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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/38829-8.txt b/38829-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e45aec4 --- /dev/null +++ b/38829-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6813 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Garden-Craft Old and New, by John D. Sedding + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Garden-Craft Old and New + +Author: John D. Sedding + +Release Date: February 11, 2012 [EBook #38829] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARDEN-CRAFT OLD AND NEW *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + + + + GARDEN-CRAFT + OLD AND NEW + + BY THE LATE + JOHN D. SEDDING + + WITH MEMORIAL NOTICE BY THE + REV. E. F. RUSSELL + + _WITH NINE ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + NEW EDITION + + LONDON + KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD. + PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD + 1895 + + + + +[Illustration: A GARDEN ENCLOSED.] + + + + +PREFACE. + + +"_What am I to say for my book?" asks Mr Stevenson in the Preface to "An +Inland Voyage." "Caleb and Joshua brought back from Palestine a +formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; +and, for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a +definition to any quantity of fruit._" + +_As this apology is so uncalled for in the case of this fruitful little +volume, I would venture to purloin it, and apply it where it is wholly +suitable. Here, the critic will say, is an architect who makes gardens +for the houses he builds, writing upon his proper craft, pandering to +that popular preference for a definition of which Mr Stevenson speaks, +by offering descriptions of what he thinks a fine garden should be, +instead of useful figured plans of its beauties!_ + +_And yet, to tell truth, it is more my subject than myself that is to +blame if my book be unpractical. Once upon a time complete in itself, as +a brief treatise upon the technics of gardening delivered to my brethren +of the Art-worker's Guild a year ago, the essay had no sooner arrived +with me at home, than it fell to pieces, lost gravity and compactness, +and became a garden-plaything--a sort of gardener's "open letter," to +take loose pages as fancies occurred. So have these errant thoughts, +jotted down in the broken leisure of a busy life, grown solid unawares +and expanded into a would-be-serious contribution to garden-literature._ + +_Following upon the original lines of the Essay on the For and Against +of Modern Gardening, I became the more confirmed as to the general +rightness of the old ways of applying Art, and of interpreting Nature +the more I studied old gardens and the point of view of their makers; +until I now appear as advocate of old types of design, which, I am +persuaded, are more consonant with the traditions of English life, and +more suitable to an English homestead than some now in vogue._ + +_The old-fashioned garden, whatever its failings in the eyes of the +modern landscape-gardener (great is the poverty of his invention), +represents one of the pleasures of England, one of the charms of that +quiet beautiful life of bygone times that I, for one, would fain see +revived. And judged even as pieces of handicraft, apart from their +poetic interest, these gardens are worthy of careful study. They embody +ideas of ancient worth; they evidence fine aims and heroic efforts; they +exemplify traditions that are the net result of a long probation. Better +still, they render into tangible shapes old moods of mind that English +landscape has inspired; they testify to old devotion to the scenery of +our native land, and illustrate old attempts to idealise its pleasant +traits._ + +_Because the old gardens are what they are--beautiful yesterday, +beautiful to-day, and beautiful always--we do well to turn to them, not +to copy their exact lines, nor to limit ourselves to the range of their +ornament and effects, but to glean hints for our garden-enterprise +to-day, to drink of their spirit, to gain impulsion from them. As often +as not, the forgotten field proves the richest of pastures._ + + _J. D. S._ + + THE CROFT, WEST WICKHAM, KENT, + _Oct. 8, 1890_. + + + + +MEMOIR. + + +The Manuscript of this book was placed complete in the hands of his +publishers by John Sedding. He did not live to see its production. + +At the wish of his family and friends, I have, with help from others, +set down some memories and impressions of my friend. + +My acquaintance with John Sedding dates from the year 1875. He was then +37 years of age, and had been practising as an architect almost +exclusively in the South-West of England. The foundations of this +practice were laid by his equally talented brother, Edmund Sedding, who, +like himself, had received his training in the office of Mr Street. +Edmund died in 1868, and John took up the business, but his clients were +so few, and the prospect of an increase in their number so little +encouraging, that he left Bristol and came to London, and here I first +met him. He had just taken a house in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, +and the house served him on starting both for home and office. + +The first years in London proved no exception to the rule of first +years, they were more or less a time of struggle and anxiety. John +Sedding's happy, buoyant nature, his joy in his art, and invincible +faith in his mission, did much to carry him through all difficulties. +But both at this time, and all through his life, he owed much, very +much, to the brave hopefulness and wise love of his wife. Rose Sedding, +a daughter of Canon Tinling, of Gloucester, lives in the memory of those +who knew her as an impersonation of singular spiritual beauty and +sweetness. Gentle and refined, sensitive and sympathetic to an unusual +degree, there was no lack in her of the sterner stuff of +character--force, courage, and endurance. John Sedding leaned upon his +wife; indeed, I cannot think of him without her, or guess how much of +his success is due to what she was to him. Two days before his death he +said to me, "I have to thank God for the happiest of homes, and the +sweetest of wives." + +Many will remember with gratitude the little home in Charlotte Street, +as the scene of some of the pleasantest and most refreshing hours they +have ever known. John Sedding had the gift of attracting young men, +artists and others, to himself, and of entering speedily into the +friendliest relations with them. He met them with such taking frankness, +such unaffected warmth of welcome, that they surrendered to him at once, +and were at once at ease with him and happy. + +On Sundays, when the religious duties of the day were over, he was wont +to gather a certain number of these young fellows to spend the evening +at his house. No one of those who were privileged to be of the party can +forget the charming hospitality of these evenings. The apparatus was so +simple, the result so delightful; an entire absence of display, and yet +no element of perfect entertainment wanting. On these occasions, when +supper was over, Mrs Sedding usually played for us with great +discernment and feeling the difficult music of Beethoven, Grieg, Chopin, +and others, and sometimes she sang. More than one friendship among their +guests grew out of these happy evenings. + +In course of time the increase of his family and the concurrent increase +of his practice obliged him to remove, first his office to Oxford +Street, and later on his home to the larger, purer air of a country +house in the little village of West Wickham, Kent. This house he +continued to occupy until his death. Work of all kinds now began to flow +in upon him, not rapidly, but by steady increase. His rich faculty of +invention, his wide knowledge, his skill in the manipulation of natural +forms, the fine quality of his taste, were becoming more and more known. +He produced in large numbers designs for wall-papers, for decoration, +and for embroidery. These designs were never repetitions of old +examples, nor were they a réchauffé of his own previous work. Something +of his soul he put into all that he undertook, hence his work was never +commonplace, and scarcely needed signature to be known as his, so +unmistakably did it bear his stamp, the "marque de fabrique," of his +individuality. + +I have known few men so well able as he to press flowers into all manner +of decorative service, in metal, wood, stone or panel, and in +needlework. He understood them, and could handle them with perfect ease +and freedom, each flower in his design seeming to fall naturally into +its appointed place. Without transgressing the natural limits of the +material employed, he yet never failed to give to each its own essential +characteristics, its gesture, and its style. Flowers were indeed +passionately loved, and most reverently, patiently studied by him. He +would spend many hours out of his summer holiday in making careful +studies of a single plant, or spray of foliage, painting them, as Mr +Ruskin had taught him, in siena and white, or in violet-carmine and +white. Leaves and flowers were, in fact, almost his only school of +decorative design. + +This is not the place to attempt any formal exposition of John Sedding's +views on Art and the aims of Art. They can be found distinctly stated +and amply, often brilliantly, illustrated in his Lectures and Addresses, +of which some have appeared in the architectural papers and some are +still in manuscript.[1] But short of this formal statement, it may prove +not uninteresting to note some characters of his work which impressed +us. + +[Footnote 1: It is much to be wished that these Lectures and Addresses +should be collected and published.] + +Following no systematic order, we note first his profound sympathy with +ancient work, and with ancient work of all periods that might be called +periods of living Art. He never lost an opportunity of visiting and +intently studying ancient buildings, sketching them, and measuring them +with extraordinary care, minuteness, and patience. "On one occasion," +writes Mr Lethaby, "when we were hurried he said, 'We cannot go, it is +life to us.'" A long array of sketch-books, crowded with studies and +memoranda, remains to bear witness to his industry. In spite of this +extensive knowledge, and copious record of old work, he never literally +reproduced it. The unacknowledged plagiarisms of Art were in his +judgment as dishonest as plagiarisms in literature, and as hopelessly +dead. "He used old forms," writes Mr Longden, "in a plastic way, and +moulded them to his requirements, never exactly reproducing the old +work, which he loved to draw and study, but making it his starting-point +for new developments. This caused great difference of opinion as to the +merit of his work, very able and skilful judges who look at style from +the traditional point of view being displeased by his designs, while +others who may be said to partake more of the movement of the time, +admired his work." + +His latest and most important work, the Church of the Holy Trinity, +Sloane Street, is a case in point. It has drawn out the most completely +opposed judgments from by no means incompetent men; denounced by some, +it has won the warmest praise from others, as, for instance, from two +men who stand in the very front rank of those who excel, William Morris +has said of it, "It is on the whole the best modern interior of a town +church"; and the eminent painter, E. Burnes-Jones, writing to John +Sedding, writes: "I cannot tell you how I admire it, and how I longed to +be at it." Speaking further of this sympathy with old work, Mr Longden, +who knew him intimately, and worked much with him, writes, "The rather +rude character of the Cornish granite work in the churches did not repel +him, indeed, he said he loved it, because he understood it. He has made +additions to churches in Cornwall, such as it may well be imagined the +old Cornishmen would have done, yet with an indescribable touch of +modernness about them. He also felt at home with the peculiar character +of the Devonshire work, and some of his last work is in village churches +where he has made a rather ordinary church quite beautiful and +interesting, by repairing and extending old wooden screens, putting in +wooden seats, with an endless variety of symbolic designs, marble font +and floor, fine metal work, simple but well-designed stained glass, good +painting in a reredos, all, as must be with an artist, adding to the +general effect, and falling into place in that general effect, while +each part is found beautiful and interesting, if examined in detail." + +"The rich Somersetshire work, where the fine stone lends itself to +elaborate carving, was very sympathetic to Sedding, and he has added to +and repaired many churches in that county, always taking the fine points +in the old work and bringing them out by his own additions, whether in +the interior or the exterior, seizing upon any peculiarity of site or +position to show the building to the best advantage, and never +forgetting the use of a church, but increasing the convenience of the +arrangements for worship, and emphasizing the sacred character of the +buildings on which he worked." + +In his lectures to Art students, no plea was more often on his lips than +the plea for living Art, as contrasted with "shop" Art, or mere +antiquarianism. The artist is the product of his own time and of his own +country, his nature comes to him out of the past, and is nourished in +part upon the past, but he lives in the present, and of the present, +sharing its spirit and its culture. John Sedding had great faith in the +existence of this art gift, as living and active in his own time, he +recognised it reverently and humbly in himself, and looked for it and +hailed it with joy and generous appreciation in others. Hence the value +he set upon association among Art workers. "Les gens d'esprit," says M. +Taine, speaking of Art in Italy, "n'ont jamais plus d'esprit que +lorsqu'ils sont ensemble. Pour avoir des oeuvres d'art il faut d'abord +des artistes, mais aussi des ateliers. Alors il y avait des ateliers, et +en outre les artistes faisaient des corporations. Tous se tenaient, et +dans la grande société, de petites sociétés unissaient étroitement et +librement leurs membres. La familiarité les rapprochait; la rivalité les +aiguillonnait."[2] + +[Footnote 2: _Philosophie de l'art en Italie_ (p. 162).--H. TAINE.] + +He gave practical effect to these views in the conduct of his own +office, which was as totally unlike the regulation architect's office, +as life is unlike clockwork. + +Here is a charming "interior" from the pen of his able chief assistant +and present successor, Mr H. Wilson:-- + +"I shall not readily forget my first impressions of Mr Sedding. I was +introduced to him at one of those delightful meetings of the Art +Workers' Guild, and his kindly reception of me, his outstretched hand, +and the unconscious backward impulses of his head, displaying the +peculiar whiteness of the skin over the prominent temporal and frontal +bones, the playful gleam of his eyes as he welcomed me, are things that +will remain with me as long as memory lasts. + +"Soon after that meeting I entered his office, only to find that he was +just as delightful at work as in the world. + +"The peculiar half shy yet eager way in which he rushed into the front +room, with a smile and a nod of recognition for each of us, always +struck me. But until he got to work he always seemed preoccupied, as if +while apparently engaged in earnest discussion of some matter an +under-current of thought was running the while, and as if he were +devising something wherewith to beautify his work even when arranging +business affairs. + +"This certainly must have been the case, for frequently he broke off in +the midst of his talk to turn to a board and sketch out some design, or +to alter a detail he had sketched the day before with a few vigorous +pencil-strokes. This done, he would return to business, only to glance +off again to some other drawing, and to complete what would not _come_ +the day before. In fact he was exactly like a bird hopping from twig to +twig, and from flower to flower, as he hovered over the many drawings +which were his daily work, settling here a form and there a moulding as +the impulse of the moment seized him. + +"And though at times we were puzzled to account for, or to anticipate +his ways, and though the work was often hindered by them, we would not +have had it otherwise. + +"Those 'gentillesses d'oiseaux,' as Hugo says, those little birdy ways, +so charming from their unexpectedness, kept us constantly on the alert, +for we never quite knew what he would do next. It was not his custom to +move in beaten tracks, and his everyday life was as much out of the +common as his inner life. His ways with each of us were marked by an +almost womanly tenderness. He seemed to regard us as his children, and +to have a parent's intuition of our troubles, and of the special needs +of each with reference to artistic development. + +"He would come, and taking possession of our stools would draw with his +left arm round us, chatting cheerily, and yet erasing, designing +vigorously meanwhile. Then, with his head on one side like a jackdaw +earnestly regarding something which did not quite please him, he would +look at the drawing a moment, and pounce on the paper, rub all his work +out, and begin again. His criticism of his own work was singularly frank +and outspoken even to us. I remember once when there had been a slight +disagreement between us, I wrote to him to explain. Next morning, when +he entered the office, he came straight to the desk where I was working, +quietly put his arm round me, took my free hand with his and pressed it +and myself to him without a word. It was more than enough. + +"He was, however, not one of those who treat all alike. He adapted +himself with singular facility to each one with whom he came in contact; +his insight in this respect was very remarkable, and in consequence he +was loved and admired by the most diverse natures. The expression of his +face was at all times pleasant but strangely varied, like a lake it +revealed every passing breath of emotion in the most wonderful way, +easily ruffled and easily calmed. + +"His eyes were very bright and expressive, with long lashes, the upper +lids large, full, and almost translucent, and his whole face at anything +which pleased him lit up and became truly radiant. At such times his +animation in voice, gesture, and look was quite remarkable, his talk was +full of felicitous phrases, happy hits, and piquant sayings. + +"His was the most childlike nature I have yet seen, taking pleasure in +the simplest things, ever ready for fun, trustful, impulsive, and +joyous, yet easily cast down. His memory for details and things he had +seen and sketched was marvellous, and he could turn to any one of his +many sketches and find a tiny scribble made twenty or thirty years ago, +as easily as if he had made it yesterday. + +"His favourite attitude in the office was with his back to the fireplace +and with his hands behind him, head thrown back, looking at, or rather +through one. He seldom seemed to look at anyone or anything, his glance +always had something of divination in it, and in his sketches, however +slight, the soul of the thing was always seized, and the accidental or +unnecessary details left to others less gifted to concern themselves +with. + +"His love of symbolism was only equalled by his genius for it, old ideas +had new meanings for him, old symbols were invested with deeper +significance and new ones full of grace and beauty discovered. In this +his intense, enthusiastic love of nature and natural things stood him in +good stead, and he used Nature as the old men did, to teach new truths. +For him as well as for all true artists, the universe was the living +visible garment of God, the thin glittering rainbow-coloured veil which +hides the actual from our eyes. He was the living embodiment of all that +an architect should be, he had the sacred fire of enthusiasm within, and +he had the power of communicating that fire to others, so that workmen, +masons, carvers could do, and did lovingly for him, what they would not +or could not do for others. We all felt and still feel that it was his +example and precept that has given us what little true knowledge and +right feeling for Art we may possess, and the pity is there will never +be his like again. + +"He was not one of those who needed to pray 'Lord, keep my memory +green,' though that phrase was often on his lips, as well as another +delightful old epitaph: + + 'Bonys emonge stonys lys ful steyl + Quilst the soules wanderis where that God will.'"[3] + +[Footnote 3: In Thornhill Church.] + +This delightful and assuredly entirely faithful picture is in itself +evidence of the contagion of John Sedding's enthusiasm. + +Beyond the inner circle of his own office, he sought and welcomed the +unfettered co-operation of other artists in his work; in the words of a +young sculptor, "he gave us a chance." He let them say their say instead +of binding them to repeat his own. God had His message to deliver by +them, and he made way that the world might hear it straight from their +lips. + +The same idea of sympathetic association, "fraternité +généreuse--confiance mutuelle--communauté de sympathies et +d'aspirations," has found embodiment in the Art Workers' Guild, a +society in which artists and craftsmen of all the Arts meet and +associate on common ground. John Sedding was one of the original members +of this Guild, and its second Master. + +Of his connection with the Guild the Secretary writes: "No member was +ever more respected, none had more influence, no truer artist existed in +the Guild." And Mr Walter Crane: "His untiring devotion to the Guild +throughout his term of office, and his tact and temper, were beyond +praise." + +It must not be inferred from these facts that John Sedding's sympathies +were only for the world of Art, art-workers, and art-ideals. He shared +to the full the ardour of his Socialist friends, in their aspirations +for that new order of more just distribution of all that makes for the +happiness of men, the coming "city which hath foundations whose builder +and maker is God." He did not share their confidence in their methods, +but he honoured their noble humanity, and followed their movements with +interest and respect, giving what help he could. The condition of the +poor, especially the London poor, touched him to the quick sometimes +with indignation at their wrongs, sometimes with deep compassion and +humbled admiration at the pathetic patience with which they bore the +burden of their joyless, suffering lives. His own happy constitution and +experience never led him to adopt the cheap optimism with which so many +of us cheat our conscience, and justify to ourselves our own selfish +inertness. The more ample income of his last years made no difference in +the simple ordering of his household, it did make difference in his +charities. He gave money, and what is better, gave his personal labour +to many works for the good of others, some of which he himself had +inaugurated. + +John Sedding was an artist by a necessity of his nature. God made him +so, and he could not but exercise his gift, but apart from the +satisfaction that comes by doing what we are meant for, it filled him +with thankfulness to have been born to a craft with ends so noble as are +the ends of Art. To give pleasure and to educate are aims good indeed to +be bound by, especially when by education we understand, not +mind-stuffing, but mind-training, in this case the training of faculty +to discern and be moved by the poetry, the spiritual suggestiveness of +common everyday life. This brought his calling into touch with working +folk. + +As a man, John Sedding impressed us all by the singular and beautiful +simplicity and childlikeness of his character, a childlikeness which +never varied, and nothing, not even the popularity and homage which at +last surrounded him, seemed able to spoil it. He never lost his boyish +spontaneity and frankness, the unrestrained brightness of his manners +and address, his boyish love of fun, and hearty, ringing laugh. Mr +Walter Crane speaks of his "indomitable gaiety and spirits which kept +all going, especially in our country outings." "He always led the fun," +writes Mr Lethaby, "at one time at the head of a side at 'tug of war,' +at another, the winner in an 'egg and spoon race.'" His very faults were +the faults of childhood, the impulsiveness, the quick and unreflecting +resentment against wrong, and the vehement denunciation of it. He +trusted his instincts far more than his reason, and on the whole, his +instincts served him right well, yet at times they failed him, as in +truth they fail us all. There were occasions when a little reflection +would have led him to see that his first rapid impressions were at +fault, and so have spared himself and others some pain and +misunderstanding. Let a thing appear to him false, unfair, or cowardly, +he would lower his lance and dash full tilt at it at once, sometimes to +our admiration, sometimes to our amusement when the appearance proved +but a windmill in the mist, sometimes to our dismay when--a rare +case--he mistook friend for foe. + +No picture of John Sedding could be considered at all to represent him +which failed to express the blameless purity of his character and +conduct. I do not think the man lives who ever heard a tainted word from +his lips. There was in him such depth and strength of moral +wholesomeness that he sickened at, and revolted against the unseemly +jest, and still more against the scenes, and experiences of the sensuous +(to use no stronger word) upon which in the minds of some, the artist +must perforce feed his gift. With his whole soul he repudiated the idea +that Art grew only as a flower upon the grave of virtue, and that +artists could, or desired to, lay claim to larger moral licence than +other less imaginative men. + +I have kept till last the best and deepest that was in him, the hidden +root of all he was, the hallowing of all he did. I mean his piety--his +deep, unfeigned piety. In his address at the annual meeting of the +Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, a singularly outspoken and +vigorous exhortation to laymen to keep their practice abreast of their +faith, he used the following words: "In the wild scene of 19th century +work, and thought, and passion, when old snares still have their old +witchery, and new depths of wickedness yawn at our feet, when the world +is so wondrous kind to tired souls, and neuralgic bodies, and itself +pleads for concessions to acknowledged weakness; when unfaith is so like +faith, and the devil freely suffers easy acquiescence in high gospel +truth, and even holds a magnifying-glass that one may better see the +sweetness of the life of the 'Son of Man,' it is well in these days of +sloth, and sin, and doubt, to have one's energies braced by a 'girdle of +God' about one's loins! It is well, I say, for a man to have a circle of +religious exercises that can so hedge him about, so get behind his life, +and wind themselves by long familiarity into his character that they +become part of his everyday existence--bone of his bone." + +Out of his own real knowledge and practice he spoke these words. The +"circle of religious exercise," the girdle of God, had become for him +part of his everyday existence. I can think of no better words to +express the unwavering consistency of his life. It is no part of my duty +to tell in detail what and how much he did, and with what +whole-heartedness he did it. + +Turning to outward things, every associate of John Sedding knew his +enthusiasm for the cause of the Catholic revival in the English Church. +It supplied him with a religion for his whole nature. No trouble seemed +too great on behalf of it, though often his zeal entailed upon him some +material disadvantage. Again and again I have known him give up precious +hours and even days in unremunerated work, to help some struggling +church or mission, or some poor religious community. It was a joy to him +to contribute anything to the beauty of the sanctuary or the solemnity +of its offices. From the year 1878 to 1881 he was sidesman, from 1882 to +1889 churchwarden of St. Alban's, Holborn, doing his work thoroughly, +and with conspicuous kindliness and courtesy. It was one of the thorns +to the rose of his new life in the country that it obliged him to +discontinue this office. For eleven years he played the organ on Sunday +afternoons for a service for young men and maidens, few of whom can +forget the extraordinary life and pathos that he was wont by some magic +to put into his accompaniment to their singing. + +This present year, 1891, opened full of promise for John Sedding. In a +marvellously short time he had come hand over hand into public notice +and public esteem, as a man from whom excellent things were to be +expected,--things interesting, original, and beautiful. Mr Burne Jones +writes: "My information about Sedding's work is very slight,--my +interest in him very great, and my admiration too, from the little I had +seen. I know only the church in Sloane Street, but that was enough to +fill me with the greatest hope about him ... I saw him in all some +half-dozen times--liked him instantly, and felt I knew him intimately, +and was looking forward to perhaps years of collaboration with him." + +Work brought work, as each thing he did revealed, to those who had eyes +to see, the gift that was in him. At Art Congresses and all assemblies +of Art Workers his co-operation was sought and his presence looked for, +especially by the younger men, who hailed him and his words with +enthusiasm. To these gatherings he brought something more and better +than the sententious wisdom, the chill repression which many feel called +upon to administer on the ground of their experience.[4] He put of the +fire that was in him into the hearts that heard him, he made them proud +of their cause and of their place in it, and hopeful for its triumph and +their own success. It was a contribution of sunshine and fresh air, and +all that is the complete opposite of routine, red-tape, and the +conventional. + +[Footnote 4: Qu'est-ce l'expérience? Une pauvre petite cabane construite +avec les débris de ces palais d'or et de marbre appelés nos +illusions.--_Joseph Roux._] + +We who have watched his progress have noticed of late a considerable +development in his literary power, a more marked individuality of style, +a swifter and smoother movement, a richer vocabulary, and new skill in +the presentation of his ideas. He was exceedingly happy in his +illustrations of a principle, and his figures were always interesting, +never hackneyed. A certain "bonhomie" in his way of putting things won +willing hearers for his words, which seemed to come to meet us with a +smile and open, outstretched hands, as the dear speaker himself was wont +to do. Something of course of the living qualities of speech are lost +when we can receive it only from the cold black and white of print, +instead of winged and full of human music from the man's own lips. Yet, +in spite of this, unless I am mistaken, readers of this book will not +fail to find in it a good deal to justify my judgment. + +It seems to have taken some of his friends by surprise that John Sedding +should write on Gardens. They knew him the master of many crafts, but +did not count Garden-craft among them. As a matter of fact, it was a +love that appeared late in life, though all along it must have been +within the man, for the instant he had a garden of his own the passion +appeared full grown. Every evening between five and six, save when his +work called him to distant parts, you might have seen him step quickly +out of the train at the little station of West Wickham, run across the +bridge, and greeting and greeted by everybody, swing along the shady +road leading to his house. In his house, first he kissed his wife and +children, and then supposing there was light and the weather fine, his +coat was off and he fell to work at once with spade or trowel in his +garden, absorbed in his plants and flowers, and the pleasant crowding +thoughts that plants and flowers bring. + +After supper he assembled his household to say evening prayers with +them. When all had gone to rest he would settle himself in his little +study and write, write, write, until past midnight, sometimes past one, +dashing now and again at a book upon his shelves to verify some one or +other of those quaint and telling bits which are so happily inwoven into +his text. One fruit of these labours is this book on Garden-craft. + +But I have detained the reader long enough. All is by no means told, and +many friends will miss, I doubt not, with disappointment this or that +feature which they knew and loved in him. It cannot be helped. I have +written as I could, not as I would, within the narrow limits which +rightly bound a preface. + +How the end came, how within fourteen days the hand of God took from our +midst the much love, genius, beauty which His hand had given us in the +person of John and Rose Sedding, a few words only must tell. + +On Easter Monday, March 30th, John Sedding spent two hours in London, +giving the last sitting for the bust which was being modelled at the +desire of the Art Workers' Guild. The rest of the day he was busy in his +garden. Next morning he left early for Winsford, in Somersetshire, to +look after the restoration of this and some other churches in the +neighbourhood. Winsford village is ten miles from the nearest railway +station Dulverton; the road follows the beautiful valley of the Exe, +which rising in the moors, descends noisily and rapidly southwards to +the sea. The air is strangely chill in the hollow of this woody valley. +Further, it was March, and March of this memorable year of 1891. Lines +of snow still lay in the ditches, and in white patches on the northern +side of hedgerows. Within a fortnight of this time men and cattle had +perished in the snow-drifts on the higher ground. + +Was this valley the valley of death for our friend, or were the seeds of +death already within him? I know not. Next morning, Wednesday, he did +not feel well enough to get up. His kind hostess, and host, the Vicar of +the parish, did all that kindness--kindness made harder and therefore +more kind by ten miles' distance from a railway station--could do. John +sent for his wife, who came at once, with her baby in her arms. On +Saturday at midnight he received his last Communion. The next day he +seemed to brighten and gave us hopes. On Monday there was a change for +the worse, and on Tuesday morning he passed away in perfect peace. + +At the wish of his wife, his grave was prepared at West Wickham. The +Solemn Requiem, by her wish also, was at the church he loved and served +so well, St. Alban's, Holborn. That church has witnessed many striking +scenes, but few more impressive than the great gathering at his funeral. +The lovely children's pall that John Sedding had himself designed and +Rose Sedding had embroidered, covered the coffin, and on the right of it +in a dark mass were gathered his comrades of the Art Workers' Guild. + +The tragedy does not end here. On that day week, at that very same hour +and spot, beneath the same pall, lay the body of his dear and devoted +wife. + +Side by side, near the tall elms of the quiet Kentish churchyard, the +bodies of John and Rose Sedding are sleeping. The spot was in a sense +chosen by Rose Sedding, if we may use the term 'choice' for her simple +wish that it might be where the sun shines and flowers will grow. The +western slope of the little hill was fixed upon, and already the flowers +they loved so well are blooming over them. + +Among the papers of Rose Sedding was found, pencilled in her own +handwriting, the following lines of a 17th century poet: + + "'Tis fit one flesh one house should have, + One tomb, one epitaph, one grave; + And they that lived and loved either + Should dye, and lye, and sleep together."[5] + +[Footnote 5: The words "'Tis fit one flesh one house should have," &c., +form part of the epitaph of Richard Bartholomew and his wife in the +parish church of Burford. + +How strange that the words should have found in her own case such exact +fulfilment. + + E. F. RUSSELL. + + ST ALBAN'S CLERGY HOUSE, + BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN. + _June 1891._ + +It stands thus:-- + + Lo Hudled up, Together lye + Gray Age, Greene Youth, White Infancy. + If Death doth Nature's law dispence, + And reconciles all difference, + 'Tis fit One Flesh One House should have, + One Tombe, One Epitaph, One Grave; + And they that lived and loved either + Should dye and Lye and sleep together. + Goe Reader, whether goe or stay, + Thou must not hence be long away.] + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. THE THEORY OF A GARDEN 1 + + II. ART IN A GARDEN 28 + + III. HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SKETCH 41 + + IV. THE STIFF GARDEN 70 + + V. THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN" 98 + + VI. THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING 133 + + VII. THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING (_CONTINUED_) 153 + + + ON THE OTHER SIDE. + + VIII. A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY 183 + + IX. IN PRAISE OF BOTH 202 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. + + + + A GARDEN ENCLOSED _FRONTISPIECE_ + + PLAN OF ROSARY WITH SUNDIAL TO FACE P. 156 + + PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER + GARDEN 158 + + GENERAL PLAN OF THE PLEASAUNCE, VILLA + ALBANI, ROME 160 + + PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF SUNK FLOWER + GARDEN, YEW WALK, AND TENNIS COURT 164 + + PLAN OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN AND YEW + HEDGES 166 + + PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, + YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A + LARGE GARDEN 180 + + PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN THE PRECEDING + PLAN 180 + + PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, + WITH CLIPPED YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER + BEDS 182 + + + + +GARDEN-CRAFT + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. + + "Come hither, come hither, come hither; + Here shall he see + No enemy + But winter and rough weather." + + +Some subjects require to be delineated according to their own taste. +Whatever the author's notions about it at starting, the subject somehow +slips out of his grasp and dictates its own method of treatment and +style. The subject of gardening answers to this description: you cannot +treat it in a regulation manner. It is a discursive subject that of +itself breeds laggard humours, inclines you to reverie, and suggests a +discursive style. + +This much in defence of my desultory essay. The subject, in a manner, +drafts itself. Like the garden, it, too, has many aspects, many +side-paths, that open out broken vistas to detach one's interest and +lure from the straight, broad terrace-platform of orderly discourse. At +first sight, perhaps, with the balanced beauty of the thing in front of +you, carefully parcelled out and enclosed, as all proper gardens are, +the theme may appear so compact, that all meandering after side-issues +may seem sheer wantonness. As you proceed, however, it becomes apparent +that you may not treat of a garden and disregard the instincts it +prompts, the connection it has with Nature, its place in Art, its office +in the world as a sweetener of human life. True, the garden itself is +hedged in and neatly defined, but behind the garden is the man who made +it; behind the man is the house he has built, which the garden adorns; +and every man has his humours; every house has its own conditions of +plan and site; every garden has its own atmosphere, its own contents, +its own story. + +So now, having in this short preamble discovered something of the rich +variety and many-sidedness of the subject, I proceed to write down three +questions just to try what the yoke of classification may do to keep +one's feet within bounds: (1) What is a garden, and why is it made? (2) +What ornamental treatment is fit and right for a garden? (3) What should +be the relation of the garden to the house? + +Forgive me if, in dealing with the first point, I so soon succumb to the +allurements of my theme, and drop into flowers of speech! To me, then, a +garden is the outward and visible sign of man's innate love of +loveliness. It reveals man on his artistic side. Beauty, it would seem, +has a magnetic charm for him; and the ornamental display of flowers +betokens his bent for, and instinctive homage of beauty. And to say this +of man in one grade of life is to say it of all sorts and conditions of +men; and to say it of one garden is to say it of all--whether the garden +be the child of quality or of lowliness; whether it adorn castle, +manor-house, villa, road-side cottage or signalman's box at the railway +siding, or Japanese or British tea-garden, or Babylonian terrace or +Platonic grove at Athens--in each case it was made for eye-delight at +Beauty's bidding. Even the Puritan, for all his gloomy creed and bleak +undecorated life, is Romanticist here; the hater of outward show turns +rank courtier at a pageant of flowers: he will dare the devil at any +moment, but not life without flowers. And so we have him lovingly +bending over the plants of his home-garden, packing the seeds to carry +with him into exile, as though these could make expatriation tolerable. +"There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of these stern +men than that they should have been sensible of their flower-roots +clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the +necessity of bringing them over sea and making them hereditary in the +new land." (Hawthorne, "Our Old Home," p. 77.) + +But to take a higher point of view. A garden is, in many ways, the "mute +gospel" it has been declared to be. It is the memorial of Paradise lost, +the pledge of Paradise regained. It is so much of earth's surface +redeemed from the scar of the fall: + + "Who loves a garden still keeps his Eden." + +Its territories stand, so to speak, betwixt heaven and earth, so that +it shares the cross-lights of each. It parades the joys of earth, yet no +less hints the joys of heaven. It tells of man's happy tillage of his +plot of ground, yet blazes abroad the infinite abundance of God's wide +husbandry of the world. It bespeaks the glory of earth's array, yet +publishes its passingness.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Think of "a paradise not like this of ours with so much +pains and curiosity made with hands"--says Evelyn, in the middle of a +rhapsody on flowers--"eternal in the heavens, where all the trees are +trees of life, the flowers all amaranths; all the plants perennial, ever +verdant, ever pregnant, and where those who desire knowledge may taste +freely of the fruit of that tree which cost the first gardener and +posterity so dear." (Sylva, "Of Forest-trees," p. 148.)] + +Again. The punctual waking of the flowers to new life upon the ruin of +the old is unfavourable to the fashionable theory of extinction, for it +shows death as the prelude of life. Nevertheless, be it admitted, the +garden-allegory points not all one way; it is, so to speak, a paradox +that mocks while it comforts. For a garden is ever perplexing us with +the "riddle of the painful earth," ever challenging our faith with its +counter-proof, ever thrusting before our eyes the abortive effort, the +inequality of lot (two roses on a single stem, the one full-blown, a +floral paragon, the other dwarfed and withered), the permitted spite of +destiny which favours the fittest and drives the weak to the wall--ever +preaching, with damnable iteration, the folly of resisting the ills that +warp life and blight fair promise. + +And yet while this is so, the annual spectacle of spring's fresh +repair--the awakening from winter's trance--the new life that grows in +the womb of the tomb--is happy augury to the soul that passes away, +immature and but half-expressed, of lusty days and consummate powers in +the everlasting garden of God. It is this very garden's message, "the +best is yet to be," that smothers the self-pitying whine in poor David +Gray's Elegy[7] and braces his spirit with the tonic of a wholesome +pride. To the human flower that is born to blush unseen, or born, +perchance, not to bloom at all, but only to feel the quickening thrill +of April-passion--the first sweet consciousness of life--the electric +touch in the soul like the faint beatings in the calyx of the rose--and +then to die, to die "not knowing what it was to live"--to such seemingly +cancelled souls the garden's message is "trust, acquiesce, be passive in +the Master's hand: the game of life is lost, but not for aye-- + + ... "There is life with God + In other Kingdom of a sweeter air: + In Eden every flower is blown." + +[Footnote 7: "My Epitaph." + + "Below lies one whose name was traced in sand-- + He died, not knowing what it was to live; + Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood + And maiden thought electrified his soul: + Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. + Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh + In a proud sorrow! There is life with God, + In other Kingdom of a sweeter air; + In Eden every flower is blown. Amen." + +David Gray ("A Poet's Sketch-book," R. Buchanan, p. 81.)] + +To come back to lower ground, a garden represents what one may call the +first simplicity of external Nature's ways and means, and the first +simplicity of man's handling of them, carried to distinction. On one +side we have Nature's "unpremeditated art" surpassed upon its own +lines--Nature's tardy efforts and common elementary traits pushed to a +masterpiece. On the other side is the callow craft of Adam's "'prentice +han'," turned into scrupulous nice-fingered Art, with forcing-pits, +glass-houses, patent manures, scientific propagation, and the accredited +rules and hoarded maxims of a host of horticultural journals at its +back. + +Or, to run still more upon fancy. A garden is a place where these two +whilom foes--Nature and man--patch up a peace for the nonce. Outside the +garden precincts--in the furrowed field, in the forest, the quarry, the +mine, out upon the broad seas--the feud still prevails that began as our +first parents found themselves on the wrong side of the gate of +Paradise. But + + "Here contest grows but interchange of love"-- + +here the old foes have struck a truce and are leagued together in a kind +of idyllic intimacy, as is witnessed in their exchange of grace for +grace, and the crowning touch that each puts upon the other's efforts. + +The garden, I have said, is a sort of "betweenity"--part heaven, part +earth, in its suggestions; so, too, in its make-up is it part Nature, +part man: for neither can strictly say "I made the garden" to disregard +the other's share in it. True, that behind all the contents of the place +sits primal Nature, but Nature "to advantage dressed," Nature in a rich +disguise, Nature delicately humoured, stamped with new qualities, +furnished with a new momentum, led to new conclusions, by man's skill in +selection and artistic concentration. True, that the contents of the +place have their originals somewhere in the wild--in forest or coppice, +or meadow, or hedgerow, swamp, jungle, Alp, or plain hillside. We can +run each thing to earth any day, only that a change has passed over +them; what in its original state was complex or general, is here made a +chosen particular; what was monotonous out there, is here mixed and +contrasted; what was rank and ragged there, is here taught to be staid +and fine; what had a fugitive beauty there, has here its beauty +prolonged, and is combined with other items, made "of imagination all +compact." Man has taken the several things and transformed them; and in +the process, they passed, as it were, through the crucible of his mind +to reappear in daintier guise; in the process, the face of Nature +became, so to speak, humanised: man's artistry conveyed an added charm. + +Judged thus, a garden is, at one and the same time, the response which +Nature makes to man's overtures, and man's answer to the standing +challenge of open-air beauty everywhere. Here they work no longer in a +spirit of rivalry, but for the attainment of a common end. We cannot +dissociate them in the garden. A garden is man's transcript of the +woodland world: it is common vegetation ennobled: outdoor scenery neatly +writ in man's small hand. It is a sort of twin-picture, conceived of +man in the studio of his brain, painted upon Nature's canvas with the +aid of her materials--a twin-essay where Nature's + + ... "primal mind + That flows in streams, that breathes in wind" + +supplies the matter, man the style. It is Nature's rustic language made +fluent and intelligible--Nature's garrulous prose tersely +recast--changed into imaginative shapes, touched to finer issues. + +"What is a garden?" For answer come hither: be Fancy's guest a moment. +Turn in from the dusty high-road and noise of practical things--for + + "Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite + Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love"; + +descend the octagonal steps; cross the green court, bright with great +urns of flowers, that fronts the house; pass under the arched doorway in +the high enclosing wall, with its gates traceried with rival wreaths of +beaten iron and clambering sprays of jasmine and rose, and, from the +vantage-ground of the terrace-platform where we stand, behold an +art-enchanted world, where the alleys with their giddy cunning, their +gentle gloom, their cross-lights and dappled shadows of waving boughs, +make paths of fantasy--where the water in the lake quivers to the wind's +soft footprints, or sparkles where the swallows dip, or springs in jets +out of shapely fountain, or, oozing from bronze dolphin's mouth, slides +down among moss-flecked stones into a deep dark pool, and is seen anon +threading with still foot the careless-careful curved banks fringed +with flowering shrubs and trailing willows and brambles--where the +flowers smile out of dainty beds in the sunny ecstasy of "sweet +madness"--where the air is flooded with fragrance, and the mixed music +of trembling leaves, falling water, singing birds, and the drowsy hum of +innumerable insects' wings. + +"What is a garden?" It is man's report of earth at her best. It is earth +emancipated from the commonplace. Earth is man's intimate +possession--Earth arrayed for beauty's bridal. It is man's love of +loveliness carried to excess--man's craving for the ideal grown to a +fine lunacy. It is piquant wonderment; culminated beauty, that for all +its combination of telling and select items, can still contrive to look +natural, debonair, native to its place. A garden is Nature aglow, +illuminated with new significance. It is Nature on parade before men's +eyes; Flodden Field in every parish, where on summer days she holds +court in "lanes of splendour," beset with pomp and pageantry more +glorious than all the kings'. + +"Why is a garden made?" Primarily, it would seem, to gratify man's +craving for beauty. Behind fine gardening is fine desire. It is a plain +fact that men do not make beautiful things merely for the sake of +something to do, but, rather, because their souls compel them. Any +beautiful work of art is a feat, an essay, of human soul. Someone has +said that "noble dreams are great realities"--this in praise of +unrealised dreams; but here, in the fine garden, is the noble dream and +the great reality. + +Here it may be objected that the ordinary garden is, after all, only a +compromise between the common and the ideal: half may be for the lust of +the eye, yet half is for domestic drudgery; half is for beauty, half for +use. The garden is contrived "a double debt to pay." Yonder mass of +foliage that bounds the garden, with its winding intervals of turf and +look of expansiveness, it serves to conceal villadom and the hulking +paper-factory beyond; that rock-garden with its developed geological +formation, dotted over with choice Alpine plants, that the stranger +comes to see. It is nothing but the quarry from whence the stone was dug +that built the house. Those banks of evergreens, full of choice +specimens, what are they but on one side the screen to your kitchen +stuff, and on the other side, the former tenant's contrivance to assist +him in forgetting his neighbour? Even so, my friend, an it please you! +You are of those who, in Sainte-Beuve's phrase, would sever a bee in +two, if you could! + +The garden, you say, is a compromise between the common and the ideal. +Yet nobility comes in low disguises. We have seen that the garden is +wild Nature elevated and transformed by man's skill in selection and +artistic concentration--wild things to which man's art has given +dignity. The common flowers of the cottager's garden tell of centuries +of collaboration. The flowers and shrubs and trees with which you have +adorned your own grounds were won for you by the curiosity, the +aspiration, the patient roaming and ceaseless research of a long list +of old naturalists; the design of your garden, its picturesque divisions +and beds, a result of the social sense, the faculty for refined +enjoyment, the constructive genius of the picked minds of the civilised +world in all ages. The methods of planting approved of to-day, carrying +us back to the admirably-dressed grounds of the ancient castles and +abbeys, to the love of woodland scenery, which is said to be a special +characteristic of Teutonic people, which is evidenced in the early +English ballads; to the slowly acquired traditions of garden-masters +like Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, Gilpin, and Repton, as well as to the +idealised landscapes of Constable, Gainsborough, Linnell, and Turner; it +is, in fact, the issue of the practical insight, the wood-craft, and +idealistic skill of untold generations. + +In this matter of floral beauty and garden-craft man has ever declared +himself a prey to the "malady of the ideal"; the Japanese will even +combine upon his trees the tints of spring and autumn.[8] But +everywhere, and in all ages of the civilised world, man spares no pains +to acquire the choicest specimens, the rarest plants, and to give to +each thing so acquired the ideally best expression of which it is +capable. It is as though Eden-memories still haunted the race with the +solicitude of an inward voice that refused to be silenced, and is +satisfied with nothing short of the best. + +[Footnote 8: "This strange combination of autumn and spring tints is a +very usual sight in Japan.... It is worth noting that in Japan a tree is +considered chiefly for its form and tint, not for use.... I heard the +cherry-trees were now budding, so I hurried up to take advantage of +them, and found them more beautiful than I had ever imagined. There are +at least fifty varieties, from delicately tinted white and pink to the +richest rose, almost crimson blossom."--Alfred East's "Trip to Japan," +_Universal Review_, March, 1890.] + +And yet, as some may point out, this homage of beauty that you speak of +is not done for nought; there enters into gardening the spirit of +calculation. A garden is a kind of investment. The labour and +forethought man expends upon it must bring adequate return. For every +flower-bed he lays down, for every plant, or shrub, or tree put into the +ground, his word is ever the same, + + "Be its beauty + Its sole duty." + +It was not simply to gratify his curiosity, to serve as a pretext for +adventure, that the gardener of old days reconnoitred the globe, culled +specimens, and spent laborious days in studying earth's picturesque +points; it was with a view to the pleasure the things would ultimately +bring. And why not! Had man not served so long an apprenticeship to +Nature on her freehold estate, the garden would not so directly appeal +to our imaginations and command our spirits. A garden reveals man as +master of Nature's lore; he has caught her accents, rifled her motives; +he has transferred her bright moods about his own dwelling, has tricked +out an ordered mosaic of the gleanings of her woodland carpet; has, as +it were, stereotyped the spontaneous in Nature, has entrapped and +rendered beautifully objective the natural magic of the outer world to +gratify the inner world of his own spirit. The garden is, first and +last, made "for delectation's sake." + +So we arrive at these conclusions. A garden is made to express man's +delight in beauty and to gratify his instincts for idealisation. But, +lest the explanation savour too much of self-interest in the gardener, +it may be well to say that the interest of man's investment of money and +toil is not all for himself. What he captures of Nature's revenues he +repays with usury, in coin that bears the mint-mark of inspired +invention. This artistic handling of natural things has for result "the +world's fresh ornament,"[9] and for plant, shrub, or tree subject to it, +it is the crowning and completion of those hidden possibilities of +perfection that have lain dormant in them since the world began. + +An artist has been defined as one who reproduces the world in his own +image and likeness. The definition is perhaps a little high-flown, and +may confer an autobiographical value to an artist's performances that +would astonish none more than himself. Yet if the thought can be +truthfully applied anywhere, it is where it occurred to Andrew +Marvell--in a garden. + +[Footnote 9: "If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses" (says +William Harrison in Holinshed's "Chronicles") "how wonderful is their +beauty increased, not only with flowers, which Columella calleth +_Terrena Sydera_, saying 'Pingit et in varias terrestria, sydera +flores,' and variety of curious and costly workmanship, but also with +rare and medicinable herbs.... How Art also helpeth Nature in the daily +colouring, doubling and enlarging the proportions of our flowers it is +incredible to report, for so curious and cunning are our gardeners now +in these days that they presume to do, in a manner, what they list with +Nature, and moderate her course in things as if they were her superiors. +It is a world also to see how many strange herbs, plants, and annual +fruits are daily brought unto us from the Indies, Americans, Taprobane, +Canary Isles, and all parts of the world, the which, albeit that his +respect of the constitutions of our bodies, they do not grow for us +(because God hath bestowed sufficient commodities upon every country for +her own necessity) yet for delectation's sake unto the eye, and their +odoriferous savours unto the nose, they are to be cherished, and God +also glorified in them, because they are His good gifts, and created to +do man help and service. There is not almost one nobleman, gentleman, or +merchant that hath not great store of these flowers, which now also +begin to wax so well acquainted with our evils that we may almost +account of them as parcel of our own commodities."--(From "Elizabethan +England," pp. 26-7.)] + + "The mind, that ocean where each kind + Does straight its own resemblance find; + Yet it creates, transcending these, + Far other worlds and other seas, + Annihilating all that's made + To a green thought in a green shade." + +And where can we find a more promising sphere for artistic creation than +a garden? Do we boast of fine ideas and perceptions of beauty and powers +of design! Where can our faculties find a happier medium of expression +or a pleasanter field for display than the garden affords? Nay, to have +the ideas, the faculties, and the chance of their exercise and still to +hold back were a sin! For a garden is, so to speak, the compliment a man +of ideas owes to Nature, to his friends, and to himself. + +Many are the inducements to gardening. Thus, if I make a garden, I need +not print a line, nor conjure with the painter's tools, to prove myself +an artist. Again, a garden is the only form of artistic creation that is +bound by the nature of things to be more lovely in realisation than in +the designer's conception. It is no mere hint of beauty--no mere +tickling of the fancy--that we get here, such as all other arts (except +music) are apt to give you. Here, on the contrary, we are led straight +into a world of actual delights patent to all men, which our eyes can +see, and our hands handle. More than this; whilst in other spheres of +labour the greater part of our life's toil and moil will, of a surety, +end as the wise man predicted, in vanity and vexation of spirit, here is +instant physical refreshment in the work the garden entails, and, in the +end, our labour will be crowned with flowers. + +Nor have I yet exhausted the scene of a garden's pleasures. A man gets +undoubted satisfaction in the very expression of his ideas--"the joy of +the deed"--in the sense of Nature's happy response, the delight of +creation,[10] the romance of possibility. + +[Footnote 10: Here is Emerson writing to Carlyle of his "new +plaything"--a piece of woodland of forty acres on the border of Walden +Pond. "In these May mornings, when maples, poplars, walnut, and pine are +in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon and cut with my +hatchet an Indian path thro' the thicket, all along the bold shore, and +open the finest pictures." (John Morley's Essays, "Emerson," p. 304.) +But, as Mr Morley points out, he finds the work too fascinating, eating +up days and weeks; "nay, a brave scholar should shun it like gambling, +and take refuge in cities and hotels from these pernicious +enchantments."] + +Some joy shall also come of the identity of the gardener with his +creation.[11] He is at home here. He is intimate with the various +growths. He carries in his head an infinity of details touching the +welfare of the garden's contents. He participates in the life of his +plants, and is familiar with all their humours; like a good host, he has +his eye on all his company. He has fine schemes for the future of the +place. The very success of the garden reflects upon its master, and +advertises the perfect understanding that exists between the artist and +his materials. The sense of ownership and responsibility brings him +satisfaction, of a cheaper sort. His the hand that holds the wand to the +garden's magic; his the initiating thought, the stamp of taste, the +style that gives it circumstance. Let but his hand be withdrawn a space, +and, at this signal, the gipsy horde of weeds and briars--that even now +peer over the fence, and cast clandestine seeds abroad with every +favouring gust of wind--would at once take leave to pitch their tents +within the garden's zone, would strip the place of art-conventions, and +hurry it back to its primal state of unkempt wildness. + +[Footnote 11: "I like your Essays," said Henry the Third to Montaigne. +"Then, sire, you will like me. I am my Essays."] + +Someone has observed that when wonder is excited, and the sense of +beauty gratified, there is instant recreation, and a stimulus that lifts +one out of life's ordinary routine. This marks the function of a garden +in a world where, but for its presence, the commonplace might +preponderate; 'tis man's recreation ground, children's fairyland, bird's +orchestra, butterfly's banquet. Verse and romance have done well, then, +to link it with pretty thoughts and soft musings, with summer reveries +and moonlight ecstasies, with love's occasion, and youth's yearning. No +fitter place could well be found than this for the softer transactions +of life that awaken love, poesy, and passion. Indeed, were its +winsomeness not balanced by simple human enjoyments--were its charmed +silences not broken by the healthy interests of common daily life--the +romps of children, the clink of tea-cups, the clatter of +croquet-mallets, the _mêlée_ of the tennis-courts, the fiddler's scrape, +and the tune of moving feet, it might well seem too lustreful a place +for this work-a-day world. + +Apart from its other uses, there is no spot like a garden for +cultivating the kindly social virtues. Its perfectness puts people upon +their best behaviour. Its nice refinement secures the mood for +politeness. Its heightened beauty produces the disposition that delights +in what is beautiful in form and colour. Its queenly graciousness of +mien inspires the reluctant loyalty of even the stoniest mind. Here, if +anywhere, will the human hedgehog unroll himself and deign to be +companionable. Here friend Smith, caught by its nameless charm, will +drop his brassy gabble and dare to be idealistic; and Jones, forgetful +of the main chance and "bulls" and "bears," will throw the rein to his +sweeter self, and reveal that latent elevation of soul and tendency to +romance known only to his wife! + +"There be delights," says an ancient writer, "that will fetch the day +about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful +dream." This tells, in terse English, the pleasures of a garden and the +instincts that are gratified in its making. For a garden is Arcady +brought home. It is man's bit of gaudy make-believe--his well-disguised +fiction of an unvexed Paradise--standing witness of his quest of the +ideal--his artifice to escape the materialism of a world that is too +actual and too much with him. A well-kept garden makes credible to +modern eyes the antique fable of an unspoiled world--a world where +gaiety knows no eclipse, and winter and rough weather are held at bay. +In this secluded spot the seasons slip by unawares. The year's +passing-bell is ignored. Decay is cheated of its prize. The invading +loss of cold, or wind, or rain--the litter of battered Nature--the +"petals from blown roses on the grass"--the pathos of dead boughs and +mouldering leaves, the blighted bloom and broken promise of the spring, +autumn's rust or winter's wreckage are, if gardeners be brisk sons of +Adam, instantly huddled out of sight, so that, come when you may, the +place wears a mask of steady brightness; each month has its new dress, +its fresh counterfeit of permanence, its new display of flowers or +foliage, as pleasing, if not so lustrous as the last, that serves in +turn to prolong the illusion and to conceal the secret irony and fond +assumption of the thing. + + "I think for to touche also + The world which neweth everie daie, + So far as I can, so as I maie." + +This snatch of Gower's rhyme expresses in old phrase the gardener's +desire, or clothed in modern prose by Mr Robinson ("English +Flower-Garden," Murray), it is "to make each place at various seasons, +and in every available situation, an epitome of the great flower-garden +of the world." + +We hinted a moment ago of the interest that a garden gathers from the +mark of man's regard and tendence; and if this be true of a modern +garden, how much more true of an old one! Indeed, this is undeniable in +the latter case, for Time is ever friendly to gardens. Ordinarily his +attitude towards all that concerns the memories of man is that of a +jealous churl. Look at history. What is history but one long record of +men who, in this sphere or that, have toiled, striven, sold their souls +even, to perpetuate a name and have their deeds written upon the tablets +of eternity, not reckoning upon the "all oblivious enmity" of Time, who, +with heedless hand, cuts their past into fragments, blots out their +name, confuses their story, and frets with gnawing tooth each vestige of +their handiwork. How, then, we ask-- + + "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, + Whose action is no stronger than a flower?" + +Yet so it is. He who has no respect for antique glories, who snaps his +fingers at earth's heroes, who overturns the statues of the laurelled +Cæsars, encrusts the hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs, and commits their +storied masonry to the mercies of the modern Philistine, will make +exception in a garden. "Time's pencil" helps a garden. In a garden not +only are the solemn shapes and passing conceits of grey epochs treasured +up, even to their minutest particulars, but the drift of the years, +elsewhere so disastrous, serves only to heighten their fascination and +power of appeal. + +Thus it comes to pass, that it were scarcely possible to name a more +pathetic symbol of the past than an old garden,[12] nor a spot which, by +its tell-tale shapes, sooner lends itself to our historic sense if we +would recall the forms and reconstruct the life of our ancestors. For we +have here the very setting of old life--the dressed stage of old drama, +the scenery of old gallantry. Upon this terrace, in front of these +flower-beds with these trees looking on, was fought out the old battle +of right and wrong--here was enacted the heroic or the shameful deeds, +the stirring or the humdrum passages in the lives of so many generations +of masters, mistresses, children, and servants, who in far-off times +have lived, loved, and died in the grey homestead hard by. "Now they are +dead," as Victor Hugo says--"they are dead, but the flowers last +always." + +[Footnote 12: Time does much for a garden. There is a story of an +American plutocrat's visit to Oxford. On his tour of the Colleges +nothing struck him so much as the velvety turf of some of the +quadrangles. He asked for the gardener, and made minute enquiries as to +the method of laying down and maintaining the grass. "That's all, is +it?" he exclaimed, when the process had been carefully described. "Yes, +sir," replied the gardener with a twinkle in his eye, "That's all, but +we generally leave it three or four centuries to settle down!"] + +Admit, then, that for their secret quality, no less than for their +obvious beauty, these old gardens should be treasured. For they are far +more than they seem to the casual observer. Like any other piece of +historic art, the old garden is only truly intelligible through a clear +apprehension of the circumstances which attended its creation. Granted +that we possess the ordinary smattering of historical knowledge, and +the garden will serve to interpret the past and make it live again +before our eyes. For the old place is (to use the journalist's phrase) +an "object lesson" of old manners; it is a proof of ancient genius, a +clue to old romance, a legacy of vague desire. The many items of the +place--the beds and walks with their special trick of "style" the +parterre, the promenoir, the maze, the quincunx, the terraces, the +extravagances in ever-green sculptures of which Pope spoke--what are +they but the mould and figure of old-world thought, down to its most +characteristic caprice! The assertive air of these things--their +prominence in the garden-scenery--bespeak their importance in the +scenery of old life. It was _thus_ that our forefathers made the world +about them picturesque, _thus_ that they coloured their life-dreams and +fitted an adjunct pleasure to every humour, _thus_ that they climbed by +flower-strewn stairs to the realm of the ideal and stimulated their +sense of beauty. + +And if further proof be needed of the large hold the garden and its +contents had of the affections of past generations, we have but to turn +to the old poets, and to note how the texture of the speech, the +groundwork of the thought, of men like Milton, Herrick, Vaughan, +Herbert, Donne (not to mention prose-writers) is saturated through and +through with garden-imagery. + +In the case of an old garden, mellowed by time, we have, I say, to note +something that goes beyond mere surface-beauty. Here we may expect to +find a certain superadded quality of pensive interest, which, so far as +it can be reduced to words, tells of the blent influences of past and +present, of things seen and unseen, of the joint effects of Nature and +Man. The old ground embodies bygone conceptions of ideal beauty; it has +absorbed human thought and memories; it registers the bequests of old +time. Dead men's traits are exemplified here. The dead hand still holds +sway, the pictures it conjured still endure, its cunning is not +forgotten, its strokes still make the garden's magic, in shapes and hues +that are unchanged save for the slow moulding of the centuries. +_Really_, not less than metaphorically, the garden-growths do keep green +the memories of the men and women who placed them there, as the flower +that is dead still holds its perfume. And few will say that the +chronicles of the dead do not + + "Shine more bright in these contents + Than unwept stone besmeared with sluttish time." + +There is a wealth of quiet interest in an old garden. We feel +instinctively that the place has been warmed by the sunshine of +humanity; watered from the secret spring of human joy and sorrow. +Sleeping echoes float about its glades; its leafy nooks can tell of +felicities sweeter than the bee-haunted cups of flowers; of glooms +graver than the midnight blackness of the immemorial yews. It is their +suggestion of antique experiences that endues the objective elements in +an old garden like Haddon, or Berkeley, or Levens, or Rockingham, with a +strange eloquence. The recollections of many a child have centred round +these objects: the one touch of romance in a narrow, simple life is +linked with them. Hearts danced or hearts drooped in this vicinity. Eyes +that brimmed over with laughter or that were veiled with tears looked on +these things as we look on them now--drank in the shifting lights and +shadows on the grass--watched the waving of the cedar's dark layers of +shade against an angry sky, "stern as the unlashed eye of God," and all +the birds were silent--once took in the sylvan vistas of trees, lawn, +fir-ridge, the broad-water where the coots and moor-hens now play (as +then) among the green lily-pads and floating weeds, regardless of +Regulas in lead standing in their midst; once dwelt upon the lustrous +flower-beds, on the sundial on the terrace--noonday rendezvous of +fantails--on the "Alley of Sighs," with its clipped beeches, its +grey-stone seat half-way down, its rustle of dying leaves, and +traditions of intrigue; on the lime avenue full of perfume in the +sweet-o'-the-year, on the foot-bridge across the moat, on the streak of +blue autumn mist that tracks the stream in yonder meadows where the +landrail is croaking, and that brings magically near the beat of hoofs, +the jingle of horses' bells, the rumble of homeward wagons on the road, +and whiffs of the reapers' songs; on the brief brilliance of the +garden-panorama as the wintry-moon gives the black clouds the slip and +suddenly discloses a white world of snow-muffled forms, that gleams with +the eerie pallor of a ghost, and is as suddenly dissolved into +darkness. + +Simple sights, you will say, and familiar! and yet, when connected with +some unique occasion, some epoch of a life, when seen on such a day, at +such a supreme, all-absorbing moment from window, open door, terrace, +arbour; in the stillness or in the wild rhetoric of the night, the +familiar scene, momentarily flashed upon the brain's retina, may have +subtly and unconsciously influenced the act, or coloured the thought of +some human being, and the brand of that moment's impress may have +accompanied that soul to the edge of doom. + +Because of its hoarded memories we come to look upon an old garden as a +sort of repository of old secrets; wrapped within its confines, as +within the covers of a sacred book, repose so many pages of the sad and +glad legend of humanity. We have before us the scenery of old home +idylls, of old household reverences and customs, of old life's give and +take--its light comedy or solemn farce, its dark tragedy, its summer +masque, its stately dance or midnight frolic, its happy wedlock or its +open sorrow, its endured wrong. The place is identified with the +fortunes of old families: for so many generations has the old place been +found favourable for lovers' tales, for youths' golden dreams, for +girls' chime of fancy, for the cut and thrust of friendly wrangles, for +the "leisures of the spirit" of student-recluse, for children's gambols +and babies' lullabies. Seated upon this mossy bank, children have spelt +out fairy tales, while birds, trees, brooks, and flowers listened +together. The marvel of its cloistered grace has been God-reminder to +the saint; its green recesses have served for Enoch's walk,[13] for +poet's retreat; as refuge for the hapless victim of broken endeavour; as +enisled shelter for the tobacco-loving sailor-uncle with a wrecked fame; +as invalid's Elysium; as haunt of the loafing, jesting, unambitioned man +("Alas, poor Yorick!"); as Death's sweet ante-room for slow-footed age. + +[Footnote 13: "There is no garden well contrived, but that which hath an +Enoch's walk in it."--SIR W. WALLER.] + +What wonder that Sir William Temple devised that his heart should rest +where its memories were so deep-intrenched--in his garden; or that +Waterton should ask to be buried between the two great oaks at the end +of the lake! (Norman Moore's Introduction to "Wanderings in South +America.") + +And if human affections be, as the poets declare, immortal, we have the +reason why an old garden, in the only sense in which it ever is old, by +the almanack, has that whisper and waving of secrecy, that air of +watchful intentness, that far-reaching, mythological, unearthly look, +that effect of being a kind of twilighted space common to the two worlds +of past and present. Who will not agree with me in this? It matters not +when you go there--at dawn, at noonday, no less than when the sky is +murky and night-winds are sighing--and although you shall be the only +visible human being present, it is not alone that you feel. A thrill +comes over you, a mysterious sense warns you that this is none other +than the sanctuary of "the dead," as we call them; the place where, amid +the hush of passionless existence, the wide leisure of uncounted time, +the shades of once familiar presences keep their "tongueless vigil." +They fly not at the "dully sound" of human footsteps; they ask no +sympathy for regret which dare not tell the secret of its sorrow; but, +with the gentle gait of old-world courtesy, they move aside, and when +you depart resume occupation of ground which, for the sake of despairing +wishes and memories of an uneffaced past, they may not quit. After +life's fitful fever these waifs of a vanished world sleep not well; here +are some consumed with covetousness, who are learning not to resent the +word "mine" applied by the living owner of hall and garden, field and +store; some that prey on withered bliss--the "bitter sweet of days that +were"--this, the miser whose buried treasure lies undiscovered here, and +who has nothing in God's bank in the other world; this, the author of +the evil book; and this loveless, unlovely pair, the ruined and ruiner, +yoked for aye; a motley band, forsooth, with "Satan's sergeants" keeping +guard! + +It is ever the indirect that is most eloquent. Someone says: Hence these +tokens of a dead past open out vistas for one's imagination and drop +hints of romance that would make thrilling reading in many volumes, but +which shall never reach Mudie's. + +Even Nature is not proof against the spell of an old garden. The very +trees have an "ancient melody of an inward agony": + + "The place is silent and aware + It has had its scenes, its joys, and crimes, + But that is its own affair"-- + +even Nature forgets to be her cold, impassive self, and puts on a +sympathetic-waiting look in a spot so intricately strewn and meshed over +with the fibres of human experience. Long and close intimacy with +mankind under various aspects--witness of things that happened to +squires, dames, priests, courtiers, servitors, page, or country-maid, in +the roundabout of that "curious, restless, clamorous being which we call +life"--has somehow tinged the place with a sensibility (one had almost +said a _wizardry_) not properly its own. And this superadded quality +reaches to the several parts of the garden and is not confined to the +scene as a whole. Each inanimate item of the place, each spot, seems +invested with a gift of attraction--to have a hidden tongue that could +syllable forgotten names--to possess a power of fixing your attention, +of fastening itself upon your mind, as though it had become, in a sense, +humanised, and claimed kindred with you as related to that secret group +with whose fortunes it was allied, with whose passions it had held +correspondence, and were letting you know it could speak an if it would +of + + "All the ways of men, so vain and melancholy." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +ON ART IN A GARDEN. + + "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty." + + ROBERT BROWNING. + + +In dealing with our second point--the ornamental treatment that is fit +and right for a garden--we are naturally brought into contact with the +good and bad points of both the old and the new systems of gardening. +This being so, it may be well at once to notice the claims of the modern +"Landscape-gardener" to monopolise to himself all the right principles +of garden-craft: all other moods than his are low, all figures other +than his are symbols of error, all dealings with Nature other than his +are mere distortions. + +If you have any acquaintance with books upon landscape-gardening written +by its professors or their admirers, you will have learnt that in the +first half of the eighteenth century, two heaven-directed geniuses--Kent +and Brown--all of a sudden stumbled upon the green world of old England, +and, perceiving its rural beauties, and the hitherto unexplored +opportunities for ornamental display that the country afforded, these +two put their heads together, and out of their combined cogitations +sprang the English garden. + +This, in brief, is what the landscape-gardener and his adherents say, +and would have you believe; and, to prove their point, they lay stress +upon the style of garden in vogue at the time Kent and Brown began their +experiments, when, forsooth, traditional garden-craft was in its dotage +and had lost its way in the paths of pedantry. + +Should you, however, chance to have some actual knowledge of old +gardens, and some insight into the principles which, consciously or +unconsciously governed their making, it may occur to you to ask the +precise points wherein the new methods claim to be different from the +old, what sources of inspiration were discovered by the new school of +gardeners that were not shared by English gardeners from time +immemorial. Are there, then, _two_ arts of gardening? or two sorts of +Englishmen to please? Is not modern garden-craft identical with the old, +so far, indeed, as it hath art enough to stand any comparison with the +other at all? + +Let us here point to the fact, that any garden whatsoever is but Nature +idealised, pastoral scenery rendered in a fanciful manner. It matters +not what the date, size, or style of the garden, it represents an +idealisation of Nature. _Real_ nature exists outside the artist and +apart from him. The Ideal is that which the artist conceives to be an +interpretation of the outside objects, or that which he adds to the +objects. The garden gives imaginative form to emotions the natural +objects have awakened in man. The _raison d'être_ of a garden is man's +feeling the _ensemble_. + +One fine day you take your architect for a jaunt along a country-lane, +until stopping shyly in front of a five-barred gate, over which is +nailed an ominous notice-board, you introduce him to your small +property, the site of your new house. It is a field very much like the +neighbouring fields--at least, so think the moles, and the rooks, and +the rabbits; not you, for here is to be your "seat" for life; and before +you have done with it, the whole country far and near will be taught to +look as though it radiated round the site and the house you will build +upon it--an honour of which, truth compels me to say, the land betrays +not the remotest presentiment just now! + +The field in question may be flat or undulating, it may be the lap of a +hillside, the edge of a moor, a treeless stretch of furrowed land with +traces of "rude mechanical's" usage, or suggestions of mutton or +mangels. The particular character of the place, or its precise +agricultural past, matters not, however; suffice it to say that it is a +bit of raw, and more or less ungroomed, Nature. + +Upon this plain, unadorned field, you set your man of imagination to +work. He must absorb both it and its whole surroundings into his brain, +and seize upon all its capabilities. He must produce symmetry and +balance where now are ragged outlines of hillocks and ridges. He must +trim and cherish the trees here, abolish the tree there; enlarge this +slope, level that; open out a partial peep of blue distance here, or a +gleam of silver water there. He must terrace the slope, step by step, +towards the stream at the base, select the sunniest spots for the +flower-beds, and arrange how best the gardens at their varying levels +shall be approached or viewed from the house. In this way and that he +must so manoeuvre the perspective and the lights and shades, so +compose or continue the sectional lines and general bearings of the +ground as to enforce the good points that exist, and draw out the latent +possibilities of the place, and this with as easy a hand, and as fine +tact as the man can muster. + +And now to come to our point. A dressed garden, I said, is Nature +idealised--pastoral scenery put fancifully, in man's way. A gardener is +a master of what the French writer calls "the charming art of touching +up the truth." + +Emerson observes that all the Arts have their origin in some enthusiasm; +and the art of gardening has for its root, man's enthusiasm for the +woodland world. It indicates a taste for flowers and trees and +landscapes. It is admiration that has, so to speak, passed from the +stage of emotion to that of form. A garden is the result of the +emulation which the vision of beauty in the world at large is ever +provoking in man-- + + "Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures + While the landskip round it measures." + +What of Nature has affected man on various occasions, what has pleased +his eye in different moods, played upon his emotions, pricked his fancy, +suggested reverie, stirred vague yearnings, brought a sense of quickened +joy--pastoral scenery, the music of leaves and waters, the hues and +sweetness of country flowers, the gladness of colour, picturesque form +of tree or contour of land, spring's bright laugh, autumn's glow, +summer's bravery, winter's grey blanched face--each thing that has gone +home to him has, in its way, fostered in man the garden mania. Inspired +by their beauty and mystery, he has gathered them to himself about his +home, has made a microcosm out of the various detached details which sum +up the qualities, features, and aspects of the open country; and the art +of this little recreated world is measured by the happy union of +naturalness and of calculated effect. + +What sources of inspiration were discovered by the new school of +gardeners, I asked a moment ago, which were not shared by English +gardeners from time immemorial? The art of gardening, I said, has its +root in man's enthusiasm for the woodland world. See how closely the +people of old days must have observed the sylvan sights of Nature, the +embroidery of the meadows, the livery of the woods at different seasons, +or they would not have been capable of building up that piece of hoarded +loveliness, the old-fashioned English garden! + +The pleasaunce of old days has been mostly stubbed up by the modern +"landscape gardener," but if no traces of them were left we have still +here and there the well-schemed surroundings of our English +homes--park, avenue, wood, and water--the romantic scenery that hems in +Tintern, Fountains, Dunster, to testify to the inborn genius of the +English for planting. If the tree, shrub, and flower be gone from the +grounds outside the old Tudor mansion, there still remains the +blue-green world in the tapestries upon the walls, with their airy +landscapes of trees and hills, hanging-gardens, flower-beds, terraces, +and embowered nooks--a little fantastical it may be, but none the less +eloquent of appreciation of natural beauty not confined to the gardener, +but shared by the artist-maid, who + + ... "with her neeld composes + Nature's own shape, of bird, branch, or berry, + That even Art sisters the natural roses." + +And should these relics be gone, we still have the books in the library, +rich in Nature-allusion. The simple ecstasies of the early ballad in the +opening stanzas of "Robin Hood and the Monk"-- + + "In somer when the shawes be sheyne, + And leves be large and longe, + Hit is full mery in feyre foreste + To here the foulys song; + + To se the dere draw to the dale, + And leve the hilles hee, + And shadow hem in the leves grene, + Under the grene-wode tre"; + +or in a "Musical Dreame"-- + + "Now wend we home, stout Robin Hood, + Leave we the woods behind us. + Love passions must not be withstood, + Love everywhere will find us. + I livde in fielde and downe, and so did he; + I got me to the woods, love followed me." + +or shall we hear tell from Chaucer how + + "When that Aprille, with his showrës swoot + The drought of March hath pierced to the root, + + * * * * * + + Then longen folk to gone on pilgrimages." + +Or hear from Stowe how the cockney of olden days "In the month of May, +namely, on May-day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would +walk in the sweet meddowes and green woods, ther to rejoyce their +spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers and with the +harmonie of birds praysing God in their kinde." + +Or shall we turn to Shakespeare's bright incidental touches of +nature-description as in Perdita's musical enumeration of the flowers of +the old stiff garden-borders "to make you garlands of," or the Queen's +bit in "Hamlet," beginning + + "There is a willow grows aslant a brook, + That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." + +Or to the old Herbals of Wyer, and Turner, and Gerard, whom Richard +Jefferies[14] pictures walking about our English lanes in old days? +"What wonderful scenes he must have viewed when they were all a tangle +of wild flowers, and plants that are now scarce were common, and the old +ploughs and the curious customs, and the wild red-deer--it would make a +good picture, it really would, Gerard studying English orchids!" + +[Footnote 14: "Field and Hedgerow," p. 27.] + +Or shall we take down the classic volumes of Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, +Cowley, Isaak Walton, Gilbert White, each in his day testifying to the +inborn love of the English for woodland scenery, their study of nature, +and their taste in trees, shrubs, and flowers. What a vindication is +here of the old-fashioned garden and gardener! What nonsense to set up +Kent and Brown as the discoverers of the green world of old England, +when, as Mr Hamerton remarks in "The Sylvan Year" (p. 173), Chaucer +hardly knows how or when to stop whenever he begins to talk about his +enjoyment of Nature. "Chaucer," he says, "in his passion for flowers, +and birds, and spring mornings in the woods, and by streams, is hard to +quote, for he leads you down to the bottom of the page, and over the +leaf, before you have time to pause." + +The question now before us--"What ornament is fit and right for a +garden?"--of itself implies a tendency to err in the direction of +ornament. We see that on the face of it the transposition of the simple +of Nature into the subtle of Art has its dangers. Something may be put, +or something may be left, which were best absent. This may be taken as +an established fact. In making a garden you start with the assumption +that something must be sacrificed of wild Nature, and something must be +superadded, and that which is superadded is not properly of this real, +visible world, but of the world of man's brain. + +The very enclosure of our garden-spaces signifies that Nature is held in +duress here. Nature of herself cannot rise above Nature, and man, seeing +perfections through her imperfections, capacities through her +incapacities, shuts her in for cultivation, binds her feet, as it were, +with the silken cord of art-constraint, and puts a gloss of intention +upon her every feature. + +In a garden Nature is not to be her simple self, but is to be subject to +man's conditions, his choice, his rejection. Let us briefly see, now, +what conditions man may fairly impose upon Nature--what lengths he may +legitimately go in the way of mimicry of natural effects or of +conventionalism. Both books and our own observation tell us that where +the past generations of gardeners have erred it has been through a +misconception of the due proportions of realism and of idealism to be +admitted into a garden. At this time, in this phase, it was _Art_, in +that phase it was _Nature_, that was carried too far; here design was +given too much rein, there not rein enough, and people in their silly +revolt against Art have gone straight for the "veracities of Nature," +copying her features, dead or alive, outright, without discrimination as +to their fitness for imitation, or their suitableness to the position +assigned to them. To what extent, we ask, may the forms of Nature be +copied or recast? What are the limits to which man may carry ideal +portraiture of Nature for the purposes of Art? Questions like these +would, of course, only occur to a curious, debating age like ours; but +put this way or that they keep alive the eternal problems of man's +standing to the world of Nature, the laws of idealism and realism, the +nice distinctions of "more and less." + +Now, it is not everything in Nature that can, or that may be, +artificially expressed in a garden; nor are the things that it is +permissible to use, of equal application everywhere. It were a palpable +mistake, an artistic crime, so to speak, to follow the wild flights of +Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin, and with them to attempt a little +amateur creation in the way of rent rocks, tumbled hillsides, and ruins +that suggest a recent geological catastrophe, or antique monsters, or +that imply by the scenery that we are living in the days of wattled +abodes and savages with flint hatchets. Much, of course, may be done in +this line in these days as in the past, if only one have sufficient +audacity and a volcanic mind; yet, when it is done, both the value and +the rightness of the art of the thing is questionable. "Canst thou catch +Leviathan with a hook?" The primæval throes, the grand stupendous +imagery of Nature should be held in more reverence. It were almost as +fit to harness a polar bear to the gardener's mowing-machine as seek to +appropriate the eerie phenomena of Nature in her untamed moods for the +ornamental purposes of a garden. And as to the result of such work, the +ass draped in the lion's skin, roaring horribly, with peaked snout and +awkward shanks visible all the while, is not more ridiculous than the +thinly-veiled savagery of an Italian garden of the seventeenth century. + +Here, then, I think we have some guidance as to the principles which +should regulate the choice of the "properties" that are fit for the +scenic show of a garden. We should follow the dictates of good taste +and of common sense. Of things applied direct from Nature the line +should be drawn at the gigantesque, the elemental, the sad, the +gruesome, the crude. True, that in art of another kind--in Architecture +or in Music--the artistic equivalents of these qualities may find place, +but as garden effects they are eminently unsuitable, except, indeed, +where it is desired to perpetrate a grim joke. + +Beyond these limitations, however, all is open ground for the +imaginative handling of the true gardener; and what a noble residue +remains! Nature in her health and wealth--green, opulent, lusty Nature +is at his feet. Of things gay, debonair, subtle, and refined--things +that stir poetic feelings or that give joy--he may take to himself and +conjure with to the top of his bent. It is for him as for the poet in +Sir Philip's Sidney's words--"So as he goeth hand in hand with Nature, +not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging +within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so +rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant +rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may +make the too-much loved earth more lovely: her world is brazen, _the +poets only deliver a golden_." + +Animated with corresponding desire, the gardener resorts to lovely +places in this "too-much loved earth," there to find his stock-in-trade +and learn his craft. We watch him as he hies to the bravery of the +spring-flowers in sunny forest-glades; to meadow-flats where lie the +golden host of daffodils, the lady-smocks, and snake-spotted +fritillaries; we see him bend his way to the field of bluebells, the +hill of primroses that with + + "their infinitie + Make a terrestrial gallaxie + As the smal starres do the skie;" + +we follow him to the tangled thicket with its meandering walks carpeted +with anemones and hung over with sweet-scented climbers; to the sombre +boskage of the wood, where the shadows leap from their ambush in +unexpected places and the brown bird's song floats upon the wings of +silence: to the green dell with its sequestered pool edged round with +alders, and willow-herb, and king-fern, and mountain-ash afire with +golden fruit: to the corn-field "a-flutter with poppies": to the +broad-terraced downs--its short, springy turf dotted over with white +sheets of thorn-blossom: to the leaping, shining mountain-tarn that +comes foaming out of the wood: to the pine-grove with its columned +blackness and dense thatch of boughs that lisp the message of the wind, +and "teach light to counterfeit a gloom"; to the widespread landscape +with its undulating forest, its clumps of foliage, its gleams of +white-beam, silver-birch, or golden yew, amid the dark blue of firs and +hollies; its emerald meadows, yellow gorse-covers and purple heather; +the many tones of leafage in the spring and fall of the year. + +And here I give but a few random sketches of Nature, taken almost at +random from the portfolio of her painted delights--a dozen or more +vignettes, shall we say?--ready-made for garden-distribution in bed, +bank, wilderness, and park; things which the old gardener freely +employed; features and images which he transferred to his dressed +grounds, not copying them minutely but in an ideal manner; mixing his +fancy with their fact, his compulsion with their consent; flavouring the +simple with a dash of the strange and marvellous, combining dreams and +actualities, things seen, with things born "within the zodiac of his own +wit"; frankly throwing into the compacted glamour of the place all that +will give _éclat_ to Nature and teach men to apprehend new joy. + +So, then, after separating the brazen from the golden in Nature--after +excluding "properties" of the woodland world which are demonstrably +unfit for the scenic show of a garden, how ample the scope for artistic +creation in the things that remain! And, given an acre or two of land +that has some natural capabilities, some charm of environment--given a +generous client, a bevy of workmen, horses and carts, and, prime +necessity of all, a pleasant homestead in the foreground to prompt its +own adornment and be the centre of your efforts, and, upon the basis of +these old tracks of Nature and old themes of Art, what may not one hope +to achieve of pretty garden-effects that shall please the eye, flatter +the taste, and captivate the imagination of such as love Beauty! + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF THE ENGLISH GARDEN. + + "The Earth is the garden of Nature, and each fruitful country a + Paradise."--Sir Thomas Browne. + + +In the last chapter I observed that in dealing with our second +point--the ornamental treatment that is fit for a garden--we should be +brought into contact with the good and bad points of both the old and +new systems of gardening. Hence the following discursus upon the +historic English garden, which will, however, be as short as it can well +be made, not only because the writer has no desire to wander on a far +errand when his interest lies near home, but also because an essay, such +as this, is ever bound to be an inconclusive affair; and 'twere a pity +to lay a heavy burden upon a light horse! + +At the outset of this section of our enquiry it is well to realise that +there is little known about the garden of earlier date than the middle +of the sixteenth century. Our knowledge of the mediæval garden is only +to be acquired piecemeal, out of casual references in old chronicles, +and stray pictures in illuminated manuscripts, and in each case +allowance must be made for the fluent fancy of the artist. Moreover, +early notices of gardens deal mostly with the orchard, or the vegetable +or herb garden, where flowers grown for ornament occur in the borders of +the ground. + +It is natural to ascribe the first rudiments of horticultural science in +this country to the Romans; and with the classic pastorals, or Pliny the +Younger's Letter to Apollinaris before us, in which an elaborate garden +is minutely and enthusiastically described, we need no further assurance +of the fitness of the Roman to impart skilled knowledge in all branches +of the science. + +Loudon, in his noble "Arboretum et fruticetum Britannicum," enters at +large into the question of what trees and shrubs are indigenous to +Britain, and gives the probable dates of the introduction of such as are +not native to this country. According to Whitaker, whose authority +Loudon adopts, it would appear that the Romans brought us the plane, the +box, the elm, the poplar, and the chestnut. (The lime, he adds, was not +generally planted here till after the time of Le Nôtre: it was used +extensively in avenues planted here in the reign of Charles the Second.) +Of fruit trees, the Roman gave us the pear, the fig, the damson, cherry, +peach, apricot, and quince. The aboriginal trees known to our first +ancestors are the birch, alder, oak, wild or Scotch pine, mountain-ash +or rowan-tree, the juniper, elder, sweet-gale, dog-rose, heath, St +John's wort, and the mistletoe. + +Authorities agree in ascribing the introduction of many other plants, +fruit trees, and trees of ornament or curiosity now common throughout +England, to the monks. And the extent of our indebtedness to the monks +in this matter may be gathered from the fact that monasteries abounded +here in early times; and the religious orders have in all times been +enthusiastic gardeners. Further be it remembered, many of the inmates of +our monasteries were either foreigners or persons who had been educated +in Italy or France, who would be well able to keep this country supplied +with specimens and with reminiscences of the styles of foreign gardens +up to date. + +The most valuable authority on the subject of early English gardens is +Alexander Necham, Abbot of Cirencester (1157-1217). His references are +in the shape of notes from a commonplace-book entitled "Of the Nature of +Things," and he writes thus: "Here the gardens should be adorned with +roses and lilies, the turnsole (heliotrope), violets and mandrake; there +you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, +savery, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, +garden-cress, and peonies.... A noble garden will give thee also +medlars, quinces, warden-trees, peaches, pears of St Riole, +pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds, dates, which are the fruits of +palms, figs, &c."[15] Here, in truth, is a delightful medley of the +useful and the beautiful, just like life! Yet the very use of the term +"noble," as applied to a garden, implies that even the +thirteenth-century Englishman had a standard of excellence to stir +ambition. Other garden flowers mentioned in Alexander's observations are +the sunflower, the iris and narcissus. + +[Footnote 15: See "The Praise of Gardens."] + +The garden described by Necham bespeaks an amount of taste in the +arrangement of the herbs, plants, and fruit-trees, but in the main it +corresponds with our kitchen-garden. The next English writer upon +gardens in point of date is Johannes de Garlandia, an English resident +in France; but here is a description of the writer's garden at Paris. +The ground here described consists of shrubbery, wood, grove, and +garden, and from the account given it is inferred that both in matters +of taste and in the horticultural and floral products of the garden, +France had advanced farther than England in garden-craft in the +fourteenth century, which is the date of the book. + +In Mr Hudson Turner's "Observations on the State of Horticulture in +England"[16] in olden times he gives notices of the early dates in which +the rose was under cultivation. In the thirteenth century King John +sends a wreath of roses to his lady-love. Chronicles inform us that +roses and lilies were among the plants bought for the Royal Garden at +Westminster in 1276; and the annual rendering of a rose is one of the +commonest species of quit-rent in ancient conveyances, like the +"pepper-corn" of later times. The extent to which the culture of the +rose was carried is inferred from the number of sorts mentioned in old +books, which include the red, the sweet-musk, double and single, the +damask, the velvet, the double-double Provence rose, and the double and +single white rose. And the demand for roses seems to have been so great +in old days that bushels of them frequently served as the payment of +vassals to their lords, both in France and England. England has good +reason to remember the distinction between the red and the white rose. + +[Footnote 16: "Archæological Journal," vol. v. p. 295.] + +Of all the flowers known to our ancestors, the gilly-flower was perhaps +the most common. + + "The fairest flowers o' the season + Are our carnations and streak'd gilly flower." + + _Winter's Tale._ + +"Their use," says a quaint writer, "is much in ornament, and comforting +the spirites by the sence of smelling." The variety of this flower, that +was best known in early times, was the wall gilly-flower, or bee-flower. +Another flower of common growth in mediæval gardens and orchards is the +periwinkle. + + "There sprang the violet all newe, + And fresh periwinkle, rich of hewe, + And flowers yellow, white and rede, + Such plenty grew there nor in the mede." + +It is not considered probable that much art was expended in the laying +out of gardens before the fifteenth century; but I give a list of +illuminated MSS. in the Library of the British Museum, where may be +found illustrations of gardens, and which I take from Messrs Birch and +Jenner's valuable Dictionary of Principal Subjects in the British +Museum[17] under the head of Garden. + +[Footnote 17: "Early Drawings and Illuminations." Birch and Jenner. +(Bagster, 1879, p. 134.) + + "Gardens. + + 19 D. i. ff. I. etc. + 20 A. xvii. f. 7b. + 20 B. ii. f. 57. + 14 803 f. 63. + 18 851 f. 182. + 18 852 f. 3. b. + 26667 f. i. + Harl. 4425. f. 12. b. + Kings 7. f. 57. + 6 E. ix. f. 15. b. + 14 E. vi. f. 146. + 15 E. iii. f. 122. + 15 E. vi. f. 146. + 16 G. v. f. 5. + 17 F. i. f. 149 _b_. + 19 A. vi. f. 2. 109. + 19 C. vii. f. i. + 20 C. v. ff. 7. _etc._ + Eg. 2022. f. 36. _b_. + Harl. 4425. f. 160 _b_. + 19720. + 19 A. vi. f. 109."] + +There is also a typical example of a fourteenth-century garden in the +Romaunt d'Alexandre (Bodleian Library). Here the flower garden or lawn +is separated by a wooden paling from the orchard, where a man is busy +pruning. An old painting at Hampton Court, of the early part of the +sixteenth century, gives pretty much the same class of treatment, but +here the paling is decorated with a chevron of white and red colour. + +To judge from old drawings, our forefathers seem to have been always +partial to the greensward and trees, which is the landscape garden in +the "egg"! A good extent of grass is always provided. Formal flower-beds +do not often occur, and, where shown, they are sometimes surrounded by a +low wattled fence--a protection against rabbits, probably. Seats and +banks of chamomile are not unusual. A bank of earth seems to have been +thrown up against the enclosing wall; the front of the bank is then +faced with a low partition of brick or stone, and the mould, brought to +an even surface, is planted in various ways. Numerous illustrations of +the fifteenth century give a bowling-green and butts for archery. About +this date it is assumed the style of English gardening was affected by +French and Flemish methods, which our connection with Burgundy at that +time would bring about. To this period is also ascribed the introduction +of the "mount" in England, although one would almost say that it is but +a survival of the Celtic "barrow." It is a feature that came, however, +into very common use, and is thus recommended by Bacon: "I wish also, in +the very middle, a fair Mount, with three Ascents and Alleys, enough for +four to walk abreast, which I would have to be perfect circles, without +any Bulwarks or Imbossments, and the whole Mount to be thirty foot high, +and some fine Banqueting House with some chimneys neatly cast, and +without too much Glass." + +The "mount" is said to have been originally contrived to allow persons +in the orchard to look over the enclosing wall, and would serve not only +as a place from which to enjoy a pretty view, but as a point of outlook +in case of attack. Moreover, when situated in a park where the deer +grazed, the unscrupulous sportsman might from thence shoot a buck. In +early days the mounts were constructed of wood or of stone, and were +curiously adorned within and without. Later on they resumed the old +barrow shape, and were made of earth, and utilized for the culture of +fruit trees. Lawson, an old writer of the sixteenth century, describes +them as placed in divers corners of the orchard, their ascent being made +by "stares of precious workmanship." When of wood, the mount was often +elaborately painted. + +An account of works done at Hampton Court in the time of Henry VIII., +mentions certain expenses incurred for "anticke" works; and referring to +Bailey's Dictionary, published early in the last century, the word +"antick," as applied to curiously-shaped trees, still survives, and is +explained as "odd figures or shapes of men, birds, beasts, &c., cut +out." From the above references, and others of like nature, we know that +the topiary art ("opus topiarum"), which dealt in quaintly-shaped trees +and shrubs, was in full practice here throughout the latter half of the +middle ages. Samuel Hartlib, in a book published in 1659, writes thus: +"About fifty years ago Ingenuities first began to flourish in England." +Lawson, writing in a jocose vein, tells how the lesser wood might be +framed by the gardener "to the shape of men armed in the field ready to +give battell; or swift-running greyhounds, or of well-scented and +true-running hounds to chase the deere or hunt the hare"; adding as a +recommendation that "this kinde of hunting shall not waste your corne, +nor much your coyne!" + +I find that John Leland in his Itinerary, 1540, further confirms the use +of highly-decorated mounts: as at Wressel Castle, Yorkshire, he tells of +the gardens with the mote, and the orchards as exceeding fair; "and yn +the orchardes were mounts writhen about with degrees, like the turnings +in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payne." There is still to +be seen, or according to Murray's Guide, 1876, was then to be seen, at +Wotton, in Surrey, an artificial mount cut into terraces, which is a +relic of Evelyn's work. + +The general shape of an old-fashioned garden is a perfect square, which +we take to be reminiscent of the square patch of ground which, in early +days, was partitioned off for the use of the family, and walled to +exclude cattle, or to define the property. It also repeats the +quadrangular court of big Tudor houses. We may also assume that the +shape would commend itself to the taste of the Renascence School of the +Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, as being that of classic times; for the +antique garden was fashioned in a square with enclosures of +trellis-work, espaliers, and clipt box hedges, regularly ornamented with +vases, fountains, and statuary. + +The square shape was common to the French and Italian gardens also. Old +views of Du Cerceau, an architect of the time of Charles IX. and Henry +III., show a square in one part of the grounds and a circular labyrinth +in another: scarcely a plot but has this arrangement. The point to note, +however, is, that while the English garden might take the same general +outline as the foreign, it had its own peculiarities; and although each +country develops the fantastic ornament common to the stiff garden of +the period in its own way, things are not carried to the same pitch of +extravagant fancy in England as in France, Holland, or Italy. + +Upon a general review of the subject of ornamental gardens, English and +foreign, we arrive at the conclusion that the type of garden produced by +any country is a question of soil and physical features, and a question +of race. The character of the scenery of a country, the section of the +land generally, no less than the taste of the people who dwell in it, +prescribes the style of the type of garden. The hand of Nature directs +the hand of Art. + +Thus, in a hilly country like Italy, Nature herself prompts the division +of the garden-spaces into wide terraces, while Art, on her side, +provides that the terraces shall be well-proportioned as to width and +height, and suitably defined by masonry walls having balustraded fronts, +flights of steps, arcades, temples, vases, statues, &c. + +Lady Mary Montagu's description of the _Giardino Jiusti_ is a case in +point: she depicts, as far as words can, how admirably it complies with +the conditions of the scenery. The palace lies at the foot of a mountain +"near three miles high, covered with a wood of orange, lemon, citron, +and pomegranate trees, which is all cut up into walks, and divided into +terraces that you may go into a separate garden from every floor of the +house, diversified with fountains, cascades, and statues, and joined by +easy marble staircases, which lead from one to another." It is a hundred +years since this description was written, but the place is little +altered to this day: "Who will now take the pains to climb its steep +paths, will find the same charm in the aged cypresses, the oddly clipped +ilexes and boxes, the stiff terraces and narrow, and now overgrown, +beds."[18] + +[Footnote 18: "The Garden."--WALTHER HOWE.] + +In France, where estates are larger, and the surface of the country more +even and regular, the ornamental grounds, while following the Italian in +certain particulars, are of wider range on the flat, and they attain +picturesqueness upon lines of their own. The taste of the people, +conveniently answering to the conditions of the country, runs upon long +avenues and spacious grounds, divided by massive trellises into a series +of ornamental sections--_Bocages_, _Cabinets de Verdure_, &c., which by +their form and name, flatter the Arcadian sentiment of a race much given +to idealisation. "I am making winding alleys all round my park, which +will be of great beauty," writes Madame de Sévigné, in 1671. "As to my +labyrinth, it is neat, it has green plots, and the palisades are +breast-high; it is a lovable spot." + +The French have parks, says the travelled Heutzner, but nothing is more +different, both in compass and direction, than those common to England. +In France they invented the parks as fit surroundings to the fine +palaces built by Mansard and Le Nôtre, and the owners of these stately +chateaux gratified their taste for Nature in an afternoon promenade on a +broad stone terrace, gazing over a carved balustrade at a world made +truly artificial to suit the period. The style of Le Nôtre is, in fact, +based upon the theory that Nature shall contribute a bare space upon +which man shall lay out a garden of symmetrical character, and trees, +shrubs, and flowers are regarded as so much raw material, out of which +Art shall carve her effects. + +Indeed, the desire for symmetry is carried to such extravagant lengths +that the largest parks become only a series of square or oblong +enclosures, regularly planted walks, bounded by chestnuts or limes; +while the gardens are equally cut up into lines of trellises and +palisades. In describing the Paris gardens Horace Walpole says, "they +form light corridors and transpicuous arbours, through which the +sunbeams play and checker the shade, set off the statues, vases, and +flowers, that marry with their gaudy hotels, and suit the gallant and +idle society who paint the walks between their parterres, and realise +the fantastic scenes of Watteau and Durfé!" In another place he says +that "many French groves seem green chests set upon poles. In the garden +of Marshall de Biron, at Paris, consisting of fourteen acres, every walk +is button-holed on each side by lines of flower-pots, which succeed in +their seasons. When I saw it there were nine thousand pots of asters or +la Reine Marguerite." + +In Holland, which Butler sarcastically describes as + + "A land that rides at anchor, and is moor'd, + In which they do not live, but go aboard"-- + +the conditions are not favourable to gardening. Man is here indebted to +Nature, in the first place, for next to nothing: Air, Earth, and Water +are, as it were, under his control. The trees grow, the rivers run, as +they are directed; and the very air is made to pay toll by means of the +windmills. + +To begin with, Holland has a meagre list of indigenous trees and shrubs, +and scarcely an indigenous ligneous flora. There is little wood in the +country, for the heavy winds are calculated to destroy high-growing +trees, and the roots cannot penetrate into the ground to any depth, +without coming to water. The land is flat, and although artificial +mountains of granite brought from Norway and Sweden have been erected as +barriers against the sea, there is scarcely a stone to be found except +in the Island of Urk. + +The conditions of the country being so unfavourable to artistic +handling, it needs a determined effort on man's part to lift things +above the dead-level of the mean and commonplace. Yet see how Nature's +defects may only prove Art's opportunity! Indeed, it is singular to note +how, as it were, in a spirit of noble contrariness, the Dutch garden +exhibits the opposite grace of each natural defect of the land. The +great plains intersected with sullen watercourses yield up only slight +strips of land, _therefore_ these niggardly strips, snatched from "an +amphibious world" (as Goldsmith terms it), shall be crammed with beauty. +The landscape outside gapes with uniform dulness, _therefore_ the garden +within shall be spick and span. The flat treeless expanse outside offers +no objects for measuring distance, _therefore_ the perspective of the +garden shall be a marvel of adroit planning and conjured proportions. +The room is small, _therefore_ its every inch shall seem an ell. The +garden is a mere patch, _therefore_ the patch shall be elaborately +darned and pattern-stitched all over. The eye may not travel far, or can +get no joy in a distant view, _therefore_ it shall rest in pure content, +focussed upon a scene where rich and orderly garniture can no farther +go. + +Thus have the ill-conditions of the land proved blessings in disguise. +Necessity, the mother of invention, has produced the Dutch garden out of +the most untoward geography, and if we find in its qualities and +features traces of the conditions which surrounded its birth and +development it is no wonder. Who shall blame the prim shapes and +economical culture where even gross deception shall pass for a virtue if +it be successful! Or the regular strips of ground, the long straight +canals, the adroit vistas of grassy terraces long-drawn out, the trees +ranged in pots, or planted in the ground at set intervals and carefully +shorn to preserve the limit of their shade! Nay, one can be merciful to +the garden's usual crowning touch, which you get at its far end--a +painted landscape of hills and dales and clumps of trees to beguile the +enamoured visitor into the fond belief that Holland is not Holland: and, +in the foreground the usual smiling wooden boy, shooting arrows at +nothing, happy in the deed, and tin hares squatting in likely nooks, +whose shy hare eyes have worn the same startled gaze these sixty years +or more, renewed with fresh paint from time to time as rust requires. +Yet the Earth is richer and mankind happier for the Dutch garden! + +And, as though out of compassion for the Dutchman's difficulties, kind +Nature has put into his hands the bulb, as a means whereby he may attain +the maximum of gaudy colour within the minimum of space. Given a few +square yards of rescued earth and sufficient manure, and what cannot the +neat-handed, frugal-minded, microscopic-eyed Dutchman do in the way of +concentrated design with his bulbs, his clipt shrubs, his trim beds, his +trickles of water, and strips of grass and gravel! And should all other +resources fail he has still his pounded brick-dust, his yellow sand, his +chips of ores and spars and green glass, which, though they may serve +only remotely to suggest Nature, will at all events carry your mind off +to the gay gardens of precious stones of fairyland literature! + +Indeed, once embarked upon his style of piquancy-at-any-price, and it is +hard to see where the Dutch gardener need stop! In this sophisticated +trifling--this lapidary's mosaic--this pastry-cook's decoration--this +child's puzzle of coloured earth, substituted for coloured living +flowers--he pushes Art farther than the plain Englishman approves. It +is, however, only one step farther than ordinary with him. All his +dealings with Nature are of this abstract sort: his details are clever, +and he is ingenious, if not imaginative, in his wholes. Still, I repeat, +the Earth is richer, and mankind happier for the Dutch garden. There is +an obvious excuse for its over-fancifulness in George Meredith's remark +that "dulness is always an irresistible temptation for brilliance." That +the Dutchman should be thus able to compete with unfriendly Nature, and +to reverse the brazen of the unkind land of his birth, is an achievement +that reflects most creditably upon the artistic capacities of his +nation. + +But England-- + + "This other Eden, demi-paradise"-- + +suggests a garden of a less-constrained order than either of these. Not +that the English garden is uniformly of the same type, at the same +periods. The variety of the type is to be accounted for in two ways: +firstly, by the ingrained eclecticism of the British mind; secondly, by +the changeful character of the country--this district is flat and open, +this is hilly--so that mere conformity to the lie of the land would +produce gardens which belong now to the French type, now to the Italian. +It is the same with British Art of all kinds, of all times: in days long +before the Norman visitation and ever since, the English Designer has +leant more or less upon foreign initiative, which goes to prove either +how inert is his own gift of origination, or how devious may be the +tastes of a mixed race. + +But if the English garden cannot boast of singular points of interest, +if its art reflects foreign countries, it bears the mark of the English +taste for landscape, which gives it distinction and is suggestive of +very charming effects. The transcendent characteristic of the English +garden is derived from and gets its impulse from the prevailing +influence of Nature at home. It has the characteristics of the country. + +It is, I know, commonly held now-a-days that the taste for landscape is +wholly of modern growth. So far as England is concerned it came in, they +say, with Thomson in poetry, and with Brown in gardens. So far as +relates to the _conscious_ relish for Nature, so far as relates to the +love of Nature as a mirror of the moods of the mind, or as a refuge from +man, this assertion may be true enough. Yet, surely the _conscious_ +delight in landscape must have been preceded by an _unconscious_ +sympathy this way: it could not have sprung without generation. Artistic +sight is based upon instinct, feeling, perceptions that reach one knows +not how far back in time, it does not come by magic. + +See also what a rude, slatternly affair this much-lauded +landscape-garden of the "immortal Brown" was! Here are two sorts of +gardens--the traditional garden according to Bacon, the garden according +to Brown. Both are Nature, but the first is Nature in an ideal dress, +the second is Nature with no dress at all. The first is a garden for a +civilised man, the second is a garden for a gipsy. The first is a +picture painted from a cherished model, the second is a photograph of +the same model undressed. Brown's work, in fact, represents the garden's +return to its original barbaric self--the reinauguration of the +elemental. Let it not be said, then, that Brown discovered the model, +for her fairness was an established fact or she would not have been so +richly apparelled when he lighted upon her. In other words, the love of +the Earth--"that green-tressed goddess," Coleridge calls her--was no new +thing in Brown's day: the sympathy for the woodland world, the love of +tree, flower, and grass is behind the manipulated stiff garden of the +fifteenth and two succeeding centuries, and it is the abiding source of +all enthusiasm in garden-craft. + +How long this taste for landscape had existed in pre-Thomsonian days it +does not fall to us to determine. Suffice it to say that so long as +there has been an English school of gardening this sympathy for +landscape has found expression in the English garden.