower and tree becomes a drum sounding with rain beats, then it seems the garden breathes deep and draws in great draughts of the delicious coolness. Then after the rain the night comes warm again, and all warm earth smells, and the new cut grass smells also, and every tree and flower join force upon force until the air is filled with a perfume which for want of better names I would call the Odour of Gratitude.”
Furthermore, Bacon speaks of the garden—“The garden is best to be square, encompassed on all four sides with a stately arched hedge.” One rich hedge is there at Bishopsbourne, which it is traditionally supposed was planted by Richard Hooker, of whom Walton writes: “It is a hedge of over one hundred feet in length, from twelve to fourteen feet in height, and some ten feet thick. It is one of the finest Yew hedges in England, a wonderful colour, an amazing strength and beautiful, when it is clipped and trimmed, to look upon.” Of the pleasure and comfort of such hedges, of the health to be gained by regarding them, many people have spoken. There is, surely, something in the tough green life of the Yew, something in its staunchness that conveys a feeling of strength to the mind. I feel this in different degree with every kind of tree, partly no doubt from moments of particular association, from memories that become attached to scenes as they will (curious how scents, arrangements of colour, outlines against a sky, will call up things and thoughts which for the moment have no connection with them. I never see Oranges but I think of a dark passage lined with books, and a cupboard built round with books in shelves. In the cupboard are dishes of fruit, and shapes, all tied up in linen, of fruit cheeses, as damson cheese, and crab-apple cheese, and a cheese made of Quinces and Medlars).
I remember a graveyard in a little Swiss village where every grave had a tiny weeping willow bending over it. It had, for us, infinitely more pathos than the sombreness of many English graveyards. There was a rushing torrent below, for the church and its graveyard was on a height over a river, and the voice of the river sang in the quiet graveyard, like a strong spirit singing in the pride of vigour to those asleep. The little willows bent and shivered in the breeze, looking small and pathetic against the strong small church. Outside the church, all along one wall was a seat very smooth and worn, it faced the graves and the tiny trees, and behind it, on the wall of the church, was a great Wisteria with clusters of pale purple flowers. There were no other trees there, or to be seen from the seat, but these little bending weeping trees. And close by, a hundred yards from the church gate, was the undertaker’s shop, part farm, part garden, part stocked with elm planks. As I passed by the son was making a coffin out in the middle of the road on trestles. Looking back one could see the young man bending earnestly over his work, the sound of his saw ripping the air. Behind him was the grey stone of the church and the forest of little shivering trees over the graves. A little below, just across the river over a covered bridge, was a beer-garden where a family was sitting drinking beer out of tall mugs. They sat, father, mother, sons and daughters, all dressed in black, under Chestnut trees cut down very close and clipped to make alleys of shade. And a little behind them was a forest rising on a hill with great masses of trees all shades of green, and glowing in the light of an afternoon sun. But of all this I carry mostly the memory of those little trees, quiet weeping sentinels, very pathetic.
Trees, especially isolated groups of trees, in towns and cities have a wonderful fascination. The very idea that they burst into bud and leaf in the midst of all the smoke and grime, and the noise and hurry, is health-giving. It brings repose, it brings hope. I believe the trees in town squares get more love than any country trees. They mean so much. It seems so good of them to fight, and to come out year by year clean and fresh and green, and in Winter when they are bare they make a delicate webwork of twigs against the background of soot-covered houses. Then in the Spring when they turn faintly purple there is a haze across the square, and it seems that even the pigeons and the horses on the cab rank feel it, but cannot scarcely believe it. Then, perhaps there is an Almond tree in the square and it will suddenly break out into the most exquisite finery, like the daintiest of women, making the square gay and full of joy. The Spring has come. It is almost unbelievable. And people passing through the square who have forgotten all about the Spring look up suddenly and smile, and say: “Look at the Almond tree. Spring is here.” Those who know the country turn their minds inwards and remember that the brown owls have begun to hoot, that the gossamer is floating, that, here and there yellow and white butterflies are flitting, looking strangely out of season, that the raven is building, and the rooks too, and that all sorts of birds they had forgotten are seen in the land.
