The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare

by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

i.e., in Provence, at the mouth of the Rhone. For beauty in shape and exquisite fragrance, I consider this Rose to be still unrivalled; but it is not a fashionable Rose, and is usually found in cottage gardens, or perhaps in some neglected part of gardens of more pretensions. I believe it is considered too loose in shape to satisfy the floral critics of exhibition flowers, and it is only a summer Rose, and so contrasts unfavourably with the Hybrid Perpetuals. Still, it is a delightful Rose, delightful to the eye, delightful for its fragrance, and most delightful from its associations.

The White Rose of York (No. [20]) has never been satisfactorily identified. It was clearly a cultivated Rose, and by some is supposed to have been only the wild White Rose (R. arvensis) grown in a garden. But it is very likely to have been the Rosa alba, which was a favourite in English gardens in Shakespeare's time, and was very probably introduced long before his time, for it is the double variety of the wild White Rose, and Gerard says of it: "The double White Rose doth grow 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 a place called Roughford, not far from Latham." It was, therefore, not a new gardener's plant in his time, as has been often stated. I have little doubt that this is the White Rose of York; it is not the R. alba of Dr. Lindley's monograph, but the double variety of the British R. arvensis.

The White Rose has a very ancient interest for Englishmen, for "long before the brawl in the Temple Gardens, the flower had been connected with one of the most ancient names of our island. The elder Pliny, in discussing the etymology of the word Albion, suggests that the land may have been so named from the White Roses which abounded in it—'Albion insula sic dicta ab albis rupibus, quas mare alluit, vel ob rosas albas quibus abundat.' Whatever we may think of the etymological skill displayed in the suggestion . . . we look with almost a new pleasure on the Roses of our own hedgerows, when regarding them as descended in a straight line from the 'rosas albas' of those far-off summers."—Quarterly Review, vol. cxiv.

The Damask Rose (No. [5]) remains to us under the same name, telling its own history. There can be little doubt that the Rose came from Damascus, probably introduced into Europe by the Crusaders or some of the early travellers in the East, who speak in glowing terms of the beauties of the gardens of Damascus. So Sir John Mandeville describes the city—"In that Cytee of Damasce, there is gret plentee of Welles, and with in the Cytee and with oute, ben many fayre Gardynes and of dyverse frutes. Non other Cytee is not lyche in comparison to it, of fayre Gardynes, and of fayre desportes."—Voiage and Travaile, cap. xi. And in our own day the author of "Eöthen" described the same gardens as he saw them: "High, high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with the weight of Roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath. There are no other flowers. The Rose trees which I saw were all of the kind we call 'damask;' they grow to an immense height and size."—Eöthen, ch. xxvii. It was not till long after the Crusades that the Damask Rose was introduced into England, for Hakluyt in 1582 says: "In time of memory many things have been brought in that were not here before, as the Damaske Rose by Doctour Linaker, King Henry the Seventh and King Henrie the Eight's Physician."—Voiages, vol. ii.[252:1]

As an ornamental Rose the Damask Rose is still a favourite, though probably the real typical Rosa Damascena is very seldom seen—but it has been the parent of a large number of hybrid Roses, which the most critical Rosarian does not reject. The whole family are very sweet-scented, so that "sweet as Damask Roses" was a proverb, and Gerard describes the common Damaske as "in other respects like the White Rose; the especiale difference consisteth in the colour and smell of the floures, for these are of a pale red colour and of a more pleasant smell, and fitter for meate or medicine."

The Musk Roses (No. [1]) were great favourites with our forefathers. This Rose (R. moschata) is a native of the North of Africa and of Spain, and has been also found in Nepaul. Hakluyt gives the exact date of its introduction. "The turkey cockes and hennes," he says, "were brought about fifty yeres past, the Artichowe in time of King Henry the Eight, and of later times was procured out of Italy the Muske Rose plant, the Plumme called the Perdigwena, and two kindes more by the Lord Cromwell after his travel."—Voiages, vol. ii. It is a long straggling Rose, bearing bunches of single flowers, and is very seldom seen except against the walls of some old houses. "You remember the great bush at the corner of the south wall just by the blue drawing-room windows; that is the old Musk Rose, Shakespeare's Musk Rose, which is dying out through the kingdom now."—My Lady Ludlow, by Mrs. Gaskell. But wherever it is grown it is highly prized, not so much for the beauty as for the delicate scent of its flowers. The scent is unlike the scent of any other Rose, or of any other flower, but it is very pleasant, and not overpowering; and the plant has the peculiarity that, like the Sweet Briar, but unlike other Roses, it gives out its scent of its own accord and unsought, and chiefly in the evening, so that if the window of a bedroom near which this rose is trained is left open, the scent will soon be perceived in the room. This peculiarity did not escape the notice of Lord Bacon. "Because the breath of flowers," he says, "is far sweeter in the air (when it comes and goes like the warbling of music) 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 yields 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."—Essay of Gardens.

The Roses mentioned in Nos. [34], [51], and [52] as a mixture of red and white must have been the mottled or variegated Roses, commonly called the York and Lancaster Roses;[253:1] these are old Roses, and very probably quite as old as the sixteenth century. There are two varieties: in one each petal is blotched with white and pink; this is the R. versicolor of Parkinson, and is a variety of R. Damascena; in the other most of the petals are white, but with a mixture of pink petals; this is the Rosa mundi or Gloria mundi, and is a variety of R. Gallica.

These, with the addition of the Eglantine or Sweet Brier (see [Eglantine]), are the only Roses that Shakespeare directly names, and they were the chief sorts grown in his time, but not the only sorts; and to what extent Roses were cultivated in Shakespeare's time we have a curious proof in the account of the grant of Ely Place, in Holborn, the property of the Bishops of Ely. "The tenant was Sir Christopher Hatton (Queen Elizabeth's handsome Lord Chancellor) to whom the greater portion of the house was let in 1576 for the term of twenty-one years. The rent was a Red Rose, ten loads of hay, and ten pounds per annum; Bishop Cox, on whom this hard bargain was forced by the Queen, reserving to himself and his successors the right of walking in the gardens, and gathering twenty bushels of Roses yearly."—Cunningham. We have records also of the garden cultivation of the Rose in London long before Shakespeare's time. "In the Earl of Lincoln's garden in Holborn in 24 Edw. I., the only flowers named are Roses, of which a quantity was sold, producing three shillings and twopence."—Hudson Turner.

My space forbids me to enter more largely into any account of these old species, or to say much of the many very interesting points in the history of the Rose, but two or three points connected with Shakespeare's Roses must not be passed over. First, its name. He says through Juliet (No. [36]) that the Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But the whole world is against him. Rose was its old Latin name corrupted from its older Greek name, and the same name, with slight and easily-traced differences, has clung to it in almost all European countries.

Shakespeare also mentions its uses in Rose-water and Rose-cakes, and it was only natural to suppose that a flower so beautiful and so sweet was meant by Nature to be of great use to man. Accordingly we find that wonderful virtues were attributed to it,[255:1] and an especial virtue was attributed to the dewdrops that settled on the full-blown Rose. Shakespeare alludes to these in Nos. [22] and [27]; and from these were made cosmetics only suited to the most extravagant.