[19] The high thick +garden-walls of the old fighting-days shall have ample outlooks in the +shape of "mounts," from whence views may be had of the open country. The +ornamental value of forest trees is well-known and appreciated. Even in +the thirteenth century the English gardener is on the alert for new +specimens and "trees of curiosity," and he is a master of horticulture. +In Chaucer's day he revels in the greensward, + + "Ful thikke of gras, ful softe and swete." + +And the early ballads as I have already shown are full of allusion to +scenery and woodland. In the days of fine gardens the Englishman must +still have his four acres "to the green," his adjuncts of shrubbery, +wilderness, and park. Nay, Henry VIII.'s garden at Nonsuch, had its +wilderness of ten acres. "Chaucer opens his Clerke's Tale with a bit of +landscape admirable for its large style," says Mr Lowell, "and as well +composed as any Claude" ("My Study Windows," p. 22). "What an airy +precision of touch is here, and what a sure eye for the points of +character in landscape." So, too, can Milton rejoice in + + "Nature boon + Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain," + +and Herrick: + + "Sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, + Of April, May, of June, and July flowers." + +[Footnote 19: "English scenery of that special type which we call +homely, and of which we are proud as only to be found in England, is, +indeed, the production of many centuries of that conservatism which has +spared the picturesque timber, and of that affectionate regard for the +future which has made men delight to spend their money in imprinting on +the face of Nature their own taste in trees and shrubs." ("Vert and +Venery," by VISCOUNT LYMINGTON; _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1891.)] + +Nor is this taste for landscape surprising in a country where the +natural scenery is so fair and full of meaning. There are the solemn +woods, the noble trees of forest and park: the "fresh green lap" of the +land, so vividly green that the American Hawthorne declares he found "a +kind of lustre in it." There is the rich vegetation, and "in France, and +still less in Italy," Walpole reminds us, "they could with difficulty +attain that verdure which the humidity of our climate bestows." There +are the leafy forest ways gemmed with flowers; the vast hunting-grounds +of old kings, the woodland net of hazel coppice, the hills and dales, +sunned or shaded, the plains mapped out with hedgerows and enlivened +with the glitter of running water: the heather-clad moors, the golden +gorse covers, the rolling downs dotted over with thorns and yews and +chalk cliffs, the upland hamlets with their rosy orchards, the farm +homesteads nestling in green combes, the grace of standing corn, the +girdle of sea with its yellow shore or white, red, or grey rocks, its +wolds and tracts of rough uncultivated ground, with bluffs and bushes +and wind-harassed trees--Nature's own "antickes"--driven like green +flames, and carved into grotesque shapes by the biting gales. There are +the + + "Russet lawns, and fallows grey + Where the nibbling flocks do stray, + Mountains on whose barren breast + The labouring clouds do often rest, + Meadows prim with daisies pied, + Shallow brooks and rivers wide"-- + +the land that Richard Jefferies says "wants no gardening, it _cannot_ be +gardened; the least interference kills it"--English woodland whose +beauty is in its detail. There is nothing empty and unclothed here. Says +Jefferies, "If the clods are left a little while undisturbed in the +fields, weeds spring up and wild flowers bloom upon them. Is the hedge +cut and trimmed, lo! the bluebells flower the more, and a yet fresher +green buds forth upon the twigs." "Never was there a garden like the +meadow," cries this laureate of the open fields; "there is not an inch +of the meadow in early summer without a flower." + +And if the various parts and details of an English landscape are so +beautiful in themselves, what shall we say of the scenery when Nature, +turned artist, sweeps across it the translucent tints of dawn or sunset, +or wind and cloud-fantasy; or veil of purple mist, or grey or red haze, +or drift of rain-shower thrown athwart the hills, for the sunbeams to +try their edge upon; or any of the numberless atmospheric changes, pure +and tender, stern and imperious, that our humid climate has ever ready +to hand! + +Shut in, as we in England are, with our short breadths of view ("on a +scale to embrace," remarks George Meredith), folded, as it were, in a +field-sanctuary of Nature-life--girt about with scenery that is at once +fair, compact, sweetly familiar and companionable, yet so changefully +coloured, so full of surprises as the day jogs along to its evensong as +to hold observation on the stretch, to force attention to Nature's last +word, to fill the fallow-mind of lonely country folk with gentle wonder, +and swell the "harvest of a quiet eye," is it strange that a land like +ours should have bred an unrivalled school of Nature-readers among +gardeners, painters, and poets? "As regards grandeur," says Hawthorne, +"there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England +can show; but, for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies +under its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it +anywhere." ("Our Old Home," p. 78.) + +The _real_ world of England, then, is, in the Englishman's opinion, +itself so fair "it wants no gardening." Our school of gardeners seem to +have found this out; for the task of the gardener has been rather that +of translator than of creator; he has not had to labour at an artificial +world he himself had made, but only to adorn, to interpret the world as +it is, in all its blithe freedom. "The earth is the garden of Nature, +and each fruitful country a Paradise;" and in England, "the world's best +garden," man has only had to focus the view and frame it. Flowers, +odours, dews, glistening waters, soft airs and sounds, noble trees, +woodland solitudes, moonlight bowers, have been always with us. + +It might seem ungenerous to institute a comparison between the French +and English styles of gardening, and to put things in a light +unfavourable to the foreigner, had not the task been already done for us +by a Frenchman in a most outspoken manner. Speaking of the French +gardens, Diderot, in his Encyclopædia (_Jardin_) says: "We bring to bear +upon the most beautiful situations a ridiculous and paltry taste. The +long straight alleys appear to us insipid; the palisades cold and +formless. We delight in devising twisted alleys, scroll-work parterres, +and shrubs formed into tufts; the largest lots are divided into little +lots. It is not so with a neighbouring nation, amongst whom gardens in +good taste are as common as magnificent palaces are rare. In England, +these kinds of walks, practicable in all weathers, seem made to be the +sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure; the body is there relaxed, the +mind diverted, the eyes are enchanted by the verdure of the turf and the +bowling-greens; the variety of flowers offers pleasant flattery to the +smell and sight, Nature alone, modestly arrayed, and never made up, +there spreads out her ornaments and benefits. How the fountains beget +the shrubs and beautify them! How the shadows of the woods put the +streams to sleep in beds of herbage." This is poetry! but it is well +that one French writer (and he so distinguished) should be found to +depict an English garden, when architects like Jussieu and Antoine +Richard signally failed to reproduce the thing, to order, upon French +soil! And the _Petit Trianon_ was in itself an improvement upon, or +rather a protest against, the sumptuous splendour of the _Orangerie_, +the basins of Latona and of Neptune, and the superb _tapis vert_, with +its bordering groves of clipt trees and shrubs. Yet here is Arthur +Young's unflattering description of the Queen's _Jardin Anglois_ at +Trianon: "It contains about 100 acres, disposed in the taste of what we +read of in books of Chinese gardening, whence it is supposed the English +style was taken. There is more of Sir William Chambers here than of Mr +Brown,[20] more effort than Nature, and more expense than taste. It is +not easy to conceive anything that Art can introduce in a garden that is +not here; woods, rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers, islands, cascades, +grottoes, walks, temples, and even villages." Truly a _Jardin Anglois_! + +[Footnote 20: Miss Edwards (and I quote from her edition of Young's +"Travels in France," p. 101) has a note to the effect that the Mr Brown +here referred to is "Robert Brown, of Markle, contributor to the +_Edinburgh Magazine_, 1757-1831." Yet, surely this is none other than Mr +"Capability" Brown, discoverer of English scenery, reputed father of the +English garden!] + +We may well prefer Diderot's simile for the English garden as "the +sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure" to the bustling crowd of +miscellaneous elements that took its name in vain in the _Petit +Trianon_! + +For an English garden is at once stately and homely--homely before all +things. Like all works of Art it is conventionally treated, and its +design conscious and deliberate. But the convention is broad, dignified, +quiet, homogeneous, suiting alike the characteristics of the country and +of the people for whom it is made. Compared with this, the foreign +garden must be allowed to be richer in provocation; there is distinctly +more fancy in its conceits, and its style is more absolute and +circumspect than the English. And yet, just as Browning says of +imperfection, that it may sometimes mean "perfection hid," so, here our +deficiencies may not mean defects. + +In order that we may compare the English and foreign garden we must +place them on common ground; and I will liken each to a pastoral +romance. Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet how +different the quality of the contents, the method of presentment, the +style, the technique of this and that, even when the design is +contemporaneous! + +A garden is, I say, a sort of pastoral romance, woven upon a background +of natural scenery. In the exercise of his pictorial genius, both the +foreign and English artist shall run upon natural things, and +transcribe Nature imaginatively yet realisably; each composition shall +have a pastoral air, and be rustic after its fashion. But how different +the platform, how different the mental complexion, the technique of the +artists! How different the detail and the atmosphere of the garden. The +rusticity of the foreign garden is dished up in a more delectable form +than is the case in the English, but there is not the same open-air +feeling about this as about that; it does not convey the same sense of +unexhausted possibilities--not the same tokens of living enjoyment of +Nature, of heart-to-heart fellowship with her. The foreign garden is +over-wrought, too full: it is a passionless thing--like the gaudy birds +of India, finely plumed but songless; like the prize rose, without +sweetness. + +Of the garden of Italy, who shall dare to speak critically. Child of +tradition: heir by unbroken descent, inheritor of the garden-craft of +the whole civilised world. It stands on a pinnacle high above the +others, peerless and alone: fit for the loveliest of lands-- + + ... "Woman-country, wooed not wed, + Loved all the more by Earth's male-lands, + Laid to their hearts instead"-- + +and it may yet be seen upon its splendid scale, splendidly adorned, with +straight terraces, marble statues, clipped ilex and box, walks bordered +with azalea and camellia, surrounded with groves of pines and +cypresses--so frankly artistic, yet so subtly blending itself into the +natural surroundings--into the distant plain, the fringe of purple +hills, the gorgeous panorama of the Alps with its background of glowing +sky. With such a radiant country to conjure with, we may truly say "The +richly provided, richly require." + +If we may speak our mind of the French and Dutch gardens, they in no +wise satisfy English taste as regards their relation to Nature. Diderot +has said that it is the peculiarity of the French to judge everything +with the mind. It is from this standpoint that the Frenchman treats +Nature in a garden. He is ever seeking to unite the accessory portions +with the _ensemble_. He overdoes design. He gives you the impression +that he is far more in love with his own ideas about Nature than with +Nature herself; that he uses her resources not to interpret them or +perfect them along their own lines, but express his own interesting +ideas. He must provide stimulus for his imagination; his nature demands +food for reverie, point for ecstasy, for delicious self-abandonment, for +bedazzlement with ideal beauty, and the garden shall supply him with +these whatever the cost to the materials employed. Hence a certain +unscrupulousness towards Nature in the French garden; hence the daring +picturesqueness, its legerdemain. Nature edited thus, is to the +Englishman but Nature in effigy, Nature used as a peg for fantastical +attire, Nature with a false lustre that tells of lead alloy--Nature that +has forgotten what she is like. + +In an English garden, as Diderot notes, Nature is handled with more +reverence, her rights are more respected. I am willing to allow that +something of the reserve traceable in English art is begotten of the +phlegmatic temper of the race that rarely gets beyond a quiescent +fervour; and this temper, exhibited in a garden would incline us always +to let well alone and not press things too hard. If the qualities of an +English garden that I speak of are to be attributed to this temper, +then, to judge by results, _laissez faire_ is not a bad motto for the +gardener! Certain it is that the dominance of man is more hinted at here +than proclaimed. Compared with foreign examples we sooner read through +its quaintnesses and braveries their sweet originals in Nature: nay, +even when we have idealised things to our hearts' full bent, they shall +yet retain the very note and rhythm of the woodland world from whence +they sprang--"English in all, of genius blithely free."[21] + +[Footnote 21: Lowell's "Ode to Fielding."] + +And this is true even in that extreme case, the Jacobean garden, where +we have much the same quips and cranks, the same quaint power of +metrical changes and playful fancy of the poetry of Herbert, Vaughan, +Herrick, and Donne; even the little clean-cut pedantries of this +artfullest of all phases of English garden-craft make for a kind of +bland stateliness and high-flown serenity, that bases its appeal upon +placid beauty rather than upon mere ingenuity or specious extravagance. +The conventionalities of its borders, its terraces and steps and images +in lead or marble, its ornamental water, its trim geometrical patterns, +its quincunx, clipped hedges, high hedges, and architectural adornments +shall be balanced by great sweeps of lawn and noble trees that are not +constrained to take hands, as in France, across the road and to look +proper, but are left to grow large and thick and wide and free. True +that there is about the Jacobean garden an air of scholarliness and +courtliness; a flavour of dreamland, Arcadia, and Italy--a touch of the +archaic and classical--yet the thing is saved from utter affectation by +our English out-of-door life which has bred in us an innate love of the +unconstrained, a sympathy that keeps its hold on reality, and these give +an undefinable quality of freshness to the composition as a whole.[22] + +[Footnote 22: "Mr _Evelyn_ has a pleasant villa at _Deptford_," writes +Gibson, "a fine garden for walks and hedges (especially his holly one +which he writes of in his 'Sylva') ... In his garden he has four large +round philareas, smooth-clipped, raised on a single stalk from the +ground, a fashion now much used. _Part of his garden is very woody and +shady for walking_; but his garden not being walled, has little of the +best fruits."] + +To sum up. The main difference in the character of the English and the +foreign schools of gardening lies in this, that the design of the +foreign leans ever in the direction of artificiality, that of England +towards natural freedom. And a true garden should have an equal regard +for Nature and Art; it should represent a marriage of contraries, should +combine finesse and audacity, subtilty and simplicity, the regular and +the unexpected, the ideal and the real "bound fast in one with golden +ease." In a French or Dutch garden the "yes" and "no" of Art and Nature +are always unequally yoked. Nature is treated with sparse courtesy by +Art, its individuality is ignored, it sweats like a drudge under its +load of false sentiment. "Sike fancies weren foolerie." + +But in England, though we hold Nature in duress, we leave her unbound; +if we mew her up for cultivation, we leave her inviolate, with a chance +of vagrant liberty and a way of escape. Thus, you will note how the +English garden stops, as it were, without ending. Around or near the +house will be the ordered garden with terraces and architectural +accessories, all trim and fit and nice. Then comes the smooth-shaven +lawn, studded and belted round with fine trees, arranged as it seems +with a divine carelessness; and beyond the lawn, the ferny heather-turf +of the park, where the dappled deer browse and the rabbits run wild, and +the sun-chequered glades go out to meet, and lose themselves "by green +degrees" in the approaching woodland,--past the river glen, the steep +fields of grass and corn, the cottages and stackyards and grey church +tower of the village; past the ridge of fir-land and the dark sweep of +heath-country into the dim waving lines of blue distance. + +So that however self-contained, however self-centred the stiff old +garden may seem to be, it never loses touch with the picturesque +commonplaces of our land; never loses sympathy with the green world at +large, but, in a sense, embraces and locks in its arms the whole +country-side as far as eye can see. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +HISTORICAL SKETCH--CONTINUED. + +THE STIFF GARDEN. + + "All is fine that is fit." + + +The English garden, as I have just tried to sketch it, was not born +yesterday, the bombastic child of a landscape-gardener's recipe. It +epitomises a nation's instincts in garden-craft; it is the slow result +of old affection for, old wonder at, beauty in forms, colours, tones; +old enthusiasm for green turf, wild flower, and forest tree. Take it at +its best, it records the matured taste of a people of Nature-readers, +Nature-lovers: it is that which experience has proved to be in most +accord with the character and climate of the country, and the genius of +the race. + +Landscape has been from the first the central tradition of English art. +Life spent amidst pictorial scenery like ours that is striking in itself +and rendered more impressive and animated by the rapid atmospheric +changes, the shifting lights and shadows, the life and movement in the +sky, and the vivid intense colouring of our moist climate, has given our +tastes a decided bent this way, and fashioned our Arts of Poetry, +Painting, and Gardening. Out-of-door life among such scenery puts our +senses on the alert, and the impressions of natural phenomena supply our +device with all its images. + +The English people had not to wait till the eighteenth century to know +to what they were inclined, or what would suit their country's +adornment. From first to last, we have said, the English garden deals +much with trees and shrubs and grass. The thought of them, and the +artistic opportunities they offer, is present in the minds of +accomplished garden-masters, travelled men, initiated spirits, like Sir +Thomas More, Bacon, Shaftesbury, Temple, and Evelyn, whose aim is to +give garden-craft all the method and distinctness of which it is +capable. However saturated with aristocratic ideas the courtier-gardener +may be, however learned in the circumspect style of the Italian, he +retains his native relish for the woodland world, and babbles of green +fields. A sixteenth-century English gardener (Gerarde) adjured his +countrymen to "Go forwarde in the name of God, graffe, set, plant, and +nourishe up trees in every corner of your grounde." A +seventeenth-century gardener (Evelyn) had ornamental landscape and shady +woods in his garden as well as pretty beds of choice flowers. + +"There are, besides the temper of our climate," writes another +seventeenth-century garden-worthy (Temple), "two things particular to +us, that contribute to the beauty and elegance of our gardens, which are +the gravel of our walks and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness +of our turf; the first is not known anywhere else, which leaves all +their dry walks in other countries very unpleasant and uneasy; the other +cannot be found in France or in Holland as we have it, the soil not +admitting that fineness of blade in Holland, nor the sun that greenness +in France during most of the summer." And following upon this is a long +essay upon the ornamental disposition of the grounds in an English +garden and the culture of fruit trees. "I will not enter upon any +account of flowers," he says, "having only pleased myself with the care, +which is more the ladies' part than the men's,[23] but the success is +wholly in the gardener." + +[Footnote 23: This remark of Temple's as to the small importance the +flower-beds had in the mind of the gardener of his day, is significant: +as indicating the different methods employed by the ancient and modern +gardener. It was not that he was not "pleased with the care" of flowers, +but that these were not his chiefest care; his prime idea was to get +broad, massive, well-defined effects in his garden generally. Hence the +monumental style of the old-fashioned garden, the carefully-disposed +ground, the formality, the well-considered poise and counter-poise, the +varying levels and well-defined parts. And only inwoven, as it were, +into the argument of the piece, are its pretty parts, used much as the +jewellery of a fair woman. I should be sorry to be so unjust to the +modern landscape gardener as to accuse him of caring over-much for +flowers, but of his garden-device generally one may fairly say it has no +monumental style, no ordered shape other than its carefully-schemed +_disorder_. It is not a masculine affair, but effeminate and niggling; a +little park-scenery, curved shrubberies, wriggling paths, emphasised +specimen plants, and flower-beds of more or less inane shape tumbled +down on the skirts of the lawn or drive, that do more harm than good to +the effect of the place, seen near or at a distance. How true it is that +to believe in Art one must be an artist!] + +And Bacon is not so wholly enamoured of Arcadia and with the embodiment +of far-brought fancies in his "prince-like" garden as to be callous of +Nature's share therein. "The contents ought not well to be under thirty +acres of ground, and to be divided into three parts; a green in the +entrance, a heath or desert in the going forth, and the main garden in +the midst, besides alleys on both sides; and I like well that four acres +be assigned to the Green, six to the Heath, four and four to either +side, and twelve to the main Garden. The Green hath two pleasures: the +one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept +finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the +midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge, which is to +enclose the garden." "For the heath, which was the third part of our +plot, I wished it be framed as much as may be to a natural wildness," +&c. Of which more anon.[24] + +[Footnote 24: Nonsuch had its wilderness of ten acres.] + +Whether the garden of Bacon's essay is the portrait of an actual thing, +whether the writer--to use a phrase of Wordsworth--"had his eye upon the +subject," or whether it was built in the man's brain like Tennyson's +"Palace of Art," we cannot tell. From the singular air of experience +that animates the description, the sure touch of the writer, we may +infer that Gorhambury had some such garden, the fruit of its master's +"Leisure with honour," or "Leisure without honour," as the case may be. +But what seems certain is, that the essay is only a sign of the ordinary +English gentleman's mind on the subject at that time; and in giving us +this masterpiece, Bacon had no more notion of posing as the founder of +the English garden (_pace_ Brown) than of getting himself labelled as +the founder of Modern Science for his distinguished labours in that +line. "I only sound the clarion," he says, "but I enter not into the +battle." + +Moderns are pleased to smile at what they deem the over-subtilty of +Bacon's ideal garden. For my own part, I find nothing recommended there +that a "princely garden" should not fitly contain (especially as these +things are all of a-piece with the device of the period), even to those +imagination-stirring features which one thinks he may have described, +not from the life, but from the figures in "The Dream of Poliphilus" (a +book of woodcuts published in Venice, 1499), features of the Enchanted +Island, to wit the two fountains--the first to spout water, to be +adorned with ornaments of images, gilt or of marble; the "other, which +we may call a bathing-pool that admits of much curiosity and beauty +wherewith we will not trouble ourselves; as that the bottom be finely +paved with images, the sides likewise; and withal embellished with +coloured glass, and such things of lustre; encompassed also with fine +rails of low statues."[25] + +[Footnote 25: _Nineteenth Century Magazine_, July, 1890.] + +No artist is disposed to apologise for the presence of subtilty in Art, +nor I for the subtle device of Bacon's garden. All Art is cunning. Yet +we must not simply note the deep intent of the old master, but must +equally recognise the air of gravity that pervades his +recommendations--the sweet reasonableness of suggestions for design +that have as much regard for the veracities of Nature, and the dictates +of common-sense, as for the nice elegancies and well-calculated +audacities of consummate Art. + +"I only sound the clarion, but I enter not into the battle." Even so, +Master! we will hold thy hand as far as thou wilt go; and the clarion +thou soundest right well, and most serviceably for all future gardeners! + +I like the ring of stout challenge in the opening words, which command +respect for the subject, and, if rightly construed, should make the +heretic "landscape gardener,"--who dotes on meagre country-grass and +gipsy scenery--pause in his denunciation of Art in a garden. "God +almighty first planted a Garden; and indeed it is the purest of humane +pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man, without +which Buildings and Palaces are but gross Handyworks. And a man shall +ever see, that when ages grow to Civility and Elegancy, men come to +build stately sooner than to garden finely: as if Gardening were the +Greater Perfection." + +This first paragraph has, for me, something of the stately tramp and +pregnant meaning of the opening phrase of "At a Solemn Music." The +praise of gardening can no further go. To say more were impossible. To +say less were to belittle your subject. I think of Ben Jonson's simile, +"They jump farthest who fetch their race largest." For Bacon "fetches" +his subject back to "In the beginning," and prophesies of all time. +Thus does he lift his theme to its full height at starting, and the +remainder holds to the same heroic measure. + +If the ideal garden be fanciful, it is also grand and impressive. Nor +could it well be otherwise. For when the essay was written fine +gardening was in the air, and the master had special opportunities for +studying and enjoying great gardens. More than this, Bacon was an apt +craftsman in many fields, a born artist, gifted with an imagination at +once rich and curious, whose performances of every sort declare the +student's love of form, and the artist's nice discrimination of +expression. Then, too, his mind was set upon the conquest of Nature, of +which gardening is a province, for the service of man, for physical +enjoyment, and for the increase of social comfort. Yet was he an +Englishman first, and a fine gardener afterwards. Admit the author's +sense of the delights of art-magic in a garden, none esteemed them more, +yet own the discreet economy of his imaginative strokes, the homely +bluntness of his criticisms upon foreign vagaries, the English +sane-mindedness of his points, his feeling for broad effects and dislike +of niggling, the mingled shrewdness and benignity of his way of putting +things. It is just because Bacon thus treats of idealisms as though they +were realisms, because he so skilfully wraps up his fanciful figures in +matter-of-fact language that even the ordinary English reader +appreciates the art of Bacon's stiff garden, and entertains +art-aspirations unawares. + +Every reader of Bacon will recognise what I wish to point out. Here, +however, are a few examples:-- + +"For the ordering of the Ground within the Great Hedge, I leave it to a +Variety of Device. Advising, nevertheless, that whatsoever form you cast +it into; first it be not too busie, or full of work; wherein I, for my +part, do not like Images cut out in Juniper, or other garden stuffs; +_they are for Children_. Little low Hedges, round like Welts, with some +pretty Pyramids, I like well; and in some places Fair Columns upon +Frames of Carpenters' work. I would also have the Alleys spacious and +fair." + +"As for the making of Knots or Figures, with Divers Coloured earths, +that they may lie under the windows of the House, on that side which the +Garden stands, _they be but Toys, you may see as good sights many +times in Tarts_." + +"For Fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, _but Pools mar +all, and make the Garden unwholesome and full of flies and frogs_." + +"For fine Devices, of arching water without spilling, and making it rise +in several forms (of Feathers, Drinking Glasses, Canopies, and the like) +(see "The Dream of Poliphilus") _they be pretty things to look on, but +nothing to Health and Sweetness_." + +Thus throughout the Essay, with alternate rise and fall, do fancy and +judgment deliver themselves of charge and retort, making a kind of +logical see-saw. At the onset Fancy kicks the beam; at the middle, +Judgment is in the ascendant, and before the sentence is done the +balance rides easy. And this scrupulousness is not to be wholly +ascribed to the fastidious bent of a mind that lived in a labyrinth; it +speaks equally of the fineness of the man's ideal, which lifts his +standard sky-high and keeps him watchful to a fault in attaining desired +effects without running upon "trifles and jingles." The master-text of +the whole Essay seems to be the writer's own apothegm: "Nature is +commanded by obeying her." + +That a true gardener should love Nature goes without saying. And Bacon +loved Nature passionately, and gardens only too well. He tells us these +were his favourite sins in the strange document--half prayer, half +Apologia--written after he had made his will, at the time of his fall, +when he presumably concluded that _anything_ might happen. "Thy +creatures have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much more. I have +sought Thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found Thee in +Thy temples." + +Three more points about the essay I would like to comment upon. First, +That in spite of its lofty dreaming, it treats of the hard and dry side +of gardening as a science in so methodical a manner that but for what it +contains besides, and for its mint-mark of a great spirit, the thing +might pass as an extract from a more-than-ordinary practical gardener's +manual. Bacon does not write upon the subject like a man in another +planet, but like a man in a land of living men. + +Secondly, As to the attitude of Bacon and his school towards external +Nature. In them is no trace of the mawkish sentimentality of the modern +"landscape-gardener," proud of his discoveries, bustling to show how +condescending he can be towards Nature, how susceptible to a pastoral +melancholy. There is nothing here of the maundering of Shenstone over +his ideal landscape-garden that reads as though it would be a superior +sort of pedants' Cremorne, where "the lover's walk may have assignation +seats, with proper mottoes, urns to faithful lovers, trophies, garlands, +etc., by means of Art"; and where due consideration is to be given to +"certain complexions of soul that will prefer an orange tree or a myrtle +to an oak or cedar." The older men thought first of the effects that +they wished to attain, and proceeded to realise them without more ado. +They had no "codes of taste" to appeal to, and no literary law-givers to +stand in dread of. They applied Nature's raw materials as their art +required. And yet, compared with the methods of the heavy-handed realist +of later times such unscrupulousness had a merit of its own. To suit +their purposes the old gardeners may have defied Nature's ways and wont; +but, even so, they act as fine gentlemen should: they never pet and +patronise her: they have no blunt and blundering methods such as mark +the Nature-maulers of the Brown or Batty-Langley school: if they cut, +they do not mince, nor hack, nor tear, they cut clean. In one's better +moments one can almost sympathise with the "landscape-gardener's" +feelings as he reads, if he ever does read, Evelyn's classic book +"Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest-trees," how they trimmed the hedges +of hornbeam, "than which there is nothing more graceful," and the cradle +or close-walk with that perplext canopy which lately covered the seat in +his Majesty's garden at Hampton Court, and how the tonsile hedges, +fifteen or twenty feet high, are to be cut and kept in order "with a +scythe of four feet long, and very little falcated; this is fixed on a +long sneed or straight handle, and _does wonderfully expedite the +trimming of these and the like hedges_." + +Thirdly, Bacon's essay tells us all that an English garden _can_ be, or +_may_ be. Bacon writes not for his age alone but for all time; nay, his +essay covers so much ground that the legion of after-writers have only +to pick up the crumbs that fall from this rich man's table, and to +amplify the two hundred and sixty lines of condensed wisdom that it +contains. Its category of effects reaches even the free-and-easy +planting of the skirts of our dressed grounds, with flowers and shrubs +set in the turf "framed as much as may be to a natural wildness"--a +pretty trick of compromise which the modern book-writers would have us +believe they invented themselves. + +On one point the modern garden has the advantage and is bound to excel +the old, namely in its employment of foreign trees and shrubs. The +decorative use of "trees of curiosity," as the foreign trees were then +called, and the employment of variegated foliage, was not unknown to the +gardener of early days, but it was long before foreign plants were +introduced to any great extent. Loudon has taken the trouble to reckon +up the number of specimens that came to England century by century, and +we gather from this that the imports of modern times exceed those of +earlier times to an enormous extent. Thus, he computes that only 131 new +specimens of foreign trees were introduced into England in the +seventeenth century as against 445 in the following century. + +Yet, to follow up this interesting point, we may observe that Heutzner, +writing of English gardens in 1598, specially notes "the great variety +of trees and plants at Theobalds." + +Furthermore, to judge by Worlidge's "Systema Horticulturæ" (1677) it +would seem that the practice of variegating, and of combining the +variegated foliage of plants and shrubs, was in existence at that time. + +"Dr Uvedale, of Enfield, is a great lover of plants," says Gibson, +writing in 1691, "and is become master of the greatest and choicest +collection of exotic greens that is perhaps anywhere in this land.... +His flowers are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture of them very +methodical and curious; but to speak of the garden in the whole, it does +not lie fine to please the eye, his delight and care lying more in the +ordering particular plants, than in the pleasing view and form of his +garden." + +"_Darby_, at _Hoxton_, has but a little garden, but is master of several +curious greens.... His Fritalaria Crassa (a green) had a flower on it of +the breadth of half-a-crown, like an embroidered star of many +colours.... He raises many striped hollies by inoculation," &c. +("Gleanings in Old Garden Literature," Hazlitt, p. 240.) + +And yet one last observation I would like to make, remembering Bacon's +subtilty, and how his every utterance is the sum of matured analytical +thought. This yearning for wild nature that makes itself felt all +through the Essay, this scheme for a "natural wildness" touching the hem +of artificiality; this provision for mounts of some pretty height "to +look abroad in the fields"; this care for the "Heath or Desart in the +going forth, planted not in any order;" the "little Heaps in the Nature +of Molehills (such as are in wild Heaths) to be set with pleasant herbs, +wild thyme, pinks, periwinkle, and the like Low Flowers being withall +sweet and sightly"--what does it imply? Primarily, it declares the +artist who knows the value of contrast, the interest of blended +contrariness; it is the cultured man's hankering after a many-faced +Nature readily accessible to him in his many moods; it tells, too, of +the drift of the Englishman towards familiar landscape effects, the +garden-mimicry which sets towards pastoral Nature; but above and beyond +all else, it is a true Baconian stroke. Is not the man's innermost self +here revealed, who in his eagerest moments struggled for detachment of +mind, held his will in leash according to his own astute maxim "not to +engage oneself too peremptorily in anything, but ever to have either a +window open to fly out of, or a secret way to retire by"? In a sense, +the garden's technique illustrates its author's personality. To change +Montaigne's reply to the king who admired his essays, Bacon might say, +"I am my garden." + +Many references to old garden-craft might be given culled from the +writings of Sir Thomas More, John Lyly, Gawen Douglas, John Gerarde, Sir +Philip Sidney, and others; all of whom are quoted in Mr Sieveking's +charming volume, "The praise of Gardens." But none will serve our +purpose so well as the notes of Heutzner, the German traveller, who +visited England in the 16th century, and Sir William Temple's +description of the garden of Moor Park. According to Heutzner, the +gardens at Theobalds, Nonsuch, Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Oxford were +laid out with considerable taste and extensively ornamented with +architectural and other devices. The Palace at Nonsuch is encompassed +with parks full of deer, with delicious gardens, groves ornamented with +trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks enclosed with trees. "In +the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of +marble, two fountains that spout water one round the other like a +pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of +their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with +Actaeon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and her +nymphs, with inscriptions." Theobalds, according to Heutzner's account, +has a "great variety of trees and plants," labyrinths, fountains of +white marble, a summerhouse, and statuary. The gardens had their +terraces, trellis-walks, and bowling-greens, the beds being laid out in +geometrical lines, and the hedges formed of yews, hollies, and limes, +clipped and shaped into cones, pyramids, and other devices. Among the +delights of Nonsuch was a wilderness of ten acres of extent. Of Hampton +Court, he says: "We saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the walls as +to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding common in England." + +No book on English gardens can afford to dispense with Temple's +description of the garden of Moor Park, which is given with considerable +relish, as though it satisfied the ideal of the writer. + + "The perfectest figure of a Garden I ever saw, either at Home or + Abroad."--"It lies on the side of a Hill (upon which the House + stands), but not very steep. The length of the House, where the + best Rooms and of most Use or Pleasure are, lies upon the Breadth + of the Garden, the Great Parlour opens into the Middle of a Terras + Gravel-Walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I + remember, about 300 Paces long, and broad in Proportion, the Border + set with Standard Laurels, and at large Distances, which have the + beauty of Orange-Trees, out of Flower and Fruit: From this Walk are + Three Descents by many Stone Steps, in the Middle and at each End, + into a very large Parterre. This is divided into Quarters by + Gravel-Walks, and adorned with Two Fountains and Eight Statues in + the several Quarters; at the End of the Terras-Walk are Two + Summer-Houses, and the Sides of the Parterre are ranged with two + large Cloisters, open to the Garden, upon Arches of Stone, and + ending with two other Summer-Houses even with the Cloisters, which + are paved with Stone, and designed for Walks of Shade, there are + none other in the whole Parterre. Over these two Cloisters are two + Terrasses covered with Lead and fenced with Balusters; and the + Passage into these Airy Walks, is out of the two Summer-Houses, at + the End of the first Terras-Walk. The Cloister facing the _South_ + is covered with Vines, and would have been proper for an + Orange-House, and the other for Myrtles, or other more common + Greens; and had, I doubt not, been cast for that Purpose, if this + Piece of Gardening had been then in as much Vogue as it is now. + + "From the middle of this Parterre is a Descent by many Steps flying + on each Side of a Grotto, that lies between them (covered with + Lead, and flat) into the lower Garden, which is all Fruit-Trees + ranged about the several Quarters of a Wilderness, which is very + Shady; the Walks here are all Green, the Grotto embellished with + Figures of Shell-Rock work, Fountains, and Water-works. If the Hill + had not ended with the lower Garden, and the Wall were not bounded + by a Common Way that goes through the Park, they might have added a + Third Quarter of all Greens; but this Want is supplied by a Garden + on the other Side of the House, which is all of that Sort, very + Wild, Shady, and adorned with rough Rock-work and Fountains." + ("Upon the Garden of Epicurus, or of Gardening.") + +The "Systema Horticulturæ" of John Worlidge (1677) was, says Mr Hazlitt +("Gleanings in old Garden Literature," p. 40), apparently the earliest +manual for the guidance of gardeners. It deals with technical matters, +such as the treatment and virtue of different soils, the form of the +ground, the structure of walls and fences, the erection of arbours, +summer-houses, fountains, grottoes, obelisks, dials, &c. + +"The Scots Gardener," by John Reid (1683) follows this, and is, says Mr +Hazlitt, the parent-production in this class of literature. It is +divided into two portions, of which the first is occupied by technical +instructions for the choice of a site for a garden, the arrangement of +beds and walks, &c. + +Crispin de Passe's "Book of Beasts, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, &c.," +published in London (1630), heralds the changes which set in with the +introduction of the Dutch school of design. + +To speak generally of the subject, it is with the art of Gardening as +with Architecture, Literature, and Music--there is the Mediæval, the +Elizabethan, the Jacobean, the Georgian types. Each and all are +English, but English with a difference--with a declared tendency this +way or that, which justifies classification, and illustrates the march +of things in this changeful modern world. + +The various types include the mediæval garden, the square garden, the +knots and figures of Elizabethan times, with their occasional use of +coloured earths and gravels; the pleach-work and intricate borders of +James I.; the painted Dutch statues as at Ham House; the quaint canals, +the winding gravel-walks, the formal geometrical figures; the quincunx +and _étoile_ of William and Mary; later on, the smooth, bare, and bald +grounds of Kent, the photographic copyism of Nature by Brown, the +garden-farm of Shenstone, and other phases of the "Landscape style" +which served for the green grave of the old-fashioned English garden. + +In the early years of George III. a reaction against tradition set in +with so strong a current, that there remains scarcely any private garden +in the United Kingdom which presents in all its parts a sample of the +original design. + +Levens, near Kendal, of which I give two illustrations, is probably the +least spoiled of any remaining examples; and this was, it would seem, +planned by a Frenchman, but worked out under the restraining influences +of English taste. A picture on the staircase of the house, apparently +Dutch, bears the inscription, "M. Beaumont, gardener to King James II. +and Colonel James Grahme. He laid out the gardens at Hampton Court and +at Levens." The gardener's house at the place is still called "Beaumont +Hall." (See an admirable monograph upon "Col. James Grahme, of Levens," +by Mr Joscelin Bagot, Kendal.) + +One who is perhaps hardly in sympathy with the quaintness of the +gardens, thus writes: "There along a wide extent of terraced walks and +walls, eagles of holly and peacocks of yew still find with each +returning summer their wings clipt and their talons; there a stately +remnant of the old promenoirs such as the Frenchman taught our +fathers,[26] rather I would say to _build_ than plant--along which in +days of old stalked the gentlemen with periwigs and swords, the ladies +in hoops and furbelows--may still to this day be seen." + +[Footnote 26: With regard to this remark, we have to note a certain +amount of French influence throughout the reigns of the Jameses and +Charleses. Here is Beaumont, "gardener to James II.;" and we hear also +of André Mollet, gardener to James I.; also that Charles II. borrowed Le +Nôtre to lay out the gardens of Greenwich and St James' Park.] + +With the pictures of the gardens at Levens before us, with memories of +Arley, of Brympton, of Wilton,[27] of Montacute, Rockingham, Penshurst, +Severn End, Berkeley,[28] and Haddon, we may here pause a moment to +count up and bewail our losses. Wolsey's garden at Hampton Court is now +effaced, for the design of the existing grounds dates from William III. +Nonsuch in Surrey, near Epsom race-course, is a mere memory. In old days +this was a favourite resort of Queen Elizabeth; the garden was designed +by her father, but the greater part carried out by the last of the +Fitzalans. Evelyn, writing of Nonsuch, says: "There stand in the garden +two handsome stone pyramids and the avenue planted with rows of fair +elms, but the rest of these goodly trees, both of this and of Worcester +adjoining, were felled by those destructive and avaricious rebels in the +late war." + +[Footnote 27: The gardens at Wilton are exceedingly beautiful, and +contain noble trees, among which are a group of fine cedars and an ilex +beneath which Sir Philip Sidney is supposed to have reclined when he +wrote his "Arcadia" here. The Italian garden is one of the most +beautiful in England.] + +[Footnote 28: Of Berkeley, Evelyn writes: "For the rest the forecourt is +noble, so are the stables; and, above all, the gardens, which are +incomparable by reason of the inequality of the ground, and a pretty +_piscina_. The holly-hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of."] + +Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, had a noble garden; it was bought in 1564 +by Cecil, and became the favourite haunt of the Stuarts, but the house +was finally destroyed during the Commonwealth. + +My Lord _Fauconbergh's_ garden at _Sutton Court_ is gone too. As +described by Gibson in 1691, it had many charms. "The maze, or +wilderness, there is very pretty, being set all with greens, with a +cypress arbour in the middle," &c. + +Sir _Henry Capell's_ garden at Kew, described by the same writer, "has +as curious greens, and is as well kept as any about London.... His +orange trees and other choice greens stand out in summer in two walks +about fourteen feet wide, enclosed with a timber frame about seven feet +high, and set with silver firs hedge-wise.... His terrace walk, bare in +the middle and grass on either side, with a hedge of rue on one side +next a low wall, and a row of dwarf trees on the other, shews very +fine; and so do from thence his yew hedges with trees of the same at +equal distance, kept in pretty shapes with tonsure. His flowers and +fruits are of the best, for the advantage of which two parallel walls, +about fourteen feet high, were now raised and almost finished," &c. + +Sir _Stephen Fox's_ garden at _Chiswick_, "excels for a fair gravel walk +betwixt two yew hedges, with rounds and spires of the same, all under +smooth tonsure. At the far end of this garden are two myrtle hedges that +cross the garden. The other gardens are full of flowers and salleting, +and the walls well clad." + +Wimbledon House, which was rebuilt by Sir Thomas Cecil in 1588, and +surveyed by order of Parliament in 1649, was celebrated for its trees, +gardens, and shrubs. In the several gardens, which consisted of mazes, +wildernesses, knots, alleys, &c., are mentioned a great variety of fruit +trees and shrubs, particularly a "faire bay tree," valued at £1; and +"one very faire tree called the Irish arbutis, very lovely to look upon +and worth £1, 10s." (Lysons, I., 397.) + +The gardens at Sherborne Castle were laid out by Sir Walter Raleigh. +Coker, in his "Survey of Dorsetshire," written in the time of James I., +says that Sir Walter built in the park adjoining the old Castle, "a most +fine house which hee beautified with orchardes, gardens, and groves of +much varietie and great delight; soe that whether that you consider the +pleasantness of the seate, the goodnesse of the soyle, or the other +delicacies belonging unto it, it rests unparalleled by anie in those +partes" (p. 124). This same park, magnificently embellished with woods +and gardens, was "improved" away by the "landscape-gardener" Brown, who +altered the grounds. + +Cobham, near Gravesend, still famous in horticultural annals as Nonsuch +is for its apples, was the seat of the Brookes. The extent to which +fruit was cultivated in old time is seen by the magnitude of the +orangery at Beddington House, Surrey, which was two hundred feet long; +the trees mostly measured thirteen feet high, and in 1690 some ten +thousand oranges were gathered. + +Ham is described with much gusto by Evelyn: "After dinner I walked to +Ham to see the house and garden of the Duke of Lauderdale, which is +indeed inferior to few of the best villas in Italy itself; the house +furnished like a great Prince's, the parterres, flower-gardens, +orangeries, groves, avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, +aviaries, and all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world, +must needs be admirable." + +Bowyer House, Surrey, is described also by Evelyn as having a very +pretty grove of oaks and hedges of yew in the garden, and a handsome row +of tall elms before the court. This garden has, however, made way for +rows of mean houses. + +At Oxford, where you would have expected more respect for antiquity, the +walks and alleys, along which Laud had conducted Charles and Henrietta, +the bowling-green at Christ Church of Cranmer's time--all are gone. + +The ruthless clearance of these gardens of renown is sad to relate: "For +what sin has the plough passed over your pleasant places?" may be +demanded of numberless cases besides Blakesmoor. Southey, writing upon +this very point, adds that "feeling is a better thing than taste,"--for +"taste" did it at the bidding of critics who had no "feeling," and who +veered round with the first sign of change in the public mind about +gardening. Not content with watching the heroic gardens swept away, he +must goad the Vandals on to their sorry work by flattering them for +their good taste. For what Horace Walpole did to expose the +poverty-stricken design and all the poor bankrupt whimsies of the garden +of his day, we owe him thanks; but not for including in his condemnation +the noble work of older days. In touching upon Lord Burleigh's garden, +and that at Nonsuch, he says: "We find the _magnificent though false +taste_ was known here as early as the reigns of Henry VIII. and his +daughter." This is not bad, coming from the man who built a cockney +Gothic house adorned with piecrust battlements and lath-and-plaster +pinnacles; who spent much of his life in concocting a maze of walks in +five acres of ground, and was so far carried away by mock-rustic +sentiment as to have rakes and hay-forks painted as leaning against the +walls of his paddocks! But then Walpole, in his polished way, sneered +at everybody and everything; he "spelt every man backward," as Macaulay +observes; with himself he lived in eminent self-content. + +So too, after quoting Temple's description of the garden at Moor Park +with the master's little rhapsody--"the sweetest place I think that I +have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or +abroad"--Walpole has this icy sneer: "Any man might design and _build_ +as sweet a garden who had been born in and never stirred out of Holborn. +It was not peculiar in Sir William Temple to think in that manner." + +It is not wise, however, to lay too much stress upon criticisms of this +sort. After all, any phase of Art does but express the mind of its day, +and it cannot do duty for the mind of another time. "The old order +changeth, yielding place to new," and to take a critical attitude +towards the forms of an older day is almost a necessity of the case; +they soon become curiosities. Yet we may fairly regret the want of +tenderness in dealing with these gardens of the Elizabethan and Jacobean +eras, for, by all the laws of human expression, they should be +masterpieces. The ground-chord of the garden-enterprise of those days +was struck by Bacon, who rates buildings and palaces, be they never so +princely, as "but gross handiworks" where no garden is: "Men come to +build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the +Greater Perfection"--the truth of which saying is only too glaringly +apparent in the relative conditions of the arts of architecture and of +gardening in the present day! + +By all the laws of human expression, I say, these old gardens should be +masterpieces. The sixteenth century, which saw the English garden +formulated, was a time for grand enterprises; indeed, to this period is +ascribed the making of England. These gardens, then, are the handiwork +of the makers of England, and should bear the marks of heroes. They are +relics of the men and women who made our land both fine and famous in +the days of the Tudors; they represent the mellow fruit of the leisure, +the poetic reverie, the patient craft of men versed in great +affairs--big men, who thought and did big things--men of splendid genius +and stately notions--past-masters of the art of life who would drink +life to the lees. + +As gardeners, these old statesmen were no dabblers. They had the good +fortune to live in a current of ideas of formal device that touched art +at all points and was well calculated to assist the creative faculty in +design of all kinds. They lived before the art of bad gardening had been +invented; before pretty thoughts had palled the taste, before gardening +had learnt routine; while Nature smiled a virgin smile and had a sense +of unsolved mystery. More than this, garden-craft was then no mere craze +or passing freak of fashion, but a serious item in the round of +home-life; --gardening was a thing to be done as well as it could be +done. Design was fresh and open to individual treatment--men needed an +outlet for their love of, their elation at, the sight of beautiful +things, and behind them lay the background of far-reaching traditions to +encourage, inspire, protect experiment with the friendly shadow of +authority. + +An accomplished French writer has remarked that even the modest work of +Art may contain occasion for long processes of analysis. "Very great +laws," he says, "may be illustrated in a very small compass." And so one +thinks it is with the ancient garden. Looked at as a piece of design, it +is the blossom of English genius at one of its sunniest moments. It is a +bit of the history of our land. It embodies the characteristics of the +mediæval, the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages just as faithfully as do +other phases of contemporary art. It contains the same principle of +beauty, the same sense of form, that animated these; it has the same +curious turns of expression, the same mixture of pedantry and subtle +sweetness; the same wistful daring and humorous sadness; the same +embroidery of nice fancy--half jocund, half grave, as--shall we +say--Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Spenser's "Faërie Queene," +Milton's "Comus," More's "Utopia," Bacon's Essays, Purcell's Madrigals, +John Thorpe's architecture at Longleat. The same spirit, the same wit +and fancy resides in each; they differ only in the medium of expression. + +To condemn old English gardening, root and branch, for its "false taste" +(and it was not peculiar to Walpole to think in that manner), was, in +truth, to indict our nation on a line of device wherein we excelled, +and to condemn device that represents the inspired dreams of some of +England's elect sons. + +To our sorry groundling minds the old pleasaunce may seem too rich and +fantastic, too spectacular, too much idealised. And if to be English one +must needs be _bourgeois_, the objection must stand. Here is developed +garden-craft, and development almost invariably means multiplicity of +forms and a marked departure from primæval simplicity. Grant, if you +will, that Art is carried too far, and Nature not carried far enough in +the old garden, yet did it deserve better treatment. Judged both from +its human and its artistic side, the place is as loveable as it is +pathetic. It has the pathos of all art that survives its creators, the +pathos of all abandoned human idols, of all high human endeavour that is +blown upon. What is more, it holds, as it were, the spent passion of men +of Utopian dreams, the ideal (in one kind) of the spoiled children of +culture, the knight-errantry of the Renascence--whose imagination soared +after illimitable satisfaction, who were avowedly bent upon transforming +the brazen of this world into the golden, to whom desire was but the +first step to attainment, and failure an unknown experience. + +But even yet some may demur that the interest of the antique garden, as +we see it, is due to Nature direct, and not to art-agencies. It is +Nature who gives it its artistic qualities of gradation, contrast, play +of form and colour, the flicker of sunshine through the foliage, the +shadows on the grass--not the master who begot the thing, for has he +not been dead, and his vacant orbits choked with clay these two hundred +years and more! To him, of course, may be ascribed the primal thought of +the place, and, say, some fifty years of active participation in its +ordering and culture, but for the rest--for its poetic excitement, for +its yearly accesses of beauty--are they not to be credited in full to +the lenience of Time and the generous operations of Nature? + +Grant all that should rightly be granted to the disaffected grumbler, +and yet, in Mr Lowell's words for another, yet a parallel case, I plead +that "Poets are always entitled to a royalty on whatever we find in +their works; for these fine creations as truly build themselves up in +the brain as they are built up with deliberate thought." If a garden +owed none of its characteristics to its maker, if it had not expressed +the mind of its designer, why the essential differences of the garden of +this style and of that! Properly speaking, the music of all gardens is +framed out of the same simple gamut of Nature's notes--it is but one +music poured from myriad lips--yet out of the use of the same raw +elements what a variety of tunes can be made, each tune complete in +itself! And it is because we may identify the maker in his work; +because, like the unfinished air, abruptly brought to a close at the +master's death, the place is much as it was first schemed, one is +jealous for the honour of the man whose eye prophesied its ultimate +magic even as he initiated its plan, and drafted its lines. + +Many an English house has been hopelessly vulgarised and beggared by +the banishment of the old pleasaunces of the days of Elizabeth, or of +the Jameses and Charleses, and their wholesale demolition there and then +struck a blow at English gardening from which it has not yet recovered. +It may be admitted that, in the case of an individual garden here and +there, the violation of these relics may be condoned on the heathen +principle of tit for tat, because Art had, in the first instance, so to +speak, turned her back on some fair landscape that Providence had +provided upon the site, preferring to focus man's eye _within_ rather +than _without_ the garden's bounds, therefore the vengeance is merited. +Yet, where change was desirable, it had been better to modify than to +destroy. + + "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, + And burned is Apollo's laurel bough." + +Certain it is that along with the girdle of high hedge or wall has gone +that air of inviting mystery and homely reserve that our forefathers +loved, and which is to me one of the pleasantest traits of an old +English garden, best described as + + "A haunt of ancient peace." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN." + + "'Pealing from Jove to Nature's bar + Bold Alteration pleades + Large evidence; but Nature soon + Her righteous doom areads."--SPENSER. + + +Why were the old-fashioned gardens destroyed? Firstly, because the +traditional garden of the early part of the eighteenth century, when the +reaction set in, represented a style which had run to seed, and men were +tired of it; secondly, because the taste for foreign trees and shrubs, +that had existed for a long time previously, then came to a head, and it +was found that the old type of garden was not fitted for the display of +the augmented stock of foreign material. Here was a new element in +garden-craft, a new chance of decoration in the way of local colours in +planting, which required a new adjustment of garden-effects; and as +there was some difficulty in accommodating the new and the old, the +problem was met by the abolition of the old altogether. + +As to this matter of the sudden increase of specimen plants, Loudon +remarks that in the earlier century the taste for foreign plants was +confined to a few, and they not wealthy persons; but in the eighteenth +century the taste for planting foreign trees extended itself among rich +landed proprietors. A host of amateurs, botanists, and commercial +gardeners were busily engaged in enriching the British Arboretum, and +the garden-grounds had to be arranged for new effects and a new mode of +culture. In Loudon's "Arboretum" (p. 126) is a list of the species of +foreign trees and shrubs introduced into England up to the year 1830. He +calculates that the total number of specimens up to the time that he +wrote was about 1400, but the numbers taken by centuries are: in the +sixteenth century, 89; in the seventeenth century, 131; in the +eighteenth century, 445; and in the first three decades of the +nineteenth century, 699! + +Men stubbed up the old gardens because they had grown tired of their +familiar types, as they tire of other familiar things. The eighteenth +century was essentially a critical age, an age of enquiry, and +gardening, along with art, morals, and religion, came in for its share +of coffee-house discussion, and elaborate essay-writing, and nothing was +considered satisfactory. As to gardening, it was not natural enough for +the critics. The works of Salvator and Poussin had pictured the grand +and terrible in scenery, Thomson was writing naturalistic poetry, +Rousseau naturalistic prose. Garden-ornament was too classical and +formal for the varnished _littérateur_ of the _Spectator_ and the +_Guardian_--too symmetrical for the jingling rhymester of a sing-song +generation--too artificial for the essayist "'Pealing from Jove to +Nature's bar," albeit he is privately content to go on touching up his +groves and grottoes at Twickenham, securing the services of a peer + + "To form his quincunx, and to rank his vines." + +Gardens are looked upon as so much "copy" to the essayist. What affected +tastes have these critics! What a confession of counterfeit love, of +selfish literary interest in gardens is this of Addison's: "I think +there are as many kinds of gardening as of poetry. Your makers of +parterres and flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this +art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are +romance writers." How beside nature, beside garden-craft, are such +pen-man's whimsies! "Nothing to the true pleasure of a garden," Bacon +would say. + +Walpole's essay on gardening is entertaining reading, and his book gives +us glimpses of the country-seats of all the great ladies and gentlemen +who had the good fortune to be his acquaintances. His condemnation of +the geometrical style of gardening common in his day, though quieter in +tone than Pope's, was none the less effective in promoting a change of +style. He tells how in Kip's views of the seats of our nobility we have +the same "tiring and returning uniformity." Every house is approached by +two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a gravel-walk and two grass +plats or borders of flowers. "Each rises above the other by two or +three steps, and as many walks and terrasses; and so many iron gates, +that we recollect those ancient romances in which every entrance was +guarded by nymphs or dragons. At Lady Orford's, at Piddletown, in +Dorsetshire, there was, when my brother married, a double enclosure of +thirteen gardens, each, I suppose, not a hundred yards square, with an +enfilade of correspondent gates; and before you arrived at these, you +passed a narrow gut between two terrasses that rose above your head, and +which were crowned by a line of pyramidal yews. A bowling-green was all +the lawn admitted in those times, a circular lake the extent of +magnificence." + +Such an air of truth and soberness pervades Walpole's narrative, and to +so absurd an extent has formality been manifestly carried under the +auspices of Loudon and Wise, who had stocked our gardens with "giants, +animals, monsters, coats of arms, mottoes in yew, box, and holly," that +we are almost persuaded to be Vandals. "The compass and square, were of +more use in plantations than the nursery-man. The measured walk, the +quincunx, and the étoile imposed their unsatisfying sameness.... Trees +were headed, and their sides pared away; many French groves seem green +chests set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and summer-houses, +terminated every vista." It is all very well for Temple to recommend the +regular form of garden. "I should hardly advise any of these attempts" +cited by Walpole, "in the form of gardens among us; _they are adventures +of too hard achievement for any common hands_." The truth will out! The +"dainter sense" of garden-craft has vanished! According to Walpole, +garden-adventure is to be henceforth journeyman's work, and Brown, the +immortal kitchen-gardener, leads the way. + +It were unfair to suspect that the exigencies of sprightly writing had +carried Walpole beyond the bounds of accuracy in his description of the +stiff-garden as he knew it, for things were in some respects very bad +indeed. At the same time he is so engrossed with his abuse of old ways +of gardening, and advocacy of the landscape-gardener's new-fangled +notions, that his account of garden-craft generally falls short of +completeness. He omits, for instance, to notice the progress in +floriculture and horticulture of this time, the acquisitions being made +in the ornamental foreign plants to be cultivated in the open ground, +the green-house, and the stove. He omits to note that Loudon and Wise +stocked our gardens with more than giants, animals, monsters, &c., in +yew and box and holly. Because the names of these two worthies occur in +this gardening text-book of Walpole's, all later essayists signal them +out for blame. But Evelyn, who ranks as one of the three of England's +great gardeners of old days, has a kindlier word for them. He is +dilating upon the advantage to the gardener of the high clipped hedge as +a protection for his shrubs and flowers, and goes on to particularise an +oblong square, palisadoed with a hornbeam hedge "in that inexhaustible +magazine at Brompton Park, cultivated by those two industrious +fellow-gardeners, Mr Loudon and Mr Wise." This hedge protects the orange +trees, myrtles, and other rare perennials and exotics from the scorching +rays of the sun; and it equally well shelters the flowers. "Here the +Indian Narcissus, Tuberoses, Japan Lillies, Jasmines, Jonquills, +Periclimena, Roses, Carnations, with all the pride of the parterre, +intermixt between the tree-cases, flowery vases, busts, and statues, +entertain the eye, and breathe their redolent odours and perfumes to the +smell." Clearly there is an advantage in being a gardener if we write +about gardens (provided you are not a mere "landscape-gardener!"). + +One cannot deny that Horace Walpole did well to expose the absurd +vagaries which were being perpetrated about his time under Dutch +influences. Close alliance with Holland through the House of Orange had +affected every department of horticulture. True, it had enriched our +gardens and conservatories with many rare and beautiful species of +flowers and bulbs, and had imbued the English collector with the +tulip-mania. So far good. But to the same source we trace the reign of +the shears in the English garden, which made Art in a Garden ridiculous, +and gave occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. + +"The gardeners about London," says Mr Lambert, writing to the Linnæan +Transactions in 1712, "were remarkable for fine cut greens, and clipt +yews in the shapes of birds, dogs, men, ships, &c. Mr. Parkinson in +Lambeth was much noticed for these things, and he had besides a few +myrtles, oleanders, and evergreens." + + "The old order changeth ... + Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." + +And now is Art in a Garden become ridiculous. Since the beginning of +things English gardeners had clipped and trimmed their shrubs; but had +never carried the practice beyond a reasonable extent, and had combined +it with woody and shady effects. With the onset of Dutch influence +country-aspects vanish. Nature is reduced to a prosaic level. The +traditional garden, whose past had been one long series of noble chances +in fine company, now found content as the pedant's darling where it +could have no opening for living romance, but must be tricked out in +stage conventions, and dwindle more and more into a thing of shreds and +patches! + +Having arrived at such a pass, it was time that change should come, and +change did come, with a vengeance! But let us not suppose that the +change was from wrong to right. For, indeed, the revolution meant only +that formality gone mad should be supplanted by informality gone equally +mad. And we may note as a significant fact, that the point of departure +is the destruction of the garden's boundaries, and the substitution of +the ha-ha. It was not for the wild improvers to realise how Art that +destroys its own boundaries is certainly doomed to soon have no country +to boast of at all! It proved so in this case. From this moment, the +very thought of garden-ornament was clean put out of mind, and the +grass is carried up to the windows of the great house, as though the +place were nothing better than a farm-shanty in the wilds of +Westmoreland! + +But to return to the inauguration of the "landscape-garden." The hour +produced its men in Kent, and "the immortal Brown," as Repton calls him. +Like many another "discovery," theirs was really due to an accident. +Just as it was the closely-corked bottle that popped that gave birth to +champagne, so it was only when our heroes casually leaped the ha-ha that +they had made that they realised that all England outside was one vast +rustic garden, from whence it were a shame to exclude anything! + +So began the rage for making all the surroundings of a house assume a +supposed appearance of rude Nature. Levelling, ploughing, stubbing-up, +was the order of the day. The British navvy was in great request--in +fact the day that Kent and Brown discovered England was this worthy's +natal day. Artificial gardens must be demolished as impostures, and +wriggling walks and turf put where they had stood. Avenues must be cut +down or disregarded; the groves, the alleys, the formal beds, the +terraces, the balustrades, the clipt hedges must be swept away as things +intolerable. For the "landscape style" does not countenance a straight +line, or terrace or architectural form, or symmetrical beds about the +house; for to allow these would not be to photograph Nature. As carried +into practice, the style demands that the house shall rise abruptly +from the grass, and the general surface of the ground shall be +characterised by smoothness and bareness (like Nature)! Hence in the +grounds of this period, house and country + + "Wrapt all o'er in everlasting green + Make one dull, vapid, smooth and tranquil scene." + +There is to my mind no more significant testimony to the attractiveness +and loveableness of the _regular_ garden as opposed to the opened-out +barbarism of the landscape-gardener's invention, than Horace Walpole's +lament over the old gardens at Houghton,[29] which has the force of +testimony wrung from unwilling lips:-- + + "When I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They told me it + was now called the '_pleasure-ground_.' What a dissonant idea of + pleasure! Those groves, those _alleys_, where I have passed so many + charming moments, are now stripped up, or overgrown; many fond + paths I could not unravel, though with a very exact clue in my + memory. I met two gamekeepers and a thousand hares! In the days + when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity, I hated + Houghton and its solitude; _yet I loved this garden_; as now, with + many regrets, I love Houghton;--Houghton, I know not what to call + it: a monument of grandeur or ruin!"--(Walpole's Letters.) + +[Footnote 29: Houghton was built by Sir R. Walpole, between 1722 and +1738. The garden was laid out in the stiff, formal manner by Eyre, "an +imitator of Bridgman," and contained 23 acres. The park contains some +fine old beeches. More than 1000 cedars were blown down here in February +1860.] + +"What a dissonant idea of pleasure," this so-called "pleasure-ground of +the landscape-gardener!" "Those groves, those alleys where I have passed +so many charming moments, stripped up! How I loved this garden!" Here is +the biter bit, and it were to be more than human not to smile! + +With all the proper appliances at hand it did not take long to +transform the stiff garden into the barbaric. It did not take long to +find out how _not_ to do what civilization had so long been learning how +to do! The ancient "Geometric or Regular style" of garden--the garden of +the aristocrat, with all its polished classicism--was to make way for +the so-called "Naturalesque or Landscape style," and the garden of the +_bourgeois_. Hope rose high in the breasts of the new professoriate. "A +boon! a boon!" quoth the critic. And there is deep joy in navvydom. +"Under the great leader, Brown," writes Repton ("Landscape Gardening," +p. 327), "or rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught +that Nature was to be our only model." It was a grand moment. A Daniel +had come to judgment! Nay, did not Brown "live to establish a fashion in +gardening which might have been expected to endure as long as Nature +should exist!" + +The Landscape School of Gardeners, so-called, has been the theme of a +great deal of literature, but with the exception of Walpole's and +Addison's essays, and Pope's admirable chaff, very little has survived +the interest it had at the moment of publication. + +The other chief writers of this School, in its early phase, are George +Mason, Whately,[30] Mason the poet, and Shenstone, our moon-struck +friend quoted above, with his "assignation seats with proper mottoes, +urns to faithful lovers," &c. Dr Johnson did not think much of +Shenstone's contributions to gardening: + + "He began from this time to point his prospects, to diversify his + surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters, which he + did with such judgement and such fancy as made his little domain + the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful--a place to + be visited by travellers and _copied by designers_. Whether to + plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every + turn where there is an object to catch the view, to make water run + where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to + leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the + plantation where there is something to be hidden--demand any great + powers of the mind, I will not enquire; perhaps a surly and sullen + spectator may think such performances rather the sport than the + business of human reason."--(Dr Johnson, "Lives of the Poets," + Shenstone.) + +[Footnote 30: Thomas Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening," was +published in 1770, fifteen years before Walpole's "Essay on Modern +Gardening." Gilpin's book "On Picturesque Beauty," though published in +part in 1782, belongs really to the second phase of the Landscape +School. Shenstone's "Unconnected Thoughts on the Garden" was published +in 1764, and is written pretty much from the standpoint of Kent. "An +Essay on Design in Gardening," by G. Mason, was published in 1795.] + +Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening," published in 1770, are +well written and distinctly valuable as bearing upon the historical side +of the subject. It says little for his idea of the value of Art in a +garden, or of the function of a garden as a refining influence in life, +to find Whately recommending "a plain field or a sheep-walk" as part of +a garden's embellishments--"as an agreeable relief, and even wilder +scenes." + +But what astounds one more is, that a writer of Whately's calibre can +describe Kent's gardens at Stowe, considered to be his masterpiece, as a +sample of the non-formality of the landscape-gardener's Art, while he +takes elaborate pains to show that it is full of would-be artistic +subterfuges in Nature, full of architectural shams throughout. These +gardens were begun by Bridgman, "Begun," Whately says, "when regularity +was in fashion; and the original boundary is still preserved on account +of its magnificence, for round the whole circuit, of between three and +four miles, is carried a very broad gravel-walk, planted with rows of +trees, and open either to the park or the country; a deep sunk-fence +attends it all the way, and comprehends a space of near 400 acres. But +in the interior spaces of the garden few traces of regularity appear; +where it yet remains in the plantations it is generally disguised; every +symptom almost of formality is obliterated from the ground; and an +octagon basin at the bottom is now converted into an irregular piece of +water, which receives on one hand two beautiful streams, and falls on +the other down a cascade into a lake." + +And then follows a list of sham architectural features that are combined +with sham views and prospects to match. "The whole space is divided into +a number of scenes, each distinguished with taste and fancy; and the +changes are so frequent, so sudden and complete, the transitions so +artfully conducted, that the ideas are never continued or repeated to +satiety." In the front of the house two elegant Doric pavilions. On the +brow of some rising grounds a Corinthian arch. On a little knoll an open +Ionic rotunda--an Egyptian pyramid stands on its brow; the Queen's +Pillar in a recess on the descent, the King's Pillar elsewhere; all the +three buildings mentioned are "peculiarly adapted to a garden scene." +In front of a wood three pavilions joined by arcades, all of the Ionic +order, "characteristically proper for a garden, and so purely +ornamental." Then a Temple of Bacchus, the Elysian fields, British +remains; misshaped elms and ragged firs are frequent in a scene of +solitude and gloom, which the trunks of dead trees assist. Then a large +Gothic building, with slated roofs, "in a noble confusion"; then the +Elysian fields, seen from the other side, a Palladian bridge, Doric +porticoes, &c, the whole thing finished off with the Temple of Concord +and Victory, probably meant as a not-undeserved compliment to the +successfully chaotic skill of the landscape-gardener, who is nothing if +not irregular, natural, non-formal, non-fantastical, non-artificial, and +non-geometrical. + +Two other points about Whately puzzle me. How comes he to strain at the +gnat of formality in the old-fashioned garden, yet readily swallow the +camel at Stowe? How can he harmonise his appreciation of the elaborately +contrived and painfully assorted shams at Stowe, with his +recommendation, of a sheep-walk in your garden "as an agreeable relief, +and even wilder scenes"? + +Whether the beauty of the general disposition of the ground at Stowe is +to be attributed to Kent or to Bridgman, who began the work, as Whately +says, "when regularity was in fashion," I cannot say. It is right to +observe, however, that the prevailing characteristic of Kent's and +Brown's landscapes was their smooth and bald surface. "Why this art has +been called 'landscape-gardening,'" says the plain-spoken Repton, +"perhaps he who gave it the title may explain. I can see no reason, +unless it be the efficacy which it has shown in destroying landscapes, +in which, indeed, it seems infallible." (Repton, p. 355.) "Our +virtuosi," said Sir William Chambers, "have scarcely left an acre of +shade, or three trees growing in a line from the Land's End to the +Tweed." + +It did not take the wiser spirits long to realise that Nature left alone +was more natural. And this same Repton, who began by praising "the great +leader Brown," has to confess again and again that, so far as results +go, he is mistaken. The ground, he laments, must be everlastingly moved +and altered. "One of the greatest difficulties I have experienced in +practice proceeds from that fondness for levelling so prevalent in all +Brown's workmen; every hillock is by them lowered, and every hollow +filled, to produce a level surface." (Repton, p. 342.) Or again (p. +347): "There is something so fascinating in the appearance of water, +that Mr Brown thought it carried its own excuse, however unnatural the +situation; and therefore, in many places, under his direction, I have +found water, on the tops of the hills, which I have been obliged to +remove into lower ground _because the deception was not sufficiently +complete to satisfy the mind as well as the eye_." Indeed, in this +matter of levelling, Brown's system does not, on the face of it, differ +from Le Nôtre's, where the natural contour of the landscape was not of +much account; or rather, it was thought the better if it had no natural +contour at all, but presented a flat plain or plateau with no +excrescences to interfere with the designer's schemes. + +So much, then, for the pastoral simplicity of Nature edited by the +"landscape-gardener." And let us note that under the auspices of the new +_régime_, not only is Nature to be changed, but changed more than was +ever dreamt of before; the transformation shall at once be more +determined in its character and more deceptive than had previously been +attempted. We were to have an artistically natural world, not a +naturally artistic one; the face of the landscape was to be purged of +its modern look and made to look primæval. And in this doing, or +undoing, of things, the only art that was to be admitted was the art of +consummate deceit, which shall "satisfy the mind as well as the eye." +Yet call the man pope or presbyter, and beneath his clothes he is the +same man! There is not a pin to choose as regards artificiality in the +_aims_ of the two schools, only in the _results_. The naked or +_undressed_ garden has studied irregularity, while the _dressed_ garden +has studied regularity and style. The first has, perhaps, an excessive +regard for expression, the other has an emphatic scorn for expression. +One garden has its plotted levels, its avenues, its vistas, its sweeping +lawns, its terraces, its balustrades, colonnades, geometrical beds, +gilded temples, and sometimes its fountains that won't play, and its +fine vases full of nothing! The other begins with fetching back the +chaos of a former world, and has for its category of effects, sham +primævalisms, exaggerated wildness, tortured levellings, cascades, +rocks, dead trunks of trees, ruined castles, lakes on the top of hills, +and sheep-runs hard by your windows. One school cannot keep the snip of +the scissors off tree and shrub, the other mimics Nature's fortuitous +wildness in proof of his disdain for the white lies of Art. + +And all goes to show, does it not? that inasmuch as the art of gardening +implies craft, and as man's imitation of Nature is bound to be unlike +Nature, it were wise to be frankly inventive in gardening on Art lines. +Success may attend one's efforts in the direction of Art, but in the +direction of Nature, never. + +The smooth, bare, and almost bald appearance which characterises Brown +and Kent's school fails to satisfy for long, and there springs up +another school which deals largely in picturesque elements, and rough +intricate effects. The principles of the "Picturesque School," as it was +called, are to be found in the writings of the Rev. William Gilpin and +Sir Uvedale Price. Their books are full of careful observations upon the +general composition of landscape-scenery, and what was then called +"Landscape Architecture," as though every English building of older days +that was worth a glance had not been "Landscape Architecture" fit for +its site! Gilpin's writings contain an admirable discourse upon "Forest +Scenery," well illustrated. This work is in eight volumes, in part +published in 1782, and it consists mainly in an account of the author's +tours in every part of Great Britain, with a running commentary on the +beauties of the scenery, and a description of the important country +seats he passed on the way. Price helped by his writings to stay the +rage for destroying avenues and terraces, and we note that he is fully +alive to the necessity of uniting a country-house with the surrounding +scenery by architectural adjuncts. + +The taste for picturesque gardening was doubtless helped by the growing +taste for landscape painting, exhibited in the works of the school of +Wilson and Gainsborough, and in the pastoral writings of Thomson, +Crabbe, Cowper, and Gray. It would farther be accelerated, as we +suggested at the outset of this chapter, by the large importation of +foreign plants and shrubs now going on. + +What is known as the Picturesque School soon had for its main exponent +Repton. He was a genius in his way--a born gardener,[31] able and +thoughtful in his treatments, and distinguished among his fellows by a +broad and comprehensive grasp of the whole character and surroundings of +a site, in reference to the general section of the land, the style of +the house to which his garden was allied, and the objects for which it +was to be used. The sterling quality of his writings did much to clear +the air of the vapourings of the critics who had gone before him, and +his practice, founded as it was upon sound principles, redeemed the +absurdities of the earlier phase of his school and preserved others from +further development of the silly rusticities upon which their mind +seemed bent. Although some of his ideas may now be thought pedantic and +antiquated, the books which contain them will not die. Passages like the +following mark the man and his aims: "I do not profess to follow Le +Nôtre or Brown, but, selecting beauties from the style of each, to adopt +so much of the grandeur of the former as may accord with a palace, and +so much of the grace of the latter as may call forth the charms of +natural landscape. Each has its proper situation; and good taste will +make fashion subservient to good sense" (p. 234). "In the rage for +picturesque beauty, let us remember that the landscape holds an inferior +rank to the historical picture; one represents nature, the other relates +to man in a state of society" (p. 236). + +[Footnote 31: Loudon calls this School "Repton's," the "_Gardenesque_" +School, its characteristic feature being "the display of the beauty of +trees and other plants _individually_."] + +Repton sums up the whole of his teaching in the preface to his "Theory +and Practice of Landscape Gardening" under the form of objections to +prevailing errors, and they are so admirable that I cannot serve the +purposes of my book better than to insert them here. + +Objection No. 1. "There is no error more prevalent in modern gardening, +or more frequently carried to excess, than taking away hedges to unite +many small fields into one extensive and naked lawn before plantations +are made to give it the appearance of a park; and where ground is +subdivided by sunk fences, imaginary freedom is dearly purchased at the +expense of actual confinement." + +No. 2. "The baldness and nakedness round the house is part of the same +mistaken system, of concealing fences to gain extent. A palace, or even +an elegant villa, in a grass field, appears to me incongruous; _yet I +have seldom had sufficient influence to correct this common error_." + +No. 3. "An approach which does not evidently lead to the house, or which +does not take the shortest course, cannot be right. (This rule must be +taken with certain limitations.) The shortest road across a lawn to a +house will seldom be found graceful, and often vulgar. A road bordered +by trees in the form of an avenue may be straight without being vulgar; +and grandeur, not grace or elegance, is the expression expected to be +produced." + +No. 4. "A poor man's cottage, divided into what is called a _pair of +lodges_, is a mistaken expedient to mark importance in the entrance to a +park." + +No. 5. "The entrance-gate should not be visible from the mansion, unless +it opens into a courtyard." + +No. 6. "The plantation surrounding a place called a _Belt_ I have never +advised; nor have I ever willingly marked a drive, or walk, completely +round the verge of a park, except in small villas, where a dry path +round a person's own field is always more interesting than any other +walk." + +No 7. "Small plantations of trees, surrounded by a fence, are the best +expedients to form groups, because trees planted singly seldom grow +well; neglect of thinning and removing the fence has produced that ugly +deformity called a _Clump_." + +No. 8. "Water on a eminence, or on the side of a hill, is among the most +common errors of Mr Brown's followers; in numerous instances I have been +allowed to remove such pieces of water from the hills to the valleys, +but in many my advice has not prevailed." + +No. 9. "Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of Nature. +Thus artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery can only be great by +deception, and the mind acquiesces in the fraud after it is detected, +but in works of Art every trick ought to be avoided. Sham churches, sham +ruins, sham bridges, and everything which appears what it is not, +disgusts when the trick is discovered." + +No. 10. "In buildings of every kind the _character_ should be strictly +observed. No incongruous mixture can be justified. To add Grecian to +Gothic, or Gothic to Grecian, is equally absurd; and a sharp pointed +arch to a garden gate or a dairy window, however frequently it occurs, +is not less offensive than Grecian architecture, in which the standard +rules of relative proportion are neglected or violated." + +The perfection of landscape-gardening consists in the fullest attention +to these principles, _Utility_, _Proportion_, and _Unity_, or harmony of +parts to the whole. (Repton, "Landscape Gardening," pp. 128-9.) + +The best advice one can give to a young gardener is--_know your Repton_. + +The writings of the new school of gardening, of which Repton is a +notable personage in its later phase, are not, however, on a par with +the writings of the old traditional school, either as pleasant garden +literature, or in regard to broad human interest or artistic quality. +They are hard and critical, and never lose the savour of the heated air +of controversy in which they were penned. Indeed, I can think of no more +sure and certain cure for a bad attack of garden-mania--nothing that +will sooner wipe the bloom off your enjoyment of natural beauty--than a +course of reading from the Classics of Landscape-garden literature! "I +only sound the clarion," said the urbane master-gardener of an earlier +day, "but I enter not into the battle." But these are at one another's +throats! Who enters here must leave his dreams of fine gardening behind, +for he will find himself in a chilly, disenchanted world, with nothing +more romantic to feed his imagination upon than "Remarks on the genius +of the late Mr. Brown," Critical enquiries, Observations on taste, +Difference between landscape gardening and painting, Price upon Repton, +Repton upon Price, Repton upon Knight, further answers to Messrs Price +and Knight, &c. But all this is desperately dull reading, hurtful to +one's imagination, fatal to garden-fervour.[32] And naturally so, for +analysis of the processes of garden-craft carried too far begets loss of +faith in all. Analysis is a kill-joy, destructive of dreams of beauty. +"We murder to dissect." That was a true word of the cynic of that day, +who summed up current controversy upon gardening in the opinion that +"the works of Nature were well executed, but in a bad taste." The +quidnuncs' books about gardening are about as much calculated to give +one delight, as the music the child gets out of the strings of an +instrument that it broke for the pride of dissection. Even Addison, with +the daintiest sense and prettiest pen of them all, shows how thoroughly +gardening had lost + + ... "its happy, country tone, + Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note + Of men contention-tost,"-- + +as he thrums out his laboured coffee-house conceit. "I think there are +as many kinds of gardening as poetry; your makers of parterres and +flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art; contrivers +of bowers and grottoes, treillages, and cascades, are Romance writers. +Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets." Nor is his elaborate argument +meant to prove the gross inferiority of Art in a garden to unadorned +Nature more inspiring. Nay, what is one to make of even the logic of +such argument as this? "If the products of Nature rise in value +according as they more or less resemble those of Art, we may be sure +that artificial works receive a greater advantage from their resemblance +of such as are natural." (_Spectator._) But who _does_ apply the +Art-standard to Nature, or value her products as they resemble those of +Art? And has not Sir Walter well said: "Nothing is more the child of Art +than a garden"? And Loudon: "All art, to be acknowledged, as art must be +avowed." + +[Footnote 32: A candid friend thus writes to Repton: "You may have +perceived that I am rather _too much_ inclined to the Price and Knight +_party_, and yet I own to you that I have been often so much disgusted +by the affected and technical language of connoisseurship, that I have +been sick of pictures for a month, and almost of Nature, when the same +jargon was applied to her." (Repton, p. 232.)] + +One prefers to this cold Pindaric garden-homage the unaffected, direct +delight in the sweets of a garden of an earlier day; to realise with old +Mountaine how your garden shall produce "a jucunditie of minde;" to +think with Bishop Hall, as he gazes at his tulips, "These Flowers are +the true Clients of the Sunne;" to be brought to old Lawson's state of +simple ravishment, "What more delightsome than an infinite varietie of +sweet-smelling flowers? decking with sundry colours the green mantle of +the Earth, colouring not onely the earth, but decking the ayre, and +sweetning every breath and spirit;" to taste the joys of living as, +taking Robert Burton's hand, you "walk amongst orchards, gardens, +bowers, mounts and arbours, artificial wildernesses, green thickets, +groves, lawns, rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, +between wood and water, in a fair meadow, by a river side, to disport in +some pleasant plain or park, must needs be a delectable recreation;" to +be inoculated with old Gerarde of the garden-mania as he bursts forth, +"Go forward in the name of God: graffe, set, plant, nourishe up trees in +every corner of your grounde;" to trace with Temple the lines and +features that go to make the witchery of the garden at Moor Park, "in +all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the Figure and +Disposition, that I have ever seen," and which you may follow if you are +not "above the Regards of Common Expence;" to hearken to Bacon expatiate +upon the Art which is indeed "the purest of all humane pleasure, the +greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man;" to feel in what he says the +value of an ideal, the magic of a style backed by passion--to have +garden precepts wrapped in pretty metaphors (such as that "because the +Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air--_where it comes and goes +like the warbling of Musick_--than in the Hand, therefore nothing is +more fit for that Delight than to know what be the Flowers and Plants +that do best perfume the Air;")--to be taught how to order a garden to +suit all the months of the year, and have things of beauty enumerated +according to their seasons--to feel rapture at the sweet-breathing +presence of Art in a garden--to learn from one who knows how to garden +in a grand manner, and yet be finally assured that beauty does not +require a great stage, that the things thrown in "for state and +magnificence" are but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden--this is +garden-literature worth reading! + +Compared with the frank raptures of such writings as these, the +laboured treatises of the landscape-school are but petty hagglings over +the mint and cummin of things. You go to the writings of the masters of +the old formality, to come away invigorated as by a whiff of mountain +air straight off Helicon; they shall give one fresh enthusiasm for +Nature, fresh devotion to Art, fresh love for beautiful things. But from +the other-- + + "The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I"-- + +they deal with technicalities in the affected language of +connoisseurship; they reveal a disenchanted world, a world of exploded +hopes given over to the navvies and the critics; and it is no wonder +that writings so prompted should have no charm for posterity; charm they +never had. They are dry as summer dust. + +For the honour of English gardening, and before closing this chapter, I +would like to recall that betweenity--the garden of the transition--done +at the very beginning of the century of revolution, which unites +something of the spirit of the old and of the new schools. Here is Sir +Walter Scott's report of the Kelso garden as he _first_ knew it, and +_after_ it had been mauled by the landscape-gardener. It was a garden of +seven or eight acres adjacent to the house of an ancient maiden lady: + + "It was full of long straight walks between hedges of yew and + hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were + thickets of flowering shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which + access was obtained through a little maze of contorted walks, + calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a + splendid Platanus or Oriental plane, a huge hill of leaves, one of + the noblest specimens of that regularly beautiful tree which we + remember to have seen. In different parts of the garden were fine + ornamental trees which had attained great size, and the orchard was + filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats + and trellis-walks, and a banqueting-house. Even in our time this + little scene, intended to present a formal exhibition of vegetable + beauty, was going fast to decay. The parterres of flowers were no + longer watched by the quiet and simple _friends_ under whose + auspices they had been planted, and much of the ornament of the + domain had been neglected or destroyed to increase its productive + value. We visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its + air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded was gone; + the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning + of this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, + and the whole character of the place so much destroyed that I was + glad when I could leave it."--("Essay on Landscape Gardening," + _Quarterly Review_, 1828.[33]) + +[Footnote 33: "The Praise of Gardens," pp. 185-6.] + +Another garden, of later date than this at Kelso, and somewhat less +artistic, is that described by Mr Henry A. Bright in "The English Flower +Garden."[34] + + "One of the most beautiful gardens I ever knew depended almost + entirely on the arrangement of its lawns and shrubberies. It had + certainly been most carefully and adroitly planned, and it had + every advantage in the soft climate of the West of England. The + various lawns were divided by thick shrubberies, so that you + wandered on from one to the other, and always came on something + new. In front of these shrubberies was a large margin of + flower-border, gay with the most effective plants and annuals. At + the corner of the lawn a standard _Magnolia grandiflora_ of great + size held up its chaliced blossoms; at another a tulip-tree was + laden with hundreds of yellow flowers. Here a magnificent + _Salisburia_ mocked the foliage of the maiden-hair; and here an old + cedar swept the grass with its large pendent branches. But the main + breadth of each lawn was never destroyed, and past them you might + see the reaches of a river, now in one aspect, now in another. Each + view was different, and each was a fresh enjoyment and surprise. + + "A few years ago and I revisited the place; the 'improver' had been + at work, and had been good enough to _open up_ the view. + Shrubberies had disappeared, and lawns had been thrown together. + The pretty peeps among the trees were gone, the long vistas had + become open spaces, and you saw at a glance all that there was to + be seen. Of course the herbaceous borders, which once contained + numberless rare and interesting plants, had disappeared, and the + lawn in front of the house was cut up into little beds of red + pelargoniums, yellow calceolarias, and the rest." + +[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, p. 296.] + +In this example we miss the condensed beauty and sweet austerities of +the older garden at Kelso: nevertheless, it represents a phase of +workmanship which, for its real insight into the secrets of +garden-beauty, we may well be proud of, and deplore its destruction at +the hands of the landscape-gardener. + +All arts are necessarily subject to progression of type. "Man cannot +escape from his time," says Mr Morley, and with changed times come +changed influences. But, then, to _progress_ is not to _change_: "to +progress is to live," and one phase of healthy progression will tread +the heels of that which precedes it. The restless changeful methods of +modern gardening are, however, not to be ascribed to the healthy +development of one consistent movement, but to chaos--to the revolution +that ensued upon the overthrow of tradition--to the indeterminateness of +men who have no guiding principles, who take so many wild leaps in the +dark, in the course of which, rival champions jostle one another and +only the fittest survives. + +In treating of Modern English Gardening, it is difficult to make our way +along the tortuous path of change, development it is not, that set in +with the banishment of Art in a garden. Critical writers have done their +best to unravel things, to find the relation of each fractured phase, +and to give each phase a descriptive name, but there are still many +unexplained points, many contradictions that are unsolved, to which I +have already alluded. + +Loudon's Introduction to Repton's "Landscape Gardening" gives perhaps +the most intelligible account of the whole matter. The art of laying out +grounds has been displayed in two very distinct styles: the first of +which is called the "Ancient Roman, Geometric, Regular, or Architectural +Style; and the second the Modern, _English_,[35] Irregular, Natural, or +Landscape Style." + +[Footnote 35: This is a little unpatriotic of Loudon to imply that the +_English_ had no garden-style till the 18th century, but one can stand a +great deal from Loudon.] + +We have, he says, the Italian, the French, and the Dutch Schools of the +Geometric Style. The Modern, or Landscape Style, when it first displayed +itself in English country residences, was distinctly marked by the +absence of everything that had the appearance of a terrace, or of +architectural forms, or lines, immediately about the house. The house, +in short, rose abruptly from the lawn, and the general surface of the +ground was characterised by smoothness and bareness. This constituted +the first School of the Landscape Style, introduced by Kent and Brown. + +This manner was followed by the romantic or Picturesque Style, which +inaugurates a School which aimed at producing architectural tricks and +devices, allied with scenery of picturesque character and sham +rusticity. The conglomeration at Stowe, albeit that it is attributed to +Kent, shows what man can do in the way of heroically wrong +garden-craft. + +To know truly how to lay out a garden "_After a more Grand and Rural +Manner than has been done before_," you cannot do better than get Batty +Langley's "New Principles of Gardening," and among other things you have +rules whereby you may concoct natural extravagances, how you shall prime +prospects, make landscapes that are pictures of nothing and very like; +how to copy hills, valleys, dales, purling streams, rocks, ruins, +grottoes, precipices, amphitheatres, &c. + +The writings of Gilpin and Price were effective in undermining Kent's +School; they helped to check the rage for destroying avenues and +terraces, and insisted upon the propriety of uniting a country-house +with the surrounding scenery by architectural appendages. The leakage +from the ranks of Kent's School was not all towards the Picturesque +School, but to what Loudon terms Repton's School, which may be +considered as combining all that was excellent in what had gone before. + +Following upon these phases is one that is oddly called the +"_Gardenesque_" Style, the leading feature of which is that it +illustrates the beauty of trees, and other plants _individually_; in +short, it is the _specimen_ style. According to the practice of all +previous phases of modern gardening, trees, shrubs, and flowers were +indiscriminately mixed and crowded together, in shrubberies or other +plantations. According to the Gardenesque School, all the trees and +shrubs are arranged to suit their kinds and dimensions, and to display +them to advantage. The ablest exponents of the school are Loudon in the +recent past, and Messrs Marnock and Robinson in the present, and their +method is based upon Loudon. + +To know how to lay out a garden after the most approved modern fashion +we have but to turn to the deservedly popular pages of "The English +Flower Garden." This book contains not only model designs and commended +examples from various existing gardens, but text contributed by some +seventy professional and amateur gardeners. Even the gardener who has +other ideals and larger ambitions than are here expected, heartily +welcomes a book so well stored with modern garden-lore up to date, with +suggestions for new aspects of vegetation, new renderings of plant life, +and must earnestly desire to see any system of gardening made perfect +after its kind-- + + ... "I wish the sun should shine + On all men's fruits and flowers, as well as mine." + +Gardening is, above all things, a progressive Art which has never had so +fine a time to display its possibilities as now, if we were only wise +enough to freely employ old experiences and modern opportunities. People +are, however, so readily content with their stereotyped models, with +barren imitations, with their petty list of specimens, when instead of +half-a-dozen kinds of plants, their garden has room for hundreds of +different plants of fine form--hardy or half-hardy, annual and +bulbous--which would equally well suit the British garden and add to its +wealth of beauty by varied colourings in spring, summer, and autumn. At +present "the choke-muddle shrubbery, in which the poor flowering shrubs +dwindle and kill each other, generally supports a few ill-grown and +ill-chosen plants, but it is mainly distinguished for wide patches of +bare earth in summer, over which, in better hands, pretty green things +might crowd." The specimen plant has no chance of displaying itself +under such conditions. + + * * * * * + +Into so nice a subject as the practice of Landscape-gardening of the +present day it is not my intention to enter in detail, and for two good +reasons. In the first place, the doctrines of a sect are best known by +the writings of its representatives; and in this case, happily, both +writings and representatives are plentiful. Secondly, I do not see that +there is much to chronicle. Landscape-gardening is, in a sense, still in +its fumbling stage; it has not increased its resources, or done anything +heroic, even on wrong lines; it has not advanced towards any permanent, +definable system of ornamentation since it began its gyrations in the +last century. Its rival champions still beat the air. Even Repton was +better off than the men of to-day, for he had, at least, his Protestant +formulary of Ten Objections to swear by, which "mark those errors or +absurdities in modern gardening and architecture to which I have never +willingly subscribed" (p. 127, "Theory and Practice of Landscape +Gardening," 1803, quoted in full above). + +But the present race of landscape-gardeners are, it strikes me, as much +at sea as ever. True they threw up traditional methods as unworthy, but +they had not learnt their own Art according to Nature before they began +to practise it; and they are still in the throes of education. Their +intentions are admirable beyond telling, but their work exhibits in the +grossest forms the very vices they condemn in the contrary school; for +the expression of their ideas is self-conscious, strained, and +pointless. To know at a glance their position towards Art in a garden, +how crippled their resources, how powerless to design, let me give an +extract from Mr Robinson. He is speaking of an old-fashioned garden, +"One of those classical gardens, the planners of which prided themselves +upon being able to give Nature lessons of good behaviour, to teach her +geometry and the fine Art of irreproachable lines; but Nature abhors +lines;[36] she is for geometers a reluctant pupil, and if she submits to +their tyranny she does it with bad grace, and with the firm resolve to +take eventually her revenge. Man cannot conquer the wildness of her +disposition, and so soon as he is no longer at hand to impose his will, +so soon as he relaxes his care, she destroys his work" (p. viii., +"English Flower Garden"). This is indeed to concede everything to +Nature, to deny altogether the mission of Art in a garden. + +[Footnote 36: For which reason, I suppose, Mr Robinson, in his model +"Non-geometrical Gardens" (p. 5), humbly skirts his ground with a path +which as nearly represents a tortured horse-shoe as Nature would permit; +and his trees he puts in a happy-go-lucky way, and allows them to nearly +obliterate his path at their own sweet will! No wonder he does not fear +Nature's revenge, where is so little Art to destroy!] + +And even the School that is rather kinder to Art, more lenient to +tradition, represented by Mr Milner--even he, in his admirable book upon +the "Art and Practice of Landscape Gardening" (1890), is the champion of +Nature, not of Art, in a garden. "Nature still seems to work in +fetters," he says, and he would "form bases for a better practice of the +Art" (p. 4). Again, Nature is the great exemplar that I follow" (p. 8). + +They have not got beyond Brown, so far as theory is concerned. "Under +the great leader Brown," writes Repton, with unconscious irony, "or +rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught that Nature +was to be our only model"--and Brown had his full chance of manipulating +the universe, for "he lived to establish a fashion in gardening, which +might have been expected to endure as long as Nature should exist"; and +yet Repton's work mostly consisted in repairing Brown's errors and in +covering the nakedness of his hungry prospects. So it would seem that +Art has her revenges as well as Nature! "The way of transgressors is +hard!" + +The Landscape-gardener, I said, gets no nearer to maturity of purpose as +time runs on. He creeps and shuffles after Nature as at the first--much +as the benighted traveller after the will-o'-the-wisp. He may not lay +hands on her, because you cannot conquer her wildness, nor impose your +will upon her, or teach her good behaviour. He may not apply the "dead +formalism of Art" to her, for "Nature abhors lines." Hence his mimicry +can never rise above Nature. Indeed, if it remains faithful to the +negative opinions of its practitioners, landscape-gardening will never +construct any system of device. It has no creed, if you except that sole +article of its faith, "I believe in the non-geometrical garden." A +monumental style is an impossibility while it eschews all features that +make for state and magnificence and symmetry; a little park scenery, +much grass, curved shrubberies, the "laboured littleness" of emphasised +specimen plants--the hardy ones dotted about in various parts--wriggling +paths, flower-borders, or beds of shapes that imply that they are the +offspring of bad dreams, and its tale of effects is told. But as for +"fine gardening," that was given up long ago as a bad job! The spirit of +Walpole's objections to the heroic enterprise of the old-fashioned +garden still holds the "landscape-gardener" in check. "I should hardly +advise any of those attempts," says Walpole; "_they are adventures of +too hard achievement for any common hands_." + +It is not so much at what he finds in the landscape gardener's creations +that the architect demurs, but at what he misses. It is not so much at +what the landscape-gardener recommends that the architect objects, as at +what moving in his own little orbit he wilfully shuts out, basing his +opposition to tradition upon such an _ex parte_ view of the matter as +this--"There are really two styles, one strait-laced, mechanical, with +much wall and stone, or it may be gravel, with much also of such +geometry as the designer of wall-papers excels in--often poorer than +that, with an immoderate supply of spouting water, and with trees in +tubs as an accompaniment, and, perhaps, griffins and endless +plaster-work, and sculpture of the poorer sort." Why "poorer"? "The +other, with _right desire_, though _often awkwardly_ (!) accepting +Nature as a guide, and endeavouring to illustrate in our gardens, _so +far as convenience and knowledge will permit_, her many treasures of the +world of flowers" ("English Flower Garden"). How sweetly doth bunkum +commend itself! + +It is not that the architect is small-minded enough to cavil at the +landscape-gardener's right to display his taste by his own methods, but +that he strikes for the same right for himself. It is not that he would +rob the landscape-gardener of the pleasure of expressing his own views +as persuasively as he can, but that he resents that air of superiority +which the other puts on as he bans the comely types and garnered +sweetness of old England's garden, that he accents the proscription of +the ways of interpreting Nature that have won the sanction of lovers of +Art and Nature of all generations of our forefathers, and this from a +School whose prerogative dates no farther back than the discovery of the +well-meaning, clumsy, now dethroned kitchen-gardener, known a short +century since as "the immortal Brown." There is no reviewer so keen as +Time! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING.[37] + + "Nothing is more the Child of Art than a Garden." + + SIR WALTER SCOTT. + +[Footnote 37: These notes make no pretence either at originality or +completeness. They represent gleanings from various sources, combined +with personal observations on garden-craft from the architect's point of +view.--J. D. S.] + + +"For every Garden," says Sir William Temple, "four things are to be +provided--Flowers, Fruit, Shade, and Water, and whoever lays out a +garden without these, must not pretend it in any perfection. Nature +should not be forced; great sums may be thrown away without Effect or +Honour, if there want sense in proportion to this." Briefly, the old +master's charge is this: "Have common-sense; follow Nature." + +Following upon these lines, the gardener's first duty in laying out the +grounds to a house is, to study the site, and not only that part of it +upon which the house immediately stands, but the whole site, its aspect, +character, soil, contour, sectional lines, trees, &c. Common-sense, +Economy, Nature, Art, alike dictate this. There is an individual +character to every plot of land, as to every human face in a crowd; and +that man is not wise who, to suit preferences for any given style of +garden, or with a view to copying a design from another place, will +ignore the characteristics of the site at his disposal. + +Equally unwise will he be to follow that school of gardening that makes +chaos before it sets about to make order. Features that are based upon, +or that grow out of the natural formation of the ground, will not only +look better than the created features, but be more to the credit of the +gardener, if successful, and will save expense. + +The ground throughout should be so handled that every natural good +point, every tree, mound, declivity, stream, or quarry, or other chance +feature, shall be turned to good account, and its consequence +heightened, avoiding the error of giving the thing mock importance, by +planting, digging, lowering declivities, raising prominences, planting +dark-foliaged trees to intensify the receding parts, forming terraces on +the slope, or adding other architectural features as may be advisable to +connect the garden with the house which is its _raison d'être_, and the +building with the landscape. + +What folly to throw down undulations in order to produce a commonplace +level, or to throw up hills, or make rocks, lakes, and waterfalls should +the site happen to be level! What folly to make a standing piece of +water imitate the curves of a winding river that has no existence, to +throw a bridge over it near its termination, so as to close the vista +and suggest the continuation of the water beyond! Nay, what need of +artificial lakes at all if there be a running stream hard by?[38] + +[Footnote 38: "All rational improvement of grounds is necessarily +founded on a due attention to the CHARACTER and SITUATION of the place +to be improved; the _former_ teaches what is advisable, the _latter_ +what is possible to be done. The _situation_ of a place always depends +on Nature, which can only be assisted, but cannot be entirely changed, +or greatly controlled by ART; but the _character_ of a place is wholly +dependent on ART; thus the house, the buildings, the gardens, the roads, +the bridges, and every circumstance which marks the habitation of man +must be artificial; and although in the works of art we may imitate the +forms and graces of Nature, yet, to make them truly natural, always +leads to absurdity" (Repton, p. 341).] + +It is of the utmost importance that Art and Nature should be linked +together, alike in the near neighbourhood of the house, and in its far +prospect, so that the scene as it meets the eye, whether at a distance +or near, should present a picture of a simple whole, in which each item +should take its part without disturbing the individual expression of the +ground. + +To attain this result, it is essential that the ground immediately about +the house should be devoted to symmetrical planning, and to distinctly +ornamental treatment; and the symmetry should break away by easy stages +from the dressed to the undressed parts, and so on to the open country, +beginning with wilder effects upon the country-boundaries of the place, +and more careful and intricate effects as the house is approached. Upon +the attainment of this appearance of graduated formality much depends. +One knows houses that are well enough in their way, that yet figure as +absolute blots upon God's landscape, and that make a man writhe as at +false notes in music, and all because due regard has not been paid to +this particular. By exercise of forethought in this matter, the house +and garden would have been linked to the site, and the site to the +landscape; as it is, you wish the house at Jericho![39] + +[Footnote 39: Not so thinks the author of "The English Flower +Garden":--"Imagine the effect of a well-built and fine old house, seen +from the extremity of a wide lawn, with plenty of trees and shrubs on +its outer parts, and nothing to impede the view of the house or its +windows but a refreshing carpet of grass. If owners of parks were to +consider this point fully, and, as they travel about, watch the effect +of such lawns as remain to us, and compare them with what has been done +by certain landscape-gardeners, there would shortly be, at many a +country-seat, a rapid carting away of the terrace and all its adjuncts." +Marry, this is sweeping! But Repton has some equally strong words +condemning the very plan our Author recommends: "In the execution of my +profession I have often experienced great difficulty and opposition in +attempting to correct the false and mistaken taste for placing a large +house in a naked grass field, without any apparent line of separation +between the ground exposed to cattle and the ground annexed to the +house, which I consider as peculiarly under the management of art. + +"This line of separation being admitted, advantage may be easily taken +to ornament the lawn with flowers and shrubs, and to attach to the +mansion that scene of 'embellished neatness' usually called a +pleasure-ground" (Repton, p. 213. See also No. 2 of Repton's +"Objections," given on p. 116).] + +As the point of access to a house from the public road and the route to +be taken afterwards not infrequently determines the position of the +house upon the site, it may be well to speak of the Approach first. In +planning the ground, care will be taken that the approach shall both +look well of itself and afford convenient access to the house and its +appurtenances, not forgetting the importance of giving to the visitor a +pleasing impression of the house as he drives up. + +In Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the usual form of approach was the +straight avenue, instances of which are still to be seen at Montacute, +Brympton, and Burleigh.