After that the big trees in the square become hazy with bursting bud, and one morning, as if some message had been whispered overnight, the far side of the square is only to be seen through a screen of the tenderest green. Bit by bit the leaves comes out, get bright, clean washed by showers, get dingy with the soot. Then comes the fall of the leaf and the crisp curl of it as it changes colour, and the far side of the square begins to show again through bronze-coloured leaves. At last the Winter comes and all that is left is the tracery of boughs and twigs, and heaps of dead, beautiful-coloured leaves beneath the trees. These still provide an interest, for the wind comes and picks them up and whirls them right up into the air in all sorts of amazing dances and games.
THE SEAT BENEATH THE OAK IN THE POET LAUREATE’S GARDEN.
In the Winter one last beauty comes. The day has been leaden, sad-coloured, bitterly cold. All the cabmen on the rank stamp with their feet, and swing their arms to keep themselves warm, and there is a little mist where all the horses breathe. And people coming through the square have forgotten the Almond tree, and the look of the big trees when the hot sun splashed gold on their leaves, and they say, looking at the sky, “See how dark it is, it is going to snow.” The snow comes; the sky is darker; the trees stick up looking black, like drawings in pen and ink. Flakes, white flakes, twenty, forty, then a rush—a thousand; the sky full of tiny white flakes, the air full of them whirling down. All sounds begin to be muffled. Horses hoofs beat with a thud on the ground. The sound of voices in the air is deadened. The voices of men encouraging horses sound sharp now and again, or a whip cracks like a shot. The square is covered with snow, every twig is outlined in white, black patches of bark show here and there, and emphasise the dead whiteness. When it has stopped snowing and a watery light comes from the sun all the trees gleam wonderfully, looking like fairy trees. And people passing through the square making beaten tracks in the snow saying, “It is Winter.”
In a country garden there is a tree stands on the end of a lawn. It is an Acacia tree, old, gnarled, and twisted, with Ivy round it, deep Ivy in which thrushes build year after year; there is a stone near by on which the thrushes break the shells of snails, the “tap, tap,” of the birds at work is one of the peaceful sounds that break the silence of the garden.
Under the tree is an oblong mark of pressed grass greener than the rest of the lawn, where the garden-roller rests. And there is a seat under the tree, and a wooden foot-rest by it.
Touch the tree and you go back at once to a picture of a boy, the boy who helped to plant it over a hundred and fifty years before. If you look from the tree across the lawn to the house you will see the very door by which he came out with his father to plant the tree.
The house and the tree have grown old together, both of them have mellowed with the garden and wear a look of old security and calm, and have an air of wise old age.
Up and down the five white steps from the garden path to the house more than five generations have passed, men in wide-skirted coats and full wigs hanging about their ears in great corkscrew curls, men in powdered wigs, rolled stockings, square buckled shoes, men in stocks and immense collars, and big frills to their shirts making them look like gentlemanly fish, down to the man who comes out to day who looks a little old-fashioned, and is square-built like the house, and who parts his hair like the men in Leech’s pictures, and who wears a rim of whisker round his face. And troops of ladies have passed out by that door into the garden in hoops, and sacques, and towers of hair, and crinolines. But no lady comes out now to cut the Lavender hedge, or snip at the Roses. The man is alone. But when he sits alone under the tree, with a spud by his side ready to uproot Plantains from his lawn, he can see troops of the garden ghosts sitting round him under the Acacia tree.
Sometimes there seems to be a sound of the ghostly click of bowls on the lawn, for it is a bowling-green banked up on three sides (the fourth bank has been done away with long ago), and there is a company of gentlemen in their wide shirt sleeves playing bowls. Above them, on the raised terrace next to the house where there is a broad path, a group of old people sit by little tables and drink wine, and smoke, and gossip. And behind them are tall Hollyhocks, and Roses and a tangle of old-fashioned flowers such as Periwinkles and Sweet Williams, and Pinks. The Acacia tree, which grows on the lawn beyond the bowling green, is quite small.
