Old Country Life

by S. Baring-Gould

Now let us see what Horace Walpole tells us of the devastation of these beautiful old gardens. "No succeeding generation," he says, "in an opulent and luxurious country contents itself with the perfection established by its ancestors; more perfect perfection was still sought, and improvements had gone on, till London and Wise had stocked all our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms and mottoes, in yew, box, and holly. Bridgman, the next fashionable designer of gardens, was far more chaste—he banished verdant sculpture, and did not even revert to the square precision of the foregoing age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every division tally to its opposite, and though he still adhered much to straight walks with high-clipped hedges, they were only his great lines; the rest he diversified by wilderness, and with loose groves of oak, though still within surrounding hedges. As his reformation gained footing, he ventured to introduce cultivated fields and even morsels of forest appearance, by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks.

"But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed,"—I shiver as I write these words,—"was the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses—an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha's! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing, and rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without. At that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays."

The man Kent deserved the gallows much more than many who have been hung. No one who pretended to be in fashion dared to maintain a hedge or a wall. Down went the walls, and the beautiful roses bent their heads and died; the great yew hedges were stubbed up, and the delicate children and feeble old gentlemen who had basked under the lea, also, like the roses, stooped to earth and died. All the shelter, sweetness, sun, restfulness went away. These hedges had taken a century and more to grow, they were levelled without compunction, never perhaps again to reappear.[5]

No doubt there was folly in our forefathers in trimming yews into fantastical shapes; but Kent and his followers were as extravagant in their way. Kent actually planted dead trees in lawns and parks, to give a greater air of reality to the scene. Where he was allowed he cut down, or mutilated avenues, because unnatural; but just as unnatural were his absurd vistas, dug through woods so that the eye might reach a pagoda, an obelisk, or a temple at the end.

A traveller in France in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution, gives an account of the garden of Ermenonville, laid out by M. de Girardin on the English system. "He has succeeded better in closely imitating the steps of nature than any spot I have ever seen; nothing seems laboured, nothing artificial. The ground is irregular, and the ornaments rude, though the latter approach to too great an excess. I can see no reason, if ornaments are to be made use of in such places as these (which in itself is a deviation from nature), why they should not be handsome. To see a miserable obelisk built of brick, and resembling more a chimney than a monument, is carrying the refinement of wildness to too high a pitch. If they are designed to be rude and natural, they may at the same time be grotesque and elegant. Winding along a lovely walk, through the bosom of a young wood, a gentle stream meandering by its side, we reached a charming and retired spot. A large space here opens, shaded by the thick branches of the trees, which just leave room for a softened light to insinuate itself, and for the zephyrs to breathe through; over interrupting rocks and heaps of pebbles, the water dashes along with a noise grateful and composing. Here an altar is erected, sacred to Reverie; on a rock that overhangs the stream are inscribed some pleasing lines. Hence through a varied and highly pleasing path we continued our route along the grove, meeting with different inscriptions. From thence we ascended the forest, and traversing a path rugged and grotesque, were presented with many interesting and pleasing views. Arriving on the plain, in the bosom of a wood, we reached an extended area, in the midst of which stood a large oak, and at the end an edifice."[6]

I had written thus far, when last night there came to see me an old village singer of nigh on eighty years, always to me a welcome guest. I seated him by the fireside on a settle, and we fell to talking about gardens, when he said, "I reckon, your honour, I know a rare old-fashioned song about flowers and gardings, and them like. If your honour 'ud plase to hear me, I'll zing 'n."

Then he struck up the following quaint ballad, to an air certainly two hundred years old—

"IN A GARDEN SWEET." Arranged by F. W. Bussell, Esq., M.A.

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