[40] The road points direct to the house, as +evidence that in the minds of the old architects the house was, as it +were, the pivot round which the attached territory and the garden in all +its parts radiated; and the road ends, next the house, in a quadrangle +or forecourt, which has either an open balustrade or high hedge, and in +the centre of the court is a grass plot enlivened by statue or fountain +or sundial. And it is worthy of note that they who prefer a road that +winds to the very door of a house on the plea of its naturalness make a +great mistake; they forget that the winding road is no whit less +artificial than the straight one. + +[Footnote 40: As an instance of how much dignity a noble house may lose +by a meanly-planned drive, I would mention Hatfield.] + +The choice of avenue or other type of approach will mainly depend upon +the character and situation of the house, its style and quality. Repton +truly observes that when generally adopted the avenue reduces all houses +to the same landscape--"if looking up a straight line, between two green +walls, deserves the name of a landscape." He states his objections to +avenues thus--"If at the end of a long avenue be placed an obelisk or +temple, or any other eye-trap, ignorance or childhood alone will be +caught and pleased by it; the eye of taste or experience hates +compulsion, and turns away with disgust from every artificial means of +attracting its notice; for this reason an avenue is most pleasing +which, like that at Langley Park, climbs up a hill, and passing over the +summit, leaves the fancy to conceive its termination." + +The very dignity of an avenue seems to demand that there shall be +something worthy of this procession of trees at its end, and if the +house to which this feature is applied be unworthy, a sense of +disappointment ensues. Provided, however, that the house be worthy of +this dignity, and that its introduction does not mar the view, or +dismember the ground, an avenue is both an artistic and convenient +approach. + +Should circumstances not admit of the use of an avenue, the drive should +be as direct as may well be, and if curved, there should be some clear +and obvious justification for the curve or divergence; it should be +clear that the road is diverted to obtain a glimpse of open country that +would otherwise be missed, or that a steep hill or awkward dip is thus +avoided. The irregularity in the line of the road should not, however, +be the occasion of any break in the gradient of the road, which should +be continuously even throughout. In this matter of planning roads, +common sense, as well as artistic sense, should be satisfied; there +should be no straining after pompous effects. Except in cases where the +house is near to the public road, the drive should not run parallel to +the road for the mere sake of gaining a pretentious effect. Nor should +the road overlook the garden, a point that touches the comfort both of +residents and visitors; and for the same reason the entrance to the +garden should not be from the drive, but from the house. + +The gradient recommended by Mr Milner,[41] to whose skilled experience I +am indebted for many practical suggestions, is 1 in 14. The width of a +drive is determined by the relative importance of the route. Thus, a +drive to the principal entrance of the house should be from 14 to 18 +ft., while that to the stables or offices 10 ft. Walks should not be +less than 6 ft. wide. The width of a grand avenue should be 50 ft, and +"the trees may be preferably Elm, Beech, Oak, Chestnut, and they should +not be planted nearer in procession than 40 ft., unless they be planted +at intervals of half that distance for the purpose of destroying +alternate trees, as their growth makes the removal necessary." + +[Footnote 41: Milner's "Art and Practice of Landscape-Gardening," pp. +13, 14.] + +The entrance-gates should not be visible from the mansion, Repton says, +unless it opens into a courtyard. As to their position, the gates may be +formed at the junction of two roads, or where a cross-road comes on to +the main road, or where the gates are sufficiently back from the public +road to allow a carriage to stand clear. The gates, as well as the +lodge, should be at right angles to the drive, and belong to it, not to +the public road. Where the house and estate are of moderate size, +architectural, rather than "rustic," simplicity best suits the character +of the lodge. It is desirable, remarks Mr Milner, to place the entrance, +if it can be managed, at the foot of a hill or rise in the public road, +and not part of the way up an ascent, or at the top of it. + +If possible, the house should stand on a platform or terraced eminence, +so as to give the appearance of being well above ground; or it should be +on a knoll where a view may be had. The ground-level of the house should +be of the right height to command the prospect. Should the architect be +so fortunate as to obtain a site for his house where the ground rises +steep and abrupt on one side of the house, he will get here a series of +terraces, rock-gardens, a fernery, a rose-garden, &c. The ideal site for +a house would have fine prospects to the south-east and to the +south-west "The principal approach should be on the north-western face, +the offices on the north-eastern side, the stables and kitchen-garden +beyond. The pleasure-gardens should be on the south-eastern aspect, with +a continuation towards the east; the south-western face might be open to +the park" (Milner). + +If it can be avoided, the house should not be placed where the ground +slopes towards it--a treatment which suggests water draining into +it--but if this position be for some sufficient reason inevitable, or +should it be an old house with this defect that we are called to treat, +then a good space should be excavated, at least of the level of the +house, with a terrace-wall at the far end, on the original level of the +site at that particular point. And as to the rest of the ground, +Repton's sound advice is to plant up the heights so as to increase the +effect of shelter and seclusion that the house naturally has, and +introduce water, if available, at the low-level of the site. The air of +seclusion that the low-lying situation gives to the house is thus +intensified by crowning the heights with wood and setting water at the +base of the slope. + +The hanging-gardens at Clevedon Court afford a good example of what can +be done by a judicious formation of ground where the house is situated +near the base of a slope, and this example is none the less interesting +for its general agreement with Lamb's "Blakesmoor"--its ample +pleasure-garden "rising backwards from the house in triple terraces; ... +the verdant quarters backwarder still, and stretching still beyond in +old formality, the firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel and the +day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the centre." + +Before dealing with the garden and its relation to the house it may be +well to say a few words upon Planting. Trees are among the grandest and +most ornamental effects of natural scenery; they help the charm of hill, +plain, valley, and dale, and the changes in the colour of their foliage +at the different seasons of the year give us perpetual delight. One of +the most important elements in ornamental gardens is the dividing up and +diversifying a given area by plantations, by grouping of trees to form +retired glades, open lawns, shaded alleys, and well-selected margins of +woods; and, if this be skilfully done, an impression of variety and +extent will be produced beyond the belief of the uninitiated who has +seen the bare site before it was planted. + +To speak generally, there should be no need of apology for applying the +most subtle art in the disposal of trees and shrubs, and in the +formation of the ground to receive them. "_All Art_," as Loudon truly +says (speaking upon this very point), "_to be acknowledged as Art, must +be avowed._" This is the case in the fine arts--there is no attempt to +conceal art in music, poetry, painting, or sculpture, none in +architecture, and none in geometrical-gardening. + +In modern landscape-gardening, practised as a fine art, many of the more +important beauties and effects produced by the artist depend on the use +he makes of foreign trees and shrubs; and, personally, one is ready to +forgive Brown much of his vile vandalism in old-fashioned gardens for +the use he makes of cedars, pines, planes, gleditschias, robinias, +deciduous cypress, and all the foreign hardy trees and shrubs that were +then to his hand. + +Loudon--every inch a fine gardener, true lineal descendant of Bacon in +the art of gardening--recommends in his "Arboretum" (pp. 11, 12) the +heading down of large trees of common species, and the grafting upon +them foreign species of the same genus, as is done in orchard +fruit-trees. Hawthorn hedges, for instance, are common everywhere; why +not graft some of the rare and beautiful sorts of tree thorns, and +intersperse common thorns between them? There are between twenty and +thirty beautiful species and varieties of thorn in our nurseries. Every +gardener can graft and bud. Or why should not scarlet oak and scarlet +acer be grafted on common species of these genera along the margins of +woods and plantations? + + * * * * * + +In planting, the gardener has regard for character of foliage and tints, +the nature of the soil, the undulations of ground and grouping, the +amount of exposure. Small plantations of trees surrounded by a fence are +the best expedients to form groups, says Repton, because trees planted +singly seldom grow well. Good trees should not be encumbered by peddling +bushes, but be treated as specimens, each having its separate mound. The +mounds can be formed out of the hollowed pathways in the curves made +between the groups. The dotting of trees over the ground or of specimen +shrubs on a lawn is destructive of all breadth of effect. This is not to +follow Nature, nor Art, for Art demands that each feature shall have +relation to other features, and all to the general effect. + +In planting trees the variety of height in their outline must be +considered as much as the variety of their outline on plan; the +prominent parts made high, the intervening bays kept low,[42] and this +both in connection with the lie of the ground and the plant selected. +Uniform curves, such as parts of circles or ovals, are not approved; +better effects are obtained by forming long bays or recesses with +forked tongues breaking forward irregularly, the turf running into the +bays. Trees may serve to frame a particular view and frame a picture; +and when well led up to the horizon will enhance the imaginative effect +of a place: a _beyond_ in any view implies somewhere to explore. + +[Footnote 42: "One deep recess, one bold prominence, has more effect +than twenty little irregularities." "Every variety in the outline of a +wood must be a _prominence_ or a _recess_" (Repton, p. 182).] + +All trees grow more luxuriantly in valleys than on the hills, and on +this account the tendency of tree-growth is to neutralise the difference +in the rise and fall of the ground and to bring the tops of the trees +level. But the perfection of planting is to get an effect approximating +as near as may be to the charming undulations of the Forest of Dean and +the New Forest. Care will be taken, then, not to plant the fast-growing, +or tall-growing trees in the low-ground, but on the higher points, and +even to add to the irregularity by clothing the natural peaks with +silver fir, whose tall heads will increase the sense of height. The +limes, planes, and elms will be mostly kept to the higher ground, +bunches of Scotch fir will be placed here and there, and oaks and +beeches grouped together, while the lower ground will be occupied by +maples, crabs, thorns, alders, &c. "Fringe the edges of your wood with +lines of horse-chestnut," says Viscount Lymington in his delightful and +valuable article on "Vert and Venery"--"a mass in spring of blossom, and +in autumn of colour; and under these chestnuts, and in nooks and +corners, thrust in some laburnum, that it may push its showers of gold +out to the light and over the fence." + +As to the nature of the soil, and degree of exposure suitable to +different forest-trees, the writer just quoted holds that, for exposure +to the wind inland, the best trees for all soils are the beech, the +Austrian pine, and the Scotch fir. + +For exposure in hedgerows, the best tree to plant ordinarily is the elm. +For exposure to frost, the Insignis pine, which will not, however, stand +the frosts of the valley, but prefers high ground. For exposure to +smoke, undoubtedly the best tree is the Western plane. The sycamore will +stand better than most trees the smoke and chemical works of +manufacturing towns. For sea-exposure, the best trees to plant are the +goat willow and pineaster. Among the low-growing shrubs which stand +sea-exposure well are mentioned the sea-buckthorn, the snow-berry, the +evergreen barberry, and the German tamarisk; to which should be added +the euonymus and the escallonia. + +With regard to the nature of the soil, Lord Lymington says: "Strong clay +produces the best oaks and the best silver fir. A deep loam is the most +favourable soil for the growth of the Spanish chestnut and ash. The +beech is the glorious weed of the chalk and down countries; the elm of +the rich red sandstone valleys. Coniferous trees prefer land of a light +sandy texture; ... but as many desire to plant conifers on other soils, +I would mention that the following among others will grow on most soils, +chalk included: the _Abies excelsa_, _canadensis_, _magnifica_, +_nobilis_, and _Pinsapo_; the _Pinus excelsa_, _insignis_, and +_Laricio_; the _Cupressus Lawsoniana_, _erecta_, _viridis_, and +_macrocarpa_; the _Salisburia adiantifolia_, and the _Wellingtonia_. The +most fast-growing in England of conifers is the Douglas fir.... It grows +luxuriantly on the slopes of the hills, but will not stand exposure to +the wind, and for that reason should always be planted in sheltered +combes with other trees behind it. + +"In moist and boggy land the spruce or the willow tribes succeed best." + +"In high, poor, and very dry land, no tree thrives so well as the Scotch +fir, the beech, and the sycamore." + +Avoid the selfishness and false economy of planting an inferior class of +fast-growing trees such as firs and larches and Lombardy poplars, on the +ground that one would not live to get any pleasure out of woods of oaks +and beech and chestnut. How frequently one sees tall, scraggy planes, or +belts of naked, attenuated firs, where groups of oaks and elms and +groves of chestnut might have stood with greater advantage. + +Avoid the thoughtlessness and false economy of not thoroughly preparing +the ground before planting. "Those that plant," says an old writer, +"should make their ground fit for the trees before they set them, and +not bury them in a hole like a dead dog; let them have good and fresh +lodgings suitable to their quality, and good attendance also, to +preserve them from their enemies till they are able to encounter them." + +Avoid trees near a house; they tend to make it damp, and the garden +which is near the house untidy. Writers upon planting have their own +ideas as to the fitness of certain growths for a certain style of house. +As regards the relation of trees to the house, if the building be of +Gothic design with the piquant outline usual to the style, then trees of +round shape form the best foil; if of Classic or Renascence design, then +trees of vertical conic growth suit best. So, if the house be of stone, +trees of dark foliage best meet the case; if of brick, trees of lighter +foliage should prevail. As a backing to the horizontal line of a roof to +an ordinary two-storey building, nothing looks better than the long +stems of stone pines or Scotch firs; and pines are health-giving trees. + +Never mark the outline of ground, nor the shape of groups of trees and +shrubs with formal rows of bedding plants or other stiff edging, which +is the almost universal practice of gardeners in the present day. This +is a poor travesty of Bacon's garden, who only allows low things to grow +naturally up to the edges. + +From the artist's point of view, perhaps the most desirable quality to +aim at in the distribution of garden space is that of breadth of +effect--in other words, simplicity; and the larger the garden the more +need does there seem for getting this quality. One may, in a manner, +_toy_ with a small garden. In the case of a large garden, where the +owner in his greed for prettiness has carried things further than +regulation-taste would allow, much may be done to subdue the +assertiveness of a multiplicity of interesting objects by architectural +adjuncts--broad terraces, well-defined lines, even a range of sentinel +yews or clipt shrubs--things that are precise, grave, calm, and +monotonous. Where such things are brought upon the scene, a certain +spaciousness and amplitude of effect ensues as a matter of course. + +One sees that the modern gardener, with his augmented list of +specimen-plants of varied foliage, is far more apt to err in the +direction of sensationalism than the gardener of old days who was exempt +from many of our temptations. Add to this power of attaining sweetness +and intricacy the artist's prone aspirations to work up to his lights +and opportunities, and we have temptation which is seductiveness itself! + +The garden at Highnam Court, dear to me for its signs and memories of my +late accomplished friend, Mr T. Gambier Parry, is the perfectest modern +garden I have ever seen. But here, if there be a fault, it is that Art +has been allowed to blossom too profusely. The attention of the visitor +is never allowed to drop, but is ever kept on the stretch. You are +throughout too much led by the master's cunning hand. Every known bit of +garden-artifice, every white lie of Art, every known variety of choice +tree or shrub, or trick of garden-arrangement is set forth there. But +somehow each thing strikes you as a little vainglorious--too sensible of +its own importance. We go about in a sort of pre-Raphaelite frame of +mind, where each seemly and beauteous feature has so much to say for +itself that, in the delightfulness of the details, we are apt to forget +that it is the first business of any work of Art to be a unit. There is +nothing of single specimen, or group of intermingled variety, or adroit +vista that we may miss and not be a loser; the only drawback is that we +see what we are expected to see, what everyone else sees. Here is +greenery of every hue; every metallic tint of silver, gold, copper, +bronze is there; and old and new favourites take hands, and we feel that +it is perfect; but the things blush in their conscious beauty--every +prospect is best seen "_there_!" England has few such beautiful gardens +as Highnam, and it has all the pathos of the touch of "a vanished hand," +and ideals that have wider range now. + +As to this matter of scenic effects, it is of course only fair to +remember that a garden is a place meant not only for broad vision, but +for minute scrutiny; and, specially near the house, intricacy is +permissible. Yet the counsels of perfection would tell the artist to +eschew such prettiness and multiplied beauties as trench upon broad +dignity. Sweetness is not good everywhere. Variations in plant-life that +are over-enforced, like variations in music, may be inferior to the +simple theme. A commonplace house, with well-disposed grounds, +flower-beds in the right place, a well-planted lawn, may please longer +than a fine pile where is ostentation and unrelieved artifice. + +Of lawns. Everything in a garden, we have said, has its first original +in primal Nature: a garden is made up of wild things that are tamed. The +old masters fully realised this. They sucked out the honey of wild +things without carrying refinement too far before they sipped it; and in +garnering for their _House Beautiful_ the rustic flavour is left so far +as was compatible with the requirements of Art--"as much as may be to a +natural wildness." And it were well for us to do the same in the +treatment of a lawn, which is only the grassy, sun-chequered, woodland +glade in, or between woods, in a wild country idealised. + +A lawn is one of the delights of man. The "Teutonic races"--says Mr +Charles Dudley Warner, in his large American way--"The Teutonic races +all love turf; they emigrate in the line of its growth." Flower-beds +breed cheerfulness, but they may at times be too gay for tired eyes and +jaded minds; they may provoke admiration till they are provoking. But a +garden-lawn is a vision of peace, and its tranquil grace is a boon of +unspeakable value to people doomed to pass their working-hours in the +hustle of city-life. + +The question of planting and of lawn-making runs together, and Nature +admonishes us how to set about this work. Every resource she offers +should be met by the resources of Art: avoid what she avoids, accept and +heighten what she gives. Nature in the wild avoids half-circles and +ovals and uniform curves, and they are bad in the planted park, both for +trees and greensward. Nature does not of herself dot the landscape over +with spies sent out single-handed to show the nakedness of the land, but +puts forth detachments that befriend each the other, the boldest and +fittest first, in jagged outlines, leading the way, but not out of touch +with the rest. And, since the modern landscape-gardener is nothing if +not a naturalist, this is why one cannot see the consistency of so fine +a master as Mr Marnock, when he dots his lawns over with straggling +specimens. (See the model garden, by Mr Marnock in "The English +Flower-Garden," p. xxi, described thus--"Here the foreground is a +sloping lawn; the flowers are mostly arranged near the kitchen garden, +partly shown to right; the hardy ones grouped and scattered in various +positions near, or within good view of, the one bold walk which sweeps +round the ground.") + +A garden is ground knit up artistically; ground which has been the field +of artistic enterprise; ground which expresses the feeling of beauty and +which absorbs qualities which man has discovered in the woodland world. +And the qualities in Nature which may well find room in a garden are +peace, variety, animation. A good sweep of lawn is a peaceful object, +but see that the view is not impeded with the modern's sprawling +pell-mell beds. And in the anxiety to make the most of your ground, do +not spoil a distant prospect. Remember, too, that a lawn requires a good +depth of soil, or it will look parched in the hot weather. + +And since a lawn is so delightful a thing, beware lest your admiration +of it lead you to swamp your whole ground with grass even to carrying it +up to the house itself. "Nothing is more a child of Art than a garden," +says Sir Walter, and he was competent to judge. If only out of +compliment to your architect and to the formal angularities of his +building, let the ground immediately about the house be of an ornamental +dressed character. + +Avoid the misplaced rusticity of the fashionable landscape-gardener, who +with his Nebuchadnezzar tastes would turn everything into grass, would +cart away the terrace and all its adjuncts, do away with all flowers, +and "lawn your hundred good acres of wheat," as Repton says, if you will +only let him, and if you have them. + +In his devotion to grass, his eagerness to display the measure of his +art in the curves of shrubberies and the arrangement of specimen plants +that strut across your lawn or dot it over as the Sunday scholars do the +croft when they come for their annual treat, he quite forgets the +flowers--forgets the old intent of a garden as the House Beautiful of +the civilised world--the place for nature-rapture, colour-pageantry, and +sweet odours. "Here the foreground is a sloping lawn; the _flowers are +mostly arranged near the kitchen garden_." Anywhere, anywhere out of the +way! Or if admitted at all into view of the house, it shall be with +little limited privileges, and the stern injunction-- + + "If you speak you must not show your face, + Or if you show your face you must not speak." + +So much for the garden-craft of the best modern landscape-gardener and +its relation to flowers. If this be the garden of the "Gardenesque" +style, as it is proudly called, I personally prefer the garden without +the style. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING--(_continued._) + + "I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring + forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like + herself; and when she collects her strength is abler still. Men are + decayed, and studies; she is not."--BEN JONSON. + + +The old-fashioned country house has, almost invariably, a garden that +curtseys to the house, with its formal lines, its terraces, and beds of +geometrical patterns. + +But to the ordinary Landscape-gardener the terrace is as much anathema +as the "Kist o' Whistles" to the Scotch Puritan! So able and +distinguished a gardener as Mr Robinson, while not absolutely forbidding +any architectural accessories or geometrical arrangement, is for ever +girding at them. The worst thing that can be done with a true garden, he +says ("The English Flower Garden," p. ii), "is to introduce any feature +which, unlike the materials of our world-designer, never changes. There +are positions, it is true, where the _intrusion of architecture_ and +embankment into the garden is justifiable; nay, now and then, even +necessary." + +If one is to promulgate opinions that shall run counter to the wisdom of +the whole civilised world, it is, of course, well that they should be +pronounced with the air of a Moses freshly come down from the Mount, +with the tables of the law in his hands. And there is more of it. "There +is no code of taste resting on any solid foundation which proves that +garden or park should have any extensive stonework or geometrical +arrangement.... Let us, then, use as few oil-cloth or carpet patterns +and as little stonework as possible in our gardens. The style is in +doubtful taste in climates and positions more suited to it than that of +England, but he who would adopt it in the present day is an enemy to +every true interest of the garden" (p. vi). + +So much for the "deadly formalism" of an old-fashioned garden in our +author's eyes! But, as Horace Walpole might say, "it is not peculiar to +Mr Robinson to think in that manner." It is the way of the +landscape-gardener to monopolise to himself all the right principles of +gardening; he is the angel of the garden who protects its true +interests; all other moods than his are low, all figures other than his +are symbols of errors, all dealings with Nature or with "the materials +of our world-designer" other than his are spurious. For the colonies I +can imagine no fitter doctrines than our author's, but not for an old +land like ours, and for methods that have the approval of men like +Bacon, Temple, More, Evelyn, Sir Joshua, Sir Walter, Elia, Wordsworth, +Tennyson, Morris, and Jefferies. And, even in the colonies, they might +demand to see "the code of taste resting on any solid foundation which +proves" that you shall have any garden or park at all! + +"If I am to have a system at all," says the author of "The Flower +Garden" (Murray, 1852), whose broad-minded views declare him to be an +amateur, "give me the good old system of terraces and angled walks, the +clipt yew hedges, against whose dark and rich verdure the bright +old-fashioned flowers glittered in the sun." Or again: "Of all the vain +assumptions of these coxcombical times, that which arrogates the +pre-eminence in the true science of gardening is the vainest.... The +real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity. +If we review the various styles that have prevailed in England from the +knotted gardens of Elizabeth ... to the landscape fashion of the present +day, we shall have little reason to pride ourselves on the advance which +national taste has made upon the earliest efforts in this department" +("The Praise of Gardens," p. 270). + +"Large or small," says Mr W. Morris, "the garden should look both +orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outer world. It +should by no means imitate either the wilfulness or the wildness of +Nature, but should look like a thing never seen except near a house" +("Hopes and Fears"). + +The whole point of the matter is, however, perhaps best summed up in +Hazlitt's remark, that there is a pleasure in Art which none but artists +feel. And why this sudden respect for "the materials of our +world-designer," when we may ask in Repton's words "why this art has +been called Landscape-gardening, perhaps he who gave the title may +explain. I see no reason, unless it be the efficacy which it has shown +in destroying landscapes, in which indeed it is infallible!" But, +setting aside the transparent shallowness of such a plea against the use +of Art in a garden, it argues little for the scheme of effects to leave +"nothing to impede the view of the house or its windows but a refreshing +carpet of grass." To pitch your house down upon the grass with no +architectural accessories about it, to link it to the soil, is to +vulgarise it, to rob it of importance, to give it the look of a pastoral +farm, green to the door-step. To bring Nature up to the windows of your +house, with a scorn of art-sweetness, is not only to betray your own +deadness to form, but to cause a sense of unexpected blankness in the +visitor's mind on leaving the well-appointed interior of an English +home. As the house is an Art-production, so is the garden that surrounds +it, and there is no code of taste that I know of which would prove that +Art is more reprehensible in the garden than in the house. + +But to return. The old-fashioned country house had its terraces. These +terraces are not mere narrow slopes of turf, such as now-a-days too +often answer to the term, but they are of solid masonry with balustrades +or open-work that give an agreeable variety of light and shade, and +impart an air of importance and of altitude to the house that would be +lacking if the terrace were not there. + +[Illustration: PLAN OF ROSERY, WITH SUNDIAL.] + +The whole of the ground upon which the house stands, or which forms +its base, constitutes the terrace. In such cases the terrace-walls are +usually in two or more levels, the upper terrace being mostly parallel +with the line of the house, or bowed out at intervals with balconies, +while the lower terrace, or terraces, serve as the varying levels of +formal gardens, pleasure-grounds, labyrinths, &c. The terraces are +approached by wide steps that are treated in a stately and impressive +manner. The walls and balustrades, moreover, conform, as they should, to +the materials employed in the house; if the house be of stone, as at +Haddon, or Brympton, or Claverton, the balustrade is of stone; if the +house be of brick, as at Hatfield or Bramshill, the walls and +balustrades will be of brick and terra-cotta. The advantage of this +agreement of material is obvious, for house and terrace, embraced at one +glance, make a consistent whole. There is not, of course, the same +necessity for consistency of material in the case of the mere retaining +walls. + +As one must needs have a system in planning grounds, there is none that +will more certainly bring honour and effect to them than the regular +geometrical treatment. This is what the architect naturally prefers. The +house is his child, and he knows what is good for it. Unlike the +imported gardener, who comes upon the scene as a foreign agent, the +architect works from the house outwards, taking the house as his centre; +the other works from the outside inwards, if he thinks of the "inwards" +at all. The first thinks of house and grounds as a whole which shall +embrace the main buildings, the outbuildings, the flower and +kitchen-gardens, terraces, walls, forecourt, winter-garden, +conservatory, fountain, steps, &c. The other makes the house common to +the commonplace; owing no allegiance to Art, a specialist of one idea, +he holds that the worst thing that can be done is to intrude +architectural or geometrical arrangement about a garden, and speaks of a +refreshing carpet of grass as preferable. + +As to the extent, number, and situation of terraces, this point is +determined by the conditions of the house and site. Terraces come +naturally if the house be on an eminence, but even in cases where the +ground recedes only to a slight extent, the surface of a second terrace +may be lowered by increasing the fall of the slope till sufficient earth +is provided for the requisite filling. The surplus earth dug out in +forming the foundations and cellars of the house, or rubbish from an old +building, will help to make up the terrace levels and save the cost of +wheeling and carting the rubbish away. + +Like all embankments, terrace walls are built with "battered" fronts or +outward slope; the back of the wall will be left rough, and well +drained. A backing of sods, Mr Milner says, will prevent thrust, and +admit of a lessened thickness in the wall. The walls should not be less +than three feet in height from the ground-level beneath, exclusive of +the balustrade, which is another three feet high. + +[Illustration: PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER GARDEN.] + +The length of the terrace adds importance to the house, and in small +gardens, where the kitchen-garden occupies one side of the +flower-garden, the terrace may with advantage be carried to the full +extent of the ground, and the kitchen-garden separated by a hedge and +shrubs; and at the upper end of the kitchen-garden may be a narrow +garden, geometrical, rock, or other garden, set next the terrace wall. + +The treatment of the upper terrace should be strictly architectural. If +the terrace be wide, raised beds with stone edging, set on the inner +side of the terrace, say alternately long beds with dwarf flowering +shrubs or hydrangeas, and circles with standard hollies, or marble +statues on pedestals, that shall alternate with pyramidal golden yews, +have a good effect, the terrace terminating with an arbour or stone +Pavilion. Modern taste, however, even if it condescend so far as to +allow of a terrace, is content with its grass plot and gravel walks, +which is not carrying Art very far. + +Laneham tells of the old pleasaunce at Kenilworth, that it had a terrace +10 ft. high and 12 ft. wide on the garden side, in which were set at +intervals obelisks and spheres and white bears, "all of stone, upon +their curious bases," and at each end an arbour; the garden-plot was +below this, and had its fair alleys, or grass, or gravel. + +The lower terrace may well be twice the width of the upper one, and may +be a geometrical garden laid out on turf, if preferred, but far better +upon gravel. Here will be collected the choicest flowers in the garden, +giving a mass of rich colouring. + +Although in old gardens the lower terrace is some 10 ft. below the upper +one, this is too deep to suit modern taste; indeed, 5 ft. or 6 ft. will +give a better view of the garden if it is to be viewed from the house. +At the same time it is undeniable that the more you are able to look +_down_ upon the garden--the higher you stand above its plane--the better +the effect; the lower you stand, the poorer the perspective. + +Modern taste, also, will not always tolerate a balustraded wall as a +boundary to the terrace, but likes a grass slope. If this poor +substitute be preferred, there should be a level space at the bottom of +the slope and at the top; the slope should have a continuous line, and +not follow any irregularity in the natural lie of the ground, and there +should be a simple plinth 12 to 18 in. high at the bottom of the slope. + +But the mere grass slope does not much help the effect of the house, far +or near; a house standing on a grass slope always has the effect of +sliding down a hill. To leave the house exposed upon the landscape, +unscreened and unterraced, is not to treat site or house fairly. There +exists a certain necessity for features in a flat place, and if no +raised terrace be possible, it is desirable to get architectural +treatment by means of balustrades alone, without much, or any, fall in +the ground. The eye always asks for definite boundaries to a piece of +ornamental ground as it does for a frame to a picture, and where +definite boundaries do not exist, the distant effect is that of a +house that has tumbled casually down from the skies, near which the +cattle may graze as they list, and the flower-beds are the mere sport of +contingencies. + +[Illustration: GENERAL PLAN OF THE PLEASAUNCE, VILLA ALBANI, ROME.] + +Good examples of terrace walls are to be found at Haddon, Claverton, +Brympton, Montacute, Bramshill, Wilton, and Blickling Hall. If truth be +told, however, all our English examples dwindle into nothingness by the +side of fine Italian examples like those at Villa Albani,[43] Villa +Medici, or Villa Borghese, with their grand scope and array of +sculpture. (See illustration from Percier and Fontaine's "_Choix des +plus célèbres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs_." Paris, +MDCCCIV.) + +[Footnote 43: See accompanying plans.] + +The arrangement of steps is a matter that may call forth a man's utmost +ingenuity. The scope and variety of step arrangement is, indeed, a +matter that can only be realised by designers who have given it their +study. As to practical points. In planning steps make the treads wide, +the risers low. Long flights without landings are always objectionable. +Some of the best examples, both in England and abroad, have winders; as +to the library quadrangle, Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Donibristle Castle, +Scotland; Villa d'Este, Tivoli; the gardens at Nîmes. The grandest +specimen of all is the Trinità di Monte steps in Rome (see Notes on +Gardens in _The British Architect_, by John Belcher and Mervyn +Macartney). + +It is impossible to lay down rules of equal application everywhere as to +the distribution of garden area into compartments, borders, terraces, +walks, &c. These matters are partly regulated by the character of the +house, its situation, the section and outline of the ground. But gardens +should, if possible, lie towards the best parts of the house, or towards +the rooms most commonly in use by the family, and endeavour should be +made to plant them so that to step from the house on to the terrace, or +from the terrace to the various parts of the garden, should only seem +like going from one room to another. + +Of the arrangement of the ground into divisions, each section should +have its own special attractiveness and should be led up to by some +inviting artifice of archway, or screened alley of shrubs, or "rosery" +with its trellis-work, or stone colonnade; and if the alley be long it +should be high enough to afford shade from the glare of the sun in hot +weather; you ought not, as Bacon pertinently says, to "buy the shade by +going into the sun." + +Again, the useful and the beautiful should be happily united, the +kitchen and the flower garden, the way to the stables and outbuildings, +the orchard, the winter garden, &c., all having a share of consideration +and a sense of connectedness; and if there be a chance for a filbert +walk, seize it; that at Hatfield is charming. "I cannot understand," +says Richard Jefferies ("Wild Life in a Southern Country," p. 70), "why +filbert walks are not planted by our modern capitalists, who make +nothing of spending a thousand pounds in forcing-houses." + +A garden should be well fenced, and there should always be facility for +getting real seclusion, so much needed now-a-days; indeed, the provision +of places of retreat has always been a note of an English garden. The +love of retirement, almost as much as a taste for trees and flowers, has +dictated its shapes. Hence the cedar-walks,[44] the bower, the avenue, +the maze, the alley, the wilderness, that were familiar, and almost the +invariable features of an old English pleasaunce, "hidden happily and +shielded safe." + +[Footnote 44: One of the finest and weirdest cedar-walks that I have +ever met with is that at Marwell, near Owslebury in Hampshire. Here you +realise the wizardry of green gloom and sense of perfect seclusion. It +was here that Henry VIII. courted one of his too willing wives.] + +This seclusion can be got by judicious screening of parts, by +shrubberies, or avenues of hazel, or yew, or sweet-scented bay, with +perhaps clusters of lilies and hollyhocks, or dwarf Alpine plants and +trailers between. And in all this the true gardener will have a thought +for the birds. "No modern exotic evergreens," says Jefferies, "ever +attract our English birds like the true old English trees and shrubs. In +the box and yew they love to build; spindly laurels and rhododendrons, +with vacant draughty spaces underneath, they detest, avoiding them as +much as possible. The common hawthorn hedge round a country garden shall +contain three times as many nests, and be visited by five times as many +birds as the foreign evergreens, so costly to rear and so sure to be +killed by the first old-fashioned frost." + +Another chance for getting seclusion is the high walls or lofty yew +hedge of the quadrangular courtyard, which may be near the entrance. +Such a forecourt is the place for a walk on bleak days; in its borders +you are sure of the earliest spring flowers, for the tender flowers can +here bloom securely, the myrtle, the pomegranate will flourish, and the +most fragrant plants and climbers hang over the door and windows. What +is more charming than the effect of hollyhocks, peonies, poppies, +tritomas, and tulips seen against a yew hedge? + +The paths should be wide and excellently made. The English have always +had good paths; as Mr Evelyn said to Mr Pepys, "We have the best walks +of gravell in the world, France having none, nor Italy." The comfort and +the elegance of a garden depend in no slight degree upon good gravel +walks, but having secured gravel walks to all parts of the grounds, +green alleys should also be provided. Nothing is prettier than a vista +through the smooth-shaven green alley, with a statue or sundial or +pavilion at the end; or an archway framing a peep of the country beyond. + +As to the garden's size, it is erroneous to suppose that the enjoyments +of a garden are only in proportion to its magnitude; the pleasurableness +of a garden depends infinitely more upon the degree of its culture and +the loving care that is bestowed upon it. If gardens were smaller than +they usually are, there would be a better chance of their orderly +keeping. As it is, gardens are mostly too large for the number of +attendants, so that the time and care of the gardener are nearly +absorbed in the manual labour of repairing and stocking the beds, and +maintaining and sweeping the walks. + +[Illustration: PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN, YEW WALK, +AND TENNIS COURT.] + +But if not large, the grounds should not have the appearance of being +confined within a limited space; and Art is well spent in giving an +effect of greater extent to the place than it really possesses by a +suitable composition of the walks, bushes, and trees. These lines should +lead the eye to the distance, and if bounded by trees, the garden should +be connected with the outer world by judicious openings; and this rule +applies to gardens large or small. + +Ground possessing a gentle inclination towards the south is desirable +for a garden. On such a slope effectual drainage is easily accomplished, +and the greatest possible benefit obtained from the sun's rays. The +garden should, if possible, have an open exposure towards the east and +west, so that it may enjoy the full benefit of morning and evening sun; +but shelter on the north or north-east, or any side in which the +particular locality may happen to be exposed, is desirable. + +The dimensions of the garden will be proportionate to the scale of the +house. The general size of the garden to a good-sized house is from four +to six acres, but the extent varies in many places from twelve to +twenty, or even thirty acres. (See an admirable article on gardening in +the "Encyclopædia.") + +Before commencing to lay out a garden the plan should be prepared in +minute detail, and every point carefully considered. Two or three acres +of kitchen garden, enclosed by walls and surrounded by slips, will +suffice for the supply of a moderate establishment.[45] The form of the +kitchen garden advocated by the writer in the "Encyclopædia" is that of +a square, or oblong, not curvilinear, since the work of cropping of the +ground can thus be more easily carried out. On the whole, the best form +is that of a parallelogram, with its longest sides in the proportion of +about five to three of the shorter, and running east and west. The whole +should be compactly arranged so as to facilitate working, and to afford +convenient access for the carting of heavy materials to the store-yards, +etc. + +[Footnote 45: As the walls afford valuable space for the growth of the +choicer kinds of hardy fruits, the direction in which they are built is +of considerable importance. "In the warmer parts of the country, the +wall on the north side of the garden should be so placed as to face the +sun at about an hour before noon, or a little to east of south; in less +favoured localities it should be made to face direct south, and in the +still more unfavourable districts it should face the sun an hour after +noon, or a little west of south. The east and west walls should run +parallel to each other, and at right angles to that on the north side."] + +There can, as we have said, be no fixed or uniform arrangement of +gardens. Some grounds will have more flower-beds than others, some more +park or wilderness; some will have terraces, some not; some a pinetum, +or an American garden. In some gardens the terraces will lie immediately +below the main front of the house, in others not, because the +geometrical garden needs a more sheltered site where the flowers can +thrive. + +[Illustration: PLAN OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN AND YEW HEDGES.] + +Of the shapes of the beds it were of little avail to speak, and the +diagrams here given are only of use where the conditions of the ground +properly admit of their application. The geometrical garden is capable +of great variety of handling. A fair size for a geometrical garden is +120 ft. by 60 ft. This size will allow of a main central walk of seven +feet that shall divide the panel into two equal parts and lead down to +the next level. The space may have a balustrade along its length on the +two sides, and on the garden side of the balustrade a flower-bed of +mixed flowers and choice low-growing shrubs, backed with hollyhocks, +tritoma, lilies, golden-rod, etc. The width of the border will +correspond with the space required for the steps that descend from the +upper terrace. For obtaining pleasant proportions in the design, the +walks in the garden will be of two sizes, gravelled like the rest--the +wider walk, say, three feet, the smaller, one foot nine inches. The +centre of the garden device on each side may be a raised bed with a +stone kerb and an ornamental shrub in the middle, and the space around +with, say, periwinkle or stonecrop, mixed with white harebells, or low +creepers. Or, should there be no wide main walk, and the garden-plot be +treated as one composition, the central bed will have a statue, sundial, +fountain, or other architectural feature. Each bed will be edged with +box or chamfered stone, or terra-cotta edging. Or the formal garden may +be sunk below the level of the paths, and filled either with flowers or +with dwarf coniferæ. + +Both for practical and artistic reasons, the beds should not be too +small; they should not be so small that, when filled with plants, they +should appear like spots of colour, nor be so large that any part of +them cannot be easily reached by a rake. Nor should the shapes of the +beds be too angular to accommodate the plants well. In Sir Gardner +Wilkinson's book on "Colour" (Murray, 1858, p. 372), he speaks of design +and good form as the very _soul_ of a dressed garden; and the very +permanence of the forms, which remain though successive series of plants +be removed, calls for a good design. The shapes of the beds, as well as +the colours of their contents, are taken cognisance of in estimating the +general effect of a geometrical garden. This same accomplished author +advises that there should always be a less formal garden beyond the +geometrical one; the latter is, so to speak, an appurtenance of the +house, a feature of the plateau upon which it stands, and no attempt +should be made to combine the patterns of the geometrical with the beds +or borders of the outer informal garden, such combination being +specially ill-judged in the neighbourhood of bushes and winding paths. + +Of the proper selection of flowers and the determination of the colours +for harmonious combination in the geometrical beds, much that is +contradictory has been preached, one gardener leaning to more formality +than another. There is, however, a general agreement upon the necessity +of having beds that will look fairly well at all seasons of the year, +and an agreement as to the use of hardy flowers in these beds. Mr +Robinson has some good advice to give upon this point ("English Flower +Garden," p. 24): "The ugliest and most needless parterre (!) in England +may be planted in the most beautiful way with hardy flowers alone." (Why +"needless," then?) "Are we not all wrong in adopting one degree, so to +say, of plant life as the only fitting one to lay before the house? Is +it well to devote the flower-bed to one type of vegetation only--low +herbaceous vegetation--be that hardy or tender?... We have been so long +accustomed to leave flower-beds raw, and to put a number of plants out +every year, forming flat surfaces of colour, that no one even thinks of +the higher and better way of filling them. But surely it is worth +considering whether it would not be right to fill the beds permanently, +rather than to leave them in this naked or flat condition throughout the +whole of the year.... If any place asks for permanent planting, it is +the spot of ground immediately near the house; for no one can wish to +see large, grave-like masses of soil frequently dug and disturbed near +the windows, and few care for the result of all this, even when the +ground is well covered during a good season." Again our author, on p. +95, states that "he has very decided notions as to arrangement of the +various colours for summer bedding, which are that the whole shall be so +commingled that one would be puzzled to determine what tint predominates +in the entire arrangement." He would have a "glaucous" colour, that is, +a light grey or whitish green. Such a colour never tires the eye, and +harmonises with the tints of the landscape, "particularly of the lawn." +This seems to be neutralising the effects of the flowers, and this +primal consideration of the lawn is like scorning your picture for the +sake of its frame! + +Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who writes of gardens from quite another point of +view, says: "It is by no means necessary or advisable to select rare +flowers for the beds, and some of the most common are the most eligible, +being more hardy, and therefore less likely to fail, or to cover the bed +with a scanty and imperfect display of colour. Indeed, it is a common +mistake to seek rare flowers, when many of the old and most ordinary +varieties are far more beautiful. The point to note in this matter of +choosing flowers for a geometrical garden is to ascertain first the +lines that will best accord with the design, and make for a harmonious +and brilliant effect, and to see that the flowers best suited to it +blossom at the same periods. A succession of those of the same colour +may be made to take the place of each, and continue the design at +successive seasons. They should also be, as near as possible, of the +same height as their companions, so that the blue flowers be not over +tall in one bed, or the red too short in another.... Common flowers, the +weeds of the country, are often most beautiful in colour, and are not to +be despised because they are common; they have also the advantage of +being hardy, and rare flowers are not always those best suited for +beds" (Wilkinson on "Colour," p. 375). + +With regard to the ornamental turf-beds of our modern gardens. To judge +of a garden upon high principles, we expect it to be the finest and +fittest expression that a given plot of ground will take; it must be the +perfect adaptation of means to an end and that end is beauty. Are we to +suppose, then, that the turf-beds of strange device that we meet with in +modern gardens are the best that can be done by the heir of all the ages +in the way of garden-craft? A garden, I am aware, has other things to +attend to besides the demands of ideal beauty; it has to embellish life +to supply innocent pleasure to the inmates of the house as well as to +dignify the house itself; and the devising of these vagrant beds that +sprawl about the grounds is a pleasure that can be ill spared from the +artistic delights of a modern householder. It is indeed wonderful to +what heights the British fancy can rise when put to the push, if only it +have a congenial field! So here we have flower-beds shaped as crescents +and kidneys--beds like flying bats or bubbling tadpoles, commingled +butterflies and leeches, stars and sausages, hearts and commas, +monograms and maggots--a motley assortment to be sure--but the modern +mind is motley, and the pretty flowers smile a sickly smile out of their +comic beds, as though Paradise itself could provide them with no fairer +lodgings! + +And yet if I dare speak my mind "sike fancies weren foolerie;" and it +were hard to find a good word to say for them from any point of view +whatever. Their wobbly shapes are not elegant; they have not the +sanction of precedent, even of epochs the most barbarous. And though +they make pretence at being a species of art, their mock-formality has +not that geometric precision which shall bind them to the formal lines +of the house, or to the general bearings of the site. Not only do they +contribute nothing to the artistic effect of the general design, but +they even mar the appearance of the grass that accommodates them. Design +they have, but not design of that quality which alone justifies its +intrusion. No wonder "Nature abhors lines" if this base and spurious +imitation of the "old formality," that Charles Lamb gloats over, is all +that the landscape-garden can offer in the way of idealisation. + +One other feature of the old-fashioned garden--the herbaceous +border--requires a word. It is worthy of note that, unlike the modern, +the ancient gardener was not a man of one idea--his art is not bounded +like a barrel-organ that can only play one invariable tune! While the +master of the "old formality" can give intricate harmonies of inwoven +colours in the geometric beds--"all mosaic, choicely planned," where +Nature lends her utmost magic to grace man's fancy--he knows the value +of the less as well as the more, and finds equal room for the +unconstrained melodies of odd free growths in the border-beds, where you +shall enjoy the individual character, the form, the outline, the colour, +the tone of each plant. Here let the mind of an earlier generation +speak in George Milner's "Country Pleasures": + + "By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed, where + only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to grow. Here + there is always delight; and I should be sorry to exchange its + sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless + bedding-plants, mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This bed + is from fifty to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in + width. A thorn hedge divides it from the orchard. In spring the + apple-bloom hangs over, and now we see in the background the apples + themselves. The plants still in flower are the dark blue monkshood, + which is 7ft. high; the spiked veronica; the meadow-sweet or + queen-o'-the-meadow; the lady's mantle, and the evening primrose. + This last may be regarded as the characteristic plant of the + season. The flowers open about seven o'clock, and as the twilight + deepens, they gleam like pale lamps, and harmonise wonderfully with + the colour of the sky. _On this bed I read the history of the + year._ Here were the first snowdrops; here came the crocuses, the + daffodils, the blue gentians, the columbines, the great globed + peonies; and last, the lilies and the roses." + +And now to apply what has been said. + +Since gardening entails so much study and experience--since it is a +craft in which one is so apt to err, in small matters as in large--since +it exists to represent passages of Nature that have touched man's +imagination from time immemorial--since its business is to paint living +pictures of living things whose habits, aspects, qualities, and +character have ever engaged man's interest--since the modern gardener +has not only not found new sources of inspiration unknown of old, but +has even lost sensibility to some that were active then--it were surely +wise to take the hand of old garden-masters who did large things in a +larger past--to whom fine gardening came as second nature--whose success +has given English garden-craft repute which not even the journeyman +efforts of modern times can quite extinguish. + +These men--Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, and their school--let us follow for +style, elevated form, noble ideals, and artistic interpretation of +Nature. + +For practical knowledge of trees and shrubs, indigenous or exotic--to +know _how_ to plant and _what_ to plant--to know what to avoid in the +practice of modern blunderers--to know the true theory and practice of +Landscape-gardening, reduced to writing, after ample analysis--turn we +to those books of solid value of the three great luminaries of modern +garden-craft, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon. + +And it were not only to be ungenerous, but absolutely foolish, to +neglect the study of the best that is now written and done in the way of +landscape-gardening, in methods of planting, and illustration of botany +up to date. One school may see things from a different point of view to +another, yet is there but one art of gardening. It is certain that to +gain boldness in practice, to have clear views upon that delicate +point--the relations of Art and Nature--to have a reliable standard of +excellence, we must know and value the good in the garden-craft of all +times, we must sympathise with the point of view of each phase, and +follow that which is good in each and all without scruple and +doubtfulness. That man is a fool who thinks that he can escape the +influence of his day, or that he can dispense with tradition. + +I say, let us follow the old garden-masters for style, form, ideal, and +artistic interpretation of Nature, and let us not say what Horace +Walpole whimpered forth of Temple's garden-enterprise: "These are +adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands." Have we not +seen that at the close of Bacon's lessons in grand gardening he adds, +that the things thrown in "for state and magnificence" are but nothing +to the true pleasure of a garden? + +The counsels of perfection are not to be slighted because our ground is +small. In gardening, as in other matters, the true test of one's work is +the measure of one's possibilities. A small, trim garden, like a sonnet, +may contain the very soul of beauty. A small garden may be as truly +admirable as a perfect song or painting. + +Let it be our aim, then, to give to gardening all the method and +distinctness of which it is capable, and admit no impediments. A garden +not fifty yards square, deftly handled, judiciously laid out, its beds +and walks suitably directed, will yield thrice the opportunity for +craft, thrice the scope for imaginative endeavour that a two-acre +"garden" of the pastoral-farm order, such as is recommended of the +faculty, will yield. The very division of the ground into proportionate +parts, the varied levels obtained, the framed vistas, the fitting +architectural adjuncts, will alone contribute an air of size and scale. +As to "codes of taste" (which are usually in matters of Art only +someone's opinions stated pompously), these should not be allowed to +baulk individual enterprise. "Long experience," says that accomplished +gardener and charming writer, E. V. B., in "Days and Hours in a Garden" +(p. 125), "Long experience has taught me to have nothing to do with +principles in the garden. Little else than a feeling of entire sympathy +with the diverse characters of your plants and flowers is needed for +'Art in a Garden.' If sympathy be there, all the rest comes naturally +enough." Or to put this thought in Temple's words, "The success is +wholly in the gardener." + +If a garden grow flowers in abundance, _there_ is success, and one may +proceed to frame a garden after approved "codes of taste" and fail in +this, or one may prefer unaccepted methods and find success beyond one's +fondest dreams. "All is fine that is fit" is a good garden motto; and +what an eclectic principle is this! How many kinds of style it allows, +justifies, and guards! the simplest way or the most ornate; the fanciful +or the sweet austere; the intricate and complex, or the coy and +unconstrained. Take it as true as Gospel that there is danger in the use +of ornament--danger of excess--take it as equally true that there is an +intrinsic and superior value in moderation, and yet the born gardener +shall find more paths, old and new, that lead to Beauty in a plot of +garden-ground than the modern stylist dreams of. + +The art of gardening may now be known of all men. Gardening is no longer +a merely princely diversion requiring thirty wide acres for its display. +Everyone who can, now lives in the country, where he is bound to have a +garden; and I repeat what I said before, let no one suppose that the +beauty of a garden depends on its acreage, or on the amount of money +spent upon it. Nay, one would almost prefer a small garden plot, so as +to ensure that ample justice shall be done to it.[46] In a small garden +there is less fear of dissipated effort, more chance of making friends +with its inmates, more time to spare to heighten the beauty of its +effects. + +[Footnote 46: "Embower a cottage thickly and completely with nothing but +roses, and nobody would desire the interference of another +plant."--LEIGH HUNT.] + +To some extent the success of a garden depends upon favourable +conditions of sun, soil, and water, but more upon the choiceness of its +contents, the skill of its planting, the lovingness of its tendence. +Love for beauty has a way of enticing beauty; the seeing eye wins its +own ranges of vision, finds points of vantage in unlikely ground. "I +write in a nook," says the poet Cowper, "that I call my boudoir; it is a +summerhouse, not bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opens into +the garden that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles, _and +the window into my neighbour's orchard_. It formerly served an +apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, however, it is dedicated to +sublimer uses." What a mastery of life is here! + + "As if life's business were a summer mood; + As if all needful things would come unsought + To genial faith, still rich in genial good; + + * * * * * + + By our own spirits are we deified." + +But I must not finish the stanza in this connection. + +A garden is pre-eminently a place to indulge individual taste. "Let us +not be that fictitious thing," says Madame Roland, "that can only exist +by the help of others--_soyons nous_!" So, regardless of the doctors, +let me say that the best general rule that I can devise for +garden-making is: put all the beauty and delightsomeness you can into +your garden, get all the beauty and delight you can out of your garden, +never minding a little mad want of balance, and think of proprieties +afterwards! Of course, this is to "prove naething," but never mind if +but the garden enshrine beauty. To say this is by no means to allow that +the garden is the fit place for indulging your love of the +out-of-the-way; not so, yet a little sign of fresh motive, a touch of +individual technique, a token, however shyly displayed, that you think +for yourself is welcome in a garden. Thus I know of a gardener who +turned a section of his grounds into a sort of huge bear-pit, not a +sunk-pit, but a mound that took the refuse soil from the site of his new +house hollowed out, and its slopes set all round with Alpine and +American garden-plants, each variety finding the aspect it likes best, +and the proportion of light and shade that suits its constitution. This +is, of course, to "intrude embankments" into a garden with a vengeance, +yet even Mr Robinson, if he saw it, would allow that, as in love and +war, your daring in gardening is justified by its results, where, as +George Herbert has it-- + + "Who shuts his hand, hath lost its gold; + Who opens it, hath it twice told." + +A garden is, first and last, a place for flowers; but, treading in the +old master's footsteps, I would devote a certain part of even a small +garden to Nature's own wild self, and the loveliness of weed-life. Here +Art should only give things a good start and help the propagation of +some sorts of plants not indigenous to the locality. Good effects do not +ensue all at once, but stand aside and wait, or help judiciously, and +the result will be a picture of rude and vigorous life, of pretty colour +and glorious form, that is gratifying for its own qualities, and more +for its opposition to the peacefulness of the garden's ordered +surroundings. + +A garden is the place for flowers, a place where one may foster a +passion for loveliness, may learn the magic of colour and the glory of +form, and quicken sympathy with Nature in her higher moods. And, because +the old-fashioned garden more conduces to these ends than the modern, it +has our preference. The spirit of old garden-craft, says: "Do everything +that can be done to help Nature, to lift things to perfection, to +interpret, to give to your Art method and distinctness." The spirit of +the modern garden-craft of the purely landscape school says: "Let be, +let well alone, or extemporise at most. Brag of your scorn for Art, yet +smuggle her in, as a stalking-horse for your halting method and +non-geometrical forms." + +And, as we have shown, Art has her revenges as well as Nature; and the +very negativeness of this school's Art-treatments is the seal to its +doom. Mere neutral teaching can father nothing; it can never breed a +system of stable device that is capable of development. But old +garden-craft is positive, where the other is negative; it has no +niggling scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment except +the unwritten laws of good taste. Hence its permanent value as a +standard of device--for every gardener must needs desire the support of +some backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts--he must +needs have some basis of form on which to rest his own device, his own +realisations of natural beauty--and what safer, stabler system of +garden-craft can he wish for than that of the old English garden--itself +the outcome of a spacious age, well skilled in the pictorial art and +bent upon perfection? + +The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are beauty, animation, +variety, mystery. A garden's beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured +by its capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, and we need +not fear to use embellishment or strong colour, or striking device, +according to the adage "The richly provided richly require." + +[Illustration: (PERSPECTIVE VIEW). + +PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A +LARGE GARDEN.] + +Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the grace of a garden, +because all gardening is Art or nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art +in a garden, nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its charm. +I have no more scruple in using the scissors upon tree or shrub, where +trimness is desirable, than I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that +once represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm in the results +of the topiary art, in the prim imagery of evergreens, that all +ages have felt. And I would even introduce _bizarreries_ on the +principle of not leaving all that is wild and odd to Nature outside of +the garden-paling; and in the formal part of the garden my yews should +take the shape of pyramids or peacocks or cocked hats or ramping lions +in Lincoln-green, or any other conceit I had a mind to, which vegetable +sculpture can take. + +[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN PLAN FOLLOWING.] + +As to the other desirable qualities--animation, variety, mystery--I +would base my garden upon the model of the old masters, without adopting +any special style. The place should be a home of fancy, full of +intention, full of pains (without showing any); half common-sense, half +romance; "neither praise nor poetry, but something better than either," +as Burke said of Sheridan's speech; it should have an ethereal touch, +yet be not inappropriate for the joyous racket and country cordiality of +an English home. It should be + + "A miniature of loveliness, all grace + Summ'd up and closed in little"-- + +something that would challenge the admiration and suit the moods of +various minds; be brimful of colour-gladness, yet be not all pyramids of +sweets, but offer some solids for the solid man; combining old processes +and new, old idealisms and new realisms; the monumental style of the old +here, the happy-go-lucky shamblings of the modern there; the page of +Bacon or Temple here, the page of Repton or Marnock there. At every turn +the imagination should get a fresh stimulus to surprise; we should be +led on from one fair sight, one attractive picture, to another; not +suddenly, nor without some preparation of heightened expectancy, but as +in a fantasy, and with something of the quick alternations of a dream. + +[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, WITH CLIPPED +YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER BEDS.] + +Your garden, gentle reader, is perchance not yet made. It were indeed +happiness if, when good things betide you, and the time is ripe for your +enterprise, Art + + ... "Shall say to thee + I find you worthy, do this thing for me." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ON THE OTHER SIDE.--A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY. + + "I am tired of civilised Europe, and I want to see a wild country + if I can."--W. R. GREG. + + "Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley + Hall!"--TENNYSON. + + +We have discussed the theory of a garden; we have analysed the motives +which prompt its making, the various treatments of which it is +susceptible; we have made a kind of inventory of its effects, its +enchantments, its spendthrift joys. Now we will hear the other side, and +find out why the morbid, tired man, the modern Hamlet, likes it not, why +the son of culture loathes it as a lack-lustre thing, betokening to him +the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. Having +made our picture now we will turn it round, and note why it is that the +garden, with its full complement of approved ornament, its selected +vegetation, its pretty turns for Nature, its many-sided beauty-- + + "Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern was there + Not less than truth designed" + +--shall never wholly satisfy. + +Your garden will serve you in many ways. It will give a sense of +household warmth to your home. It will smile, or look grave, or be +dreamily fanciful almost at your bidding. If your bent be that way it +will minister to your imaginative reverie, and almost surfeit you with +its floods of lazy music. If you are hot, or weary, or dispirited, or +touched with _ennui_, its calm atmosphere will lay the dust and lessen +the fret of your life. Yet--let us not blink the fact--just because +_all_ Nature is not represented here; because the girdle of the garden +walls narrows our view of the world at large, and excludes more of +Nature's physiognomy than it includes; because the garden is, as Sir +Walter truly says, entirely "a child of Art"; the place, be it never so +fair, falls short of man's imaginative craving, and, when put to the +push, fails to supply the stimulus his varying moods require. Art's +sounding-line will never fathom human nature's emotional depths. + +Nay, one need not be that interesting product of civilisation, the +over-civilised artist who writes books, and paints pictures, and murmurs +rhyme that-- + + "Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, + Telling a tale not too importunate + To those who in the sleepy region stay, + Lulled by the singer of an empty day." + +There is the _ennuyé_ of the clubs whom you are proud to meet in Pall +Mall, not a hair of his hat turned, not a wrinkle marring the sit of his +coat; meeting him thus and there you would not dream of supposing that +this exquisite trophy of the times is a prey to reactionary desires! Yet +deep down in the hidden roots of his being lies a layer of unscotched +savagery--an unextinguished, inextinguishable strain of the wild man of +the woods. Scratch him, and beneath his skin is Rousseau-Thoreau. +Scratch him again in the same place, and beneath his second skin see the +brown hide of the aboriginal Briton, the dweller in wattled abodes, who +knew an earlier England than this, that had swamps and forests, roadless +wastes and unbridled winter floods, and strange beasts that no man could +tame. Even he ("the sweetest lamb that ever loved a bear") will prate to +you of the Bohemian delights of an ungardened country, where "the white +man's poetry" has not defiled the landscape, and the Britisher shall be +free to take his pleasure sadly. + +Let us not be too hard, then, on that dislike of beauty, that worship of +the barbaric which we are apt to condemn as distempered vagaries, for +they denote maladies incident to the age, which are neither surprising +nor ignoble. This disdain for Art in a garden, this abhorrence of +symmetry, this preference for the rude and shaggy, what is it but a new +turn given to old instincts, the new Don Quixote sighing for +primævalism! This ruthlessness of the followers of the "immortal Brown" +who would navvy away the residue of the old-fashioned English gardens; +who live to reverse tradition and to scatter the lessons of the past to +the winds; what is it but a new quest of the bygone, the knight-errantry +of the civilized man, when turned inside out! + +And for yet another reason is the garden unable to meet the moods of the +age. In discussing the things it may rightly contain, we saw that the +laws of artistic presentment, no less than the avowed purpose for which +a garden is made, require that only such things shall be admitted, or +such aspects be portrayed there, as conduce to gladness and poetic +charm. And, so far as the garden is concerned, the restriction is +necessary and desirable. As with other phases of Art, Sculpture, +Painting, or Romance, the things and aspects portrayed must be +idealistic, not realistic; its effects must be select, not +indiscriminate. The garden is a deliberately contrived thing, a +voluntary piece of handicraft, purpose-made; and for this reason it must +not stereotype imperfections; it may toy with Nature, but must not +wilfully exaggerate what is ordinary; only Nature may exaggerate +herself--not Art. It must not imitate those items in Nature that are +crude, ugly, abnormal, elementary; it may not reproduce the absolutely +repellent; or at most, the artist may only touch them with a light hand, +by way of imaginative hint, but not with intent to produce a finished +picture out of them. + +On this point there is a distinct analogy between the guiding principles +of Art and Religion. Art and Religion both signify effort to comply with +an ideal standard--indeed, the height of the standard is the test of +each--and what makes for innocence or for faultiness in the one, makes +for innocence or faultiness in the other. Innocence is found in each, +but to be without guile in Art or in Religion means that you must be +either flawlessly obedient to a perfect standard, or be beyond the pale +of law through pure ignorance of wrong. Where no law is, there can be +no transgression. Between these two points is no middle-ground, either +in the fields of Art or of Religion. + +To apply this to a garden. Untaught, lawless Nature may present things +indiscriminately, as they are, the casual, the accidental, the savage, +in their native dress, or undress, in all their rugged reality, and not +be ashamed. But the artist-gardener, knowing good and evil, exercising +free-will in his garden-craft, must choose only what he may rightly +have, and employ only what his trained judgment or the unwritten +commandments of good taste will allow. + +There you have the art of a garden. But because of its necessary +exclusiveness, because all Nature is not there, the garden, though of +the best, the most far-reaching in its application of art-resources, +fails to satisfy all man's imaginative cravings. + +Your garden, I said, will serve you many a good turn. Here one may come +to play the truant from petty worries, to find quiet harbourage in the +chopping sea of life's casual ups and downs; but when _real_ trouble +comes, on occasions of spiritual tension, or mental conflict, or heavy +depression, then the perfect beauty of the garden offends; the garden +has no respect for sadness--then it almost mocks and flaunts you; it +smiles the same, though your child die, and then instinct sends you away +from the lap of Art to the bosom of Nature-- + + "Knowing that Nature never did betray + The heart that loved her." + +All of man, then, asks for all of Nature, and is not content with less. +Just as a stringed instrument, even when lying idle, is awake to +sympathetic sound but refuses to vibrate to notes that are not kindred +to its compass, so the garden, with all its wakeful magic, will voice +only such of your moods as it is in touch with; and there are many +chords missing in the cunningly encased music of a garden--many human +notes find no answering pulsation there. + +Let us not blink the fact, then; Art, whether of this sphere or of that, +is not all. If you want beauty ready-made, obvious gladness of colour, +heightened nobleness of form, suggested romance, Nature idealised--all +these things are yours in a garden; and yet the very "dressing" of the +place which heightens its appeal to one side of man's being is the bar +to its acceptance on another side. To have been baptised of Art is to +have received gifts rich and strange, that enable the garden's contents +to climb to ideal heights; and yet not all men care for perfectness; the +most part prefer creatures not too bright or good for human nature's +daily food. So, to tell truth, the wild things of field, forest, and +shore have a gamut of life, a range of appeal wider than the gardens; +the impunities of lawless Nature reach further than man's finished +strokes. Nay, when man has done his best in a garden, some shall even +regret, for sentimental reasons, that he brought Art upon the scene at +all. "Even after the wild landscape, through which youth had strayed at +will, has been laid out into fields and gardens, and enclosed with +fences and hedges; after the footsteps, which had bounded over the +flower-strewn grass have been circumscribed within firm gravel-walks, +the vision of its former happiness will still at times float before the +mind in its dreams." ("Guesses at Truth.") + +Beauty, Romance, and Nature await an audience with you in the garden; +but it is Beauty after she has been sent to school to learn the tricks +of conscious grace; Beauty that has "the foreign aid of ornament," that +walks with the supple gait of one who has been well drilled; but gone +are the fine careless raptures, gone the bounding step, the blithe +impulses of unschooled freedom and gipsy life out of doors. + +Romance awaits you, holding in her hand a picture of things bright and +jocund, full of tender colour and sweet suggestion; a picture designed +to prove this world to be unruffled Arcadia, a sunlit pageant, a dream +of delectation, a place for solace, a Herrick-land + + "Of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers;" + +and human life a jewelled tale with all the irony left out. + +Nature awaits you, but only as a fair captive, ready to respond to your +behests, to answer to the spring of your imaginings. To man's wooing, "I +love you, love me back," she resigned herself, not perceiving the drift +of homage that was paid, not so much to the beauty that she had, but to +the beauty of a heightened sort that should ensue upon his cultivation, +for the sake of which he sought her. So now her wildness is subdued. +The yew and the holly from the tangled brake shall feel the ignominy of +the shears. The "common" thorn of the hedge shall be grafted with one of +the twenty-seven rarer sorts; the oak and maple shall be headed down and +converted into scarlet species; the single flowers, obedient to a +beautiful disease, shall blow as doubles, and be propagated by +scientific processes that defy Nature and accomplish centuries of +evolution at a stride. The woodbine from the vernal wood must be nailed +to the carpenter's trellis, the brook may no more brawl, nor violate its +limits, the leaves of the hollybush and the box shall be variegated, the +forest tree and woodland shrub shall have their frayed hedges shorn, and +their wildness pressed out of them in Art's dissembling embrace. + +And as with the green things of the earth, so with the creatures of the +animal world that are admitted into the sanctuary of a garden. Here is +no place for nonconformity of any kind. True, the spruce little squirrel +asks no leave for his dashing raids upon the beech-mast and the sweet +chestnuts that have escaped the range of the gardener's broom; true, the +white and golden pheasant and the speckled goligny may moon about in +their distraught fashion down the green alleys and in and out the +shrubberies; the foreign duck may frisk in the lake; the white swan may +hoist her sail, and "float double, swan and shadow;" the birds may sing +in the trees; the peacock may strut on the lawn, or preen his feathers +upon the terrace walls; the fallow deer may browse among the bracken on +the other side of the ha-ha--thus much of the animal creation shall be +allowed here, and not the most fastidious son of Adam will protest a +word. But note the terms of their admission. They are a select company, +gathered with nice judgment from all quarters of the globe, that are +bound over to respectable behaviour, pledged to the beautiful or +picturesque; they are in chains, though the chains be aerial and not +seen. + +It is not that the gardener loves pheasants or peacocks, ducks or swans +or guinea-fowls for themselves, or for their contribution to the music +of the place. Not this, but because these creatures assist the garden's +magic, they support the illusion upon which the whole thing is based; as +they flit about, and cross and recross the scene, and scream, and quack, +and cackle, you get a touch of actuality that adds finish to the +strangeness and piquancy that prevail around; they verify your doubting +vision, and make valid the reality of its ideality; they accord with the +well-swept lawn, the scented air, the flashing radiance of the fountain, +the white statuary backed by dark yews or dim stone alcoves, with the +clipt shrubs, the dreaming trees, the blare of bright colours, in the +shapely beds, the fragrant odours and select beauties of the place. +These living creatures (for they _are_ alive), prowling about the +grounds,[47] looking fairly comfortable in artificial surroundings from +whence their clipped wings will not allow them to escape, incline you to +believe that this world is a smooth, genteel, beneficent world after +all, and its pastoral character is here so well sustained that no one +would be a bit surprised if Pan with his pipe of reeds, or Corydon with +his white-fleeced flock, should turn the corner at any moment. + +[Footnote 47: Lord Beaconsfield adds macaws to the ornament of his ideal +garden. "Sir Ferdinand, when he resided at Armine, was accustomed to +fill these pleasure grounds with macaws and other birds of gorgeous +plumage." But Lord Beaconsfield is Benjamin Disraeli--a master of the +ornate, a bit of a dandy always. In Italy, too, they throw in porcupines +and ferrets for picturesqueness. In Holland are our old friends the tin +hare and guinea-pigs, and the happy shooting boy, in holiday attire, +painted to the life.] + +It is only upon man's terms, however, and to suit his scheme of scenic +effects, that these tame things are allowed on the premises. They are +not here because man loves them. Woe to the satin-coated mole that +blindly burrows on the lawn! Woe to the rabbit that sneaks through the +fence, or to the hare that leaps it! Woe to the red fox that litters in +the pinetum, or to the birds that make nests in the shrubberies! Woe to +the otter that takes license to fish in the ponds at the bottom of the +pleasaunce! Woe to the blackbirds that strip the rowan-tree of its +berries just when autumn visitors are expected! Woe to the finches that +nip the buds off the fruit-trees in the hard spring frost, presuming +upon David's plea for sacrilege! Death, instant or prolonged, or dear +life purchased at the price of a torn limb, for the silly things that +dare to stray where the woodland liberties are forbidden to either plant +or animal! + +So much for the results of man's manipulation of the universe in the way +of making ornamental grounds! And the sketch here given applies equally +to the new style or to the old, to the garden after Loudon or to the +garden after Bacon; the destiny of things is equally interfered with to +meet the requirements of the one or the other; the styles are equally +artificial, equally remorseless to primal Nature. + +But one may go farther, and ask: What wonder at the outcry of the modern +Nature-lovers against a world so altered from its original self as that +Hawthorne should say of England in general that here "the wildest things +are more than half tame? The trees, for instance, whether in hedgerow, +park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are +never ragged; there is a certain decorous restraint in the freest +outspread of their branches!" Nay, so far does this mistaken man carry +his diseased appetite for English soil, marred as it is, that he shall +write: "To us Americans there is a kind of sanctity even in an English +turnip-field, when we think how long that small square of ground has +been known and recognised as a possession, transmitted from father to +son, trodden often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery +by old acquaintance with civilised eyes" ("Our Old Home," p. 75). + +What wonder, I say, that a land that is so hopelessly gardened as +this--a land so sentimentalised and humanised that its very clods, to +the American, are "poesy all ramm'd with life"--shall grate the nerves +of the Hamlets of to-day, who live too much in the sun, whom man +delights not, nor woman neither! + +What a land to live in! when its best landscape painters--men like +Gainsborough or Constable--are so carried away by the influence of +agriculture upon landscape, so lost to the superiority of wild solitude, +that they will plainly tell you that they like the fields the farmers +work in, and the work they do in them; preferring Nature that was +modified by man, painting a well-cultivated country with villages and +mills and church-steeples seen over hedges and between trees![48] + +[Footnote 48: See P. G. Hamerton's "Sylvan Year," p. 112.] + +What a land to live in! when even Nature's wild children of field and +forest hug their chains--preserve their old ways and habits up to the +very frontier-line of civilisation. For here is Jefferies (who ought to +know) writing thus: "Modern progress, except where it has exterminated +them, has scarcely touched the habits of bird or animal; so almost up to +the very houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns to her +old haunts. If we go a few hours' journey only, and then step just +beyond the highway, where the steam ploughing-engine has left the mark +of its wide wheels on the dust, and glance into the hedgerow, the copse, +or stream, there are Nature's children as unrestrained in their wild, +free life as they were in the veritable backwoods of primitive +England." + +What wonder that a land where Nature has thus succumbed wholesale to +culture, should exasperate the man who has earned a right to be morbid, +or that he should cry aloud in his despair, "I am tired of civilised +Europe, and I want to see a _wild_ country if I can." Too many are our +spots renowned for beauty, our smiling champaigns of flower and fruit. +For "Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but, alas, if times be +not fair!" Hence the comfort of oppressive surroundings over-sadly +tinged, to men who suffer from the mockery of a place that is too +smiling! Hence the glory of a waste like Egdon to Mr Hardy! ("The Return +of the Native," pp. 4, 5). For Egdon Heath, "Haggard Egdon appealed to a +subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion than +that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair. +Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty +is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a +gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and +closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to +our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually +arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain +will be all of Nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of +the more thinking of mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, +spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of +South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed +unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand-dunes of Scheveningen." + +I admit that it is strange that time should hold in reserve such +revenges as this ascetic writing denotes--strange that man should find +beauty irksome, and that he should feel blasted with the very ecstasy +himself has built up in a garden! strange this sudden recoil of the +smooth son of culture from the extreme of Art, to the extreme of Nature! +Stranger still that the "Yes" and "No" of the _Ideal_ Hyde and the +_Real_ Jekyll should consist in the same bosom, and that a man shall be, +as it were, a prey to contrary maladies at one and the same time! Yet we +have found this in Bacon--prince of fine gardeners, who with all his +seeming content with the heroic pleasaunce that he has made, shall still +betray a sneaking fondness for the maiden charms of Bohemia outside. +Earthly Paradise is fine and fit, but there must needs be "mounts of +some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high to +look abroad in the fields"--there must be "a window open, to fly out at, +a secret way to retire by." Nay, after all, what are to him the charms +that inspire his rhapsody of words--the things that princes add for +state and magnificence! They are Delilah's charms, and "but nothing to +the true pleasure of a garden!" + +"Our gardens in Paris," says Joubert, "smell musty; I do not like these +ever-green trees. There is something of blackness in their greenery, of +coldness in their shade. Besides, since they neither lose anything, nor +have anything to fear, they seem to me unfeeling, and hence have little +interest for me.... Those irregular gardens, which we call English +gardens, require a labyrinth for a dwelling." + +"I hate those trees that never lose their foliage" (says Landor); "they +seem to have no sympathy with Nature; winter and summer are alike to +them." Says Thomson, + + ... "For loveliness + Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, + But it is when unadorned adorn'd the most." + +Or Cowley's + + "My garden painted o'er + With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, + Horace might envy in his Sabine field." + +Or Addison: "I have often looked upon it as a piece of happiness that I +have never fallen into any of these fantastical tastes, nor esteemed +anything the more for its being uncommon and hard to be met with. For +this reason I look upon the whole country in spring-time as a spacious +garden, and make as many visits to a spot of daisies, or a bank of +violets, as a florist does to his borders or parterres. There is not a +bush in blossom within a mile of me which I am not acquainted with, nor +scarce a daffodil or cowslip that withers away in my neighbourhood +without my missing it." Or Rousseau: "I can imagine, said I to them, a +rich man from Paris or London, who should be master of this house, +bringing with him an expensive architect to spoil Nature. With what +disdain would he enter this simple and mean place! With what contempt +would he have all these tatters uprooted! What fine avenues he would +open out! What beautiful alleys he would have pierced! What fine +goose-feet, what fine trees like parasols and fans! What finely fretted +trellises! What beautifully-drawn yew hedges, finely squared and +rounded! What fine bowling-greens of fine English turf, rounded, +squared, sloped, ovaled; what fine yews carved into dragons, pagodas, +marmosets, every kind of monster! With what fine bronze vases, what fine +stone-founts he would adorn his garden! When all that is carried out, +said M. De Wolmar, he will have made a very fine place, which one will +scarcely enter, and will always be anxious to leave to seek the +country." + +Or Gautier, upon Nature's wild growths: "You will find in her domain a +thousand exquisitely pretty little corners into which man seldom or +never penetrates. There, from every constraint, she gives herself up to +that delightful extravagance of dishevelled plants, of glowing flowers +and wild vegetation--everything that germinates, flowers, and casts its +seeds, instinct with an eager vitality, to the wind, whose mission it is +to disperse them broadcast with an unsparing hand.... And over the +rain-washed gate, bare of paint, and having no trace of that green +colour beloved by Rousseau, we should have written this inscription in +black letters, stonelike in shape, and threatening in aspect: + + 'GARDENERS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ENTERING HERE.' + +"Such a whim--very difficult for one to realise who is so deeply +incrusted with civilisation, where the least originality is taxed as +folly--is continually indulged in by Nature, who laughs at the judgment +of fools." + +Or Thoreau--hero of the Walden shanty, with his open-air gospel--all +Nature for the asking--to whom a garden is but Nature debauched, and all +Art a sin: "There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning towards +wildness.... We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn's +'Sylva,' 'Acetarium,' and 'Kalendarium Hortense,' but they imply a +relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants +the vigour and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.... It is true there +are the innocent pleasures of country-life, and it is sometimes pleasant +to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their +season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter +retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its +_parterres_ elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by +the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as +berries. We should not be always soothing and training Nature.... The +Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the +greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her +midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar +and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble and +cleanly in the former's distance.... There are other savager, and more +primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white +man's poetry." + +To sum up the whole matter, this unmitigated hostility of the cultured +man (with Jacob's smooth hands and Esau's wild blood) to the amenities +of civilised life, brings us back to the point from whence we started at +the commencement of this chapter. While men are what they are, Art is +not all. Man has Viking passions as well as Eden instincts. Man is of +mixed blood, whose sympathies are not so much divided as double. And all +of man asks for all of Nature, and is not content with less. To the +over-civilised man who is under a cloud, the old contentment with +orthodox beauty must give place to the subtler, scarcer instinct, to +"the more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort +of beauty called charming and fair." Fair effects are only for fair +times. The garden represents to such an one a too careful abstract of +Nature's traits and features that had better not have been epitomised. +The place is to him a kind of fraud--a forgery, so to speak, of Nature's +autograph. It is only the result of man's turning spy or detective upon +the beauties of the outer world. Its perfection is too monotonous; its +grace is too subtle; its geography too bounded; its interest too full of +intention--too much sharpened to a point; its growth is too uniformly +temperate; its imagery too exacting of notice. These prim and trim +things remind him of captive princes of the wood, brightly attired only +that they may give romantic interest to the garden--these tame birds +with clipped wings, of distraught aspect and dreamy tread--these docile +animals with their limp legs and vacant stare, may contribute to the +scenic pomp of the place, but it is at the expense of their native +instincts and the joyous _abandon_ of woodland life. If this be the +outcome of your boasted editing of Nature, give us dead Nature +untranslated. If this be what comes of your idealisation of the raw +materials of Nature--of the transference of your own emotions to the +simple, unsophisticated things of the common earth, let us rather have +Nature's unspoilt self--"God's Art," as Plato calls Nature--where + + "Visions, as prophetic eyes avow, + Hang on each leaf, and cling to each bough." + + * * * * * + + "But stay, here come the gardeners!" + + (_Enter a gardener and two servants!_)--_King Richard II._ + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +IN PRAISE OF BOTH. + + "In small proportions we just beauties see, + And in short measures life may perfect be."--BEN JONSON. + + "The Common all men have."--GEORGE HERBERT. + + +What shall we say, then, to the two conflicting views of garden-craft +referred to in my last chapter, wherein I take the modern position, +namely, that the love of Art in a garden, and the love of wild things in +Nature's large estate, cannot co-exist in the same breast? Is the +position true or false? + +To see the matter in its full bearings I must fetch back a little, and +recall what was said in a former chapter (p. 85) upon the differing +attitudes towards Nature taken by the earlier and later schools of +gardening. There is, I said, no trace in the writings, or in the +gardening, of the earlier traditional school, of that mawkish sentiment +about Nature, that condescending tenderness for her primal shapes, that +has nursed the scruples, and embarrassed the efforts of the +"landscape-gardener" from Kent's and Brown's days to now. + +The older gardener had no half-and-half methods; he made no pretence of +Nature-worship, nursed no scruples that could hinder the expression of +his own mind about Nature, or check him from fathoming all her +possibilities. Yet with all his seeming unscrupulousness the old +gardener does not close his eyes or his heart to Nature at large, but +whether in the garden sanctuary or out of it, he maintains equally +tender relations towards her. + +But the scruples of the earlier phase of the landscape school, about +tampering with Nature by way of attaining Art effects, are as water unto +wine compared with what is taught by men of the same school now-a-days. +We have now to reckon with an altogether deeper stratum of antipathy to +garden-craft than was reached by the followers of Brown. We have not now +to haggle with the quidnuncs over the less or more of Art permissible in +a garden, but to fight out the question whether civilisation shall have +any garden at all. Away with this "white man's poetry!" The wild +Indian's "intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the +greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her +midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar +and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble and +cleanly in the former's distance." "Alas!" says Newman, "what are we +doing all through life, both as a necessity and a duty, but unlearning +the world's poetry, and attaining to its prose?" + +One does not fear, however, that the English people will part lightly +with their land's old poetry, however seductive the emotion which we are +told "prefers the oppression of surroundings over-sadly tinged, and +solitudes that have a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities to +the old-fashioned sort of beauty called charming and fair." + +The lesson we have to learn is the falsehood of extremes. The point we +have to master is, that in the prodigality of "God's Plenty" many sorts +of beauty are ours, and nothing shall be scorned. God's creation has a +broad gamut, a vast range, to meet our many moods. "There are, it may +be, so many kinds of music in the world, and none of them is without +signification." + + "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty." + +There is nothing contradictory in the variety and multiformity of +Nature, whether loose and at large in Nature's unmapped geography, or +garnered and assorted and heightened by man's artistry in the small +proportions of a perfect garden. Man, we said, is of mixed blood, whose +sympathies are not so much divided as double, and each sympathy shall +have free play. My inborn Eden instincts draw me to the bloom and wonder +of the world; my Viking blood drives me to the snap and enthusiasm of +anarchic forms, the colossal images, the swarthy monotony, the sombre +aspects of Nature in the wild. "Yet all is beauty." + +Thus much by way of preamble. And now, after repeating that the gardener +of the old formality, however sternly he discipline wild Nature for the +purposes of beauty, is none the less capable of loving and of holding +friendly commerce with the things that grew outside his garden hedge, +let me bring upon my page a modern of moderns, who, by the wide range of +his sympathies, recalls the giants of a healthier day, and redeems a +generation of lopsided folk abnormally developed in one direction. + +And the poet Wordsworth, self-drawn in his own works, or depicted by his +friends, is one of the old stock of sane, sound-hearted Englishmen, who +can be equally susceptible to the _inward_ beauties of man's created +brain-world, and the _outward_ beauties of unkempt Nature. So the +combination we plead for is not impossible! The two tastes are not +irreconcilable! Blessed be both! + +We may trust Wordsworth implicitly as an authority upon Nature. No one +questions his knowledge of wild woodland lore. There is no one of +ancient or of modern times who in his outward mien, his words, his +habits, carries more indisputable proof of the prophet's ordination than +the man who spent a long noviciate in his native mountain solitudes. +There is no one so fully entitled, or so well able to speak of and for +her, as he who knows her language to the faintest whisper, who spent his +days at her feet, who pored over her lineaments under every change of +expression, who in his writings drew upon the secret honey of the beauty +and harmony of the world, telling, to use his own swinging phrases, of +"the joy and happiness of loving creatures, of men and children, of +birds and beasts, of hills and streams, and trees and flowers; with the +changes of night and day, evening and morning, summer and winter; and +all their unwearied actions and energies." + +Of all Nature's consecrated children, he is the prince of the +apostolate; he is, so to speak, the beloved disciple of them all, whose +exalted personal love admits him to the right to lean upon her breast, +to hear her heart-beats, to catch knowledge there that had been kept +secret since the world began. None so familiar with pastoral life in its +varied time-fulness, sweet or stern, glad or grim, pathetic or sublime, +as he who carries in his mind the echoes of the passion of the storm, +the moan of the passing wind with its beat upon the bald mountain-crag, +the sighing of the dry sedge, the lunge of mighty waters, the tones of +waterfalls, the inland sounds of caves and trees, the plaintive spirit +of the solitude. There are none who have pondered so deeply over "the +blended holiness of earth and sky," the gesture of the wind and cloud, +the silence of the hills; none so free to fraternise with things bold or +obscure, great or small, as he who told alike of the love and infinite +longings of Margaret, of the fresh joy of + + "The blooming girl whose hair was wet + With points of morning dew," + +of the lonely star, the solitary raven, the pliant hare-bell, swinging +in the breeze, the meadows and the lower ground, and all the sweetness +of a common dawn. + +Thus did Wordsworth enter into the soul of things and sing of them + + "In a music sweeter than their own." + +Nay, says Arnold, "It might seem that Nature not only gave him the +matter of his poem, but wrote his poem for him" ("Essays in Criticism," +p. 155). + +So much for Wordsworth upon Nature out of doors; now let us hear him +upon Art in a garden, of which he was fully entitled to speak, and we +shall see that the man is no less the poet of idealism upon his own +ground, than the poet of actuality in the woodland world. + +Writing to his friend Sir Geo. Beaumont,[49] with all the outspokenness +of friendship and the simplicity of a candid mind, he thus delivers +himself upon the Art of Gardening: "Laying out grounds, as it is called, +may be considered as a Liberal Art, in some sort like poetry and +painting, and its object is, or ought to be, to move the affections +under the control of good sense; that is, those of the best and wisest; +but, _speaking with more precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the +affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauties of +Nature, who have the most valuable feelings, that is, the most +permanent, the most independent, the most ennobling with Nature and +human life_." + +[Footnote 49: See Myres' "Wordsworth," English Men of Letters Series, p. +67.] + +Hearken to Nature's own high priest, turned laureate of the garden! How +can this thing be? Here is the man whose days had been spent at Nature's +feet, whose life's business seemed to be this only, that he should extol +her, interpret her, sing of her, lift her as high in man's esteem as +fine utterance can affect the human soul. Yet when he has done all, +said all that inspired imagination can say in her praise, in what seems +an outburst of disloyalty to his old mistress, he deliberately takes the +crown himself had woven from off the head of Nature and places it on the +brows of Art in a garden! + +Not Bacon himself could write with more discernment or with more fervour +of garden-craft than this, and the pronouncement gains further +significance as being the deliberately expressed opinion of a great +poet, and him the leader of the modern School of Naturalists. And that +these two men, separated not merely by two centuries of time, but by the +revolutionary influences which coloured them, should find common ground +and shake hands in a garden, is strange indeed! Both men loved Nature. +Bacon, as Dean Church remarks,[50] had a "keen delight in Nature, in the +beauty and scents of flowers, in the charm of open-air life;" but his +regard for Nature's beauties was not so ardent, his knowledge of her +works and ways not so intimate or so scientifically verified, his senses +not so sympathetically allured as Wordsworth's; he had not the same +prophet's vision that could see into the life of things, and find +thoughts there "that do often lie too deep for tears." That special +sense Wordsworth himself fathered. + +[Footnote 50: "Bacon," English Men of Letters Series, R. W. Church.] + +Points like these add weight to Wordsworth's testimony of the high rank +of gardening, and we do well to note that the wreath that the modern man +brings for Art in a garden is not only greener and fresher than the +garland of the other, but it was gathered on loftier heights; it means +more, it implies a more emphatic homage. + +And Wordsworth had not that superficial knowledge of gardening which no +gentleman's head should be without. He knew it as a craftsman knows the +niceties of his craft. "More than one seat in the lake-country," says Mr +Myres ("Wordsworth," p. 68), "among them one home of pre-eminent beauty, +have owed to Wordsworth no small part of their ordered charm." + +Of Wordsworth's own garden, one writes: "I know that thirty years ago +that which struck me most at Rydal Mount, and which appeared to me its +greatest charm, was the union of the garden and the wilderness. You +passed almost imperceptibly from the trim parterre to the noble wood, +and from the narrow, green vista to that wide sweep of lake and mountain +which made up one of the finest landscapes in England. Nor could you +doubt that this unusual combination was largely the result of the poet's +own care and arrangement. _He had the faculty for such work._" + +Here one may well leave the matter without further labouring, content to +have proved by the example of a four-square, sane genius, that those +instincts of ours which seem to pull contrary ways--Art-wards or +Nature-wards--and to drive our lopsided selves to the falsehood of +extremes, are, after all, not incompatible. The field, the waste, the +moor, the mountain, the trim garden with its parterres and terraces, +are one Nature. These things breathe one breath, they sing one music, +they share one heart between them; the difference between the dressed +and the undressed is only superficial. The art of gardening is not +intended to supersede Nature, but only "to assist Nature in moving the +affections of those who have the deepest perceptions of the beauties of +Nature, who have the most valuable feelings, ... the most ennobling with +Nature and human life." + +One need not, if Wordsworth's example prove anything, be less the child +of the present (but rather the more) because one can both appreciate the +realities of rude Nature, and that deliberately-contrived, purpose-made, +piece of human handicraft, a well-equipped garden. One need not be less +susceptible to the black forebodings of this contention-tost, modern +world, nor need one's ear be less alert to Nature's correspondence to + + "The still, sad music of humanity," + +because one experiences, with old Mountaine, "a jucunditie of minde" in +a fair garden. There is an unerring rightness both in rude Nature and in +garden grace, in the chartered liberty of the one, and the unchartered +freedom of unadjusted things in the other. Blessed be both! + +It is worth something to have mastered truth, which, however simple and +elementary it seem, is really vital to the proper understanding of the +relation of Art to Nature. It helps one to appraise at their proper +value the denunciations of the disciples of Kent and Brown against Art +in a garden, and to see, on the other hand, why Bacon and the Early +School of gardeners loved Nature in the wild state no less than in a +garden. It dispels any lingering hesitation we may have as to the amount +of Art a garden may receive in defiance of Dryasdust "codes of taste." +It explains what your artist-gardener friend meant when he said that he +had as much sympathy with, and felt as much interest in, the moving +drama of Nature going on on this as on that side of his garden-hedge, +and how he could pass from the rough theme outside to the ordered music +inside, from the uncertain windings in the coppice-glade to the pleached +alley of the garden, without sense of disparagement to the one or the +other. It explains why it is that nothing in Nature goes unobserved of +him; how you shall call to see him and hunt the garden over, and at last +find him idling along the bridle-path in the plantation, his fist full +of flowers, his mind set on Nature's affairs, his ear in such unison +with local sounds that he shall tell you the dominant tone of the wind +in the tree-tops. Or he is in the covert's tangle enjoying + + "Simple Nature's breathing life," + +surprising the thorn veiled in blossom, revelling in the wealth of +boundless life there, in the variety of plant-form, the palpitating +lights, the melody of nesting birds, the common joy and sweet assurance +of things. + + "Society is all but rude + To this delicious solitude." + +Or it may be he is on the breezy waste, lying full length among the +heather, watching the rabbits' gambols, or the floating thistle-down +with its hint of unseen life in the air, or sauntering by the stream in +the lower meadows, learning afresh the glory of weed life in the lush +magnificence of the great docks, the red sorrel, the willow-herb, the +purple thistles, and the gay battalions of fox-gloves thrown out in +skirmishing order, that swarm on each eminence and hedgerow. Or you may +meet him hastening home for the evening view from the orchard-terrace, +to see the solemn close of day, and the last gleam of sunshine fading +over the hill. + +It is worth something, I say, to win clear hold of the fact that Nature +in a garden and Nature in the wild are at unity; that they have each +their place in the economy of human life, and that each should have its +share in man's affections. The true gardener is in touch with both. He +knows where this excels or falls behind the other, and because he knows +the range of each, he fears no comparison between them. He can be +eloquent upon the charms of a garden, its stimulus for the tired eye and +mind, the harmony that resides in the proportions of its lines and +masses, the gladness of its colour, the delight of its frankly +decorative arrangement, the sense of rest that comes of its symmetry and +repeated patterns. He will tell you that for halcyon days, when life's +wheels run smooth, and the sun shines, even for life's average days, +there is nothing so cheery, nothing so blithely companionable, nothing +that can give such a sense of household warmth to your home as a +pleasant garden. And yet none will be more ready to warn you of the +limits of a garden's charms, of its sheer impotence to yield +satisfaction at either end of the scale of human joy or sorrow. + +And so it is. Let but the mist of melancholy descend upon you, let but +the pessimistic distress to which we moderns are all prone penetrate +your mind, let you be the prey of undermining sorrow, or lie under the +shadow of bereavement, and it is not to the garden that you will go for +Nature's comfort. The chalices of its flowers store not the dew that +shall cool your brow. Nay, at times like these the garden poses as a +kind of lovely foe, to mock you with its polite reticence, its look of +unwavering complacency, its gentle ecstasy. Then the ear refuses the +soft and intimate garden-melodies, and asks instead for the rough +unrehearsed music of Nature in the wild, the jar and jangle of winds and +tides, the challenge of discords, + + "The conflict and the sounds that live in darkness," + +the wild rhetoric of the night upon some "haggard Egdon," or along the +steep wild cliffs when the storm is up, and the deeps are troubled, and +the earth throbs and throbs again with the violence of the waves that +break and bellow in the caves beneath your feet; and then it perhaps +shall cross your mind to set this brief moment of your despair against +the unavailing passion of tides that for ten thousand years and more +have hurled themselves against this heedless shore. Or you shall find +some sequestered corner of the land that keeps its scars of old-world +turmoil, the symptoms of the hustle of primeval days, the shock of grim +shapes, long ago put to sleep beneath a coverlet of sweet-scented turf; +and the unspoiled grandeur of the scene will prick and arouse your +dulled senses, while its peaceful face will assure you that, as it was +with the troubled masonry of the hills in the morning of the world, even +so shall it be with you--time shall tranquillise and at length cancel +all your woes. Or again, + + "Should life be dull, and spirits low + 'Twill soothe us in our sorrow + That earth has something yet to show, + The bonny holms of Yarrow." + +Better tonic, one thinks, for the over-wrought brain than the soft +glamour of the well-swept lawn, the clipt shrubs, the focussed beauty of +dotted specimens, the ordered disorder of wriggling paths and sprawling +flower-beds of strange device, the ransacked wardrobe of the gardener's +stock of gay bedding-plants, or other of the permitted charms of a +modern garden; better than these is the stir and enthusiasm of Nature's +broad estate, the boulder-tossed moor, where the hare runs races in her +mirth, and the lark has a special song for your ear; or the high +transport of hours of indolence spent basking in the bed of purple +heather, your nostrils filled with gladsome air and the scent of thyme, +your eyes following the course of the milk-white clouds that ride with +folded sails in the blue heavens overhead and cast flying shadows on +the uplands, where nothing breaks the silence of the hills but the song +in the air, the tinkle of the sheep-bells, and the murmur of the +moorland bee. + +And the upshot of the matter is this. The master-things for the +enjoyment of life are: health, a balanced mind that will not churlishly +refuse "God's plenty," an eye quick to discern the marvel of beautiful +things, a heart in sympathy with man and beast. Possessing these we may +defy Fortune-- + + "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny: + You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, + You cannot shut the windows of the sky + Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; + You cannot bar my constant feet to trace + The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve: + Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, + And I their toys to the great children leave; + Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave." + + * * * * * + + PRINTED BY + TURNBULL AND SPEARS + EDINBURGH + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Garden-Craft Old and New, by John D. 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Sedding + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Garden-Craft Old and New + +Author: John D. Sedding + +Release Date: February 11, 2012 [EBook #38829] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARDEN-CRAFT OLD AND NEW *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h1>GARDEN-CRAFT<br /> +OLD AND NEW</h1> + +<h2>BY THE LATE<br /> +JOHN D. SEDDING</h2> + +<h3>WITH MEMORIAL NOTICE BY THE<br /> +REV. E. F. RUSSELL</h3> + +<p class="center"><i>WITH NINE ILLUSTRATIONS</i></p> + +<p class="center">NEW EDITION</p> + +<p class="center">LONDON<br /> +KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br /> +PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD<br /> +1895</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a> +<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>A GARDEN ENCLOSED.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table summary="contents"> +<tr><td align="right">CHAP.</td><td> </td><td align="right"> PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I"> <span class="smcap">The Theory of a Garden</span></a></td><td align="right">1</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II"> <span class="smcap">Art in a Garden</span></a></td><td align="right">28</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III"> <span class="smcap">Historical and Comparative Sketch</span></a></td><td align="right">41</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"> <span class="smcap">The Stiff Garden</span></a></td><td align="right">70</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V"> <span class="smcap">The "Landscape-Garden"</span></a></td><td align="right">98</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"> <span class="smcap">The Technics of Gardening</span></a></td><td align="right">133</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"> <span class="smcap">The Technics of Gardening</span> (<i>continued</i>)</a></td><td align="right">153</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"></td><td> </td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"></td><td>ON THE OTHER SIDE.</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"> <span class="smcap">A Plea for Savagery</span></a></td><td align="right">183</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"> <span class="smcap">In Praise of Both</span></a></td><td align="right">202</td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2> + +<table summary="illustrations"> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus1"><span class="smcap">A Garden Enclosed</span> </a></td><td align="right"><i>Frontispiece</i></td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus2"><span class="smcap">Plan of Rosary with Sundial</span> </a></td><td align="right">to face p. 156</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus3"><span class="smcap">Plan of Tennis Lawn, Terraces, and Flower +Garden</span></a></td><td align="right">158</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus4"><span class="smcap">General Plan of the Pleasaunce, Villa +Albani, Rome</span></a></td><td align="right">160</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus5"><span class="smcap">Plan showing Arrangement of Sunk Flower +Garden, Yew Walk, and Tennis Court</span></a></td><td align="right">164</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus6"><span class="smcap">Plan of Sunk Flower Garden and Yew +Hedges</span></a></td><td align="right">166</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus7"><span class="smcap">Plan Showing Arrangement of Fountain, +Yew Walk, and Flower Beds for a +Large Garden</span></a></td><td align="right">180</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus8"><span class="smcap">Perspective View of Garden in the preceding +Plan</span></a></td><td align="right">180</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#illus9"><span class="smcap">Perspective View of a Design for a Garden, +with Clipped Yew Hedges and Flower +Beds</span></a></td><td align="right">182</td></tr> + +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + + +<p>"<i>What am I to say for my book?" asks Mr Stevenson in the Preface to "An +Inland Voyage." "Caleb and Joshua brought back from Palestine a +formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; +and, for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a +definition to any quantity of fruit.