The old man who dreams of these ghosts in his garden recognises them readily because they have stepped out of pictures on his walls, and when they are not haunting the garden are demurely hanging on the oak panels in the old rooms.
Then he can see, if he chooses, a picture of the garden when the acacia tree is quite tall, but still elegant and slender, and in this picture an old, old lady walks down the garden paths. She is dressed in a large hooped skirt with panniers, and has high-heeled shoes, and a perfect tower of hair on her head, and over that a calash hood like the hood over a waggon except that it is black. She carries an ebony stick in a silk-mittened hand, a hand knotted with gout and covered with the mourning rings of her friends. She it was who added largely to the garden, and took in two acres more of land, and planted a row of Elms and Beech trees. She kept the garden as bright and gay as the samplers she worked herself. She had a mania for set beds, and her Tulips were the talk of the county. A long bed of them ran from the house along one bank of the bowling-green to the orchard, and it was arranged in pattern of colours, lines, squares, interlaced geometrical designs of flaming red and scarlet, pink and yellow and white and dull purple. She it was who caused the sundial to be placed in the garden and who found the motto for it, and designed the four triangular beds to go round it, and placed a hedge of Lavender and Rosemary all about it in a square.
The tap of her stick on the paths is one of the ghostly sounds that haunt the place, and sometimes it is difficult to know whether it is a woodpecker, or a thrush breaking open a snail, or her stick that makes such a sharp crisp sound on the Summer air.
There is another sound, too, that the Acacia tree knows well. It is the click of glasses under its boughs. On a table placed under the tree is an array of beautiful cut-glass decanters and a number of glasses which reflect in the polished mahogany surface. Round the table four gentlemen sit with white wigs and elegant lace falls at their throats, and ruffles at their wrists. It is a hot Summer afternoon, and so still that not a Rose leaf of those spread on the lawn stirs. A large white sheet lies on the lawn covered with thousands of rose petals left to dry in the sun, and when they are dry, and have undergone a careful mixture with spices, and have herbs added to them by the mistress of the house, they will be placed in china bowls in all the rooms, and will give out a subtle delicious odour.
The man who is dreaming in his garden can see the four gentlemen as plain as life raising their glasses and touch them before drinking the silent toast. And it is difficult to tell whether it is the gardener striking on his frames by accident, or the chink of glasses that sounds so clearly under the Acacia tree.
Now, in another picture the garden holds, things are somewhat altered. Instead of the big Tulip bed on the lawn there are a number of small cut beds with long beds behind them on either side of a new gravel walk. Instead of the older fashioned borders there are startling colour schemes of carpet-bedding in which the flowers are made to look more like coloured earths than anything. In the long beds, instead of the profusion of Hollyhocks, Sunflowers and bushes of Roses, a primness reigns. A row of blue Lobelia backed by a row of white Lobelia, then scarlet Geraniums, then Calceolarias, then crimson Beet plants, every ten yards a Marguerite Daisy sticks up out of the middle of the bed. Only one rambling border remains, and that is hidden from the view of the house windows, but can just be seen from the seat under the Acacia tree. In it Phlox and Red-hot Pokers, Asters, Anemonies, Moss Rose, and French Marigolds grow profusely, and some merciful sentiment has allowed an old twisted Apple tree to remain there.
The old bowling-green is still beautifully kept, the grass is smooth and fair, not a Daisy or Plantain is there to mar the splendour of the turf. The Acacia tree, now grown old and venerable, spreads out fine branches, and gives delightful shade. Here and there new arches of rustic woodwork, in horrible designs, stretch over the paths, their ugliness partly hidden by climbing Roses of the Seven Sisters kind, or Clematis, or Honeysuckle, or Jasmine. Many trees in the garden are old enough to exchange memories of a hundred years ago; the orchard alone boasts a venerable congregation of old trees, some grey with lichen, some bowed down with the result of full crops.
