Though unable to identify among the plants of Asia, which was the “hom” or tree of life, held so sacred by the Assyrians and later Persians, we know enough about that king of fruits—the “pine-apple”—as to correct a great mistake into which those have fallen who hitherto have had to write about the patterns figured on ancient or mediæval textiles. In their descriptions, we are perpetually told of the pine-apple appearing there; and at a period when the Ananas, so far from having been even once beheld in the old world, had never been dreamed of. Among the Peruvians our pine-apple, the “Nanas,” was first found and seen by Europeans. Hardly more than two hundred years ago was a single fruit of it brought to any place in the old world. A little over a century has it been cultivated here in England; and, as far as our memory goes, a pine-apple, fifty years ago, had never been planted in any part of Italy or Sicily, nor so much as seen. Writing, October 17, 1716, from Blankenburg, and telling her friend all about a royal dinner at which she had just been, Lady Mary Wortley Montague says:—“What I thought worth all the rest (were) two ripe Ananasses, which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came here, but by enchantment. Upon enquiry, I learned that they have brought their stoves to such perfection, &c. I am surprised we do not practise in England so useful an invention.”[463] As turnips grow in England, so do artichokes all over middle and south Italy, as well as Sicily, large fields are full of them. Put side by side with the pine-apple, and its narrow stiff leaves, the artichoke in bloom amid its graceful foliage, shows well; and every artistic eye will see that the Sicilian weaver, so fond of flowers and nice foliage for his patterns, must have chosen his own vegetable, unfolding its beauties to him at every step he took, and not a fruit of which he had never heard, and which he had never looked upon.
In his description of fruits or flowers woven on a textile, let not the youthful or unwary writer be led astray by older men with a reputation howsoever high for learning other than botanical. Some years ago we were reading with great delight a tale about some things that happened in the third century, and near Carthage. Though avowedly a fiction, most of its incidents were facts, so admirably put together that they seemed to have been drawn by the pen of one who had lived upon the spot. But taking one of his personages to a walk amid the hills running down to the shores of North Africa, the writer leads him through a narrow glen tangled over head, and shaded with sweet smelling creepers and climbers, among which he sees the passion-flower in full bloom. Now, as every species—save one from China of late introduction—that we have of this genus of plants, came to the old world from the new one, to speak of them as growing wild in Africa, quite fourteen hundred years before they could have been seen there, and America was known, is spoiling a picture otherwise beautifully sketched.
[459] Layard’s Discoveries at Nineveh, abridged, p. 46.
[460] Ibid. p. 245.
[461] Pp. 132, 239.
[462] The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, or Biblical Legends of Mussulmans compiled, &c., by Dr. G. Weil, pp. 183, 184.
[463] Letters, t. i. p. 105, London, 1763.
With some, there perhaps may be a wish to know what was the origin of this collection.
As is set forth, in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[464] some thirty years ago there began to grow up, amid a few, a strong desire to behold a better taste in the building of churches, and the design of every ecclesiastical accessory. Our common sympathies on all these points brought together the late Mr. A. Welby Pugin, and him who writes these lines, and they became warm friends. What were the results to Pugin through our intercourse he himself has acknowledged in his “Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture,” p. 67. To think of anything and do it, were, with Pugin, two consecutive actions which followed one another speedily. While at Birmingham Hardman was working in metal, after drawings by Pugin, and putting together a stained-glass window from one of his cartoons, a loom at Manchester, which had been geared after his idea, was throwing off textiles for church use, and orphreys, broad and narrow, were being wove in London: the mediæval court at Hyde Park, in the year 1851, was the gem of our first Exhibition. Going back, a German lady took from England a cope made of the textiles that had been designed by Pugin. This vestment got into the hands of Dr. Bock, whose feelings were, as they still are, akin to our own in a love for all the beauties of the mediæval period. While so glad of his new gift, it set this worthy canon of Aix-la-Chapelle thinking that other and better patterns were to be seen upon stuffs of an old and good period, could they be but found. He gave himself to the search, and took along with him, over the length and breadth of Europe, that energy and speed for which he is so conspicuous; and the gatherings from his many journeys, put together, made up the bulk of a most curious and valuable collection—the only one of its kind—which has found an abiding home in England, at the South Kensington Museum. Thus have these beautiful art-works of the loom become, after a manner, a recompense most gratefully received, to the native land of those men whose action, some thirty years ago, indirectly originated their being brought together.