</i>"</p> + +<p><i>As this apology is so uncalled for in the case of this fruitful little +volume, I would venture to purloin it, and apply it where it is wholly +suitable. Here, the critic will say, is an architect who makes gardens +for the houses he builds, writing upon his proper craft, pandering to +that popular preference for a definition of which Mr Stevenson speaks, +by offering descriptions of what he thinks a fine garden should be, +instead of useful figured plans of its beauties!</i></p> + +<p><i>And yet, to tell truth, it is more my subject than myself that is to +blame if my book be unpractical. Once upon a time complete in itself, as +a brief treatise upon the technics of gardening delivered to my brethren +of the Art-worker's Guild a year ago, the essay had no sooner arrived +with me at home, than it fell to pieces, lost gravity and compactness, +and became a garden-plaything—a sort of</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> <i>gardener's "open letter," to +take loose pages as fancies occurred. So have these errant thoughts, +jotted down in the broken leisure of a busy life, grown solid unawares +and expanded into a would-be-serious contribution to garden-literature.</i></p> + +<p><i>Following upon the original lines of the Essay on the For and Against +of Modern Gardening, I became the more confirmed as to the general +rightness of the old ways of applying Art, and of interpreting Nature +the more I studied old gardens and the point of view of their makers; +until I now appear as advocate of old types of design, which, I am +persuaded, are more consonant with the traditions of English life, and +more suitable to an English homestead than some now in vogue.</i></p> + +<p><i>The old-fashioned garden, whatever its failings in the eyes of the +modern landscape-gardener (great is the poverty of his invention), +represents one of the pleasures of England, one of the charms of that +quiet beautiful life of bygone times that I, for one, would fain see +revived. And judged even as pieces of handicraft, apart from their +poetic interest, these gardens are worthy of careful study. They embody +ideas of ancient worth; they evidence fine aims and heroic efforts; they +exemplify traditions that are the net result of a long probation. Better +still, they render into tangible shapes old moods of mind that English +landscape has inspired; they testify to old devotion to the scenery of +our native land, and illustrate old attempts to idealise its pleasant +traits.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Because the old gardens are what they are—beautiful yesterday, +beautiful to-day, and beautiful always—we do well to turn to them, not +to copy their exact lines, nor to limit ourselves to the range of their +ornament and effects, but to glean hints for our garden-enterprise +to-day, to drink of their spirit, to gain impulsion from them. As often +as not, the forgotten field proves the richest of pastures.</i></p> + +<p class="right"><i>J. D. S.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Croft, West Wickham, Kent</span>,<br /> + <i>Oct. 8, 1890</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> +<h2>MEMOIR.</h2> + + +<p>The Manuscript of this book was placed complete in the hands of his +publishers by John Sedding. He did not live to see its production.</p> + +<p>At the wish of his family and friends, I have, with help from others, +set down some memories and impressions of my friend.</p> + +<p>My acquaintance with John Sedding dates from the year 1875. He was then +37 years of age, and had been practising as an architect almost +exclusively in the South-West of England. The foundations of this +practice were laid by his equally talented brother, Edmund Sedding, who, +like himself, had received his training in the office of Mr Street. +Edmund died in 1868, and John took up the business, but his clients were +so few, and the prospect of an increase in their number so little +encouraging, that he left Bristol and came to London, and here I first +met him. He had just taken a house in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, +and the house served him on starting both for home and office.</p> + +<p>The first years in London proved no exception to the rule of first +years, they were more or less a time of struggle and anxiety. John +Sedding's happy, buoyant nature, his joy in his art, and invincible +faith in his mission, did much to carry him through all difficulties. +But both at this time, and all through his life, he owed much, very +much, to the brave hopefulness and wise love of his wife.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> Rose Sedding, +a daughter of Canon Tinling, of Gloucester, lives in the memory of those +who knew her as an impersonation of singular spiritual beauty and +sweetness. Gentle and refined, sensitive and sympathetic to an unusual +degree, there was no lack in her of the sterner stuff of +character—force, courage, and endurance. John Sedding leaned upon his +wife; indeed, I cannot think of him without her, or guess how much of +his success is due to what she was to him. Two days before his death he +said to me, "I have to thank God for the happiest of homes, and the +sweetest of wives."</p> + +<p>Many will remember with gratitude the little home in Charlotte Street, +as the scene of some of the pleasantest and most refreshing hours they +have ever known. John Sedding had the gift of attracting young men, +artists and others, to himself, and of entering speedily into the +friendliest relations with them. He met them with such taking frankness, +such unaffected warmth of welcome, that they surrendered to him at once, +and were at once at ease with him and happy.</p> + +<p>On Sundays, when the religious duties of the day were over, he was wont +to gather a certain number of these young fellows to spend the evening +at his house. No one of those who were privileged to be of the party can +forget the charming hospitality of these evenings. The apparatus was so +simple, the result so delightful; an entire absence of display, and yet +no element of perfect entertainment wanting. On these occasions, when +supper was over, Mrs Sedding usually played for us with great +discernment and feeling the difficult music of Beethoven, Grieg, Chopin, +and others, and sometimes she sang. More than one friendship among their +guests grew out of these happy evenings.</p> + +<p>In course of time the increase of his family and the concurrent increase +of his practice obliged him to remove, first his office to Oxford +Street, and later on his home<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> to the larger, purer air of a country +house in the little village of West Wickham, Kent. This house he +continued to occupy until his death. Work of all kinds now began to flow +in upon him, not rapidly, but by steady increase. His rich faculty of +invention, his wide knowledge, his skill in the manipulation of natural +forms, the fine quality of his taste, were becoming more and more known. +He produced in large numbers designs for wall-papers, for decoration, +and for embroidery. These designs were never repetitions of old +examples, nor were they a réchauffé of his own previous work. Something +of his soul he put into all that he undertook, hence his work was never +commonplace, and scarcely needed signature to be known as his, so +unmistakably did it bear his stamp, the "marque de fabrique," of his +individuality.</p> + +<p>I have known few men so well able as he to press flowers into all manner +of decorative service, in metal, wood, stone or panel, and in +needlework. He understood them, and could handle them with perfect ease +and freedom, each flower in his design seeming to fall naturally into +its appointed place. Without transgressing the natural limits of the +material employed, he yet never failed to give to each its own essential +characteristics, its gesture, and its style. Flowers were indeed +passionately loved, and most reverently, patiently studied by him. He +would spend many hours out of his summer holiday in making careful +studies of a single plant, or spray of foliage, painting them, as Mr +Ruskin had taught him, in siena and white, or in violet-carmine and +white. Leaves and flowers were, in fact, almost his only school of +decorative design.</p> + +<p>This is not the place to attempt any formal exposition of John Sedding's +views on Art and the aims of Art. They can be found distinctly stated +and amply, often brilliantly, illustrated in his Lectures and Addresses, +of which some have appeared in the architectural papers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> and some are +still in manuscript.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But short of this formal statement, it may prove +not uninteresting to note some characters of his work which impressed +us.</p> + +<p>Following no systematic order, we note first his profound sympathy with +ancient work, and with ancient work of all periods that might be called +periods of living Art. He never lost an opportunity of visiting and +intently studying ancient buildings, sketching them, and measuring them +with extraordinary care, minuteness, and patience. "On one occasion," +writes Mr Lethaby, "when we were hurried he said, 'We cannot go, it is +life to us.'" A long array of sketch-books, crowded with studies and +memoranda, remains to bear witness to his industry. In spite of this +extensive knowledge, and copious record of old work, he never literally +reproduced it. The unacknowledged plagiarisms of Art were in his +judgment as dishonest as plagiarisms in literature, and as hopelessly +dead. "He used old forms," writes Mr Longden, "in a plastic way, and +moulded them to his requirements, never exactly reproducing the old +work, which he loved to draw and study, but making it his starting-point +for new developments. This caused great difference of opinion as to the +merit of his work, very able and skilful judges who look at style from +the traditional point of view being displeased by his designs, while +others who may be said to partake more of the movement of the time, +admired his work."</p> + +<p>His latest and most important work, the Church of the Holy Trinity, +Sloane Street, is a case in point. It has drawn out the most completely +opposed judgments from by no means incompetent men; denounced by some, +it has won the warmest praise from others, as, for instance, from two +men who stand in the very front rank of those who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> excel, William Morris +has said of it, "It is on the whole the best modern interior of a town +church"; and the eminent painter, E. Burnes-Jones, writing to John +Sedding, writes: "I cannot tell you how I admire it, and how I longed to +be at it." Speaking further of this sympathy with old work, Mr Longden, +who knew him intimately, and worked much with him, writes, "The rather +rude character of the Cornish granite work in the churches did not repel +him, indeed, he said he loved it, because he understood it. He has made +additions to churches in Cornwall, such as it may well be imagined the +old Cornishmen would have done, yet with an indescribable touch of +modernness about them. He also felt at home with the peculiar character +of the Devonshire work, and some of his last work is in village churches +where he has made a rather ordinary church quite beautiful and +interesting, by repairing and extending old wooden screens, putting in +wooden seats, with an endless variety of symbolic designs, marble font +and floor, fine metal work, simple but well-designed stained glass, good +painting in a reredos, all, as must be with an artist, adding to the +general effect, and falling into place in that general effect, while +each part is found beautiful and interesting, if examined in detail."</p> + +<p>"The rich Somersetshire work, where the fine stone lends itself to +elaborate carving, was very sympathetic to Sedding, and he has added to +and repaired many churches in that county, always taking the fine points +in the old work and bringing them out by his own additions, whether in +the interior or the exterior, seizing upon any peculiarity of site or +position to show the building to the best advantage, and never +forgetting the use of a church, but increasing the convenience of the +arrangements for worship, and emphasizing the sacred character of the +buildings on which he worked."</p> + +<p>In his lectures to Art students, no plea was more often on his lips than +the plea for living Art, as contrasted with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> "shop" Art, or mere +antiquarianism. The artist is the product of his own time and of his own +country, his nature comes to him out of the past, and is nourished in +part upon the past, but he lives in the present, and of the present, +sharing its spirit and its culture. John Sedding had great faith in the +existence of this art gift, as living and active in his own time, he +recognised it reverently and humbly in himself, and looked for it and +hailed it with joy and generous appreciation in others. Hence the value +he set upon association among Art workers. "Les gens d'esprit," says M. +Taine, speaking of Art in Italy, "n'ont jamais plus d'esprit que +lorsqu'ils sont ensemble. Pour avoir des œuvres d'art il faut d'abord +des artistes, mais aussi des ateliers. Alors il y avait des ateliers, et +en outre les artistes faisaient des corporations. Tous se tenaient, et +dans la grande société, de petites sociétés unissaient étroitement et +librement leurs membres. La familiarité les rapprochait; la rivalité les +aiguillonnait."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>He gave practical effect to these views in the conduct of his own +office, which was as totally unlike the regulation architect's office, +as life is unlike clockwork.</p> + +<p>Here is a charming "interior" from the pen of his able chief assistant +and present successor, Mr H. Wilson:—</p> + +<p>"I shall not readily forget my first impressions of Mr Sedding. I was +introduced to him at one of those delightful meetings of the Art +Workers' Guild, and his kindly reception of me, his outstretched hand, +and the unconscious backward impulses of his head, displaying the +peculiar whiteness of the skin over the prominent temporal and frontal +bones, the playful gleam of his eyes as he welcomed me, are things that +will remain with me as long as memory lasts.</p> + +<p>"Soon after that meeting I entered his office, only to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> find that he was +just as delightful at work as in the world.</p> + +<p>"The peculiar half shy yet eager way in which he rushed into the front +room, with a smile and a nod of recognition for each of us, always +struck me. But until he got to work he always seemed preoccupied, as if +while apparently engaged in earnest discussion of some matter an +under-current of thought was running the while, and as if he were +devising something wherewith to beautify his work even when arranging +business affairs.</p> + +<p>"This certainly must have been the case, for frequently he broke off in +the midst of his talk to turn to a board and sketch out some design, or +to alter a detail he had sketched the day before with a few vigorous +pencil-strokes. This done, he would return to business, only to glance +off again to some other drawing, and to complete what would not <i>come</i> +the day before. In fact he was exactly like a bird hopping from twig to +twig, and from flower to flower, as he hovered over the many drawings +which were his daily work, settling here a form and there a moulding as +the impulse of the moment seized him.</p> + +<p>"And though at times we were puzzled to account for, or to anticipate +his ways, and though the work was often hindered by them, we would not +have had it otherwise.</p> + +<p>"Those 'gentillesses d'oiseaux,' as Hugo says, those little birdy ways, +so charming from their unexpectedness, kept us constantly on the alert, +for we never quite knew what he would do next. It was not his custom to +move in beaten tracks, and his everyday life was as much out of the +common as his inner life. His ways with each of us were marked by an +almost womanly tenderness. He seemed to regard us as his children, and +to have a parent's intuition of our troubles, and of the special needs +of each with reference to artistic development.</p> + +<p>"He would come, and taking possession of our stools<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span> would draw with his +left arm round us, chatting cheerily, and yet erasing, designing +vigorously meanwhile. Then, with his head on one side like a jackdaw +earnestly regarding something which did not quite please him, he would +look at the drawing a moment, and pounce on the paper, rub all his work +out, and begin again. His criticism of his own work was singularly frank +and outspoken even to us. I remember once when there had been a slight +disagreement between us, I wrote to him to explain. Next morning, when +he entered the office, he came straight to the desk where I was working, +quietly put his arm round me, took my free hand with his and pressed it +and myself to him without a word. It was more than enough.</p> + +<p>"He was, however, not one of those who treat all alike. He adapted +himself with singular facility to each one with whom he came in contact; +his insight in this respect was very remarkable, and in consequence he +was loved and admired by the most diverse natures. The expression of his +face was at all times pleasant but strangely varied, like a lake it +revealed every passing breath of emotion in the most wonderful way, +easily ruffled and easily calmed.</p> + +<p>"His eyes were very bright and expressive, with long lashes, the upper +lids large, full, and almost translucent, and his whole face at anything +which pleased him lit up and became truly radiant. At such times his +animation in voice, gesture, and look was quite remarkable, his talk was +full of felicitous phrases, happy hits, and piquant sayings.</p> + +<p>"His was the most childlike nature I have yet seen, taking pleasure in +the simplest things, ever ready for fun, trustful, impulsive, and +joyous, yet easily cast down. His memory for details and things he had +seen and sketched was marvellous, and he could turn to any one of his +many sketches and find a tiny scribble made twenty or thirty years ago, +as easily as if he had made it yesterday.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p> + +<p>"His favourite attitude in the office was with his back to the fireplace +and with his hands behind him, head thrown back, looking at, or rather +through one. He seldom seemed to look at anyone or anything, his glance +always had something of divination in it, and in his sketches, however +slight, the soul of the thing was always seized, and the accidental or +unnecessary details left to others less gifted to concern themselves +with.</p> + +<p>"His love of symbolism was only equalled by his genius for it, old ideas +had new meanings for him, old symbols were invested with deeper +significance and new ones full of grace and beauty discovered. In this +his intense, enthusiastic love of nature and natural things stood him in +good stead, and he used Nature as the old men did, to teach new truths. +For him as well as for all true artists, the universe was the living +visible garment of God, the thin glittering rainbow-coloured veil which +hides the actual from our eyes. He was the living embodiment of all that +an architect should be, he had the sacred fire of enthusiasm within, and +he had the power of communicating that fire to others, so that workmen, +masons, carvers could do, and did lovingly for him, what they would not +or could not do for others. We all felt and still feel that it was his +example and precept that has given us what little true knowledge and +right feeling for Art we may possess, and the pity is there will never +be his like again.</p> + +<p>"He was not one of those who needed to pray 'Lord, keep my memory +green,' though that phrase was often on his lips, as well as another +delightful old epitaph:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Bonys emonge stonys lys ful steyl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quilst the soules wanderis where that God will.'"<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This delightful and assuredly entirely faithful picture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span> is in itself +evidence of the contagion of John Sedding's enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>Beyond the inner circle of his own office, he sought and welcomed the +unfettered co-operation of other artists in his work; in the words of a +young sculptor, "he gave us a chance." He let them say their say instead +of binding them to repeat his own. God had His message to deliver by +them, and he made way that the world might hear it straight from their +lips.</p> + +<p>The same idea of sympathetic association, "fraternité +généreuse—confiance mutuelle—communauté de sympathies et +d'aspirations," has found embodiment in the Art Workers' Guild, a +society in which artists and craftsmen of all the Arts meet and +associate on common ground. John Sedding was one of the original members +of this Guild, and its second Master.</p> + +<p>Of his connection with the Guild the Secretary writes: "No member was +ever more respected, none had more influence, no truer artist existed in +the Guild." And Mr Walter Crane: "His untiring devotion to the Guild +throughout his term of office, and his tact and temper, were beyond +praise."</p> + +<p>It must not be inferred from these facts that John Sedding's sympathies +were only for the world of Art, art-workers, and art-ideals. He shared +to the full the ardour of his Socialist friends, in their aspirations +for that new order of more just distribution of all that makes for the +happiness of men, the coming "city which hath foundations whose builder +and maker is God." He did not share their confidence in their methods, +but he honoured their noble humanity, and followed their movements with +interest and respect, giving what help he could. The condition of the +poor, especially the London poor, touched him to the quick sometimes +with indignation at their wrongs, sometimes with deep compassion and +humbled admiration at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span> pathetic patience with which they bore the +burden of their joyless, suffering lives. His own happy constitution and +experience never led him to adopt the cheap optimism with which so many +of us cheat our conscience, and justify to ourselves our own selfish +inertness. The more ample income of his last years made no difference in +the simple ordering of his household, it did make difference in his +charities. He gave money, and what is better, gave his personal labour +to many works for the good of others, some of which he himself had +inaugurated.</p> + +<p>John Sedding was an artist by a necessity of his nature. God made him +so, and he could not but exercise his gift, but apart from the +satisfaction that comes by doing what we are meant for, it filled him +with thankfulness to have been born to a craft with ends so noble as are +the ends of Art. To give pleasure and to educate are aims good indeed to +be bound by, especially when by education we understand, not +mind-stuffing, but mind-training, in this case the training of faculty +to discern and be moved by the poetry, the spiritual suggestiveness of +common everyday life. This brought his calling into touch with working +folk.</p> + +<p>As a man, John Sedding impressed us all by the singular and beautiful +simplicity and childlikeness of his character, a childlikeness which +never varied, and nothing, not even the popularity and homage which at +last surrounded him, seemed able to spoil it. He never lost his boyish +spontaneity and frankness, the unrestrained brightness of his manners +and address, his boyish love of fun, and hearty, ringing laugh. Mr +Walter Crane speaks of his "indomitable gaiety and spirits which kept +all going, especially in our country outings." "He always led the fun," +writes Mr Lethaby, "at one time at the head of a side at 'tug of war,' +at another, the winner in an 'egg and spoon race.'" His very faults were +the faults of childhood, the impulsiveness, the quick and unreflecting +resentment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span> against wrong, and the vehement denunciation of it. He +trusted his instincts far more than his reason, and on the whole, his +instincts served him right well, yet at times they failed him, as in +truth they fail us all. There were occasions when a little reflection +would have led him to see that his first rapid impressions were at +fault, and so have spared himself and others some pain and +misunderstanding. Let a thing appear to him false, unfair, or cowardly, +he would lower his lance and dash full tilt at it at once, sometimes to +our admiration, sometimes to our amusement when the appearance proved +but a windmill in the mist, sometimes to our dismay when—a rare +case—he mistook friend for foe.</p> + +<p>No picture of John Sedding could be considered at all to represent him +which failed to express the blameless purity of his character and +conduct. I do not think the man lives who ever heard a tainted word from +his lips. There was in him such depth and strength of moral +wholesomeness that he sickened at, and revolted against the unseemly +jest, and still more against the scenes, and experiences of the sensuous +(to use no stronger word) upon which in the minds of some, the artist +must perforce feed his gift. With his whole soul he repudiated the idea +that Art grew only as a flower upon the grave of virtue, and that +artists could, or desired to, lay claim to larger moral licence than +other less imaginative men.</p> + +<p>I have kept till last the best and deepest that was in him, the hidden +root of all he was, the hallowing of all he did. I mean his piety—his +deep, unfeigned piety. In his address at the annual meeting of the +Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, a singularly outspoken and +vigorous exhortation to laymen to keep their practice abreast of their +faith, he used the following words: "In the wild scene of 19th century +work, and thought, and passion, when old snares still have their old +witchery, and new depths of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span> wickedness yawn at our feet, when the world +is so wondrous kind to tired souls, and neuralgic bodies, and itself +pleads for concessions to acknowledged weakness; when unfaith is so like +faith, and the devil freely suffers easy acquiescence in high gospel +truth, and even holds a magnifying-glass that one may better see the +sweetness of the life of the 'Son of Man,' it is well in these days of +sloth, and sin, and doubt, to have one's energies braced by a 'girdle of +God' about one's loins! It is well, I say, for a man to have a circle of +religious exercises that can so hedge him about, so get behind his life, +and wind themselves by long familiarity into his character that they +become part of his everyday existence—bone of his bone."</p> + +<p>Out of his own real knowledge and practice he spoke these words. The +"circle of religious exercise," the girdle of God, had become for him +part of his everyday existence. I can think of no better words to +express the unwavering consistency of his life. It is no part of my duty +to tell in detail what and how much he did, and with what +whole-heartedness he did it.</p> + +<p>Turning to outward things, every associate of John Sedding knew his +enthusiasm for the cause of the Catholic revival in the English Church. +It supplied him with a religion for his whole nature. No trouble seemed +too great on behalf of it, though often his zeal entailed upon him some +material disadvantage. Again and again I have known him give up precious +hours and even days in unremunerated work, to help some struggling +church or mission, or some poor religious community. It was a joy to him +to contribute anything to the beauty of the sanctuary or the solemnity +of its offices. From the year 1878 to 1881 he was sidesman, from 1882 to +1889 churchwarden of St. Alban's, Holborn, doing his work thoroughly, +and with conspicuous kindliness and courtesy. It was one of the thorns +to the rose of his new life in the country that it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span> obliged him to +discontinue this office. For eleven years he played the organ on Sunday +afternoons for a service for young men and maidens, few of whom can +forget the extraordinary life and pathos that he was wont by some magic +to put into his accompaniment to their singing.</p> + +<p>This present year, 1891, opened full of promise for John Sedding. In a +marvellously short time he had come hand over hand into public notice +and public esteem, as a man from whom excellent things were to be +expected,—things interesting, original, and beautiful. Mr Burne Jones +writes: "My information about Sedding's work is very slight,—my +interest in him very great, and my admiration too, from the little I had +seen. I know only the church in Sloane Street, but that was enough to +fill me with the greatest hope about him ... I saw him in all some +half-dozen times—liked him instantly, and felt I knew him intimately, +and was looking forward to perhaps years of collaboration with him."</p> + +<p>Work brought work, as each thing he did revealed, to those who had eyes +to see, the gift that was in him. At Art Congresses and all assemblies +of Art Workers his co-operation was sought and his presence looked for, +especially by the younger men, who hailed him and his words with +enthusiasm. To these gatherings he brought something more and better +than the sententious wisdom, the chill repression which many feel called +upon to administer on the ground of their experience.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> He put of the +fire that was in him into the hearts that heard him, he made them proud +of their cause and of their place in it, and hopeful for its triumph and +their own success. It was a contribution of sunshine and fresh air, and +all that is the complete opposite of routine, red-tape, and the +conventional.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span></p> + +<p>We who have watched his progress have noticed of late a considerable +development in his literary power, a more marked individuality of style, +a swifter and smoother movement, a richer vocabulary, and new skill in +the presentation of his ideas. He was exceedingly happy in his +illustrations of a principle, and his figures were always interesting, +never hackneyed. A certain "bonhomie" in his way of putting things won +willing hearers for his words, which seemed to come to meet us with a +smile and open, outstretched hands, as the dear speaker himself was wont +to do. Something of course of the living qualities of speech are lost +when we can receive it only from the cold black and white of print, +instead of winged and full of human music from the man's own lips. Yet, +in spite of this, unless I am mistaken, readers of this book will not +fail to find in it a good deal to justify my judgment.</p> + +<p>It seems to have taken some of his friends by surprise that John Sedding +should write on Gardens. They knew him the master of many crafts, but +did not count Garden-craft among them. As a matter of fact, it was a +love that appeared late in life, though all along it must have been +within the man, for the instant he had a garden of his own the passion +appeared full grown. Every evening between five and six, save when his +work called him to distant parts, you might have seen him step quickly +out of the train at the little station of West Wickham, run across the +bridge, and greeting and greeted by everybody, swing along the shady +road leading to his house. In his house, first he kissed his wife and +children, and then supposing there was light and the weather fine, his +coat was off and he fell to work at once with spade or trowel in his +garden, absorbed in his plants and flowers, and the pleasant crowding +thoughts that plants and flowers bring.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span></p> + +<p>After supper he assembled his household to say evening prayers with +them. When all had gone to rest he would settle himself in his little +study and write, write, write, until past midnight, sometimes past one, +dashing now and again at a book upon his shelves to verify some one or +other of those quaint and telling bits which are so happily inwoven into +his text. One fruit of these labours is this book on Garden-craft.</p> + +<p>But I have detained the reader long enough. All is by no means told, and +many friends will miss, I doubt not, with disappointment this or that +feature which they knew and loved in him. It cannot be helped. I have +written as I could, not as I would, within the narrow limits which +rightly bound a preface.</p> + +<p>How the end came, how within fourteen days the hand of God took from our +midst the much love, genius, beauty which His hand had given us in the +person of John and Rose Sedding, a few words only must tell.</p> + +<p>On Easter Monday, March 30th, John Sedding spent two hours in London, +giving the last sitting for the bust which was being modelled at the +desire of the Art Workers' Guild. The rest of the day he was busy in his +garden. Next morning he left early for Winsford, in Somersetshire, to +look after the restoration of this and some other churches in the +neighbourhood. Winsford village is ten miles from the nearest railway +station Dulverton; the road follows the beautiful valley of the Exe, +which rising in the moors, descends noisily and rapidly southwards to +the sea. The air is strangely chill in the hollow of this woody valley. +Further, it was March, and March of this memorable year of 1891. Lines +of snow still lay in the ditches, and in white patches on the northern +side of hedgerows. Within a fortnight of this time men and cattle had +perished in the snow-drifts on the higher ground.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span></p> + +<p>Was this valley the valley of death for our friend, or were the seeds of +death already within him? I know not. Next morning, Wednesday, he did +not feel well enough to get up. His kind hostess, and host, the Vicar of +the parish, did all that kindness—kindness made harder and therefore +more kind by ten miles' distance from a railway station—could do. John +sent for his wife, who came at once, with her baby in her arms. On +Saturday at midnight he received his last Communion. The next day he +seemed to brighten and gave us hopes. On Monday there was a change for +the worse, and on Tuesday morning he passed away in perfect peace.</p> + +<p>At the wish of his wife, his grave was prepared at West Wickham. The +Solemn Requiem, by her wish also, was at the church he loved and served +so well, St. Alban's, Holborn. That church has witnessed many striking +scenes, but few more impressive than the great gathering at his funeral. +The lovely children's pall that John Sedding had himself designed and +Rose Sedding had embroidered, covered the coffin, and on the right of it +in a dark mass were gathered his comrades of the Art Workers' Guild.</p> + +<p>The tragedy does not end here. On that day week, at that very same hour +and spot, beneath the same pall, lay the body of his dear and devoted +wife.</p> + +<p>Side by side, near the tall elms of the quiet Kentish churchyard, the +bodies of John and Rose Sedding are sleeping. The spot was in a sense +chosen by Rose Sedding, if we may use the term 'choice' for her simple +wish that it might be where the sun shines and flowers will grow. The +western slope of the little hill was fixed upon, and already the flowers +they loved so well are blooming over them.</p> + +<p>Among the papers of Rose Sedding was found, pencilled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span> in her own +handwriting, the following lines of a 17th century poet:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Tis fit one flesh one house should have,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One tomb, one epitaph, one grave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they that lived and loved either<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should dye, and lye, and sleep together."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p> +How strange that the words should have found in her own case such exact +fulfilment. +</p> + +<p class="right">E. F. RUSSELL.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">St Alban's Clergy House,<br /> + Brooke Street, Holborn.</span><br /> + <i>June 1891.</i></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>GARDEN-CRAFT</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<h3>ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN.</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come hither, come hither, come hither;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here shall he see<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No enemy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But winter and rough weather."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>Some subjects require to be delineated according to their own taste. +Whatever the author's notions about it at starting, the subject somehow +slips out of his grasp and dictates its own method of treatment and +style. The subject of gardening answers to this description: you cannot +treat it in a regulation manner. It is a discursive subject that of +itself breeds laggard humours, inclines you to reverie, and suggests a +discursive style.</p> + +<p>This much in defence of my desultory essay. The subject, in a manner, +drafts itself. Like the garden, it, too, has many aspects, many +side-paths, that open out broken vistas to detach one's interest and +lure from the straight, broad terrace-platform of orderly discourse. At +first sight, perhaps, with the balanced beauty of the thing in front of +you, carefully parcelled out and enclosed, as all proper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> gardens are, +the theme may appear so compact, that all meandering after side-issues +may seem sheer wantonness. As you proceed, however, it becomes apparent +that you may not treat of a garden and disregard the instincts it +prompts, the connection it has with Nature, its place in Art, its office +in the world as a sweetener of human life. True, the garden itself is +hedged in and neatly defined, but behind the garden is the man who made +it; behind the man is the house he has built, which the garden adorns; +and every man has his humours; every house has its own conditions of +plan and site; every garden has its own atmosphere, its own contents, +its own story.</p> + +<p>So now, having in this short preamble discovered something of the rich +variety and many-sidedness of the subject, I proceed to write down three +questions just to try what the yoke of classification may do to keep +one's feet within bounds: (1) What is a garden, and why is it made? (2) +What ornamental treatment is fit and right for a garden? (3) What should +be the relation of the garden to the house?</p> + +<p>Forgive me if, in dealing with the first point, I so soon succumb to the +allurements of my theme, and drop into flowers of speech! To me, then, a +garden is the outward and visible sign of man's innate love of +loveliness. It reveals man on his artistic side. Beauty, it would seem, +has a magnetic charm for him; and the ornamental display of flowers +betokens his bent for, and instinctive homage of beauty. And to say this +of man in one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> grade of life is to say it of all sorts and conditions of +men; and to say it of one garden is to say it of all—whether the garden +be the child of quality or of lowliness; whether it adorn castle, +manor-house, villa, road-side cottage or signalman's box at the railway +siding, or Japanese or British tea-garden, or Babylonian terrace or +Platonic grove at Athens—in each case it was made for eye-delight at +Beauty's bidding. Even the Puritan, for all his gloomy creed and bleak +undecorated life, is Romanticist here; the hater of outward show turns +rank courtier at a pageant of flowers: he will dare the devil at any +moment, but not life without flowers. And so we have him lovingly +bending over the plants of his home-garden, packing the seeds to carry +with him into exile, as though these could make expatriation tolerable. +"There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of these stern +men than that they should have been sensible of their flower-roots +clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the +necessity of bringing them over sea and making them hereditary in the +new land." (Hawthorne, "Our Old Home," p. 77.)</p> + +<p>But to take a higher point of view. A garden is, in many ways, the "mute +gospel" it has been declared to be. It is the memorial of Paradise lost, +the pledge of Paradise regained. It is so much of earth's surface +redeemed from the scar of the fall:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who loves a garden still keeps his Eden."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Its territories stand, so to speak, betwixt heaven<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> and earth, so that +it shares the cross-lights of each. It parades the joys of earth, yet no +less hints the joys of heaven. It tells of man's happy tillage of his +plot of ground, yet blazes abroad the infinite abundance of God's wide +husbandry of the world. It bespeaks the glory of earth's array, yet +publishes its passingness.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>Again. The punctual waking of the flowers to new life upon the ruin of +the old is unfavourable to the fashionable theory of extinction, for it +shows death as the prelude of life. Nevertheless, be it admitted, the +garden-allegory points not all one way; it is, so to speak, a paradox +that mocks while it comforts. For a garden is ever perplexing us with +the "riddle of the painful earth," ever challenging our faith with its +counter-proof, ever thrusting before our eyes the abortive effort, the +inequality of lot (two roses on a single stem, the one full-blown, a +floral paragon, the other dwarfed and withered), the permitted spite of +destiny which favours the fittest and drives the weak to the wall—ever +preaching, with damnable iteration, the folly of resisting the ills that +warp life and blight fair promise.</p> + +<p>And yet while this is so, the annual spectacle of spring's fresh +repair—the awakening from winter's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> trance—the new life that grows in +the womb of the tomb—is happy augury to the soul that passes away, +immature and but half-expressed, of lusty days and consummate powers in +the everlasting garden of God. It is this very garden's message, "the +best is yet to be," that smothers the self-pitying whine in poor David +Gray's Elegy<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> and braces his spirit with the tonic of a wholesome +pride. To the human flower that is born to blush unseen, or born, +perchance, not to bloom at all, but only to feel the quickening thrill +of April-passion—the first sweet consciousness of life—the electric +touch in the soul like the faint beatings in the calyx of the rose—and +then to die, to die "not knowing what it was to live"—to such seemingly +cancelled souls the garden's message is "trust, acquiesce, be passive in +the Master's hand: the game of life is lost, but not for aye—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">... "There is life with God<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In other Kingdom of a sweeter air:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Eden every flower is blown."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To come back to lower ground, a garden represents what one may call the +first simplicity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> external Nature's ways and means, and the first +simplicity of man's handling of them, carried to distinction. On one +side we have Nature's "unpremeditated art" surpassed upon its own +lines—Nature's tardy efforts and common elementary traits pushed to a +masterpiece. On the other side is the callow craft of Adam's "'prentice +han'," turned into scrupulous nice-fingered Art, with forcing-pits, +glass-houses, patent manures, scientific propagation, and the accredited +rules and hoarded maxims of a host of horticultural journals at its +back.</p> + +<p>Or, to run still more upon fancy. A garden is a place where these two +whilom foes—Nature and man—patch up a peace for the nonce. Outside the +garden precincts—in the furrowed field, in the forest, the quarry, the +mine, out upon the broad seas—the feud still prevails that began as our +first parents found themselves on the wrong side of the gate of +Paradise. But</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here contest grows but interchange of love"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>here the old foes have struck a truce and are leagued together in a kind +of idyllic intimacy, as is witnessed in their exchange of grace for +grace, and the crowning touch that each puts upon the other's efforts.</p> + +<p>The garden, I have said, is a sort of "betweenity"—part heaven, part +earth, in its suggestions; so, too, in its make-up is it part Nature, +part man: for neither can strictly say "I made the garden" to disregard +the other's share in it. True, that behind all the contents of the place +sits primal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> Nature, but Nature "to advantage dressed," Nature in a rich +disguise, Nature delicately humoured, stamped with new qualities, +furnished with a new momentum, led to new conclusions, by man's skill in +selection and artistic concentration. True, that the contents of the +place have their originals somewhere in the wild—in forest or coppice, +or meadow, or hedgerow, swamp, jungle, Alp, or plain hillside. We can +run each thing to earth any day, only that a change has passed over +them; what in its original state was complex or general, is here made a +chosen particular; what was monotonous out there, is here mixed and +contrasted; what was rank and ragged there, is here taught to be staid +and fine; what had a fugitive beauty there, has here its beauty +prolonged, and is combined with other items, made "of imagination all +compact." Man has taken the several things and transformed them; and in +the process, they passed, as it were, through the crucible of his mind +to reappear in daintier guise; in the process, the face of Nature +became, so to speak, humanised: man's artistry conveyed an added charm.</p> + +<p>Judged thus, a garden is, at one and the same time, the response which +Nature makes to man's overtures, and man's answer to the standing +challenge of open-air beauty everywhere. Here they work no longer in a +spirit of rivalry, but for the attainment of a common end. We cannot +dissociate them in the garden. A garden is man's transcript of the +woodland world: it is common vegetation ennobled: outdoor scenery neatly +writ in man's small hand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> It is a sort of twin-picture, conceived of +man in the studio of his brain, painted upon Nature's canvas with the +aid of her materials—a twin-essay where Nature's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">... "primal mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That flows in streams, that breathes in wind"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>supplies the matter, man the style. It is Nature's rustic language made +fluent and intelligible—Nature's garrulous prose tersely +recast—changed into imaginative shapes, touched to finer issues.</p> + +<p>"What is a garden?" For answer come hither: be Fancy's guest a moment. +Turn in from the dusty high-road and noise of practical things—for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>descend the octagonal steps; cross the green court, bright with great +urns of flowers, that fronts the house; pass under the arched doorway in +the high enclosing wall, with its gates traceried with rival wreaths of +beaten iron and clambering sprays of jasmine and rose, and, from the +vantage-ground of the terrace-platform where we stand, behold an +art-enchanted world, where the alleys with their giddy cunning, their +gentle gloom, their cross-lights and dappled shadows of waving boughs, +make paths of fantasy—where the water in the lake quivers to the wind's +soft footprints, or sparkles where the swallows dip, or springs in jets +out of shapely fountain, or, oozing from bronze dolphin's mouth, slides +down among moss-flecked stones into a deep dark pool, and is seen anon +threading with still foot the careless-careful curved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> banks fringed +with flowering shrubs and trailing willows and brambles—where the +flowers smile out of dainty beds in the sunny ecstasy of "sweet +madness"—where the air is flooded with fragrance, and the mixed music +of trembling leaves, falling water, singing birds, and the drowsy hum of +innumerable insects' wings.</p> + +<p>"What is a garden?" It is man's report of earth at her best. It is earth +emancipated from the commonplace. Earth is man's intimate +possession—Earth arrayed for beauty's bridal. It is man's love of +loveliness carried to excess—man's craving for the ideal grown to a +fine lunacy. It is piquant wonderment; culminated beauty, that for all +its combination of telling and select items, can still contrive to look +natural, debonair, native to its place. A garden is Nature aglow, +illuminated with new significance. It is Nature on parade before men's +eyes; Flodden Field in every parish, where on summer days she holds +court in "lanes of splendour," beset with pomp and pageantry more +glorious than all the kings'.</p> + +<p>"Why is a garden made?" Primarily, it would seem, to gratify man's +craving for beauty. Behind fine gardening is fine desire. It is a plain +fact that men do not make beautiful things merely for the sake of +something to do, but, rather, because their souls compel them. Any +beautiful work of art is a feat, an essay, of human soul. Someone has +said that "noble dreams are great realities"—this in praise of +unrealised dreams; but here, in the fine garden, is the noble dream and +the great reality.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> + +<p>Here it may be objected that the ordinary garden is, after all, only a +compromise between the common and the ideal: half may be for the lust of +the eye, yet half is for domestic drudgery; half is for beauty, half for +use. The garden is contrived "a double debt to pay." Yonder mass of +foliage that bounds the garden, with its winding intervals of turf and +look of expansiveness, it serves to conceal villadom and the hulking +paper-factory beyond; that rock-garden with its developed geological +formation, dotted over with choice Alpine plants, that the stranger +comes to see. It is nothing but the quarry from whence the stone was dug +that built the house. Those banks of evergreens, full of choice +specimens, what are they but on one side the screen to your kitchen +stuff, and on the other side, the former tenant's contrivance to assist +him in forgetting his neighbour? Even so, my friend, an it please you! +You are of those who, in Sainte-Beuve's phrase, would sever a bee in +two, if you could!</p> + +<p>The garden, you say, is a compromise between the common and the ideal. +Yet nobility comes in low disguises. We have seen that the garden is +wild Nature elevated and transformed by man's skill in selection and +artistic concentration—wild things to which man's art has given +dignity. The common flowers of the cottager's garden tell of centuries +of collaboration. The flowers and shrubs and trees with which you have +adorned your own grounds were won for you by the curiosity, the +aspiration, the patient roaming and ceaseless research of a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> list +of old naturalists; the design of your garden, its picturesque divisions +and beds, a result of the social sense, the faculty for refined +enjoyment, the constructive genius of the picked minds of the civilised +world in all ages. The methods of planting approved of to-day, carrying +us back to the admirably-dressed grounds of the ancient castles and +abbeys, to the love of woodland scenery, which is said to be a special +characteristic of Teutonic people, which is evidenced in the early +English ballads; to the slowly acquired traditions of garden-masters +like Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, Gilpin, and Repton, as well as to the +idealised landscapes of Constable, Gainsborough, Linnell, and Turner; it +is, in fact, the issue of the practical insight, the wood-craft, and +idealistic skill of untold generations.</p> + +<p>In this matter of floral beauty and garden-craft man has ever declared +himself a prey to the "malady of the ideal"; the Japanese will even +combine upon his trees the tints of spring and autumn.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> But +everywhere, and in all ages of the civilised world, man spares no pains +to acquire the choicest specimens, the rarest plants, and to give to +each thing so acquired the ideally best expression of which it is +capable. It is as though Eden-memories still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> haunted the race with the +solicitude of an inward voice that refused to be silenced, and is +satisfied with nothing short of the best.</p> + + +<p>And yet, as some may point out, this homage of beauty that you speak of +is not done for nought; there enters into gardening the spirit of +calculation. A garden is a kind of investment. The labour and +forethought man expends upon it must bring adequate return. For every +flower-bed he lays down, for every plant, or shrub, or tree put into the +ground, his word is ever the same,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Be its beauty<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its sole duty."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was not simply to gratify his curiosity, to serve as a pretext for +adventure, that the gardener of old days reconnoitred the globe, culled +specimens, and spent laborious days in studying earth's picturesque +points; it was with a view to the pleasure the things would ultimately +bring. And why not! Had man not served so long an apprenticeship to +Nature on her freehold estate, the garden would not so directly appeal +to our imaginations and command our spirits. A garden reveals man as +master of Nature's lore; he has caught her accents, rifled her motives; +he has transferred her bright moods about his own dwelling, has tricked +out an ordered mosaic of the gleanings of her woodland carpet; has, as +it were, stereotyped the spontaneous in Nature, has entrapped and +rendered beautifully objective the natural magic of the outer world to +gratify the inner world of his own spirit.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> The garden is, first and +last, made "for delectation's sake."</p> + +<p>So we arrive at these conclusions. A garden is made to express man's +delight in beauty and to gratify his instincts for idealisation. But, +lest the explanation savour too much of self-interest in the gardener, +it may be well to say that the interest of man's investment of money and +toil is not all for himself. What he captures of Nature's revenues he +repays with usury, in coin that bears the mint-mark of inspired +invention. This artistic handling of natural things has for result "the +world's fresh ornament,"<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> and for plant, shrub, or tree subject to it, +it is the crowning and completion of those hidden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> possibilities of +perfection that have lain dormant in them since the world began.</p> + +<p>An artist has been defined as one who reproduces the world in his own +image and likeness. The definition is perhaps a little high-flown, and +may confer an autobiographical value to an artist's performances that +would astonish none more than himself. Yet if the thought can be +truthfully applied anywhere, it is where it occurred to Andrew +Marvell—in a garden.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The mind, that ocean where each kind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Does straight its own resemblance find;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet it creates, transcending these,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far other worlds and other seas,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Annihilating all that's made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To a green thought in a green shade."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And where can we find a more promising sphere for artistic creation than +a garden? Do we boast of fine ideas and perceptions of beauty and powers +of design! Where can our faculties find a happier medium of expression +or a pleasanter field for display than the garden affords? Nay, to have +the ideas, the faculties, and the chance of their exercise and still to +hold back were a sin! For a garden is, so to speak, the compliment a man +of ideas owes to Nature, to his friends, and to himself.</p> + +<p>Many are the inducements to gardening. Thus, if I make a garden, I need +not print a line, nor conjure with the painter's tools, to prove myself +an artist. Again, a garden is the only form of artistic creation that is +bound by the nature of things to be more lovely in realisation than in +the designer's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> conception. It is no mere hint of beauty—no mere +tickling of the fancy—that we get here, such as all other arts (except +music) are apt to give you. Here, on the contrary, we are led straight +into a world of actual delights patent to all men, which our eyes can +see, and our hands handle. More than this; whilst in other spheres of +labour the greater part of our life's toil and moil will, of a surety, +end as the wise man predicted, in vanity and vexation of spirit, here is +instant physical refreshment in the work the garden entails, and, in the +end, our labour will be crowned with flowers.</p> + +<p>Nor have I yet exhausted the scene of a garden's pleasures. A man gets +undoubted satisfaction in the very expression of his ideas—"the joy of +the deed"—in the sense of Nature's happy response, the delight of +creation,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> the romance of possibility.</p> + +<p>Some joy shall also come of the identity of the gardener with his +creation.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> He is at home here. He is intimate with the various +growths. He carries in his head an infinity of details touching the +welfare of the garden's contents. He participates in the life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> of his +plants, and is familiar with all their humours; like a good host, he has +his eye on all his company. He has fine schemes for the future of the +place. The very success of the garden reflects upon its master, and +advertises the perfect understanding that exists between the artist and +his materials. The sense of ownership and responsibility brings him +satisfaction, of a cheaper sort. His the hand that holds the wand to the +garden's magic; his the initiating thought, the stamp of taste, the +style that gives it circumstance. Let but his hand be withdrawn a space, +and, at this signal, the gipsy horde of weeds and briars—that even now +peer over the fence, and cast clandestine seeds abroad with every +favouring gust of wind—would at once take leave to pitch their tents +within the garden's zone, would strip the place of art-conventions, and +hurry it back to its primal state of unkempt wildness.</p> + +<p>Someone has observed that when wonder is excited, and the sense of +beauty gratified, there is instant recreation, and a stimulus that lifts +one out of life's ordinary routine. This marks the function of a garden +in a world where, but for its presence, the commonplace might +preponderate; 'tis man's recreation ground, children's fairyland, bird's +orchestra, butterfly's banquet. Verse and romance have done well, then, +to link it with pretty thoughts and soft musings, with summer reveries +and moonlight ecstasies, with love's occasion, and youth's yearning. No +fitter place could well be found than this for the softer transactions +of life that awaken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> love, poesy, and passion. Indeed, were its +winsomeness not balanced by simple human enjoyments—were its charmed +silences not broken by the healthy interests of common daily life—the +romps of children, the clink of tea-cups, the clatter of +croquet-mallets, the <i>mêlée</i> of the tennis-courts, the fiddler's scrape, +and the tune of moving feet, it might well seem too lustreful a place +for this work-a-day world.</p> + +<p>Apart from its other uses, there is no spot like a garden for +cultivating the kindly social virtues. Its perfectness puts people upon +their best behaviour. Its nice refinement secures the mood for +politeness. Its heightened beauty produces the disposition that delights +in what is beautiful in form and colour. Its queenly graciousness of +mien inspires the reluctant loyalty of even the stoniest mind. Here, if +anywhere, will the human hedgehog unroll himself and deign to be +companionable. Here friend Smith, caught by its nameless charm, will +drop his brassy gabble and dare to be idealistic; and Jones, forgetful +of the main chance and "bulls" and "bears," will throw the rein to his +sweeter self, and reveal that latent elevation of soul and tendency to +romance known only to his wife!</p> + +<p>"There be delights," says an ancient writer, "that will fetch the day +about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful +dream." This tells, in terse English, the pleasures of a garden and the +instincts that are gratified in its making. For a garden is Arcady +brought home. It is man's bit of gaudy make-believe—his well-disguised +fiction of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> an unvexed Paradise—standing witness of his quest of the +ideal—his artifice to escape the materialism of a world that is too +actual and too much with him. A well-kept garden makes credible to +modern eyes the antique fable of an unspoiled world—a world where +gaiety knows no eclipse, and winter and rough weather are held at bay. +In this secluded spot the seasons slip by unawares. The year's +passing-bell is ignored. Decay is cheated of its prize. The invading +loss of cold, or wind, or rain—the litter of battered Nature—the +"petals from blown roses on the grass"—the pathos of dead boughs and +mouldering leaves, the blighted bloom and broken promise of the spring, +autumn's rust or winter's wreckage are, if gardeners be brisk sons of +Adam, instantly huddled out of sight, so that, come when you may, the +place wears a mask of steady brightness; each month has its new dress, +its fresh counterfeit of permanence, its new display of flowers or +foliage, as pleasing, if not so lustrous as the last, that serves in +turn to prolong the illusion and to conceal the secret irony and fond +assumption of the thing.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I think for to touche also<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world which neweth everie daie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So far as I can, so as I maie."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This snatch of Gower's rhyme expresses in old phrase the gardener's +desire, or clothed in modern prose by Mr Robinson ("English +Flower-Garden," Murray), it is "to make each place at various seasons, +and in every available situation, an epitome of the great flower-garden +of the world."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<p>We hinted a moment ago of the interest that a garden gathers from the +mark of man's regard and tendence; and if this be true of a modern +garden, how much more true of an old one! Indeed, this is undeniable in +the latter case, for Time is ever friendly to gardens. Ordinarily his +attitude towards all that concerns the memories of man is that of a +jealous churl. Look at history. What is history but one long record of +men who, in this sphere or that, have toiled, striven, sold their souls +even, to perpetuate a name and have their deeds written upon the tablets +of eternity, not reckoning upon the "all oblivious enmity" of Time, who, +with heedless hand, cuts their past into fragments, blots out their +name, confuses their story, and frets with gnawing tooth each vestige of +their handiwork. How, then, we ask—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose action is no stronger than a flower?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet so it is. He who has no respect for antique glories, who snaps his +fingers at earth's heroes, who overturns the statues of the laurelled +Cæsars, encrusts the hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs, and commits their +storied masonry to the mercies of the modern Philistine, will make +exception in a garden. "Time's pencil" helps a garden. In a garden not +only are the solemn shapes and passing conceits of grey epochs treasured +up, even to their minutest particulars, but the drift of the years, +elsewhere so disastrous, serves only to heighten their fascination and +power of appeal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<p>Thus it comes to pass, that it were scarcely possible to name a more +pathetic symbol of the past than an old garden,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> nor a spot which, by +its tell-tale shapes, sooner lends itself to our historic sense if we +would recall the forms and reconstruct the life of our ancestors. For we +have here the very setting of old life—the dressed stage of old drama, +the scenery of old gallantry. Upon this terrace, in front of these +flower-beds with these trees looking on, was fought out the old battle +of right and wrong—here was enacted the heroic or the shameful deeds, +the stirring or the humdrum passages in the lives of so many generations +of masters, mistresses, children, and servants, who in far-off times +have lived, loved, and died in the grey homestead hard by. "Now they are +dead," as Victor Hugo says—"they are dead, but the flowers last +always."</p> + +<p>Admit, then, that for their secret quality, no less than for their +obvious beauty, these old gardens should be treasured. For they are far +more than they seem to the casual observer. Like any other piece of +historic art, the old garden is only truly intelligible through a clear +apprehension of the circumstances which attended its creation. Granted +that we possess the ordinary smattering of historical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> knowledge, and +the garden will serve to interpret the past and make it live again +before our eyes. For the old place is (to use the journalist's phrase) +an "object lesson" of old manners; it is a proof of ancient genius, a +clue to old romance, a legacy of vague desire. The many items of the +place—the beds and walks with their special trick of "style" the +parterre, the promenoir, the maze, the quincunx, the terraces, the +extravagances in ever-green sculptures of which Pope spoke—what are +they but the mould and figure of old-world thought, down to its most +characteristic caprice! The assertive air of these things—their +prominence in the garden-scenery—bespeak their importance in the +scenery of old life. It was <i>thus</i> that our forefathers made the world +about them picturesque, <i>thus</i> that they coloured their life-dreams and +fitted an adjunct pleasure to every humour, <i>thus</i> that they climbed by +flower-strewn stairs to the realm of the ideal and stimulated their +sense of beauty.</p> + +<p>And if further proof be needed of the large hold the garden and its +contents had of the affections of past generations, we have but to turn +to the old poets, and to note how the texture of the speech, the +groundwork of the thought, of men like Milton, Herrick, Vaughan, +Herbert, Donne (not to mention prose-writers) is saturated through and +through with garden-imagery.</p> + +<p>In the case of an old garden, mellowed by time, we have, I say, to note +something that goes beyond mere surface-beauty. Here we may expect to +find<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> a certain superadded quality of pensive interest, which, so far as +it can be reduced to words, tells of the blent influences of past and +present, of things seen and unseen, of the joint effects of Nature and +Man. The old ground embodies bygone conceptions of ideal beauty; it has +absorbed human thought and memories; it registers the bequests of old +time. Dead men's traits are exemplified here. The dead hand still holds +sway, the pictures it conjured still endure, its cunning is not +forgotten, its strokes still make the garden's magic, in shapes and hues +that are unchanged save for the slow moulding of the centuries. +<i>Really</i>, not less than metaphorically, the garden-growths do keep green +the memories of the men and women who placed them there, as the flower +that is dead still holds its perfume. And few will say that the +chronicles of the dead do not</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Shine more bright in these contents<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than unwept stone besmeared with sluttish time."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is a wealth of quiet interest in an old garden. We feel +instinctively that the place has been warmed by the sunshine of +humanity; watered from the secret spring of human joy and sorrow. +Sleeping echoes float about its glades; its leafy nooks can tell of +felicities sweeter than the bee-haunted cups of flowers; of glooms +graver than the midnight blackness of the immemorial yews. It is their +suggestion of antique experiences that endues the objective elements in +an old garden like Haddon, or Berkeley, or Levens, or Rockingham, with a +strange eloquence. The recollections of many a child have centred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> round +these objects: the one touch of romance in a narrow, simple life is +linked with them. Hearts danced or hearts drooped in this vicinity. Eyes +that brimmed over with laughter or that were veiled with tears looked on +these things as we look on them now—drank in the shifting lights and +shadows on the grass—watched the waving of the cedar's dark layers of +shade against an angry sky, "stern as the unlashed eye of God," and all +the birds were silent—once took in the sylvan vistas of trees, lawn, +fir-ridge, the broad-water where the coots and moor-hens now play (as +then) among the green lily-pads and floating weeds, regardless of +Regulas in lead standing in their midst; once dwelt upon the lustrous +flower-beds, on the sundial on the terrace—noonday rendezvous of +fantails—on the "Alley of Sighs," with its clipped beeches, its +grey-stone seat half-way down, its rustle of dying leaves, and +traditions of intrigue; on the lime avenue full of perfume in the +sweet-o'-the-year, on the foot-bridge across the moat, on the streak of +blue autumn mist that tracks the stream in yonder meadows where the +landrail is croaking, and that brings magically near the beat of hoofs, +the jingle of horses' bells, the rumble of homeward wagons on the road, +and whiffs of the reapers' songs; on the brief brilliance of the +garden-panorama as the wintry-moon gives the black clouds the slip and +suddenly discloses a white world of snow-muffled forms, that gleams with +the eerie pallor of a ghost, and is as suddenly dissolved into +darkness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> + +<p>Simple sights, you will say, and familiar! and yet, when connected with +some unique occasion, some epoch of a life, when seen on such a day, at +such a supreme, all-absorbing moment from window, open door, terrace, +arbour; in the stillness or in the wild rhetoric of the night, the +familiar scene, momentarily flashed upon the brain's retina, may have +subtly and unconsciously influenced the act, or coloured the thought of +some human being, and the brand of that moment's impress may have +accompanied that soul to the edge of doom.</p> + +<p>Because of its hoarded memories we come to look upon an old garden as a +sort of repository of old secrets; wrapped within its confines, as +within the covers of a sacred book, repose so many pages of the sad and +glad legend of humanity. We have before us the scenery of old home +idylls, of old household reverences and customs, of old life's give and +take—its light comedy or solemn farce, its dark tragedy, its summer +masque, its stately dance or midnight frolic, its happy wedlock or its +open sorrow, its endured wrong. The place is identified with the +fortunes of old families: for so many generations has the old place been +found favourable for lovers' tales, for youths' golden dreams, for +girls' chime of fancy, for the cut and thrust of friendly wrangles, for +the "leisures of the spirit" of student-recluse, for children's gambols +and babies' lullabies. Seated upon this mossy bank, children have spelt +out fairy tales, while birds, trees, brooks, and flowers listened +together. The marvel of its cloistered grace has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> God-reminder to +the saint; its green recesses have served for Enoch's walk,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> for +poet's retreat; as refuge for the hapless victim of broken endeavour; as +enisled shelter for the tobacco-loving sailor-uncle with a wrecked fame; +as invalid's Elysium; as haunt of the loafing, jesting, unambitioned man +("Alas, poor Yorick!"); as Death's sweet ante-room for slow-footed age.</p> + +<p>What wonder that Sir William Temple devised that his heart should rest +where its memories were so deep-intrenched—in his garden; or that +Waterton should ask to be buried between the two great oaks at the end +of the lake! (Norman Moore's Introduction to "Wanderings in South +America.")</p> + +<p>And if human affections be, as the poets declare, immortal, we have the +reason why an old garden, in the only sense in which it ever is old, by +the almanack, has that whisper and waving of secrecy, that air of +watchful intentness, that far-reaching, mythological, unearthly look, +that effect of being a kind of twilighted space common to the two worlds +of past and present. Who will not agree with me in this? It matters not +when you go there—at dawn, at noonday, no less than when the sky is +murky and night-winds are sighing—and although you shall be the only +visible human being present, it is not alone that you feel. A thrill +comes over you, a mysterious sense warns you that this is none other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> +than the sanctuary of "the dead," as we call them; the place where, amid +the hush of passionless existence, the wide leisure of uncounted time, +the shades of once familiar presences keep their "tongueless vigil." +They fly not at the "dully sound" of human footsteps; they ask no +sympathy for regret which dare not tell the secret of its sorrow; but, +with the gentle gait of old-world courtesy, they move aside, and when +you depart resume occupation of ground which, for the sake of despairing +wishes and memories of an uneffaced past, they may not quit. After +life's fitful fever these waifs of a vanished world sleep not well; here +are some consumed with covetousness, who are learning not to resent the +word "mine" applied by the living owner of hall and garden, field and +store; some that prey on withered bliss—the "bitter sweet of days that +were"—this, the miser whose buried treasure lies undiscovered here, and +who has nothing in God's bank in the other world; this, the author of +the evil book; and this loveless, unlovely pair, the ruined and ruiner, +yoked for aye; a motley band, forsooth, with "Satan's sergeants" keeping +guard!</p> + +<p>It is ever the indirect that is most eloquent. Someone says: Hence these +tokens of a dead past open out vistas for one's imagination and drop +hints of romance that would make thrilling reading in many volumes, but +which shall never reach Mudie's.</p> + +<p>Even Nature is not proof against the spell of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> old garden. The very +trees have an "ancient melody of an inward agony":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The place is silent and aware<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It has had its scenes, its joys, and crimes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But that is its own affair"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>even Nature forgets to be her cold, impassive self, and puts on a +sympathetic-waiting look in a spot so intricately strewn and meshed over +with the fibres of human experience. Long and close intimacy with +mankind under various aspects—witness of things that happened to +squires, dames, priests, courtiers, servitors, page, or country-maid, in +the roundabout of that "curious, restless, clamorous being which we call +life"—has somehow tinged the place with a sensibility (one had almost +said a <i>wizardry</i>) not properly its own. And this superadded quality +reaches to the several parts of the garden and is not confined to the +scene as a whole. Each inanimate item of the place, each spot, seems +invested with a gift of attraction—to have a hidden tongue that could +syllable forgotten names—to possess a power of fixing your attention, +of fastening itself upon your mind, as though it had become, in a sense, +humanised, and claimed kindred with you as related to that secret group +with whose fortunes it was allied, with whose passions it had held +correspondence, and were letting you know it could speak an if it would +of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All the ways of men, so vain and melancholy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<h3>ON ART IN A GARDEN.</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O world, as God has made it! All is beauty."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>In dealing with our second point—the ornamental treatment that is fit +and right for a garden—we are naturally brought into contact with the +good and bad points of both the old and the new systems of gardening. +This being so, it may be well at once to notice the claims of the modern +"Landscape-gardener" to monopolise to himself all the right principles +of garden-craft: all other moods than his are low, all figures other +than his are symbols of error, all dealings with Nature other than his +are mere distortions.</p> + +<p>If you have any acquaintance with books upon landscape-gardening written +by its professors or their admirers, you will have learnt that in the +first half of the eighteenth century, two heaven-directed geniuses—Kent +and Brown—all of a sudden stumbled upon the green world of old England, +and, perceiving its rural beauties, and the hitherto unexplored +opportunities for ornamental display that the country afforded, these +two put their heads together,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> and out of their combined cogitations +sprang the English garden.</p> + +<p>This, in brief, is what the landscape-gardener and his adherents say, +and would have you believe; and, to prove their point, they lay stress +upon the style of garden in vogue at the time Kent and Brown began their +experiments, when, forsooth, traditional garden-craft was in its dotage +and had lost its way in the paths of pedantry.</p> + +<p>Should you, however, chance to have some actual knowledge of old +gardens, and some insight into the principles which, consciously or +unconsciously governed their making, it may occur to you to ask the +precise points wherein the new methods claim to be different from the +old, what sources of inspiration were discovered by the new school of +gardeners that were not shared by English gardeners from time +immemorial. Are there, then, <i>two</i> arts of gardening? or two sorts of +Englishmen to please? Is not modern garden-craft identical with the old, +so far, indeed, as it hath art enough to stand any comparison with the +other at all?</p> + +<p>Let us here point to the fact, that any garden whatsoever is but Nature +idealised, pastoral scenery rendered in a fanciful manner. It matters +not what the date, size, or style of the garden, it represents an +idealisation of Nature. <i>Real</i> nature exists outside the artist and +apart from him. The Ideal is that which the artist conceives to be an +interpretation of the outside objects, or that which he adds to the +objects. The garden gives imaginative form<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> to emotions the natural +objects have awakened in man. The <i>raison d'être</i> of a garden is man's +feeling the <i>ensemble</i>.</p> + +<p>One fine day you take your architect for a jaunt along a country-lane, +until stopping shyly in front of a five-barred gate, over which is +nailed an ominous notice-board, you introduce him to your small +property, the site of your new house. It is a field very much like the +neighbouring fields—at least, so think the moles, and the rooks, and +the rabbits; not you, for here is to be your "seat" for life; and before +you have done with it, the whole country far and near will be taught to +look as though it radiated round the site and the house you will build +upon it—an honour of which, truth compels me to say, the land betrays +not the remotest presentiment just now!</p> + +<p>The field in question may be flat or undulating, it may be the lap of a +hillside, the edge of a moor, a treeless stretch of furrowed land with +traces of "rude mechanical's" usage, or suggestions of mutton or +mangels. The particular character of the place, or its precise +agricultural past, matters not, however; suffice it to say that it is a +bit of raw, and more or less ungroomed, Nature.</p> + +<p>Upon this plain, unadorned field, you set your man of imagination to +work. He must absorb both it and its whole surroundings into his brain, +and seize upon all its capabilities. He must produce symmetry and +balance where now are ragged outlines of hillocks and ridges. He must +trim and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> cherish the trees here, abolish the tree there; enlarge this +slope, level that; open out a partial peep of blue distance here, or a +gleam of silver water there. He must terrace the slope, step by step, +towards the stream at the base, select the sunniest spots for the +flower-beds, and arrange how best the gardens at their varying levels +shall be approached or viewed from the house. In this way and that he +must so manœuvre the perspective and the lights and shades, so +compose or continue the sectional lines and general bearings of the +ground as to enforce the good points that exist, and draw out the latent +possibilities of the place, and this with as easy a hand, and as fine +tact as the man can muster.</p> + +<p>And now to come to our point. A dressed garden, I said, is Nature +idealised—pastoral scenery put fancifully, in man's way. A gardener is +a master of what the French writer calls "the charming art of touching +up the truth."</p> + +<p>Emerson observes that all the Arts have their origin in some enthusiasm; +and the art of gardening has for its root, man's enthusiasm for the +woodland world. It indicates a taste for flowers and trees and +landscapes. It is admiration that has, so to speak, passed from the +stage of emotion to that of form. A garden is the result of the +emulation which the vision of beauty in the world at large is ever +provoking in man—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the landskip round it measures."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What of Nature has affected man on various<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> occasions, what has pleased +his eye in different moods, played upon his emotions, pricked his fancy, +suggested reverie, stirred vague yearnings, brought a sense of quickened +joy—pastoral scenery, the music of leaves and waters, the hues and +sweetness of country flowers, the gladness of colour, picturesque form +of tree or contour of land, spring's bright laugh, autumn's glow, +summer's bravery, winter's grey blanched face—each thing that has gone +home to him has, in its way, fostered in man the garden mania. Inspired +by their beauty and mystery, he has gathered them to himself about his +home, has made a microcosm out of the various detached details which sum +up the qualities, features, and aspects of the open country; and the art +of this little recreated world is measured by the happy union of +naturalness and of calculated effect.</p> + +<p>What sources of inspiration were discovered by the new school of +gardeners, I asked a moment ago, which were not shared by English +gardeners from time immemorial? The art of gardening, I said, has its +root in man's enthusiasm for the woodland world. See how closely the +people of old days must have observed the sylvan sights of Nature, the +embroidery of the meadows, the livery of the woods at different seasons, +or they would not have been capable of building up that piece of hoarded +loveliness, the old-fashioned English garden!</p> + +<p>The pleasaunce of old days has been mostly stubbed up by the modern +"landscape gardener," but if no traces of them were left we have still +here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> and there the well-schemed surroundings of our English +homes—park, avenue, wood, and water—the romantic scenery that hems in +Tintern, Fountains, Dunster, to testify to the inborn genius of the +English for planting. If the tree, shrub, and flower be gone from the +grounds outside the old Tudor mansion, there still remains the +blue-green world in the tapestries upon the walls, with their airy +landscapes of trees and hills, hanging-gardens, flower-beds, terraces, +and embowered nooks—a little fantastical it may be, but none the less +eloquent of appreciation of natural beauty not confined to the gardener, +but shared by the artist-maid, who</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">... "with her neeld composes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nature's own shape, of bird, branch, or berry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That even Art sisters the natural roses."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And should these relics be gone, we still have the books in the library, +rich in Nature-allusion. The simple ecstasies of the early ballad in the +opening stanzas of "Robin Hood and the Monk"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In somer when the shawes be sheyne,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And leves be large and longe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hit is full mery in feyre foreste<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To here the foulys song;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To se the dere draw to the dale,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And leve the hilles hee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And shadow hem in the leves grene,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Under the grene-wode tre";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or in a "Musical Dreame"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now wend we home, stout Robin Hood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leave we the woods behind us.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love passions must not be withstood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love everywhere will find us.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I livde in fielde and downe, and so did he;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I got me to the woods, love followed me."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>or shall we hear tell from Chaucer how</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When that Aprille, with his showrës swoot<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The drought of March hath pierced to the root,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then longen folk to gone on pilgrimages."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or hear from Stowe how the cockney of olden days "In the month of May, +namely, on May-day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would +walk in the sweet meddowes and green woods, ther to rejoyce their +spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers and with the +harmonie of birds praysing God in their kinde."</p> + +<p>Or shall we turn to Shakespeare's bright incidental touches of +nature-description as in Perdita's musical enumeration of the flowers of +the old stiff garden-borders "to make you garlands of," or the Queen's +bit in "Hamlet," beginning</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or to the old Herbals of Wyer, and Turner, and Gerard, whom Richard +Jefferies<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> pictures walking about our English lanes in old days? +"What wonderful scenes he must have viewed when they were all a tangle +of wild flowers, and plants that are now scarce were common, and the old +ploughs and the curious customs, and the wild red-deer—it would make a +good picture, it really would, Gerard studying English orchids!"</p> + +<p>Or shall we take down the classic volumes of Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, +Cowley, Isaak Walton,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Gilbert White, each in his day testifying to the +inborn love of the English for woodland scenery, their study of nature, +and their taste in trees, shrubs, and flowers. What a vindication is +here of the old-fashioned garden and gardener! What nonsense to set up +Kent and Brown as the discoverers of the green world of old England, +when, as Mr Hamerton remarks in "The Sylvan Year" (p. 173), Chaucer +hardly knows how or when to stop whenever he begins to talk about his +enjoyment of Nature. "Chaucer," he says, "in his passion for flowers, +and birds, and spring mornings in the woods, and by streams, is hard to +quote, for he leads you down to the bottom of the page, and over the +leaf, before you have time to pause."</p> + +<p>The question now before us—"What ornament is fit and right for a +garden?"—of itself implies a tendency to err in the direction of +ornament. We see that on the face of it the transposition of the simple +of Nature into the subtle of Art has its dangers. Something may be put, +or something may be left, which were best absent. This may be taken as +an established fact. In making a garden you start with the assumption +that something must be sacrificed of wild Nature, and something must be +superadded, and that which is superadded is not properly of this real, +visible world, but of the world of man's brain.</p> + +<p>The very enclosure of our garden-spaces signifies that Nature is held in +duress here. Nature of herself cannot rise above Nature, and man, seeing +perfections through her imperfections, capacities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> through her +incapacities, shuts her in for cultivation, binds her feet, as it were, +with the silken cord of art-constraint, and puts a gloss of intention +upon her every feature.</p> + +<p>In a garden Nature is not to be her simple self, but is to be subject to +man's conditions, his choice, his rejection. Let us briefly see, now, +what conditions man may fairly impose upon Nature—what lengths he may +legitimately go in the way of mimicry of natural effects or of +conventionalism. Both books and our own observation tell us that where +the past generations of gardeners have erred it has been through a +misconception of the due proportions of realism and of idealism to be +admitted into a garden. At this time, in this phase, it was <i>Art</i>, in +that phase it was <i>Nature</i>, that was carried too far; here design was +given too much rein, there not rein enough, and people in their silly +revolt against Art have gone straight for the "veracities of Nature," +copying her features, dead or alive, outright, without discrimination as +to their fitness for imitation, or their suitableness to the position +assigned to them. To what extent, we ask, may the forms of Nature be +copied or recast? What are the limits to which man may carry ideal +portraiture of Nature for the purposes of Art? Questions like these +would, of course, only occur to a curious, debating age like ours; but +put this way or that they keep alive the eternal problems of man's +standing to the world of Nature, the laws of idealism and realism, the +nice distinctions of "more and less."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p> + +<p>Now, it is not everything in Nature that can, or that may be, +artificially expressed in a garden; nor are the things that it is +permissible to use, of equal application everywhere. It were a palpable +mistake, an artistic crime, so to speak, to follow the wild flights of +Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin, and with them to attempt a little +amateur creation in the way of rent rocks, tumbled hillsides, and ruins +that suggest a recent geological catastrophe, or antique monsters, or +that imply by the scenery that we are living in the days of wattled +abodes and savages with flint hatchets. Much, of course, may be done in +this line in these days as in the past, if only one have sufficient +audacity and a volcanic mind; yet, when it is done, both the value and +the rightness of the art of the thing is questionable. "Canst thou catch +Leviathan with a hook?" The primæval throes, the grand stupendous +imagery of Nature should be held in more reverence. It were almost as +fit to harness a polar bear to the gardener's mowing-machine as seek to +appropriate the eerie phenomena of Nature in her untamed moods for the +ornamental purposes of a garden. And as to the result of such work, the +ass draped in the lion's skin, roaring horribly, with peaked snout and +awkward shanks visible all the while, is not more ridiculous than the +thinly-veiled savagery of an Italian garden of the seventeenth century.</p> + +<p>Here, then, I think we have some guidance as to the principles which +should regulate the choice of the "properties" that are fit for the +scenic show of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> a garden. We should follow the dictates of good taste +and of common sense. Of things applied direct from Nature the line +should be drawn at the gigantesque, the elemental, the sad, the +gruesome, the crude. True, that in art of another kind—in Architecture +or in Music—the artistic equivalents of these qualities may find place, +but as garden effects they are eminently unsuitable, except, indeed, +where it is desired to perpetrate a grim joke.</p> + +<p>Beyond these limitations, however, all is open ground for the +imaginative handling of the true gardener; and what a noble residue +remains! Nature in her health and wealth—green, opulent, lusty Nature +is at his feet. Of things gay, debonair, subtle, and refined—things +that stir poetic feelings or that give joy—he may take to himself and +conjure with to the top of his bent. It is for him as for the poet in +Sir Philip's Sidney's words—"So as he goeth hand in hand with Nature, +not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging +within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so +rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant +rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may +make the too-much loved earth more lovely: her world is brazen, <i>the +poets only deliver a golden</i>."</p> + +<p>Animated with corresponding desire, the gardener resorts to lovely +places in this "too-much loved earth," there to find his stock-in-trade +and learn his craft. We watch him as he hies to the bravery of the +spring-flowers in sunny forest-glades; to meadow-flats<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> where lie the +golden host of daffodils, the lady-smocks, and snake-spotted +fritillaries; we see him bend his way to the field of bluebells, the +hill of primroses that with</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"their infinitie<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make a terrestrial gallaxie<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the smal starres do the skie;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>we follow him to the tangled thicket with its meandering walks carpeted +with anemones and hung over with sweet-scented climbers; to the sombre +boskage of the wood, where the shadows leap from their ambush in +unexpected places and the brown bird's song floats upon the wings of +silence: to the green dell with its sequestered pool edged round with +alders, and willow-herb, and king-fern, and mountain-ash afire with +golden fruit: to the corn-field "a-flutter with poppies": to the +broad-terraced downs—its short, springy turf dotted over with white +sheets of thorn-blossom: to the leaping, shining mountain-tarn that +comes foaming out of the wood: to the pine-grove with its columned +blackness and dense thatch of boughs that lisp the message of the wind, +and "teach light to counterfeit a gloom"; to the widespread landscape +with its undulating forest, its clumps of foliage, its gleams of +white-beam, silver-birch, or golden yew, amid the dark blue of firs and +hollies; its emerald meadows, yellow gorse-covers and purple heather; +the many tones of leafage in the spring and fall of the year.</p> + +<p>And here I give but a few random sketches of Nature, taken almost at +random from the portfolio of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> her painted delights—a dozen or more +vignettes, shall we say?—ready-made for garden-distribution in bed, +bank, wilderness, and park; things which the old gardener freely +employed; features and images which he transferred to his dressed +grounds, not copying them minutely but in an ideal manner; mixing his +fancy with their fact, his compulsion with their consent; flavouring the +simple with a dash of the strange and marvellous, combining dreams and +actualities, things seen, with things born "within the zodiac of his own +wit"; frankly throwing into the compacted glamour of the place all that +will give <i>éclat</i> to Nature and teach men to apprehend new joy.</p> + +<p>So, then, after separating the brazen from the golden in Nature—after +excluding "properties" of the woodland world which are demonstrably +unfit for the scenic show of a garden, how ample the scope for artistic +creation in the things that remain! And, given an acre or two of land +that has some natural capabilities, some charm of environment—given a +generous client, a bevy of workmen, horses and carts, and, prime +necessity of all, a pleasant homestead in the foreground to prompt its +own adornment and be the centre of your efforts, and, upon the basis of +these old tracks of Nature and old themes of Art, what may not one hope +to achieve of pretty garden-effects that shall please the eye, flatter +the taste, and captivate the imagination of such as love Beauty!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<h3>HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF THE ENGLISH GARDEN.</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"The Earth is the garden of Nature, and each fruitful country a +Paradise."—<span class="smcap">Sir Thomas Browne.</span></p></blockquote> + + +<p>In the last chapter I observed that in dealing with our second +point—the ornamental treatment that is fit for a garden—we should be +brought into contact with the good and bad points of both the old and +new systems of gardening. Hence the following discursus upon the +historic English garden, which will, however, be as short as it can well +be made, not only because the writer has no desire to wander on a far +errand when his interest lies near home, but also because an essay, such +as this, is ever bound to be an inconclusive affair; and 'twere a pity +to lay a heavy burden upon a light horse!</p> + +<p>At the outset of this section of our enquiry it is well to realise that +there is little known about the garden of earlier date than the middle +of the sixteenth century. Our knowledge of the mediæval garden is only +to be acquired piecemeal, out of casual references in old chronicles, +and stray pictures in illuminated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> manuscripts, and in each case +allowance must be made for the fluent fancy of the artist. Moreover, +early notices of gardens deal mostly with the orchard, or the vegetable +or herb garden, where flowers grown for ornament occur in the borders of +the ground.</p> + +<p>It is natural to ascribe the first rudiments of horticultural science in +this country to the Romans; and with the classic pastorals, or Pliny the +Younger's Letter to Apollinaris before us, in which an elaborate garden +is minutely and enthusiastically described, we need no further assurance +of the fitness of the Roman to impart skilled knowledge in all branches +of the science.</p> + +<p>Loudon, in his noble "Arboretum et fruticetum Britannicum," enters at +large into the question of what trees and shrubs are indigenous to +Britain, and gives the probable dates of the introduction of such as are +not native to this country. According to Whitaker, whose authority +Loudon adopts, it would appear that the Romans brought us the plane, the +box, the elm, the poplar, and the chestnut. (The lime, he adds, was not +generally planted here till after the time of Le Nôtre: it was used +extensively in avenues planted here in the reign of Charles the Second.) +Of fruit trees, the Roman gave us the pear, the fig, the damson, cherry, +peach, apricot, and quince. The aboriginal trees known to our first +ancestors are the birch, alder, oak, wild or Scotch pine, mountain-ash +or rowan-tree, the juniper, elder, sweet-gale, dog-rose, heath, St +John's wort, and the mistletoe.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> + +<p>Authorities agree in ascribing the introduction of many other plants, +fruit trees, and trees of ornament or curiosity now common throughout +England, to the monks. And the extent of our indebtedness to the monks +in this matter may be gathered from the fact that monasteries abounded +here in early times; and the religious orders have in all times been +enthusiastic gardeners. Further be it remembered, many of the inmates of +our monasteries were either foreigners or persons who had been educated +in Italy or France, who would be well able to keep this country supplied +with specimens and with reminiscences of the styles of foreign gardens +up to date.</p> + +<p>The most valuable authority on the subject of early English gardens is +Alexander Necham, Abbot of Cirencester (1157-1217). His references are +in the shape of notes from a commonplace-book entitled "Of the Nature of +Things," and he writes thus: "Here the gardens should be adorned with +roses and lilies, the turnsole (heliotrope), violets and mandrake; there +you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, +savery, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, +garden-cress, and peonies.... A noble garden will give thee also +medlars, quinces, warden-trees, peaches, pears of St Riole, +pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds, dates, which are the fruits of +palms, figs, &c."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Here, in truth, is a delightful medley of the +useful and the beautiful, just like life! Yet the very use of the term +"noble," as applied to a garden, implies that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> even the +thirteenth-century Englishman had a standard of excellence to stir +ambition. Other garden flowers mentioned in Alexander's observations are +the sunflower, the iris and narcissus.</p> + +<p>The garden described by Necham bespeaks an amount of taste in the +arrangement of the herbs, plants, and fruit-trees, but in the main it +corresponds with our kitchen-garden. The next English writer upon +gardens in point of date is Johannes de Garlandia, an English resident +in France; but here is a description of the writer's garden at Paris. +The ground here described consists of shrubbery, wood, grove, and +garden, and from the account given it is inferred that both in matters +of taste and in the horticultural and floral products of the garden, +France had advanced farther than England in garden-craft in the +fourteenth century, which is the date of the book.</p> + +<p>In Mr Hudson Turner's "Observations on the State of Horticulture in +England"<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> in olden times he gives notices of the early dates in which +the rose was under cultivation. In the thirteenth century King John +sends a wreath of roses to his lady-love. Chronicles inform us that +roses and lilies were among the plants bought for the Royal Garden at +Westminster in 1276; and the annual rendering of a rose is one of the +commonest species of quit-rent in ancient conveyances, like the +"pepper-corn" of later times. The extent to which the culture of the +rose was carried is inferred from the number of sorts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> mentioned in old +books, which include the red, the sweet-musk, double and single, the +damask, the velvet, the double-double Provence rose, and the double and +single white rose. And the demand for roses seems to have been so great +in old days that bushels of them frequently served as the payment of +vassals to their lords, both in France and England. England has good +reason to remember the distinction between the red and the white rose.</p> + +<p>Of all the flowers known to our ancestors, the gilly-flower was perhaps +the most common.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The fairest flowers o' the season<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are our carnations and streak'd gilly flower."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8"><i>Winter's Tale.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Their use," says a quaint writer, "is much in ornament, and comforting +the spirites by the sence of smelling." The variety of this flower, that +was best known in early times, was the wall gilly-flower, or bee-flower. +Another flower of common growth in mediæval gardens and orchards is the +periwinkle.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There sprang the violet all newe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fresh periwinkle, rich of hewe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And flowers yellow, white and rede,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such plenty grew there nor in the mede."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is not considered probable that much art was expended in the laying +out of gardens before the fifteenth century; but I give a list of +illuminated MSS. in the Library of the British Museum, where may be +found illustrations of gardens, and which I take from Messrs Birch and +Jenner's valuable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> Dictionary of Principal Subjects in the British +Museum<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> under the head of Garden.</p> + +<p>There is also a typical example of a fourteenth-century garden in the +Romaunt d'Alexandre (Bodleian Library). Here the flower garden or lawn +is separated by a wooden paling from the orchard, where a man is busy +pruning. An old painting at Hampton Court, of the early part of the +sixteenth century, gives pretty much the same class of treatment, but +here the paling is decorated with a chevron of white and red colour.</p> + +<p>To judge from old drawings, our forefathers seem to have been always +partial to the greensward and trees, which is the landscape garden in +the "egg"! A good extent of grass is always provided. Formal flower-beds +do not often occur, and, where shown, they are sometimes surrounded by a +low wattled fence—a protection against rabbits, probably. Seats and +banks of chamomile are not unusual. A bank of earth seems to have been +thrown up against the enclosing wall; the front of the bank is then +faced with a low<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> partition of brick or stone, and the mould, brought to +an even surface, is planted in various ways. Numerous illustrations of +the fifteenth century give a bowling-green and butts for archery. About +this date it is assumed the style of English gardening was affected by +French and Flemish methods, which our connection with Burgundy at that +time would bring about. To this period is also ascribed the introduction +of the "mount" in England, although one would almost say that it is but +a survival of the Celtic "barrow." It is a feature that came, however, +into very common use, and is thus recommended by Bacon: "I wish also, in +the very middle, a fair Mount, with three Ascents and Alleys, enough for +four to walk abreast, which I would have to be perfect circles, without +any Bulwarks or Imbossments, and the whole Mount to be thirty foot high, +and some fine Banqueting House with some chimneys neatly cast, and +without too much Glass."</p> + +<p>The "mount" is said to have been originally contrived to allow persons +in the orchard to look over the enclosing wall, and would serve not only +as a place from which to enjoy a pretty view, but as a point of outlook +in case of attack. Moreover, when situated in a park where the deer +grazed, the unscrupulous sportsman might from thence shoot a buck. In +early days the mounts were constructed of wood or of stone, and were +curiously adorned within and without. Later on they resumed the old +barrow shape, and were made of earth, and utilized for the culture of +fruit trees. Lawson, an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> old writer of the sixteenth century, describes +them as placed in divers corners of the orchard, their ascent being made +by "stares of precious workmanship." When of wood, the mount was often +elaborately painted.</p> + +<p>An account of works done at Hampton Court in the time of Henry VIII., +mentions certain expenses incurred for "anticke" works; and referring to +Bailey's Dictionary, published early in the last century, the word +"antick," as applied to curiously-shaped trees, still survives, and is +explained as "odd figures or shapes of men, birds, beasts, &c., cut +out." From the above references, and others of like nature, we know that +the topiary art ("opus topiarum"), which dealt in quaintly-shaped trees +and shrubs, was in full practice here throughout the latter half of the +middle ages. Samuel Hartlib, in a book published in 1659, writes thus: +"About fifty years ago Ingenuities first began to flourish in England." +Lawson, writing in a jocose vein, tells how the lesser wood might be +framed by the gardener "to the shape of men armed in the field ready to +give battell; or swift-running greyhounds, or of well-scented and +true-running hounds to chase the deere or hunt the hare"; adding as a +recommendation that "this kinde of hunting shall not waste your corne, +nor much your coyne!"</p> + +<p>I find that John Leland in his Itinerary, 1540, further confirms the use +of highly-decorated mounts: as at Wressel Castle, Yorkshire, he tells of +the gardens with the mote, and the orchards as exceeding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> fair; "and yn +the orchardes were mounts writhen about with degrees, like the turnings +in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payne." There is still to +be seen, or according to Murray's Guide, 1876, was then to be seen, at +Wotton, in Surrey, an artificial mount cut into terraces, which is a +relic of Evelyn's work.</p> + +<p>The general shape of an old-fashioned garden is a perfect square, which +we take to be reminiscent of the square patch of ground which, in early +days, was partitioned off for the use of the family, and walled to +exclude cattle, or to define the property. It also repeats the +quadrangular court of big Tudor houses. We may also assume that the +shape would commend itself to the taste of the Renascence School of the +Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, as being that of classic times; for the +antique garden was fashioned in a square with enclosures of +trellis-work, espaliers, and clipt box hedges, regularly ornamented with +vases, fountains, and statuary.</p> + +<p>The square shape was common to the French and Italian gardens also. Old +views of Du Cerceau, an architect of the time of Charles IX. and Henry +III., show a square in one part of the grounds and a circular labyrinth +in another: scarcely a plot but has this arrangement. The point to note, +however, is, that while the English garden might take the same general +outline as the foreign, it had its own peculiarities; and although each +country develops the fantastic ornament common to the stiff garden of +the period in its own way, things are not carried to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> the same pitch of +extravagant fancy in England as in France, Holland, or Italy.</p> + +<p>Upon a general review of the subject of ornamental gardens, English and +foreign, we arrive at the conclusion that the type of garden produced by +any country is a question of soil and physical features, and a question +of race. The character of the scenery of a country, the section of the +land generally, no less than the taste of the people who dwell in it, +prescribes the style of the type of garden. The hand of Nature directs +the hand of Art.</p> + +<p>Thus, in a hilly country like Italy, Nature herself prompts the division +of the garden-spaces into wide terraces, while Art, on her side, +provides that the terraces shall be well-proportioned as to width and +height, and suitably defined by masonry walls having balustraded fronts, +flights of steps, arcades, temples, vases, statues, &c.</p> + +<p>Lady Mary Montagu's description of the <i>Giardino Jiusti</i> is a case in +point: she depicts, as far as words can, how admirably it complies with +the conditions of the scenery. The palace lies at the foot of a mountain +"near three miles high, covered with a wood of orange, lemon, citron, +and pomegranate trees, which is all cut up into walks, and divided into +terraces that you may go into a separate garden from every floor of the +house, diversified with fountains, cascades, and statues, and joined by +easy marble staircases, which lead from one to another." It is a hundred +years since this description was written, but the place is little +altered to this day: "Who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> will now take the pains to climb its steep +paths, will find the same charm in the aged cypresses, the oddly clipped +ilexes and boxes, the stiff terraces and narrow, and now overgrown, +beds."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p> + +<p>In France, where estates are larger, and the surface of the country more +even and regular, the ornamental grounds, while following the Italian in +certain particulars, are of wider range on the flat, and they attain +picturesqueness upon lines of their own. The taste of the people, +conveniently answering to the conditions of the country, runs upon long +avenues and spacious grounds, divided by massive trellises into a series +of ornamental sections—<i>Bocages</i>, <i>Cabinets de Verdure</i>, &c., which by +their form and name, flatter the Arcadian sentiment of a race much given +to idealisation. "I am making winding alleys all round my park, which +will be of great beauty," writes Madame de Sévigné, in 1671. "As to my +labyrinth, it is neat, it has green plots, and the palisades are +breast-high; it is a lovable spot."</p> + +<p>The French have parks, says the travelled Heutzner, but nothing is more +different, both in compass and direction, than those common to England. +In France they invented the parks as fit surroundings to the fine +palaces built by Mansard and Le Nôtre, and the owners of these stately +chateaux gratified their taste for Nature in an afternoon promenade on a +broad stone terrace, gazing over a carved balustrade at a world made +truly artificial to suit the period. The style of Le Nôtre is, in fact, +based upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> theory that Nature shall contribute a bare space upon +which man shall lay out a garden of symmetrical character, and trees, +shrubs, and flowers are regarded as so much raw material, out of which +Art shall carve her effects.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the desire for symmetry is carried to such extravagant lengths +that the largest parks become only a series of square or oblong +enclosures, regularly planted walks, bounded by chestnuts or limes; +while the gardens are equally cut up into lines of trellises and +palisades. In describing the Paris gardens Horace Walpole says, "they +form light corridors and transpicuous arbours, through which the +sunbeams play and checker the shade, set off the statues, vases, and +flowers, that marry with their gaudy hotels, and suit the gallant and +idle society who paint the walks between their parterres, and realise +the fantastic scenes of Watteau and Durfé!" In another place he says +that "many French groves seem green chests set upon poles. In the garden +of Marshall de Biron, at Paris, consisting of fourteen acres, every walk +is button-holed on each side by lines of flower-pots, which succeed in +their seasons. When I saw it there were nine thousand pots of asters or +la Reine Marguerite."</p> + +<p>In Holland, which Butler sarcastically describes as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A land that rides at anchor, and is moor'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In which they do not live, but go aboard"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the conditions are not favourable to gardening. Man is here indebted to +Nature, in the first place, for next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> to nothing: Air, Earth, and Water +are, as it were, under his control. The trees grow, the rivers run, as +they are directed; and the very air is made to pay toll by means of the +windmills.</p> + +<p>To begin with, Holland has a meagre list of indigenous trees and shrubs, +and scarcely an indigenous ligneous flora. There is little wood in the +country, for the heavy winds are calculated to destroy high-growing +trees, and the roots cannot penetrate into the ground to any depth, +without coming to water. The land is flat, and although artificial +mountains of granite brought from Norway and Sweden have been erected as +barriers against the sea, there is scarcely a stone to be found except +in the Island of Urk.</p> + +<p>The conditions of the country being so unfavourable to artistic +handling, it needs a determined effort on man's part to lift things +above the dead-level of the mean and commonplace. Yet see how Nature's +defects may only prove Art's opportunity! Indeed, it is singular to note +how, as it were, in a spirit of noble contrariness, the Dutch garden +exhibits the opposite grace of each natural defect of the land. The +great plains intersected with sullen watercourses yield up only slight +strips of land, <i>therefore</i> these niggardly strips, snatched from "an +amphibious world" (as Goldsmith terms it), shall be crammed with beauty. +The landscape outside gapes with uniform dulness, <i>therefore</i> the garden +within shall be spick and span. The flat treeless expanse outside offers +no objects for measuring distance, <i>therefore</i> the perspective of the +garden shall be a marvel of adroit planning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and conjured proportions. +The room is small, <i>therefore</i> its every inch shall seem an ell. The +garden is a mere patch, <i>therefore</i> the patch shall be elaborately +darned and pattern-stitched all over. The eye may not travel far, or can +get no joy in a distant view, <i>therefore</i> it shall rest in pure content, +focussed upon a scene where rich and orderly garniture can no farther +go.</p> + +<p>Thus have the ill-conditions of the land proved blessings in disguise. +Necessity, the mother of invention, has produced the Dutch garden out of +the most untoward geography, and if we find in its qualities and +features traces of the conditions which surrounded its birth and +development it is no wonder. Who shall blame the prim shapes and +economical culture where even gross deception shall pass for a virtue if +it be successful! Or the regular strips of ground, the long straight +canals, the adroit vistas of grassy terraces long-drawn out, the trees +ranged in pots, or planted in the ground at set intervals and carefully +shorn to preserve the limit of their shade! Nay, one can be merciful to +the garden's usual crowning touch, which you get at its far end—a +painted landscape of hills and dales and clumps of trees to beguile the +enamoured visitor into the fond belief that Holland is not Holland: and, +in the foreground the usual smiling wooden boy, shooting arrows at +nothing, happy in the deed, and tin hares squatting in likely nooks, +whose shy hare eyes have worn the same startled gaze these sixty years +or more, renewed with fresh paint from time to time as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> rust requires. +Yet the Earth is richer and mankind happier for the Dutch garden!</p> + +<p>And, as though out of compassion for the Dutchman's difficulties, kind +Nature has put into his hands the bulb, as a means whereby he may attain +the maximum of gaudy colour within the minimum of space. Given a few +square yards of rescued earth and sufficient manure, and what cannot the +neat-handed, frugal-minded, microscopic-eyed Dutchman do in the way of +concentrated design with his bulbs, his clipt shrubs, his trim beds, his +trickles of water, and strips of grass and gravel! And should all other +resources fail he has still his pounded brick-dust, his yellow sand, his +chips of ores and spars and green glass, which, though they may serve +only remotely to suggest Nature, will at all events carry your mind off +to the gay gardens of precious stones of fairyland literature!</p> + +<p>Indeed, once embarked upon his style of piquancy-at-any-price, and it is +hard to see where the Dutch gardener need stop! In this sophisticated +trifling—this lapidary's mosaic—this pastry-cook's decoration—this +child's puzzle of coloured earth, substituted for coloured living +flowers—he pushes Art farther than the plain Englishman approves. It +is, however, only one step farther than ordinary with him. All his +dealings with Nature are of this abstract sort: his details are clever, +and he is ingenious, if not imaginative, in his wholes. Still, I repeat, +the Earth is richer, and mankind happier for the Dutch garden. There is +an obvious excuse for its over-fancifulness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> in George Meredith's remark +that "dulness is always an irresistible temptation for brilliance." That +the Dutchman should be thus able to compete with unfriendly Nature, and +to reverse the brazen of the unkind land of his birth, is an achievement +that reflects most creditably upon the artistic capacities of his +nation.