New ghosts walk the garden paths in crinolines and Leghorn hats, and side curls, talking to gentlemen with glossy side whiskers, peg-top trousers, and tartan waistcoats.
On the bowling-green the new game is laid out, and ladies and gentlemen talk learnedly of bisques, and the correct weight of croquet mallets. There is a fresh sound for the garden, the smack of croquet balls.
And now nearly all the ghosts vanish, and the old man who is sitting under the Acacia tree looks around and sees his garden as it is to-day, fuller of flowers than ever it was, with the hideous set borders done away with, with the little rustic arches pulled down and a pergola, properly built, in their place, and all of the horrors of Early Victorian gardening gone for good, the plaster nymphs and cupids, the tree called a “Monkey Puzzler,” the terrible rockery of clinkers and bad bricks. Here, as in the house, taste has triumphed over fashion. Inside the oak panels that had been covered over with hideous wallpapers are brought to light. The wool mats have vanished, the glass domes over clocks, the worsted bell-pulls, the druggets and the rep curtains all gone for good.
Outside, wonders have been worked in the garden. New beds filled with the choicest Roses and Carnations. Water is now properly conveyed by a sprinkler. The old water-butt, slimy and falling to pieces, gone to give place to a well filled concrete tank of water, kept clean and sweet.
One more ghostly sound left, a sound the lonely man unconsciously listens for as he sits under the tree. On one bough, low growing and strong, shows the marks deep cut where once depended the ropes of a swing. In his ears he can sometimes hear the shouts of children and the creak of the swing ropes, sounds he used to hear in his childhood. And mingled with the children’s laughter he can hear, very faintly, a boy’s voice, his own.
Such is the story of an hundred English Gardens, where trees will tell secrets, and the lawn holds memories, and the paths echo with footsteps out of the past.
The influence literature has on the mind is nowhere more traceable than in a garden. A dozen thoughts spring to the mind gathered out of the store cupboards of remembered reading at the sight of flowers, trees, sunlit walks, dark alleys. Trees call up romantic meetings, hollow trunks where lovers have posted their letters, dark shades where vows have been made, smooth trunks on which are carven twin hearts pierced by a single arrow and crowned with initials cut into the bark. Gloomy recesses under spreading boughs remind one of the hiding places of conspirators, of fugitives.
Sometimes, on a winter’s night, to look into the garden and see the trees toss and shake with an angry wind, or stand bare, bleak, and black against the sparkle of a frosty sky, some written thing comes quickly into the brain almost as if the printed letters stood out clear. There is one scene of winter and trees comes often to me very full and clear. It is from the beginning of “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and heralds the entrance in the story of the immortal Mr. Pecksniff.
“The fallen leaves, with which the ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fragrance, and, subduing all harsh sounds of distant feet and wheels, created a repose in gentle unison with the light scattering of seed hither and thither by the distant husbandman, and with the noiseless passage of the plough as it turned up the rich brown earth and wrought a graceful pattern in the stubbled fields. On the motionless branches of some trees autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels; others, stripped of all their garniture, stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright red leaves, watching their slow decay; others again still wearing theirs, had them all crunched and crackled up, as though they had been burnt. About the stems of some were piled, in ruddy mounds, the apples they had borne that year; while others (hardy evergreens this class) showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their vigour, as charged by nature with the admonition that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous favourites she grants the longest term of life. Still athwart their darker boughs the sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, used them as foils to set its brightness off, and aid the lustre of the dying day.
“A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt in everything.
“An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The withering leaves, no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from its chill pursuit; the labourer unyoked the horses, and, with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside them; and from the cottage windows lights began to glance and wink upon the darkening fields.
“It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves; but this wind, happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this good enough for its malicious fury; for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them, and hunted them into the wheelwright’s saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed on their heels!
IN THE BOTANIC GARDEN, OXFORD.
