The glimpses he gives us of London gardens are few and one longs for more. It is remarkable how few vegetables, or “pot-herbs” as they called them, were grown in Elizabethan times. Vegetables which figured in the old Roman menus were considered luxuries in this country even in the days of the later Stuarts. The wild carrot is an indigenous plant in our islands, but of the cultivated carrot we were ignorant till the Flemish immigrants introduced it in the early seventeenth century. Parsnips, turnips and spinach were also rarities. With the exception of the wild cabbage, the whole brassica tribe were unknown to us till the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes were both introduced into this country in Tudor days. Gerard was one of the first to grow potatoes, and he proudly tells us, “I have received hereof from Virginia roots which grow and prosper in my garden as in their own native countrie.” He was, in fact, the originator of the popular but incorrect epithet “Virginia potato.” The potato was not a native of Virginia, nor was it cultivated there in Tudor times. The Spaniards brought it from Quito in 1580, and Gerard had it in his garden as early as 1596. The potato to which Shakespeare refers (Troilus and Cressida, V. ii. 534; Merry Wives of Windsor, V. v. 20, 21) is, of course, the sweet potato, which had been introduced into Europe nearly eighty years earlier. Gerard speaks of this sweet potato as “the common potato,” which is somewhat confusing to the modern reader.
There is a delightful glimpse of a well-known London garden, that of “Master Tuggie,” who lived in Westminster and whose hobby was gilliflowers. It is the more interesting to find this passage in Gerard, for, as all lovers of Parkinson’s Paradisus will remember, some of the varieties of gilliflower were called after their enthusiastic grower. Indeed, who can forget their enchanting names—“Master Tuggie’s Princesse” and “Master Tuggie his Rose gillowflower”? Of gilliflowers, which vied with roses in pride of place in Elizabethan gardens, Gerard writes thus:—
“Now I (holding it a thing not so fit for me to insist upon these accidental differences of plants having specifique differences enough to treat of) refer such as are addicted to these commendable and harmless delights to survey the late and oft-mentioned Worke of my friend, Mr. John Parkinson, who hath accurately and plentifully treated of these varieties. If they require further satisfaction, let them at the time of the yeare repaire to the garden of Mistress Tuggie (the wife of my late deceased friend, Mr. Ralph Tuggie) in Westminster, which in the excellencie and varietie of these delights exceedeth all that I have seene, as also, he himself, whilst he lived exceeded most, if not all, of his time, in his care, industry and skill, in raising, increasing and preserving of these plants.”
Gerard’s descriptions of the most loved English garden flowers are perhaps too well known to quote, and therefore I give only the following: “The Plant of Roses, though it be a shrub full of prickes, yet it hath beene more fit and convenient to have placed it with the most glorious flowers of the world than to inserte the same here among base and thornie shrubs; for the rose doth deserve the chiefest and most principall place among all flowers whatsoever being not only esteemed in his beautie, vertue and his fragrance and odoriferous smell, but also because it is the honor and ornament of our English Scepter, as by the coniunction appeereth in the uniting of those two most royal houses of Lancaster and Yorke. Which pleasant flowers deserve the chiefest place in crowns and garlands. The double white sort doth growe wilde in many hedges of Lancashire in great abundance, even as briers do with us in these southerly parts, especially in a place of the countrey called Leyland, and in the place called Roughfoorde not far from Latham. The distilled water of roses is good for the strengthening of the hart and refreshing of the spirits and likewise in all things that require a gentle cooling. The same being put in iunketting dishes, cakes, sawces and many other pleasant things, giveth a fine and delectable taste. It bringeth sleepe which also the fresh roses themselves promote through their sweete and pleasant smell.”
Like most gardeners Gerard was an optimist. It is wonderful enough to think of the rare, white thyme growing in the heart of London, but think of the courage of trying to raise dates in the open! “of the which,” Gerard tells us (in no wise downcast by his numerous failures), “I have planted many times in my garden and have growne to the height of three foot, but the frost hath nipped them in such sort that soone after they perished, notwithstanding my industrie by covering them, or what else I could do for their succour.” And does it not make one feel as eager as Gerard himself when one finds, under water-mallows, that, though exotic plants, “at the impression hereof I have sowen some seeds of them in my garden, expecting the successe.” The mere catalogue of the plants in Gerard’s own wonderful garden fills a small book, and scattered through the Herbal we find numerous references to it, unfortunately too lengthy to quote here.
One likes to think that Shakespeare must have seen this garden, for we know that at least for a time he lived in the vicinity. In those days two such prominent men could scarcely have failed to know one another.[85] As Canon Ellacombe has pointed out, Shakespeare’s writings are full of the old English herb lore. In this use of plant lore, which was traditional rather than literary, he is curiously distinct from his contemporaries. Outside the herbals there is more old English herb lore to be found in Shakespeare than in any other writer. It is, in fact, incredible that the man whose own works are so redolent of the fields and hedgerows of his native Warwickshire, did not visit the garden of the most famous herbarist of his day. Perhaps it was to Shakespeare that Gerard first told the sad tale of the loss of his precious scammony of Syria, a tale which no one with a gardener’s heart can read without a pang of sympathy, even after the lapse of three centuries. One of his numerous correspondents had sent him the seed of this rare plant, “of which seed,” he says:—
“I received two plants that prospered exceeding well; the one whereof I bestowed upon a learned apothecary of Colchester, which continueth to this day bearing both floures and ripe seed. But an ignorant weeder of my garden plucked mine up and cast it away in my absence instead of a weed, by which mischance I am not able to write hereof so absolutely as I determined. It floured in my garden about S. James’ tide as I remember, for when I went to Bristow Faire I left it in floure; but at my returne it was destroyed as is aforesaid.”
FOOTNOTES:
[76] Americans who have the proud distinction of being “of Royal Indian descent” may be interested to know that a copy of Gerard’s Herbal in Oxford has been identified as having belonged to Dorothy Rolfe, the mother-in-law of the Princess Pocahontas.
[77] Yew berries are an ingredient in at least one prescription in a Saxon herbal (Leech Book of Bald, I. 63).