</p> + +<p>But England—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This other Eden, demi-paradise"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>suggests a garden of a less-constrained order than either of these. Not +that the English garden is uniformly of the same type, at the same +periods. The variety of the type is to be accounted for in two ways: +firstly, by the ingrained eclecticism of the British mind; secondly, by +the changeful character of the country—this district is flat and open, +this is hilly—so that mere conformity to the lie of the land would +produce gardens which belong now to the French type, now to the Italian. +It is the same with British Art of all kinds, of all times: in days long +before the Norman visitation and ever since, the English Designer has +leant more or less upon foreign initiative, which goes to prove either +how inert is his own gift of origination, or how devious may be the +tastes of a mixed race.</p> + +<p>But if the English garden cannot boast of singular points of interest, +if its art reflects foreign countries, it bears the mark of the English +taste for landscape, which gives it distinction and is suggestive of +very charming effects. The transcendent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> characteristic of the English +garden is derived from and gets its impulse from the prevailing +influence of Nature at home. It has the characteristics of the country.</p> + +<p>It is, I know, commonly held now-a-days that the taste for landscape is +wholly of modern growth. So far as England is concerned it came in, they +say, with Thomson in poetry, and with Brown in gardens. So far as +relates to the <i>conscious</i> relish for Nature, so far as relates to the +love of Nature as a mirror of the moods of the mind, or as a refuge from +man, this assertion may be true enough. Yet, surely the <i>conscious</i> +delight in landscape must have been preceded by an <i>unconscious</i> +sympathy this way: it could not have sprung without generation. Artistic +sight is based upon instinct, feeling, perceptions that reach one knows +not how far back in time, it does not come by magic.</p> + +<p>See also what a rude, slatternly affair this much-lauded +landscape-garden of the "immortal Brown" was! Here are two sorts of +gardens—the traditional garden according to Bacon, the garden according +to Brown. Both are Nature, but the first is Nature in an ideal dress, +the second is Nature with no dress at all. The first is a garden for a +civilised man, the second is a garden for a gipsy. The first is a +picture painted from a cherished model, the second is a photograph of +the same model undressed. Brown's work, in fact, represents the garden's +return to its original barbaric self—the reinauguration of the +elemental. Let it not be said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> then, that Brown discovered the model, +for her fairness was an established fact or she would not have been so +richly apparelled when he lighted upon her. In other words, the love of +the Earth—"that green-tressed goddess," Coleridge calls her—was no new +thing in Brown's day: the sympathy for the woodland world, the love of +tree, flower, and grass is behind the manipulated stiff garden of the +fifteenth and two succeeding centuries, and it is the abiding source of +all enthusiasm in garden-craft.</p> + +<p>How long this taste for landscape had existed in pre-Thomsonian days it +does not fall to us to determine. Suffice it to say that so long as +there has been an English school of gardening this sympathy for +landscape has found expression in the English garden.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> The high thick +garden-walls of the old fighting-days shall have ample outlooks in the +shape of "mounts," from whence views may be had of the open country. The +ornamental value of forest trees is well-known and appreciated. Even in +the thirteenth century the English gardener is on the alert for new +specimens and "trees of curiosity," and he is a master of horticulture. +In Chaucer's day he revels in the greensward,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ful thikke of gras, ful softe and swete."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>And the early ballads as I have already shown are full of allusion to +scenery and woodland. In the days of fine gardens the Englishman must +still have his four acres "to the green," his adjuncts of shrubbery, +wilderness, and park. Nay, Henry VIII.'s garden at Nonsuch, had its +wilderness of ten acres. "Chaucer opens his Clerke's Tale with a bit of +landscape admirable for its large style," says Mr Lowell, "and as well +composed as any Claude" ("My Study Windows," p. 22). "What an airy +precision of touch is here, and what a sure eye for the points of +character in landscape." So, too, can Milton rejoice in</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Nature boon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and Herrick:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of April, May, of June, and July flowers."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nor is this taste for landscape surprising in a country where the +natural scenery is so fair and full of meaning. There are the solemn +woods, the noble trees of forest and park: the "fresh green lap" of the +land, so vividly green that the American Hawthorne declares he found "a +kind of lustre in it." There is the rich vegetation, and "in France, and +still less in Italy," Walpole reminds us, "they could with difficulty +attain that verdure which the humidity of our climate bestows." There +are the leafy forest ways gemmed with flowers; the vast hunting-grounds +of old kings, the woodland net of hazel coppice, the hills and dales, +sunned or shaded, the plains mapped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> out with hedgerows and enlivened +with the glitter of running water: the heather-clad moors, the golden +gorse covers, the rolling downs dotted over with thorns and yews and +chalk cliffs, the upland hamlets with their rosy orchards, the farm +homesteads nestling in green combes, the grace of standing corn, the +girdle of sea with its yellow shore or white, red, or grey rocks, its +wolds and tracts of rough uncultivated ground, with bluffs and bushes +and wind-harassed trees—Nature's own "antickes"—driven like green +flames, and carved into grotesque shapes by the biting gales. There are +the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Russet lawns, and fallows grey<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the nibbling flocks do stray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mountains on whose barren breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The labouring clouds do often rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Meadows prim with daisies pied,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shallow brooks and rivers wide"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the land that Richard Jefferies says "wants no gardening, it <i>cannot</i> be +gardened; the least interference kills it"—English woodland whose +beauty is in its detail. There is nothing empty and unclothed here. Says +Jefferies, "If the clods are left a little while undisturbed in the +fields, weeds spring up and wild flowers bloom upon them. Is the hedge +cut and trimmed, lo! the bluebells flower the more, and a yet fresher +green buds forth upon the twigs." "Never was there a garden like the +meadow," cries this laureate of the open fields; "there is not an inch +of the meadow in early summer without a flower."</p> + +<p>And if the various parts and details of an English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> landscape are so +beautiful in themselves, what shall we say of the scenery when Nature, +turned artist, sweeps across it the translucent tints of dawn or sunset, +or wind and cloud-fantasy; or veil of purple mist, or grey or red haze, +or drift of rain-shower thrown athwart the hills, for the sunbeams to +try their edge upon; or any of the numberless atmospheric changes, pure +and tender, stern and imperious, that our humid climate has ever ready +to hand!</p> + +<p>Shut in, as we in England are, with our short breadths of view ("on a +scale to embrace," remarks George Meredith), folded, as it were, in a +field-sanctuary of Nature-life—girt about with scenery that is at once +fair, compact, sweetly familiar and companionable, yet so changefully +coloured, so full of surprises as the day jogs along to its evensong as +to hold observation on the stretch, to force attention to Nature's last +word, to fill the fallow-mind of lonely country folk with gentle wonder, +and swell the "harvest of a quiet eye," is it strange that a land like +ours should have bred an unrivalled school of Nature-readers among +gardeners, painters, and poets? "As regards grandeur," says Hawthorne, +"there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England +can show; but, for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies +under its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it +anywhere." ("Our Old Home," p. 78.)</p> + +<p>The <i>real</i> world of England, then, is, in the Englishman's opinion, +itself so fair "it wants no gardening." Our school of gardeners seem to +have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> found this out; for the task of the gardener has been rather that +of translator than of creator; he has not had to labour at an artificial +world he himself had made, but only to adorn, to interpret the world as +it is, in all its blithe freedom. "The earth is the garden of Nature, +and each fruitful country a Paradise;" and in England, "the world's best +garden," man has only had to focus the view and frame it. Flowers, +odours, dews, glistening waters, soft airs and sounds, noble trees, +woodland solitudes, moonlight bowers, have been always with us.</p> + +<p>It might seem ungenerous to institute a comparison between the French +and English styles of gardening, and to put things in a light +unfavourable to the foreigner, had not the task been already done for us +by a Frenchman in a most outspoken manner. Speaking of the French +gardens, Diderot, in his Encyclopædia (<i>Jardin</i>) says: "We bring to bear +upon the most beautiful situations a ridiculous and paltry taste. The +long straight alleys appear to us insipid; the palisades cold and +formless. We delight in devising twisted alleys, scroll-work parterres, +and shrubs formed into tufts; the largest lots are divided into little +lots. It is not so with a neighbouring nation, amongst whom gardens in +good taste are as common as magnificent palaces are rare. In England, +these kinds of walks, practicable in all weathers, seem made to be the +sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure; the body is there relaxed, the +mind diverted, the eyes are enchanted by the verdure of the turf and the +bowling-greens; the variety of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> flowers offers pleasant flattery to the +smell and sight, Nature alone, modestly arrayed, and never made up, +there spreads out her ornaments and benefits. How the fountains beget +the shrubs and beautify them! How the shadows of the woods put the +streams to sleep in beds of herbage." This is poetry! but it is well +that one French writer (and he so distinguished) should be found to +depict an English garden, when architects like Jussieu and Antoine +Richard signally failed to reproduce the thing, to order, upon French +soil! And the <i>Petit Trianon</i> was in itself an improvement upon, or +rather a protest against, the sumptuous splendour of the <i>Orangerie</i>, +the basins of Latona and of Neptune, and the superb <i>tapis vert</i>, with +its bordering groves of clipt trees and shrubs. Yet here is Arthur +Young's unflattering description of the Queen's <i>Jardin Anglois</i> at +Trianon: "It contains about 100 acres, disposed in the taste of what we +read of in books of Chinese gardening, whence it is supposed the English +style was taken. There is more of Sir William Chambers here than of Mr +Brown,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> more effort than Nature, and more expense than taste. It is +not easy to conceive anything that Art can introduce in a garden that is +not here; woods, rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers, islands, cascades, +grottoes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> walks, temples, and even villages." Truly a <i>Jardin Anglois</i>!</p> + +<p>We may well prefer Diderot's simile for the English garden as "the +sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure" to the bustling crowd of +miscellaneous elements that took its name in vain in the <i>Petit +Trianon</i>!</p> + +<p>For an English garden is at once stately and homely—homely before all +things. Like all works of Art it is conventionally treated, and its +design conscious and deliberate. But the convention is broad, dignified, +quiet, homogeneous, suiting alike the characteristics of the country and +of the people for whom it is made. Compared with this, the foreign +garden must be allowed to be richer in provocation; there is distinctly +more fancy in its conceits, and its style is more absolute and +circumspect than the English. And yet, just as Browning says of +imperfection, that it may sometimes mean "perfection hid," so, here our +deficiencies may not mean defects.</p> + +<p>In order that we may compare the English and foreign garden we must +place them on common ground; and I will liken each to a pastoral +romance. Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet how +different the quality of the contents, the method of presentment, the +style, the technique of this and that, even when the design is +contemporaneous!</p> + +<p>A garden is, I say, a sort of pastoral romance, woven upon a background +of natural scenery. In the exercise of his pictorial genius, both the +foreign and English artist shall run upon natural things, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +transcribe Nature imaginatively yet realisably; each composition shall +have a pastoral air, and be rustic after its fashion. But how different +the platform, how different the mental complexion, the technique of the +artists! How different the detail and the atmosphere of the garden. The +rusticity of the foreign garden is dished up in a more delectable form +than is the case in the English, but there is not the same open-air +feeling about this as about that; it does not convey the same sense of +unexhausted possibilities—not the same tokens of living enjoyment of +Nature, of heart-to-heart fellowship with her. The foreign garden is +over-wrought, too full: it is a passionless thing—like the gaudy birds +of India, finely plumed but songless; like the prize rose, without +sweetness.</p> + +<p>Of the garden of Italy, who shall dare to speak critically. Child of +tradition: heir by unbroken descent, inheritor of the garden-craft of +the whole civilised world. It stands on a pinnacle high above the +others, peerless and alone: fit for the loveliest of lands—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">... "Woman-country, wooed not wed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Loved all the more by Earth's male-lands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laid to their hearts instead"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and it may yet be seen upon its splendid scale, splendidly adorned, with +straight terraces, marble statues, clipped ilex and box, walks bordered +with azalea and camellia, surrounded with groves of pines and +cypresses—so frankly artistic, yet so subtly blending itself into the +natural surroundings—into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> the distant plain, the fringe of purple +hills, the gorgeous panorama of the Alps with its background of glowing +sky. With such a radiant country to conjure with, we may truly say "The +richly provided, richly require."</p> + +<p>If we may speak our mind of the French and Dutch gardens, they in no +wise satisfy English taste as regards their relation to Nature. Diderot +has said that it is the peculiarity of the French to judge everything +with the mind. It is from this standpoint that the Frenchman treats +Nature in a garden. He is ever seeking to unite the accessory portions +with the <i>ensemble</i>. He overdoes design. He gives you the impression +that he is far more in love with his own ideas about Nature than with +Nature herself; that he uses her resources not to interpret them or +perfect them along their own lines, but express his own interesting +ideas. He must provide stimulus for his imagination; his nature demands +food for reverie, point for ecstasy, for delicious self-abandonment, for +bedazzlement with ideal beauty, and the garden shall supply him with +these whatever the cost to the materials employed. Hence a certain +unscrupulousness towards Nature in the French garden; hence the daring +picturesqueness, its legerdemain. Nature edited thus, is to the +Englishman but Nature in effigy, Nature used as a peg for fantastical +attire, Nature with a false lustre that tells of lead alloy—Nature that +has forgotten what she is like.</p> + +<p>In an English garden, as Diderot notes, Nature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> is handled with more +reverence, her rights are more respected. I am willing to allow that +something of the reserve traceable in English art is begotten of the +phlegmatic temper of the race that rarely gets beyond a quiescent +fervour; and this temper, exhibited in a garden would incline us always +to let well alone and not press things too hard. If the qualities of an +English garden that I speak of are to be attributed to this temper, +then, to judge by results, <i>laissez faire</i> is not a bad motto for the +gardener! Certain it is that the dominance of man is more hinted at here +than proclaimed. Compared with foreign examples we sooner read through +its quaintnesses and braveries their sweet originals in Nature: nay, +even when we have idealised things to our hearts' full bent, they shall +yet retain the very note and rhythm of the woodland world from whence +they sprang—"English in all, of genius blithely free."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p> + +<p>And this is true even in that extreme case, the Jacobean garden, where +we have much the same quips and cranks, the same quaint power of +metrical changes and playful fancy of the poetry of Herbert, Vaughan, +Herrick, and Donne; even the little clean-cut pedantries of this +artfullest of all phases of English garden-craft make for a kind of +bland stateliness and high-flown serenity, that bases its appeal upon +placid beauty rather than upon mere ingenuity or specious extravagance. +The conventionalities of its borders, its terraces and steps and images +in lead or marble, its ornamental water, its trim geometrical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> patterns, +its quincunx, clipped hedges, high hedges, and architectural adornments +shall be balanced by great sweeps of lawn and noble trees that are not +constrained to take hands, as in France, across the road and to look +proper, but are left to grow large and thick and wide and free. True +that there is about the Jacobean garden an air of scholarliness and +courtliness; a flavour of dreamland, Arcadia, and Italy—a touch of the +archaic and classical—yet the thing is saved from utter affectation by +our English out-of-door life which has bred in us an innate love of the +unconstrained, a sympathy that keeps its hold on reality, and these give +an undefinable quality of freshness to the composition as a whole.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p> + +<p>To sum up. The main difference in the character of the English and the +foreign schools of gardening lies in this, that the design of the +foreign leans ever in the direction of artificiality, that of England +towards natural freedom. And a true garden should have an equal regard +for Nature and Art; it should represent a marriage of contraries, should +combine finesse and audacity, subtilty and simplicity, the regular and +the unexpected, the ideal and the real "bound fast in one with golden +ease." In a French or Dutch garden the "yes" and "no"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> of Art and Nature +are always unequally yoked. Nature is treated with sparse courtesy by +Art, its individuality is ignored, it sweats like a drudge under its +load of false sentiment. "Sike fancies weren foolerie."</p> + +<p>But in England, though we hold Nature in duress, we leave her unbound; +if we mew her up for cultivation, we leave her inviolate, with a chance +of vagrant liberty and a way of escape. Thus, you will note how the +English garden stops, as it were, without ending. Around or near the +house will be the ordered garden with terraces and architectural +accessories, all trim and fit and nice. Then comes the smooth-shaven +lawn, studded and belted round with fine trees, arranged as it seems +with a divine carelessness; and beyond the lawn, the ferny heather-turf +of the park, where the dappled deer browse and the rabbits run wild, and +the sun-chequered glades go out to meet, and lose themselves "by green +degrees" in the approaching woodland,—past the river glen, the steep +fields of grass and corn, the cottages and stackyards and grey church +tower of the village; past the ridge of fir-land and the dark sweep of +heath-country into the dim waving lines of blue distance.</p> + +<p>So that however self-contained, however self-centred the stiff old +garden may seem to be, it never loses touch with the picturesque +commonplaces of our land; never loses sympathy with the green world at +large, but, in a sense, embraces and locks in its arms the whole +country-side as far as eye can see.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<h3>HISTORICAL SKETCH—CONTINUED.</h3> + +<h3>THE STIFF GARDEN.</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All is fine that is fit."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>The English garden, as I have just tried to sketch it, was not born +yesterday, the bombastic child of a landscape-gardener's recipe. It +epitomises a nation's instincts in garden-craft; it is the slow result +of old affection for, old wonder at, beauty in forms, colours, tones; +old enthusiasm for green turf, wild flower, and forest tree. Take it at +its best, it records the matured taste of a people of Nature-readers, +Nature-lovers: it is that which experience has proved to be in most +accord with the character and climate of the country, and the genius of +the race.</p> + +<p>Landscape has been from the first the central tradition of English art. +Life spent amidst pictorial scenery like ours that is striking in itself +and rendered more impressive and animated by the rapid atmospheric +changes, the shifting lights and shadows, the life and movement in the +sky, and the vivid intense colouring of our moist climate, has given our +tastes a decided bent this way, and fashioned our Arts of Poetry, +Painting, and Gardening. Out-of-door life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> among such scenery puts our +senses on the alert, and the impressions of natural phenomena supply our +device with all its images.</p> + +<p>The English people had not to wait till the eighteenth century to know +to what they were inclined, or what would suit their country's +adornment. From first to last, we have said, the English garden deals +much with trees and shrubs and grass. The thought of them, and the +artistic opportunities they offer, is present in the minds of +accomplished garden-masters, travelled men, initiated spirits, like Sir +Thomas More, Bacon, Shaftesbury, Temple, and Evelyn, whose aim is to +give garden-craft all the method and distinctness of which it is +capable. However saturated with aristocratic ideas the courtier-gardener +may be, however learned in the circumspect style of the Italian, he +retains his native relish for the woodland world, and babbles of green +fields. A sixteenth-century English gardener (Gerarde) adjured his +countrymen to "Go forwarde in the name of God, graffe, set, plant, and +nourishe up trees in every corner of your grounde." A +seventeenth-century gardener (Evelyn) had ornamental landscape and shady +woods in his garden as well as pretty beds of choice flowers.</p> + +<p>"There are, besides the temper of our climate," writes another +seventeenth-century garden-worthy (Temple), "two things particular to +us, that contribute to the beauty and elegance of our gardens, which are +the gravel of our walks and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness +of our turf;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the first is not known anywhere else, which leaves all +their dry walks in other countries very unpleasant and uneasy; the other +cannot be found in France or in Holland as we have it, the soil not +admitting that fineness of blade in Holland, nor the sun that greenness +in France during most of the summer." And following upon this is a long +essay upon the ornamental disposition of the grounds in an English +garden and the culture of fruit trees. "I will not enter upon any +account of flowers," he says, "having only pleased myself with the care, +which is more the ladies' part than the men's,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> but the success is +wholly in the gardener."</p> + +<p>And Bacon is not so wholly enamoured of Arcadia and with the embodiment +of far-brought fancies in his "prince-like" garden as to be callous of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +Nature's share therein. "The contents ought not well to be under thirty +acres of ground, and to be divided into three parts; a green in the +entrance, a heath or desert in the going forth, and the main garden in +the midst, besides alleys on both sides; and I like well that four acres +be assigned to the Green, six to the Heath, four and four to either +side, and twelve to the main Garden. The Green hath two pleasures: the +one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept +finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the +midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge, which is to +enclose the garden." "For the heath, which was the third part of our +plot, I wished it be framed as much as may be to a natural wildness," +&c. Of which more anon.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p> + +<p>Whether the garden of Bacon's essay is the portrait of an actual thing, +whether the writer—to use a phrase of Wordsworth—"had his eye upon the +subject," or whether it was built in the man's brain like Tennyson's +"Palace of Art," we cannot tell. From the singular air of experience +that animates the description, the sure touch of the writer, we may +infer that Gorhambury had some such garden, the fruit of its master's +"Leisure with honour," or "Leisure without honour," as the case may be. +But what seems certain is, that the essay is only a sign of the ordinary +English gentleman's mind on the subject at that time; and in giving us +this masterpiece, Bacon had no more notion of posing as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> founder of +the English garden (<i>pace</i> Brown) than of getting himself labelled as +the founder of Modern Science for his distinguished labours in that +line. "I only sound the clarion," he says, "but I enter not into the +battle."</p> + +<p>Moderns are pleased to smile at what they deem the over-subtilty of +Bacon's ideal garden. For my own part, I find nothing recommended there +that a "princely garden" should not fitly contain (especially as these +things are all of a-piece with the device of the period), even to those +imagination-stirring features which one thinks he may have described, +not from the life, but from the figures in "The Dream of Poliphilus" (a +book of woodcuts published in Venice, 1499), features of the Enchanted +Island, to wit the two fountains—the first to spout water, to be +adorned with ornaments of images, gilt or of marble; the "other, which +we may call a bathing-pool that admits of much curiosity and beauty +wherewith we will not trouble ourselves; as that the bottom be finely +paved with images, the sides likewise; and withal embellished with +coloured glass, and such things of lustre; encompassed also with fine +rails of low statues."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> + +<p>No artist is disposed to apologise for the presence of subtilty in Art, +nor I for the subtle device of Bacon's garden. All Art is cunning. Yet +we must not simply note the deep intent of the old master, but must +equally recognise the air of gravity that pervades his +recommendations—the sweet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> reasonableness of suggestions for design +that have as much regard for the veracities of Nature, and the dictates +of common-sense, as for the nice elegancies and well-calculated +audacities of consummate Art.</p> + +<p>"I only sound the clarion, but I enter not into the battle." Even so, +Master! we will hold thy hand as far as thou wilt go; and the clarion +thou soundest right well, and most serviceably for all future gardeners!</p> + +<p>I like the ring of stout challenge in the opening words, which command +respect for the subject, and, if rightly construed, should make the +heretic "landscape gardener,"—who dotes on meagre country-grass and +gipsy scenery—pause in his denunciation of Art in a garden. "God +almighty first planted a Garden; and indeed it is the purest of humane +pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man, without +which Buildings and Palaces are but gross Handyworks. And a man shall +ever see, that when ages grow to Civility and Elegancy, men come to +build stately sooner than to garden finely: as if Gardening were the +Greater Perfection."</p> + +<p>This first paragraph has, for me, something of the stately tramp and +pregnant meaning of the opening phrase of "At a Solemn Music." The +praise of gardening can no further go. To say more were impossible. To +say less were to belittle your subject. I think of Ben Jonson's simile, +"They jump farthest who fetch their race largest." For Bacon "fetches" +his subject back to "In the beginning,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> and prophesies of all time. +Thus does he lift his theme to its full height at starting, and the +remainder holds to the same heroic measure.</p> + +<p>If the ideal garden be fanciful, it is also grand and impressive. Nor +could it well be otherwise. For when the essay was written fine +gardening was in the air, and the master had special opportunities for +studying and enjoying great gardens. More than this, Bacon was an apt +craftsman in many fields, a born artist, gifted with an imagination at +once rich and curious, whose performances of every sort declare the +student's love of form, and the artist's nice discrimination of +expression. Then, too, his mind was set upon the conquest of Nature, of +which gardening is a province, for the service of man, for physical +enjoyment, and for the increase of social comfort. Yet was he an +Englishman first, and a fine gardener afterwards. Admit the author's +sense of the delights of art-magic in a garden, none esteemed them more, +yet own the discreet economy of his imaginative strokes, the homely +bluntness of his criticisms upon foreign vagaries, the English +sane-mindedness of his points, his feeling for broad effects and dislike +of niggling, the mingled shrewdness and benignity of his way of putting +things. It is just because Bacon thus treats of idealisms as though they +were realisms, because he so skilfully wraps up his fanciful figures in +matter-of-fact language that even the ordinary English reader +appreciates the art of Bacon's stiff garden, and entertains +art-aspirations unawares.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> + +<p>Every reader of Bacon will recognise what I wish to point out. Here, +however, are a few examples:—</p> + +<p>"For the ordering of the Ground within the Great Hedge, I leave it to a +Variety of Device. Advising, nevertheless, that whatsoever form you cast +it into; first it be not too busie, or full of work; wherein I, for my +part, do not like Images cut out in Juniper, or other garden stuffs; +<i>they are for Children</i>. Little low Hedges, round like Welts, with some +pretty Pyramids, I like well; and in some places Fair Columns upon +Frames of Carpenters' work. I would also have the Alleys spacious and +fair."</p> + +<p>"As for the making of Knots or Figures, with Divers Coloured earths, +that they may lie under the windows of the House, on that side which the +Garden stands, <i>they be but Toys, you may see as good sights many +times in Tarts</i>."</p> + +<p>"For Fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, <i>but Pools mar +all, and make the Garden unwholesome and full of flies and frogs</i>."</p> + +<p>"For fine Devices, of arching water without spilling, and making it rise +in several forms (of Feathers, Drinking Glasses, Canopies, and the like) +(see "The Dream of Poliphilus") <i>they be pretty things to look on, but +nothing to Health and Sweetness</i>."</p> + +<p>Thus throughout the Essay, with alternate rise and fall, do fancy and +judgment deliver themselves of charge and retort, making a kind of +logical see-saw. At the onset Fancy kicks the beam; at the middle, +Judgment is in the ascendant, and before the sentence is done the +balance rides easy. And this scrupulousness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> is not to be wholly +ascribed to the fastidious bent of a mind that lived in a labyrinth; it +speaks equally of the fineness of the man's ideal, which lifts his +standard sky-high and keeps him watchful to a fault in attaining desired +effects without running upon "trifles and jingles." The master-text of +the whole Essay seems to be the writer's own apothegm: "Nature is +commanded by obeying her."</p> + +<p>That a true gardener should love Nature goes without saying. And Bacon +loved Nature passionately, and gardens only too well. He tells us these +were his favourite sins in the strange document—half prayer, half +Apologia—written after he had made his will, at the time of his fall, +when he presumably concluded that <i>anything</i> might happen. "Thy +creatures have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much more. I have +sought Thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found Thee in +Thy temples."</p> + +<p>Three more points about the essay I would like to comment upon. First, +That in spite of its lofty dreaming, it treats of the hard and dry side +of gardening as a science in so methodical a manner that but for what it +contains besides, and for its mint-mark of a great spirit, the thing +might pass as an extract from a more-than-ordinary practical gardener's +manual. Bacon does not write upon the subject like a man in another +planet, but like a man in a land of living men.</p> + +<p>Secondly, As to the attitude of Bacon and his school towards external +Nature. In them is no trace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> of the mawkish sentimentality of the modern +"landscape-gardener," proud of his discoveries, bustling to show how +condescending he can be towards Nature, how susceptible to a pastoral +melancholy. There is nothing here of the maundering of Shenstone over +his ideal landscape-garden that reads as though it would be a superior +sort of pedants' Cremorne, where "the lover's walk may have assignation +seats, with proper mottoes, urns to faithful lovers, trophies, garlands, +etc., by means of Art"; and where due consideration is to be given to +"certain complexions of soul that will prefer an orange tree or a myrtle +to an oak or cedar." The older men thought first of the effects that +they wished to attain, and proceeded to realise them without more ado. +They had no "codes of taste" to appeal to, and no literary law-givers to +stand in dread of. They applied Nature's raw materials as their art +required. And yet, compared with the methods of the heavy-handed realist +of later times such unscrupulousness had a merit of its own. To suit +their purposes the old gardeners may have defied Nature's ways and wont; +but, even so, they act as fine gentlemen should: they never pet and +patronise her: they have no blunt and blundering methods such as mark +the Nature-maulers of the Brown or Batty-Langley school: if they cut, +they do not mince, nor hack, nor tear, they cut clean. In one's better +moments one can almost sympathise with the "landscape-gardener's" +feelings as he reads, if he ever does read, Evelyn's classic book +"Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest-trees," how they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> trimmed the hedges +of hornbeam, "than which there is nothing more graceful," and the cradle +or close-walk with that perplext canopy which lately covered the seat in +his Majesty's garden at Hampton Court, and how the tonsile hedges, +fifteen or twenty feet high, are to be cut and kept in order "with a +scythe of four feet long, and very little falcated; this is fixed on a +long sneed or straight handle, and <i>does wonderfully expedite the +trimming of these and the like hedges</i>."</p> + +<p>Thirdly, Bacon's essay tells us all that an English garden <i>can</i> be, or +<i>may</i> be. Bacon writes not for his age alone but for all time; nay, his +essay covers so much ground that the legion of after-writers have only +to pick up the crumbs that fall from this rich man's table, and to +amplify the two hundred and sixty lines of condensed wisdom that it +contains. Its category of effects reaches even the free-and-easy +planting of the skirts of our dressed grounds, with flowers and shrubs +set in the turf "framed as much as may be to a natural wildness"—a +pretty trick of compromise which the modern book-writers would have us +believe they invented themselves.</p> + +<p>On one point the modern garden has the advantage and is bound to excel +the old, namely in its employment of foreign trees and shrubs. The +decorative use of "trees of curiosity," as the foreign trees were then +called, and the employment of variegated foliage, was not unknown to the +gardener of early days, but it was long before foreign plants were +introduced to any great extent. Loudon has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> taken the trouble to reckon +up the number of specimens that came to England century by century, and +we gather from this that the imports of modern times exceed those of +earlier times to an enormous extent. Thus, he computes that only 131 new +specimens of foreign trees were introduced into England in the +seventeenth century as against 445 in the following century.</p> + +<p>Yet, to follow up this interesting point, we may observe that Heutzner, +writing of English gardens in 1598, specially notes "the great variety +of trees and plants at Theobalds."</p> + +<p>Furthermore, to judge by Worlidge's "Systema Horticulturæ" (1677) it +would seem that the practice of variegating, and of combining the +variegated foliage of plants and shrubs, was in existence at that time.</p> + +<p>"Dr Uvedale, of Enfield, is a great lover of plants," says Gibson, +writing in 1691, "and is become master of the greatest and choicest +collection of exotic greens that is perhaps anywhere in this land.... +His flowers are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture of them very +methodical and curious; but to speak of the garden in the whole, it does +not lie fine to please the eye, his delight and care lying more in the +ordering particular plants, than in the pleasing view and form of his +garden."</p> + +<p>"<i>Darby</i>, at <i>Hoxton</i>, has but a little garden, but is master of several +curious greens.... His Fritalaria Crassa (a green) had a flower on it of +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> breadth of half-a-crown, like an embroidered star of many +colours.... He raises many striped hollies by inoculation," &c. +("Gleanings in Old Garden Literature," Hazlitt, p. 240.)</p> + +<p>And yet one last observation I would like to make, remembering Bacon's +subtilty, and how his every utterance is the sum of matured analytical +thought. This yearning for wild nature that makes itself felt all +through the Essay, this scheme for a "natural wildness" touching the hem +of artificiality; this provision for mounts of some pretty height "to +look abroad in the fields"; this care for the "Heath or Desart in the +going forth, planted not in any order;" the "little Heaps in the Nature +of Molehills (such as are in wild Heaths) to be set with pleasant herbs, +wild thyme, pinks, periwinkle, and the like Low Flowers being withall +sweet and sightly"—what does it imply? Primarily, it declares the +artist who knows the value of contrast, the interest of blended +contrariness; it is the cultured man's hankering after a many-faced +Nature readily accessible to him in his many moods; it tells, too, of +the drift of the Englishman towards familiar landscape effects, the +garden-mimicry which sets towards pastoral Nature; but above and beyond +all else, it is a true Baconian stroke. Is not the man's innermost self +here revealed, who in his eagerest moments struggled for detachment of +mind, held his will in leash according to his own astute maxim "not to +engage oneself too peremptorily in anything, but ever to have either a +window open to fly out of, or a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> secret way to retire by"? In a sense, +the garden's technique illustrates its author's personality. To change +Montaigne's reply to the king who admired his essays, Bacon might say, +"I am my garden."</p> + +<p>Many references to old garden-craft might be given culled from the +writings of Sir Thomas More, John Lyly, Gawen Douglas, John Gerarde, Sir +Philip Sidney, and others; all of whom are quoted in Mr Sieveking's +charming volume, "The praise of Gardens." But none will serve our +purpose so well as the notes of Heutzner, the German traveller, who +visited England in the 16th century, and Sir William Temple's +description of the garden of Moor Park. According to Heutzner, the +gardens at Theobalds, Nonsuch, Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Oxford were +laid out with considerable taste and extensively ornamented with +architectural and other devices. The Palace at Nonsuch is encompassed +with parks full of deer, with delicious gardens, groves ornamented with +trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks enclosed with trees. "In +the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of +marble, two fountains that spout water one round the other like a +pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of +their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with +Actaeon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and her +nymphs, with inscriptions." Theobalds, according to Heutzner's account, +has a "great variety of trees and plants," labyrinths, fountains of +white marble, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> summerhouse, and statuary. The gardens had their +terraces, trellis-walks, and bowling-greens, the beds being laid out in +geometrical lines, and the hedges formed of yews, hollies, and limes, +clipped and shaped into cones, pyramids, and other devices. Among the +delights of Nonsuch was a wilderness of ten acres of extent. Of Hampton +Court, he says: "We saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the walls as +to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding common in England."</p> + +<p>No book on English gardens can afford to dispense with Temple's +description of the garden of Moor Park, which is given with considerable +relish, as though it satisfied the ideal of the writer.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The perfectest figure of a Garden I ever saw, either at Home or +Abroad."—"It lies on the side of a Hill (upon which the House +stands), but not very steep. The length of the House, where the +best Rooms and of most Use or Pleasure are, lies upon the Breadth +of the Garden, the Great Parlour opens into the Middle of a Terras +Gravel-Walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I +remember, about 300 Paces long, and broad in Proportion, the Border +set with Standard Laurels, and at large Distances, which have the +beauty of Orange-Trees, out of Flower and Fruit: From this Walk are +Three Descents by many Stone Steps, in the Middle and at each End, +into a very large Parterre. This is divided into Quarters by +Gravel-Walks, and adorned with Two Fountains and Eight Statues in +the several Quarters; at the End of the Terras-Walk are Two +Summer-Houses, and the Sides of the Parterre are ranged with two +large Cloisters, open to the Garden, upon Arches of Stone, and +ending with two other Summer-Houses even with the Cloisters, which +are paved with Stone, and designed for Walks of Shade, there are +none other in the whole Parterre. Over these two Cloisters are two +Terrasses covered with Lead and fenced with Balusters; and the +Passage into these Airy Walks, is out of the two Summer-Houses, at +the End of the first Terras-Walk. The Cloister facing the <i>South</i> +is covered with Vines, and would have been proper for an +Orange-House, and the other for Myrtles, or other more common +Greens; and had, I doubt not, been cast for that Purpose, if this +Piece of Gardening had been then in as much Vogue as it is now.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p> + +<p>"From the middle of this Parterre is a Descent by many Steps flying +on each Side of a Grotto, that lies between them (covered with +Lead, and flat) into the lower Garden, which is all Fruit-Trees +ranged about the several Quarters of a Wilderness, which is very +Shady; the Walks here are all Green, the Grotto embellished with +Figures of Shell-Rock work, Fountains, and Water-works. If the Hill +had not ended with the lower Garden, and the Wall were not bounded +by a Common Way that goes through the Park, they might have added a +Third Quarter of all Greens; but this Want is supplied by a Garden +on the other Side of the House, which is all of that Sort, very +Wild, Shady, and adorned with rough Rock-work and Fountains." +("Upon the Garden of Epicurus, or of Gardening.")</p></blockquote> + +<p>The "Systema Horticulturæ" of John Worlidge (1677) was, says Mr Hazlitt +("Gleanings in old Garden Literature," p. 40), apparently the earliest +manual for the guidance of gardeners. It deals with technical matters, +such as the treatment and virtue of different soils, the form of the +ground, the structure of walls and fences, the erection of arbours, +summer-houses, fountains, grottoes, obelisks, dials, &c.</p> + +<p>"The Scots Gardener," by John Reid (1683) follows this, and is, says Mr +Hazlitt, the parent-production in this class of literature. It is +divided into two portions, of which the first is occupied by technical +instructions for the choice of a site for a garden, the arrangement of +beds and walks, &c.</p> + +<p>Crispin de Passe's "Book of Beasts, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, &c.," +published in London (1630), heralds the changes which set in with the +introduction of the Dutch school of design.</p> + +<p>To speak generally of the subject, it is with the art of Gardening as +with Architecture, Literature, and Music—there is the Mediæval, the +Elizabethan, the Jacobean, the Georgian types. Each and all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> are +English, but English with a difference—with a declared tendency this +way or that, which justifies classification, and illustrates the march +of things in this changeful modern world.</p> + +<p>The various types include the mediæval garden, the square garden, the +knots and figures of Elizabethan times, with their occasional use of +coloured earths and gravels; the pleach-work and intricate borders of +James I.; the painted Dutch statues as at Ham House; the quaint canals, +the winding gravel-walks, the formal geometrical figures; the quincunx +and <i>étoile</i> of William and Mary; later on, the smooth, bare, and bald +grounds of Kent, the photographic copyism of Nature by Brown, the +garden-farm of Shenstone, and other phases of the "Landscape style" +which served for the green grave of the old-fashioned English garden.</p> + +<p>In the early years of George III. a reaction against tradition set in +with so strong a current, that there remains scarcely any private garden +in the United Kingdom which presents in all its parts a sample of the +original design.</p> + +<p>Levens, near Kendal, of which I give two illustrations, is probably the +least spoiled of any remaining examples; and this was, it would seem, +planned by a Frenchman, but worked out under the restraining influences +of English taste. A picture on the staircase of the house, apparently +Dutch, bears the inscription, "M. Beaumont, gardener to King James II. +and Colonel James Grahme. He laid out the gardens at Hampton Court and +at Levens." The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> gardener's house at the place is still called "Beaumont +Hall." (See an admirable monograph upon "Col. James Grahme, of Levens," +by Mr Joscelin Bagot, Kendal.)</p> + +<p>One who is perhaps hardly in sympathy with the quaintness of the +gardens, thus writes: "There along a wide extent of terraced walks and +walls, eagles of holly and peacocks of yew still find with each +returning summer their wings clipt and their talons; there a stately +remnant of the old promenoirs such as the Frenchman taught our +fathers,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> rather I would say to <i>build</i> than plant—along which in +days of old stalked the gentlemen with periwigs and swords, the ladies +in hoops and furbelows—may still to this day be seen."</p> + +<p>With the pictures of the gardens at Levens before us, with memories of +Arley, of Brympton, of Wilton,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> of Montacute, Rockingham, Penshurst, +Severn End, Berkeley,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and Haddon, we may here pause a moment to +count up and bewail our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> losses. Wolsey's garden at Hampton Court is now +effaced, for the design of the existing grounds dates from William III. +Nonsuch in Surrey, near Epsom race-course, is a mere memory. In old days +this was a favourite resort of Queen Elizabeth; the garden was designed +by her father, but the greater part carried out by the last of the +Fitzalans. Evelyn, writing of Nonsuch, says: "There stand in the garden +two handsome stone pyramids and the avenue planted with rows of fair +elms, but the rest of these goodly trees, both of this and of Worcester +adjoining, were felled by those destructive and avaricious rebels in the +late war."</p> + +<p>Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, had a noble garden; it was bought in 1564 +by Cecil, and became the favourite haunt of the Stuarts, but the house +was finally destroyed during the Commonwealth.</p> + +<p>My Lord <i>Fauconbergh's</i> garden at <i>Sutton Court</i> is gone too. As +described by Gibson in 1691, it had many charms. "The maze, or +wilderness, there is very pretty, being set all with greens, with a +cypress arbour in the middle," &c.</p> + +<p>Sir <i>Henry Capell's</i> garden at Kew, described by the same writer, "has +as curious greens, and is as well kept as any about London.... His +orange trees and other choice greens stand out in summer in two walks +about fourteen feet wide, enclosed with a timber frame about seven feet +high, and set with silver firs hedge-wise.... His terrace walk, bare in +the middle and grass on either side, with a hedge of rue on one side +next a low wall, and a row of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> dwarf trees on the other, shews very +fine; and so do from thence his yew hedges with trees of the same at +equal distance, kept in pretty shapes with tonsure. His flowers and +fruits are of the best, for the advantage of which two parallel walls, +about fourteen feet high, were now raised and almost finished," &c.</p> + +<p>Sir <i>Stephen Fox's</i> garden at <i>Chiswick</i>, "excels for a fair gravel walk +betwixt two yew hedges, with rounds and spires of the same, all under +smooth tonsure. At the far end of this garden are two myrtle hedges that +cross the garden. The other gardens are full of flowers and salleting, +and the walls well clad."</p> + +<p>Wimbledon House, which was rebuilt by Sir Thomas Cecil in 1588, and +surveyed by order of Parliament in 1649, was celebrated for its trees, +gardens, and shrubs. In the several gardens, which consisted of mazes, +wildernesses, knots, alleys, &c., are mentioned a great variety of fruit +trees and shrubs, particularly a "faire bay tree," valued at £1; and +"one very faire tree called the Irish arbutis, very lovely to look upon +and worth £1, 10s." (Lysons, I., 397.)</p> + +<p>The gardens at Sherborne Castle were laid out by Sir Walter Raleigh. +Coker, in his "Survey of Dorsetshire," written in the time of James I., +says that Sir Walter built in the park adjoining the old Castle, "a most +fine house which hee beautified with orchardes, gardens, and groves of +much varietie and great delight; soe that whether that you consider<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the +pleasantness of the seate, the goodnesse of the soyle, or the other +delicacies belonging unto it, it rests unparalleled by anie in those +partes" (p. 124). This same park, magnificently embellished with woods +and gardens, was "improved" away by the "landscape-gardener" Brown, who +altered the grounds.</p> + +<p>Cobham, near Gravesend, still famous in horticultural annals as Nonsuch +is for its apples, was the seat of the Brookes. The extent to which +fruit was cultivated in old time is seen by the magnitude of the +orangery at Beddington House, Surrey, which was two hundred feet long; +the trees mostly measured thirteen feet high, and in 1690 some ten +thousand oranges were gathered.</p> + +<p>Ham is described with much gusto by Evelyn: "After dinner I walked to +Ham to see the house and garden of the Duke of Lauderdale, which is +indeed inferior to few of the best villas in Italy itself; the house +furnished like a great Prince's, the parterres, flower-gardens, +orangeries, groves, avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, +aviaries, and all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world, +must needs be admirable."</p> + +<p>Bowyer House, Surrey, is described also by Evelyn as having a very +pretty grove of oaks and hedges of yew in the garden, and a handsome row +of tall elms before the court. This garden has, however, made way for +rows of mean houses.</p> + +<p>At Oxford, where you would have expected more respect for antiquity, the +walks and alleys, along<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> which Laud had conducted Charles and Henrietta, +the bowling-green at Christ Church of Cranmer's time—all are gone.</p> + +<p>The ruthless clearance of these gardens of renown is sad to relate: "For +what sin has the plough passed over your pleasant places?" may be +demanded of numberless cases besides Blakesmoor. Southey, writing upon +this very point, adds that "feeling is a better thing than taste,"—for +"taste" did it at the bidding of critics who had no "feeling," and who +veered round with the first sign of change in the public mind about +gardening. Not content with watching the heroic gardens swept away, he +must goad the Vandals on to their sorry work by flattering them for +their good taste. For what Horace Walpole did to expose the +poverty-stricken design and all the poor bankrupt whimsies of the garden +of his day, we owe him thanks; but not for including in his condemnation +the noble work of older days. In touching upon Lord Burleigh's garden, +and that at Nonsuch, he says: "We find the <i>magnificent though false +taste</i> was known here as early as the reigns of Henry VIII. and his +daughter." This is not bad, coming from the man who built a cockney +Gothic house adorned with piecrust battlements and lath-and-plaster +pinnacles; who spent much of his life in concocting a maze of walks in +five acres of ground, and was so far carried away by mock-rustic +sentiment as to have rakes and hay-forks painted as leaning against the +walls of his paddocks! But then Walpole, in his polished way, sneered +at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> everybody and everything; he "spelt every man backward," as Macaulay +observes; with himself he lived in eminent self-content.</p> + +<p>So too, after quoting Temple's description of the garden at Moor Park +with the master's little rhapsody—"the sweetest place I think that I +have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or +abroad"—Walpole has this icy sneer: "Any man might design and <i>build</i> +as sweet a garden who had been born in and never stirred out of Holborn. +It was not peculiar in Sir William Temple to think in that manner."</p> + +<p>It is not wise, however, to lay too much stress upon criticisms of this +sort. After all, any phase of Art does but express the mind of its day, +and it cannot do duty for the mind of another time. "The old order +changeth, yielding place to new," and to take a critical attitude +towards the forms of an older day is almost a necessity of the case; +they soon become curiosities. Yet we may fairly regret the want of +tenderness in dealing with these gardens of the Elizabethan and Jacobean +eras, for, by all the laws of human expression, they should be +masterpieces. The ground-chord of the garden-enterprise of those days +was struck by Bacon, who rates buildings and palaces, be they never so +princely, as "but gross handiworks" where no garden is: "Men come to +build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the +Greater Perfection"—the truth of which saying is only too glaringly +apparent in the relative conditions of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> arts of architecture and of +gardening in the present day!</p> + +<p>By all the laws of human expression, I say, these old gardens should be +masterpieces. The sixteenth century, which saw the English garden +formulated, was a time for grand enterprises; indeed, to this period is +ascribed the making of England. These gardens, then, are the handiwork +of the makers of England, and should bear the marks of heroes. They are +relics of the men and women who made our land both fine and famous in +the days of the Tudors; they represent the mellow fruit of the leisure, +the poetic reverie, the patient craft of men versed in great +affairs—big men, who thought and did big things—men of splendid genius +and stately notions—past-masters of the art of life who would drink +life to the lees.</p> + +<p>As gardeners, these old statesmen were no dabblers. They had the good +fortune to live in a current of ideas of formal device that touched art +at all points and was well calculated to assist the creative faculty in +design of all kinds. They lived before the art of bad gardening had been +invented; before pretty thoughts had palled the taste, before gardening +had learnt routine; while Nature smiled a virgin smile and had a sense +of unsolved mystery. More than this, garden-craft was then no mere craze +or passing freak of fashion, but a serious item in the round of +home-life; —gardening was a thing to be done as well as it could be +done. Design was fresh and open to individual treatment—men needed an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> +outlet for their love of, their elation at, the sight of beautiful +things, and behind them lay the background of far-reaching traditions to +encourage, inspire, protect experiment with the friendly shadow of +authority.</p> + +<p>An accomplished French writer has remarked that even the modest work of +Art may contain occasion for long processes of analysis. "Very great +laws," he says, "may be illustrated in a very small compass." And so one +thinks it is with the ancient garden. Looked at as a piece of design, it +is the blossom of English genius at one of its sunniest moments. It is a +bit of the history of our land. It embodies the characteristics of the +mediæval, the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages just as faithfully as do +other phases of contemporary art. It contains the same principle of +beauty, the same sense of form, that animated these; it has the same +curious turns of expression, the same mixture of pedantry and subtle +sweetness; the same wistful daring and humorous sadness; the same +embroidery of nice fancy—half jocund, half grave, as—shall we +say—Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Spenser's "Faërie Queene," +Milton's "Comus," More's "Utopia," Bacon's Essays, Purcell's Madrigals, +John Thorpe's architecture at Longleat. The same spirit, the same wit +and fancy resides in each; they differ only in the medium of expression.</p> + +<p>To condemn old English gardening, root and branch, for its "false taste" +(and it was not peculiar to Walpole to think in that manner), was, in +truth, to indict our nation on a line of device wherein we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> excelled, +and to condemn device that represents the inspired dreams of some of +England's elect sons.</p> + +<p>To our sorry groundling minds the old pleasaunce may seem too rich and +fantastic, too spectacular, too much idealised. And if to be English one +must needs be <i>bourgeois</i>, the objection must stand. Here is developed +garden-craft, and development almost invariably means multiplicity of +forms and a marked departure from primæval simplicity. Grant, if you +will, that Art is carried too far, and Nature not carried far enough in +the old garden, yet did it deserve better treatment. Judged both from +its human and its artistic side, the place is as loveable as it is +pathetic. It has the pathos of all art that survives its creators, the +pathos of all abandoned human idols, of all high human endeavour that is +blown upon. What is more, it holds, as it were, the spent passion of men +of Utopian dreams, the ideal (in one kind) of the spoiled children of +culture, the knight-errantry of the Renascence—whose imagination soared +after illimitable satisfaction, who were avowedly bent upon transforming +the brazen of this world into the golden, to whom desire was but the +first step to attainment, and failure an unknown experience.</p> + +<p>But even yet some may demur that the interest of the antique garden, as +we see it, is due to Nature direct, and not to art-agencies. It is +Nature who gives it its artistic qualities of gradation, contrast, play +of form and colour, the flicker of sunshine through the foliage, the +shadows on the grass—not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> the master who begot the thing, for has he +not been dead, and his vacant orbits choked with clay these two hundred +years and more! To him, of course, may be ascribed the primal thought of +the place, and, say, some fifty years of active participation in its +ordering and culture, but for the rest—for its poetic excitement, for +its yearly accesses of beauty—are they not to be credited in full to +the lenience of Time and the generous operations of Nature?</p> + +<p>Grant all that should rightly be granted to the disaffected grumbler, +and yet, in Mr Lowell's words for another, yet a parallel case, I plead +that "Poets are always entitled to a royalty on whatever we find in +their works; for these fine creations as truly build themselves up in +the brain as they are built up with deliberate thought." If a garden +owed none of its characteristics to its maker, if it had not expressed +the mind of its designer, why the essential differences of the garden of +this style and of that! Properly speaking, the music of all gardens is +framed out of the same simple gamut of Nature's notes—it is but one +music poured from myriad lips—yet out of the use of the same raw +elements what a variety of tunes can be made, each tune complete in +itself! And it is because we may identify the maker in his work; +because, like the unfinished air, abruptly brought to a close at the +master's death, the place is much as it was first schemed, one is +jealous for the honour of the man whose eye prophesied its ultimate +magic even as he initiated its plan, and drafted its lines.</p> + +<p>Many an English house has been hopelessly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> vulgarised and beggared by +the banishment of the old pleasaunces of the days of Elizabeth, or of +the Jameses and Charleses, and their wholesale demolition there and then +struck a blow at English gardening from which it has not yet recovered. +It may be admitted that, in the case of an individual garden here and +there, the violation of these relics may be condoned on the heathen +principle of tit for tat, because Art had, in the first instance, so to +speak, turned her back on some fair landscape that Providence had +provided upon the site, preferring to focus man's eye <i>within</i> rather +than <i>without</i> the garden's bounds, therefore the vengeance is merited. +Yet, where change was desirable, it had been better to modify than to +destroy.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And burned is Apollo's laurel bough."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Certain it is that along with the girdle of high hedge or wall has gone +that air of inviting mystery and homely reserve that our forefathers +loved, and which is to me one of the pleasantest traits of an old +English garden, best described as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A haunt of ancient peace."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<h3>THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN."</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"'Pealing from Jove to Nature's bar<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Bold Alteration pleades<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Large evidence; but Nature soon<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Her righteous doom areads."—<span class="smcap">Spenser.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>Why were the old-fashioned gardens destroyed? Firstly, because the +traditional garden of the early part of the eighteenth century, when the +reaction set in, represented a style which had run to seed, and men were +tired of it; secondly, because the taste for foreign trees and shrubs, +that had existed for a long time previously, then came to a head, and it +was found that the old type of garden was not fitted for the display of +the augmented stock of foreign material. Here was a new element in +garden-craft, a new chance of decoration in the way of local colours in +planting, which required a new adjustment of garden-effects; and as +there was some difficulty in accommodating the new and the old, the +problem was met by the abolition of the old altogether.</p> + +<p>As to this matter of the sudden increase of specimen plants, Loudon +remarks that in the earlier century the taste for foreign plants was +confined to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> a few, and they not wealthy persons; but in the eighteenth +century the taste for planting foreign trees extended itself among rich +landed proprietors. A host of amateurs, botanists, and commercial +gardeners were busily engaged in enriching the British Arboretum, and +the garden-grounds had to be arranged for new effects and a new mode of +culture. In Loudon's "Arboretum" (p. 126) is a list of the species of +foreign trees and shrubs introduced into England up to the year 1830. He +calculates that the total number of specimens up to the time that he +wrote was about 1400, but the numbers taken by centuries are: in the +sixteenth century, 89; in the seventeenth century, 131; in the +eighteenth century, 445; and in the first three decades of the +nineteenth century, 699!</p> + +<p>Men stubbed up the old gardens because they had grown tired of their +familiar types, as they tire of other familiar things. The eighteenth +century was essentially a critical age, an age of enquiry, and +gardening, along with art, morals, and religion, came in for its share +of coffee-house discussion, and elaborate essay-writing, and nothing was +considered satisfactory. As to gardening, it was not natural enough for +the critics. The works of Salvator and Poussin had pictured the grand +and terrible in scenery, Thomson was writing naturalistic poetry, +Rousseau naturalistic prose. Garden-ornament was too classical and +formal for the varnished <i>littérateur</i> of the <i>Spectator</i> and the +<i>Guardian</i>—too symmetrical for the jingling rhymester of a sing-song +generation—too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> artificial for the essayist "'Pealing from Jove to +Nature's bar," albeit he is privately content to go on touching up his +groves and grottoes at Twickenham, securing the services of a peer</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To form his quincunx, and to rank his vines."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Gardens are looked upon as so much "copy" to the essayist. What affected +tastes have these critics! What a confession of counterfeit love, of +selfish literary interest in gardens is this of Addison's: "I think +there are as many kinds of gardening as of poetry. Your makers of +parterres and flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this +art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are +romance writers." How beside nature, beside garden-craft, are such +pen-man's whimsies! "Nothing to the true pleasure of a garden," Bacon +would say.</p> + +<p>Walpole's essay on gardening is entertaining reading, and his book gives +us glimpses of the country-seats of all the great ladies and gentlemen +who had the good fortune to be his acquaintances. His condemnation of +the geometrical style of gardening common in his day, though quieter in +tone than Pope's, was none the less effective in promoting a change of +style. He tells how in Kip's views of the seats of our nobility we have +the same "tiring and returning uniformity." Every house is approached by +two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a gravel-walk and two grass +plats or borders of flowers. "Each rises above the other by two or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +three steps, and as many walks and terrasses; and so many iron gates, +that we recollect those ancient romances in which every entrance was +guarded by nymphs or dragons. At Lady Orford's, at Piddletown, in +Dorsetshire, there was, when my brother married, a double enclosure of +thirteen gardens, each, I suppose, not a hundred yards square, with an +enfilade of correspondent gates; and before you arrived at these, you +passed a narrow gut between two terrasses that rose above your head, and +which were crowned by a line of pyramidal yews. A bowling-green was all +the lawn admitted in those times, a circular lake the extent of +magnificence."</p> + +<p>Such an air of truth and soberness pervades Walpole's narrative, and to +so absurd an extent has formality been manifestly carried under the +auspices of Loudon and Wise, who had stocked our gardens with "giants, +animals, monsters, coats of arms, mottoes in yew, box, and holly," that +we are almost persuaded to be Vandals. "The compass and square, were of +more use in plantations than the nursery-man. The measured walk, the +quincunx, and the étoile imposed their unsatisfying sameness.... Trees +were headed, and their sides pared away; many French groves seem green +chests set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and summer-houses, +terminated every vista." It is all very well for Temple to recommend the +regular form of garden. "I should hardly advise any of these attempts" +cited by Walpole, "in the form of gardens among us; <i>they are adventures +of too hard achievement for any common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> hands</i>." The truth will out! The +"dainter sense" of garden-craft has vanished! According to Walpole, +garden-adventure is to be henceforth journeyman's work, and Brown, the +immortal kitchen-gardener, leads the way.</p> + +<p>It were unfair to suspect that the exigencies of sprightly writing had +carried Walpole beyond the bounds of accuracy in his description of the +stiff-garden as he knew it, for things were in some respects very bad +indeed. At the same time he is so engrossed with his abuse of old ways +of gardening, and advocacy of the landscape-gardener's new-fangled +notions, that his account of garden-craft generally falls short of +completeness. He omits, for instance, to notice the progress in +floriculture and horticulture of this time, the acquisitions being made +in the ornamental foreign plants to be cultivated in the open ground, +the green-house, and the stove. He omits to note that Loudon and Wise +stocked our gardens with more than giants, animals, monsters, &c., in +yew and box and holly. Because the names of these two worthies occur in +this gardening text-book of Walpole's, all later essayists signal them +out for blame. But Evelyn, who ranks as one of the three of England's +great gardeners of old days, has a kindlier word for them. He is +dilating upon the advantage to the gardener of the high clipped hedge as +a protection for his shrubs and flowers, and goes on to particularise an +oblong square, palisadoed with a hornbeam hedge "in that inexhaustible +magazine at Brompton Park, cultivated by those two industrious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +fellow-gardeners, Mr Loudon and Mr Wise." This hedge protects the orange +trees, myrtles, and other rare perennials and exotics from the scorching +rays of the sun; and it equally well shelters the flowers. "Here the +Indian Narcissus, Tuberoses, Japan Lillies, Jasmines, Jonquills, +Periclimena, Roses, Carnations, with all the pride of the parterre, +intermixt between the tree-cases, flowery vases, busts, and statues, +entertain the eye, and breathe their redolent odours and perfumes to the +smell." Clearly there is an advantage in being a gardener if we write +about gardens (provided you are not a mere "landscape-gardener!").</p> + +<p>One cannot deny that Horace Walpole did well to expose the absurd +vagaries which were being perpetrated about his time under Dutch +influences. Close alliance with Holland through the House of Orange had +affected every department of horticulture. True, it had enriched our +gardens and conservatories with many rare and beautiful species of +flowers and bulbs, and had imbued the English collector with the +tulip-mania. So far good. But to the same source we trace the reign of +the shears in the English garden, which made Art in a Garden ridiculous, +and gave occasion to the enemy to blaspheme.</p> + +<p>"The gardeners about London," says Mr Lambert, writing to the Linnæan +Transactions in 1712, "were remarkable for fine cut greens, and clipt +yews in the shapes of birds, dogs, men, ships, &c. Mr. Parkinson in +Lambeth was much noticed for these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> things, and he had besides a few +myrtles, oleanders, and evergreens."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The old order changeth ...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And now is Art in a Garden become ridiculous. Since the beginning of +things English gardeners had clipped and trimmed their shrubs; but had +never carried the practice beyond a reasonable extent, and had combined +it with woody and shady effects. With the onset of Dutch influence +country-aspects vanish. Nature is reduced to a prosaic level. The +traditional garden, whose past had been one long series of noble chances +in fine company, now found content as the pedant's darling where it +could have no opening for living romance, but must be tricked out in +stage conventions, and dwindle more and more into a thing of shreds and +patches!</p> + +<p>Having arrived at such a pass, it was time that change should come, and +change did come, with a vengeance! But let us not suppose that the +change was from wrong to right. For, indeed, the revolution meant only +that formality gone mad should be supplanted by informality gone equally +mad. And we may note as a significant fact, that the point of departure +is the destruction of the garden's boundaries, and the substitution of +the ha-ha. It was not for the wild improvers to realise how Art that +destroys its own boundaries is certainly doomed to soon have no country +to boast of at all! It proved so in this case. From this moment, the +very thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> of garden-ornament was clean put out of mind, and the +grass is carried up to the windows of the great house, as though the +place were nothing better than a farm-shanty in the wilds of +Westmoreland!</p> + +<p>But to return to the inauguration of the "landscape-garden." The hour +produced its men in Kent, and "the immortal Brown," as Repton calls him. +Like many another "discovery," theirs was really due to an accident. +Just as it was the closely-corked bottle that popped that gave birth to +champagne, so it was only when our heroes casually leaped the ha-ha that +they had made that they realised that all England outside was one vast +rustic garden, from whence it were a shame to exclude anything!</p> + +<p>So began the rage for making all the surroundings of a house assume a +supposed appearance of rude Nature. Levelling, ploughing, stubbing-up, +was the order of the day. The British navvy was in great request—in +fact the day that Kent and Brown discovered England was this worthy's +natal day. Artificial gardens must be demolished as impostures, and +wriggling walks and turf put where they had stood. Avenues must be cut +down or disregarded; the groves, the alleys, the formal beds, the +terraces, the balustrades, the clipt hedges must be swept away as things +intolerable. For the "landscape style" does not countenance a straight +line, or terrace or architectural form, or symmetrical beds about the +house; for to allow these would not be to photograph Nature. As carried +into practice, the style demands that the house shall rise abruptly +from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> the grass, and the general surface of the ground shall be +characterised by smoothness and bareness (like Nature)! Hence in the +grounds of this period, house and country</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wrapt all o'er in everlasting green<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make one dull, vapid, smooth and tranquil scene."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is to my mind no more significant testimony to the attractiveness +and loveableness of the <i>regular</i> garden as opposed to the opened-out +barbarism of the landscape-gardener's invention, than Horace Walpole's +lament over the old gardens at Houghton,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> which has the force of +testimony wrung from unwilling lips:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"When I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They told me it +was now called the '<i>pleasure-ground</i>.' What a dissonant idea of +pleasure! Those groves, those <i>alleys</i>, where I have passed so many +charming moments, are now stripped up, or overgrown; many fond +paths I could not unravel, though with a very exact clue in my +memory. I met two gamekeepers and a thousand hares! In the days +when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity, I hated +Houghton and its solitude; <i>yet I loved this garden</i>; as now, with +many regrets, I love Houghton;—Houghton, I know not what to call +it: a monument of grandeur or ruin!"—(Walpole's Letters.)</p></blockquote> + +<p>"What a dissonant idea of pleasure," this so-called "pleasure-ground of +the landscape-gardener!" "Those groves, those alleys where I have passed +so many charming moments, stripped up! How I loved this garden!" Here is +the biter bit, and it were to be more than human not to smile!</p> + +<p>With all the proper appliances at hand it did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> take long to +transform the stiff garden into the barbaric. It did not take long to +find out how <i>not</i> to do what civilization had so long been learning how +to do! The ancient "Geometric or Regular style" of garden—the garden of +the aristocrat, with all its polished classicism—was to make way for +the so-called "Naturalesque or Landscape style," and the garden of the +<i>bourgeois</i>. Hope rose high in the breasts of the new professoriate. "A +boon! a boon!" quoth the critic. And there is deep joy in navvydom. +"Under the great leader, Brown," writes Repton ("Landscape Gardening," +p. 327), "or rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught +that Nature was to be our only model." It was a grand moment. A Daniel +had come to judgment! Nay, did not Brown "live to establish a fashion in +gardening which might have been expected to endure as long as Nature +should exist!"</p> + +<p>The Landscape School of Gardeners, so-called, has been the theme of a +great deal of literature, but with the exception of Walpole's and +Addison's essays, and Pope's admirable chaff, very little has survived +the interest it had at the moment of publication.</p> + +<p>The other chief writers of this School, in its early phase, are George +Mason, Whately,<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> Mason the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> poet, and Shenstone, our moon-struck +friend quoted above, with his "assignation seats with proper mottoes, +urns to faithful lovers," &c. Dr Johnson did not think much of +Shenstone's contributions to gardening:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"He began from this time to point his prospects, to diversify his +surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters, which he +did with such judgement and such fancy as made his little domain +the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful—a place to +be visited by travellers and <i>copied by designers</i>. Whether to +plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every +turn where there is an object to catch the view, to make water run +where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to +leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the +plantation where there is something to be hidden—demand any great +powers of the mind, I will not enquire; perhaps a surly and sullen +spectator may think such performances rather the sport than the +business of human reason."—(Dr Johnson, "Lives of the Poets," +Shenstone.)</p></blockquote> + +<p>Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening," published in 1770, are +well written and distinctly valuable as bearing upon the historical side +of the subject. It says little for his idea of the value of Art in a +garden, or of the function of a garden as a refining influence in life, +to find Whately recommending "a plain field or a sheep-walk" as part of +a garden's embellishments—"as an agreeable relief, and even wilder +scenes."</p> + +<p>But what astounds one more is, that a writer of Whately's calibre can +describe Kent's gardens at Stowe, considered to be his masterpiece, as a +sample of the non-formality of the landscape-gardener's Art, while he +takes elaborate pains to show that it is full of would-be artistic +subterfuges in Nature, full of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> architectural shams throughout. These +gardens were begun by Bridgman, "Begun," Whately says, "when regularity +was in fashion; and the original boundary is still preserved on account +of its magnificence, for round the whole circuit, of between three and +four miles, is carried a very broad gravel-walk, planted with rows of +trees, and open either to the park or the country; a deep sunk-fence +attends it all the way, and comprehends a space of near 400 acres. But +in the interior spaces of the garden few traces of regularity appear; +where it yet remains in the plantations it is generally disguised; every +symptom almost of formality is obliterated from the ground; and an +octagon basin at the bottom is now converted into an irregular piece of +water, which receives on one hand two beautiful streams, and falls on +the other down a cascade into a lake."</p> + +<p>And then follows a list of sham architectural features that are combined +with sham views and prospects to match. "The whole space is divided into +a number of scenes, each distinguished with taste and fancy; and the +changes are so frequent, so sudden and complete, the transitions so +artfully conducted, that the ideas are never continued or repeated to +satiety." In the front of the house two elegant Doric pavilions. On the +brow of some rising grounds a Corinthian arch. On a little knoll an open +Ionic rotunda—an Egyptian pyramid stands on its brow; the Queen's +Pillar in a recess on the descent, the King's Pillar elsewhere; all the +three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> buildings mentioned are "peculiarly adapted to a garden scene." +In front of a wood three pavilions joined by arcades, all of the Ionic +order, "characteristically proper for a garden, and so purely +ornamental." Then a Temple of Bacchus, the Elysian fields, British +remains; misshaped elms and ragged firs are frequent in a scene of +solitude and gloom, which the trunks of dead trees assist. Then a large +Gothic building, with slated roofs, "in a noble confusion"; then the +Elysian fields, seen from the other side, a Palladian bridge, Doric +porticoes, &c., the whole thing finished off with the Temple of Concord +and Victory, probably meant as a not-undeserved compliment to the +successfully chaotic skill of the landscape-gardener, who is nothing if +not irregular, natural, non-formal, non-fantastical, non-artificial, and +non-geometrical.</p> + +<p>Two other points about Whately puzzle me. How comes he to strain at the +gnat of formality in the old-fashioned garden, yet readily swallow the +camel at Stowe? How can he harmonise his appreciation of the elaborately +contrived and painfully assorted shams at Stowe, with his +recommendation, of a sheep-walk in your garden "as an agreeable relief, +and even wilder scenes"?</p> + +<p>Whether the beauty of the general disposition of the ground at Stowe is +to be attributed to Kent or to Bridgman, who began the work, as Whately +says, "when regularity was in fashion," I cannot say. It is right to +observe, however, that the prevailing characteristic of Kent's and +Brown's landscapes was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> their smooth and bald surface. "Why this art has +been called 'landscape-gardening,'" says the plain-spoken Repton, +"perhaps he who gave it the title may explain. I can see no reason, +unless it be the efficacy which it has shown in destroying landscapes, +in which, indeed, it seems infallible." (Repton, p. 355.) "Our +virtuosi," said Sir William Chambers, "have scarcely left an acre of +shade, or three trees growing in a line from the Land's End to the +Tweed."</p> + +<p>It did not take the wiser spirits long to realise that Nature left alone +was more natural. And this same Repton, who began by praising "the great +leader Brown," has to confess again and again that, so far as results +go, he is mistaken. The ground, he laments, must be everlastingly moved +and altered. "One of the greatest difficulties I have experienced in +practice proceeds from that fondness for levelling so prevalent in all +Brown's workmen; every hillock is by them lowered, and every hollow +filled, to produce a level surface." (Repton, p. 342.) Or again (p. +347): "There is something so fascinating in the appearance of water, +that Mr Brown thought it carried its own excuse, however unnatural the +situation; and therefore, in many places, under his direction, I have +found water, on the tops of the hills, which I have been obliged to +remove into lower ground <i>because the deception was not sufficiently +complete to satisfy the mind as well as the eye</i>." Indeed, in this +matter of levelling, Brown's system does not, on the face of it, differ +from Le Nôtre's, where the natural<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> contour of the landscape was not of +much account; or rather, it was thought the better if it had no natural +contour at all, but presented a flat plain or plateau with no +excrescences to interfere with the designer's schemes.</p> + +<p>So much, then, for the pastoral simplicity of Nature edited by the +"landscape-gardener." And let us note that under the auspices of the new +<i>régime</i>, not only is Nature to be changed, but changed more than was +ever dreamt of before; the transformation shall at once be more +determined in its character and more deceptive than had previously been +attempted. We were to have an artistically natural world, not a +naturally artistic one; the face of the landscape was to be purged of +its modern look and made to look primæval. And in this doing, or +undoing, of things, the only art that was to be admitted was the art of +consummate deceit, which shall "satisfy the mind as well as the eye." +Yet call the man pope or presbyter, and beneath his clothes he is the +same man! There is not a pin to choose as regards artificiality in the +<i>aims</i> of the two schools, only in the <i>results</i>. The naked or +<i>undressed</i> garden has studied irregularity, while the <i>dressed</i> garden +has studied regularity and style. The first has, perhaps, an excessive +regard for expression, the other has an emphatic scorn for expression. +One garden has its plotted levels, its avenues, its vistas, its sweeping +lawns, its terraces, its balustrades, colonnades, geometrical beds, +gilded temples, and sometimes its fountains that won't play, and its +fine vases full of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> nothing! The other begins with fetching back the +chaos of a former world, and has for its category of effects, sham +primævalisms, exaggerated wildness, tortured levellings, cascades, +rocks, dead trunks of trees, ruined castles, lakes on the top of hills, +and sheep-runs hard by your windows. One school cannot keep the snip of +the scissors off tree and shrub, the other mimics Nature's fortuitous +wildness in proof of his disdain for the white lies of Art.</p> + +<p>And all goes to show, does it not? that inasmuch as the art of gardening +implies craft, and as man's imitation of Nature is bound to be unlike +Nature, it were wise to be frankly inventive in gardening on Art lines. +Success may attend one's efforts in the direction of Art, but in the +direction of Nature, never.</p> + +<p>The smooth, bare, and almost bald appearance which characterises Brown +and Kent's school fails to satisfy for long, and there springs up +another school which deals largely in picturesque elements, and rough +intricate effects. The principles of the "Picturesque School," as it was +called, are to be found in the writings of the Rev. William Gilpin and +Sir Uvedale Price. Their books are full of careful observations upon the +general composition of landscape-scenery, and what was then called +"Landscape Architecture," as though every English building of older days +that was worth a glance had not been "Landscape Architecture" fit for +its site! Gilpin's writings contain an admirable discourse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> upon "Forest +Scenery," well illustrated. This work is in eight volumes, in part +published in 1782, and it consists mainly in an account of the author's +tours in every part of Great Britain, with a running commentary on the +beauties of the scenery, and a description of the important country +seats he passed on the way. Price helped by his writings to stay the +rage for destroying avenues and terraces, and we note that he is fully +alive to the necessity of uniting a country-house with the surrounding +scenery by architectural adjuncts.</p> + +<p>The taste for picturesque gardening was doubtless helped by the growing +taste for landscape painting, exhibited in the works of the school of +Wilson and Gainsborough, and in the pastoral writings of Thomson, +Crabbe, Cowper, and Gray. It would farther be accelerated, as we +suggested at the outset of this chapter, by the large importation of +foreign plants and shrubs now going on.</p> + +<p>What is known as the Picturesque School soon had for its main exponent +Repton. He was a genius in his way—a born gardener,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> able and +thoughtful in his treatments, and distinguished among his fellows by a +broad and comprehensive grasp of the whole character and surroundings of +a site, in reference to the general section of the land, the style of +the house to which his garden was allied, and the objects for which it +was to be used. The sterling quality of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> writings did much to clear +the air of the vapourings of the critics who had gone before him, and +his practice, founded as it was upon sound principles, redeemed the +absurdities of the earlier phase of his school and preserved others from +further development of the silly rusticities upon which their mind +seemed bent. Although some of his ideas may now be thought pedantic and +antiquated, the books which contain them will not die. Passages like the +following mark the man and his aims: "I do not profess to follow Le +Nôtre or Brown, but, selecting beauties from the style of each, to adopt +so much of the grandeur of the former as may accord with a palace, and +so much of the grace of the latter as may call forth the charms of +natural landscape. Each has its proper situation; and good taste will +make fashion subservient to good sense" (p. 234). "In the rage for +picturesque beauty, let us remember that the landscape holds an inferior +rank to the historical picture; one represents nature, the other relates +to man in a state of society" (p. 236).</p> + +<p>Repton sums up the whole of his teaching in the preface to his "Theory +and Practice of Landscape Gardening" under the form of objections to +prevailing errors, and they are so admirable that I cannot serve the +purposes of my book better than to insert them here.</p> + +<p>Objection No. 1. "There is no error more prevalent in modern gardening, +or more frequently carried to excess, than taking away hedges to unite +many small fields into one extensive and naked lawn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> before plantations +are made to give it the appearance of a park; and where ground is +subdivided by sunk fences, imaginary freedom is dearly purchased at the +expense of actual confinement."</p> + +<p>No. 2. "The baldness and nakedness round the house is part of the same +mistaken system, of concealing fences to gain extent. A palace, or even +an elegant villa, in a grass field, appears to me incongruous; <i>yet I +have seldom had sufficient influence to correct this common error</i>."</p> + +<p>No. 3. "An approach which does not evidently lead to the house, or which +does not take the shortest course, cannot be right. (This rule must be +taken with certain limitations.) The shortest road across a lawn to a +house will seldom be found graceful, and often vulgar. A road bordered +by trees in the form of an avenue may be straight without being vulgar; +and grandeur, not grace or elegance, is the expression expected to be +produced."</p> + +<p>No. 4. "A poor man's cottage, divided into what is called a <i>pair of +lodges</i>, is a mistaken expedient to mark importance in the entrance to a +park."</p> + +<p>No. 5. "The entrance-gate should not be visible from the mansion, unless +it opens into a courtyard."</p> + +<p>No. 6. "The plantation surrounding a place called a <i>Belt</i> I have never +advised; nor have I ever willingly marked a drive, or walk, completely +round the verge of a park, except in small villas, where a dry path +round a person's own field is always more interesting than any other +walk."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> + +<p>No 7. "Small plantations of trees, surrounded by a fence, are the best +expedients to form groups, because trees planted singly seldom grow +well; neglect of thinning and removing the fence has produced that ugly +deformity called a <i>Clump</i>."</p> + +<p>No. 8. "Water on a eminence, or on the side of a hill, is among the most +common errors of Mr Brown's followers; in numerous instances I have been +allowed to remove such pieces of water from the hills to the valleys, +but in many my advice has not prevailed."</p> + +<p>No. 9. "Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of Nature. +Thus artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery can only be great by +deception, and the mind acquiesces in the fraud after it is detected, +but in works of Art every trick ought to be avoided. Sham churches, sham +ruins, sham bridges, and everything which appears what it is not, +disgusts when the trick is discovered."</p> + +<p>No. 10. "In buildings of every kind the <i>character</i> should be strictly +observed. No incongruous mixture can be justified. To add Grecian to +Gothic, or Gothic to Grecian, is equally absurd; and a sharp pointed +arch to a garden gate or a dairy window, however frequently it occurs, +is not less offensive than Grecian architecture, in which the standard +rules of relative proportion are neglected or violated."</p> + +<p>The perfection of landscape-gardening consists<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> in the fullest attention +to these principles, <i>Utility</i>, <i>Proportion</i>, and <i>Unity</i>, or harmony of +parts to the whole. (Repton, "Landscape Gardening," pp. 128-9.)</p> + +<p>The best advice one can give to a young gardener is—<i>know your Repton</i>.</p> + +<p>The writings of the new school of gardening, of which Repton is a +notable personage in its later phase, are not, however, on a par with +the writings of the old traditional school, either as pleasant garden +literature, or in regard to broad human interest or artistic quality. +They are hard and critical, and never lose the savour of the heated air +of controversy in which they were penned. Indeed, I can think of no more +sure and certain cure for a bad attack of garden-mania—nothing that +will sooner wipe the bloom off your enjoyment of natural beauty—than a +course of reading from the Classics of Landscape-garden literature! "I +only sound the clarion," said the urbane master-gardener of an earlier +day, "but I enter not into the battle." But these are at one another's +throats! Who enters here must leave his dreams of fine gardening behind, +for he will find himself in a chilly, disenchanted world, with nothing +more romantic to feed his imagination upon than "Remarks on the genius +of the late Mr. Brown," Critical enquiries, Observations on taste, +Difference between landscape gardening and painting, Price upon Repton, +Repton upon Price, Repton upon Knight, further answers to Messrs Price +and Knight, &c. But all this is desperately dull reading, hurtful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> to +one's imagination, fatal to garden-fervour.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> And naturally so, for +analysis of the processes of garden-craft carried too far begets loss of +faith in all. Analysis is a kill-joy, destructive of dreams of beauty. +"We murder to dissect." That was a true word of the cynic of that day, +who summed up current controversy upon gardening in the opinion that +"the works of Nature were well executed, but in a bad taste." The +quidnuncs' books about gardening are about as much calculated to give +one delight, as the music the child gets out of the strings of an +instrument that it broke for the pride of dissection. Even Addison, with +the daintiest sense and prettiest pen of them all, shows how thoroughly +gardening had lost</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">... "its happy, country tone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of men contention-tost,"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>as he thrums out his laboured coffee-house conceit. "I think there are +as many kinds of gardening as poetry; your makers of parterres and +flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art; contrivers +of bowers and grottoes, treillages, and cascades, are Romance writers. +Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets." Nor is his elaborate argument +meant to prove the gross inferiority of Art in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> garden to unadorned +Nature more inspiring. Nay, what is one to make of even the logic of +such argument as this? "If the products of Nature rise in value +according as they more or less resemble those of Art, we may be sure +that artificial works receive a greater advantage from their resemblance +of such as are natural." (<i>Spectator.</i>) But who <i>does</i> apply the +Art-standard to Nature, or value her products as they resemble those of +Art? And has not Sir Walter well said: "Nothing is more the child of Art +than a garden"? And Loudon: "All art, to be acknowledged, as art must be +avowed."</p> + +<p>One prefers to this cold Pindaric garden-homage the unaffected, direct +delight in the sweets of a garden of an earlier day; to realise with old +Mountaine how your garden shall produce "a jucunditie of minde;" to +think with Bishop Hall, as he gazes at his tulips, "These Flowers are +the true Clients of the Sunne;" to be brought to old Lawson's state of +simple ravishment, "What more delightsome than an infinite varietie of +sweet-smelling flowers? decking with sundry colours the green mantle of +the Earth, colouring not onely the earth, but decking the ayre, and +sweetning every breath and spirit;" to taste the joys of living as, +taking Robert Burton's hand, you "walk amongst orchards, gardens, +bowers, mounts and arbours, artificial wildernesses, green thickets, +groves, lawns, rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, +between wood and water, in a fair meadow, by a river side, to disport in +some pleasant plain or park, must needs be a delectable recreation;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> to +be inoculated with old Gerarde of the garden-mania as he bursts forth, +"Go forward in the name of God: graffe, set, plant, nourishe up trees in +every corner of your grounde;" to trace with Temple the lines and +features that go to make the witchery of the garden at Moor Park, "in +all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the Figure and +Disposition, that I have ever seen," and which you may follow if you are +not "above the Regards of Common Expence;" to hearken to Bacon expatiate +upon the Art which is indeed "the purest of all humane pleasure, the +greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man;" to feel in what he says the +value of an ideal, the magic of a style backed by passion—to have +garden precepts wrapped in pretty metaphors (such as that "because the +Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air—<i>where it comes and goes +like the warbling of Musick</i>—than in the Hand, therefore nothing is +more fit for that Delight than to know what be the Flowers and Plants +that do best perfume the Air;")—to be taught how to order a garden to +suit all the months of the year, and have things of beauty enumerated +according to their seasons—to feel rapture at the sweet-breathing +presence of Art in a garden—to learn from one who knows how to garden +in a grand manner, and yet be finally assured that beauty does not +require a great stage, that the things thrown in "for state and +magnificence" are but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden—this is +garden-literature worth reading!</p> + +<p>Compared with the frank raptures of such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> writings as these, the +laboured treatises of the landscape-school are but petty hagglings over +the mint and cummin of things. You go to the writings of the masters of +the old formality, to come away invigorated as by a whiff of mountain +air straight off Helicon; they shall give one fresh enthusiasm for +Nature, fresh devotion to Art, fresh love for beautiful things. But from +the other—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>they deal with technicalities in the affected language of +connoisseurship; they reveal a disenchanted world, a world of exploded +hopes given over to the navvies and the critics; and it is no wonder +that writings so prompted should have no charm for posterity; charm they +never had. They are dry as summer dust.</p> + +<p>For the honour of English gardening, and before closing this chapter, I +would like to recall that betweenity—the garden of the transition—done +at the very beginning of the century of revolution, which unites +something of the spirit of the old and of the new schools. Here is Sir +Walter Scott's report of the Kelso garden as he <i>first</i> knew it, and +<i>after</i> it had been mauled by the landscape-gardener. It was a garden of +seven or eight acres adjacent to the house of an ancient maiden lady:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"It was full of long straight walks between hedges of yew and +hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were +thickets of flowering shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which +access was obtained through a little maze of contorted walks, +calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a +splendid Platanus or Oriental plane, a huge hill of leaves, one of +the noblest specimens of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> that regularly beautiful tree which we +remember to have seen. In different parts of the garden were fine +ornamental trees which had attained great size, and the orchard was +filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats +and trellis-walks, and a banqueting-house. Even in our time this +little scene, intended to present a formal exhibition of vegetable +beauty, was going fast to decay. The parterres of flowers were no +longer watched by the quiet and simple <i>friends</i> under whose +auspices they had been planted, and much of the ornament of the +domain had been neglected or destroyed to increase its productive +value. We visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its +air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded was gone; +the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning +of this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, +and the whole character of the place so much destroyed that I was +glad when I could leave it."—("Essay on Landscape Gardening," +<i>Quarterly Review</i>, 1828.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>)</p></blockquote> + +<p>Another garden, of later date than this at Kelso, and somewhat less +artistic, is that described by Mr Henry A. Bright in "The English Flower +Garden."<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p> + +<blockquote><p>"One of the most beautiful gardens I ever knew depended almost +entirely on the arrangement of its lawns and shrubberies. It had +certainly been most carefully and adroitly planned, and it had +every advantage in the soft climate of the West of England. The +various lawns were divided by thick shrubberies, so that you +wandered on from one to the other, and always came on something +new. In front of these shrubberies was a large margin of +flower-border, gay with the most effective plants and annuals. At +the corner of the lawn a standard <i>Magnolia grandiflora</i> of great +size held up its chaliced blossoms; at another a tulip-tree was +laden with hundreds of yellow flowers. Here a magnificent +<i>Salisburia</i> mocked the foliage of the maiden-hair; and here an old +cedar swept the grass with its large pendent branches. But the main +breadth of each lawn was never destroyed, and past them you might +see the reaches of a river, now in one aspect, now in another. Each +view was different, and each was a fresh enjoyment and surprise.</p> + +<p>"A few years ago and I revisited the place; the 'improver' had been +at work, and had been good enough to <i>open up</i> the view. +Shrubberies had disappeared, and lawns had been thrown together. +The pretty peeps among the trees were gone, the long vistas had +become open spaces, and you saw at a glance all that there was to +be seen.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> Of course the herbaceous borders, which once contained +numberless rare and interesting plants, had disappeared, and the +lawn in front of the house was cut up into little beds of red +pelargoniums, yellow calceolarias, and the rest."</p></blockquote> + +<p>In this example we miss the condensed beauty and sweet austerities of +the older garden at Kelso: nevertheless, it represents a phase of +workmanship which, for its real insight into the secrets of +garden-beauty, we may well be proud of, and deplore its destruction at +the hands of the landscape-gardener.</p> + +<p>All arts are necessarily subject to progression of type. "Man cannot +escape from his time," says Mr Morley, and with changed times come +changed influences. But, then, to <i>progress</i> is not to <i>change</i>: "to +progress is to live," and one phase of healthy progression will tread +the heels of that which precedes it. The restless changeful methods of +modern gardening are, however, not to be ascribed to the healthy +development of one consistent movement, but to chaos—to the revolution +that ensued upon the overthrow of tradition—to the indeterminateness of +men who have no guiding principles, who take so many wild leaps in the +dark, in the course of which, rival champions jostle one another and +only the fittest survives.</p> + +<p>In treating of Modern English Gardening, it is difficult to make our way +along the tortuous path of change, development it is not, that set in +with the banishment of Art in a garden. Critical writers have done their +best to unravel things, to find the relation of each fractured phase, +and to give each phase a descriptive name, but there are still many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> +unexplained points, many contradictions that are unsolved, to which I +have already alluded.</p> + +<p>Loudon's Introduction to Repton's "Landscape Gardening" gives perhaps +the most intelligible account of the whole matter. The art of laying out +grounds has been displayed in two very distinct styles: the first of +which is called the "Ancient Roman, Geometric, Regular, or Architectural +Style; and the second the Modern, <i>English</i>,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Irregular, Natural, or +Landscape Style."</p> + +<p>We have, he says, the Italian, the French, and the Dutch Schools of the +Geometric Style. The Modern, or Landscape Style, when it first displayed +itself in English country residences, was distinctly marked by the +absence of everything that had the appearance of a terrace, or of +architectural forms, or lines, immediately about the house. The house, +in short, rose abruptly from the lawn, and the general surface of the +ground was characterised by smoothness and bareness. This constituted +the first School of the Landscape Style, introduced by Kent and Brown.</p> + +<p>This manner was followed by the romantic or Picturesque Style, which +inaugurates a School which aimed at producing architectural tricks and +devices, allied with scenery of picturesque character and sham +rusticity. The conglomeration at Stowe, albeit that it is attributed to +Kent, shows what man can do in the way of heroically wrong +garden-craft.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>To know truly how to lay out a garden "<i>After a more Grand and Rural +Manner than has been done before</i>," you cannot do better than get Batty +Langley's "New Principles of Gardening," and among other things you have +rules whereby you may concoct natural extravagances, how you shall prime +prospects, make landscapes that are pictures of nothing and very like; +how to copy hills, valleys, dales, purling streams, rocks, ruins, +grottoes, precipices, amphitheatres, &c.</p> + +<p>The writings of Gilpin and Price were effective in undermining Kent's +School; they helped to check the rage for destroying avenues and +terraces, and insisted upon the propriety of uniting a country-house +with the surrounding scenery by architectural appendages. The leakage +from the ranks of Kent's School was not all towards the Picturesque +School, but to what Loudon terms Repton's School, which may be +considered as combining all that was excellent in what had gone before.</p> + +<p>Following upon these phases is one that is oddly called the +"<i>Gardenesque</i>" Style, the leading feature of which is that it +illustrates the beauty of trees, and other plants <i>individually</i>; in +short, it is the <i>specimen</i> style. According to the practice of all +previous phases of modern gardening, trees, shrubs, and flowers were +indiscriminately mixed and crowded together, in shrubberies or other +plantations. According to the Gardenesque School, all the trees and +shrubs are arranged to suit their kinds and dimensions, and to display +them to advantage. The ablest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> exponents of the school are Loudon in the +recent past, and Messrs Marnock and Robinson in the present, and their +method is based upon Loudon.</p> + +<p>To know how to lay out a garden after the most approved modern fashion +we have but to turn to the deservedly popular pages of "The English +Flower Garden." This book contains not only model designs and commended +examples from various existing gardens, but text contributed by some +seventy professional and amateur gardeners. Even the gardener who has +other ideals and larger ambitions than are here expected, heartily +welcomes a book so well stored with modern garden-lore up to date, with +suggestions for new aspects of vegetation, new renderings of plant life, +and must earnestly desire to see any system of gardening made perfect +after its kind—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">... "I wish the sun should shine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On all men's fruits and flowers, as well as mine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Gardening is, above all things, a progressive Art which has never had so +fine a time to display its possibilities as now, if we were only wise +enough to freely employ old experiences and modern opportunities. People +are, however, so readily content with their stereotyped models, with +barren imitations, with their petty list of specimens, when instead of +half-a-dozen kinds of plants, their garden has room for hundreds of +different plants of fine form—hardy or half-hardy, annual and +bulbous—which would equally well suit the British garden and add to its +wealth of beauty by varied colourings in spring,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> summer, and autumn. At +present "the choke-muddle shrubbery, in which the poor flowering shrubs +dwindle and kill each other, generally supports a few ill-grown and +ill-chosen plants, but it is mainly distinguished for wide patches of +bare earth in summer, over which, in better hands, pretty green things +might crowd." The specimen plant has no chance of displaying itself +under such conditions.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Into so nice a subject as the practice of Landscape-gardening of the +present day it is not my intention to enter in detail, and for two good +reasons. In the first place, the doctrines of a sect are best known by +the writings of its representatives; and in this case, happily, both +writings and representatives are plentiful. Secondly, I do not see that +there is much to chronicle. Landscape-gardening is, in a sense, still in +its fumbling stage; it has not increased its resources, or done anything +heroic, even on wrong lines; it has not advanced towards any permanent, +definable system of ornamentation since it began its gyrations in the +last century. Its rival champions still beat the air. Even Repton was +better off than the men of to-day, for he had, at least, his Protestant +formulary of Ten Objections to swear by, which "mark those errors or +absurdities in modern gardening and architecture to which I have never +willingly subscribed" (p. 127, "Theory and Practice of Landscape +Gardening," 1803, quoted in full above).</p> + +<p>But the present race of landscape-gardeners are, it strikes me, as much +at sea as ever. True they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> threw up traditional methods as unworthy, but +they had not learnt their own Art according to Nature before they began +to practise it; and they are still in the throes of education. Their +intentions are admirable beyond telling, but their work exhibits in the +grossest forms the very vices they condemn in the contrary school; for +the expression of their ideas is self-conscious, strained, and +pointless. To know at a glance their position towards Art in a garden, +how crippled their resources, how powerless to design, let me give an +extract from Mr Robinson. He is speaking of an old-fashioned garden, +"One of those classical gardens, the planners of which prided themselves +upon being able to give Nature lessons of good behaviour, to teach her +geometry and the fine Art of irreproachable lines; but Nature abhors +lines;<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> she is for geometers a reluctant pupil, and if she submits to +their tyranny she does it with bad grace, and with the firm resolve to +take eventually her revenge. Man cannot conquer the wildness of her +disposition, and so soon as he is no longer at hand to impose his will, +so soon as he relaxes his care, she destroys his work" (p. viii., +"English Flower Garden"). This is indeed to concede everything to +Nature, to deny altogether the mission of Art in a garden.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> + +<p>And even the School that is rather kinder to Art, more lenient to +tradition, represented by Mr Milner—even he, in his admirable book upon +the "Art and Practice of Landscape Gardening" (1890), is the champion of +Nature, not of Art, in a garden. "Nature still seems to work in +fetters," he says, and he would "form bases for a better practice of the +Art" (p. 4). Again, Nature is the great exemplar that I follow" (p. 8).</p> + +<p>They have not got beyond Brown, so far as theory is concerned. "Under +the great leader Brown," writes Repton, with unconscious irony, "or +rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught that Nature +was to be our only model"—and Brown had his full chance of manipulating +the universe, for "he lived to establish a fashion in gardening, which +might have been expected to endure as long as Nature should exist"; and +yet Repton's work mostly consisted in repairing Brown's errors and in +covering the nakedness of his hungry prospects. So it would seem that +Art has her revenges as well as Nature! "The way of transgressors is +hard!"</p> + +<p>The Landscape-gardener, I said, gets no nearer to maturity of purpose as +time runs on. He creeps and shuffles after Nature as at the first—much +as the benighted traveller after the will-o'-the-wisp. He may not lay +hands on her, because you cannot conquer her wildness, nor impose your +will upon her, or teach her good behaviour. He may not apply the "dead +formalism of Art" to her, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> "Nature abhors lines." Hence his mimicry +can never rise above Nature. Indeed, if it remains faithful to the +negative opinions of its practitioners, landscape-gardening will never +construct any system of device. It has no creed, if you except that sole +article of its faith, "I believe in the non-geometrical garden." A +monumental style is an impossibility while it eschews all features that +make for state and magnificence and symmetry; a little park scenery, +much grass, curved shrubberies, the "laboured littleness" of emphasised +specimen plants—the hardy ones dotted about in various parts—wriggling +paths, flower-borders, or beds of shapes that imply that they are the +offspring of bad dreams, and its tale of effects is told. But as for +"fine gardening," that was given up long ago as a bad job! The spirit of +Walpole's objections to the heroic enterprise of the old-fashioned +garden still holds the "landscape-gardener" in check. "I should hardly +advise any of those attempts," says Walpole; "<i>they are adventures of +too hard achievement for any common hands</i>."</p> + +<p>It is not so much at what he finds in the landscape gardener's creations +that the architect demurs, but at what he misses. It is not so much at +what the landscape-gardener recommends that the architect objects, as at +what moving in his own little orbit he wilfully shuts out, basing his +opposition to tradition upon such an <i>ex parte</i> view of the matter as +this—"There are really two styles, one strait-laced, mechanical, with +much wall and stone, or it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> may be gravel, with much also of such +geometry as the designer of wall-papers excels in—often poorer than +that, with an immoderate supply of spouting water, and with trees in +tubs as an accompaniment, and, perhaps, griffins and endless +plaster-work, and sculpture of the poorer sort." Why "poorer"? "The +other, with <i>right desire</i>, though <i>often awkwardly</i> (!) accepting +Nature as a guide, and endeavouring to illustrate in our gardens, <i>so +far as convenience and knowledge will permit</i>, her many treasures of the +world of flowers" ("English Flower Garden"). How sweetly doth bunkum +commend itself!</p> + +<p>It is not that the architect is small-minded enough to cavil at the +landscape-gardener's right to display his taste by his own methods, but +that he strikes for the same right for himself. It is not that he would +rob the landscape-gardener of the pleasure of expressing his own views +as persuasively as he can, but that he resents that air of superiority +which the other puts on as he bans the comely types and garnered +sweetness of old England's garden, that he accents the proscription of +the ways of interpreting Nature that have won the sanction of lovers of +Art and Nature of all generations of our forefathers, and this from a +School whose prerogative dates no farther back than the discovery of the +well-meaning, clumsy, now dethroned kitchen-gardener, known a short +century since as "the immortal Brown." There is no reviewer so keen as +Time!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<h3>THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nothing is more the Child of Art than a Garden."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>"For every Garden," says Sir William Temple, "four things are to be +provided—Flowers, Fruit, Shade, and Water, and whoever lays out a +garden without these, must not pretend it in any perfection. Nature +should not be forced; great sums may be thrown away without Effect or +Honour, if there want sense in proportion to this." Briefly, the old +master's charge is this: "Have common-sense; follow Nature."</p> + +<p>Following upon these lines, the gardener's first duty in laying out the +grounds to a house is, to study the site, and not only that part of it +upon which the house immediately stands, but the whole site, its aspect, +character, soil, contour, sectional lines, trees, &c. Common-sense, +Economy, Nature, Art, alike dictate this. There is an individual +character to every plot of land, as to every human face in a crowd; and +that man is not wise who, to suit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> preferences for any given style of +garden, or with a view to copying a design from another place, will +ignore the characteristics of the site at his disposal.