“The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hayricks like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges; and, in short, went anywhere for safety. But the oddest feat they achieved was, to take advantage of the sudden opening of Mr. Pecksniff’s front door, to dash wildly down his passage, with the wind following close upon them, and finding the back door open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and slammed the front door against Mr. Pecksniff, who was at that moment entering, with such violence, that in the twinkling of an eye, he lay on his back at the bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling performances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of it.”
Is not this wonderful and immortal passage as much a part of the Charm of Gardens as the most delectable poetry on the perfumed air of a summer night?
Often, when the logs are crackling on the hearth, one hears those hunted leaves come banging on the window panes, those gaunt trees tossing in the wind. When all the garden lies cold and bare and stripped of green, the trees roar out an answer to the wind, an hundred garden voices swell the storm, and you sit happy by your fireside and dream new colours for the garden beds; and where a white frost sparkles on the earth, and trees lift up bare fingers to the sky, you see deep wealth of green, and jewelled borders brim full of spring flowers, and there a set of bulbs you have nursed, come out sweet in green sheathes, and here a tree, now naked, clothed in young green.
That for the night. For the morning, trailing clouds of mist over the trees like fairy shawls alive with dew-diamonds, each dew-drop reflecting its tiny world. The trees, the world, the garden still asleep, or half asleep, until the sun throws off the counterpane of clouds and springs into the skies.
It is at that time, before the sun is awake, the trees look strange as sleeping things look strange, with a counterfeit of death, so still are they. And in the Spring when the orchard is a pale ghost before the sun is up, a man would swear it had been covered up at night in silver smoke, or gossamer, or fairy silk that the sun tears into weeping shreds that drip and drip and give the grass a bath.
But of the effect of trees as a spiritual support no man is at variance with another. That they give courage, and help and hope, that the green sight of them is good as being reminder that Heaven is kind, and that the Winter is not always, no man doubts but, perhaps, fears to voice, feeling his neighbour will call out at him for a worshipper of Pan and of strange gods. But to the garden dweller, or to him who must perforce make his garden of one tree in a dusty court, and of one glass of flowers on his desk, these things have voices, and they are kindly voices, saying, “Despair not,” and “Regard me how I grow upright through the seasons,” and also “Give shade and shelter to all things and men equally as I do, without distinction or difference, and if the grass gives a couch, fair and embroidered with flowers, so do I give a roof of infinite variety, and a shade from the sun, and a shelter from the wind.” And again, “If a man know a tree to love it he will understand much of men, and of birds, and beasts and of all living things. And of greater things too, for in the branches is other fruit than the fruit of the tree. Just as the rainbow is set in the sky for a promise, so is fruit in a tree set there; and the leaves show how orderly is the Great Plan; and the branches show the strength of slender things, and of little things, so that a man may know how Heaven has its roots in earth, and its crest in the clouds. And a man who holds to earth with one hand, and reaches at the stars with the other, in that span he encompasses all that may be known if he but see it. But men are blind, and do not see the sky but as sky, and do not see the stars but as balls of fire, or the green grass but as a carpet, or the flowers but as a combination of chemical accidents. But over all, and through all, and in all is God, Who still speaks with Adam in the Garden.”
These things are to be learnt of trees both great and small, withered and young, sapling and Oak of centuries. And they are to be learnt also in the dust on a butterfly’s wing; or of a blade of grass; or of a hemp seed. But men are deaf, and hear no voice but the voice of water in a rushing stream; and no sound but the sound of leaves stirring when the wind rests in a tree; and no voice speaking in a blaze of flowers who sing praises night and day in scented voices.
A tree is not dumb, and the Creeping Briar is not dumb, and the Rose has a voice like the voice of a woman rejoicing that she is fair. But men are dumb, for though their hearts speak, all tongues are not touched with fire.
