ELIZABETH OF YORK’S BOWER
Besides these fair gardens, I thought in the dawn of gardening, of Elizabeth of York’s bower, “in the little park of Wyndsor,” and I liked to dream of that arbour in Baynarde’s Castle in London put up for her, by order of the king. I should have liked also to have walked with Sir Thomas More in that fair garden (probably his) from which he imagined the one in his “Utopia,” where “we went and sat down on a green bank and entertained one another in discourse.”
Then I should have liked to have crept into the great gardens at Hampton Court laid out by the great cardinal, where “there was a flower garden to supply the queen’s bower with roses, and where John Chapman, the most famous gardener of his time, grew his herbs for the king’s table.”
I should have liked to have had the invisible cap, and to have stepped past the guard and entered the Privy garden, and have read the mottoes on the sundials, and to have slyly scented the roses, and pinched the rosemary, juniper, and lavender.
Had I possessed the magic cap, I should not have forgotten to wander into the Bird garden and to have seen “the beestes,” holding in stone their vanes; and I should have liked also dearly to have seen all the strange animals, amongst which there were harts, badgers, hounds, dragons, antelopes, and one stately lion.
Could I have walked there, perhaps I might have caught a glance of that “sweetest lady from Spain” whom Shakespeare honoured most of all women; or perhaps in the joyous hey-day of her youth have met Anne of the slender neck, for whom Fate had reserved so terrible a fate, although for a time all seemed to go so smilingly with her.
Then I should have liked to have been a favourite guest at Moor Park, in the days when the stately Countess of Bedford lived there, and to have heard the wits talk, and perhaps have followed the countess and Doctor Donne up the trim gravel walks, and have admired the standard laurels, and rejoiced in the stately fountains in a garden that, in the words of the great Minister of the Hague, “was too pleasant ever to forget.” I should have liked also to have walked into Sir William Temple’s own garden at Sheen, had a chat with him about his melons, of which he was so proud, or have paced with him the trim alleys of his own Moor Park in Surrey. Later, I should have liked to have seen his stiff beds, reflections of the parterres of Holland, and have heard from his own lips the account of the Triple Alliance. And beyond this garden of men’s hands, I should like to have seen the glorious extent of firs and heather that enclosed his garden, and to have heard the murmur of the distant rivulet, and to have felt the charm of the distant view that he gazed upon.
Perhaps even, if fortune had been kind, I might have seen Lady Gifford in all the splendour of silk or satin, or heard some brilliant witticism from the lips of young Jonathan, or even have caught a fleeting glimpse of lovely Stella.
Now all these pretty, all these interesting shades of the past are gone. Yet Sir William’s sundial still stands in his favourite garden, and below it lies buried his heart, placed there by his own desire, whilst the rest of his remains lie in Westminster Abbey, beside those of his charming wife, Dorothy Osborne.
THE GARDENS OF THE EAST