</p> + +<p>Equally unwise will he be to follow that school of gardening that makes +chaos before it sets about to make order. Features that are based upon, +or that grow out of the natural formation of the ground, will not only +look better than the created features, but be more to the credit of the +gardener, if successful, and will save expense.</p> + +<p>The ground throughout should be so handled that every natural good +point, every tree, mound, declivity, stream, or quarry, or other chance +feature, shall be turned to good account, and its consequence +heightened, avoiding the error of giving the thing mock importance, by +planting, digging, lowering declivities, raising prominences, planting +dark-foliaged trees to intensify the receding parts, forming terraces on +the slope, or adding other architectural features as may be advisable to +connect the garden with the house which is its <i>raison d'être</i>, and the +building with the landscape.</p> + +<p>What folly to throw down undulations in order to produce a commonplace +level, or to throw up hills, or make rocks, lakes, and waterfalls should +the site happen to be level! What folly to make a standing piece of +water imitate the curves of a winding river that has no existence, to +throw a bridge over it near its termination, so as to close the vista +and suggest the continuation of the water<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> beyond! Nay, what need of +artificial lakes at all if there be a running stream hard by?<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p> + +<p>It is of the utmost importance that Art and Nature should be linked +together, alike in the near neighbourhood of the house, and in its far +prospect, so that the scene as it meets the eye, whether at a distance +or near, should present a picture of a simple whole, in which each item +should take its part without disturbing the individual expression of the +ground.</p> + +<p>To attain this result, it is essential that the ground immediately about +the house should be devoted to symmetrical planning, and to distinctly +ornamental treatment; and the symmetry should break away by easy stages +from the dressed to the undressed parts, and so on to the open country, +beginning with wilder effects upon the country-boundaries of the place, +and more careful and intricate effects as the house is approached. Upon +the attainment of this appearance of graduated formality much depends. +One knows houses that are well enough in their way, that yet figure as +absolute blots upon God's landscape, and that make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> a man writhe as at +false notes in music, and all because due regard has not been paid to +this particular. By exercise of forethought in this matter, the house +and garden would have been linked to the site, and the site to the +landscape; as it is, you wish the house at Jericho!<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p> + +<p>As the point of access to a house from the public road and the route to +be taken afterwards not infrequently determines the position of the +house upon the site, it may be well to speak of the Approach first. In +planning the ground, care will be taken that the approach shall both +look well of itself and afford convenient access to the house and its +appurtenances, not forgetting the importance of giving to the visitor a +pleasing impression of the house as he drives up.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p> + +<p>In Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the usual form of approach was the +straight avenue, instances of which are still to be seen at Montacute, +Brympton, and Burleigh.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> The road points direct to the house, as +evidence that in the minds of the old architects the house was, as it +were, the pivot round which the attached territory and the garden in all +its parts radiated; and the road ends, next the house, in a quadrangle +or forecourt, which has either an open balustrade or high hedge, and in +the centre of the court is a grass plot enlivened by statue or fountain +or sundial. And it is worthy of note that they who prefer a road that +winds to the very door of a house on the plea of its naturalness make a +great mistake; they forget that the winding road is no whit less +artificial than the straight one.</p> + +<p>The choice of avenue or other type of approach will mainly depend upon +the character and situation of the house, its style and quality. Repton +truly observes that when generally adopted the avenue reduces all houses +to the same landscape—"if looking up a straight line, between two green +walls, deserves the name of a landscape." He states his objections to +avenues thus—"If at the end of a long avenue be placed an obelisk or +temple, or any other eye-trap, ignorance or childhood alone will be +caught and pleased by it; the eye of taste or experience hates +compulsion, and turns away with disgust from every artificial means of +attracting its notice; for this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> reason an avenue is most pleasing +which, like that at Langley Park, climbs up a hill, and passing over the +summit, leaves the fancy to conceive its termination."</p> + +<p>The very dignity of an avenue seems to demand that there shall be +something worthy of this procession of trees at its end, and if the +house to which this feature is applied be unworthy, a sense of +disappointment ensues. Provided, however, that the house be worthy of +this dignity, and that its introduction does not mar the view, or +dismember the ground, an avenue is both an artistic and convenient +approach.</p> + +<p>Should circumstances not admit of the use of an avenue, the drive should +be as direct as may well be, and if curved, there should be some clear +and obvious justification for the curve or divergence; it should be +clear that the road is diverted to obtain a glimpse of open country that +would otherwise be missed, or that a steep hill or awkward dip is thus +avoided. The irregularity in the line of the road should not, however, +be the occasion of any break in the gradient of the road, which should +be continuously even throughout. In this matter of planning roads, +common sense, as well as artistic sense, should be satisfied; there +should be no straining after pompous effects. Except in cases where the +house is near to the public road, the drive should not run parallel to +the road for the mere sake of gaining a pretentious effect. Nor should +the road overlook the garden, a point that touches the comfort both of +residents and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> visitors; and for the same reason the entrance to the +garden should not be from the drive, but from the house.</p> + +<p>The gradient recommended by Mr Milner,<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> to whose skilled experience I +am indebted for many practical suggestions, is 1 in 14. The width of a +drive is determined by the relative importance of the route. Thus, a +drive to the principal entrance of the house should be from 14 to 18 +ft., while that to the stables or offices 10 ft. Walks should not be +less than 6 ft. wide. The width of a grand avenue should be 50 ft, and +"the trees may be preferably Elm, Beech, Oak, Chestnut, and they should +not be planted nearer in procession than 40 ft., unless they be planted +at intervals of half that distance for the purpose of destroying +alternate trees, as their growth makes the removal necessary."</p> + +<p>The entrance-gates should not be visible from the mansion, Repton says, +unless it opens into a courtyard. As to their position, the gates may be +formed at the junction of two roads, or where a cross-road comes on to +the main road, or where the gates are sufficiently back from the public +road to allow a carriage to stand clear. The gates, as well as the +lodge, should be at right angles to the drive, and belong to it, not to +the public road. Where the house and estate are of moderate size, +architectural, rather than "rustic," simplicity best suits the character +of the lodge. It is desirable, remarks Mr Milner, to place the entrance, +if it can be managed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> at the foot of a hill or rise in the public road, +and not part of the way up an ascent, or at the top of it.</p> + +<p>If possible, the house should stand on a platform or terraced eminence, +so as to give the appearance of being well above ground; or it should be +on a knoll where a view may be had. The ground-level of the house should +be of the right height to command the prospect. Should the architect be +so fortunate as to obtain a site for his house where the ground rises +steep and abrupt on one side of the house, he will get here a series of +terraces, rock-gardens, a fernery, a rose-garden, &c. The ideal site for +a house would have fine prospects to the south-east and to the +south-west "The principal approach should be on the north-western face, +the offices on the north-eastern side, the stables and kitchen-garden +beyond. The pleasure-gardens should be on the south-eastern aspect, with +a continuation towards the east; the south-western face might be open to +the park" (Milner).</p> + +<p>If it can be avoided, the house should not be placed where the ground +slopes towards it—a treatment which suggests water draining into +it—but if this position be for some sufficient reason inevitable, or +should it be an old house with this defect that we are called to treat, +then a good space should be excavated, at least of the level of the +house, with a terrace-wall at the far end, on the original level of the +site at that particular point. And as to the rest of the ground, +Repton's sound advice is to plant up the heights so as to increase the +effect of shelter and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> seclusion that the house naturally has, and +introduce water, if available, at the low-level of the site. The air of +seclusion that the low-lying situation gives to the house is thus +intensified by crowning the heights with wood and setting water at the +base of the slope.</p> + +<p>The hanging-gardens at Clevedon Court afford a good example of what can +be done by a judicious formation of ground where the house is situated +near the base of a slope, and this example is none the less interesting +for its general agreement with Lamb's "Blakesmoor"—its ample +pleasure-garden "rising backwards from the house in triple terraces; ... +the verdant quarters backwarder still, and stretching still beyond in +old formality, the firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel and the +day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the centre."</p> + +<p>Before dealing with the garden and its relation to the house it may be +well to say a few words upon Planting. Trees are among the grandest and +most ornamental effects of natural scenery; they help the charm of hill, +plain, valley, and dale, and the changes in the colour of their foliage +at the different seasons of the year give us perpetual delight. One of +the most important elements in ornamental gardens is the dividing up and +diversifying a given area by plantations, by grouping of trees to form +retired glades, open lawns, shaded alleys, and well-selected margins of +woods; and, if this be skilfully done, an impression of variety and +extent will be produced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> beyond the belief of the uninitiated who has +seen the bare site before it was planted.</p> + +<p>To speak generally, there should be no need of apology for applying the +most subtle art in the disposal of trees and shrubs, and in the +formation of the ground to receive them. "<i>All Art</i>," as Loudon truly +says (speaking upon this very point), "<i>to be acknowledged as Art, must +be avowed.</i>" This is the case in the fine arts—there is no attempt to +conceal art in music, poetry, painting, or sculpture, none in +architecture, and none in geometrical-gardening.</p> + +<p>In modern landscape-gardening, practised as a fine art, many of the more +important beauties and effects produced by the artist depend on the use +he makes of foreign trees and shrubs; and, personally, one is ready to +forgive Brown much of his vile vandalism in old-fashioned gardens for +the use he makes of cedars, pines, planes, gleditschias, robinias, +deciduous cypress, and all the foreign hardy trees and shrubs that were +then to his hand.</p> + +<p>Loudon—every inch a fine gardener, true lineal descendant of Bacon in +the art of gardening—recommends in his "Arboretum" (pp. 11, 12) the +heading down of large trees of common species, and the grafting upon +them foreign species of the same genus, as is done in orchard +fruit-trees. Hawthorn hedges, for instance, are common everywhere; why +not graft some of the rare and beautiful sorts of tree thorns, and +intersperse common thorns between them? There are between twenty and +thirty beautiful species and varieties of thorn in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> our nurseries. Every +gardener can graft and bud. Or why should not scarlet oak and scarlet +acer be grafted on common species of these genera along the margins of +woods and plantations?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>In planting, the gardener has regard for character of foliage and tints, +the nature of the soil, the undulations of ground and grouping, the +amount of exposure. Small plantations of trees surrounded by a fence are +the best expedients to form groups, says Repton, because trees planted +singly seldom grow well. Good trees should not be encumbered by peddling +bushes, but be treated as specimens, each having its separate mound. The +mounds can be formed out of the hollowed pathways in the curves made +between the groups. The dotting of trees over the ground or of specimen +shrubs on a lawn is destructive of all breadth of effect. This is not to +follow Nature, nor Art, for Art demands that each feature shall have +relation to other features, and all to the general effect.</p> + +<p>In planting trees the variety of height in their outline must be +considered as much as the variety of their outline on plan; the +prominent parts made high, the intervening bays kept low,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> and this +both in connection with the lie of the ground and the plant selected. +Uniform curves, such as parts of circles or ovals, are not approved; +better effects are obtained by forming long bays or recesses with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> +forked tongues breaking forward irregularly, the turf running into the +bays. Trees may serve to frame a particular view and frame a picture; +and when well led up to the horizon will enhance the imaginative effect +of a place: a <i>beyond</i> in any view implies somewhere to explore.</p> + +<p>All trees grow more luxuriantly in valleys than on the hills, and on +this account the tendency of tree-growth is to neutralise the difference +in the rise and fall of the ground and to bring the tops of the trees +level. But the perfection of planting is to get an effect approximating +as near as may be to the charming undulations of the Forest of Dean and +the New Forest. Care will be taken, then, not to plant the fast-growing, +or tall-growing trees in the low-ground, but on the higher points, and +even to add to the irregularity by clothing the natural peaks with +silver fir, whose tall heads will increase the sense of height. The +limes, planes, and elms will be mostly kept to the higher ground, +bunches of Scotch fir will be placed here and there, and oaks and +beeches grouped together, while the lower ground will be occupied by +maples, crabs, thorns, alders, &c. "Fringe the edges of your wood with +lines of horse-chestnut," says Viscount Lymington in his delightful and +valuable article on "Vert and Venery"—"a mass in spring of blossom, and +in autumn of colour; and under these chestnuts, and in nooks and +corners, thrust in some laburnum, that it may push its showers of gold +out to the light and over the fence."</p> + +<p>As to the nature of the soil, and degree of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> exposure suitable to +different forest-trees, the writer just quoted holds that, for exposure +to the wind inland, the best trees for all soils are the beech, the +Austrian pine, and the Scotch fir.</p> + +<p>For exposure in hedgerows, the best tree to plant ordinarily is the elm. +For exposure to frost, the Insignis pine, which will not, however, stand +the frosts of the valley, but prefers high ground. For exposure to +smoke, undoubtedly the best tree is the Western plane. The sycamore will +stand better than most trees the smoke and chemical works of +manufacturing towns. For sea-exposure, the best trees to plant are the +goat willow and pineaster. Among the low-growing shrubs which stand +sea-exposure well are mentioned the sea-buckthorn, the snow-berry, the +evergreen barberry, and the German tamarisk; to which should be added +the euonymus and the escallonia.</p> + +<p>With regard to the nature of the soil, Lord Lymington says: "Strong clay +produces the best oaks and the best silver fir. A deep loam is the most +favourable soil for the growth of the Spanish chestnut and ash. The +beech is the glorious weed of the chalk and down countries; the elm of +the rich red sandstone valleys. Coniferous trees prefer land of a light +sandy texture; ... but as many desire to plant conifers on other soils, +I would mention that the following among others will grow on most soils, +chalk included: the <i>Abies excelsa</i>, <i>canadensis</i>, <i>magnifica</i>, +<i>nobilis</i>, and <i>Pinsapo</i>; the <i>Pinus excelsa</i>, <i>insignis</i>, and +<i>Laricio</i>; the <i>Cupressus Lawsoniana</i>, <i>erecta</i>, <i>viridis</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> and +<i>macrocarpa</i>; the <i>Salisburia adiantifolia</i>, and the <i>Wellingtonia</i>. The +most fast-growing in England of conifers is the Douglas fir.... It grows +luxuriantly on the slopes of the hills, but will not stand exposure to +the wind, and for that reason should always be planted in sheltered +combes with other trees behind it.</p> + +<p>"In moist and boggy land the spruce or the willow tribes succeed best."</p> + +<p>"In high, poor, and very dry land, no tree thrives so well as the Scotch +fir, the beech, and the sycamore."</p> + +<p>Avoid the selfishness and false economy of planting an inferior class of +fast-growing trees such as firs and larches and Lombardy poplars, on the +ground that one would not live to get any pleasure out of woods of oaks +and beech and chestnut. How frequently one sees tall, scraggy planes, or +belts of naked, attenuated firs, where groups of oaks and elms and +groves of chestnut might have stood with greater advantage.</p> + +<p>Avoid the thoughtlessness and false economy of not thoroughly preparing +the ground before planting. "Those that plant," says an old writer, +"should make their ground fit for the trees before they set them, and +not bury them in a hole like a dead dog; let them have good and fresh +lodgings suitable to their quality, and good attendance also, to +preserve them from their enemies till they are able to encounter them."</p> + +<p>Avoid trees near a house; they tend to make it damp, and the garden +which is near the house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> untidy. Writers upon planting have their own +ideas as to the fitness of certain growths for a certain style of house. +As regards the relation of trees to the house, if the building be of +Gothic design with the piquant outline usual to the style, then trees of +round shape form the best foil; if of Classic or Renascence design, then +trees of vertical conic growth suit best. So, if the house be of stone, +trees of dark foliage best meet the case; if of brick, trees of lighter +foliage should prevail. As a backing to the horizontal line of a roof to +an ordinary two-storey building, nothing looks better than the long +stems of stone pines or Scotch firs; and pines are health-giving trees.</p> + +<p>Never mark the outline of ground, nor the shape of groups of trees and +shrubs with formal rows of bedding plants or other stiff edging, which +is the almost universal practice of gardeners in the present day. This +is a poor travesty of Bacon's garden, who only allows low things to grow +naturally up to the edges.</p> + +<p>From the artist's point of view, perhaps the most desirable quality to +aim at in the distribution of garden space is that of breadth of +effect—in other words, simplicity; and the larger the garden the more +need does there seem for getting this quality. One may, in a manner, +<i>toy</i> with a small garden. In the case of a large garden, where the +owner in his greed for prettiness has carried things further than +regulation-taste would allow, much may be done to subdue the +assertiveness of a multiplicity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> interesting objects by architectural +adjuncts—broad terraces, well-defined lines, even a range of sentinel +yews or clipt shrubs—things that are precise, grave, calm, and +monotonous. Where such things are brought upon the scene, a certain +spaciousness and amplitude of effect ensues as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>One sees that the modern gardener, with his augmented list of +specimen-plants of varied foliage, is far more apt to err in the +direction of sensationalism than the gardener of old days who was exempt +from many of our temptations. Add to this power of attaining sweetness +and intricacy the artist's prone aspirations to work up to his lights +and opportunities, and we have temptation which is seductiveness itself!</p> + +<p>The garden at Highnam Court, dear to me for its signs and memories of my +late accomplished friend, Mr T. Gambier Parry, is the perfectest modern +garden I have ever seen. But here, if there be a fault, it is that Art +has been allowed to blossom too profusely. The attention of the visitor +is never allowed to drop, but is ever kept on the stretch. You are +throughout too much led by the master's cunning hand. Every known bit of +garden-artifice, every white lie of Art, every known variety of choice +tree or shrub, or trick of garden-arrangement is set forth there. But +somehow each thing strikes you as a little vainglorious—too sensible of +its own importance. We go about in a sort of pre-Raphaelite frame of +mind, where each seemly and beauteous feature has so much to say for +itself that, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> delightfulness of the details, we are apt to forget +that it is the first business of any work of Art to be a unit. There is +nothing of single specimen, or group of intermingled variety, or adroit +vista that we may miss and not be a loser; the only drawback is that we +see what we are expected to see, what everyone else sees. Here is +greenery of every hue; every metallic tint of silver, gold, copper, +bronze is there; and old and new favourites take hands, and we feel that +it is perfect; but the things blush in their conscious beauty—every +prospect is best seen "<i>there</i>!" England has few such beautiful gardens +as Highnam, and it has all the pathos of the touch of "a vanished hand," +and ideals that have wider range now.</p> + +<p>As to this matter of scenic effects, it is of course only fair to +remember that a garden is a place meant not only for broad vision, but +for minute scrutiny; and, specially near the house, intricacy is +permissible. Yet the counsels of perfection would tell the artist to +eschew such prettiness and multiplied beauties as trench upon broad +dignity. Sweetness is not good everywhere. Variations in plant-life that +are over-enforced, like variations in music, may be inferior to the +simple theme. A commonplace house, with well-disposed grounds, +flower-beds in the right place, a well-planted lawn, may please longer +than a fine pile where is ostentation and unrelieved artifice.</p> + +<p>Of lawns. Everything in a garden, we have said, has its first original +in primal Nature: a garden is made up of wild things that are tamed. The +old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> masters fully realised this. They sucked out the honey of wild +things without carrying refinement too far before they sipped it; and in +garnering for their <i>House Beautiful</i> the rustic flavour is left so far +as was compatible with the requirements of Art—"as much as may be to a +natural wildness." And it were well for us to do the same in the +treatment of a lawn, which is only the grassy, sun-chequered, woodland +glade in, or between woods, in a wild country idealised.</p> + +<p>A lawn is one of the delights of man. The "Teutonic races"—says Mr +Charles Dudley Warner, in his large American way—"The Teutonic races +all love turf; they emigrate in the line of its growth." Flower-beds +breed cheerfulness, but they may at times be too gay for tired eyes and +jaded minds; they may provoke admiration till they are provoking. But a +garden-lawn is a vision of peace, and its tranquil grace is a boon of +unspeakable value to people doomed to pass their working-hours in the +hustle of city-life.</p> + +<p>The question of planting and of lawn-making runs together, and Nature +admonishes us how to set about this work. Every resource she offers +should be met by the resources of Art: avoid what she avoids, accept and +heighten what she gives. Nature in the wild avoids half-circles and +ovals and uniform curves, and they are bad in the planted park, both for +trees and greensward. Nature does not of herself dot the landscape over +with spies sent out single-handed to show the nakedness of the land, but +puts forth detachments that befriend each the other, the boldest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> and +fittest first, in jagged outlines, leading the way, but not out of touch +with the rest. And, since the modern landscape-gardener is nothing if +not a naturalist, this is why one cannot see the consistency of so fine +a master as Mr Marnock, when he dots his lawns over with straggling +specimens. (See the model garden, by Mr Marnock in "The English +Flower-Garden," p. xxi, described thus—"Here the foreground is a +sloping lawn; the flowers are mostly arranged near the kitchen garden, +partly shown to right; the hardy ones grouped and scattered in various +positions near, or within good view of, the one bold walk which sweeps +round the ground.")</p> + +<p>A garden is ground knit up artistically; ground which has been the field +of artistic enterprise; ground which expresses the feeling of beauty and +which absorbs qualities which man has discovered in the woodland world. +And the qualities in Nature which may well find room in a garden are +peace, variety, animation. A good sweep of lawn is a peaceful object, +but see that the view is not impeded with the modern's sprawling +pell-mell beds. And in the anxiety to make the most of your ground, do +not spoil a distant prospect. Remember, too, that a lawn requires a good +depth of soil, or it will look parched in the hot weather.</p> + +<p>And since a lawn is so delightful a thing, beware lest your admiration +of it lead you to swamp your whole ground with grass even to carrying it +up to the house itself. "Nothing is more a child of Art than a garden," +says Sir Walter, and he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> competent to judge. If only out of +compliment to your architect and to the formal angularities of his +building, let the ground immediately about the house be of an ornamental +dressed character.</p> + +<p>Avoid the misplaced rusticity of the fashionable landscape-gardener, who +with his Nebuchadnezzar tastes would turn everything into grass, would +cart away the terrace and all its adjuncts, do away with all flowers, +and "lawn your hundred good acres of wheat," as Repton says, if you will +only let him, and if you have them.</p> + +<p>In his devotion to grass, his eagerness to display the measure of his +art in the curves of shrubberies and the arrangement of specimen plants +that strut across your lawn or dot it over as the Sunday scholars do the +croft when they come for their annual treat, he quite forgets the +flowers—forgets the old intent of a garden as the House Beautiful of +the civilised world—the place for nature-rapture, colour-pageantry, and +sweet odours. "Here the foreground is a sloping lawn; the <i>flowers are +mostly arranged near the kitchen garden</i>." Anywhere, anywhere out of the +way! Or if admitted at all into view of the house, it shall be with +little limited privileges, and the stern injunction—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If you speak you must not show your face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or if you show your face you must not speak."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So much for the garden-craft of the best modern landscape-gardener and +its relation to flowers. If this be the garden of the "Gardenesque" +style, as it is proudly called, I personally prefer the garden without +the style.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<h3>THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING—(<i>continued.</i>)</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring +forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like +herself; and when she collects her strength is abler still. Men are +decayed, and studies; she is not."—<span class="smcap">Ben Jonson.</span></p></blockquote> + + +<p>The old-fashioned country house has, almost invariably, a garden that +curtseys to the house, with its formal lines, its terraces, and beds of +geometrical patterns.</p> + +<p>But to the ordinary Landscape-gardener the terrace is as much anathema +as the "Kist o' Whistles" to the Scotch Puritan! So able and +distinguished a gardener as Mr Robinson, while not absolutely forbidding +any architectural accessories or geometrical arrangement, is for ever +girding at them. The worst thing that can be done with a true garden, he +says ("The English Flower Garden," p. ii), "is to introduce any feature +which, unlike the materials of our world-designer, never changes. There +are positions, it is true, where the <i>intrusion of architecture</i> and +embankment into the garden is justifiable; nay, now and then, even +necessary."</p> + +<p>If one is to promulgate opinions that shall run counter to the wisdom of +the whole civilised world, it is, of course, well that they should be +pronounced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> with the air of a Moses freshly come down from the Mount, +with the tables of the law in his hands. And there is more of it. "There +is no code of taste resting on any solid foundation which proves that +garden or park should have any extensive stonework or geometrical +arrangement.... Let us, then, use as few oil-cloth or carpet patterns +and as little stonework as possible in our gardens. The style is in +doubtful taste in climates and positions more suited to it than that of +England, but he who would adopt it in the present day is an enemy to +every true interest of the garden" (p. vi).</p> + +<p>So much for the "deadly formalism" of an old-fashioned garden in our +author's eyes! But, as Horace Walpole might say, "it is not peculiar to +Mr Robinson to think in that manner." It is the way of the +landscape-gardener to monopolise to himself all the right principles of +gardening; he is the angel of the garden who protects its true +interests; all other moods than his are low, all figures other than his +are symbols of errors, all dealings with Nature or with "the materials +of our world-designer" other than his are spurious. For the colonies I +can imagine no fitter doctrines than our author's, but not for an old +land like ours, and for methods that have the approval of men like +Bacon, Temple, More, Evelyn, Sir Joshua, Sir Walter, Elia, Wordsworth, +Tennyson, Morris, and Jefferies. And, even in the colonies, they might +demand to see "the code of taste resting on any solid foundation which +proves" that you shall have any garden or park at all!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If I am to have a system at all," says the author of "The Flower +Garden" (Murray, 1852), whose broad-minded views declare him to be an +amateur, "give me the good old system of terraces and angled walks, the +clipt yew hedges, against whose dark and rich verdure the bright +old-fashioned flowers glittered in the sun." Or again: "Of all the vain +assumptions of these coxcombical times, that which arrogates the +pre-eminence in the true science of gardening is the vainest.... The +real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity. +If we review the various styles that have prevailed in England from the +knotted gardens of Elizabeth ... to the landscape fashion of the present +day, we shall have little reason to pride ourselves on the advance which +national taste has made upon the earliest efforts in this department" +("The Praise of Gardens," p. 270).</p> + +<p>"Large or small," says Mr W. Morris, "the garden should look both +orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outer world. It +should by no means imitate either the wilfulness or the wildness of +Nature, but should look like a thing never seen except near a house" +("Hopes and Fears").</p> + +<p>The whole point of the matter is, however, perhaps best summed up in +Hazlitt's remark, that there is a pleasure in Art which none but artists +feel. And why this sudden respect for "the materials of our +world-designer," when we may ask in Repton's words "why this art has +been called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> Landscape-gardening, perhaps he who gave the title may +explain. I see no reason, unless it be the efficacy which it has shown +in destroying landscapes, in which indeed it is infallible!" But, +setting aside the transparent shallowness of such a plea against the use +of Art in a garden, it argues little for the scheme of effects to leave +"nothing to impede the view of the house or its windows but a refreshing +carpet of grass." To pitch your house down upon the grass with no +architectural accessories about it, to link it to the soil, is to +vulgarise it, to rob it of importance, to give it the look of a pastoral +farm, green to the door-step. To bring Nature up to the windows of your +house, with a scorn of art-sweetness, is not only to betray your own +deadness to form, but to cause a sense of unexpected blankness in the +visitor's mind on leaving the well-appointed interior of an English +home. As the house is an Art-production, so is the garden that surrounds +it, and there is no code of taste that I know of which would prove that +Art is more reprehensible in the garden than in the house.</p> + +<p>But to return. The old-fashioned country house had its terraces. These +terraces are not mere narrow slopes of turf, such as now-a-days too +often answer to the term, but they are of solid masonry with balustrades +or open-work that give an agreeable variety of light and shade, and +impart an air of importance and of altitude to the house that would be +lacking if the terrace were not there.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a> +<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PLAN OF ROSERY, WITH SUNDIAL.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The whole of the ground upon which the house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> stands, or which forms +its base, constitutes the terrace. In such cases the terrace-walls are +usually in two or more levels, the upper terrace being mostly parallel +with the line of the house, or bowed out at intervals with balconies, +while the lower terrace, or terraces, serve as the varying levels of +formal gardens, pleasure-grounds, labyrinths, &c. The terraces are +approached by wide steps that are treated in a stately and impressive +manner. The walls and balustrades, moreover, conform, as they should, to +the materials employed in the house; if the house be of stone, as at +Haddon, or Brympton, or Claverton, the balustrade is of stone; if the +house be of brick, as at Hatfield or Bramshill, the walls and +balustrades will be of brick and terra-cotta. The advantage of this +agreement of material is obvious, for house and terrace, embraced at one +glance, make a consistent whole. There is not, of course, the same +necessity for consistency of material in the case of the mere retaining +walls.</p> + +<p>As one must needs have a system in planning grounds, there is none that +will more certainly bring honour and effect to them than the regular +geometrical treatment. This is what the architect naturally prefers. The +house is his child, and he knows what is good for it. Unlike the +imported gardener, who comes upon the scene as a foreign agent, the +architect works from the house outwards, taking the house as his centre; +the other works from the outside inwards, if he thinks of the "inwards" +at all. The first thinks of house and grounds as a whole which shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> +embrace the main buildings, the outbuildings, the flower and +kitchen-gardens, terraces, walls, forecourt, winter-garden, +conservatory, fountain, steps, &c. The other makes the house common to +the commonplace; owing no allegiance to Art, a specialist of one idea, +he holds that the worst thing that can be done is to intrude +architectural or geometrical arrangement about a garden, and speaks of a +refreshing carpet of grass as preferable.</p> + +<p>As to the extent, number, and situation of terraces, this point is +determined by the conditions of the house and site. Terraces come +naturally if the house be on an eminence, but even in cases where the +ground recedes only to a slight extent, the surface of a second terrace +may be lowered by increasing the fall of the slope till sufficient earth +is provided for the requisite filling. The surplus earth dug out in +forming the foundations and cellars of the house, or rubbish from an old +building, will help to make up the terrace levels and save the cost of +wheeling and carting the rubbish away.</p> + +<p>Like all embankments, terrace walls are built with "battered" fronts or +outward slope; the back of the wall will be left rough, and well +drained. A backing of sods, Mr Milner says, will prevent thrust, and +admit of a lessened thickness in the wall. The walls should not be less +than three feet in height from the ground-level beneath, exclusive of +the balustrade, which is another three feet high.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a> +<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER GARDEN.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The length of the terrace adds importance to the house, and in small +gardens, where the kitchen-garden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> occupies one side of the +flower-garden, the terrace may with advantage be carried to the full +extent of the ground, and the kitchen-garden separated by a hedge and +shrubs; and at the upper end of the kitchen-garden may be a narrow +garden, geometrical, rock, or other garden, set next the terrace wall.</p> + +<p>The treatment of the upper terrace should be strictly architectural. If +the terrace be wide, raised beds with stone edging, set on the inner +side of the terrace, say alternately long beds with dwarf flowering +shrubs or hydrangeas, and circles with standard hollies, or marble +statues on pedestals, that shall alternate with pyramidal golden yews, +have a good effect, the terrace terminating with an arbour or stone +Pavilion. Modern taste, however, even if it condescend so far as to +allow of a terrace, is content with its grass plot and gravel walks, +which is not carrying Art very far.</p> + +<p>Laneham tells of the old pleasaunce at Kenilworth, that it had a terrace +10 ft. high and 12 ft. wide on the garden side, in which were set at +intervals obelisks and spheres and white bears, "all of stone, upon +their curious bases," and at each end an arbour; the garden-plot was +below this, and had its fair alleys, or grass, or gravel.</p> + +<p>The lower terrace may well be twice the width of the upper one, and may +be a geometrical garden laid out on turf, if preferred, but far better +upon gravel. Here will be collected the choicest flowers in the garden, +giving a mass of rich colouring.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p> + +<p>Although in old gardens the lower terrace is some 10 ft. below the upper +one, this is too deep to suit modern taste; indeed, 5 ft. or 6 ft. will +give a better view of the garden if it is to be viewed from the house. +At the same time it is undeniable that the more you are able to look +<i>down</i> upon the garden—the higher you stand above its plane—the better +the effect; the lower you stand, the poorer the perspective.</p> + +<p>Modern taste, also, will not always tolerate a balustraded wall as a +boundary to the terrace, but likes a grass slope. If this poor +substitute be preferred, there should be a level space at the bottom of +the slope and at the top; the slope should have a continuous line, and +not follow any irregularity in the natural lie of the ground, and there +should be a simple plinth 12 to 18 in. high at the bottom of the slope.</p> + +<p>But the mere grass slope does not much help the effect of the house, far +or near; a house standing on a grass slope always has the effect of +sliding down a hill. To leave the house exposed upon the landscape, +unscreened and unterraced, is not to treat site or house fairly. There +exists a certain necessity for features in a flat place, and if no +raised terrace be possible, it is desirable to get architectural +treatment by means of balustrades alone, without much, or any, fall in +the ground. The eye always asks for definite boundaries to a piece of +ornamental ground as it does for a frame to a picture, and where +definite boundaries do not exist, the distant effect is that of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> +house that has tumbled casually down from the skies, near which the +cattle may graze as they list, and the flower-beds are the mere sport of +contingencies.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a> +<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>GENERAL PLAN OF THE PLEASAUNCE, VILLA ALBANI, ROME.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Good examples of terrace walls are to be found at Haddon, Claverton, +Brympton, Montacute, Bramshill, Wilton, and Blickling Hall. If truth be +told, however, all our English examples dwindle into nothingness by the +side of fine Italian examples like those at Villa Albani,<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Villa +Medici, or Villa Borghese, with their grand scope and array of +sculpture. (See illustration from Percier and Fontaine's "<i>Choix des +plus célèbres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs</i>." Paris, +MDCCCIV.)</p> + +<p>The arrangement of steps is a matter that may call forth a man's utmost +ingenuity. The scope and variety of step arrangement is, indeed, a +matter that can only be realised by designers who have given it their +study. As to practical points. In planning steps make the treads wide, +the risers low. Long flights without landings are always objectionable. +Some of the best examples, both in England and abroad, have winders; as +to the library quadrangle, Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Donibristle Castle, +Scotland; Villa d'Este, Tivoli; the gardens at Nîmes. The grandest +specimen of all is the Trinità di Monte steps in Rome (see Notes on +Gardens in <i>The British Architect</i>, by John Belcher and Mervyn +Macartney).</p> + +<p>It is impossible to lay down rules of equal application everywhere as to +the distribution of garden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> area into compartments, borders, terraces, +walks, &c. These matters are partly regulated by the character of the +house, its situation, the section and outline of the ground. But gardens +should, if possible, lie towards the best parts of the house, or towards +the rooms most commonly in use by the family, and endeavour should be +made to plant them so that to step from the house on to the terrace, or +from the terrace to the various parts of the garden, should only seem +like going from one room to another.</p> + +<p>Of the arrangement of the ground into divisions, each section should +have its own special attractiveness and should be led up to by some +inviting artifice of archway, or screened alley of shrubs, or "rosery" +with its trellis-work, or stone colonnade; and if the alley be long it +should be high enough to afford shade from the glare of the sun in hot +weather; you ought not, as Bacon pertinently says, to "buy the shade by +going into the sun."</p> + +<p>Again, the useful and the beautiful should be happily united, the +kitchen and the flower garden, the way to the stables and outbuildings, +the orchard, the winter garden, &c., all having a share of consideration +and a sense of connectedness; and if there be a chance for a filbert +walk, seize it; that at Hatfield is charming. "I cannot understand," +says Richard Jefferies ("Wild Life in a Southern Country," p. 70), "why +filbert walks are not planted by our modern capitalists, who make +nothing of spending a thousand pounds in forcing-houses."</p> + +<p>A garden should be well fenced, and there should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> always be facility for +getting real seclusion, so much needed now-a-days; indeed, the provision +of places of retreat has always been a note of an English garden. The +love of retirement, almost as much as a taste for trees and flowers, has +dictated its shapes. Hence the cedar-walks,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> the bower, the avenue, +the maze, the alley, the wilderness, that were familiar, and almost the +invariable features of an old English pleasaunce, "hidden happily and +shielded safe."</p> + +<p>This seclusion can be got by judicious screening of parts, by +shrubberies, or avenues of hazel, or yew, or sweet-scented bay, with +perhaps clusters of lilies and hollyhocks, or dwarf Alpine plants and +trailers between. And in all this the true gardener will have a thought +for the birds. "No modern exotic evergreens," says Jefferies, "ever +attract our English birds like the true old English trees and shrubs. In +the box and yew they love to build; spindly laurels and rhododendrons, +with vacant draughty spaces underneath, they detest, avoiding them as +much as possible. The common hawthorn hedge round a country garden shall +contain three times as many nests, and be visited by five times as many +birds as the foreign evergreens, so costly to rear and so sure to be +killed by the first old-fashioned frost."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p> + +<p>Another chance for getting seclusion is the high walls or lofty yew +hedge of the quadrangular courtyard, which may be near the entrance. +Such a forecourt is the place for a walk on bleak days; in its borders +you are sure of the earliest spring flowers, for the tender flowers can +here bloom securely, the myrtle, the pomegranate will flourish, and the +most fragrant plants and climbers hang over the door and windows. What +is more charming than the effect of hollyhocks, peonies, poppies, +tritomas, and tulips seen against a yew hedge?</p> + +<p>The paths should be wide and excellently made. The English have always +had good paths; as Mr Evelyn said to Mr Pepys, "We have the best walks +of gravell in the world, France having none, nor Italy." The comfort and +the elegance of a garden depend in no slight degree upon good gravel +walks, but having secured gravel walks to all parts of the grounds, +green alleys should also be provided. Nothing is prettier than a vista +through the smooth-shaven green alley, with a statue or sundial or +pavilion at the end; or an archway framing a peep of the country beyond.</p> + +<p>As to the garden's size, it is erroneous to suppose that the enjoyments +of a garden are only in proportion to its magnitude; the pleasurableness +of a garden depends infinitely more upon the degree of its culture and +the loving care that is bestowed upon it. If gardens were smaller than +they usually are, there would be a better chance of their orderly +keeping. As it is, gardens are mostly too large for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> the number of +attendants, so that the time and care of the gardener are nearly +absorbed in the manual labour of repairing and stocking the beds, and +maintaining and sweeping the walks.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus5" id="illus5"></a> +<img src="images/illus5.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN, YEW WALK, +AND TENNIS COURT.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>But if not large, the grounds should not have the appearance of being +confined within a limited space; and Art is well spent in giving an +effect of greater extent to the place than it really possesses by a +suitable composition of the walks, bushes, and trees. These lines should +lead the eye to the distance, and if bounded by trees, the garden should +be connected with the outer world by judicious openings; and this rule +applies to gardens large or small.</p> + +<p>Ground possessing a gentle inclination towards the south is desirable +for a garden. On such a slope effectual drainage is easily accomplished, +and the greatest possible benefit obtained from the sun's rays. The +garden should, if possible, have an open exposure towards the east and +west, so that it may enjoy the full benefit of morning and evening sun; +but shelter on the north or north-east, or any side in which the +particular locality may happen to be exposed, is desirable.</p> + +<p>The dimensions of the garden will be proportionate to the scale of the +house. The general size of the garden to a good-sized house is from four +to six acres, but the extent varies in many places from twelve to +twenty, or even thirty acres. (See an admirable article on gardening in +the "Encyclopædia.")</p> + +<p>Before commencing to lay out a garden the plan should be prepared in +minute detail, and every point<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> carefully considered. Two or three acres +of kitchen garden, enclosed by walls and surrounded by slips, will +suffice for the supply of a moderate establishment.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> The form of the +kitchen garden advocated by the writer in the "Encyclopædia" is that of +a square, or oblong, not curvilinear, since the work of cropping of the +ground can thus be more easily carried out. On the whole, the best form +is that of a parallelogram, with its longest sides in the proportion of +about five to three of the shorter, and running east and west. The whole +should be compactly arranged so as to facilitate working, and to afford +convenient access for the carting of heavy materials to the store-yards, +etc.</p> + +<p>There can, as we have said, be no fixed or uniform arrangement of +gardens. Some grounds will have more flower-beds than others, some more +park or wilderness; some will have terraces, some not; some a pinetum, +or an American garden. In some gardens the terraces will lie immediately +below the main front of the house, in others not, because the +geometrical garden needs a more sheltered site where the flowers can +thrive.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus6" id="illus6"></a> +<img src="images/illus6.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PLAN OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN AND YEW HEDGES.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Of the shapes of the beds it were of little avail to speak, and the +diagrams here given are only of use where the conditions of the ground +properly admit of their application. The geometrical garden is capable +of great variety of handling. A fair size for a geometrical garden is +120 ft. by 60 ft. This size will allow of a main central walk of seven +feet that shall divide the panel into two equal parts and lead down to +the next level. The space may have a balustrade along its length on the +two sides, and on the garden side of the balustrade a flower-bed of +mixed flowers and choice low-growing shrubs, backed with hollyhocks, +tritoma, lilies, golden-rod, etc. The width of the border will +correspond with the space required for the steps that descend from the +upper terrace. For obtaining pleasant proportions in the design, the +walks in the garden will be of two sizes, gravelled like the rest—the +wider walk, say, three feet, the smaller, one foot nine inches. The +centre of the garden device on each side may be a raised bed with a +stone kerb and an ornamental shrub in the middle, and the space around +with, say, periwinkle or stonecrop, mixed with white harebells, or low +creepers. Or, should there be no wide main walk, and the garden-plot be +treated as one composition, the central bed will have a statue, sundial, +fountain, or other architectural feature. Each bed will be edged with +box or chamfered stone, or terra-cotta edging. Or the formal garden may +be sunk below the level of the paths, and filled either with flowers or +with dwarf coniferæ.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> + +<p>Both for practical and artistic reasons, the beds should not be too +small; they should not be so small that, when filled with plants, they +should appear like spots of colour, nor be so large that any part of +them cannot be easily reached by a rake. Nor should the shapes of the +beds be too angular to accommodate the plants well. In Sir Gardner +Wilkinson's book on "Colour" (Murray, 1858, p. 372), he speaks of design +and good form as the very <i>soul</i> of a dressed garden; and the very +permanence of the forms, which remain though successive series of plants +be removed, calls for a good design. The shapes of the beds, as well as +the colours of their contents, are taken cognisance of in estimating the +general effect of a geometrical garden. This same accomplished author +advises that there should always be a less formal garden beyond the +geometrical one; the latter is, so to speak, an appurtenance of the +house, a feature of the plateau upon which it stands, and no attempt +should be made to combine the patterns of the geometrical with the beds +or borders of the outer informal garden, such combination being +specially ill-judged in the neighbourhood of bushes and winding paths.</p> + +<p>Of the proper selection of flowers and the determination of the colours +for harmonious combination in the geometrical beds, much that is +contradictory has been preached, one gardener leaning to more formality +than another. There is, however, a general agreement upon the necessity +of having beds that will look fairly well at all seasons of the year, +and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> an agreement as to the use of hardy flowers in these beds. Mr +Robinson has some good advice to give upon this point ("English Flower +Garden," p. 24): "The ugliest and most needless parterre (!) in England +may be planted in the most beautiful way with hardy flowers alone." (Why +"needless," then?) "Are we not all wrong in adopting one degree, so to +say, of plant life as the only fitting one to lay before the house? Is +it well to devote the flower-bed to one type of vegetation only—low +herbaceous vegetation—be that hardy or tender?... We have been so long +accustomed to leave flower-beds raw, and to put a number of plants out +every year, forming flat surfaces of colour, that no one even thinks of +the higher and better way of filling them. But surely it is worth +considering whether it would not be right to fill the beds permanently, +rather than to leave them in this naked or flat condition throughout the +whole of the year.... If any place asks for permanent planting, it is +the spot of ground immediately near the house; for no one can wish to +see large, grave-like masses of soil frequently dug and disturbed near +the windows, and few care for the result of all this, even when the +ground is well covered during a good season." Again our author, on p. +95, states that "he has very decided notions as to arrangement of the +various colours for summer bedding, which are that the whole shall be so +commingled that one would be puzzled to determine what tint predominates +in the entire arrangement." He would have a "glaucous" colour, that is, +a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> light grey or whitish green. Such a colour never tires the eye, and +harmonises with the tints of the landscape, "particularly of the lawn." +This seems to be neutralising the effects of the flowers, and this +primal consideration of the lawn is like scorning your picture for the +sake of its frame!</p> + +<p>Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who writes of gardens from quite another point of +view, says: "It is by no means necessary or advisable to select rare +flowers for the beds, and some of the most common are the most eligible, +being more hardy, and therefore less likely to fail, or to cover the bed +with a scanty and imperfect display of colour. Indeed, it is a common +mistake to seek rare flowers, when many of the old and most ordinary +varieties are far more beautiful. The point to note in this matter of +choosing flowers for a geometrical garden is to ascertain first the +lines that will best accord with the design, and make for a harmonious +and brilliant effect, and to see that the flowers best suited to it +blossom at the same periods. A succession of those of the same colour +may be made to take the place of each, and continue the design at +successive seasons. They should also be, as near as possible, of the +same height as their companions, so that the blue flowers be not over +tall in one bed, or the red too short in another.... Common flowers, the +weeds of the country, are often most beautiful in colour, and are not to +be despised because they are common; they have also the advantage of +being hardy, and rare flowers are not always those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> best suited for +beds" (Wilkinson on "Colour," p. 375).</p> + +<p>With regard to the ornamental turf-beds of our modern gardens. To judge +of a garden upon high principles, we expect it to be the finest and +fittest expression that a given plot of ground will take; it must be the +perfect adaptation of means to an end and that end is beauty. Are we to +suppose, then, that the turf-beds of strange device that we meet with in +modern gardens are the best that can be done by the heir of all the ages +in the way of garden-craft? A garden, I am aware, has other things to +attend to besides the demands of ideal beauty; it has to embellish life +to supply innocent pleasure to the inmates of the house as well as to +dignify the house itself; and the devising of these vagrant beds that +sprawl about the grounds is a pleasure that can be ill spared from the +artistic delights of a modern householder. It is indeed wonderful to +what heights the British fancy can rise when put to the push, if only it +have a congenial field! So here we have flower-beds shaped as crescents +and kidneys—beds like flying bats or bubbling tadpoles, commingled +butterflies and leeches, stars and sausages, hearts and commas, +monograms and maggots—a motley assortment to be sure—but the modern +mind is motley, and the pretty flowers smile a sickly smile out of their +comic beds, as though Paradise itself could provide them with no fairer +lodgings!</p> + +<p>And yet if I dare speak my mind "sike fancies weren foolerie;" and it +were hard to find a good word<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> to say for them from any point of view +whatever. Their wobbly shapes are not elegant; they have not the +sanction of precedent, even of epochs the most barbarous. And though +they make pretence at being a species of art, their mock-formality has +not that geometric precision which shall bind them to the formal lines +of the house, or to the general bearings of the site. Not only do they +contribute nothing to the artistic effect of the general design, but +they even mar the appearance of the grass that accommodates them. Design +they have, but not design of that quality which alone justifies its +intrusion. No wonder "Nature abhors lines" if this base and spurious +imitation of the "old formality," that Charles Lamb gloats over, is all +that the landscape-garden can offer in the way of idealisation.</p> + +<p>One other feature of the old-fashioned garden—the herbaceous +border—requires a word. It is worthy of note that, unlike the modern, +the ancient gardener was not a man of one idea—his art is not bounded +like a barrel-organ that can only play one invariable tune! While the +master of the "old formality" can give intricate harmonies of inwoven +colours in the geometric beds—"all mosaic, choicely planned," where +Nature lends her utmost magic to grace man's fancy—he knows the value +of the less as well as the more, and finds equal room for the +unconstrained melodies of odd free growths in the border-beds, where you +shall enjoy the individual character, the form, the outline, the colour, +the tone of each plant. Here let the mind of an earlier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> generation +speak in George Milner's "Country Pleasures":</p> + +<blockquote><p>"By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed, where +only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to grow. Here +there is always delight; and I should be sorry to exchange its +sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless +bedding-plants, mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This bed +is from fifty to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in +width. A thorn hedge divides it from the orchard. In spring the +apple-bloom hangs over, and now we see in the background the apples +themselves. The plants still in flower are the dark blue monkshood, +which is 7ft. high; the spiked veronica; the meadow-sweet or +queen-o'-the-meadow; the lady's mantle, and the evening primrose. +This last may be regarded as the characteristic plant of the +season. The flowers open about seven o'clock, and as the twilight +deepens, they gleam like pale lamps, and harmonise wonderfully with +the colour of the sky. <i>On this bed I read the history of the +year.</i> Here were the first snowdrops; here came the crocuses, the +daffodils, the blue gentians, the columbines, the great globed +peonies; and last, the lilies and the roses."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And now to apply what has been said.</p> + +<p>Since gardening entails so much study and experience—since it is a +craft in which one is so apt to err, in small matters as in large—since +it exists to represent passages of Nature that have touched man's +imagination from time immemorial—since its business is to paint living +pictures of living things whose habits, aspects, qualities, and +character have ever engaged man's interest—since the modern gardener +has not only not found new sources of inspiration unknown of old, but +has even lost sensibility to some that were active then—it were surely +wise to take the hand of old garden-masters who did large things in a +larger past—to whom fine gardening came as second nature—whose success +has given English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> garden-craft repute which not even the journeyman +efforts of modern times can quite extinguish.</p> + +<p>These men—Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, and their school—let us follow for +style, elevated form, noble ideals, and artistic interpretation of +Nature.</p> + +<p>For practical knowledge of trees and shrubs, indigenous or exotic—to +know <i>how</i> to plant and <i>what</i> to plant—to know what to avoid in the +practice of modern blunderers—to know the true theory and practice of +Landscape-gardening, reduced to writing, after ample analysis—turn we +to those books of solid value of the three great luminaries of modern +garden-craft, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon.</p> + +<p>And it were not only to be ungenerous, but absolutely foolish, to +neglect the study of the best that is now written and done in the way of +landscape-gardening, in methods of planting, and illustration of botany +up to date. One school may see things from a different point of view to +another, yet is there but one art of gardening. It is certain that to +gain boldness in practice, to have clear views upon that delicate +point—the relations of Art and Nature—to have a reliable standard of +excellence, we must know and value the good in the garden-craft of all +times, we must sympathise with the point of view of each phase, and +follow that which is good in each and all without scruple and +doubtfulness. That man is a fool who thinks that he can escape the +influence of his day, or that he can dispense with tradition.</p> + +<p>I say, let us follow the old garden-masters for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> style, form, ideal, and +artistic interpretation of Nature, and let us not say what Horace +Walpole whimpered forth of Temple's garden-enterprise: "These are +adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands." Have we not +seen that at the close of Bacon's lessons in grand gardening he adds, +that the things thrown in "for state and magnificence" are but nothing +to the true pleasure of a garden?</p> + +<p>The counsels of perfection are not to be slighted because our ground is +small. In gardening, as in other matters, the true test of one's work is +the measure of one's possibilities. A small, trim garden, like a sonnet, +may contain the very soul of beauty. A small garden may be as truly +admirable as a perfect song or painting.</p> + +<p>Let it be our aim, then, to give to gardening all the method and +distinctness of which it is capable, and admit no impediments. A garden +not fifty yards square, deftly handled, judiciously laid out, its beds +and walks suitably directed, will yield thrice the opportunity for +craft, thrice the scope for imaginative endeavour that a two-acre +"garden" of the pastoral-farm order, such as is recommended of the +faculty, will yield. The very division of the ground into proportionate +parts, the varied levels obtained, the framed vistas, the fitting +architectural adjuncts, will alone contribute an air of size and scale. +As to "codes of taste" (which are usually in matters of Art only +someone's opinions stated pompously), these should not be allowed to +baulk individual enterprise. "Long experience," says that accomplished +gardener<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> and charming writer, E. V. B., in "Days and Hours in a Garden" +(p. 125), "Long experience has taught me to have nothing to do with +principles in the garden. Little else than a feeling of entire sympathy +with the diverse characters of your plants and flowers is needed for +'Art in a Garden.' If sympathy be there, all the rest comes naturally +enough." Or to put this thought in Temple's words, "The success is +wholly in the gardener."</p> + +<p>If a garden grow flowers in abundance, <i>there</i> is success, and one may +proceed to frame a garden after approved "codes of taste" and fail in +this, or one may prefer unaccepted methods and find success beyond one's +fondest dreams. "All is fine that is fit" is a good garden motto; and +what an eclectic principle is this! How many kinds of style it allows, +justifies, and guards! the simplest way or the most ornate; the fanciful +or the sweet austere; the intricate and complex, or the coy and +unconstrained. Take it as true as Gospel that there is danger in the use +of ornament—danger of excess—take it as equally true that there is an +intrinsic and superior value in moderation, and yet the born gardener +shall find more paths, old and new, that lead to Beauty in a plot of +garden-ground than the modern stylist dreams of.</p> + +<p>The art of gardening may now be known of all men. Gardening is no longer +a merely princely diversion requiring thirty wide acres for its display. +Everyone who can, now lives in the country, where he is bound to have a +garden; and I repeat what I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> said before, let no one suppose that the +beauty of a garden depends on its acreage, or on the amount of money +spent upon it. Nay, one would almost prefer a small garden plot, so as +to ensure that ample justice shall be done to it.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> In a small garden +there is less fear of dissipated effort, more chance of making friends +with its inmates, more time to spare to heighten the beauty of its +effects.</p> + +<p>To some extent the success of a garden depends upon favourable +conditions of sun, soil, and water, but more upon the choiceness of its +contents, the skill of its planting, the lovingness of its tendence. +Love for beauty has a way of enticing beauty; the seeing eye wins its +own ranges of vision, finds points of vantage in unlikely ground. "I +write in a nook," says the poet Cowper, "that I call my boudoir; it is a +summerhouse, not bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opens into +the garden that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles, <i>and +the window into my neighbour's orchard</i>. It formerly served an +apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, however, it is dedicated to +sublimer uses." What a mastery of life is here!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As if life's business were a summer mood;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if all needful things would come unsought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To genial faith, still rich in genial good;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By our own spirits are we deified."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But I must not finish the stanza in this connection.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> + +<p>A garden is pre-eminently a place to indulge individual taste. "Let us +not be that fictitious thing," says Madame Roland, "that can only exist +by the help of others—<i>soyons nous</i>!" So, regardless of the doctors, +let me say that the best general rule that I can devise for +garden-making is: put all the beauty and delightsomeness you can into +your garden, get all the beauty and delight you can out of your garden, +never minding a little mad want of balance, and think of proprieties +afterwards! Of course, this is to "prove naething," but never mind if +but the garden enshrine beauty. To say this is by no means to allow that +the garden is the fit place for indulging your love of the +out-of-the-way; not so, yet a little sign of fresh motive, a touch of +individual technique, a token, however shyly displayed, that you think +for yourself is welcome in a garden. Thus I know of a gardener who +turned a section of his grounds into a sort of huge bear-pit, not a +sunk-pit, but a mound that took the refuse soil from the site of his new +house hollowed out, and its slopes set all round with Alpine and +American garden-plants, each variety finding the aspect it likes best, +and the proportion of light and shade that suits its constitution. This +is, of course, to "intrude embankments" into a garden with a vengeance, +yet even Mr Robinson, if he saw it, would allow that, as in love and +war, your daring in gardening is justified by its results, where, as +George Herbert has it—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who shuts his hand, hath lost its gold;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who opens it, hath it twice told."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>A garden is, first and last, a place for flowers; but, treading in the +old master's footsteps, I would devote a certain part of even a small +garden to Nature's own wild self, and the loveliness of weed-life. Here +Art should only give things a good start and help the propagation of +some sorts of plants not indigenous to the locality. Good effects do not +ensue all at once, but stand aside and wait, or help judiciously, and +the result will be a picture of rude and vigorous life, of pretty colour +and glorious form, that is gratifying for its own qualities, and more +for its opposition to the peacefulness of the garden's ordered +surroundings.</p> + +<p>A garden is the place for flowers, a place where one may foster a +passion for loveliness, may learn the magic of colour and the glory of +form, and quicken sympathy with Nature in her higher moods. And, because +the old-fashioned garden more conduces to these ends than the modern, it +has our preference. The spirit of old garden-craft, says: "Do everything +that can be done to help Nature, to lift things to perfection, to +interpret, to give to your Art method and distinctness." The spirit of +the modern garden-craft of the purely landscape school says: "Let be, +let well alone, or extemporise at most. Brag of your scorn for Art, yet +smuggle her in, as a stalking-horse for your halting method and +non-geometrical forms."</p> + +<p>And, as we have shown, Art has her revenges as well as Nature; and the +very negativeness of this school's Art-treatments is the seal to its +doom.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> Mere neutral teaching can father nothing; it can never breed a +system of stable device that is capable of development. But old +garden-craft is positive, where the other is negative; it has no +niggling scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment except +the unwritten laws of good taste. Hence its permanent value as a +standard of device—for every gardener must needs desire the support of +some backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts—he must +needs have some basis of form on which to rest his own device, his own +realisations of natural beauty—and what safer, stabler system of +garden-craft can he wish for than that of the old English garden—itself +the outcome of a spacious age, well skilled in the pictorial art and +bent upon perfection?</p> + +<p>The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are beauty, animation, +variety, mystery. A garden's beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured +by its capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, and we need +not fear to use embellishment or strong colour, or striking device, +according to the adage "The richly provided richly require."</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus7" id="illus7"></a> +<img src="images/illus7.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A +LARGE GARDEN.<br /> +(PERSPECTIVE VIEW).</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the grace of a garden, +because all gardening is Art or nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art +in a garden, nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its charm. +I have no more scruple in using the scissors upon tree or shrub, where +trimness is desirable, than I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that +once represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm in the results +of the topiary art, in the prim imagery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> of evergreens, that all +ages have felt. And I would even introduce <i>bizarreries</i> on the +principle of not leaving all that is wild and odd to Nature outside of +the garden-paling; and in the formal part of the garden my yews should +take the shape of pyramids or peacocks or cocked hats or ramping lions +in Lincoln-green, or any other conceit I had a mind to, which vegetable +sculpture can take.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus8" id="illus8"></a> +<img src="images/illus8.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN PLAN FOLLOWING.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>As to the other desirable qualities—animation, variety, mystery—I +would base my garden upon the model of the old masters, without adopting +any special style. The place should be a home of fancy, full of +intention, full of pains (without showing any); half common-sense, half +romance; "neither praise nor poetry, but something better than either," +as Burke said of Sheridan's speech; it should have an ethereal touch, +yet be not inappropriate for the joyous racket and country cordiality of +an English home. It should be</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A miniature of loveliness, all grace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Summ'd up and closed in little"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>something that would challenge the admiration and suit the moods of +various minds; be brimful of colour-gladness, yet be not all pyramids of +sweets, but offer some solids for the solid man; combining old processes +and new, old idealisms and new realisms; the monumental style of the old +here, the happy-go-lucky shamblings of the modern there; the page of +Bacon or Temple here, the page of Repton or Marnock there. At every turn +the imagination should get a fresh stimulus to surprise; we should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> be +led on from one fair sight, one attractive picture, to another; not +suddenly, nor without some preparation of heightened expectancy, but as +in a fantasy, and with something of the quick alternations of a dream.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus9" id="illus9"></a> +<img src="images/illus9.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, WITH CLIPPED +YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER BEDS.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Your garden, gentle reader, is perchance not yet made. It were indeed +happiness if, when good things betide you, and the time is ripe for your +enterprise, Art</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">... "Shall say to thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I find you worthy, do this thing for me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<h3>ON THE OTHER SIDE.—A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY.</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"I am tired of civilised Europe, and I want to see a wild country +if I can."—<span class="smcap">W. R. Greg.</span></p> + +<p>"Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley +Hall!"—<span class="smcap">Tennyson.</span></p></blockquote> + + +<p>We have discussed the theory of a garden; we have analysed the motives +which prompt its making, the various treatments of which it is +susceptible; we have made a kind of inventory of its effects, its +enchantments, its spendthrift joys. Now we will hear the other side, and +find out why the morbid, tired man, the modern Hamlet, likes it not, why +the son of culture loathes it as a lack-lustre thing, betokening to him +the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. Having +made our picture now we will turn it round, and note why it is that the +garden, with its full complement of approved ornament, its selected +vegetation, its pretty turns for Nature, its many-sided beauty—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern was there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not less than truth designed"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—shall never wholly satisfy.</p> + +<p>Your garden will serve you in many ways. It will give a sense of +household warmth to your home.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> It will smile, or look grave, or be +dreamily fanciful almost at your bidding. If your bent be that way it +will minister to your imaginative reverie, and almost surfeit you with +its floods of lazy music. If you are hot, or weary, or dispirited, or +touched with <i>ennui</i>, its calm atmosphere will lay the dust and lessen +the fret of your life. Yet—let us not blink the fact—just because +<i>all</i> Nature is not represented here; because the girdle of the garden +walls narrows our view of the world at large, and excludes more of +Nature's physiognomy than it includes; because the garden is, as Sir +Walter truly says, entirely "a child of Art"; the place, be it never so +fair, falls short of man's imaginative craving, and, when put to the +push, fails to supply the stimulus his varying moods require. Art's +sounding-line will never fathom human nature's emotional depths.</p> + +<p>Nay, one need not be that interesting product of civilisation, the +over-civilised artist who writes books, and paints pictures, and murmurs +rhyme that—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Telling a tale not too importunate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To those who in the sleepy region stay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lulled by the singer of an empty day."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is the <i>ennuyé</i> of the clubs whom you are proud to meet in Pall +Mall, not a hair of his hat turned, not a wrinkle marring the sit of his +coat; meeting him thus and there you would not dream of supposing that +this exquisite trophy of the times is a prey to reactionary desires! Yet +deep down in the hidden roots of his being lies a layer of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> unscotched +savagery—an unextinguished, inextinguishable strain of the wild man of +the woods. Scratch him, and beneath his skin is Rousseau-Thoreau. +Scratch him again in the same place, and beneath his second skin see the +brown hide of the aboriginal Briton, the dweller in wattled abodes, who +knew an earlier England than this, that had swamps and forests, roadless +wastes and unbridled winter floods, and strange beasts that no man could +tame. Even he ("the sweetest lamb that ever loved a bear") will prate to +you of the Bohemian delights of an ungardened country, where "the white +man's poetry" has not defiled the landscape, and the Britisher shall be +free to take his pleasure sadly.</p> + +<p>Let us not be too hard, then, on that dislike of beauty, that worship of +the barbaric which we are apt to condemn as distempered vagaries, for +they denote maladies incident to the age, which are neither surprising +nor ignoble. This disdain for Art in a garden, this abhorrence of +symmetry, this preference for the rude and shaggy, what is it but a new +turn given to old instincts, the new Don Quixote sighing for +primævalism! This ruthlessness of the followers of the "immortal Brown" +who would navvy away the residue of the old-fashioned English gardens; +who live to reverse tradition and to scatter the lessons of the past to +the winds; what is it but a new quest of the bygone, the knight-errantry +of the civilized man, when turned inside out!</p> + +<p>And for yet another reason is the garden unable to meet the moods of the +age. In discussing the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> things it may rightly contain, we saw that the +laws of artistic presentment, no less than the avowed purpose for which +a garden is made, require that only such things shall be admitted, or +such aspects be portrayed there, as conduce to gladness and poetic +charm. And, so far as the garden is concerned, the restriction is +necessary and desirable. As with other phases of Art, Sculpture, +Painting, or Romance, the things and aspects portrayed must be +idealistic, not realistic; its effects must be select, not +indiscriminate. The garden is a deliberately contrived thing, a +voluntary piece of handicraft, purpose-made; and for this reason it must +not stereotype imperfections; it may toy with Nature, but must not +wilfully exaggerate what is ordinary; only Nature may exaggerate +herself—not Art. It must not imitate those items in Nature that are +crude, ugly, abnormal, elementary; it may not reproduce the absolutely +repellent; or at most, the artist may only touch them with a light hand, +by way of imaginative hint, but not with intent to produce a finished +picture out of them.</p> + +<p>On this point there is a distinct analogy between the guiding principles +of Art and Religion. Art and Religion both signify effort to comply with +an ideal standard—indeed, the height of the standard is the test of +each—and what makes for innocence or for faultiness in the one, makes +for innocence or faultiness in the other. Innocence is found in each, +but to be without guile in Art or in Religion means that you must be +either flawlessly obedient to a perfect standard, or be beyond the pale +of law<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> through pure ignorance of wrong. Where no law is, there can be +no transgression. Between these two points is no middle-ground, either +in the fields of Art or of Religion.</p> + +<p>To apply this to a garden. Untaught, lawless Nature may present things +indiscriminately, as they are, the casual, the accidental, the savage, +in their native dress, or undress, in all their rugged reality, and not +be ashamed. But the artist-gardener, knowing good and evil, exercising +free-will in his garden-craft, must choose only what he may rightly +have, and employ only what his trained judgment or the unwritten +commandments of good taste will allow.</p> + +<p>There you have the art of a garden. But because of its necessary +exclusiveness, because all Nature is not there, the garden, though of +the best, the most far-reaching in its application of art-resources, +fails to satisfy all man's imaginative cravings.</p> + +<p>Your garden, I said, will serve you many a good turn. Here one may come +to play the truant from petty worries, to find quiet harbourage in the +chopping sea of life's casual ups and downs; but when <i>real</i> trouble +comes, on occasions of spiritual tension, or mental conflict, or heavy +depression, then the perfect beauty of the garden offends; the garden +has no respect for sadness—then it almost mocks and flaunts you; it +smiles the same, though your child die, and then instinct sends you away +from the lap of Art to the bosom of Nature—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Knowing that Nature never did betray<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heart that loved her."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>All of man, then, asks for all of Nature, and is not content with less. +Just as a stringed instrument, even when lying idle, is awake to +sympathetic sound but refuses to vibrate to notes that are not kindred +to its compass, so the garden, with all its wakeful magic, will voice +only such of your moods as it is in touch with; and there are many +chords missing in the cunningly encased music of a garden—many human +notes find no answering pulsation there.</p> + +<p>Let us not blink the fact, then; Art, whether of this sphere or of that, +is not all. If you want beauty ready-made, obvious gladness of colour, +heightened nobleness of form, suggested romance, Nature idealised—all +these things are yours in a garden; and yet the very "dressing" of the +place which heightens its appeal to one side of man's being is the bar +to its acceptance on another side. To have been baptised of Art is to +have received gifts rich and strange, that enable the garden's contents +to climb to ideal heights; and yet not all men care for perfectness; the +most part prefer creatures not too bright or good for human nature's +daily food. So, to tell truth, the wild things of field, forest, and +shore have a gamut of life, a range of appeal wider than the gardens; +the impunities of lawless Nature reach further than man's finished +strokes. Nay, when man has done his best in a garden, some shall even +regret, for sentimental reasons, that he brought Art upon the scene at +all. "Even after the wild landscape, through which youth had strayed at +will, has been laid out into fields and gardens, and enclosed with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +fences and hedges; after the footsteps, which had bounded over the +flower-strewn grass have been circumscribed within firm gravel-walks, +the vision of its former happiness will still at times float before the +mind in its dreams." ("Guesses at Truth.")</p> + +<p>Beauty, Romance, and Nature await an audience with you in the garden; +but it is Beauty after she has been sent to school to learn the tricks +of conscious grace; Beauty that has "the foreign aid of ornament," that +walks with the supple gait of one who has been well drilled; but gone +are the fine careless raptures, gone the bounding step, the blithe +impulses of unschooled freedom and gipsy life out of doors.</p> + +<p>Romance awaits you, holding in her hand a picture of things bright and +jocund, full of tender colour and sweet suggestion; a picture designed +to prove this world to be unruffled Arcadia, a sunlit pageant, a dream +of delectation, a place for solace, a Herrick-land</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and human life a jewelled tale with all the irony left out.</p> + +<p>Nature awaits you, but only as a fair captive, ready to respond to your +behests, to answer to the spring of your imaginings. To man's wooing, "I +love you, love me back," she resigned herself, not perceiving the drift +of homage that was paid, not so much to the beauty that she had, but to +the beauty of a heightened sort that should ensue upon his cultivation, +for the sake of which he sought her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> So now her wildness is subdued. +The yew and the holly from the tangled brake shall feel the ignominy of +the shears. The "common" thorn of the hedge shall be grafted with one of +the twenty-seven rarer sorts; the oak and maple shall be headed down and +converted into scarlet species; the single flowers, obedient to a +beautiful disease, shall blow as doubles, and be propagated by +scientific processes that defy Nature and accomplish centuries of +evolution at a stride. The woodbine from the vernal wood must be nailed +to the carpenter's trellis, the brook may no more brawl, nor violate its +limits, the leaves of the hollybush and the box shall be variegated, the +forest tree and woodland shrub shall have their frayed hedges shorn, and +their wildness pressed out of them in Art's dissembling embrace.</p> + +<p>And as with the green things of the earth, so with the creatures of the +animal world that are admitted into the sanctuary of a garden. Here is +no place for nonconformity of any kind. True, the spruce little squirrel +asks no leave for his dashing raids upon the beech-mast and the sweet +chestnuts that have escaped the range of the gardener's broom; true, the +white and golden pheasant and the speckled goligny may moon about in +their distraught fashion down the green alleys and in and out the +shrubberies; the foreign duck may frisk in the lake; the white swan may +hoist her sail, and "float double, swan and shadow;" the birds may sing +in the trees; the peacock may strut on the lawn, or preen his feathers +upon the terrace walls; the fallow deer may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> browse among the bracken on +the other side of the ha-ha—thus much of the animal creation shall be +allowed here, and not the most fastidious son of Adam will protest a +word. But note the terms of their admission. They are a select company, +gathered with nice judgment from all quarters of the globe, that are +bound over to respectable behaviour, pledged to the beautiful or +picturesque; they are in chains, though the chains be aerial and not +seen.</p> + +<p>It is not that the gardener loves pheasants or peacocks, ducks or swans +or guinea-fowls for themselves, or for their contribution to the music +of the place. Not this, but because these creatures assist the garden's +magic, they support the illusion upon which the whole thing is based; as +they flit about, and cross and recross the scene, and scream, and quack, +and cackle, you get a touch of actuality that adds finish to the +strangeness and piquancy that prevail around; they verify your doubting +vision, and make valid the reality of its ideality; they accord with the +well-swept lawn, the scented air, the flashing radiance of the fountain, +the white statuary backed by dark yews or dim stone alcoves, with the +clipt shrubs, the dreaming trees, the blare of bright colours, in the +shapely beds, the fragrant odours and select beauties of the place. +These living creatures (for they <i>are</i> alive), prowling about the +grounds,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> looking fairly comfortable in artificial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> surroundings from +whence their clipped wings will not allow them to escape, incline you to +believe that this world is a smooth, genteel, beneficent world after +all, and its pastoral character is here so well sustained that no one +would be a bit surprised if Pan with his pipe of reeds, or Corydon with +his white-fleeced flock, should turn the corner at any moment.</p> + +<p>It is only upon man's terms, however, and to suit his scheme of scenic +effects, that these tame things are allowed on the premises. They are +not here because man loves them. Woe to the satin-coated mole that +blindly burrows on the lawn! Woe to the rabbit that sneaks through the +fence, or to the hare that leaps it! Woe to the red fox that litters in +the pinetum, or to the birds that make nests in the shrubberies! Woe to +the otter that takes license to fish in the ponds at the bottom of the +pleasaunce! Woe to the blackbirds that strip the rowan-tree of its +berries just when autumn visitors are expected! Woe to the finches that +nip the buds off the fruit-trees in the hard spring frost, presuming +upon David's plea for sacrilege! Death, instant or prolonged, or dear +life purchased at the price of a torn limb, for the silly things that +dare to stray where the woodland liberties are forbidden to either plant +or animal!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> + +<p>So much for the results of man's manipulation of the universe in the way +of making ornamental grounds! And the sketch here given applies equally +to the new style or to the old, to the garden after Loudon or to the +garden after Bacon; the destiny of things is equally interfered with to +meet the requirements of the one or the other; the styles are equally +artificial, equally remorseless to primal Nature.</p> + +<p>But one may go farther, and ask: What wonder at the outcry of the modern +Nature-lovers against a world so altered from its original self as that +Hawthorne should say of England in general that here "the wildest things +are more than half tame? The trees, for instance, whether in hedgerow, +park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are +never ragged; there is a certain decorous restraint in the freest +outspread of their branches!" Nay, so far does this mistaken man carry +his diseased appetite for English soil, marred as it is, that he shall +write: "To us Americans there is a kind of sanctity even in an English +turnip-field, when we think how long that small square of ground has +been known and recognised as a possession, transmitted from father to +son, trodden often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery +by old acquaintance with civilised eyes" ("Our Old Home," p. 75).</p> + +<p>What wonder, I say, that a land that is so hopelessly gardened as +this—a land so sentimentalised and humanised that its very clods, to +the American,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> are "poesy all ramm'd with life"—shall grate the nerves +of the Hamlets of to-day, who live too much in the sun, whom man +delights not, nor woman neither!</p> + +<p>What a land to live in! when its best landscape painters—men like +Gainsborough or Constable—are so carried away by the influence of +agriculture upon landscape, so lost to the superiority of wild solitude, +that they will plainly tell you that they like the fields the farmers +work in, and the work they do in them; preferring Nature that was +modified by man, painting a well-cultivated country with villages and +mills and church-steeples seen over hedges and between trees!<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p> + +<p>What a land to live in! when even Nature's wild children of field and +forest hug their chains—preserve their old ways and habits up to the +very frontier-line of civilisation. For here is Jefferies (who ought to +know) writing thus: "Modern progress, except where it has exterminated +them, has scarcely touched the habits of bird or animal; so almost up to +the very houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns to her +old haunts. If we go a few hours' journey only, and then step just +beyond the highway, where the steam ploughing-engine has left the mark +of its wide wheels on the dust, and glance into the hedgerow, the copse, +or stream, there are Nature's children as unrestrained in their wild, +free life as they were in the veritable backwoods of primitive +England."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> + +<p>What wonder that a land where Nature has thus succumbed wholesale to +culture, should exasperate the man who has earned a right to be morbid, +or that he should cry aloud in his despair, "I am tired of civilised +Europe, and I want to see a <i>wild</i> country if I can." Too many are our +spots renowned for beauty, our smiling champaigns of flower and fruit. +For "Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but, alas, if times be +not fair!" Hence the comfort of oppressive surroundings over-sadly +tinged, to men who suffer from the mockery of a place that is too +smiling! Hence the glory of a waste like Egdon to Mr Hardy! ("The Return +of the Native," pp. 4, 5). For Egdon Heath, "Haggard Egdon appealed to a +subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion than +that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair. +Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty +is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a +gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and +closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to +our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually +arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain +will be all of Nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of +the more thinking of mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, +spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of +South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> +unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand-dunes of Scheveningen."</p> + +<p>I admit that it is strange that time should hold in reserve such +revenges as this ascetic writing denotes—strange that man should find +beauty irksome, and that he should feel blasted with the very ecstasy +himself has built up in a garden! strange this sudden recoil of the +smooth son of culture from the extreme of Art, to the extreme of Nature! +Stranger still that the "Yes" and "No" of the <i>Ideal</i> Hyde and the +<i>Real</i> Jekyll should consist in the same bosom, and that a man shall be, +as it were, a prey to contrary maladies at one and the same time! Yet we +have found this in Bacon—prince of fine gardeners, who with all his +seeming content with the heroic pleasaunce that he has made, shall still +betray a sneaking fondness for the maiden charms of Bohemia outside. +Earthly Paradise is fine and fit, but there must needs be "mounts of +some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high to +look abroad in the fields"—there must be "a window open, to fly out at, +a secret way to retire by." Nay, after all, what are to him the charms +that inspire his rhapsody of words—the things that princes add for +state and magnificence! They are Delilah's charms, and "but nothing to +the true pleasure of a garden!"</p> + +<p>"Our gardens in Paris," says Joubert, "smell musty; I do not like these +ever-green trees. There is something of blackness in their greenery, of +coldness in their shade. Besides, since they neither lose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> anything, nor +have anything to fear, they seem to me unfeeling, and hence have little +interest for me.... Those irregular gardens, which we call English +gardens, require a labyrinth for a dwelling."</p> + +<p>"I hate those trees that never lose their foliage" (says Landor); "they +seem to have no sympathy with Nature; winter and summer are alike to +them." Says Thomson,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">... "For loveliness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But it is when unadorned adorn'd the most."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or Cowley's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My garden painted o'er<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Horace might envy in his Sabine field."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or Addison: "I have often looked upon it as a piece of happiness that I +have never fallen into any of these fantastical tastes, nor esteemed +anything the more for its being uncommon and hard to be met with. For +this reason I look upon the whole country in spring-time as a spacious +garden, and make as many visits to a spot of daisies, or a bank of +violets, as a florist does to his borders or parterres. There is not a +bush in blossom within a mile of me which I am not acquainted with, nor +scarce a daffodil or cowslip that withers away in my neighbourhood +without my missing it." Or Rousseau: "I can imagine, said I to them, a +rich man from Paris or London, who should be master of this house, +bringing with him an expensive architect to spoil Nature. With what +disdain would he enter this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> simple and mean place! With what contempt +would he have all these tatters uprooted! What fine avenues he would +open out! What beautiful alleys he would have pierced! What fine +goose-feet, what fine trees like parasols and fans! What finely fretted +trellises! What beautifully-drawn yew hedges, finely squared and +rounded! What fine bowling-greens of fine English turf, rounded, +squared, sloped, ovaled; what fine yews carved into dragons, pagodas, +marmosets, every kind of monster! With what fine bronze vases, what fine +stone-founts he would adorn his garden! When all that is carried out, +said M. De Wolmar, he will have made a very fine place, which one will +scarcely enter, and will always be anxious to leave to seek the +country."</p> + +<p>Or Gautier, upon Nature's wild growths: "You will find in her domain a +thousand exquisitely pretty little corners into which man seldom or +never penetrates. There, from every constraint, she gives herself up to +that delightful extravagance of dishevelled plants, of glowing flowers +and wild vegetation—everything that germinates, flowers, and casts its +seeds, instinct with an eager vitality, to the wind, whose mission it is +to disperse them broadcast with an unsparing hand.... And over the +rain-washed gate, bare of paint, and having no trace of that green +colour beloved by Rousseau, we should have written this inscription in +black letters, stonelike in shape, and threatening in aspect:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'GARDENERS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ENTERING HERE.'<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>"Such a whim—very difficult for one to realise who is so deeply +incrusted with civilisation, where the least originality is taxed as +folly—is continually indulged in by Nature, who laughs at the judgment +of fools."</p> + +<p>Or Thoreau—hero of the Walden shanty, with his open-air gospel—all +Nature for the asking—to whom a garden is but Nature debauched, and all +Art a sin: "There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning towards +wildness.... We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn's +'Sylva,' 'Acetarium,' and 'Kalendarium Hortense,' but they imply a +relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants +the vigour and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.... It is true there +are the innocent pleasures of country-life, and it is sometimes pleasant +to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their +season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter +retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its +<i>parterres</i> elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by +the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as +berries. We should not be always soothing and training Nature.... The +Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the +greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her +midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar +and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble and +cleanly in the former's distance....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> There are other savager, and more +primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white +man's poetry."</p> + +<p>To sum up the whole matter, this unmitigated hostility of the cultured +man (with Jacob's smooth hands and Esau's wild blood) to the amenities +of civilised life, brings us back to the point from whence we started at +the commencement of this chapter. While men are what they are, Art is +not all. Man has Viking passions as well as Eden instincts. Man is of +mixed blood, whose sympathies are not so much divided as double. And all +of man asks for all of Nature, and is not content with less. To the +over-civilised man who is under a cloud, the old contentment with +orthodox beauty must give place to the subtler, scarcer instinct, to +"the more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort +of beauty called charming and fair." Fair effects are only for fair +times. The garden represents to such an one a too careful abstract of +Nature's traits and features that had better not have been epitomised. +The place is to him a kind of fraud—a forgery, so to speak, of Nature's +autograph. It is only the result of man's turning spy or detective upon +the beauties of the outer world. Its perfection is too monotonous; its +grace is too subtle; its geography too bounded; its interest too full of +intention—too much sharpened to a point; its growth is too uniformly +temperate; its imagery too exacting of notice. These prim and trim +things remind him of captive princes of the wood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> brightly attired only +that they may give romantic interest to the garden—these tame birds +with clipped wings, of distraught aspect and dreamy tread—these docile +animals with their limp legs and vacant stare, may contribute to the +scenic pomp of the place, but it is at the expense of their native +instincts and the joyous <i>abandon</i> of woodland life. If this be the +outcome of your boasted editing of Nature, give us dead Nature +untranslated. If this be what comes of your idealisation of the raw +materials of Nature—of the transference of your own emotions to the +simple, unsophisticated things of the common earth, let us rather have +Nature's unspoilt self—"God's Art," as Plato calls Nature—where</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"Visions, as prophetic eyes avow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hang on each leaf, and cling to each bough."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"But stay, here come the gardeners!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">(<i>Enter a gardener and two servants!</i>)—<i>King Richard II.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<h3>IN PRAISE OF BOTH.</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In small proportions we just beauties see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in short measures life may perfect be."—<span class="smcap">Ben Jonson.</span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The Common all men have."—<span class="smcap">George Herbert.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>What shall we say, then, to the two conflicting views of garden-craft +referred to in my last chapter, wherein I take the modern position, +namely, that the love of Art in a garden, and the love of wild things in +Nature's large estate, cannot co-exist in the same breast? Is the +position true or false?</p> + +<p>To see the matter in its full bearings I must fetch back a little, and +recall what was said in a former chapter (p. 85) upon the differing +attitudes towards Nature taken by the earlier and later schools of +gardening. There is, I said, no trace in the writings, or in the +gardening, of the earlier traditional school, of that mawkish sentiment +about Nature, that condescending tenderness for her primal shapes, that +has nursed the scruples, and embarrassed the efforts of the +"landscape-gardener" from Kent's and Brown's days to now.</p> + +<p>The older gardener had no half-and-half methods; he made no pretence of +Nature-worship, nursed no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> scruples that could hinder the expression of +his own mind about Nature, or check him from fathoming all her +possibilities. Yet with all his seeming unscrupulousness the old +gardener does not close his eyes or his heart to Nature at large, but +whether in the garden sanctuary or out of it, he maintains equally +tender relations towards her.</p> + +<p>But the scruples of the earlier phase of the landscape school, about +tampering with Nature by way of attaining Art effects, are as water unto +wine compared with what is taught by men of the same school now-a-days. +We have now to reckon with an altogether deeper stratum of antipathy to +garden-craft than was reached by the followers of Brown. We have not now +to haggle with the quidnuncs over the less or more of Art permissible in +a garden, but to fight out the question whether civilisation shall have +any garden at all. Away with this "white man's poetry!" The wild +Indian's "intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the +greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her +midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar +and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble and +cleanly in the former's distance." "Alas!" says Newman, "what are we +doing all through life, both as a necessity and a duty, but unlearning +the world's poetry, and attaining to its prose?"</p> + +<p>One does not fear, however, that the English people will part lightly +with their land's old poetry, however seductive the emotion which we are +told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> "prefers the oppression of surroundings over-sadly tinged, and +solitudes that have a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities to +the old-fashioned sort of beauty called charming and fair."</p> + +<p>The lesson we have to learn is the falsehood of extremes. The point we +have to master is, that in the prodigality of "God's Plenty" many sorts +of beauty are ours, and nothing shall be scorned. God's creation has a +broad gamut, a vast range, to meet our many moods. "There are, it may +be, so many kinds of music in the world, and none of them is without +signification."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O world, as God has made it! All is beauty."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is nothing contradictory in the variety and multiformity of +Nature, whether loose and at large in Nature's unmapped geography, or +garnered and assorted and heightened by man's artistry in the small +proportions of a perfect garden. Man, we said, is of mixed blood, whose +sympathies are not so much divided as double, and each sympathy shall +have free play. My inborn Eden instincts draw me to the bloom and wonder +of the world; my Viking blood drives me to the snap and enthusiasm of +anarchic forms, the colossal images, the swarthy monotony, the sombre +aspects of Nature in the wild. "Yet all is beauty."</p> + +<p>Thus much by way of preamble. And now, after repeating that the gardener +of the old formality, however sternly he discipline wild Nature for the +purposes of beauty, is none the less capable of loving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> and of holding +friendly commerce with the things that grew outside his garden hedge, +let me bring upon my page a modern of moderns, who, by the wide range of +his sympathies, recalls the giants of a healthier day, and redeems a +generation of lopsided folk abnormally developed in one direction.</p> + +<p>And the poet Wordsworth, self-drawn in his own works, or depicted by his +friends, is one of the old stock of sane, sound-hearted Englishmen, who +can be equally susceptible to the <i>inward</i> beauties of man's created +brain-world, and the <i>outward</i> beauties of unkempt Nature. So the +combination we plead for is not impossible! The two tastes are not +irreconcilable! Blessed be both!</p> + +<p>We may trust Wordsworth implicitly as an authority upon Nature. No one +questions his knowledge of wild woodland lore. There is no one of +ancient or of modern times who in his outward mien, his words, his +habits, carries more indisputable proof of the prophet's ordination than +the man who spent a long noviciate in his native mountain solitudes. +There is no one so fully entitled, or so well able to speak of and for +her, as he who knows her language to the faintest whisper, who spent his +days at her feet, who pored over her lineaments under every change of +expression, who in his writings drew upon the secret honey of the beauty +and harmony of the world, telling, to use his own swinging phrases, of +"the joy and happiness of loving creatures, of men and children, of +birds and beasts, of hills and streams, and trees and flowers; with the +changes of night and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> day, evening and morning, summer and winter; and +all their unwearied actions and energies."</p> + +<p>Of all Nature's consecrated children, he is the prince of the +apostolate; he is, so to speak, the beloved disciple of them all, whose +exalted personal love admits him to the right to lean upon her breast, +to hear her heart-beats, to catch knowledge there that had been kept +secret since the world began. None so familiar with pastoral life in its +varied time-fulness, sweet or stern, glad or grim, pathetic or sublime, +as he who carries in his mind the echoes of the passion of the storm, +the moan of the passing wind with its beat upon the bald mountain-crag, +the sighing of the dry sedge, the lunge of mighty waters, the tones of +waterfalls, the inland sounds of caves and trees, the plaintive spirit +of the solitude. There are none who have pondered so deeply over "the +blended holiness of earth and sky," the gesture of the wind and cloud, +the silence of the hills; none so free to fraternise with things bold or +obscure, great or small, as he who told alike of the love and infinite +longings of Margaret, of the fresh joy of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The blooming girl whose hair was wet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With points of morning dew,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>of the lonely star, the solitary raven, the pliant hare-bell, swinging +in the breeze, the meadows and the lower ground, and all the sweetness +of a common dawn.</p> + +<p>Thus did Wordsworth enter into the soul of things and sing of them</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In a music sweeter than their own."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Nay, says Arnold, "It might seem that Nature not only gave him the +matter of his poem, but wrote his poem for him" ("Essays in Criticism," +p. 155).</p> + +<p>So much for Wordsworth upon Nature out of doors; now let us hear him +upon Art in a garden, of which he was fully entitled to speak, and we +shall see that the man is no less the poet of idealism upon his own +ground, than the poet of actuality in the woodland world.</p> + +<p>Writing to his friend Sir Geo. Beaumont,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> with all the outspokenness +of friendship and the simplicity of a candid mind, he thus delivers +himself upon the Art of Gardening: "Laying out grounds, as it is called, +may be considered as a Liberal Art, in some sort like poetry and +painting, and its object is, or ought to be, to move the affections +under the control of good sense; that is, those of the best and wisest; +but, <i>speaking with more precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the +affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauties of +Nature, who have the most valuable feelings, that is, the most +permanent, the most independent, the most ennobling with Nature and +human life</i>."</p> + +<p>Hearken to Nature's own high priest, turned laureate of the garden! How +can this thing be? Here is the man whose days had been spent at Nature's +feet, whose life's business seemed to be this only, that he should extol +her, interpret her, sing of her, lift her as high in man's esteem as +fine utterance can affect the human soul. Yet when he has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> done all, +said all that inspired imagination can say in her praise, in what seems +an outburst of disloyalty to his old mistress, he deliberately takes the +crown himself had woven from off the head of Nature and places it on the +brows of Art in a garden!</p> + +<p>Not Bacon himself could write with more discernment or with more fervour +of garden-craft than this, and the pronouncement gains further +significance as being the deliberately expressed opinion of a great +poet, and him the leader of the modern School of Naturalists. And that +these two men, separated not merely by two centuries of time, but by the +revolutionary influences which coloured them, should find common ground +and shake hands in a garden, is strange indeed! Both men loved Nature. +Bacon, as Dean Church remarks,<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> had a "keen delight in Nature, in the +beauty and scents of flowers, in the charm of open-air life;" but his +regard for Nature's beauties was not so ardent, his knowledge of her +works and ways not so intimate or so scientifically verified, his senses +not so sympathetically allured as Wordsworth's; he had not the same +prophet's vision that could see into the life of things, and find +thoughts there "that do often lie too deep for tears." That special +sense Wordsworth himself fathered.</p> + +<p>Points like these add weight to Wordsworth's testimony of the high rank +of gardening, and we do well to note that the wreath that the modern man +brings for Art in a garden is not only greener and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> fresher than the +garland of the other, but it was gathered on loftier heights; it means +more, it implies a more emphatic homage.</p> + +<p>And Wordsworth had not that superficial knowledge of gardening which no +gentleman's head should be without. He knew it as a craftsman knows the +niceties of his craft. "More than one seat in the lake-country," says Mr +Myres ("Wordsworth," p. 68), "among them one home of pre-eminent beauty, +have owed to Wordsworth no small part of their ordered charm."</p> + +<p>Of Wordsworth's own garden, one writes: "I know that thirty years ago +that which struck me most at Rydal Mount, and which appeared to me its +greatest charm, was the union of the garden and the wilderness. You +passed almost imperceptibly from the trim parterre to the noble wood, +and from the narrow, green vista to that wide sweep of lake and mountain +which made up one of the finest landscapes in England. Nor could you +doubt that this unusual combination was largely the result of the poet's +own care and arrangement. <i>He had the faculty for such work.</i>"</p> + +<p>Here one may well leave the matter without further labouring, content to +have proved by the example of a four-square, sane genius, that those +instincts of ours which seem to pull contrary ways—Art-wards or +Nature-wards—and to drive our lopsided selves to the falsehood of +extremes, are, after all, not incompatible. The field, the waste, the +moor, the mountain, the trim garden with its parterres and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> terraces, +are one Nature. These things breathe one breath, they sing one music, +they share one heart between them; the difference between the dressed +and the undressed is only superficial. The art of gardening is not +intended to supersede Nature, but only "to assist Nature in moving the +affections of those who have the deepest perceptions of the beauties of +Nature, who have the most valuable feelings, ... the most ennobling with +Nature and human life."</p> + +<p>One need not, if Wordsworth's example prove anything, be less the child +of the present (but rather the more) because one can both appreciate the +realities of rude Nature, and that deliberately-contrived, purpose-made, +piece of human handicraft, a well-equipped garden. One need not be less +susceptible to the black forebodings of this contention-tost, modern +world, nor need one's ear be less alert to Nature's correspondence to</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The still, sad music of humanity,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>because one experiences, with old Mountaine, "a jucunditie of minde" in +a fair garden. There is an unerring rightness both in rude Nature and in +garden grace, in the chartered liberty of the one, and the unchartered +freedom of unadjusted things in the other. Blessed be both!</p> + +<p>It is worth something to have mastered truth, which, however simple and +elementary it seem, is really vital to the proper understanding of the +relation of Art to Nature. It helps one to appraise at their proper +value the denunciations of the disciples of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> Kent and Brown against Art +in a garden, and to see, on the other hand, why Bacon and the Early +School of gardeners loved Nature in the wild state no less than in a +garden. It dispels any lingering hesitation we may have as to the amount +of Art a garden may receive in defiance of Dryasdust "codes of taste." +It explains what your artist-gardener friend meant when he said that he +had as much sympathy with, and felt as much interest in, the moving +drama of Nature going on on this as on that side of his garden-hedge, +and how he could pass from the rough theme outside to the ordered music +inside, from the uncertain windings in the coppice-glade to the pleached +alley of the garden, without sense of disparagement to the one or the +other. It explains why it is that nothing in Nature goes unobserved of +him; how you shall call to see him and hunt the garden over, and at last +find him idling along the bridle-path in the plantation, his fist full +of flowers, his mind set on Nature's affairs, his ear in such unison +with local sounds that he shall tell you the dominant tone of the wind +in the tree-tops. Or he is in the covert's tangle enjoying</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Simple Nature's breathing life,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>surprising the thorn veiled in blossom, revelling in the wealth of +boundless life there, in the variety of plant-form, the palpitating +lights, the melody of nesting birds, the common joy and sweet assurance +of things.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Society is all but rude<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To this delicious solitude."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Or it may be he is on the breezy waste, lying full length among the +heather, watching the rabbits' gambols, or the floating thistle-down +with its hint of unseen life in the air, or sauntering by the stream in +the lower meadows, learning afresh the glory of weed life in the lush +magnificence of the great docks, the red sorrel, the willow-herb, the +purple thistles, and the gay battalions of fox-gloves thrown out in +skirmishing order, that swarm on each eminence and hedgerow. Or you may +meet him hastening home for the evening view from the orchard-terrace, +to see the solemn close of day, and the last gleam of sunshine fading +over the hill.