So may trees be a solace in trouble, and secrets may be whispered to bushes of Rosemary and Lavender, who will yield their secret solace of peace, as the tree yields strength. All these things are written in a garden in coloured letters of gold, and green, and crimson, in blue and purple, orange and grey, and they are written for a purpose. And a man may seek diligently for the secret of this great book and find nothing if he seek with his head alone. He will tell of the growth of trees, their years, their nature, their sickness. He will learn of the power of the sap which flows down from the tips of leaves to the great tree roots all snug in the soil; and he will learn of the veins in the leaves, and the properties of the gum of the bark, yet will he never learn that of which the tree speaks always, night and day—praising.
Of what is the colour of green that the earth’s best page is made of it? Of what is the colour of young green that it brings, unbidden, tender thoughts? It is more than the gold of Corn, and the brown of ploughed earth, and the glory of flowers. By it comes peace to the eyes, and through the eyes to the heart of man, so that men say of youth and the times of youth that they are salad days; and of old age, if so be it is a fine old age, that it is green. It is the colour of the body as blue is the colour of the soul. The sky and the sea are blue, and they are things of mystery, deep and profound, and because of their great depth and profundity they are blue. The grass and the trees, and the leaves of flowers, and blades of young Corn are green. They are mysterious things but they are nearer to man, and he has them to his hand to be near them, and get quick comfort of them.
And Daisies are the stars of the grass, as stars are the Daisies of Heaven; and if a man look long at the stars set out orderly in the sky he may become fearful, for God may seem far off and difficult; yet if he be near he may pick a Daisy and take his fill of comfortable things, for God will seem near and His voice in the Daisy.
Yet many a man will walk over a field of grass pressing the Daisies with his feet, and take no heed of them, or of the stars over above his head; and the night and the day will be to him but light and darkness, and the stars but lanterns to show him home, and the Daisies but flowers of the field. But if he be a man who sees all, and in everything can feel the finger and pulse of God, his staff will blossom in his hand, and he will go on his way rejoicing.
In this way can man regard the trees in his garden, and speak with them, loving them, and learning of them, for learning is all of love. And he may yet be an ordinary man, not poet, or artist, but he must be mystic because he has the true sight. Many a man, stockbroker, clerk, painter, labourer, soldier, or whatever he seems to be, has his real being in these moments, and they are revealed through love or sorrow, but not by hard learning or text-books.
III
A LOVER OF GARDENS
There are many who say this and that of Sir John Mandeville, his Travels; that he was not; that he was a Frenchman; that no one knows who he was. For years he was to me an English Knight who lived at St. Albans, and from there set out to travel over all the world seeking adventure, and relating the peculiarities of his journey in fascinating, if slightly imaginative, language. I rejoiced when he saw a board from the Noah’s Ark, when he talked with the Cham of Tartary; and told of the wonders of Ind. But comes along this and that expert who upset the figure of the gallant Knight, and heave him from horse to ground as a dummy figure, and burn him for firewood as a fallen idol. And why? It appears that Sir John is no more a real being than Homer, or Æsop, or any other of those personal names for great bundles of collected literature; and is a literature all by himself, and a series of impudent thieves who stole travellers’ tales and jotted them together in a personal narrative. For all that I believe in a figure of the blind Homer, and the impudent slave Æsop who played tricks on his master, and I firmly believe in a stalwart figure of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, “albeit,” he says, “I be not worthy, that was born in England, in the town of St. Albans, and passed the sea in the year of our Lord Jesu Christ, 1322, in the day of St. Michael.”
There is one thing, a touch of character, put in, maybe, by the skilful editor of these travels, that makes us lean to the man as being a real person. It is his love of Gardens, and his pains to tell of them, and the stories of trees, and legends. And whether one who confessed to the fraud of putting these travels together—Jean de Bourgogne, by name—was a keen gardener or herbalist, or whether it was a literary habit of the fourteenth century (which, when I come to think of it, is so), somehow I feel that there is a garden-loving spirit in forming the book, and for that I love the man.
In his wanderings Sir John meets many things, and of these I beg leave to choose here and there one or two of his anecdotes when they touch an idea such as gardeners love. The first is of the True Cross, and the story of its origin. All of Sir John I have read in Mr. Pollard’s edition, than which nothing could be more satisfactory and clear expressed.