Or perhaps, if fortune had smiled upon me, I might another day have popped in and got a talk with John Tradescant, whose father and grandfather were both gardeners to Queen Bess, and who himself was gardener in his time, to ill-fated Charles I. These Tradescants travelled all over the world in search of plants for the royal gardens, and one of them even went to Virginia in order to bring back new specimens.
WHERE ARE THE GARDENS OF THE PAST?
Where are the gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? A few are the delight and joy of our own time, but most of them have perished, and are gone like the roses that Sir Philip Sidney picked for Stella, or the anemones that John Evelyn loved. The press of human feet has displaced nearly all the fair floral sites in London, and the hare and the partridges rove over many of those famed in Tudor and Stuart days in the country.
Of Nonsuch, Evelyn wrote, “they cut down the fair elms and defaced the stateliest seat that his Majesty possessed.”
Alone, near High Ercall, at Eyton, where George Herbert’s mother was born and bred, stands the old gazebo or pleasure-house that belonged to the ancient hall of the Newports. This still remains in red brick, a lovely sixteenth-century building. The old house has perished, and the old gardens have gone back into plough, or meadow-land. Alone the old pleasure-house stands and a gigantic ilex, which is said to have been planted at the same time.
Did “holy Mr. Herbert” ever pace that old pleasure-house, I have often asked myself, as a little lad? It is a pleasant thought. All loved him. Lord Pembroke, his kinsman, told the king, James I., that he loved him more for his learning and virtues than even for his name and his family, and all men sought his friendship. Amongst these the learned Bishop of Winchester and Francis Lord Bacon. Was it of such a man that the great essayist wrote, “A man having such a friend hath two lives in his desires”? If so, it was of the immortal side of life he spoke, for all George’s aspirations were for the treasure where “neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and where no thief can break through or steal.”
Then I let my fancy linger for a moment in the old bowling-green at Whitehall, all gone too; I thought of the prisoner, Sir Richard Fanshawe, in the chamber above: and of his devoted wife, standing morning after morning, whilst the rain fell in torrents, talking and listening with the desperation of love.
THE MASQUE OF FLOWERS
The shadows deepened, the sunlight faded, and the glory of red melted away into tender lavender and green. After a while I think I got drowsy, for in my imagination I saw a garden, gorgeous and resplendent. Loud music resounded within its precincts, and a pleasaunce extended before me of strange and fantastic beauty. In the centre I noted a beautiful fountain, reared on four columns of silver, with four golden masked faces, from whose lips clear water issued in sparkling streams. There were also curious beasts of gold and silver, in the shape of lions and unicorns.
The magic garden was hedged in with a sombre hedge of cypress. On the whole scene fell the brilliant glare of flaming torches. Gorgeous parterres of tulips, all a blaze of blossom, flashed with a hundred colours, whilst to me, borne on little eddying breezes, came wafted back the delicious sweetness of honeysuckle and eglantine. Then, as I looked, to the sound of lutes and to the tinkle of old stringed instruments, I saw nymphs clad in rich apparel dance a stately measure.