</p> + +<p>It is worth something, I say, to win clear hold of the fact that Nature +in a garden and Nature in the wild are at unity; that they have each +their place in the economy of human life, and that each should have its +share in man's affections. The true gardener is in touch with both. He +knows where this excels or falls behind the other, and because he knows +the range of each, he fears no comparison between them. He can be +eloquent upon the charms of a garden, its stimulus for the tired eye and +mind, the harmony that resides in the proportions of its lines and +masses, the gladness of its colour, the delight of its frankly +decorative arrangement, the sense of rest that comes of its symmetry and +repeated patterns. He will tell you that for halcyon days, when life's +wheels run smooth, and the sun shines, even for life's average days, +there is nothing so cheery, nothing so blithely companionable, nothing +that can give such a sense of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> household warmth to your home as a +pleasant garden. And yet none will be more ready to warn you of the +limits of a garden's charms, of its sheer impotence to yield +satisfaction at either end of the scale of human joy or sorrow.</p> + +<p>And so it is. Let but the mist of melancholy descend upon you, let but +the pessimistic distress to which we moderns are all prone penetrate +your mind, let you be the prey of undermining sorrow, or lie under the +shadow of bereavement, and it is not to the garden that you will go for +Nature's comfort. The chalices of its flowers store not the dew that +shall cool your brow. Nay, at times like these the garden poses as a +kind of lovely foe, to mock you with its polite reticence, its look of +unwavering complacency, its gentle ecstasy. Then the ear refuses the +soft and intimate garden-melodies, and asks instead for the rough +unrehearsed music of Nature in the wild, the jar and jangle of winds and +tides, the challenge of discords,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The conflict and the sounds that live in darkness,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the wild rhetoric of the night upon some "haggard Egdon," or along the +steep wild cliffs when the storm is up, and the deeps are troubled, and +the earth throbs and throbs again with the violence of the waves that +break and bellow in the caves beneath your feet; and then it perhaps +shall cross your mind to set this brief moment of your despair against +the unavailing passion of tides that for ten thousand years and more +have hurled themselves against this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> heedless shore. Or you shall find +some sequestered corner of the land that keeps its scars of old-world +turmoil, the symptoms of the hustle of primeval days, the shock of grim +shapes, long ago put to sleep beneath a coverlet of sweet-scented turf; +and the unspoiled grandeur of the scene will prick and arouse your +dulled senses, while its peaceful face will assure you that, as it was +with the troubled masonry of the hills in the morning of the world, even +so shall it be with you—time shall tranquillise and at length cancel +all your woes. Or again,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Should life be dull, and spirits low<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Twill soothe us in our sorrow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That earth has something yet to show,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The bonny holms of Yarrow."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Better tonic, one thinks, for the over-wrought brain than the soft +glamour of the well-swept lawn, the clipt shrubs, the focussed beauty of +dotted specimens, the ordered disorder of wriggling paths and sprawling +flower-beds of strange device, the ransacked wardrobe of the gardener's +stock of gay bedding-plants, or other of the permitted charms of a +modern garden; better than these is the stir and enthusiasm of Nature's +broad estate, the boulder-tossed moor, where the hare runs races in her +mirth, and the lark has a special song for your ear; or the high +transport of hours of indolence spent basking in the bed of purple +heather, your nostrils filled with gladsome air and the scent of thyme, +your eyes following the course of the milk-white clouds that ride with +folded sails in the blue heavens overhead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> and cast flying shadows on +the uplands, where nothing breaks the silence of the hills but the song +in the air, the tinkle of the sheep-bells, and the murmur of the +moorland bee.</p> + +<p>And the upshot of the matter is this. The master-things for the +enjoyment of life are: health, a balanced mind that will not churlishly +refuse "God's plenty," an eye quick to discern the marvel of beautiful +things, a heart in sympathy with man and beast. Possessing these we may +defy Fortune—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You cannot shut the windows of the sky<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You cannot bar my constant feet to trace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I their toys to the great children leave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is much to be wished that these Lectures and Addresses +should be collected and published.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Philosophie de l'art en Italie</i> (p. 162).—<span class="smcap">H. Taine.</span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In Thornhill Church.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Qu'est-ce l'expérience? Une pauvre petite cabane construite +avec les débris de ces palais d'or et de marbre appelés nos +illusions.—<i>Joseph Roux.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The words "'Tis fit one flesh one house should have," &c., +form part of the epitaph of Richard Bartholomew and his wife in the +parish church of Burford. +</p> +It stands thus:— +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lo Hudled up, Together lye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gray Age, Greene Youth, White Infancy.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If Death doth Nature's law dispence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And reconciles all difference,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis fit One Flesh One House should have,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One Tombe, One Epitaph, One Grave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they that lived and loved either<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should dye and Lye and sleep together.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Goe Reader, whether goe or stay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou must not hence be long away.<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Think of "a paradise not like this of ours with so much +pains and curiosity made with hands"—says Evelyn, in the middle of a +rhapsody on flowers—"eternal in the heavens, where all the trees are +trees of life, the flowers all amaranths; all the plants perennial, ever +verdant, ever pregnant, and where those who desire knowledge may taste +freely of the fruit of that tree which cost the first gardener and +posterity so dear." (Sylva, "Of Forest-trees," p. 148.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> "My Epitaph." +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Below lies one whose name was traced in sand—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He died, not knowing what it was to live;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And maiden thought electrified his soul:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a proud sorrow! There is life with God,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In other Kingdom of a sweeter air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Eden every flower is blown. Amen."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p> +<span class="smcap">David Gray</span> ("A Poet's Sketch-book," R. Buchanan, p. 81.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> "This strange combination of autumn and spring tints is a +very usual sight in Japan.... It is worth noting that in Japan a tree is +considered chiefly for its form and tint, not for use.... I heard the +cherry-trees were now budding, so I hurried up to take advantage of +them, and found them more beautiful than I had ever imagined. There are +at least fifty varieties, from delicately tinted white and pink to the +richest rose, almost crimson blossom."—Alfred East's "Trip to Japan," +<i>Universal Review</i>, March, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> "If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses" (says +William Harrison in Holinshed's "Chronicles") "how wonderful is their +beauty increased, not only with flowers, which Columella calleth +<i>Terrena Sydera</i>, saying 'Pingit et in varias terrestria, sydera +flores,' and variety of curious and costly workmanship, but also with +rare and medicinable herbs.... How Art also helpeth Nature in the daily +colouring, doubling and enlarging the proportions of our flowers it is +incredible to report, for so curious and cunning are our gardeners now +in these days that they presume to do, in a manner, what they list with +Nature, and moderate her course in things as if they were her superiors. +It is a world also to see how many strange herbs, plants, and annual +fruits are daily brought unto us from the Indies, Americans, Taprobane, +Canary Isles, and all parts of the world, the which, albeit that his +respect of the constitutions of our bodies, they do not grow for us +(because God hath bestowed sufficient commodities upon every country for +her own necessity) yet for delectation's sake unto the eye, and their +odoriferous savours unto the nose, they are to be cherished, and God +also glorified in them, because they are His good gifts, and created to +do man help and service. There is not almost one nobleman, gentleman, or +merchant that hath not great store of these flowers, which now also +begin to wax so well acquainted with our evils that we may almost +account of them as parcel of our own commodities."—(From "Elizabethan +England," pp. 26-7.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Here is Emerson writing to Carlyle of his "new +plaything"—a piece of woodland of forty acres on the border of Walden +Pond. "In these May mornings, when maples, poplars, walnut, and pine are +in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon and cut with my +hatchet an Indian path thro' the thicket, all along the bold shore, and +open the finest pictures." (John Morley's Essays, "Emerson," p. 304.) +But, as Mr Morley points out, he finds the work too fascinating, eating +up days and weeks; "nay, a brave scholar should shun it like gambling, +and take refuge in cities and hotels from these pernicious +enchantments."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "I like your Essays," said Henry the Third to Montaigne. +"Then, sire, you will like me. I am my Essays."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Time does much for a garden. There is a story of an +American plutocrat's visit to Oxford. On his tour of the Colleges +nothing struck him so much as the velvety turf of some of the +quadrangles. He asked for the gardener, and made minute enquiries as to +the method of laying down and maintaining the grass. "That's all, is +it?" he exclaimed, when the process had been carefully described. "Yes, +sir," replied the gardener with a twinkle in his eye, "That's all, but +we generally leave it three or four centuries to settle down!"</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "There is no garden well contrived, but that which hath an +Enoch's walk in it."—<span class="smcap">Sir W. Waller.</span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> "Field and Hedgerow," p. 27.</p></div> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> See "The Praise of Gardens."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> "Archæological Journal," vol. v. p. 295.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> "Early Drawings and Illuminations." Birch and Jenner. +(Bagster, 1879, p. 134.) +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gardens.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">19 D. i. ff. I. etc.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">20 A. xvii. f. 7b.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">20 B. ii. f. 57.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">14 803 f. 63.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">18 851 f. 182.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">18 852 f. 3. b.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">26667 f. i.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Harl. 4425. f. 12. b.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Kings 7. f. 57.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">6 E. ix. f. 15. b.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">14 E. vi. f. 146.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">15 E. iii. f. 122.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">15 E. vi. f. 146.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">16 G. v. f. 5.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">17 F. i. f. 149 <i>b</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">19 A. vi. f. 2. 109.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">19 C. vii. f. i.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">20 C. v. ff. 7. <i>etc.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Eg. 2022. f. 36. <i>b</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Harl. 4425. f. 160 <i>b</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">19720.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">19 A. vi. f. 109."<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> "The Garden."—<span class="smcap">Walther Howe.</span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> "English scenery of that special type which we call +homely, and of which we are proud as only to be found in England, is, +indeed, the production of many centuries of that conservatism which has +spared the picturesque timber, and of that affectionate regard for the +future which has made men delight to spend their money in imprinting on +the face of Nature their own taste in trees and shrubs." ("Vert and +Venery," by <span class="smcap">Viscount Lymington</span>; <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, January, 1891.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Miss Edwards (and I quote from her edition of Young's +"Travels in France," p. 101) has a note to the effect that the Mr Brown +here referred to is "Robert Brown, of Markle, contributor to the +<i>Edinburgh Magazine</i>, 1757-1831." Yet, surely this is none other than Mr +"Capability" Brown, discoverer of English scenery, reputed father of the +English garden!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Lowell's "Ode to Fielding."</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> "Mr <i>Evelyn</i> has a pleasant villa at <i>Deptford</i>," writes +Gibson, "a fine garden for walks and hedges (especially his holly one +which he writes of in his 'Sylva') ... In his garden he has four large +round philareas, smooth-clipped, raised on a single stalk from the +ground, a fashion now much used. <i>Part of his garden is very woody and +shady for walking</i>; but his garden not being walled, has little of the +best fruits."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> This remark of Temple's as to the small importance the +flower-beds had in the mind of the gardener of his day, is significant: +as indicating the different methods employed by the ancient and modern +gardener. It was not that he was not "pleased with the care" of flowers, +but that these were not his chiefest care; his prime idea was to get +broad, massive, well-defined effects in his garden generally. Hence the +monumental style of the old-fashioned garden, the carefully-disposed +ground, the formality, the well-considered poise and counter-poise, the +varying levels and well-defined parts. And only inwoven, as it were, +into the argument of the piece, are its pretty parts, used much as the +jewellery of a fair woman. I should be sorry to be so unjust to the +modern landscape gardener as to accuse him of caring over-much for +flowers, but of his garden-device generally one may fairly say it has no +monumental style, no ordered shape other than its carefully-schemed +<i>disorder</i>. It is not a masculine affair, but effeminate and niggling; a +little park-scenery, curved shrubberies, wriggling paths, emphasised +specimen plants, and flower-beds of more or less inane shape tumbled +down on the skirts of the lawn or drive, that do more harm than good to +the effect of the place, seen near or at a distance. How true it is that +to believe in Art one must be an artist!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Nonsuch had its wilderness of ten acres.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Nineteenth Century Magazine</i>, July, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> With regard to this remark, we have to note a certain +amount of French influence throughout the reigns of the Jameses and +Charleses. Here is Beaumont, "gardener to James II.;" and we hear also +of André Mollet, gardener to James I.; also that Charles II. borrowed Le +Nôtre to lay out the gardens of Greenwich and St James' Park.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The gardens at Wilton are exceedingly beautiful, and +contain noble trees, among which are a group of fine cedars and an ilex +beneath which Sir Philip Sidney is supposed to have reclined when he +wrote his "Arcadia" here. The Italian garden is one of the most +beautiful in England.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Of Berkeley, Evelyn writes: "For the rest the forecourt is +noble, so are the stables; and, above all, the gardens, which are +incomparable by reason of the inequality of the ground, and a pretty +<i>piscina</i>. The holly-hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Houghton was built by Sir R. Walpole, between 1722 and +1738. The garden was laid out in the stiff, formal manner by Eyre, "an +imitator of Bridgman," and contained 23 acres. The park contains some +fine old beeches. More than 1000 cedars were blown down here in February +1860.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Thomas Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening," was +published in 1770, fifteen years before Walpole's "Essay on Modern +Gardening." Gilpin's book "On Picturesque Beauty," though published in +part in 1782, belongs really to the second phase of the Landscape +School. Shenstone's "Unconnected Thoughts on the Garden" was published +in 1764, and is written pretty much from the standpoint of Kent. "An +Essay on Design in Gardening," by G. Mason, was published in 1795.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Loudon calls this School "Repton's," the "<i>Gardenesque</i>" +School, its characteristic feature being "the display of the beauty of +trees and other plants <i>individually</i>."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> A candid friend thus writes to Repton: "You may have +perceived that I am rather <i>too much</i> inclined to the Price and Knight +<i>party</i>, and yet I own to you that I have been often so much disgusted +by the affected and technical language of connoisseurship, that I have +been sick of pictures for a month, and almost of Nature, when the same +jargon was applied to her." (Repton, p. 232.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> "The Praise of Gardens," pp. 185-6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 296.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> This is a little unpatriotic of Loudon to imply that the +<i>English</i> had no garden-style till the 18th century, but one can stand a +great deal from Loudon.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> For which reason, I suppose, Mr Robinson, in his model +"Non-geometrical Gardens" (p. 5), humbly skirts his ground with a path +which as nearly represents a tortured horse-shoe as Nature would permit; +and his trees he puts in a happy-go-lucky way, and allows them to nearly +obliterate his path at their own sweet will! No wonder he does not fear +Nature's revenge, where is so little Art to destroy!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> These notes make no pretence either at originality or +completeness. They represent gleanings from various sources, combined +with personal observations on garden-craft from the architect's point of +view.—J. D. S.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> "All rational improvement of grounds is necessarily +founded on a due attention to the <span class="smcap">character</span> and <span class="smcap">situation</span> of the place +to be improved; the <i>former</i> teaches what is advisable, the <i>latter</i> +what is possible to be done. The <i>situation</i> of a place always depends +on Nature, which can only be assisted, but cannot be entirely changed, +or greatly controlled by <span class="smcap">Art</span>; but the <i>character</i> of a place is wholly +dependent on <span class="smcap">Art</span>; thus the house, the buildings, the gardens, the roads, +the bridges, and every circumstance which marks the habitation of man +must be artificial; and although in the works of art we may imitate the +forms and graces of Nature, yet, to make them truly natural, always +leads to absurdity" (Repton, p. 341).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Not so thinks the author of "The English Flower +Garden":—"Imagine the effect of a well-built and fine old house, seen +from the extremity of a wide lawn, with plenty of trees and shrubs on +its outer parts, and nothing to impede the view of the house or its +windows but a refreshing carpet of grass. If owners of parks were to +consider this point fully, and, as they travel about, watch the effect +of such lawns as remain to us, and compare them with what has been done +by certain landscape-gardeners, there would shortly be, at many a +country-seat, a rapid carting away of the terrace and all its adjuncts." +Marry, this is sweeping! But Repton has some equally strong words +condemning the very plan our Author recommends: "In the execution of my +profession I have often experienced great difficulty and opposition in +attempting to correct the false and mistaken taste for placing a large +house in a naked grass field, without any apparent line of separation +between the ground exposed to cattle and the ground annexed to the +house, which I consider as peculiarly under the management of art. +</p><p> +"This line of separation being admitted, advantage may be easily taken +to ornament the lawn with flowers and shrubs, and to attach to the +mansion that scene of 'embellished neatness' usually called a +pleasure-ground" (Repton, p. 213. See also No. 2 of Repton's +"Objections," given on p. 116).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> As an instance of how much dignity a noble house may lose +by a meanly-planned drive, I would mention Hatfield.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Milner's "Art and Practice of Landscape-Gardening," pp. +13, 14.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> "One deep recess, one bold prominence, has more effect +than twenty little irregularities." "Every variety in the outline of a +wood must be a <i>prominence</i> or a <i>recess</i>" (Repton, p. 182).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See accompanying plans.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> One of the finest and weirdest cedar-walks that I have +ever met with is that at Marwell, near Owslebury in Hampshire. Here you +realise the wizardry of green gloom and sense of perfect seclusion. It +was here that Henry VIII. courted one of his too willing wives.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> As the walls afford valuable space for the growth of the +choicer kinds of hardy fruits, the direction in which they are built is +of considerable importance. "In the warmer parts of the country, the +wall on the north side of the garden should be so placed as to face the +sun at about an hour before noon, or a little to east of south; in less +favoured localities it should be made to face direct south, and in the +still more unfavourable districts it should face the sun an hour after +noon, or a little west of south. The east and west walls should run +parallel to each other, and at right angles to that on the north side."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> "Embower a cottage thickly and completely with nothing but +roses, and nobody would desire the interference of another +plant."—<span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt.</span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Lord Beaconsfield adds macaws to the ornament of his ideal +garden. "Sir Ferdinand, when he resided at Armine, was accustomed to +fill these pleasure grounds with macaws and other birds of gorgeous +plumage." But Lord Beaconsfield is Benjamin Disraeli—a master of the +ornate, a bit of a dandy always. In Italy, too, they throw in porcupines +and ferrets for picturesqueness. In Holland are our old friends the tin +hare and guinea-pigs, and the happy shooting boy, in holiday attire, +painted to the life.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> See P. G. Hamerton's "Sylvan Year," p. 112.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> See Myres' "Wordsworth," English Men of Letters Series, p. +67.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> "Bacon," English Men of Letters Series, R. W. Church.</p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<p class="center">PRINTED BY<br /> +TURNBULL AND SPEARS<br /> +EDINBURGH</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Garden-Craft Old and New, by John D. 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Sedding + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Garden-Craft Old and New + +Author: John D. Sedding + +Release Date: February 11, 2012 [EBook #38829] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARDEN-CRAFT OLD AND NEW *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + + + + GARDEN-CRAFT + OLD AND NEW + + BY THE LATE + JOHN D. SEDDING + + WITH MEMORIAL NOTICE BY THE + REV. E. F. RUSSELL + + _WITH NINE ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + NEW EDITION + + LONDON + KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER & CO., LTD. + PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD + 1895 + + + + +[Illustration: A GARDEN ENCLOSED.] + + + + +PREFACE. + + +"_What am I to say for my book?" asks Mr Stevenson in the Preface to "An +Inland Voyage." "Caleb and Joshua brought back from Palestine a +formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; +and, for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a +definition to any quantity of fruit._" + +_As this apology is so uncalled for in the case of this fruitful little +volume, I would venture to purloin it, and apply it where it is wholly +suitable. Here, the critic will say, is an architect who makes gardens +for the houses he builds, writing upon his proper craft, pandering to +that popular preference for a definition of which Mr Stevenson speaks, +by offering descriptions of what he thinks a fine garden should be, +instead of useful figured plans of its beauties!_ + +_And yet, to tell truth, it is more my subject than myself that is to +blame if my book be unpractical. Once upon a time complete in itself, as +a brief treatise upon the technics of gardening delivered to my brethren +of the Art-worker's Guild a year ago, the essay had no sooner arrived +with me at home, than it fell to pieces, lost gravity and compactness, +and became a garden-plaything--a sort of gardener's "open letter," to +take loose pages as fancies occurred. So have these errant thoughts, +jotted down in the broken leisure of a busy life, grown solid unawares +and expanded into a would-be-serious contribution to garden-literature._ + +_Following upon the original lines of the Essay on the For and Against +of Modern Gardening, I became the more confirmed as to the general +rightness of the old ways of applying Art, and of interpreting Nature +the more I studied old gardens and the point of view of their makers; +until I now appear as advocate of old types of design, which, I am +persuaded, are more consonant with the traditions of English life, and +more suitable to an English homestead than some now in vogue._ + +_The old-fashioned garden, whatever its failings in the eyes of the +modern landscape-gardener (great is the poverty of his invention), +represents one of the pleasures of England, one of the charms of that +quiet beautiful life of bygone times that I, for one, would fain see +revived. And judged even as pieces of handicraft, apart from their +poetic interest, these gardens are worthy of careful study. They embody +ideas of ancient worth; they evidence fine aims and heroic efforts; they +exemplify traditions that are the net result of a long probation. Better +still, they render into tangible shapes old moods of mind that English +landscape has inspired; they testify to old devotion to the scenery of +our native land, and illustrate old attempts to idealise its pleasant +traits._ + +_Because the old gardens are what they are--beautiful yesterday, +beautiful to-day, and beautiful always--we do well to turn to them, not +to copy their exact lines, nor to limit ourselves to the range of their +ornament and effects, but to glean hints for our garden-enterprise +to-day, to drink of their spirit, to gain impulsion from them. As often +as not, the forgotten field proves the richest of pastures._ + + _J. D. S._ + + THE CROFT, WEST WICKHAM, KENT, + _Oct. 8, 1890_. + + + + +MEMOIR. + + +The Manuscript of this book was placed complete in the hands of his +publishers by John Sedding. He did not live to see its production. + +At the wish of his family and friends, I have, with help from others, +set down some memories and impressions of my friend. + +My acquaintance with John Sedding dates from the year 1875. He was then +37 years of age, and had been practising as an architect almost +exclusively in the South-West of England. The foundations of this +practice were laid by his equally talented brother, Edmund Sedding, who, +like himself, had received his training in the office of Mr Street. +Edmund died in 1868, and John took up the business, but his clients were +so few, and the prospect of an increase in their number so little +encouraging, that he left Bristol and came to London, and here I first +met him. He had just taken a house in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, +and the house served him on starting both for home and office. + +The first years in London proved no exception to the rule of first +years, they were more or less a time of struggle and anxiety. John +Sedding's happy, buoyant nature, his joy in his art, and invincible +faith in his mission, did much to carry him through all difficulties. +But both at this time, and all through his life, he owed much, very +much, to the brave hopefulness and wise love of his wife. Rose Sedding, +a daughter of Canon Tinling, of Gloucester, lives in the memory of those +who knew her as an impersonation of singular spiritual beauty and +sweetness. Gentle and refined, sensitive and sympathetic to an unusual +degree, there was no lack in her of the sterner stuff of +character--force, courage, and endurance. John Sedding leaned upon his +wife; indeed, I cannot think of him without her, or guess how much of +his success is due to what she was to him. Two days before his death he +said to me, "I have to thank God for the happiest of homes, and the +sweetest of wives." + +Many will remember with gratitude the little home in Charlotte Street, +as the scene of some of the pleasantest and most refreshing hours they +have ever known. John Sedding had the gift of attracting young men, +artists and others, to himself, and of entering speedily into the +friendliest relations with them. He met them with such taking frankness, +such unaffected warmth of welcome, that they surrendered to him at once, +and were at once at ease with him and happy. + +On Sundays, when the religious duties of the day were over, he was wont +to gather a certain number of these young fellows to spend the evening +at his house. No one of those who were privileged to be of the party can +forget the charming hospitality of these evenings. The apparatus was so +simple, the result so delightful; an entire absence of display, and yet +no element of perfect entertainment wanting. On these occasions, when +supper was over, Mrs Sedding usually played for us with great +discernment and feeling the difficult music of Beethoven, Grieg, Chopin, +and others, and sometimes she sang. More than one friendship among their +guests grew out of these happy evenings. + +In course of time the increase of his family and the concurrent increase +of his practice obliged him to remove, first his office to Oxford +Street, and later on his home to the larger, purer air of a country +house in the little village of West Wickham, Kent. This house he +continued to occupy until his death. Work of all kinds now began to flow +in upon him, not rapidly, but by steady increase. His rich faculty of +invention, his wide knowledge, his skill in the manipulation of natural +forms, the fine quality of his taste, were becoming more and more known. +He produced in large numbers designs for wall-papers, for decoration, +and for embroidery. These designs were never repetitions of old +examples, nor were they a rechauffe of his own previous work. Something +of his soul he put into all that he undertook, hence his work was never +commonplace, and scarcely needed signature to be known as his, so +unmistakably did it bear his stamp, the "marque de fabrique," of his +individuality. + +I have known few men so well able as he to press flowers into all manner +of decorative service, in metal, wood, stone or panel, and in +needlework. He understood them, and could handle them with perfect ease +and freedom, each flower in his design seeming to fall naturally into +its appointed place. Without transgressing the natural limits of the +material employed, he yet never failed to give to each its own essential +characteristics, its gesture, and its style. Flowers were indeed +passionately loved, and most reverently, patiently studied by him. He +would spend many hours out of his summer holiday in making careful +studies of a single plant, or spray of foliage, painting them, as Mr +Ruskin had taught him, in siena and white, or in violet-carmine and +white. Leaves and flowers were, in fact, almost his only school of +decorative design. + +This is not the place to attempt any formal exposition of John Sedding's +views on Art and the aims of Art. They can be found distinctly stated +and amply, often brilliantly, illustrated in his Lectures and Addresses, +of which some have appeared in the architectural papers and some are +still in manuscript.[1] But short of this formal statement, it may prove +not uninteresting to note some characters of his work which impressed +us. + +[Footnote 1: It is much to be wished that these Lectures and Addresses +should be collected and published.] + +Following no systematic order, we note first his profound sympathy with +ancient work, and with ancient work of all periods that might be called +periods of living Art. He never lost an opportunity of visiting and +intently studying ancient buildings, sketching them, and measuring them +with extraordinary care, minuteness, and patience. "On one occasion," +writes Mr Lethaby, "when we were hurried he said, 'We cannot go, it is +life to us.'" A long array of sketch-books, crowded with studies and +memoranda, remains to bear witness to his industry. In spite of this +extensive knowledge, and copious record of old work, he never literally +reproduced it. The unacknowledged plagiarisms of Art were in his +judgment as dishonest as plagiarisms in literature, and as hopelessly +dead. "He used old forms," writes Mr Longden, "in a plastic way, and +moulded them to his requirements, never exactly reproducing the old +work, which he loved to draw and study, but making it his starting-point +for new developments. This caused great difference of opinion as to the +merit of his work, very able and skilful judges who look at style from +the traditional point of view being displeased by his designs, while +others who may be said to partake more of the movement of the time, +admired his work." + +His latest and most important work, the Church of the Holy Trinity, +Sloane Street, is a case in point. It has drawn out the most completely +opposed judgments from by no means incompetent men; denounced by some, +it has won the warmest praise from others, as, for instance, from two +men who stand in the very front rank of those who excel, William Morris +has said of it, "It is on the whole the best modern interior of a town +church"; and the eminent painter, E. Burnes-Jones, writing to John +Sedding, writes: "I cannot tell you how I admire it, and how I longed to +be at it." Speaking further of this sympathy with old work, Mr Longden, +who knew him intimately, and worked much with him, writes, "The rather +rude character of the Cornish granite work in the churches did not repel +him, indeed, he said he loved it, because he understood it. He has made +additions to churches in Cornwall, such as it may well be imagined the +old Cornishmen would have done, yet with an indescribable touch of +modernness about them. He also felt at home with the peculiar character +of the Devonshire work, and some of his last work is in village churches +where he has made a rather ordinary church quite beautiful and +interesting, by repairing and extending old wooden screens, putting in +wooden seats, with an endless variety of symbolic designs, marble font +and floor, fine metal work, simple but well-designed stained glass, good +painting in a reredos, all, as must be with an artist, adding to the +general effect, and falling into place in that general effect, while +each part is found beautiful and interesting, if examined in detail." + +"The rich Somersetshire work, where the fine stone lends itself to +elaborate carving, was very sympathetic to Sedding, and he has added to +and repaired many churches in that county, always taking the fine points +in the old work and bringing them out by his own additions, whether in +the interior or the exterior, seizing upon any peculiarity of site or +position to show the building to the best advantage, and never +forgetting the use of a church, but increasing the convenience of the +arrangements for worship, and emphasizing the sacred character of the +buildings on which he worked." + +In his lectures to Art students, no plea was more often on his lips than +the plea for living Art, as contrasted with "shop" Art, or mere +antiquarianism. The artist is the product of his own time and of his own +country, his nature comes to him out of the past, and is nourished in +part upon the past, but he lives in the present, and of the present, +sharing its spirit and its culture. John Sedding had great faith in the +existence of this art gift, as living and active in his own time, he +recognised it reverently and humbly in himself, and looked for it and +hailed it with joy and generous appreciation in others. Hence the value +he set upon association among Art workers. "Les gens d'esprit," says M. +Taine, speaking of Art in Italy, "n'ont jamais plus d'esprit que +lorsqu'ils sont ensemble. Pour avoir des oeuvres d'art il faut d'abord +des artistes, mais aussi des ateliers. Alors il y avait des ateliers, et +en outre les artistes faisaient des corporations. Tous se tenaient, et +dans la grande societe, de petites societes unissaient etroitement et +librement leurs membres. La familiarite les rapprochait; la rivalite les +aiguillonnait."[2] + +[Footnote 2: _Philosophie de l'art en Italie_ (p. 162).--H. TAINE.] + +He gave practical effect to these views in the conduct of his own +office, which was as totally unlike the regulation architect's office, +as life is unlike clockwork. + +Here is a charming "interior" from the pen of his able chief assistant +and present successor, Mr H. Wilson:-- + +"I shall not readily forget my first impressions of Mr Sedding. I was +introduced to him at one of those delightful meetings of the Art +Workers' Guild, and his kindly reception of me, his outstretched hand, +and the unconscious backward impulses of his head, displaying the +peculiar whiteness of the skin over the prominent temporal and frontal +bones, the playful gleam of his eyes as he welcomed me, are things that +will remain with me as long as memory lasts. + +"Soon after that meeting I entered his office, only to find that he was +just as delightful at work as in the world. + +"The peculiar half shy yet eager way in which he rushed into the front +room, with a smile and a nod of recognition for each of us, always +struck me. But until he got to work he always seemed preoccupied, as if +while apparently engaged in earnest discussion of some matter an +under-current of thought was running the while, and as if he were +devising something wherewith to beautify his work even when arranging +business affairs. + +"This certainly must have been the case, for frequently he broke off in +the midst of his talk to turn to a board and sketch out some design, or +to alter a detail he had sketched the day before with a few vigorous +pencil-strokes. This done, he would return to business, only to glance +off again to some other drawing, and to complete what would not _come_ +the day before. In fact he was exactly like a bird hopping from twig to +twig, and from flower to flower, as he hovered over the many drawings +which were his daily work, settling here a form and there a moulding as +the impulse of the moment seized him. + +"And though at times we were puzzled to account for, or to anticipate +his ways, and though the work was often hindered by them, we would not +have had it otherwise. + +"Those 'gentillesses d'oiseaux,' as Hugo says, those little birdy ways, +so charming from their unexpectedness, kept us constantly on the alert, +for we never quite knew what he would do next. It was not his custom to +move in beaten tracks, and his everyday life was as much out of the +common as his inner life. His ways with each of us were marked by an +almost womanly tenderness. He seemed to regard us as his children, and +to have a parent's intuition of our troubles, and of the special needs +of each with reference to artistic development. + +"He would come, and taking possession of our stools would draw with his +left arm round us, chatting cheerily, and yet erasing, designing +vigorously meanwhile. Then, with his head on one side like a jackdaw +earnestly regarding something which did not quite please him, he would +look at the drawing a moment, and pounce on the paper, rub all his work +out, and begin again. His criticism of his own work was singularly frank +and outspoken even to us. I remember once when there had been a slight +disagreement between us, I wrote to him to explain. Next morning, when +he entered the office, he came straight to the desk where I was working, +quietly put his arm round me, took my free hand with his and pressed it +and myself to him without a word. It was more than enough. + +"He was, however, not one of those who treat all alike. He adapted +himself with singular facility to each one with whom he came in contact; +his insight in this respect was very remarkable, and in consequence he +was loved and admired by the most diverse natures. The expression of his +face was at all times pleasant but strangely varied, like a lake it +revealed every passing breath of emotion in the most wonderful way, +easily ruffled and easily calmed. + +"His eyes were very bright and expressive, with long lashes, the upper +lids large, full, and almost translucent, and his whole face at anything +which pleased him lit up and became truly radiant. At such times his +animation in voice, gesture, and look was quite remarkable, his talk was +full of felicitous phrases, happy hits, and piquant sayings. + +"His was the most childlike nature I have yet seen, taking pleasure in +the simplest things, ever ready for fun, trustful, impulsive, and +joyous, yet easily cast down. His memory for details and things he had +seen and sketched was marvellous, and he could turn to any one of his +many sketches and find a tiny scribble made twenty or thirty years ago, +as easily as if he had made it yesterday. + +"His favourite attitude in the office was with his back to the fireplace +and with his hands behind him, head thrown back, looking at, or rather +through one. He seldom seemed to look at anyone or anything, his glance +always had something of divination in it, and in his sketches, however +slight, the soul of the thing was always seized, and the accidental or +unnecessary details left to others less gifted to concern themselves +with. + +"His love of symbolism was only equalled by his genius for it, old ideas +had new meanings for him, old symbols were invested with deeper +significance and new ones full of grace and beauty discovered. In this +his intense, enthusiastic love of nature and natural things stood him in +good stead, and he used Nature as the old men did, to teach new truths. +For him as well as for all true artists, the universe was the living +visible garment of God, the thin glittering rainbow-coloured veil which +hides the actual from our eyes. He was the living embodiment of all that +an architect should be, he had the sacred fire of enthusiasm within, and +he had the power of communicating that fire to others, so that workmen, +masons, carvers could do, and did lovingly for him, what they would not +or could not do for others. We all felt and still feel that it was his +example and precept that has given us what little true knowledge and +right feeling for Art we may possess, and the pity is there will never +be his like again. + +"He was not one of those who needed to pray 'Lord, keep my memory +green,' though that phrase was often on his lips, as well as another +delightful old epitaph: + + 'Bonys emonge stonys lys ful steyl + Quilst the soules wanderis where that God will.'"[3] + +[Footnote 3: In Thornhill Church.] + +This delightful and assuredly entirely faithful picture is in itself +evidence of the contagion of John Sedding's enthusiasm. + +Beyond the inner circle of his own office, he sought and welcomed the +unfettered co-operation of other artists in his work; in the words of a +young sculptor, "he gave us a chance." He let them say their say instead +of binding them to repeat his own. God had His message to deliver by +them, and he made way that the world might hear it straight from their +lips. + +The same idea of sympathetic association, "fraternite +genereuse--confiance mutuelle--communaute de sympathies et +d'aspirations," has found embodiment in the Art Workers' Guild, a +society in which artists and craftsmen of all the Arts meet and +associate on common ground. John Sedding was one of the original members +of this Guild, and its second Master. + +Of his connection with the Guild the Secretary writes: "No member was +ever more respected, none had more influence, no truer artist existed in +the Guild." And Mr Walter Crane: "His untiring devotion to the Guild +throughout his term of office, and his tact and temper, were beyond +praise." + +It must not be inferred from these facts that John Sedding's sympathies +were only for the world of Art, art-workers, and art-ideals. He shared +to the full the ardour of his Socialist friends, in their aspirations +for that new order of more just distribution of all that makes for the +happiness of men, the coming "city which hath foundations whose builder +and maker is God." He did not share their confidence in their methods, +but he honoured their noble humanity, and followed their movements with +interest and respect, giving what help he could. The condition of the +poor, especially the London poor, touched him to the quick sometimes +with indignation at their wrongs, sometimes with deep compassion and +humbled admiration at the pathetic patience with which they bore the +burden of their joyless, suffering lives. His own happy constitution and +experience never led him to adopt the cheap optimism with which so many +of us cheat our conscience, and justify to ourselves our own selfish +inertness. The more ample income of his last years made no difference in +the simple ordering of his household, it did make difference in his +charities. He gave money, and what is better, gave his personal labour +to many works for the good of others, some of which he himself had +inaugurated. + +John Sedding was an artist by a necessity of his nature. God made him +so, and he could not but exercise his gift, but apart from the +satisfaction that comes by doing what we are meant for, it filled him +with thankfulness to have been born to a craft with ends so noble as are +the ends of Art. To give pleasure and to educate are aims good indeed to +be bound by, especially when by education we understand, not +mind-stuffing, but mind-training, in this case the training of faculty +to discern and be moved by the poetry, the spiritual suggestiveness of +common everyday life. This brought his calling into touch with working +folk. + +As a man, John Sedding impressed us all by the singular and beautiful +simplicity and childlikeness of his character, a childlikeness which +never varied, and nothing, not even the popularity and homage which at +last surrounded him, seemed able to spoil it. He never lost his boyish +spontaneity and frankness, the unrestrained brightness of his manners +and address, his boyish love of fun, and hearty, ringing laugh. Mr +Walter Crane speaks of his "indomitable gaiety and spirits which kept +all going, especially in our country outings." "He always led the fun," +writes Mr Lethaby, "at one time at the head of a side at 'tug of war,' +at another, the winner in an 'egg and spoon race.'" His very faults were +the faults of childhood, the impulsiveness, the quick and unreflecting +resentment against wrong, and the vehement denunciation of it. He +trusted his instincts far more than his reason, and on the whole, his +instincts served him right well, yet at times they failed him, as in +truth they fail us all. There were occasions when a little reflection +would have led him to see that his first rapid impressions were at +fault, and so have spared himself and others some pain and +misunderstanding. Let a thing appear to him false, unfair, or cowardly, +he would lower his lance and dash full tilt at it at once, sometimes to +our admiration, sometimes to our amusement when the appearance proved +but a windmill in the mist, sometimes to our dismay when--a rare +case--he mistook friend for foe. + +No picture of John Sedding could be considered at all to represent him +which failed to express the blameless purity of his character and +conduct. I do not think the man lives who ever heard a tainted word from +his lips. There was in him such depth and strength of moral +wholesomeness that he sickened at, and revolted against the unseemly +jest, and still more against the scenes, and experiences of the sensuous +(to use no stronger word) upon which in the minds of some, the artist +must perforce feed his gift. With his whole soul he repudiated the idea +that Art grew only as a flower upon the grave of virtue, and that +artists could, or desired to, lay claim to larger moral licence than +other less imaginative men. + +I have kept till last the best and deepest that was in him, the hidden +root of all he was, the hallowing of all he did. I mean his piety--his +deep, unfeigned piety. In his address at the annual meeting of the +Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, a singularly outspoken and +vigorous exhortation to laymen to keep their practice abreast of their +faith, he used the following words: "In the wild scene of 19th century +work, and thought, and passion, when old snares still have their old +witchery, and new depths of wickedness yawn at our feet, when the world +is so wondrous kind to tired souls, and neuralgic bodies, and itself +pleads for concessions to acknowledged weakness; when unfaith is so like +faith, and the devil freely suffers easy acquiescence in high gospel +truth, and even holds a magnifying-glass that one may better see the +sweetness of the life of the 'Son of Man,' it is well in these days of +sloth, and sin, and doubt, to have one's energies braced by a 'girdle of +God' about one's loins! It is well, I say, for a man to have a circle of +religious exercises that can so hedge him about, so get behind his life, +and wind themselves by long familiarity into his character that they +become part of his everyday existence--bone of his bone." + +Out of his own real knowledge and practice he spoke these words. The +"circle of religious exercise," the girdle of God, had become for him +part of his everyday existence. I can think of no better words to +express the unwavering consistency of his life. It is no part of my duty +to tell in detail what and how much he did, and with what +whole-heartedness he did it. + +Turning to outward things, every associate of John Sedding knew his +enthusiasm for the cause of the Catholic revival in the English Church. +It supplied him with a religion for his whole nature. No trouble seemed +too great on behalf of it, though often his zeal entailed upon him some +material disadvantage. Again and again I have known him give up precious +hours and even days in unremunerated work, to help some struggling +church or mission, or some poor religious community. It was a joy to him +to contribute anything to the beauty of the sanctuary or the solemnity +of its offices. From the year 1878 to 1881 he was sidesman, from 1882 to +1889 churchwarden of St. Alban's, Holborn, doing his work thoroughly, +and with conspicuous kindliness and courtesy. It was one of the thorns +to the rose of his new life in the country that it obliged him to +discontinue this office. For eleven years he played the organ on Sunday +afternoons for a service for young men and maidens, few of whom can +forget the extraordinary life and pathos that he was wont by some magic +to put into his accompaniment to their singing. + +This present year, 1891, opened full of promise for John Sedding. In a +marvellously short time he had come hand over hand into public notice +and public esteem, as a man from whom excellent things were to be +expected,--things interesting, original, and beautiful. Mr Burne Jones +writes: "My information about Sedding's work is very slight,--my +interest in him very great, and my admiration too, from the little I had +seen. I know only the church in Sloane Street, but that was enough to +fill me with the greatest hope about him ... I saw him in all some +half-dozen times--liked him instantly, and felt I knew him intimately, +and was looking forward to perhaps years of collaboration with him." + +Work brought work, as each thing he did revealed, to those who had eyes +to see, the gift that was in him. At Art Congresses and all assemblies +of Art Workers his co-operation was sought and his presence looked for, +especially by the younger men, who hailed him and his words with +enthusiasm. To these gatherings he brought something more and better +than the sententious wisdom, the chill repression which many feel called +upon to administer on the ground of their experience.[4] He put of the +fire that was in him into the hearts that heard him, he made them proud +of their cause and of their place in it, and hopeful for its triumph and +their own success. It was a contribution of sunshine and fresh air, and +all that is the complete opposite of routine, red-tape, and the +conventional. + +[Footnote 4: Qu'est-ce l'experience? Une pauvre petite cabane construite +avec les debris de ces palais d'or et de marbre appeles nos +illusions.--_Joseph Roux._] + +We who have watched his progress have noticed of late a considerable +development in his literary power, a more marked individuality of style, +a swifter and smoother movement, a richer vocabulary, and new skill in +the presentation of his ideas. He was exceedingly happy in his +illustrations of a principle, and his figures were always interesting, +never hackneyed. A certain "bonhomie" in his way of putting things won +willing hearers for his words, which seemed to come to meet us with a +smile and open, outstretched hands, as the dear speaker himself was wont +to do. Something of course of the living qualities of speech are lost +when we can receive it only from the cold black and white of print, +instead of winged and full of human music from the man's own lips. Yet, +in spite of this, unless I am mistaken, readers of this book will not +fail to find in it a good deal to justify my judgment. + +It seems to have taken some of his friends by surprise that John Sedding +should write on Gardens. They knew him the master of many crafts, but +did not count Garden-craft among them. As a matter of fact, it was a +love that appeared late in life, though all along it must have been +within the man, for the instant he had a garden of his own the passion +appeared full grown. Every evening between five and six, save when his +work called him to distant parts, you might have seen him step quickly +out of the train at the little station of West Wickham, run across the +bridge, and greeting and greeted by everybody, swing along the shady +road leading to his house. In his house, first he kissed his wife and +children, and then supposing there was light and the weather fine, his +coat was off and he fell to work at once with spade or trowel in his +garden, absorbed in his plants and flowers, and the pleasant crowding +thoughts that plants and flowers bring. + +After supper he assembled his household to say evening prayers with +them. When all had gone to rest he would settle himself in his little +study and write, write, write, until past midnight, sometimes past one, +dashing now and again at a book upon his shelves to verify some one or +other of those quaint and telling bits which are so happily inwoven into +his text. One fruit of these labours is this book on Garden-craft. + +But I have detained the reader long enough. All is by no means told, and +many friends will miss, I doubt not, with disappointment this or that +feature which they knew and loved in him. It cannot be helped. I have +written as I could, not as I would, within the narrow limits which +rightly bound a preface. + +How the end came, how within fourteen days the hand of God took from our +midst the much love, genius, beauty which His hand had given us in the +person of John and Rose Sedding, a few words only must tell. + +On Easter Monday, March 30th, John Sedding spent two hours in London, +giving the last sitting for the bust which was being modelled at the +desire of the Art Workers' Guild. The rest of the day he was busy in his +garden. Next morning he left early for Winsford, in Somersetshire, to +look after the restoration of this and some other churches in the +neighbourhood. Winsford village is ten miles from the nearest railway +station Dulverton; the road follows the beautiful valley of the Exe, +which rising in the moors, descends noisily and rapidly southwards to +the sea. The air is strangely chill in the hollow of this woody valley. +Further, it was March, and March of this memorable year of 1891. Lines +of snow still lay in the ditches, and in white patches on the northern +side of hedgerows. Within a fortnight of this time men and cattle had +perished in the snow-drifts on the higher ground. + +Was this valley the valley of death for our friend, or were the seeds of +death already within him? I know not. Next morning, Wednesday, he did +not feel well enough to get up. His kind hostess, and host, the Vicar of +the parish, did all that kindness--kindness made harder and therefore +more kind by ten miles' distance from a railway station--could do. John +sent for his wife, who came at once, with her baby in her arms. On +Saturday at midnight he received his last Communion. The next day he +seemed to brighten and gave us hopes. On Monday there was a change for +the worse, and on Tuesday morning he passed away in perfect peace. + +At the wish of his wife, his grave was prepared at West Wickham. The +Solemn Requiem, by her wish also, was at the church he loved and served +so well, St. Alban's, Holborn. That church has witnessed many striking +scenes, but few more impressive than the great gathering at his funeral. +The lovely children's pall that John Sedding had himself designed and +Rose Sedding had embroidered, covered the coffin, and on the right of it +in a dark mass were gathered his comrades of the Art Workers' Guild. + +The tragedy does not end here. On that day week, at that very same hour +and spot, beneath the same pall, lay the body of his dear and devoted +wife. + +Side by side, near the tall elms of the quiet Kentish churchyard, the +bodies of John and Rose Sedding are sleeping. The spot was in a sense +chosen by Rose Sedding, if we may use the term 'choice' for her simple +wish that it might be where the sun shines and flowers will grow. The +western slope of the little hill was fixed upon, and already the flowers +they loved so well are blooming over them. + +Among the papers of Rose Sedding was found, pencilled in her own +handwriting, the following lines of a 17th century poet: + + "'Tis fit one flesh one house should have, + One tomb, one epitaph, one grave; + And they that lived and loved either + Should dye, and lye, and sleep together."[5] + +[Footnote 5: The words "'Tis fit one flesh one house should have," &c., +form part of the epitaph of Richard Bartholomew and his wife in the +parish church of Burford. + +How strange that the words should have found in her own case such exact +fulfilment. + + E. F. RUSSELL. + + ST ALBAN'S CLERGY HOUSE, + BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN. + _June 1891._ + +It stands thus:-- + + Lo Hudled up, Together lye + Gray Age, Greene Youth, White Infancy. + If Death doth Nature's law dispence, + And reconciles all difference, + 'Tis fit One Flesh One House should have, + One Tombe, One Epitaph, One Grave; + And they that lived and loved either + Should dye and Lye and sleep together. + Goe Reader, whether goe or stay, + Thou must not hence be long away.] + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. THE THEORY OF A GARDEN 1 + + II. ART IN A GARDEN 28 + + III. HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SKETCH 41 + + IV. THE STIFF GARDEN 70 + + V. THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN" 98 + + VI. THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING 133 + + VII. THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING (_CONTINUED_) 153 + + + ON THE OTHER SIDE. + + VIII. A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY 183 + + IX. IN PRAISE OF BOTH 202 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. + + + + A GARDEN ENCLOSED _FRONTISPIECE_ + + PLAN OF ROSARY WITH SUNDIAL TO FACE P. 156 + + PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER + GARDEN 158 + + GENERAL PLAN OF THE PLEASAUNCE, VILLA + ALBANI, ROME 160 + + PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF SUNK FLOWER + GARDEN, YEW WALK, AND TENNIS COURT 164 + + PLAN OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN AND YEW + HEDGES 166 + + PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, + YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A + LARGE GARDEN 180 + + PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN THE PRECEDING + PLAN 180 + + PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, + WITH CLIPPED YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER + BEDS 182 + + + + +GARDEN-CRAFT + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. + + "Come hither, come hither, come hither; + Here shall he see + No enemy + But winter and rough weather." + + +Some subjects require to be delineated according to their own taste. +Whatever the author's notions about it at starting, the subject somehow +slips out of his grasp and dictates its own method of treatment and +style. The subject of gardening answers to this description: you cannot +treat it in a regulation manner. It is a discursive subject that of +itself breeds laggard humours, inclines you to reverie, and suggests a +discursive style. + +This much in defence of my desultory essay. The subject, in a manner, +drafts itself. Like the garden, it, too, has many aspects, many +side-paths, that open out broken vistas to detach one's interest and +lure from the straight, broad terrace-platform of orderly discourse. At +first sight, perhaps, with the balanced beauty of the thing in front of +you, carefully parcelled out and enclosed, as all proper gardens are, +the theme may appear so compact, that all meandering after side-issues +may seem sheer wantonness. As you proceed, however, it becomes apparent +that you may not treat of a garden and disregard the instincts it +prompts, the connection it has with Nature, its place in Art, its office +in the world as a sweetener of human life. True, the garden itself is +hedged in and neatly defined, but behind the garden is the man who made +it; behind the man is the house he has built, which the garden adorns; +and every man has his humours; every house has its own conditions of +plan and site; every garden has its own atmosphere, its own contents, +its own story. + +So now, having in this short preamble discovered something of the rich +variety and many-sidedness of the subject, I proceed to write down three +questions just to try what the yoke of classification may do to keep +one's feet within bounds: (1) What is a garden, and why is it made? (2) +What ornamental treatment is fit and right for a garden? (3) What should +be the relation of the garden to the house? + +Forgive me if, in dealing with the first point, I so soon succumb to the +allurements of my theme, and drop into flowers of speech! To me, then, a +garden is the outward and visible sign of man's innate love of +loveliness. It reveals man on his artistic side. Beauty, it would seem, +has a magnetic charm for him; and the ornamental display of flowers +betokens his bent for, and instinctive homage of beauty. And to say this +of man in one grade of life is to say it of all sorts and conditions of +men; and to say it of one garden is to say it of all--whether the garden +be the child of quality or of lowliness; whether it adorn castle, +manor-house, villa, road-side cottage or signalman's box at the railway +siding, or Japanese or British tea-garden, or Babylonian terrace or +Platonic grove at Athens--in each case it was made for eye-delight at +Beauty's bidding. Even the Puritan, for all his gloomy creed and bleak +undecorated life, is Romanticist here; the hater of outward show turns +rank courtier at a pageant of flowers: he will dare the devil at any +moment, but not life without flowers. And so we have him lovingly +bending over the plants of his home-garden, packing the seeds to carry +with him into exile, as though these could make expatriation tolerable. +"There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of these stern +men than that they should have been sensible of their flower-roots +clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the +necessity of bringing them over sea and making them hereditary in the +new land." (Hawthorne, "Our Old Home," p. 77.) + +But to take a higher point of view. A garden is, in many ways, the "mute +gospel" it has been declared to be. It is the memorial of Paradise lost, +the pledge of Paradise regained. It is so much of earth's surface +redeemed from the scar of the fall: + + "Who loves a garden still keeps his Eden." + +Its territories stand, so to speak, betwixt heaven and earth, so that +it shares the cross-lights of each. It parades the joys of earth, yet no +less hints the joys of heaven. It tells of man's happy tillage of his +plot of ground, yet blazes abroad the infinite abundance of God's wide +husbandry of the world. It bespeaks the glory of earth's array, yet +publishes its passingness.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Think of "a paradise not like this of ours with so much +pains and curiosity made with hands"--says Evelyn, in the middle of a +rhapsody on flowers--"eternal in the heavens, where all the trees are +trees of life, the flowers all amaranths; all the plants perennial, ever +verdant, ever pregnant, and where those who desire knowledge may taste +freely of the fruit of that tree which cost the first gardener and +posterity so dear." (Sylva, "Of Forest-trees," p. 148.)] + +Again. The punctual waking of the flowers to new life upon the ruin of +the old is unfavourable to the fashionable theory of extinction, for it +shows death as the prelude of life. Nevertheless, be it admitted, the +garden-allegory points not all one way; it is, so to speak, a paradox +that mocks while it comforts. For a garden is ever perplexing us with +the "riddle of the painful earth," ever challenging our faith with its +counter-proof, ever thrusting before our eyes the abortive effort, the +inequality of lot (two roses on a single stem, the one full-blown, a +floral paragon, the other dwarfed and withered), the permitted spite of +destiny which favours the fittest and drives the weak to the wall--ever +preaching, with damnable iteration, the folly of resisting the ills that +warp life and blight fair promise. + +And yet while this is so, the annual spectacle of spring's fresh +repair--the awakening from winter's trance--the new life that grows in +the womb of the tomb--is happy augury to the soul that passes away, +immature and but half-expressed, of lusty days and consummate powers in +the everlasting garden of God. It is this very garden's message, "the +best is yet to be," that smothers the self-pitying whine in poor David +Gray's Elegy[7] and braces his spirit with the tonic of a wholesome +pride. To the human flower that is born to blush unseen, or born, +perchance, not to bloom at all, but only to feel the quickening thrill +of April-passion--the first sweet consciousness of life--the electric +touch in the soul like the faint beatings in the calyx of the rose--and +then to die, to die "not knowing what it was to live"--to such seemingly +cancelled souls the garden's message is "trust, acquiesce, be passive in +the Master's hand: the game of life is lost, but not for aye-- + + ... "There is life with God + In other Kingdom of a sweeter air: + In Eden every flower is blown." + +[Footnote 7: "My Epitaph." + + "Below lies one whose name was traced in sand-- + He died, not knowing what it was to live; + Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood + And maiden thought electrified his soul: + Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. + Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh + In a proud sorrow! There is life with God, + In other Kingdom of a sweeter air; + In Eden every flower is blown. Amen." + +David Gray ("A Poet's Sketch-book," R. Buchanan, p. 81.)] + +To come back to lower ground, a garden represents what one may call the +first simplicity of external Nature's ways and means, and the first +simplicity of man's handling of them, carried to distinction. On one +side we have Nature's "unpremeditated art" surpassed upon its own +lines--Nature's tardy efforts and common elementary traits pushed to a +masterpiece. On the other side is the callow craft of Adam's "'prentice +han'," turned into scrupulous nice-fingered Art, with forcing-pits, +glass-houses, patent manures, scientific propagation, and the accredited +rules and hoarded maxims of a host of horticultural journals at its +back. + +Or, to run still more upon fancy. A garden is a place where these two +whilom foes--Nature and man--patch up a peace for the nonce. Outside the +garden precincts--in the furrowed field, in the forest, the quarry, the +mine, out upon the broad seas--the feud still prevails that began as our +first parents found themselves on the wrong side of the gate of +Paradise. But + + "Here contest grows but interchange of love"-- + +here the old foes have struck a truce and are leagued together in a kind +of idyllic intimacy, as is witnessed in their exchange of grace for +grace, and the crowning touch that each puts upon the other's efforts. + +The garden, I have said, is a sort of "betweenity"--part heaven, part +earth, in its suggestions; so, too, in its make-up is it part Nature, +part man: for neither can strictly say "I made the garden" to disregard +the other's share in it. True, that behind all the contents of the place +sits primal Nature, but Nature "to advantage dressed," Nature in a rich +disguise, Nature delicately humoured, stamped with new qualities, +furnished with a new momentum, led to new conclusions, by man's skill in +selection and artistic concentration. True, that the contents of the +place have their originals somewhere in the wild--in forest or coppice, +or meadow, or hedgerow, swamp, jungle, Alp, or plain hillside. We can +run each thing to earth any day, only that a change has passed over +them; what in its original state was complex or general, is here made a +chosen particular; what was monotonous out there, is here mixed and +contrasted; what was rank and ragged there, is here taught to be staid +and fine; what had a fugitive beauty there, has here its beauty +prolonged, and is combined with other items, made "of imagination all +compact." Man has taken the several things and transformed them; and in +the process, they passed, as it were, through the crucible of his mind +to reappear in daintier guise; in the process, the face of Nature +became, so to speak, humanised: man's artistry conveyed an added charm. + +Judged thus, a garden is, at one and the same time, the response which +Nature makes to man's overtures, and man's answer to the standing +challenge of open-air beauty everywhere. Here they work no longer in a +spirit of rivalry, but for the attainment of a common end. We cannot +dissociate them in the garden. A garden is man's transcript of the +woodland world: it is common vegetation ennobled: outdoor scenery neatly +writ in man's small hand. It is a sort of twin-picture, conceived of +man in the studio of his brain, painted upon Nature's canvas with the +aid of her materials--a twin-essay where Nature's + + ... "primal mind + That flows in streams, that breathes in wind" + +supplies the matter, man the style. It is Nature's rustic language made +fluent and intelligible--Nature's garrulous prose tersely +recast--changed into imaginative shapes, touched to finer issues. + +"What is a garden?" For answer come hither: be Fancy's guest a moment. +Turn in from the dusty high-road and noise of practical things--for + + "Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite + Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love"; + +descend the octagonal steps; cross the green court, bright with great +urns of flowers, that fronts the house; pass under the arched doorway in +the high enclosing wall, with its gates traceried with rival wreaths of +beaten iron and clambering sprays of jasmine and rose, and, from the +vantage-ground of the terrace-platform where we stand, behold an +art-enchanted world, where the alleys with their giddy cunning, their +gentle gloom, their cross-lights and dappled shadows of waving boughs, +make paths of fantasy--where the water in the lake quivers to the wind's +soft footprints, or sparkles where the swallows dip, or springs in jets +out of shapely fountain, or, oozing from bronze dolphin's mouth, slides +down among moss-flecked stones into a deep dark pool, and is seen anon +threading with still foot the careless-careful curved banks fringed +with flowering shrubs and trailing willows and brambles--where the +flowers smile out of dainty beds in the sunny ecstasy of "sweet +madness"--where the air is flooded with fragrance, and the mixed music +of trembling leaves, falling water, singing birds, and the drowsy hum of +innumerable insects' wings. + +"What is a garden?" It is man's report of earth at her best. It is earth +emancipated from the commonplace. Earth is man's intimate +possession--Earth arrayed for beauty's bridal. It is man's love of +loveliness carried to excess--man's craving for the ideal grown to a +fine lunacy. It is piquant wonderment; culminated beauty, that for all +its combination of telling and select items, can still contrive to look +natural, debonair, native to its place. A garden is Nature aglow, +illuminated with new significance. It is Nature on parade before men's +eyes; Flodden Field in every parish, where on summer days she holds +court in "lanes of splendour," beset with pomp and pageantry more +glorious than all the kings'. + +"Why is a garden made?" Primarily, it would seem, to gratify man's +craving for beauty. Behind fine gardening is fine desire. It is a plain +fact that men do not make beautiful things merely for the sake of +something to do, but, rather, because their souls compel them. Any +beautiful work of art is a feat, an essay, of human soul. Someone has +said that "noble dreams are great realities"--this in praise of +unrealised dreams; but here, in the fine garden, is the noble dream and +the great reality. + +Here it may be objected that the ordinary garden is, after all, only a +compromise between the common and the ideal: half may be for the lust of +the eye, yet half is for domestic drudgery; half is for beauty, half for +use. The garden is contrived "a double debt to pay." Yonder mass of +foliage that bounds the garden, with its winding intervals of turf and +look of expansiveness, it serves to conceal villadom and the hulking +paper-factory beyond; that rock-garden with its developed geological +formation, dotted over with choice Alpine plants, that the stranger +comes to see. It is nothing but the quarry from whence the stone was dug +that built the house. Those banks of evergreens, full of choice +specimens, what are they but on one side the screen to your kitchen +stuff, and on the other side, the former tenant's contrivance to assist +him in forgetting his neighbour? Even so, my friend, an it please you! +You are of those who, in Sainte-Beuve's phrase, would sever a bee in +two, if you could! + +The garden, you say, is a compromise between the common and the ideal. +Yet nobility comes in low disguises. We have seen that the garden is +wild Nature elevated and transformed by man's skill in selection and +artistic concentration--wild things to which man's art has given +dignity. The common flowers of the cottager's garden tell of centuries +of collaboration. The flowers and shrubs and trees with which you have +adorned your own grounds were won for you by the curiosity, the +aspiration, the patient roaming and ceaseless research of a long list +of old naturalists; the design of your garden, its picturesque divisions +and beds, a result of the social sense, the faculty for refined +enjoyment, the constructive genius of the picked minds of the civilised +world in all ages. The methods of planting approved of to-day, carrying +us back to the admirably-dressed grounds of the ancient castles and +abbeys, to the love of woodland scenery, which is said to be a special +characteristic of Teutonic people, which is evidenced in the early +English ballads; to the slowly acquired traditions of garden-masters +like Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, Gilpin, and Repton, as well as to the +idealised landscapes of Constable, Gainsborough, Linnell, and Turner; it +is, in fact, the issue of the practical insight, the wood-craft, and +idealistic skill of untold generations. + +In this matter of floral beauty and garden-craft man has ever declared +himself a prey to the "malady of the ideal"; the Japanese will even +combine upon his trees the tints of spring and autumn.[8] But +everywhere, and in all ages of the civilised world, man spares no pains +to acquire the choicest specimens, the rarest plants, and to give to +each thing so acquired the ideally best expression of which it is +capable. It is as though Eden-memories still haunted the race with the +solicitude of an inward voice that refused to be silenced, and is +satisfied with nothing short of the best. + +[Footnote 8: "This strange combination of autumn and spring tints is a +very usual sight in Japan.... It is worth noting that in Japan a tree is +considered chiefly for its form and tint, not for use.... I heard the +cherry-trees were now budding, so I hurried up to take advantage of +them, and found them more beautiful than I had ever imagined. There are +at least fifty varieties, from delicately tinted white and pink to the +richest rose, almost crimson blossom."--Alfred East's "Trip to Japan," +_Universal Review_, March, 1890.] + +And yet, as some may point out, this homage of beauty that you speak of +is not done for nought; there enters into gardening the spirit of +calculation. A garden is a kind of investment. The labour and +forethought man expends upon it must bring adequate return. For every +flower-bed he lays down, for every plant, or shrub, or tree put into the +ground, his word is ever the same, + + "Be its beauty + Its sole duty." + +It was not simply to gratify his curiosity, to serve as a pretext for +adventure, that the gardener of old days reconnoitred the globe, culled +specimens, and spent laborious days in studying earth's picturesque +points; it was with a view to the pleasure the things would ultimately +bring. And why not! Had man not served so long an apprenticeship to +Nature on her freehold estate, the garden would not so directly appeal +to our imaginations and command our spirits. A garden reveals man as +master of Nature's lore; he has caught her accents, rifled her motives; +he has transferred her bright moods about his own dwelling, has tricked +out an ordered mosaic of the gleanings of her woodland carpet; has, as +it were, stereotyped the spontaneous in Nature, has entrapped and +rendered beautifully objective the natural magic of the outer world to +gratify the inner world of his own spirit. The garden is, first and +last, made "for delectation's sake." + +So we arrive at these conclusions. A garden is made to express man's +delight in beauty and to gratify his instincts for idealisation. But, +lest the explanation savour too much of self-interest in the gardener, +it may be well to say that the interest of man's investment of money and +toil is not all for himself. What he captures of Nature's revenues he +repays with usury, in coin that bears the mint-mark of inspired +invention. This artistic handling of natural things has for result "the +world's fresh ornament,"[9] and for plant, shrub, or tree subject to it, +it is the crowning and completion of those hidden possibilities of +perfection that have lain dormant in them since the world began. + +An artist has been defined as one who reproduces the world in his own +image and likeness. The definition is perhaps a little high-flown, and +may confer an autobiographical value to an artist's performances that +would astonish none more than himself. Yet if the thought can be +truthfully applied anywhere, it is where it occurred to Andrew +Marvell--in a garden. + +[Footnote 9: "If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses" (says +William Harrison in Holinshed's "Chronicles") "how wonderful is their +beauty increased, not only with flowers, which Columella calleth +_Terrena Sydera_, saying 'Pingit et in varias terrestria, sydera +flores,' and variety of curious and costly workmanship, but also with +rare and medicinable herbs.... How Art also helpeth Nature in the daily +colouring, doubling and enlarging the proportions of our flowers it is +incredible to report, for so curious and cunning are our gardeners now +in these days that they presume to do, in a manner, what they list with +Nature, and moderate her course in things as if they were her superiors. +It is a world also to see how many strange herbs, plants, and annual +fruits are daily brought unto us from the Indies, Americans, Taprobane, +Canary Isles, and all parts of the world, the which, albeit that his +respect of the constitutions of our bodies, they do not grow for us +(because God hath bestowed sufficient commodities upon every country for +her own necessity) yet for delectation's sake unto the eye, and their +odoriferous savours unto the nose, they are to be cherished, and God +also glorified in them, because they are His good gifts, and created to +do man help and service. There is not almost one nobleman, gentleman, or +merchant that hath not great store of these flowers, which now also +begin to wax so well acquainted with our evils that we may almost +account of them as parcel of our own commodities."--(From "Elizabethan +England," pp. 26-7.)] + + "The mind, that ocean where each kind + Does straight its own resemblance find; + Yet it creates, transcending these, + Far other worlds and other seas, + Annihilating all that's made + To a green thought in a green shade." + +And where can we find a more promising sphere for artistic creation than +a garden? Do we boast of fine ideas and perceptions of beauty and powers +of design! Where can our faculties find a happier medium of expression +or a pleasanter field for display than the garden affords? Nay, to have +the ideas, the faculties, and the chance of their exercise and still to +hold back were a sin! For a garden is, so to speak, the compliment a man +of ideas owes to Nature, to his friends, and to himself. + +Many are the inducements to gardening. Thus, if I make a garden, I need +not print a line, nor conjure with the painter's tools, to prove myself +an artist. Again, a garden is the only form of artistic creation that is +bound by the nature of things to be more lovely in realisation than in +the designer's conception. It is no mere hint of beauty--no mere +tickling of the fancy--that we get here, such as all other arts (except +music) are apt to give you. Here, on the contrary, we are led straight +into a world of actual delights patent to all men, which our eyes can +see, and our hands handle. More than this; whilst in other spheres of +labour the greater part of our life's toil and moil will, of a surety, +end as the wise man predicted, in vanity and vexation of spirit, here is +instant physical refreshment in the work the garden entails, and, in the +end, our labour will be crowned with flowers. + +Nor have I yet exhausted the scene of a garden's pleasures. A man gets +undoubted satisfaction in the very expression of his ideas--"the joy of +the deed"--in the sense of Nature's happy response, the delight of +creation,[10] the romance of possibility. + +[Footnote 10: Here is Emerson writing to Carlyle of his "new +plaything"--a piece of woodland of forty acres on the border of Walden +Pond. "In these May mornings, when maples, poplars, walnut, and pine are +in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon and cut with my +hatchet an Indian path thro' the thicket, all along the bold shore, and +open the finest pictures." (John Morley's Essays, "Emerson," p. 304.) +But, as Mr Morley points out, he finds the work too fascinating, eating +up days and weeks; "nay, a brave scholar should shun it like gambling, +and take refuge in cities and hotels from these pernicious +enchantments."] + +Some joy shall also come of the identity of the gardener with his +creation.[11] He is at home here. He is intimate with the various +growths. He carries in his head an infinity of details touching the +welfare of the garden's contents. He participates in the life of his +plants, and is familiar with all their humours; like a good host, he has +his eye on all his company. He has fine schemes for the future of the +place. The very success of the garden reflects upon its master, and +advertises the perfect understanding that exists between the artist and +his materials. The sense of ownership and responsibility brings him +satisfaction, of a cheaper sort. His the hand that holds the wand to the +garden's magic; his the initiating thought, the stamp of taste, the +style that gives it circumstance. Let but his hand be withdrawn a space, +and, at this signal, the gipsy horde of weeds and briars--that even now +peer over the fence, and cast clandestine seeds abroad with every +favouring gust of wind--would at once take leave to pitch their tents +within the garden's zone, would strip the place of art-conventions, and +hurry it back to its primal state of unkempt wildness. + +[Footnote 11: "I like your Essays," said Henry the Third to Montaigne. +"Then, sire, you will like me. I am my Essays."] + +Someone has observed that when wonder is excited, and the sense of +beauty gratified, there is instant recreation, and a stimulus that lifts +one out of life's ordinary routine. This marks the function of a garden +in a world where, but for its presence, the commonplace might +preponderate; 'tis man's recreation ground, children's fairyland, bird's +orchestra, butterfly's banquet. Verse and romance have done well, then, +to link it with pretty thoughts and soft musings, with summer reveries +and moonlight ecstasies, with love's occasion, and youth's yearning. No +fitter place could well be found than this for the softer transactions +of life that awaken love, poesy, and passion. Indeed, were its +winsomeness not balanced by simple human enjoyments--were its charmed +silences not broken by the healthy interests of common daily life--the +romps of children, the clink of tea-cups, the clatter of +croquet-mallets, the _melee_ of the tennis-courts, the fiddler's scrape, +and the tune of moving feet, it might well seem too lustreful a place +for this work-a-day world. + +Apart from its other uses, there is no spot like a garden for +cultivating the kindly social virtues. Its perfectness puts people upon +their best behaviour. Its nice refinement secures the mood for +politeness. Its heightened beauty produces the disposition that delights +in what is beautiful in form and colour. Its queenly graciousness of +mien inspires the reluctant loyalty of even the stoniest mind. Here, if +anywhere, will the human hedgehog unroll himself and deign to be +companionable. Here friend Smith, caught by its nameless charm, will +drop his brassy gabble and dare to be idealistic; and Jones, forgetful +of the main chance and "bulls" and "bears," will throw the rein to his +sweeter self, and reveal that latent elevation of soul and tendency to +romance known only to his wife! + +"There be delights," says an ancient writer, "that will fetch the day +about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful +dream." This tells, in terse English, the pleasures of a garden and the +instincts that are gratified in its making. For a garden is Arcady +brought home. It is man's bit of gaudy make-believe--his well-disguised +fiction of an unvexed Paradise--standing witness of his quest of the +ideal--his artifice to escape the materialism of a world that is too +actual and too much with him. A well-kept garden makes credible to +modern eyes the antique fable of an unspoiled world--a world where +gaiety knows no eclipse, and winter and rough weather are held at bay. +In this secluded spot the seasons slip by unawares. The year's +passing-bell is ignored. Decay is cheated of its prize. The invading +loss of cold, or wind, or rain--the litter of battered Nature--the +"petals from blown roses on the grass"--the pathos of dead boughs and +mouldering leaves, the blighted bloom and broken promise of the spring, +autumn's rust or winter's wreckage are, if gardeners be brisk sons of +Adam, instantly huddled out of sight, so that, come when you may, the +place wears a mask of steady brightness; each month has its new dress, +its fresh counterfeit of permanence, its new display of flowers or +foliage, as pleasing, if not so lustrous as the last, that serves in +turn to prolong the illusion and to conceal the secret irony and fond +assumption of the thing. + + "I think for to touche also + The world which neweth everie daie, + So far as I can, so as I maie." + +This snatch of Gower's rhyme expresses in old phrase the gardener's +desire, or clothed in modern prose by Mr Robinson ("English +Flower-Garden," Murray), it is "to make each place at various seasons, +and in every available situation, an epitome of the great flower-garden +of the world." + +We hinted a moment ago of the interest that a garden gathers from the +mark of man's regard and tendence; and if this be true of a modern +garden, how much more true of an old one! Indeed, this is undeniable in +the latter case, for Time is ever friendly to gardens. Ordinarily his +attitude towards all that concerns the memories of man is that of a +jealous churl. Look at history. What is history but one long record of +men who, in this sphere or that, have toiled, striven, sold their souls +even, to perpetuate a name and have their deeds written upon the tablets +of eternity, not reckoning upon the "all oblivious enmity" of Time, who, +with heedless hand, cuts their past into fragments, blots out their +name, confuses their story, and frets with gnawing tooth each vestige of +their handiwork. How, then, we ask-- + + "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, + Whose action is no stronger than a flower?" + +Yet so it is. He who has no respect for antique glories, who snaps his +fingers at earth's heroes, who overturns the statues of the laurelled +Caesars, encrusts the hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs, and commits their +storied masonry to the mercies of the modern Philistine, will make +exception in a garden. "Time's pencil" helps a garden. In a garden not +only are the solemn shapes and passing conceits of grey epochs treasured +up, even to their minutest particulars, but the drift of the years, +elsewhere so disastrous, serves only to heighten their fascination and +power of appeal. + +Thus it comes to pass, that it were scarcely possible to name a more +pathetic symbol of the past than an old garden,[12] nor a spot which, by +its tell-tale shapes, sooner lends itself to our historic sense if we +would recall the forms and reconstruct the life of our ancestors. For we +have here the very setting of old life--the dressed stage of old drama, +the scenery of old gallantry. Upon this terrace, in front of these +flower-beds with these trees looking on, was fought out the old battle +of right and wrong--here was enacted the heroic or the shameful deeds, +the stirring or the humdrum passages in the lives of so many generations +of masters, mistresses, children, and servants, who in far-off times +have lived, loved, and died in the grey homestead hard by. "Now they are +dead," as Victor Hugo says--"they are dead, but the flowers last +always." + +[Footnote 12: Time does much for a garden. There is a story of an +American plutocrat's visit to Oxford. On his tour of the Colleges +nothing struck him so much as the velvety turf of some of the +quadrangles. He asked for the gardener, and made minute enquiries as to +the method of laying down and maintaining the grass. "That's all, is +it?" he exclaimed, when the process had been carefully described. "Yes, +sir," replied the gardener with a twinkle in his eye, "That's all, but +we generally leave it three or four centuries to settle down!"] + +Admit, then, that for their secret quality, no less than for their +obvious beauty, these old gardens should be treasured. For they are far +more than they seem to the casual observer. Like any other piece of +historic art, the old garden is only truly intelligible through a clear +apprehension of the circumstances which attended its creation. Granted +that we possess the ordinary smattering of historical knowledge, and +the garden will serve to interpret the past and make it live again +before our eyes. For the old place is (to use the journalist's phrase) +an "object lesson" of old manners; it is a proof of ancient genius, a +clue to old romance, a legacy of vague desire. The many items of the +place--the beds and walks with their special trick of "style" the +parterre, the promenoir, the maze, the quincunx, the terraces, the +extravagances in ever-green sculptures of which Pope spoke--what are +they but the mould and figure of old-world thought, down to its most +characteristic caprice! The assertive air of these things--their +prominence in the garden-scenery--bespeak their importance in the +scenery of old life. It was _thus_ that our forefathers made the world +about them picturesque, _thus_ that they coloured their life-dreams and +fitted an adjunct pleasure to every humour, _thus_ that they climbed by +flower-strewn stairs to the realm of the ideal and stimulated their +sense of beauty. + +And if further proof be needed of the large hold the garden and its +contents had of the affections of past generations, we have but to turn +to the old poets, and to note how the texture of the speech, the +groundwork of the thought, of men like Milton, Herrick, Vaughan, +Herbert, Donne (not to mention prose-writers) is saturated through and +through with garden-imagery. + +In the case of an old garden, mellowed by time, we have, I say, to note +something that goes beyond mere surface-beauty. Here we may expect to +find a certain superadded quality of pensive interest, which, so far as +it can be reduced to words, tells of the blent influences of past and +present, of things seen and unseen, of the joint effects of Nature and +Man. The old ground embodies bygone conceptions of ideal beauty; it has +absorbed human thought and memories; it registers the bequests of old +time. Dead men's traits are exemplified here. The dead hand still holds +sway, the pictures it conjured still endure, its cunning is not +forgotten, its strokes still make the garden's magic, in shapes and hues +that are unchanged save for the slow moulding of the centuries. +_Really_, not less than metaphorically, the garden-growths do keep green +the memories of the men and women who placed them there, as the flower +that is dead still holds its perfume. And few will say that the +chronicles of the dead do not + + "Shine more bright in these contents + Than unwept stone besmeared with sluttish time." + +There is a wealth of quiet interest in an old garden. We feel +instinctively that the place has been warmed by the sunshine of +humanity; watered from the secret spring of human joy and sorrow. +Sleeping echoes float about its glades; its leafy nooks can tell of +felicities sweeter than the bee-haunted cups of flowers; of glooms +graver than the midnight blackness of the immemorial yews. It is their +suggestion of antique experiences that endues the objective elements in +an old garden like Haddon, or Berkeley, or Levens, or Rockingham, with a +strange eloquence. The recollections of many a child have centred round +these objects: the one touch of romance in a narrow, simple life is +linked with them. Hearts danced or hearts drooped in this vicinity. Eyes +that brimmed over with laughter or that were veiled with tears looked on +these things as we look on them now--drank in the shifting lights and +shadows on the grass--watched the waving of the cedar's dark layers of +shade against an angry sky, "stern as the unlashed eye of God," and all +the birds were silent--once took in the sylvan vistas of trees, lawn, +fir-ridge, the broad-water where the coots and moor-hens now play (as +then) among the green lily-pads and floating weeds, regardless of +Regulas in lead standing in their midst; once dwelt upon the lustrous +flower-beds, on the sundial on the terrace--noonday rendezvous of +fantails--on the "Alley of Sighs," with its clipped beeches, its +grey-stone seat half-way down, its rustle of dying leaves, and +traditions of intrigue; on the lime avenue full of perfume in the +sweet-o'-the-year, on the foot-bridge across the moat, on the streak of +blue autumn mist that tracks the stream in yonder meadows where the +landrail is croaking, and that brings magically near the beat of hoofs, +the jingle of horses' bells, the rumble of homeward wagons on the road, +and whiffs of the reapers' songs; on the brief brilliance of the +garden-panorama as the wintry-moon gives the black clouds the slip and +suddenly discloses a white world of snow-muffled forms, that gleams with +the eerie pallor of a ghost, and is as suddenly dissolved into +darkness. + +Simple sights, you will say, and familiar! and yet, when connected with +some unique occasion, some epoch of a life, when seen on such a day, at +such a supreme, all-absorbing moment from window, open door, terrace, +arbour; in the stillness or in the wild rhetoric of the night, the +familiar scene, momentarily flashed upon the brain's retina, may have +subtly and unconsciously influenced the act, or coloured the thought of +some human being, and the brand of that moment's impress may have +accompanied that soul to the edge of doom. + +Because of its hoarded memories we come to look upon an old garden as a +sort of repository of old secrets; wrapped within its confines, as +within the covers of a sacred book, repose so many pages of the sad and +glad legend of humanity. We have before us the scenery of old home +idylls, of old household reverences and customs, of old life's give and +take--its light comedy or solemn farce, its dark tragedy, its summer +masque, its stately dance or midnight frolic, its happy wedlock or its +open sorrow, its endured wrong. The place is identified with the +fortunes of old families: for so many generations has the old place been +found favourable for lovers' tales, for youths' golden dreams, for +girls' chime of fancy, for the cut and thrust of friendly wrangles, for +the "leisures of the spirit" of student-recluse, for children's gambols +and babies' lullabies. Seated upon this mossy bank, children have spelt +out fairy tales, while birds, trees, brooks, and flowers listened +together. The marvel of its cloistered grace has been God-reminder to +the saint; its green recesses have served for Enoch's walk,[13] for +poet's retreat; as refuge for the hapless victim of broken endeavour; as +enisled shelter for the tobacco-loving sailor-uncle with a wrecked fame; +as invalid's Elysium; as haunt of the loafing, jesting, unambitioned man +("Alas, poor Yorick!"); as Death's sweet ante-room for slow-footed age. + +[Footnote 13: "There is no garden well contrived, but that which hath an +Enoch's walk in it."--SIR W. WALLER.] + +What wonder that Sir William Temple devised that his heart should rest +where its memories were so deep-intrenched--in his garden; or that +Waterton should ask to be buried between the two great oaks at the end +of the lake! (Norman Moore's Introduction to "Wanderings in South +America.") + +And if human affections be, as the poets declare, immortal, we have the +reason why an old garden, in the only sense in which it ever is old, by +the almanack, has that whisper and waving of secrecy, that air of +watchful intentness, that far-reaching, mythological, unearthly look, +that effect of being a kind of twilighted space common to the two worlds +of past and present. Who will not agree with me in this? It matters not +when you go there--at dawn, at noonday, no less than when the sky is +murky and night-winds are sighing--and although you shall be the only +visible human being present, it is not alone that you feel. A thrill +comes over you, a mysterious sense warns you that this is none other +than the sanctuary of "the dead," as we call them; the place where, amid +the hush of passionless existence, the wide leisure of uncounted time, +the shades of once familiar presences keep their "tongueless vigil." +They fly not at the "dully sound" of human footsteps; they ask no +sympathy for regret which dare not tell the secret of its sorrow; but, +with the gentle gait of old-world courtesy, they move aside, and when +you depart resume occupation of ground which, for the sake of despairing +wishes and memories of an uneffaced past, they may not quit. After +life's fitful fever these waifs of a vanished world sleep not well; here +are some consumed with covetousness, who are learning not to resent the +word "mine" applied by the living owner of hall and garden, field and +store; some that prey on withered bliss--the "bitter sweet of days that +were"--this, the miser whose buried treasure lies undiscovered here, and +who has nothing in God's bank in the other world; this, the author of +the evil book; and this loveless, unlovely pair, the ruined and ruiner, +yoked for aye; a motley band, forsooth, with "Satan's sergeants" keeping +guard! + +It is ever the indirect that is most eloquent. Someone says: Hence these +tokens of a dead past open out vistas for one's imagination and drop +hints of romance that would make thrilling reading in many volumes, but +which shall never reach Mudie's. + +Even Nature is not proof against the spell of an old garden. The very +trees have an "ancient melody of an inward agony": + + "The place is silent and aware + It has had its scenes, its joys, and crimes, + But that is its own affair"-- + +even Nature forgets to be her cold, impassive self, and puts on a +sympathetic-waiting look in a spot so intricately strewn and meshed over +with the fibres of human experience. Long and close intimacy with +mankind under various aspects--witness of things that happened to +squires, dames, priests, courtiers, servitors, page, or country-maid, in +the roundabout of that "curious, restless, clamorous being which we call +life"--has somehow tinged the place with a sensibility (one had almost +said a _wizardry_) not properly its own. And this superadded quality +reaches to the several parts of the garden and is not confined to the +scene as a whole. Each inanimate item of the place, each spot, seems +invested with a gift of attraction--to have a hidden tongue that could +syllable forgotten names--to possess a power of fixing your attention, +of fastening itself upon your mind, as though it had become, in a sense, +humanised, and claimed kindred with you as related to that secret group +with whose fortunes it was allied, with whose passions it had held +correspondence, and were letting you know it could speak an if it would +of + + "All the ways of men, so vain and melancholy." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +ON ART IN A GARDEN. + + "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty." + + ROBERT BROWNING. + + +In dealing with our second point--the ornamental treatment that is fit +and right for a garden--we are naturally brought into contact with the +good and bad points of both the old and the new systems of gardening. +This being so, it may be well at once to notice the claims of the modern +"Landscape-gardener" to monopolise to himself all the right principles +of garden-craft: all other moods than his are low, all figures other +than his are symbols of error, all dealings with Nature other than his +are mere distortions. + +If you have any acquaintance with books upon landscape-gardening written +by its professors or their admirers, you will have learnt that in the +first half of the eighteenth century, two heaven-directed geniuses--Kent +and Brown--all of a sudden stumbled upon the green world of old England, +and, perceiving its rural beauties, and the hitherto unexplored +opportunities for ornamental display that the country afforded, these +two put their heads together, and out of their combined cogitations +sprang the English garden. + +This, in brief, is what the landscape-gardener and his adherents say, +and would have you believe; and, to prove their point, they lay stress +upon the style of garden in vogue at the time Kent and Brown began their +experiments, when, forsooth, traditional garden-craft was in its dotage +and had lost its way in the paths of pedantry. + +Should you, however, chance to have some actual knowledge of old +gardens, and some insight into the principles which, consciously or +unconsciously governed their making, it may occur to you to ask the +precise points wherein the new methods claim to be different from the +old, what sources of inspiration were discovered by the new school of +gardeners that were not shared by English gardeners from time +immemorial. Are there, then, _two_ arts of gardening? or two sorts of +Englishmen to please? Is not modern garden-craft identical with the old, +so far, indeed, as it hath art enough to stand any comparison with the +other at all? + +Let us here point to the fact, that any garden whatsoever is but Nature +idealised, pastoral scenery rendered in a fanciful manner. It matters +not what the date, size, or style of the garden, it represents an +idealisation of Nature. _Real_ nature exists outside the artist and +apart from him. The Ideal is that which the artist conceives to be an +interpretation of the outside objects, or that which he adds to the +objects. The garden gives imaginative form to emotions the natural +objects have awakened in man. The _raison d'etre_ of a garden is man's +feeling the _ensemble_. + +One fine day you take your architect for a jaunt along a country-lane, +until stopping shyly in front of a five-barred gate, over which is +nailed an ominous notice-board, you introduce him to your small +property, the site of your new house. It is a field very much like the +neighbouring fields--at least, so think the moles, and the rooks, and +the rabbits; not you, for here is to be your "seat" for life; and before +you have done with it, the whole country far and near will be taught to +look as though it radiated round the site and the house you will build +upon it--an honour of which, truth compels me to say, the land betrays +not the remotest presentiment just now! + +The field in question may be flat or undulating, it may be the lap of a +hillside, the edge of a moor, a treeless stretch of furrowed land with +traces of "rude mechanical's" usage, or suggestions of mutton or +mangels. The particular character of the place, or its precise +agricultural past, matters not, however; suffice it to say that it is a +bit of raw, and more or less ungroomed, Nature. + +Upon this plain, unadorned field, you set your man of imagination to +work. He must absorb both it and its whole surroundings into his brain, +and seize upon all its capabilities. He must produce symmetry and +balance where now are ragged outlines of hillocks and ridges. He must +trim and cherish the trees here, abolish the tree there; enlarge this +slope, level that; open out a partial peep of blue distance here, or a +gleam of silver water there. He must terrace the slope, step by step, +towards the stream at the base, select the sunniest spots for the +flower-beds, and arrange how best the gardens at their varying levels +shall be approached or viewed from the house. In this way and that he +must so manoeuvre the perspective and the lights and shades, so +compose or continue the sectional lines and general bearings of the +ground as to enforce the good points that exist, and draw out the latent +possibilities of the place, and this with as easy a hand, and as fine +tact as the man can muster. + +And now to come to our point. A dressed garden, I said, is Nature +idealised--pastoral scenery put fancifully, in man's way. A gardener is +a master of what the French writer calls "the charming art of touching +up the truth." + +Emerson observes that all the Arts have their origin in some enthusiasm; +and the art of gardening has for its root, man's enthusiasm for the +woodland world. It indicates a taste for flowers and trees and +landscapes. It is admiration that has, so to speak, passed from the +stage of emotion to that of form. A garden is the result of the +emulation which the vision of beauty in the world at large is ever +provoking in man-- + + "Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures + While the landskip round it measures." + +What of Nature has affected man on various occasions, what has pleased +his eye in different moods, played upon his emotions, pricked his fancy, +suggested reverie, stirred vague yearnings, brought a sense of quickened +joy--pastoral scenery, the music of leaves and waters, the hues and +sweetness of country flowers, the gladness of colour, picturesque form +of tree or contour of land, spring's bright laugh, autumn's glow, +summer's bravery, winter's grey blanched face--each thing that has gone +home to him has, in its way, fostered in man the garden mania. Inspired +by their beauty and mystery, he has gathered them to himself about his +home, has made a microcosm out of the various detached details which sum +up the qualities, features, and aspects of the open country; and the art +of this little recreated world is measured by the happy union of +naturalness and of calculated effect. + +What sources of inspiration were discovered by the new school of +gardeners, I asked a moment ago, which were not shared by English +gardeners from time immemorial? The art of gardening, I said, has its +root in man's enthusiasm for the woodland world. See how closely the +people of old days must have observed the sylvan sights of Nature, the +embroidery of the meadows, the livery of the woods at different seasons, +or they would not have been capable of building up that piece of hoarded +loveliness, the old-fashioned English garden! + +The pleasaunce of old days has been mostly stubbed up by the modern +"landscape gardener," but if no traces of them were left we have still +here and there the well-schemed surroundings of our English +homes--park, avenue, wood, and water--the romantic scenery that hems in +Tintern, Fountains, Dunster, to testify to the inborn genius of the +English for planting. If the tree, shrub, and flower be gone from the +grounds outside the old Tudor mansion, there still remains the +blue-green world in the tapestries upon the walls, with their airy +landscapes of trees and hills, hanging-gardens, flower-beds, terraces, +and embowered nooks--a little fantastical it may be, but none the less +eloquent of appreciation of natural beauty not confined to the gardener, +but shared by the artist-maid, who + + ... "with her neeld composes + Nature's own shape, of bird, branch, or berry, + That even Art sisters the natural roses." + +And should these relics be gone, we still have the books in the library, +rich in Nature-allusion. The simple ecstasies of the early ballad in the +opening stanzas of "Robin Hood and the Monk"-- + + "In somer when the shawes be sheyne, + And leves be large and longe, + Hit is full mery in feyre foreste + To here the foulys song; + + To se the dere draw to the dale, + And leve the hilles hee, + And shadow hem in the leves grene, + Under the grene-wode tre"; + +or in a "Musical Dreame"-- + + "Now wend we home, stout Robin Hood, + Leave we the woods behind us. + Love passions must not be withstood, + Love everywhere will find us. + I livde in fielde and downe, and so did he; + I got me to the woods, love followed me." + +or shall we hear tell from Chaucer how + + "When that Aprille, with his showres swoot + The drought of March hath pierced to the root, + + * * * * * + + Then longen folk to gone on pilgrimages." + +Or hear from Stowe how the cockney of olden days "In the month of May, +namely, on May-day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would +walk in the sweet meddowes and green woods, ther to rejoyce their +spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers and with the +harmonie of birds praysing God in their kinde." + +Or shall we turn to Shakespeare's bright incidental touches of +nature-description as in Perdita's musical enumeration of the flowers of +the old stiff garden-borders "to make you garlands of," or the Queen's +bit in "Hamlet," beginning + + "There is a willow grows aslant a brook, + That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." + +Or to the old Herbals of Wyer, and Turner, and Gerard, whom Richard +Jefferies[14] pictures walking about our English lanes in old days? +"What wonderful scenes he must have viewed when they were all a tangle +of wild flowers, and plants that are now scarce were common, and the old +ploughs and the curious customs, and the wild red-deer--it would make a +good picture, it really would, Gerard studying English orchids!" + +[Footnote 14: "Field and Hedgerow," p. 27.] + +Or shall we take down the classic volumes of Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, +Cowley, Isaak Walton, Gilbert White, each in his day testifying to the +inborn love of the English for woodland scenery, their study of nature, +and their taste in trees, shrubs, and flowers. What a vindication is +here of the old-fashioned garden and gardener! What nonsense to set up +Kent and Brown as the discoverers of the green world of old England, +when, as Mr Hamerton remarks in "The Sylvan Year" (p. 173), Chaucer +hardly knows how or when to stop whenever he begins to talk about his +enjoyment of Nature. "Chaucer," he says, "in his passion for flowers, +and birds, and spring mornings in the woods, and by streams, is hard to +quote, for he leads you down to the bottom of the page, and over the +leaf, before you have time to pause." + +The question now before us--"What ornament is fit and right for a +garden?"--of itself implies a tendency to err in the direction of +ornament. We see that on the face of it the transposition of the simple +of Nature into the subtle of Art has its dangers. Something may be put, +or something may be left, which were best absent. This may be taken as +an established fact. In making a garden you start with the assumption +that something must be sacrificed of wild Nature, and something must be +superadded, and that which is superadded is not properly of this real, +visible world, but of the world of man's brain. + +The very enclosure of our garden-spaces signifies that Nature is held in +duress here. Nature of herself cannot rise above Nature, and man, seeing +perfections through her imperfections, capacities through her +incapacities, shuts her in for cultivation, binds her feet, as it were, +with the silken cord of art-constraint, and puts a gloss of intention +upon her every feature. + +In a garden Nature is not to be her simple self, but is to be subject to +man's conditions, his choice, his rejection. Let us briefly see, now, +what conditions man may fairly impose upon Nature--what lengths he may +legitimately go in the way of mimicry of natural effects or of +conventionalism. Both books and our own observation tell us that where +the past generations of gardeners have erred it has been through a +misconception of the due proportions of realism and of idealism to be +admitted into a garden. At this time, in this phase, it was _Art_, in +that phase it was _Nature_, that was carried too far; here design was +given too much rein, there not rein enough, and people in their silly +revolt against Art have gone straight for the "veracities of Nature," +copying her features, dead or alive, outright, without discrimination as +to their fitness for imitation, or their suitableness to the position +assigned to them. To what extent, we ask, may the forms of Nature be +copied or recast? What are the limits to which man may carry ideal +portraiture of Nature for the purposes of Art? Questions like these +would, of course, only occur to a curious, debating age like ours; but +put this way or that they keep alive the eternal problems of man's +standing to the world of Nature, the laws of idealism and realism, the +nice distinctions of "more and less." + +Now, it is not everything in Nature that can, or that may be, +artificially expressed in a garden; nor are the things that it is +permissible to use, of equal application everywhere. It were a palpable +mistake, an artistic crime, so to speak, to follow the wild flights of +Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin, and with them to attempt a little +amateur creation in the way of rent rocks, tumbled hillsides, and ruins +that suggest a recent geological catastrophe, or antique monsters, or +that imply by the scenery that we are living in the days of wattled +abodes and savages with flint hatchets. Much, of course, may be done in +this line in these days as in the past, if only one have sufficient +audacity and a volcanic mind; yet, when it is done, both the value and +the rightness of the art of the thing is questionable. "Canst thou catch +Leviathan with a hook?" The primaeval throes, the grand stupendous +imagery of Nature should be held in more reverence. It were almost as +fit to harness a polar bear to the gardener's mowing-machine as seek to +appropriate the eerie phenomena of Nature in her untamed moods for the +ornamental purposes of a garden. And as to the result of such work, the +ass draped in the lion's skin, roaring horribly, with peaked snout and +awkward shanks visible all the while, is not more ridiculous than the +thinly-veiled savagery of an Italian garden of the seventeenth century. + +Here, then, I think we have some guidance as to the principles which +should regulate the choice of the "properties" that are fit for the +scenic show of a garden. We should follow the dictates of good taste +and of common sense. Of things applied direct from Nature the line +should be drawn at the gigantesque, the elemental, the sad, the +gruesome, the crude. True, that in art of another kind--in Architecture +or in Music--the artistic equivalents of these qualities may find place, +but as garden effects they are eminently unsuitable, except, indeed, +where it is desired to perpetrate a grim joke. + +Beyond these limitations, however, all is open ground for the +imaginative handling of the true gardener; and what a noble residue +remains! Nature in her health and wealth--green, opulent, lusty Nature +is at his feet. Of things gay, debonair, subtle, and refined--things +that stir poetic feelings or that give joy--he may take to himself and +conjure with to the top of his bent. It is for him as for the poet in +Sir Philip's Sidney's words--"So as he goeth hand in hand with Nature, +not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging +within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so +rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant +rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may +make the too-much loved earth more lovely: her world is brazen, _the +poets only deliver a golden_." + +Animated with corresponding desire, the gardener resorts to lovely +places in this "too-much loved earth," there to find his stock-in-trade +and learn his craft. We watch him as he hies to the bravery of the +spring-flowers in sunny forest-glades; to meadow-flats where lie the +golden host of daffodils, the lady-smocks, and snake-spotted +fritillaries; we see him bend his way to the field of bluebells, the +hill of primroses that with + + "their infinitie + Make a terrestrial gallaxie + As the smal starres do the skie;" + +we follow him to the tangled thicket with its meandering walks carpeted +with anemones and hung over with sweet-scented climbers; to the sombre +boskage of the wood, where the shadows leap from their ambush in +unexpected places and the brown bird's song floats upon the wings of +silence: to the green dell with its sequestered pool edged round with +alders, and willow-herb, and king-fern, and mountain-ash afire with +golden fruit: to the corn-field "a-flutter with poppies": to the +broad-terraced downs--its short, springy turf dotted over with white +sheets of thorn-blossom: to the leaping, shining mountain-tarn that +comes foaming out of the wood: to the pine-grove with its columned +blackness and dense thatch of boughs that lisp the message of the wind, +and "teach light to counterfeit a gloom"; to the widespread landscape +with its undulating forest, its clumps of foliage, its gleams of +white-beam, silver-birch, or golden yew, amid the dark blue of firs and +hollies; its emerald meadows, yellow gorse-covers and purple heather; +the many tones of leafage in the spring and fall of the year. + +And here I give but a few random sketches of Nature, taken almost at +random from the portfolio of her painted delights--a dozen or more +vignettes, shall we say?