[THE EVELYNS AT WOTTON.]
t has been well observed of the Evelyn family, that "rarely do we read of people who so admirably combined a love of rural life with literature." Studious retirement, not isolation, was what John Evelyn sought; and nowhere did he so delightfully enjoy his tastes as at Wotton House or Place in Surrey. This "great Virtuoso," as Aubrey called him, has left us the following account of his family, and of their first settlement at Wotton:—"We have not been at Wotton (purchased of one Owen, a great rich man) above 160 years. My great grandfather came from Long Ditton (the seat now of Sir Edward Eveylin), where we had been long before; and to Long Ditton from Harrow-on-the-Hill; and many years before that, from Evelyn, near Tower Castle, Shropshire. There are of our name in France and Italy, written Ivelyn, Avelin: and in old deeds I find Avelyn, alias Evelyn. One of our name was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt. When the Duchess of Orleans came to Dover to see the King [Charles II.], one of our name (whose family derives itself from Lusignan, king of Cyprus) claimed relation to us. We have in our family a tradition of a great sum of money, that had been given for the ransom of a French lord, with which a great estate was purchased; but these things are all mystical."
Wotton House, placed in a valley south-west of Dorking, though really upon a part of Leith Hill, was first erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Here, on October 31, 1620, was born John Evelyn, "Sylva Evelyn," as he was called from the title of his valuable work on Forest-trees. When four years old, he was taught at the porch of Wotton Church. He then learnt Latin in a school at Lewes; whence his father proposed to send him to Eton, but he was terrified at the reported severity of the discipline there, and he was again sent to Lewes, which he "afterwards a thousand times deplored." In 1636 he was admitted to the Middle Temple; whence he removed to Balliol College, Oxford. He returned to London in 1640; but on the death of his father he relinquished all thoughts of legal practice.
Mr. Evelyn, thus become his own master, purposed a life of studious seclusion, and actually commenced making a kind of hermitage at Wotton, at that period the seat of his eldest brother. The park is watered by a winding stream, and is backed by a magnificent range of beech-woods: the goodly oaks were cut down by John Evelyn's grandfather, and birch has taken the place of beech in many cases; but we trace to this day Evelyn's hollies, "a viretum all the year round;" and the noble planting of the author of Sylva, who describes the house as "large and ancient, suitable to those hospitable times, and so sweetly environed with delicious streams and venerable woods. It has rising grounds, meadows, woods, and water in abundance.... I should speak much of the gardens, fountains, and groves that adorne it, were they not generally known to be amongst the most natural (until this later and universal luxury of the whole nation, since abounding in such expenses), the most magnificent that England afforded, and which, indeed, gave one of the first examples of that elegancy since so much in vogue, and followed in the managing of their waters, and other ornaments of that nature."
Evelyn, by whom, in his brother's lifetime, the chief improvements in these grounds were directed, thus speaks of their origin in his Diary, under the date 1643, after the disastrous contest had commenced between the King and the Parliament:—"Resolving to possess myself in some quiet, if it might be, in a time of so great jealousy, I built, by my brother's permission, a study, made a fish-pond, and an island, and some other solitudes and retirements at Wotton; which gave the first occasion to those water-works and gardens which afterwards succeeded them."
Further alterations were made in 1652, and are thus described:—"I went with my brother Evelyn to Wotton to give him what directions I was able about his garden, which he was now desirous to put into some forme; but for which he was to remove a mountaine overgrowne with huge trees and thicket, with a moate within ten yards of the house. This my brother immediately attempted, and that without greate coste; for more than a hundred yards south, by digging down the mountaine, and flinging it into a rapid streame, it not only carried away the sand, &c., but filled up the moate, and levelled that noble area, where now the garden and fountaine is."
In 1641, Evelyn, tired of this seclusion, made a tour in France and the Netherlands, in which he appears to have gathered from observation such knowledge of Gardening as led him into its systematic study. He describes the Tuileries as rarely contrived for privacy, shade, or company; and he specially describes a labyrinth of cypress, with an artificial echo, "redoubling the words distinctly, and never without some fair nymph singing to it." "Standing at one of the focuses, which is under a tree, or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from the clouds; at another, as if it was underground." He tells us, too, of the curious garden of the Archbishop of Paris, at St. Cloud, with a Mount Parnassus, and a grotto, or "shell-house," on the top of the hill, the walls painted with the Muses, many statues placed about it, and within, "divers water-works, and contrivances to wet the spectators," reminding one of the famous copper-tube willow-tree at Chatsworth. Evelyn speaks of the Luxembourg Gardens as a paradise, where the Duke of Orleans kept tortoises in great numbers. The young traveller was charmed with the gardens of Italy; and at Padua he bought, for winter provision, three thousand weight of grapes, and pressed his own wine, which proved excellent.
Faithful to the Crown, Mr. Evelyn (who had become a volunteer in an English regiment serving in Flanders) joined the King's army at Brentford; but that he had not the temperament of a hero we may judge from the fact that, on the day before the battle of Edgehill was fought, after seeing Portsmouth delivered up to Sir William Waller, "he was able to make a careful archæological survey of the city of Winchester, calmly noting its castle, church, school, and King Arthur's Round Table." Knowing this characteristic trait, we are not surprised that he left his distracted country for the pleasures of foreign travel. On returning from Italy he visited Paris, and at the English Embassy met his future wife, the daughter of the Ambassador, Sir Richard Browne. He married her when she was little more than fourteen, and some months afterwards left her, as he admits, "still very young," under the appropriate care of her mother, whilst he transacted business in England. The Prince de Condé besieged Paris, and a year and a half elapsed before Evelyn rejoined his wife.