All here however was as it should be: Percy Lodge was the becoming retreat of a lady of high rank, who having in the natural course of time and things outlived all inclination for the pomps and vanities of the world, and all necessity for conforming to them, remembered what was still due to her station; and doing nothing to be seen of men, had retired thither to pass the remainder of her days in privacy and religious peace.
1 DIOGO BERNARDES.
All too was as it should be at Thaxted Grange. Picturesque was a term which had never been heard there; and taste was as little thought of as pretended to; but the right old English word comfort, in its good old English meaning, was nowhere more thoroughly understood. Nor anywhere could more evident indications of it be seen both within and without.
A tradesman retiring from business in these days with a fortune equivalent to what Mr. Allison had made, would begin his improvements upon such a house as the Grange by pulling it down. Mr. Allison contented himself with thoroughly repairing it. He had no dislike to low rooms, and casement windows. The whole furniture of his house cost less than would now be expended by a person of equal circumstances in fitting up a drawing-room. Every thing was for use, and nothing for display, unless it were two fowling pieces, which were kept in good order over the fire place in the best kitchen, and never used but when a kite threatened the poultry, or an owl was observed to frequent the dove-cote in preference to the barn.
But out of doors as much regard was shown to beauty as to utility. Miss Allison and Betsey claimed the little garden in front of the house for themselves. It was in so neglected a state when they took possession, that between children and poultry and stray pigs, not a garden flower was left there to grow wild: and the gravel walk from the gate to the porch was overgrown with weeds and grass, except a path in the middle which had been kept bare by use. On each side of the gate were three yew trees, at equal distances. In the old days of the Grange they had been squared in three lessening stages, the uppermost tapering pyramidally to a point. While the house had been shorn of its honours, the yews remained unshorn; but when it was once more occupied by a wealthy habitant, and a new gate had been set up and the pillars and their stone-balls cleaned from moss and lichen and short ferns, the unfortunate evergreens were again reduced to the formal shape in which Mr. Allison and his sister remembered them in their childhood. This was with them a matter of feeling, which is a better thing than taste. And indeed the yews must either have been trimmed, or cut down, because they intercepted sunshine from the garden and the prospect from the upper windows. The garden would have been better without them, for they were bad neighbours; but they belonged to old times, and it would have seemed a sort of sacrilege to destroy them.
Flower-beds used, like beds in the kitchen garden, to be raised a little above the path, with nothing to divide them from it, till about the beginning of the seventeenth century the fashion of bordering them was introduced either by the Italians or the French. Daisies, periwinkles, feverfew, hyssop, lavender, rosemary, rue, sage, wormwood, camomile, thyme and box, were used for this purpose: a German horticulturist observes that hyssop was preferred as the most convenient; box however gradually obtained the preference. The Jesuit Rapin claims for the French the merit of bringing this plant into use, and embellishes his account of it by one of those school-boy fictions which passed for poetry in his days, and may still pass for it in his country. He describes a feast of the rural gods:
Adfuit et Cybele, Phrygias celebrata per urbes;
Ipsaque cum reliquis Flora invitata deabus
Venit, inornatis, ut erat neglecta, capillis;
Sive fuit fastus, seu fors fiducia formæ.
Non illi pubes ridendi prompta pepercit,
Neglectam risere. Deam Berecynthia mater
Semotam à turba, casum miserata puellæ,
Exornat, certâque comam sub lege reponit,
Et viridi imprimis buxo (nam buxifer omnis
Undique campus erat) velavit tempora nymphæ.
Reddidit is speciem cultus, cœpitque videri
Formosa, et meruit: novus hinc decor additus ori.
Ex illo, ut Floram decuit cultura, per artem
Floribus ille decor posthac quæsitus, et hortis:
Quem tamen Ausonii cultores, quemque Pelasgi
Nescivere, suos nullâ qui lege per hortos
Plantabant flores, nec eos componere norant
Areolis, tonsâque vias describere buxo.
Culta super reliquas Francis topiaria gentes,
Ingenium seu mite soli cœlique benigni
Temperies tantam per sese adjuverit artem;
Sive illam egregiæ solers industria gentis
Extuderit, seris seu venerit usus ab annis.
The fashion which this buxom Flora introduced had at one time the effect of banishing flowers from what should have been the flower garden: the ground was set with box in their stead disposed in patterns more or less formal, some intricate as a labyrinth and not a little resembling those of Turkey carpets, where mahometan laws interdict the likeness of any living thing, and the taste of Turkish weavers excludes any combination of graceful forms. One sense at least was gratified when fragrant herbs were used in these “rare figures of composures,” or knots as they were called, hyssop being mixed in them with thyme, as aiders the one to the other, the one being dry, the other moist. Box had the disadvantage of a disagreeable odour; but it was greener in winter and more compact in all seasons. To lay out these knots and tread them required the skill of a master-gardener: much labour was thus expended without producing any beauty. The walks between them were sometimes of different colours, some would be of lighter or darker gravel, red or yellow sand; and when such materials were at hand, pulverised coal and pulverised shells.
Such a garden Mr. Cradock saw at Bordeaux no longer ago than the year 1785; it belonged to Monsieur Rabi, a very rich Jew merchant, and was surrounded by a bank of earth, on which there stood about two hundred blue and white flower-pots; the garden itself was a scroll work cut very narrow, and the interstices filled with sand of different colours to imitate embroidery; it required repairing after every shower, and if the wind rose the eyes were sure to suffer. Yet the French admired this and exclaimed, superbe! magnifique!
Neither Miss Allison nor her niece, would have taken any pleasure in gardens of this kind, which had nothing of a garden but the name. They both delighted in flowers; the aunt because flowers to her were “redolent of youth,” and never failed to awaken tender recollections; Betsey for an opposite reason; having been born and bred in London, a nosegay there had seemed always to bring her a foretaste of those enjoyments for which she was looking forward with eager hope. They had stocked their front garden therefore with the gayest and the sweetest flowers that were cultivated in those days; larkspurs both of the giant and dwarf species, and of all colours; sweet-williams of the richest hues; monks-hood for its stately growth; Betsey called it the dumbledore's delight, and was not aware that the plant in whose helmet- rather than cowl-shaped flowers that busy and best-natured of all insects appears to revel more than in any other, is the deadly aconite of which she read in poetry: the white lily, and the fleur-de-lis; peonies, which are still the glory of the English garden; stocks and gilly flowers which make the air sweet as the gales of Arabia; wall-flowers, which for a while are little less fragrant, and not less beautiful; pinks and carnations added their spicy odours; roses red and white peeped at the lower casements, and the jessamine climbed to those of the chambers above. You must nurse your own flowers if you would have them flourish, unless you happen to have a gardener who is as fond of them as yourself. Eve was not busier with her's in Paradise, her “pleasant task injoined,” than Betsey Allison and her aunt, from the time that early spring invited them to their cheerful employment, till late and monitory autumn closed it for the year.