--ready-made for garden-distribution in bed, +bank, wilderness, and park; things which the old gardener freely +employed; features and images which he transferred to his dressed +grounds, not copying them minutely but in an ideal manner; mixing his +fancy with their fact, his compulsion with their consent; flavouring the +simple with a dash of the strange and marvellous, combining dreams and +actualities, things seen, with things born "within the zodiac of his own +wit"; frankly throwing into the compacted glamour of the place all that +will give _eclat_ to Nature and teach men to apprehend new joy. + +So, then, after separating the brazen from the golden in Nature--after +excluding "properties" of the woodland world which are demonstrably +unfit for the scenic show of a garden, how ample the scope for artistic +creation in the things that remain! And, given an acre or two of land +that has some natural capabilities, some charm of environment--given a +generous client, a bevy of workmen, horses and carts, and, prime +necessity of all, a pleasant homestead in the foreground to prompt its +own adornment and be the centre of your efforts, and, upon the basis of +these old tracks of Nature and old themes of Art, what may not one hope +to achieve of pretty garden-effects that shall please the eye, flatter +the taste, and captivate the imagination of such as love Beauty! + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF THE ENGLISH GARDEN. + + "The Earth is the garden of Nature, and each fruitful country a + Paradise."--Sir Thomas Browne. + + +In the last chapter I observed that in dealing with our second +point--the ornamental treatment that is fit for a garden--we should be +brought into contact with the good and bad points of both the old and +new systems of gardening. Hence the following discursus upon the +historic English garden, which will, however, be as short as it can well +be made, not only because the writer has no desire to wander on a far +errand when his interest lies near home, but also because an essay, such +as this, is ever bound to be an inconclusive affair; and 'twere a pity +to lay a heavy burden upon a light horse! + +At the outset of this section of our enquiry it is well to realise that +there is little known about the garden of earlier date than the middle +of the sixteenth century. Our knowledge of the mediaeval garden is only +to be acquired piecemeal, out of casual references in old chronicles, +and stray pictures in illuminated manuscripts, and in each case +allowance must be made for the fluent fancy of the artist. Moreover, +early notices of gardens deal mostly with the orchard, or the vegetable +or herb garden, where flowers grown for ornament occur in the borders of +the ground. + +It is natural to ascribe the first rudiments of horticultural science in +this country to the Romans; and with the classic pastorals, or Pliny the +Younger's Letter to Apollinaris before us, in which an elaborate garden +is minutely and enthusiastically described, we need no further assurance +of the fitness of the Roman to impart skilled knowledge in all branches +of the science. + +Loudon, in his noble "Arboretum et fruticetum Britannicum," enters at +large into the question of what trees and shrubs are indigenous to +Britain, and gives the probable dates of the introduction of such as are +not native to this country. According to Whitaker, whose authority +Loudon adopts, it would appear that the Romans brought us the plane, the +box, the elm, the poplar, and the chestnut. (The lime, he adds, was not +generally planted here till after the time of Le Notre: it was used +extensively in avenues planted here in the reign of Charles the Second.) +Of fruit trees, the Roman gave us the pear, the fig, the damson, cherry, +peach, apricot, and quince. The aboriginal trees known to our first +ancestors are the birch, alder, oak, wild or Scotch pine, mountain-ash +or rowan-tree, the juniper, elder, sweet-gale, dog-rose, heath, St +John's wort, and the mistletoe. + +Authorities agree in ascribing the introduction of many other plants, +fruit trees, and trees of ornament or curiosity now common throughout +England, to the monks. And the extent of our indebtedness to the monks +in this matter may be gathered from the fact that monasteries abounded +here in early times; and the religious orders have in all times been +enthusiastic gardeners. Further be it remembered, many of the inmates of +our monasteries were either foreigners or persons who had been educated +in Italy or France, who would be well able to keep this country supplied +with specimens and with reminiscences of the styles of foreign gardens +up to date. + +The most valuable authority on the subject of early English gardens is +Alexander Necham, Abbot of Cirencester (1157-1217). His references are +in the shape of notes from a commonplace-book entitled "Of the Nature of +Things," and he writes thus: "Here the gardens should be adorned with +roses and lilies, the turnsole (heliotrope), violets and mandrake; there +you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, +savery, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, +garden-cress, and peonies.... A noble garden will give thee also +medlars, quinces, warden-trees, peaches, pears of St Riole, +pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds, dates, which are the fruits of +palms, figs, &c."[15] Here, in truth, is a delightful medley of the +useful and the beautiful, just like life! Yet the very use of the term +"noble," as applied to a garden, implies that even the +thirteenth-century Englishman had a standard of excellence to stir +ambition. Other garden flowers mentioned in Alexander's observations are +the sunflower, the iris and narcissus. + +[Footnote 15: See "The Praise of Gardens."] + +The garden described by Necham bespeaks an amount of taste in the +arrangement of the herbs, plants, and fruit-trees, but in the main it +corresponds with our kitchen-garden. The next English writer upon +gardens in point of date is Johannes de Garlandia, an English resident +in France; but here is a description of the writer's garden at Paris. +The ground here described consists of shrubbery, wood, grove, and +garden, and from the account given it is inferred that both in matters +of taste and in the horticultural and floral products of the garden, +France had advanced farther than England in garden-craft in the +fourteenth century, which is the date of the book. + +In Mr Hudson Turner's "Observations on the State of Horticulture in +England"[16] in olden times he gives notices of the early dates in which +the rose was under cultivation. In the thirteenth century King John +sends a wreath of roses to his lady-love. Chronicles inform us that +roses and lilies were among the plants bought for the Royal Garden at +Westminster in 1276; and the annual rendering of a rose is one of the +commonest species of quit-rent in ancient conveyances, like the +"pepper-corn" of later times. The extent to which the culture of the +rose was carried is inferred from the number of sorts mentioned in old +books, which include the red, the sweet-musk, double and single, the +damask, the velvet, the double-double Provence rose, and the double and +single white rose. And the demand for roses seems to have been so great +in old days that bushels of them frequently served as the payment of +vassals to their lords, both in France and England. England has good +reason to remember the distinction between the red and the white rose. + +[Footnote 16: "Archaeological Journal," vol. v. p. 295.] + +Of all the flowers known to our ancestors, the gilly-flower was perhaps +the most common. + + "The fairest flowers o' the season + Are our carnations and streak'd gilly flower." + + _Winter's Tale._ + +"Their use," says a quaint writer, "is much in ornament, and comforting +the spirites by the sence of smelling." The variety of this flower, that +was best known in early times, was the wall gilly-flower, or bee-flower. +Another flower of common growth in mediaeval gardens and orchards is the +periwinkle. + + "There sprang the violet all newe, + And fresh periwinkle, rich of hewe, + And flowers yellow, white and rede, + Such plenty grew there nor in the mede." + +It is not considered probable that much art was expended in the laying +out of gardens before the fifteenth century; but I give a list of +illuminated MSS. in the Library of the British Museum, where may be +found illustrations of gardens, and which I take from Messrs Birch and +Jenner's valuable Dictionary of Principal Subjects in the British +Museum[17] under the head of Garden. + +[Footnote 17: "Early Drawings and Illuminations." Birch and Jenner. +(Bagster, 1879, p. 134.) + + "Gardens. + + 19 D. i. ff. I. etc. + 20 A. xvii. f. 7b. + 20 B. ii. f. 57. + 14 803 f. 63. + 18 851 f. 182. + 18 852 f. 3. b. + 26667 f. i. + Harl. 4425. f. 12. b. + Kings 7. f. 57. + 6 E. ix. f. 15. b. + 14 E. vi. f. 146. + 15 E. iii. f. 122. + 15 E. vi. f. 146. + 16 G. v. f. 5. + 17 F. i. f. 149 _b_. + 19 A. vi. f. 2. 109. + 19 C. vii. f. i. + 20 C. v. ff. 7. _etc._ + Eg. 2022. f. 36. _b_. + Harl. 4425. f. 160 _b_. + 19720. + 19 A. vi. f. 109."] + +There is also a typical example of a fourteenth-century garden in the +Romaunt d'Alexandre (Bodleian Library). Here the flower garden or lawn +is separated by a wooden paling from the orchard, where a man is busy +pruning. An old painting at Hampton Court, of the early part of the +sixteenth century, gives pretty much the same class of treatment, but +here the paling is decorated with a chevron of white and red colour. + +To judge from old drawings, our forefathers seem to have been always +partial to the greensward and trees, which is the landscape garden in +the "egg"! A good extent of grass is always provided. Formal flower-beds +do not often occur, and, where shown, they are sometimes surrounded by a +low wattled fence--a protection against rabbits, probably. Seats and +banks of chamomile are not unusual. A bank of earth seems to have been +thrown up against the enclosing wall; the front of the bank is then +faced with a low partition of brick or stone, and the mould, brought to +an even surface, is planted in various ways. Numerous illustrations of +the fifteenth century give a bowling-green and butts for archery. About +this date it is assumed the style of English gardening was affected by +French and Flemish methods, which our connection with Burgundy at that +time would bring about. To this period is also ascribed the introduction +of the "mount" in England, although one would almost say that it is but +a survival of the Celtic "barrow." It is a feature that came, however, +into very common use, and is thus recommended by Bacon: "I wish also, in +the very middle, a fair Mount, with three Ascents and Alleys, enough for +four to walk abreast, which I would have to be perfect circles, without +any Bulwarks or Imbossments, and the whole Mount to be thirty foot high, +and some fine Banqueting House with some chimneys neatly cast, and +without too much Glass." + +The "mount" is said to have been originally contrived to allow persons +in the orchard to look over the enclosing wall, and would serve not only +as a place from which to enjoy a pretty view, but as a point of outlook +in case of attack. Moreover, when situated in a park where the deer +grazed, the unscrupulous sportsman might from thence shoot a buck. In +early days the mounts were constructed of wood or of stone, and were +curiously adorned within and without. Later on they resumed the old +barrow shape, and were made of earth, and utilized for the culture of +fruit trees. Lawson, an old writer of the sixteenth century, describes +them as placed in divers corners of the orchard, their ascent being made +by "stares of precious workmanship." When of wood, the mount was often +elaborately painted. + +An account of works done at Hampton Court in the time of Henry VIII., +mentions certain expenses incurred for "anticke" works; and referring to +Bailey's Dictionary, published early in the last century, the word +"antick," as applied to curiously-shaped trees, still survives, and is +explained as "odd figures or shapes of men, birds, beasts, &c., cut +out." From the above references, and others of like nature, we know that +the topiary art ("opus topiarum"), which dealt in quaintly-shaped trees +and shrubs, was in full practice here throughout the latter half of the +middle ages. Samuel Hartlib, in a book published in 1659, writes thus: +"About fifty years ago Ingenuities first began to flourish in England." +Lawson, writing in a jocose vein, tells how the lesser wood might be +framed by the gardener "to the shape of men armed in the field ready to +give battell; or swift-running greyhounds, or of well-scented and +true-running hounds to chase the deere or hunt the hare"; adding as a +recommendation that "this kinde of hunting shall not waste your corne, +nor much your coyne!" + +I find that John Leland in his Itinerary, 1540, further confirms the use +of highly-decorated mounts: as at Wressel Castle, Yorkshire, he tells of +the gardens with the mote, and the orchards as exceeding fair; "and yn +the orchardes were mounts writhen about with degrees, like the turnings +in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payne." There is still to +be seen, or according to Murray's Guide, 1876, was then to be seen, at +Wotton, in Surrey, an artificial mount cut into terraces, which is a +relic of Evelyn's work. + +The general shape of an old-fashioned garden is a perfect square, which +we take to be reminiscent of the square patch of ground which, in early +days, was partitioned off for the use of the family, and walled to +exclude cattle, or to define the property. It also repeats the +quadrangular court of big Tudor houses. We may also assume that the +shape would commend itself to the taste of the Renascence School of the +Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, as being that of classic times; for the +antique garden was fashioned in a square with enclosures of +trellis-work, espaliers, and clipt box hedges, regularly ornamented with +vases, fountains, and statuary. + +The square shape was common to the French and Italian gardens also. Old +views of Du Cerceau, an architect of the time of Charles IX. and Henry +III., show a square in one part of the grounds and a circular labyrinth +in another: scarcely a plot but has this arrangement. The point to note, +however, is, that while the English garden might take the same general +outline as the foreign, it had its own peculiarities; and although each +country develops the fantastic ornament common to the stiff garden of +the period in its own way, things are not carried to the same pitch of +extravagant fancy in England as in France, Holland, or Italy. + +Upon a general review of the subject of ornamental gardens, English and +foreign, we arrive at the conclusion that the type of garden produced by +any country is a question of soil and physical features, and a question +of race. The character of the scenery of a country, the section of the +land generally, no less than the taste of the people who dwell in it, +prescribes the style of the type of garden. The hand of Nature directs +the hand of Art. + +Thus, in a hilly country like Italy, Nature herself prompts the division +of the garden-spaces into wide terraces, while Art, on her side, +provides that the terraces shall be well-proportioned as to width and +height, and suitably defined by masonry walls having balustraded fronts, +flights of steps, arcades, temples, vases, statues, &c. + +Lady Mary Montagu's description of the _Giardino Jiusti_ is a case in +point: she depicts, as far as words can, how admirably it complies with +the conditions of the scenery. The palace lies at the foot of a mountain +"near three miles high, covered with a wood of orange, lemon, citron, +and pomegranate trees, which is all cut up into walks, and divided into +terraces that you may go into a separate garden from every floor of the +house, diversified with fountains, cascades, and statues, and joined by +easy marble staircases, which lead from one to another." It is a hundred +years since this description was written, but the place is little +altered to this day: "Who will now take the pains to climb its steep +paths, will find the same charm in the aged cypresses, the oddly clipped +ilexes and boxes, the stiff terraces and narrow, and now overgrown, +beds."[18] + +[Footnote 18: "The Garden."--WALTHER HOWE.] + +In France, where estates are larger, and the surface of the country more +even and regular, the ornamental grounds, while following the Italian in +certain particulars, are of wider range on the flat, and they attain +picturesqueness upon lines of their own. The taste of the people, +conveniently answering to the conditions of the country, runs upon long +avenues and spacious grounds, divided by massive trellises into a series +of ornamental sections--_Bocages_, _Cabinets de Verdure_, &c., which by +their form and name, flatter the Arcadian sentiment of a race much given +to idealisation. "I am making winding alleys all round my park, which +will be of great beauty," writes Madame de Sevigne, in 1671. "As to my +labyrinth, it is neat, it has green plots, and the palisades are +breast-high; it is a lovable spot." + +The French have parks, says the travelled Heutzner, but nothing is more +different, both in compass and direction, than those common to England. +In France they invented the parks as fit surroundings to the fine +palaces built by Mansard and Le Notre, and the owners of these stately +chateaux gratified their taste for Nature in an afternoon promenade on a +broad stone terrace, gazing over a carved balustrade at a world made +truly artificial to suit the period. The style of Le Notre is, in fact, +based upon the theory that Nature shall contribute a bare space upon +which man shall lay out a garden of symmetrical character, and trees, +shrubs, and flowers are regarded as so much raw material, out of which +Art shall carve her effects. + +Indeed, the desire for symmetry is carried to such extravagant lengths +that the largest parks become only a series of square or oblong +enclosures, regularly planted walks, bounded by chestnuts or limes; +while the gardens are equally cut up into lines of trellises and +palisades. In describing the Paris gardens Horace Walpole says, "they +form light corridors and transpicuous arbours, through which the +sunbeams play and checker the shade, set off the statues, vases, and +flowers, that marry with their gaudy hotels, and suit the gallant and +idle society who paint the walks between their parterres, and realise +the fantastic scenes of Watteau and Durfe!" In another place he says +that "many French groves seem green chests set upon poles. In the garden +of Marshall de Biron, at Paris, consisting of fourteen acres, every walk +is button-holed on each side by lines of flower-pots, which succeed in +their seasons. When I saw it there were nine thousand pots of asters or +la Reine Marguerite." + +In Holland, which Butler sarcastically describes as + + "A land that rides at anchor, and is moor'd, + In which they do not live, but go aboard"-- + +the conditions are not favourable to gardening. Man is here indebted to +Nature, in the first place, for next to nothing: Air, Earth, and Water +are, as it were, under his control. The trees grow, the rivers run, as +they are directed; and the very air is made to pay toll by means of the +windmills. + +To begin with, Holland has a meagre list of indigenous trees and shrubs, +and scarcely an indigenous ligneous flora. There is little wood in the +country, for the heavy winds are calculated to destroy high-growing +trees, and the roots cannot penetrate into the ground to any depth, +without coming to water. The land is flat, and although artificial +mountains of granite brought from Norway and Sweden have been erected as +barriers against the sea, there is scarcely a stone to be found except +in the Island of Urk. + +The conditions of the country being so unfavourable to artistic +handling, it needs a determined effort on man's part to lift things +above the dead-level of the mean and commonplace. Yet see how Nature's +defects may only prove Art's opportunity! Indeed, it is singular to note +how, as it were, in a spirit of noble contrariness, the Dutch garden +exhibits the opposite grace of each natural defect of the land. The +great plains intersected with sullen watercourses yield up only slight +strips of land, _therefore_ these niggardly strips, snatched from "an +amphibious world" (as Goldsmith terms it), shall be crammed with beauty. +The landscape outside gapes with uniform dulness, _therefore_ the garden +within shall be spick and span. The flat treeless expanse outside offers +no objects for measuring distance, _therefore_ the perspective of the +garden shall be a marvel of adroit planning and conjured proportions. +The room is small, _therefore_ its every inch shall seem an ell. The +garden is a mere patch, _therefore_ the patch shall be elaborately +darned and pattern-stitched all over. The eye may not travel far, or can +get no joy in a distant view, _therefore_ it shall rest in pure content, +focussed upon a scene where rich and orderly garniture can no farther +go. + +Thus have the ill-conditions of the land proved blessings in disguise. +Necessity, the mother of invention, has produced the Dutch garden out of +the most untoward geography, and if we find in its qualities and +features traces of the conditions which surrounded its birth and +development it is no wonder. Who shall blame the prim shapes and +economical culture where even gross deception shall pass for a virtue if +it be successful! Or the regular strips of ground, the long straight +canals, the adroit vistas of grassy terraces long-drawn out, the trees +ranged in pots, or planted in the ground at set intervals and carefully +shorn to preserve the limit of their shade! Nay, one can be merciful to +the garden's usual crowning touch, which you get at its far end--a +painted landscape of hills and dales and clumps of trees to beguile the +enamoured visitor into the fond belief that Holland is not Holland: and, +in the foreground the usual smiling wooden boy, shooting arrows at +nothing, happy in the deed, and tin hares squatting in likely nooks, +whose shy hare eyes have worn the same startled gaze these sixty years +or more, renewed with fresh paint from time to time as rust requires. +Yet the Earth is richer and mankind happier for the Dutch garden! + +And, as though out of compassion for the Dutchman's difficulties, kind +Nature has put into his hands the bulb, as a means whereby he may attain +the maximum of gaudy colour within the minimum of space. Given a few +square yards of rescued earth and sufficient manure, and what cannot the +neat-handed, frugal-minded, microscopic-eyed Dutchman do in the way of +concentrated design with his bulbs, his clipt shrubs, his trim beds, his +trickles of water, and strips of grass and gravel! And should all other +resources fail he has still his pounded brick-dust, his yellow sand, his +chips of ores and spars and green glass, which, though they may serve +only remotely to suggest Nature, will at all events carry your mind off +to the gay gardens of precious stones of fairyland literature! + +Indeed, once embarked upon his style of piquancy-at-any-price, and it is +hard to see where the Dutch gardener need stop! In this sophisticated +trifling--this lapidary's mosaic--this pastry-cook's decoration--this +child's puzzle of coloured earth, substituted for coloured living +flowers--he pushes Art farther than the plain Englishman approves. It +is, however, only one step farther than ordinary with him. All his +dealings with Nature are of this abstract sort: his details are clever, +and he is ingenious, if not imaginative, in his wholes. Still, I repeat, +the Earth is richer, and mankind happier for the Dutch garden. There is +an obvious excuse for its over-fancifulness in George Meredith's remark +that "dulness is always an irresistible temptation for brilliance." That +the Dutchman should be thus able to compete with unfriendly Nature, and +to reverse the brazen of the unkind land of his birth, is an achievement +that reflects most creditably upon the artistic capacities of his +nation. + +But England-- + + "This other Eden, demi-paradise"-- + +suggests a garden of a less-constrained order than either of these. Not +that the English garden is uniformly of the same type, at the same +periods. The variety of the type is to be accounted for in two ways: +firstly, by the ingrained eclecticism of the British mind; secondly, by +the changeful character of the country--this district is flat and open, +this is hilly--so that mere conformity to the lie of the land would +produce gardens which belong now to the French type, now to the Italian. +It is the same with British Art of all kinds, of all times: in days long +before the Norman visitation and ever since, the English Designer has +leant more or less upon foreign initiative, which goes to prove either +how inert is his own gift of origination, or how devious may be the +tastes of a mixed race. + +But if the English garden cannot boast of singular points of interest, +if its art reflects foreign countries, it bears the mark of the English +taste for landscape, which gives it distinction and is suggestive of +very charming effects. The transcendent characteristic of the English +garden is derived from and gets its impulse from the prevailing +influence of Nature at home. It has the characteristics of the country. + +It is, I know, commonly held now-a-days that the taste for landscape is +wholly of modern growth. So far as England is concerned it came in, they +say, with Thomson in poetry, and with Brown in gardens. So far as +relates to the _conscious_ relish for Nature, so far as relates to the +love of Nature as a mirror of the moods of the mind, or as a refuge from +man, this assertion may be true enough. Yet, surely the _conscious_ +delight in landscape must have been preceded by an _unconscious_ +sympathy this way: it could not have sprung without generation. Artistic +sight is based upon instinct, feeling, perceptions that reach one knows +not how far back in time, it does not come by magic. + +See also what a rude, slatternly affair this much-lauded +landscape-garden of the "immortal Brown" was! Here are two sorts of +gardens--the traditional garden according to Bacon, the garden according +to Brown. Both are Nature, but the first is Nature in an ideal dress, +the second is Nature with no dress at all. The first is a garden for a +civilised man, the second is a garden for a gipsy. The first is a +picture painted from a cherished model, the second is a photograph of +the same model undressed. Brown's work, in fact, represents the garden's +return to its original barbaric self--the reinauguration of the +elemental. Let it not be said, then, that Brown discovered the model, +for her fairness was an established fact or she would not have been so +richly apparelled when he lighted upon her. In other words, the love of +the Earth--"that green-tressed goddess," Coleridge calls her--was no new +thing in Brown's day: the sympathy for the woodland world, the love of +tree, flower, and grass is behind the manipulated stiff garden of the +fifteenth and two succeeding centuries, and it is the abiding source of +all enthusiasm in garden-craft. + +How long this taste for landscape had existed in pre-Thomsonian days it +does not fall to us to determine. Suffice it to say that so long as +there has been an English school of gardening this sympathy for +landscape has found expression in the English garden.[19] The high thick +garden-walls of the old fighting-days shall have ample outlooks in the +shape of "mounts," from whence views may be had of the open country. The +ornamental value of forest trees is well-known and appreciated. Even in +the thirteenth century the English gardener is on the alert for new +specimens and "trees of curiosity," and he is a master of horticulture. +In Chaucer's day he revels in the greensward, + + "Ful thikke of gras, ful softe and swete." + +And the early ballads as I have already shown are full of allusion to +scenery and woodland. In the days of fine gardens the Englishman must +still have his four acres "to the green," his adjuncts of shrubbery, +wilderness, and park. Nay, Henry VIII.'s garden at Nonsuch, had its +wilderness of ten acres. "Chaucer opens his Clerke's Tale with a bit of +landscape admirable for its large style," says Mr Lowell, "and as well +composed as any Claude" ("My Study Windows," p. 22). "What an airy +precision of touch is here, and what a sure eye for the points of +character in landscape." So, too, can Milton rejoice in + + "Nature boon + Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain," + +and Herrick: + + "Sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, + Of April, May, of June, and July flowers." + +[Footnote 19: "English scenery of that special type which we call +homely, and of which we are proud as only to be found in England, is, +indeed, the production of many centuries of that conservatism which has +spared the picturesque timber, and of that affectionate regard for the +future which has made men delight to spend their money in imprinting on +the face of Nature their own taste in trees and shrubs." ("Vert and +Venery," by VISCOUNT LYMINGTON; _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1891.)] + +Nor is this taste for landscape surprising in a country where the +natural scenery is so fair and full of meaning. There are the solemn +woods, the noble trees of forest and park: the "fresh green lap" of the +land, so vividly green that the American Hawthorne declares he found "a +kind of lustre in it." There is the rich vegetation, and "in France, and +still less in Italy," Walpole reminds us, "they could with difficulty +attain that verdure which the humidity of our climate bestows." There +are the leafy forest ways gemmed with flowers; the vast hunting-grounds +of old kings, the woodland net of hazel coppice, the hills and dales, +sunned or shaded, the plains mapped out with hedgerows and enlivened +with the glitter of running water: the heather-clad moors, the golden +gorse covers, the rolling downs dotted over with thorns and yews and +chalk cliffs, the upland hamlets with their rosy orchards, the farm +homesteads nestling in green combes, the grace of standing corn, the +girdle of sea with its yellow shore or white, red, or grey rocks, its +wolds and tracts of rough uncultivated ground, with bluffs and bushes +and wind-harassed trees--Nature's own "antickes"--driven like green +flames, and carved into grotesque shapes by the biting gales. There are +the + + "Russet lawns, and fallows grey + Where the nibbling flocks do stray, + Mountains on whose barren breast + The labouring clouds do often rest, + Meadows prim with daisies pied, + Shallow brooks and rivers wide"-- + +the land that Richard Jefferies says "wants no gardening, it _cannot_ be +gardened; the least interference kills it"--English woodland whose +beauty is in its detail. There is nothing empty and unclothed here. Says +Jefferies, "If the clods are left a little while undisturbed in the +fields, weeds spring up and wild flowers bloom upon them. Is the hedge +cut and trimmed, lo! the bluebells flower the more, and a yet fresher +green buds forth upon the twigs." "Never was there a garden like the +meadow," cries this laureate of the open fields; "there is not an inch +of the meadow in early summer without a flower." + +And if the various parts and details of an English landscape are so +beautiful in themselves, what shall we say of the scenery when Nature, +turned artist, sweeps across it the translucent tints of dawn or sunset, +or wind and cloud-fantasy; or veil of purple mist, or grey or red haze, +or drift of rain-shower thrown athwart the hills, for the sunbeams to +try their edge upon; or any of the numberless atmospheric changes, pure +and tender, stern and imperious, that our humid climate has ever ready +to hand! + +Shut in, as we in England are, with our short breadths of view ("on a +scale to embrace," remarks George Meredith), folded, as it were, in a +field-sanctuary of Nature-life--girt about with scenery that is at once +fair, compact, sweetly familiar and companionable, yet so changefully +coloured, so full of surprises as the day jogs along to its evensong as +to hold observation on the stretch, to force attention to Nature's last +word, to fill the fallow-mind of lonely country folk with gentle wonder, +and swell the "harvest of a quiet eye," is it strange that a land like +ours should have bred an unrivalled school of Nature-readers among +gardeners, painters, and poets? "As regards grandeur," says Hawthorne, +"there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England +can show; but, for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies +under its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it +anywhere." ("Our Old Home," p. 78.) + +The _real_ world of England, then, is, in the Englishman's opinion, +itself so fair "it wants no gardening." Our school of gardeners seem to +have found this out; for the task of the gardener has been rather that +of translator than of creator; he has not had to labour at an artificial +world he himself had made, but only to adorn, to interpret the world as +it is, in all its blithe freedom. "The earth is the garden of Nature, +and each fruitful country a Paradise;" and in England, "the world's best +garden," man has only had to focus the view and frame it. Flowers, +odours, dews, glistening waters, soft airs and sounds, noble trees, +woodland solitudes, moonlight bowers, have been always with us. + +It might seem ungenerous to institute a comparison between the French +and English styles of gardening, and to put things in a light +unfavourable to the foreigner, had not the task been already done for us +by a Frenchman in a most outspoken manner. Speaking of the French +gardens, Diderot, in his Encyclopaedia (_Jardin_) says: "We bring to bear +upon the most beautiful situations a ridiculous and paltry taste. The +long straight alleys appear to us insipid; the palisades cold and +formless. We delight in devising twisted alleys, scroll-work parterres, +and shrubs formed into tufts; the largest lots are divided into little +lots. It is not so with a neighbouring nation, amongst whom gardens in +good taste are as common as magnificent palaces are rare. In England, +these kinds of walks, practicable in all weathers, seem made to be the +sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure; the body is there relaxed, the +mind diverted, the eyes are enchanted by the verdure of the turf and the +bowling-greens; the variety of flowers offers pleasant flattery to the +smell and sight, Nature alone, modestly arrayed, and never made up, +there spreads out her ornaments and benefits. How the fountains beget +the shrubs and beautify them! How the shadows of the woods put the +streams to sleep in beds of herbage." This is poetry! but it is well +that one French writer (and he so distinguished) should be found to +depict an English garden, when architects like Jussieu and Antoine +Richard signally failed to reproduce the thing, to order, upon French +soil! And the _Petit Trianon_ was in itself an improvement upon, or +rather a protest against, the sumptuous splendour of the _Orangerie_, +the basins of Latona and of Neptune, and the superb _tapis vert_, with +its bordering groves of clipt trees and shrubs. Yet here is Arthur +Young's unflattering description of the Queen's _Jardin Anglois_ at +Trianon: "It contains about 100 acres, disposed in the taste of what we +read of in books of Chinese gardening, whence it is supposed the English +style was taken. There is more of Sir William Chambers here than of Mr +Brown,[20] more effort than Nature, and more expense than taste. It is +not easy to conceive anything that Art can introduce in a garden that is +not here; woods, rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers, islands, cascades, +grottoes, walks, temples, and even villages." Truly a _Jardin Anglois_! + +[Footnote 20: Miss Edwards (and I quote from her edition of Young's +"Travels in France," p. 101) has a note to the effect that the Mr Brown +here referred to is "Robert Brown, of Markle, contributor to the +_Edinburgh Magazine_, 1757-1831." Yet, surely this is none other than Mr +"Capability" Brown, discoverer of English scenery, reputed father of the +English garden!] + +We may well prefer Diderot's simile for the English garden as "the +sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure" to the bustling crowd of +miscellaneous elements that took its name in vain in the _Petit +Trianon_! + +For an English garden is at once stately and homely--homely before all +things. Like all works of Art it is conventionally treated, and its +design conscious and deliberate. But the convention is broad, dignified, +quiet, homogeneous, suiting alike the characteristics of the country and +of the people for whom it is made. Compared with this, the foreign +garden must be allowed to be richer in provocation; there is distinctly +more fancy in its conceits, and its style is more absolute and +circumspect than the English. And yet, just as Browning says of +imperfection, that it may sometimes mean "perfection hid," so, here our +deficiencies may not mean defects. + +In order that we may compare the English and foreign garden we must +place them on common ground; and I will liken each to a pastoral +romance. Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet how +different the quality of the contents, the method of presentment, the +style, the technique of this and that, even when the design is +contemporaneous! + +A garden is, I say, a sort of pastoral romance, woven upon a background +of natural scenery. In the exercise of his pictorial genius, both the +foreign and English artist shall run upon natural things, and +transcribe Nature imaginatively yet realisably; each composition shall +have a pastoral air, and be rustic after its fashion. But how different +the platform, how different the mental complexion, the technique of the +artists! How different the detail and the atmosphere of the garden. The +rusticity of the foreign garden is dished up in a more delectable form +than is the case in the English, but there is not the same open-air +feeling about this as about that; it does not convey the same sense of +unexhausted possibilities--not the same tokens of living enjoyment of +Nature, of heart-to-heart fellowship with her. The foreign garden is +over-wrought, too full: it is a passionless thing--like the gaudy birds +of India, finely plumed but songless; like the prize rose, without +sweetness. + +Of the garden of Italy, who shall dare to speak critically. Child of +tradition: heir by unbroken descent, inheritor of the garden-craft of +the whole civilised world. It stands on a pinnacle high above the +others, peerless and alone: fit for the loveliest of lands-- + + ... "Woman-country, wooed not wed, + Loved all the more by Earth's male-lands, + Laid to their hearts instead"-- + +and it may yet be seen upon its splendid scale, splendidly adorned, with +straight terraces, marble statues, clipped ilex and box, walks bordered +with azalea and camellia, surrounded with groves of pines and +cypresses--so frankly artistic, yet so subtly blending itself into the +natural surroundings--into the distant plain, the fringe of purple +hills, the gorgeous panorama of the Alps with its background of glowing +sky. With such a radiant country to conjure with, we may truly say "The +richly provided, richly require." + +If we may speak our mind of the French and Dutch gardens, they in no +wise satisfy English taste as regards their relation to Nature. Diderot +has said that it is the peculiarity of the French to judge everything +with the mind. It is from this standpoint that the Frenchman treats +Nature in a garden. He is ever seeking to unite the accessory portions +with the _ensemble_. He overdoes design. He gives you the impression +that he is far more in love with his own ideas about Nature than with +Nature herself; that he uses her resources not to interpret them or +perfect them along their own lines, but express his own interesting +ideas. He must provide stimulus for his imagination; his nature demands +food for reverie, point for ecstasy, for delicious self-abandonment, for +bedazzlement with ideal beauty, and the garden shall supply him with +these whatever the cost to the materials employed. Hence a certain +unscrupulousness towards Nature in the French garden; hence the daring +picturesqueness, its legerdemain. Nature edited thus, is to the +Englishman but Nature in effigy, Nature used as a peg for fantastical +attire, Nature with a false lustre that tells of lead alloy--Nature that +has forgotten what she is like. + +In an English garden, as Diderot notes, Nature is handled with more +reverence, her rights are more respected. I am willing to allow that +something of the reserve traceable in English art is begotten of the +phlegmatic temper of the race that rarely gets beyond a quiescent +fervour; and this temper, exhibited in a garden would incline us always +to let well alone and not press things too hard. If the qualities of an +English garden that I speak of are to be attributed to this temper, +then, to judge by results, _laissez faire_ is not a bad motto for the +gardener! Certain it is that the dominance of man is more hinted at here +than proclaimed. Compared with foreign examples we sooner read through +its quaintnesses and braveries their sweet originals in Nature: nay, +even when we have idealised things to our hearts' full bent, they shall +yet retain the very note and rhythm of the woodland world from whence +they sprang--"English in all, of genius blithely free."[21] + +[Footnote 21: Lowell's "Ode to Fielding."] + +And this is true even in that extreme case, the Jacobean garden, where +we have much the same quips and cranks, the same quaint power of +metrical changes and playful fancy of the poetry of Herbert, Vaughan, +Herrick, and Donne; even the little clean-cut pedantries of this +artfullest of all phases of English garden-craft make for a kind of +bland stateliness and high-flown serenity, that bases its appeal upon +placid beauty rather than upon mere ingenuity or specious extravagance. +The conventionalities of its borders, its terraces and steps and images +in lead or marble, its ornamental water, its trim geometrical patterns, +its quincunx, clipped hedges, high hedges, and architectural adornments +shall be balanced by great sweeps of lawn and noble trees that are not +constrained to take hands, as in France, across the road and to look +proper, but are left to grow large and thick and wide and free. True +that there is about the Jacobean garden an air of scholarliness and +courtliness; a flavour of dreamland, Arcadia, and Italy--a touch of the +archaic and classical--yet the thing is saved from utter affectation by +our English out-of-door life which has bred in us an innate love of the +unconstrained, a sympathy that keeps its hold on reality, and these give +an undefinable quality of freshness to the composition as a whole.[22] + +[Footnote 22: "Mr _Evelyn_ has a pleasant villa at _Deptford_," writes +Gibson, "a fine garden for walks and hedges (especially his holly one +which he writes of in his 'Sylva') ... In his garden he has four large +round philareas, smooth-clipped, raised on a single stalk from the +ground, a fashion now much used. _Part of his garden is very woody and +shady for walking_; but his garden not being walled, has little of the +best fruits."] + +To sum up. The main difference in the character of the English and the +foreign schools of gardening lies in this, that the design of the +foreign leans ever in the direction of artificiality, that of England +towards natural freedom. And a true garden should have an equal regard +for Nature and Art; it should represent a marriage of contraries, should +combine finesse and audacity, subtilty and simplicity, the regular and +the unexpected, the ideal and the real "bound fast in one with golden +ease." In a French or Dutch garden the "yes" and "no" of Art and Nature +are always unequally yoked. Nature is treated with sparse courtesy by +Art, its individuality is ignored, it sweats like a drudge under its +load of false sentiment. "Sike fancies weren foolerie." + +But in England, though we hold Nature in duress, we leave her unbound; +if we mew her up for cultivation, we leave her inviolate, with a chance +of vagrant liberty and a way of escape. Thus, you will note how the +English garden stops, as it were, without ending. Around or near the +house will be the ordered garden with terraces and architectural +accessories, all trim and fit and nice. Then comes the smooth-shaven +lawn, studded and belted round with fine trees, arranged as it seems +with a divine carelessness; and beyond the lawn, the ferny heather-turf +of the park, where the dappled deer browse and the rabbits run wild, and +the sun-chequered glades go out to meet, and lose themselves "by green +degrees" in the approaching woodland,--past the river glen, the steep +fields of grass and corn, the cottages and stackyards and grey church +tower of the village; past the ridge of fir-land and the dark sweep of +heath-country into the dim waving lines of blue distance. + +So that however self-contained, however self-centred the stiff old +garden may seem to be, it never loses touch with the picturesque +commonplaces of our land; never loses sympathy with the green world at +large, but, in a sense, embraces and locks in its arms the whole +country-side as far as eye can see. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +HISTORICAL SKETCH--CONTINUED. + +THE STIFF GARDEN. + + "All is fine that is fit." + + +The English garden, as I have just tried to sketch it, was not born +yesterday, the bombastic child of a landscape-gardener's recipe. It +epitomises a nation's instincts in garden-craft; it is the slow result +of old affection for, old wonder at, beauty in forms, colours, tones; +old enthusiasm for green turf, wild flower, and forest tree. Take it at +its best, it records the matured taste of a people of Nature-readers, +Nature-lovers: it is that which experience has proved to be in most +accord with the character and climate of the country, and the genius of +the race. + +Landscape has been from the first the central tradition of English art. +Life spent amidst pictorial scenery like ours that is striking in itself +and rendered more impressive and animated by the rapid atmospheric +changes, the shifting lights and shadows, the life and movement in the +sky, and the vivid intense colouring of our moist climate, has given our +tastes a decided bent this way, and fashioned our Arts of Poetry, +Painting, and Gardening. Out-of-door life among such scenery puts our +senses on the alert, and the impressions of natural phenomena supply our +device with all its images. + +The English people had not to wait till the eighteenth century to know +to what they were inclined, or what would suit their country's +adornment. From first to last, we have said, the English garden deals +much with trees and shrubs and grass. The thought of them, and the +artistic opportunities they offer, is present in the minds of +accomplished garden-masters, travelled men, initiated spirits, like Sir +Thomas More, Bacon, Shaftesbury, Temple, and Evelyn, whose aim is to +give garden-craft all the method and distinctness of which it is +capable. However saturated with aristocratic ideas the courtier-gardener +may be, however learned in the circumspect style of the Italian, he +retains his native relish for the woodland world, and babbles of green +fields. A sixteenth-century English gardener (Gerarde) adjured his +countrymen to "Go forwarde in the name of God, graffe, set, plant, and +nourishe up trees in every corner of your grounde." A +seventeenth-century gardener (Evelyn) had ornamental landscape and shady +woods in his garden as well as pretty beds of choice flowers. + +"There are, besides the temper of our climate," writes another +seventeenth-century garden-worthy (Temple), "two things particular to +us, that contribute to the beauty and elegance of our gardens, which are +the gravel of our walks and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness +of our turf; the first is not known anywhere else, which leaves all +their dry walks in other countries very unpleasant and uneasy; the other +cannot be found in France or in Holland as we have it, the soil not +admitting that fineness of blade in Holland, nor the sun that greenness +in France during most of the summer." And following upon this is a long +essay upon the ornamental disposition of the grounds in an English +garden and the culture of fruit trees. "I will not enter upon any +account of flowers," he says, "having only pleased myself with the care, +which is more the ladies' part than the men's,[23] but the success is +wholly in the gardener." + +[Footnote 23: This remark of Temple's as to the small importance the +flower-beds had in the mind of the gardener of his day, is significant: +as indicating the different methods employed by the ancient and modern +gardener. It was not that he was not "pleased with the care" of flowers, +but that these were not his chiefest care; his prime idea was to get +broad, massive, well-defined effects in his garden generally. Hence the +monumental style of the old-fashioned garden, the carefully-disposed +ground, the formality, the well-considered poise and counter-poise, the +varying levels and well-defined parts. And only inwoven, as it were, +into the argument of the piece, are its pretty parts, used much as the +jewellery of a fair woman. I should be sorry to be so unjust to the +modern landscape gardener as to accuse him of caring over-much for +flowers, but of his garden-device generally one may fairly say it has no +monumental style, no ordered shape other than its carefully-schemed +_disorder_. It is not a masculine affair, but effeminate and niggling; a +little park-scenery, curved shrubberies, wriggling paths, emphasised +specimen plants, and flower-beds of more or less inane shape tumbled +down on the skirts of the lawn or drive, that do more harm than good to +the effect of the place, seen near or at a distance. How true it is that +to believe in Art one must be an artist!] + +And Bacon is not so wholly enamoured of Arcadia and with the embodiment +of far-brought fancies in his "prince-like" garden as to be callous of +Nature's share therein. "The contents ought not well to be under thirty +acres of ground, and to be divided into three parts; a green in the +entrance, a heath or desert in the going forth, and the main garden in +the midst, besides alleys on both sides; and I like well that four acres +be assigned to the Green, six to the Heath, four and four to either +side, and twelve to the main Garden. The Green hath two pleasures: the +one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept +finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the +midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge, which is to +enclose the garden." "For the heath, which was the third part of our +plot, I wished it be framed as much as may be to a natural wildness," +&c. Of which more anon.[24] + +[Footnote 24: Nonsuch had its wilderness of ten acres.] + +Whether the garden of Bacon's essay is the portrait of an actual thing, +whether the writer--to use a phrase of Wordsworth--"had his eye upon the +subject," or whether it was built in the man's brain like Tennyson's +"Palace of Art," we cannot tell. From the singular air of experience +that animates the description, the sure touch of the writer, we may +infer that Gorhambury had some such garden, the fruit of its master's +"Leisure with honour," or "Leisure without honour," as the case may be. +But what seems certain is, that the essay is only a sign of the ordinary +English gentleman's mind on the subject at that time; and in giving us +this masterpiece, Bacon had no more notion of posing as the founder of +the English garden (_pace_ Brown) than of getting himself labelled as +the founder of Modern Science for his distinguished labours in that +line. "I only sound the clarion," he says, "but I enter not into the +battle." + +Moderns are pleased to smile at what they deem the over-subtilty of +Bacon's ideal garden. For my own part, I find nothing recommended there +that a "princely garden" should not fitly contain (especially as these +things are all of a-piece with the device of the period), even to those +imagination-stirring features which one thinks he may have described, +not from the life, but from the figures in "The Dream of Poliphilus" (a +book of woodcuts published in Venice, 1499), features of the Enchanted +Island, to wit the two fountains--the first to spout water, to be +adorned with ornaments of images, gilt or of marble; the "other, which +we may call a bathing-pool that admits of much curiosity and beauty +wherewith we will not trouble ourselves; as that the bottom be finely +paved with images, the sides likewise; and withal embellished with +coloured glass, and such things of lustre; encompassed also with fine +rails of low statues."[25] + +[Footnote 25: _Nineteenth Century Magazine_, July, 1890.] + +No artist is disposed to apologise for the presence of subtilty in Art, +nor I for the subtle device of Bacon's garden. All Art is cunning. Yet +we must not simply note the deep intent of the old master, but must +equally recognise the air of gravity that pervades his +recommendations--the sweet reasonableness of suggestions for design +that have as much regard for the veracities of Nature, and the dictates +of common-sense, as for the nice elegancies and well-calculated +audacities of consummate Art. + +"I only sound the clarion, but I enter not into the battle." Even so, +Master! we will hold thy hand as far as thou wilt go; and the clarion +thou soundest right well, and most serviceably for all future gardeners! + +I like the ring of stout challenge in the opening words, which command +respect for the subject, and, if rightly construed, should make the +heretic "landscape gardener,"--who dotes on meagre country-grass and +gipsy scenery--pause in his denunciation of Art in a garden. "God +almighty first planted a Garden; and indeed it is the purest of humane +pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man, without +which Buildings and Palaces are but gross Handyworks. And a man shall +ever see, that when ages grow to Civility and Elegancy, men come to +build stately sooner than to garden finely: as if Gardening were the +Greater Perfection." + +This first paragraph has, for me, something of the stately tramp and +pregnant meaning of the opening phrase of "At a Solemn Music." The +praise of gardening can no further go. To say more were impossible. To +say less were to belittle your subject. I think of Ben Jonson's simile, +"They jump farthest who fetch their race largest." For Bacon "fetches" +his subject back to "In the beginning," and prophesies of all time. +Thus does he lift his theme to its full height at starting, and the +remainder holds to the same heroic measure. + +If the ideal garden be fanciful, it is also grand and impressive. Nor +could it well be otherwise. For when the essay was written fine +gardening was in the air, and the master had special opportunities for +studying and enjoying great gardens. More than this, Bacon was an apt +craftsman in many fields, a born artist, gifted with an imagination at +once rich and curious, whose performances of every sort declare the +student's love of form, and the artist's nice discrimination of +expression. Then, too, his mind was set upon the conquest of Nature, of +which gardening is a province, for the service of man, for physical +enjoyment, and for the increase of social comfort. Yet was he an +Englishman first, and a fine gardener afterwards. Admit the author's +sense of the delights of art-magic in a garden, none esteemed them more, +yet own the discreet economy of his imaginative strokes, the homely +bluntness of his criticisms upon foreign vagaries, the English +sane-mindedness of his points, his feeling for broad effects and dislike +of niggling, the mingled shrewdness and benignity of his way of putting +things. It is just because Bacon thus treats of idealisms as though they +were realisms, because he so skilfully wraps up his fanciful figures in +matter-of-fact language that even the ordinary English reader +appreciates the art of Bacon's stiff garden, and entertains +art-aspirations unawares. + +Every reader of Bacon will recognise what I wish to point out. Here, +however, are a few examples:-- + +"For the ordering of the Ground within the Great Hedge, I leave it to a +Variety of Device. Advising, nevertheless, that whatsoever form you cast +it into; first it be not too busie, or full of work; wherein I, for my +part, do not like Images cut out in Juniper, or other garden stuffs; +_they are for Children_. Little low Hedges, round like Welts, with some +pretty Pyramids, I like well; and in some places Fair Columns upon +Frames of Carpenters' work. I would also have the Alleys spacious and +fair." + +"As for the making of Knots or Figures, with Divers Coloured earths, +that they may lie under the windows of the House, on that side which the +Garden stands, _they be but Toys, you may see as good sights many +times in Tarts_." + +"For Fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, _but Pools mar +all, and make the Garden unwholesome and full of flies and frogs_." + +"For fine Devices, of arching water without spilling, and making it rise +in several forms (of Feathers, Drinking Glasses, Canopies, and the like) +(see "The Dream of Poliphilus") _they be pretty things to look on, but +nothing to Health and Sweetness_." + +Thus throughout the Essay, with alternate rise and fall, do fancy and +judgment deliver themselves of charge and retort, making a kind of +logical see-saw. At the onset Fancy kicks the beam; at the middle, +Judgment is in the ascendant, and before the sentence is done the +balance rides easy. And this scrupulousness is not to be wholly +ascribed to the fastidious bent of a mind that lived in a labyrinth; it +speaks equally of the fineness of the man's ideal, which lifts his +standard sky-high and keeps him watchful to a fault in attaining desired +effects without running upon "trifles and jingles." The master-text of +the whole Essay seems to be the writer's own apothegm: "Nature is +commanded by obeying her." + +That a true gardener should love Nature goes without saying. And Bacon +loved Nature passionately, and gardens only too well. He tells us these +were his favourite sins in the strange document--half prayer, half +Apologia--written after he had made his will, at the time of his fall, +when he presumably concluded that _anything_ might happen. "Thy +creatures have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much more. I have +sought Thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found Thee in +Thy temples." + +Three more points about the essay I would like to comment upon. First, +That in spite of its lofty dreaming, it treats of the hard and dry side +of gardening as a science in so methodical a manner that but for what it +contains besides, and for its mint-mark of a great spirit, the thing +might pass as an extract from a more-than-ordinary practical gardener's +manual. Bacon does not write upon the subject like a man in another +planet, but like a man in a land of living men. + +Secondly, As to the attitude of Bacon and his school towards external +Nature. In them is no trace of the mawkish sentimentality of the modern +"landscape-gardener," proud of his discoveries, bustling to show how +condescending he can be towards Nature, how susceptible to a pastoral +melancholy. There is nothing here of the maundering of Shenstone over +his ideal landscape-garden that reads as though it would be a superior +sort of pedants' Cremorne, where "the lover's walk may have assignation +seats, with proper mottoes, urns to faithful lovers, trophies, garlands, +etc., by means of Art"; and where due consideration is to be given to +"certain complexions of soul that will prefer an orange tree or a myrtle +to an oak or cedar." The older men thought first of the effects that +they wished to attain, and proceeded to realise them without more ado. +They had no "codes of taste" to appeal to, and no literary law-givers to +stand in dread of. They applied Nature's raw materials as their art +required. And yet, compared with the methods of the heavy-handed realist +of later times such unscrupulousness had a merit of its own. To suit +their purposes the old gardeners may have defied Nature's ways and wont; +but, even so, they act as fine gentlemen should: they never pet and +patronise her: they have no blunt and blundering methods such as mark +the Nature-maulers of the Brown or Batty-Langley school: if they cut, +they do not mince, nor hack, nor tear, they cut clean. In one's better +moments one can almost sympathise with the "landscape-gardener's" +feelings as he reads, if he ever does read, Evelyn's classic book +"Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest-trees," how they trimmed the hedges +of hornbeam, "than which there is nothing more graceful," and the cradle +or close-walk with that perplext canopy which lately covered the seat in +his Majesty's garden at Hampton Court, and how the tonsile hedges, +fifteen or twenty feet high, are to be cut and kept in order "with a +scythe of four feet long, and very little falcated; this is fixed on a +long sneed or straight handle, and _does wonderfully expedite the +trimming of these and the like hedges_." + +Thirdly, Bacon's essay tells us all that an English garden _can_ be, or +_may_ be. Bacon writes not for his age alone but for all time; nay, his +essay covers so much ground that the legion of after-writers have only +to pick up the crumbs that fall from this rich man's table, and to +amplify the two hundred and sixty lines of condensed wisdom that it +contains. Its category of effects reaches even the free-and-easy +planting of the skirts of our dressed grounds, with flowers and shrubs +set in the turf "framed as much as may be to a natural wildness"--a +pretty trick of compromise which the modern book-writers would have us +believe they invented themselves. + +On one point the modern garden has the advantage and is bound to excel +the old, namely in its employment of foreign trees and shrubs. The +decorative use of "trees of curiosity," as the foreign trees were then +called, and the employment of variegated foliage, was not unknown to the +gardener of early days, but it was long before foreign plants were +introduced to any great extent. Loudon has taken the trouble to reckon +up the number of specimens that came to England century by century, and +we gather from this that the imports of modern times exceed those of +earlier times to an enormous extent. Thus, he computes that only 131 new +specimens of foreign trees were introduced into England in the +seventeenth century as against 445 in the following century. + +Yet, to follow up this interesting point, we may observe that Heutzner, +writing of English gardens in 1598, specially notes "the great variety +of trees and plants at Theobalds." + +Furthermore, to judge by Worlidge's "Systema Horticulturae" (1677) it +would seem that the practice of variegating, and of combining the +variegated foliage of plants and shrubs, was in existence at that time. + +"Dr Uvedale, of Enfield, is a great lover of plants," says Gibson, +writing in 1691, "and is become master of the greatest and choicest +collection of exotic greens that is perhaps anywhere in this land.... +His flowers are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture of them very +methodical and curious; but to speak of the garden in the whole, it does +not lie fine to please the eye, his delight and care lying more in the +ordering particular plants, than in the pleasing view and form of his +garden." + +"_Darby_, at _Hoxton_, has but a little garden, but is master of several +curious greens.... His Fritalaria Crassa (a green) had a flower on it of +the breadth of half-a-crown, like an embroidered star of many +colours.... He raises many striped hollies by inoculation," &c. +("Gleanings in Old Garden Literature," Hazlitt, p. 240.) + +And yet one last observation I would like to make, remembering Bacon's +subtilty, and how his every utterance is the sum of matured analytical +thought. This yearning for wild nature that makes itself felt all +through the Essay, this scheme for a "natural wildness" touching the hem +of artificiality; this provision for mounts of some pretty height "to +look abroad in the fields"; this care for the "Heath or Desart in the +going forth, planted not in any order;" the "little Heaps in the Nature +of Molehills (such as are in wild Heaths) to be set with pleasant herbs, +wild thyme, pinks, periwinkle, and the like Low Flowers being withall +sweet and sightly"--what does it imply? Primarily, it declares the +artist who knows the value of contrast, the interest of blended +contrariness; it is the cultured man's hankering after a many-faced +Nature readily accessible to him in his many moods; it tells, too, of +the drift of the Englishman towards familiar landscape effects, the +garden-mimicry which sets towards pastoral Nature; but above and beyond +all else, it is a true Baconian stroke. Is not the man's innermost self +here revealed, who in his eagerest moments struggled for detachment of +mind, held his will in leash according to his own astute maxim "not to +engage oneself too peremptorily in anything, but ever to have either a +window open to fly out of, or a secret way to retire by"? In a sense, +the garden's technique illustrates its author's personality. To change +Montaigne's reply to the king who admired his essays, Bacon might say, +"I am my garden." + +Many references to old garden-craft might be given culled from the +writings of Sir Thomas More, John Lyly, Gawen Douglas, John Gerarde, Sir +Philip Sidney, and others; all of whom are quoted in Mr Sieveking's +charming volume, "The praise of Gardens." But none will serve our +purpose so well as the notes of Heutzner, the German traveller, who +visited England in the 16th century, and Sir William Temple's +description of the garden of Moor Park. According to Heutzner, the +gardens at Theobalds, Nonsuch, Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Oxford were +laid out with considerable taste and extensively ornamented with +architectural and other devices. The Palace at Nonsuch is encompassed +with parks full of deer, with delicious gardens, groves ornamented with +trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks enclosed with trees. "In +the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of +marble, two fountains that spout water one round the other like a +pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of +their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with +Actaeon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and her +nymphs, with inscriptions." Theobalds, according to Heutzner's account, +has a "great variety of trees and plants," labyrinths, fountains of +white marble, a summerhouse, and statuary. The gardens had their +terraces, trellis-walks, and bowling-greens, the beds being laid out in +geometrical lines, and the hedges formed of yews, hollies, and limes, +clipped and shaped into cones, pyramids, and other devices. Among the +delights of Nonsuch was a wilderness of ten acres of extent. Of Hampton +Court, he says: "We saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the walls as +to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding common in England." + +No book on English gardens can afford to dispense with Temple's +description of the garden of Moor Park, which is given with considerable +relish, as though it satisfied the ideal of the writer. + + "The perfectest figure of a Garden I ever saw, either at Home or + Abroad."--"It lies on the side of a Hill (upon which the House + stands), but not very steep. The length of the House, where the + best Rooms and of most Use or Pleasure are, lies upon the Breadth + of the Garden, the Great Parlour opens into the Middle of a Terras + Gravel-Walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I + remember, about 300 Paces long, and broad in Proportion, the Border + set with Standard Laurels, and at large Distances, which have the + beauty of Orange-Trees, out of Flower and Fruit: From this Walk are + Three Descents by many Stone Steps, in the Middle and at each End, + into a very large Parterre. This is divided into Quarters by + Gravel-Walks, and adorned with Two Fountains and Eight Statues in + the several Quarters; at the End of the Terras-Walk are Two + Summer-Houses, and the Sides of the Parterre are ranged with two + large Cloisters, open to the Garden, upon Arches of Stone, and + ending with two other Summer-Houses even with the Cloisters, which + are paved with Stone, and designed for Walks of Shade, there are + none other in the whole Parterre. Over these two Cloisters are two + Terrasses covered with Lead and fenced with Balusters; and the + Passage into these Airy Walks, is out of the two Summer-Houses, at + the End of the first Terras-Walk. The Cloister facing the _South_ + is covered with Vines, and would have been proper for an + Orange-House, and the other for Myrtles, or other more common + Greens; and had, I doubt not, been cast for that Purpose, if this + Piece of Gardening had been then in as much Vogue as it is now. + + "From the middle of this Parterre is a Descent by many Steps flying + on each Side of a Grotto, that lies between them (covered with + Lead, and flat) into the lower Garden, which is all Fruit-Trees + ranged about the several Quarters of a Wilderness, which is very + Shady; the Walks here are all Green, the Grotto embellished with + Figures of Shell-Rock work, Fountains, and Water-works. If the Hill + had not ended with the lower Garden, and the Wall were not bounded + by a Common Way that goes through the Park, they might have added a + Third Quarter of all Greens; but this Want is supplied by a Garden + on the other Side of the House, which is all of that Sort, very + Wild, Shady, and adorned with rough Rock-work and Fountains." + ("Upon the Garden of Epicurus, or of Gardening.") + +The "Systema Horticulturae" of John Worlidge (1677) was, says Mr Hazlitt +("Gleanings in old Garden Literature," p. 40), apparently the earliest +manual for the guidance of gardeners. It deals with technical matters, +such as the treatment and virtue of different soils, the form of the +ground, the structure of walls and fences, the erection of arbours, +summer-houses, fountains, grottoes, obelisks, dials, &c. + +"The Scots Gardener," by John Reid (1683) follows this, and is, says Mr +Hazlitt, the parent-production in this class of literature. It is +divided into two portions, of which the first is occupied by technical +instructions for the choice of a site for a garden, the arrangement of +beds and walks, &c. + +Crispin de Passe's "Book of Beasts, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, &c.," +published in London (1630), heralds the changes which set in with the +introduction of the Dutch school of design. + +To speak generally of the subject, it is with the art of Gardening as +with Architecture, Literature, and Music--there is the Mediaeval, the +Elizabethan, the Jacobean, the Georgian types. Each and all are +English, but English with a difference--with a declared tendency this +way or that, which justifies classification, and illustrates the march +of things in this changeful modern world. + +The various types include the mediaeval garden, the square garden, the +knots and figures of Elizabethan times, with their occasional use of +coloured earths and gravels; the pleach-work and intricate borders of +James I.; the painted Dutch statues as at Ham House; the quaint canals, +the winding gravel-walks, the formal geometrical figures; the quincunx +and _etoile_ of William and Mary; later on, the smooth, bare, and bald +grounds of Kent, the photographic copyism of Nature by Brown, the +garden-farm of Shenstone, and other phases of the "Landscape style" +which served for the green grave of the old-fashioned English garden. + +In the early years of George III. a reaction against tradition set in +with so strong a current, that there remains scarcely any private garden +in the United Kingdom which presents in all its parts a sample of the +original design. + +Levens, near Kendal, of which I give two illustrations, is probably the +least spoiled of any remaining examples; and this was, it would seem, +planned by a Frenchman, but worked out under the restraining influences +of English taste. A picture on the staircase of the house, apparently +Dutch, bears the inscription, "M. Beaumont, gardener to King James II. +and Colonel James Grahme. He laid out the gardens at Hampton Court and +at Levens." The gardener's house at the place is still called "Beaumont +Hall." (See an admirable monograph upon "Col. James Grahme, of Levens," +by Mr Joscelin Bagot, Kendal.) + +One who is perhaps hardly in sympathy with the quaintness of the +gardens, thus writes: "There along a wide extent of terraced walks and +walls, eagles of holly and peacocks of yew still find with each +returning summer their wings clipt and their talons; there a stately +remnant of the old promenoirs such as the Frenchman taught our +fathers,[26] rather I would say to _build_ than plant--along which in +days of old stalked the gentlemen with periwigs and swords, the ladies +in hoops and furbelows--may still to this day be seen." + +[Footnote 26: With regard to this remark, we have to note a certain +amount of French influence throughout the reigns of the Jameses and +Charleses. Here is Beaumont, "gardener to James II.;" and we hear also +of Andre Mollet, gardener to James I.; also that Charles II. borrowed Le +Notre to lay out the gardens of Greenwich and St James' Park.] + +With the pictures of the gardens at Levens before us, with memories of +Arley, of Brympton, of Wilton,[27] of Montacute, Rockingham, Penshurst, +Severn End, Berkeley,[28] and Haddon, we may here pause a moment to +count up and bewail our losses. Wolsey's garden at Hampton Court is now +effaced, for the design of the existing grounds dates from William III. +Nonsuch in Surrey, near Epsom race-course, is a mere memory. In old days +this was a favourite resort of Queen Elizabeth; the garden was designed +by her father, but the greater part carried out by the last of the +Fitzalans. Evelyn, writing of Nonsuch, says: "There stand in the garden +two handsome stone pyramids and the avenue planted with rows of fair +elms, but the rest of these goodly trees, both of this and of Worcester +adjoining, were felled by those destructive and avaricious rebels in the +late war." + +[Footnote 27: The gardens at Wilton are exceedingly beautiful, and +contain noble trees, among which are a group of fine cedars and an ilex +beneath which Sir Philip Sidney is supposed to have reclined when he +wrote his "Arcadia" here. The Italian garden is one of the most +beautiful in England.] + +[Footnote 28: Of Berkeley, Evelyn writes: "For the rest the forecourt is +noble, so are the stables; and, above all, the gardens, which are +incomparable by reason of the inequality of the ground, and a pretty +_piscina_. The holly-hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of."] + +Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, had a noble garden; it was bought in 1564 +by Cecil, and became the favourite haunt of the Stuarts, but the house +was finally destroyed during the Commonwealth. + +My Lord _Fauconbergh's_ garden at _Sutton Court_ is gone too. As +described by Gibson in 1691, it had many charms. "The maze, or +wilderness, there is very pretty, being set all with greens, with a +cypress arbour in the middle," &c. + +Sir _Henry Capell's_ garden at Kew, described by the same writer, "has +as curious greens, and is as well kept as any about London.... His +orange trees and other choice greens stand out in summer in two walks +about fourteen feet wide, enclosed with a timber frame about seven feet +high, and set with silver firs hedge-wise.... His terrace walk, bare in +the middle and grass on either side, with a hedge of rue on one side +next a low wall, and a row of dwarf trees on the other, shews very +fine; and so do from thence his yew hedges with trees of the same at +equal distance, kept in pretty shapes with tonsure. His flowers and +fruits are of the best, for the advantage of which two parallel walls, +about fourteen feet high, were now raised and almost finished," &c. + +Sir _Stephen Fox's_ garden at _Chiswick_, "excels for a fair gravel walk +betwixt two yew hedges, with rounds and spires of the same, all under +smooth tonsure. At the far end of this garden are two myrtle hedges that +cross the garden. The other gardens are full of flowers and salleting, +and the walls well clad." + +Wimbledon House, which was rebuilt by Sir Thomas Cecil in 1588, and +surveyed by order of Parliament in 1649, was celebrated for its trees, +gardens, and shrubs. In the several gardens, which consisted of mazes, +wildernesses, knots, alleys, &c., are mentioned a great variety of fruit +trees and shrubs, particularly a "faire bay tree," valued at L1; and +"one very faire tree called the Irish arbutis, very lovely to look upon +and worth L1, 10s." (Lysons, I., 397.) + +The gardens at Sherborne Castle were laid out by Sir Walter Raleigh. +Coker, in his "Survey of Dorsetshire," written in the time of James I., +says that Sir Walter built in the park adjoining the old Castle, "a most +fine house which hee beautified with orchardes, gardens, and groves of +much varietie and great delight; soe that whether that you consider the +pleasantness of the seate, the goodnesse of the soyle, or the other +delicacies belonging unto it, it rests unparalleled by anie in those +partes" (p. 124). This same park, magnificently embellished with woods +and gardens, was "improved" away by the "landscape-gardener" Brown, who +altered the grounds. + +Cobham, near Gravesend, still famous in horticultural annals as Nonsuch +is for its apples, was the seat of the Brookes. The extent to which +fruit was cultivated in old time is seen by the magnitude of the +orangery at Beddington House, Surrey, which was two hundred feet long; +the trees mostly measured thirteen feet high, and in 1690 some ten +thousand oranges were gathered. + +Ham is described with much gusto by Evelyn: "After dinner I walked to +Ham to see the house and garden of the Duke of Lauderdale, which is +indeed inferior to few of the best villas in Italy itself; the house +furnished like a great Prince's, the parterres, flower-gardens, +orangeries, groves, avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, +aviaries, and all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world, +must needs be admirable." + +Bowyer House, Surrey, is described also by Evelyn as having a very +pretty grove of oaks and hedges of yew in the garden, and a handsome row +of tall elms before the court. This garden has, however, made way for +rows of mean houses. + +At Oxford, where you would have expected more respect for antiquity, the +walks and alleys, along which Laud had conducted Charles and Henrietta, +the bowling-green at Christ Church of Cranmer's time--all are gone. + +The ruthless clearance of these gardens of renown is sad to relate: "For +what sin has the plough passed over your pleasant places?" may be +demanded of numberless cases besides Blakesmoor. Southey, writing upon +this very point, adds that "feeling is a better thing than taste,"--for +"taste" did it at the bidding of critics who had no "feeling," and who +veered round with the first sign of change in the public mind about +gardening. Not content with watching the heroic gardens swept away, he +must goad the Vandals on to their sorry work by flattering them for +their good taste. For what Horace Walpole did to expose the +poverty-stricken design and all the poor bankrupt whimsies of the garden +of his day, we owe him thanks; but not for including in his condemnation +the noble work of older days. In touching upon Lord Burleigh's garden, +and that at Nonsuch, he says: "We find the _magnificent though false +taste_ was known here as early as the reigns of Henry VIII. and his +daughter." This is not bad, coming from the man who built a cockney +Gothic house adorned with piecrust battlements and lath-and-plaster +pinnacles; who spent much of his life in concocting a maze of walks in +five acres of ground, and was so far carried away by mock-rustic +sentiment as to have rakes and hay-forks painted as leaning against the +walls of his paddocks! But then Walpole, in his polished way, sneered +at everybody and everything; he "spelt every man backward," as Macaulay +observes; with himself he lived in eminent self-content. + +So too, after quoting Temple's description of the garden at Moor Park +with the master's little rhapsody--"the sweetest place I think that I +have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or +abroad"--Walpole has this icy sneer: "Any man might design and _build_ +as sweet a garden who had been born in and never stirred out of Holborn. +It was not peculiar in Sir William Temple to think in that manner." + +It is not wise, however, to lay too much stress upon criticisms of this +sort. After all, any phase of Art does but express the mind of its day, +and it cannot do duty for the mind of another time. "The old order +changeth, yielding place to new," and to take a critical attitude +towards the forms of an older day is almost a necessity of the case; +they soon become curiosities. Yet we may fairly regret the want of +tenderness in dealing with these gardens of the Elizabethan and Jacobean +eras, for, by all the laws of human expression, they should be +masterpieces. The ground-chord of the garden-enterprise of those days +was struck by Bacon, who rates buildings and palaces, be they never so +princely, as "but gross handiworks" where no garden is: "Men come to +build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the +Greater Perfection"--the truth of which saying is only too glaringly +apparent in the relative conditions of the arts of architecture and of +gardening in the present day! + +By all the laws of human expression, I say, these old gardens should be +masterpieces. The sixteenth century, which saw the English garden +formulated, was a time for grand enterprises; indeed, to this period is +ascribed the making of England. These gardens, then, are the handiwork +of the makers of England, and should bear the marks of heroes. They are +relics of the men and women who made our land both fine and famous in +the days of the Tudors; they represent the mellow fruit of the leisure, +the poetic reverie, the patient craft of men versed in great +affairs--big men, who thought and did big things--men of splendid genius +and stately notions--past-masters of the art of life who would drink +life to the lees. + +As gardeners, these old statesmen were no dabblers. They had the good +fortune to live in a current of ideas of formal device that touched art +at all points and was well calculated to assist the creative faculty in +design of all kinds. They lived before the art of bad gardening had been +invented; before pretty thoughts had palled the taste, before gardening +had learnt routine; while Nature smiled a virgin smile and had a sense +of unsolved mystery. More than this, garden-craft was then no mere craze +or passing freak of fashion, but a serious item in the round of +home-life; --gardening was a thing to be done as well as it could be +done. Design was fresh and open to individual treatment--men needed an +outlet for their love of, their elation at, the sight of beautiful +things, and behind them lay the background of far-reaching traditions to +encourage, inspire, protect experiment with the friendly shadow of +authority. + +An accomplished French writer has remarked that even the modest work of +Art may contain occasion for long processes of analysis. "Very great +laws," he says, "may be illustrated in a very small compass." And so one +thinks it is with the ancient garden. Looked at as a piece of design, it +is the blossom of English genius at one of its sunniest moments. It is a +bit of the history of our land. It embodies the characteristics of the +mediaeval, the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages just as faithfully as do +other phases of contemporary art. It contains the same principle of +beauty, the same sense of form, that animated these; it has the same +curious turns of expression, the same mixture of pedantry and subtle +sweetness; the same wistful daring and humorous sadness; the same +embroidery of nice fancy--half jocund, half grave, as--shall we +say--Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Spenser's "Faerie Queene," +Milton's "Comus," More's "Utopia," Bacon's Essays, Purcell's Madrigals, +John Thorpe's architecture at Longleat. The same spirit, the same wit +and fancy resides in each; they differ only in the medium of expression. + +To condemn old English gardening, root and branch, for its "false taste" +(and it was not peculiar to Walpole to think in that manner), was, in +truth, to indict our nation on a line of device wherein we excelled, +and to condemn device that represents the inspired dreams of some of +England's elect sons. + +To our sorry groundling minds the old pleasaunce may seem too rich and +fantastic, too spectacular, too much idealised. And if to be English one +must needs be _bourgeois_, the objection must stand. Here is developed +garden-craft, and development almost invariably means multiplicity of +forms and a marked departure from primaeval simplicity. Grant, if you +will, that Art is carried too far, and Nature not carried far enough in +the old garden, yet did it deserve better treatment. Judged both from +its human and its artistic side, the place is as loveable as it is +pathetic. It has the pathos of all art that survives its creators, the +pathos of all abandoned human idols, of all high human endeavour that is +blown upon. What is more, it holds, as it were, the spent passion of men +of Utopian dreams, the ideal (in one kind) of the spoiled children of +culture, the knight-errantry of the Renascence--whose imagination soared +after illimitable satisfaction, who were avowedly bent upon transforming +the brazen of this world into the golden, to whom desire was but the +first step to attainment, and failure an unknown experience. + +But even yet some may demur that the interest of the antique garden, as +we see it, is due to Nature direct, and not to art-agencies. It is +Nature who gives it its artistic qualities of gradation, contrast, play +of form and colour, the flicker of sunshine through the foliage, the +shadows on the grass--not the master who begot the thing, for has he +not been dead, and his vacant orbits choked with clay these two hundred +years and more! To him, of course, may be ascribed the primal thought of +the place, and, say, some fifty years of active participation in its +ordering and culture, but for the rest--for its poetic excitement, for +its yearly accesses of beauty--are they not to be credited in full to +the lenience of Time and the generous operations of Nature? + +Grant all that should rightly be granted to the disaffected grumbler, +and yet, in Mr Lowell's words for another, yet a parallel case, I plead +that "Poets are always entitled to a royalty on whatever we find in +their works; for these fine creations as truly build themselves up in +the brain as they are built up with deliberate thought." If a garden +owed none of its characteristics to its maker, if it had not expressed +the mind of its designer, why the essential differences of the garden of +this style and of that! Properly speaking, the music of all gardens is +framed out of the same simple gamut of Nature's notes--it is but one +music poured from myriad lips--yet out of the use of the same raw +elements what a variety of tunes can be made, each tune complete in +itself! And it is because we may identify the maker in his work; +because, like the unfinished air, abruptly brought to a close at the +master's death, the place is much as it was first schemed, one is +jealous for the honour of the man whose eye prophesied its ultimate +magic even as he initiated its plan, and drafted its lines. + +Many an English house has been hopelessly vulgarised and beggared by +the banishment of the old pleasaunces of the days of Elizabeth, or of +the Jameses and Charleses, and their wholesale demolition there and then +struck a blow at English gardening from which it has not yet recovered. +It may be admitted that, in the case of an individual garden here and +there, the violation of these relics may be condoned on the heathen +principle of tit for tat, because Art had, in the first instance, so to +speak, turned her back on some fair landscape that Providence had +provided upon the site, preferring to focus man's eye _within_ rather +than _without_ the garden's bounds, therefore the vengeance is merited. +Yet, where change was desirable, it had been better to modify than to +destroy. + + "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, + And burned is Apollo's laurel bough." + +Certain it is that along with the girdle of high hedge or wall has gone +that air of inviting mystery and homely reserve that our forefathers +loved, and which is to me one of the pleasantest traits of an old +English garden, best described as + + "A haunt of ancient peace." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN." + + "'Pealing from Jove to Nature's bar + Bold Alteration pleades + Large evidence; but Nature soon + Her righteous doom areads."--SPENSER. + + +Why were the old-fashioned gardens destroyed? Firstly, because the +traditional garden of the early part of the eighteenth century, when the +reaction set in, represented a style which had run to seed, and men were +tired of it; secondly, because the taste for foreign trees and shrubs, +that had existed for a long time previously, then came to a head, and it +was found that the old type of garden was not fitted for the display of +the augmented stock of foreign material. Here was a new element in +garden-craft, a new chance of decoration in the way of local colours in +planting, which required a new adjustment of garden-effects; and as +there was some difficulty in accommodating the new and the old, the +problem was met by the abolition of the old altogether. + +As to this matter of the sudden increase of specimen plants, Loudon +remarks that in the earlier century the taste for foreign plants was +confined to a few, and they not wealthy persons; but in the eighteenth +century the taste for planting foreign trees extended itself among rich +landed proprietors. A host of amateurs, botanists, and commercial +gardeners were busily engaged in enriching the British Arboretum, and +the garden-grounds had to be arranged for new effects and a new mode of +culture. In Loudon's "Arboretum" (p. 126) is a list of the species of +foreign trees and shrubs introduced into England up to the year 1830. He +calculates that the total number of specimens up to the time that he +wrote was about 1400, but the numbers taken by centuries are: in the +sixteenth century, 89; in the seventeenth century, 131; in the +eighteenth century, 445; and in the first three decades of the +nineteenth century, 699! + +Men stubbed up the old gardens because they had grown tired of their +familiar types, as they tire of other familiar things. The eighteenth +century was essentially a critical age, an age of enquiry, and +gardening, along with art, morals, and religion, came in for its share +of coffee-house discussion, and elaborate essay-writing, and nothing was +considered satisfactory. As to gardening, it was not natural enough for +the critics. The works of Salvator and Poussin had pictured the grand +and terrible in scenery, Thomson was writing naturalistic poetry, +Rousseau naturalistic prose. Garden-ornament was too classical and +formal for the varnished _litterateur_ of the _Spectator_ and the +_Guardian_--too symmetrical for the jingling rhymester of a sing-song +generation--too artificial for the essayist "'Pealing from Jove to +Nature's bar," albeit he is privately content to go on touching up his +groves and grottoes at Twickenham, securing the services of a peer + + "To form his quincunx, and to rank his vines." + +Gardens are looked upon as so much "copy" to the essayist. What affected +tastes have these critics! What a confession of counterfeit love, of +selfish literary interest in gardens is this of Addison's: "I think +there are as many kinds of gardening as of poetry. Your makers of +parterres and flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this +art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are +romance writers." How beside nature, beside garden-craft, are such +pen-man's whimsies! "Nothing to the true pleasure of a garden," Bacon +would say. + +Walpole's essay on gardening is entertaining reading, and his book gives +us glimpses of the country-seats of all the great ladies and gentlemen +who had the good fortune to be his acquaintances. His condemnation of +the geometrical style of gardening common in his day, though quieter in +tone than Pope's, was none the less effective in promoting a change of +style. He tells how in Kip's views of the seats of our nobility we have +the same "tiring and returning uniformity." Every house is approached by +two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a gravel-walk and two grass +plats or borders of flowers. "Each rises above the other by two or +three steps, and as many walks and terrasses; and so many iron gates, +that we recollect those ancient romances in which every entrance was +guarded by nymphs or dragons. At Lady Orford's, at Piddletown, in +Dorsetshire, there was, when my brother married, a double enclosure of +thirteen gardens, each, I suppose, not a hundred yards square, with an +enfilade of correspondent gates; and before you arrived at these, you +passed a narrow gut between two terrasses that rose above your head, and +which were crowned by a line of pyramidal yews. A bowling-green was all +the lawn admitted in those times, a circular lake the extent of +magnificence." + +Such an air of truth and soberness pervades Walpole's narrative, and to +so absurd an extent has formality been manifestly carried under the +auspices of Loudon and Wise, who had stocked our gardens with "giants, +animals, monsters, coats of arms, mottoes in yew, box, and holly," that +we are almost persuaded to be Vandals. "The compass and square, were of +more use in plantations than the nursery-man. The measured walk, the +quincunx, and the etoile imposed their unsatisfying sameness.... Trees +were headed, and their sides pared away; many French groves seem green +chests set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and summer-houses, +terminated every vista." It is all very well for Temple to recommend the +regular form of garden. "I should hardly advise any of these attempts" +cited by Walpole, "in the form of gardens among us; _they are adventures +of too hard achievement for any common hands_." The truth will out! The +"dainter sense" of garden-craft has vanished! According to Walpole, +garden-adventure is to be henceforth journeyman's work, and Brown, the +immortal kitchen-gardener, leads the way. + +It were unfair to suspect that the exigencies of sprightly writing had +carried Walpole beyond the bounds of accuracy in his description of the +stiff-garden as he knew it, for things were in some respects very bad +indeed. At the same time he is so engrossed with his abuse of old ways +of gardening, and advocacy of the landscape-gardener's new-fangled +notions, that his account of garden-craft generally falls short of +completeness. He omits, for instance, to notice the progress in +floriculture and horticulture of this time, the acquisitions being made +in the ornamental foreign plants to be cultivated in the open ground, +the green-house, and the stove. He omits to note that Loudon and Wise +stocked our gardens with more than giants, animals, monsters, &c., in +yew and box and holly. Because the names of these two worthies occur in +this gardening text-book of Walpole's, all later essayists signal them +out for blame. But Evelyn, who ranks as one of the three of England's +great gardeners of old days, has a kindlier word for them. He is +dilating upon the advantage to the gardener of the high clipped hedge as +a protection for his shrubs and flowers, and goes on to particularise an +oblong square, palisadoed with a hornbeam hedge "in that inexhaustible +magazine at Brompton Park, cultivated by those two industrious +fellow-gardeners, Mr Loudon and Mr Wise." This hedge protects the orange +trees, myrtles, and other rare perennials and exotics from the scorching +rays of the sun; and it equally well shelters the flowers. "Here the +Indian Narcissus, Tuberoses, Japan Lillies, Jasmines, Jonquills, +Periclimena, Roses, Carnations, with all the pride of the parterre, +intermixt between the tree-cases, flowery vases, busts, and statues, +entertain the eye, and breathe their redolent odours and perfumes to the +smell." Clearly there is an advantage in being a gardener if we write +about gardens (provided you are not a mere "landscape-gardener!"). + +One cannot deny that Horace Walpole did well to expose the absurd +vagaries which were being perpetrated about his time under Dutch +influences. Close alliance with Holland through the House of Orange had +affected every department of horticulture. True, it had enriched our +gardens and conservatories with many rare and beautiful species of +flowers and bulbs, and had imbued the English collector with the +tulip-mania. So far good. But to the same source we trace the reign of +the shears in the English garden, which made Art in a Garden ridiculous, +and gave occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. + +"The gardeners about London," says Mr Lambert, writing to the Linnaean +Transactions in 1712, "were remarkable for fine cut greens, and clipt +yews in the shapes of birds, dogs, men, ships, &c. Mr. Parkinson in +Lambeth was much noticed for these things, and he had besides a few +myrtles, oleanders, and evergreens." + + "The old order changeth ... + Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." + +And now is Art in a Garden become ridiculous. Since the beginning of +things English gardeners had clipped and trimmed their shrubs; but had +never carried the practice beyond a reasonable extent, and had combined +it with woody and shady effects. With the onset of Dutch influence +country-aspects vanish. Nature is reduced to a prosaic level. The +traditional garden, whose past had been one long series of noble chances +in fine company, now found content as the pedant's darling where it +could have no opening for living romance, but must be tricked out in +stage conventions, and dwindle more and more into a thing of shreds and +patches! + +Having arrived at such a pass, it was time that change should come, and +change did come, with a vengeance! But let us not suppose that the +change was from wrong to right. For, indeed, the revolution meant only +that formality gone mad should be supplanted by informality gone equally +mad. And we may note as a significant fact, that the point of departure +is the destruction of the garden's boundaries, and the substitution of +the ha-ha. It was not for the wild improvers to realise how Art that +destroys its own boundaries is certainly doomed to soon have no country +to boast of at all! It proved so in this case. From this moment, the +very thought of garden-ornament was clean put out of mind, and the +grass is carried up to the windows of the great house, as though the +place were nothing better than a farm-shanty in the wilds of +Westmoreland! + +But to return to the inauguration of the "landscape-garden." The hour +produced its men in Kent, and "the immortal Brown," as Repton calls him. +Like many another "discovery," theirs was really due to an accident. +Just as it was the closely-corked bottle that popped that gave birth to +champagne, so it was only when our heroes casually leaped the ha-ha that +they had made that they realised that all England outside was one vast +rustic garden, from whence it were a shame to exclude anything! + +So began the rage for making all the surroundings of a house assume a +supposed appearance of rude Nature. Levelling, ploughing, stubbing-up, +was the order of the day. The British navvy was in great request--in +fact the day that Kent and Brown discovered England was this worthy's +natal day. Artificial gardens must be demolished as impostures, and +wriggling walks and turf put where they had stood. Avenues must be cut +down or disregarded; the groves, the alleys, the formal beds, the +terraces, the balustrades, the clipt hedges must be swept away as things +intolerable. For the "landscape style" does not countenance a straight +line, or terrace or architectural form, or symmetrical beds about the +house; for to allow these would not be to photograph Nature. As carried +into practice, the style demands that the house shall rise abruptly +from the grass, and the general surface of the ground shall be +characterised by smoothness and bareness (like Nature)! Hence in the +grounds of this period, house and country + + "Wrapt all o'er in everlasting green + Make one dull, vapid, smooth and tranquil scene." + +There is to my mind no more significant testimony to the attractiveness +and loveableness of the _regular_ garden as opposed to the opened-out +barbarism of the landscape-gardener's invention, than Horace Walpole's +lament over the old gardens at Houghton,[29] which has the force of +testimony wrung from unwilling lips:-- + + "When I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They told me it + was now called the '_pleasure-ground_.' What a dissonant idea of + pleasure! Those groves, those _alleys_, where I have passed so many + charming moments, are now stripped up, or overgrown; many fond + paths I could not unravel, though with a very exact clue in my + memory. I met two gamekeepers and a thousand hares! In the days + when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity, I hated + Houghton and its solitude; _yet I loved this garden_; as now, with + many regrets, I love Houghton;--Houghton, I know not what to call + it: a monument of grandeur or ruin!"--(Walpole's Letters.) + +[Footnote 29: Houghton was built by Sir R. Walpole, between 1722 and +1738. The garden was laid out in the stiff, formal manner by Eyre, "an +imitator of Bridgman," and contained 23 acres. The park contains some +fine old beeches. More than 1000 cedars were blown down here in February +1860.] + +"What a dissonant idea of pleasure," this so-called "pleasure-ground of +the landscape-gardener!" "Those groves, those alleys where I have passed +so many charming moments, stripped up! How I loved this garden!" Here is +the biter bit, and it were to be more than human not to smile! + +With all the proper appliances at hand it did not take long to +transform the stiff garden into the barbaric. It did not take long to +find out how _not_ to do what civilization had so long been learning how +to do! The ancient "Geometric or Regular style" of garden--the garden of +the aristocrat, with all its polished classicism--was to make way for +the so-called "Naturalesque or Landscape style," and the garden of the +_bourgeois_. Hope rose high in the breasts of the new professoriate. "A +boon! a boon!" quoth the critic. And there is deep joy in navvydom. +"Under the great leader, Brown," writes Repton ("Landscape Gardening," +p. 327), "or rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught +that Nature was to be our only model." It was a grand moment. A Daniel +had come to judgment! Nay, did not Brown "live to establish a fashion in +gardening which might have been expected to endure as long as Nature +should exist!" + +The Landscape School of Gardeners, so-called, has been the theme of a +great deal of literature, but with the exception of Walpole's and +Addison's essays, and Pope's admirable chaff, very little has survived +the interest it had at the moment of publication. + +The other chief writers of this School, in its early phase, are George +Mason, Whately,[30] Mason the poet, and Shenstone, our moon-struck +friend quoted above, with his "assignation seats with proper mottoes, +urns to faithful lovers," &c. Dr Johnson did not think much of +Shenstone's contributions to gardening: + + "He began from this time to point his prospects, to diversify his + surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters, which he + did with such judgement and such fancy as made his little domain + the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful--a place to + be visited by travellers and _copied by designers_. Whether to + plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every + turn where there is an object to catch the view, to make water run + where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to + leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the + plantation where there is something to be hidden--demand any great + powers of the mind, I will not enquire; perhaps a surly and sullen + spectator may think such performances rather the sport than the + business of human reason."--(Dr Johnson, "Lives of the Poets," + Shenstone.) + +[Footnote 30: Thomas Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening," was +published in 1770, fifteen years before Walpole's "Essay on Modern +Gardening." Gilpin's book "On Picturesque Beauty," though published in +part in 1782, belongs really to the second phase of the Landscape +School. Shenstone's "Unconnected Thoughts on the Garden" was published +in 1764, and is written pretty much from the standpoint of Kent. "An +Essay on Design in Gardening," by G. Mason, was published in 1795.] + +Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening," published in 1770, are +well written and distinctly valuable as bearing upon the historical side +of the subject. It says little for his idea of the value of Art in a +garden, or of the function of a garden as a refining influence in life, +to find Whately recommending "a plain field or a sheep-walk" as part of +a garden's embellishments--"as an agreeable relief, and even wilder +scenes." + +But what astounds one more is, that a writer of Whately's calibre can +describe Kent's gardens at Stowe, considered to be his masterpiece, as a +sample of the non-formality of the landscape-gardener's Art, while he +takes elaborate pains to show that it is full of would-be artistic +subterfuges in Nature, full of architectural shams throughout. These +gardens were begun by Bridgman, "Begun," Whately says, "when regularity +was in fashion; and the original boundary is still preserved on account +of its magnificence, for round the whole circuit, of between three and +four miles, is carried a very broad gravel-walk, planted with rows of +trees, and open either to the park or the country; a deep sunk-fence +attends it all the way, and comprehends a space of near 400 acres. But +in the interior spaces of the garden few traces of regularity appear; +where it yet remains in the plantations it is generally disguised; every +symptom almost of formality is obliterated from the ground; and an +octagon basin at the bottom is now converted into an irregular piece of +water, which receives on one hand two beautiful streams, and falls on +the other down a cascade into a lake." + +And then follows a list of sham architectural features that are combined +with sham views and prospects to match. "The whole space is divided into +a number of scenes, each distinguished with taste and fancy; and the +changes are so frequent, so sudden and complete, the transitions so +artfully conducted, that the ideas are never continued or repeated to +satiety." In the front of the house two elegant Doric pavilions. On the +brow of some rising grounds a Corinthian arch. On a little knoll an open +Ionic rotunda--an Egyptian pyramid stands on its brow; the Queen's +Pillar in a recess on the descent, the King's Pillar elsewhere; all the +three buildings mentioned are "peculiarly adapted to a garden scene." +In front of a wood three pavilions joined by arcades, all of the Ionic +order, "characteristically proper for a garden, and so purely +ornamental." Then a Temple of Bacchus, the Elysian fields, British +remains; misshaped elms and ragged firs are frequent in a scene of +solitude and gloom, which the trunks of dead trees assist. Then a large +Gothic building, with slated roofs, "in a noble confusion"; then the +Elysian fields, seen from the other side, a Palladian bridge, Doric +porticoes, &c, the whole thing finished off with the Temple of Concord +and Victory, probably meant as a not-undeserved compliment to the +successfully chaotic skill of the landscape-gardener, who is nothing if +not irregular, natural, non-formal, non-fantastical, non-artificial, and +non-geometrical. + +Two other points about Whately puzzle me. How comes he to strain at the +gnat of formality in the old-fashioned garden, yet readily swallow the +camel at Stowe? How can he harmonise his appreciation of the elaborately +contrived and painfully assorted shams at Stowe, with his +recommendation, of a sheep-walk in your garden "as an agreeable relief, +and even wilder scenes"? + +Whether the beauty of the general disposition of the ground at Stowe is +to be attributed to Kent or to Bridgman, who began the work, as Whately +says, "when regularity was in fashion," I cannot say. It is right to +observe, however, that the prevailing characteristic of Kent's and +Brown's landscapes was their smooth and bald surface. "Why this art has +been called 'landscape-gardening,'" says the plain-spoken Repton, +"perhaps he who gave it the title may explain. I can see no reason, +unless it be the efficacy which it has shown in destroying landscapes, +in which, indeed, it seems infallible." (Repton, p. 355.) "Our +virtuosi," said Sir William Chambers, "have scarcely left an acre of +shade, or three trees growing in a line from the Land's End to the +Tweed." + +It did not take the wiser spirits long to realise that Nature left alone +was more natural. And this same Repton, who began by praising "the great +leader Brown," has to confess again and again that, so far as results +go, he is mistaken. The ground, he laments, must be everlastingly moved +and altered. "One of the greatest difficulties I have experienced in +practice proceeds from that fondness for levelling so prevalent in all +Brown's workmen; every hillock is by them lowered, and every hollow +filled, to produce a level surface." (Repton, p. 342.) Or again (p. +347): "There is something so fascinating in the appearance of water, +that Mr Brown thought it carried its own excuse, however unnatural the +situation; and therefore, in many places, under his direction, I have +found water, on the tops of the hills, which I have been obliged to +remove into lower ground _because the deception was not sufficiently +complete to satisfy the mind as well as the eye_." Indeed, in this +matter of levelling, Brown's system does not, on the face of it, differ +from Le Notre's, where the natural contour of the landscape was not of +much account; or rather, it was thought the better if it had no natural +contour at all, but presented a flat plain or plateau with no +excrescences to interfere with the designer's schemes. + +So much, then, for the pastoral simplicity of Nature edited by the +"landscape-gardener." And let us note that under the auspices of the new +_regime_, not only is Nature to be changed, but changed more than was +ever dreamt of before; the transformation shall at once be more +determined in its character and more deceptive than had previously been +attempted. We were to have an artistically natural world, not a +naturally artistic one; the face of the landscape was to be purged of +its modern look and made to look primaeval. And in this doing, or +undoing, of things, the only art that was to be admitted was the art of +consummate deceit, which shall "satisfy the mind as well as the eye." +Yet call the man pope or presbyter, and beneath his clothes he is the +same man! There is not a pin to choose as regards artificiality in the +_aims_ of the two schools, only in the _results_. The naked or +_undressed_ garden has studied irregularity, while the _dressed_ garden +has studied regularity and style. The first has, perhaps, an excessive +regard for expression, the other has an emphatic scorn for expression. +One garden has its plotted levels, its avenues, its vistas, its sweeping +lawns, its terraces, its balustrades, colonnades, geometrical beds, +gilded temples, and sometimes its fountains that won't play, and its +fine vases full of nothing! The other begins with fetching back the +chaos of a former world, and has for its category of effects, sham +primaevalisms, exaggerated wildness, tortured levellings, cascades, +rocks, dead trunks of trees, ruined castles, lakes on the top of hills, +and sheep-runs hard by your windows. One school cannot keep the snip of +the scissors off tree and shrub, the other mimics Nature's fortuitous +wildness in proof of his disdain for the white lies of Art. + +And all goes to show, does it not? that inasmuch as the art of gardening +implies craft, and as man's imitation of Nature is bound to be unlike +Nature, it were wise to be frankly inventive in gardening on Art lines. +Success may attend one's efforts in the direction of Art, but in the +direction of Nature, never. + +The smooth, bare, and almost bald appearance which characterises Brown +and Kent's school fails to satisfy for long, and there springs up +another school which deals largely in picturesque elements, and rough +intricate effects. The principles of the "Picturesque School," as it was +called, are to be found in the writings of the Rev. William Gilpin and +Sir Uvedale Price. Their books are full of careful observations upon the +general composition of landscape-scenery, and what was then called +"Landscape Architecture," as though every English building of older days +that was worth a glance had not been "Landscape Architecture" fit for +its site! Gilpin's writings contain an admirable discourse upon "Forest +Scenery," well illustrated. This work is in eight volumes, in part +published in 1782, and it consists mainly in an account of the author's +tours in every part of Great Britain, with a running commentary on the +beauties of the scenery, and a description of the important country +seats he passed on the way. Price helped by his writings to stay the +rage for destroying avenues and terraces, and we note that he is fully +alive to the necessity of uniting a country-house with the surrounding +scenery by architectural adjuncts. + +The taste for picturesque gardening was doubtless helped by the growing +taste for landscape painting, exhibited in the works of the school of +Wilson and Gainsborough, and in the pastoral writings of Thomson, +Crabbe, Cowper, and Gray. It would farther be accelerated, as we +suggested at the outset of this chapter, by the large importation of +foreign plants and shrubs now going on. + +What is known as the Picturesque School soon had for its main exponent +Repton. He was a genius in his way--a born gardener,[31] able and +thoughtful in his treatments, and distinguished among his fellows by a +broad and comprehensive grasp of the whole character and surroundings of +a site, in reference to the general section of the land, the style of +the house to which his garden was allied, and the objects for which it +was to be used. The sterling quality of his writings did much to clear +the air of the vapourings of the critics who had gone before him, and +his practice, founded as it was upon sound principles, redeemed the +absurdities of the earlier phase of his school and preserved others from +further development of the silly rusticities upon which their mind +seemed bent. Although some of his ideas may now be thought pedantic and +antiquated, the books which contain them will not die. Passages like the +following mark the man and his aims: "I do not profess to follow Le +Notre or Brown, but, selecting beauties from the style of each, to adopt +so much of the grandeur of the former as may accord with a palace, and +so much of the grace of the latter as may call forth the charms of +natural landscape. Each has its proper situation; and good taste will +make fashion subservient to good sense" (p. 234). "In the rage for +picturesque beauty, let us remember that the landscape holds an inferior +rank to the historical picture; one represents nature, the other relates +to man in a state of society" (p. 236). + +[Footnote 31: Loudon calls this School "Repton's," the "_Gardenesque_" +School, its characteristic feature being "the display of the beauty of +trees and other plants _individually_."] + +Repton sums up the whole of his teaching in the preface to his "Theory +and Practice of Landscape Gardening" under the form of objections to +prevailing errors, and they are so admirable that I cannot serve the +purposes of my book better than to insert them here. + +Objection No. 1. "There is no error more prevalent in modern gardening, +or more frequently carried to excess, than taking away hedges to unite +many small fields into one extensive and naked lawn before plantations +are made to give it the appearance of a park; and where ground is +subdivided by sunk fences, imaginary freedom is dearly purchased at the +expense of actual confinement." + +No. 2. "The baldness and nakedness round the house is part of the same +mistaken system, of concealing fences to gain extent. A palace, or even +an elegant villa, in a grass field, appears to me incongruous; _yet I +have seldom had sufficient influence to correct this common error_." + +No. 3. "An approach which does not evidently lead to the house, or which +does not take the shortest course, cannot be right. (This rule must be +taken with certain limitations.) The shortest road across a lawn to a +house will seldom be found graceful, and often vulgar. A road bordered +by trees in the form of an avenue may be straight without being vulgar; +and grandeur, not grace or elegance, is the expression expected to be +produced." + +No. 4. "A poor man's cottage, divided into what is called a _pair of +lodges_, is a mistaken expedient to mark importance in the entrance to a +park." + +No. 5. "The entrance-gate should not be visible from the mansion, unless +it opens into a courtyard." + +No. 6. "The plantation surrounding a place called a _Belt_ I have never +advised; nor have I ever willingly marked a drive, or walk, completely +round the verge of a park, except in small villas, where a dry path +round a person's own field is always more interesting than any other +walk." + +No 7. "Small plantations of trees, surrounded by a fence, are the best +expedients to form groups, because trees planted singly seldom grow +well; neglect of thinning and removing the fence has produced that ugly +deformity called a _Clump_." + +No. 8. "Water on a eminence, or on the side of a hill, is among the most +common errors of Mr Brown's followers; in numerous instances I have been +allowed to remove such pieces of water from the hills to the valleys, +but in many my advice has not prevailed." + +No. 9. "Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of Nature. +Thus artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery can only be great by +deception, and the mind acquiesces in the fraud after it is detected, +but in works of Art every trick ought to be avoided. Sham churches, sham +ruins, sham bridges, and everything which appears what it is not, +disgusts when the trick is discovered." + +No. 10. "In buildings of every kind the _character_ should be strictly +observed. No incongruous mixture can be justified. To add Grecian to +Gothic, or Gothic to Grecian, is equally absurd; and a sharp pointed +arch to a garden gate or a dairy window, however frequently it occurs, +is not less offensive than Grecian architecture, in which the standard +rules of relative proportion are neglected or violated." + +The perfection of landscape-gardening consists in the fullest attention +to these principles, _Utility_, _Proportion_, and _Unity_, or harmony of +parts to the whole. (Repton, "Landscape Gardening," pp. 128-9.) + +The best advice one can give to a young gardener is--_know your Repton_. + +The writings of the new school of gardening, of which Repton is a +notable personage in its later phase, are not, however, on a par with +the writings of the old traditional school, either as pleasant garden +literature, or in regard to broad human interest or artistic quality. +They are hard and critical, and never lose the savour of the heated air +of controversy in which they were penned. Indeed, I can think of no more +sure and certain cure for a bad attack of garden-mania--nothing that +will sooner wipe the bloom off your enjoyment of natural beauty--than a +course of reading from the Classics of Landscape-garden literature! "I +only sound the clarion," said the urbane master-gardener of an earlier +day, "but I enter not into the battle." But these are at one another's +throats! Who enters here must leave his dreams of fine gardening behind, +for he will find himself in a chilly, disenchanted world, with nothing +more romantic to feed his imagination upon than "Remarks on the genius +of the late Mr. Brown," Critical enquiries, Observations on taste, +Difference between landscape gardening and painting, Price upon Repton, +Repton upon Price, Repton upon Knight, further answers to Messrs Price +and Knight, &c. But all this is desperately dull reading, hurtful to +one's imagination, fatal to garden-fervour.[32] And naturally so, for +analysis of the processes of garden-craft carried too far begets loss of +faith in all. Analysis is a kill-joy, destructive of dreams of beauty. +"We murder to dissect." That was a true word of the cynic of that day, +who summed up current controversy upon gardening in the opinion that +"the works of Nature were well executed, but in a bad taste." The +quidnuncs' books about gardening are about as much calculated to give +one delight, as the music the child gets out of the strings of an +instrument that it broke for the pride of dissection. Even Addison, with +the daintiest sense and prettiest pen of them all, shows how thoroughly +gardening had lost + + ... "its happy, country tone, + Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note + Of men contention-tost,"-- + +as he thrums out his laboured coffee-house conceit. "I think there are +as many kinds of gardening as poetry; your makers of parterres and +flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art; contrivers +of bowers and grottoes, treillages, and cascades, are Romance writers. +Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets." Nor is his elaborate argument +meant to prove the gross inferiority of Art in a garden to unadorned +Nature more inspiring. Nay, what is one to make of even the logic of +such argument as this? "If the products of Nature rise in value +according as they more or less resemble those of Art, we may be sure +that artificial works receive a greater advantage from their resemblance +of such as are natural." (_Spectator._) But who _does_ apply the +Art-standard to Nature, or value her products as they resemble those of +Art? And has not Sir Walter well said: "Nothing is more the child of Art +than a garden"? And Loudon: "All art, to be acknowledged, as art must be +avowed." + +[Footnote 32: A candid friend thus writes to Repton: "You may have +perceived that I am rather _too much_ inclined to the Price and Knight +_party_, and yet I own to you that I have been often so much disgusted +by the affected and technical language of connoisseurship, that I have +been sick of pictures for a month, and almost of Nature, when the same +jargon was applied to her." (Repton, p. 232.)] + +One prefers to this cold Pindaric garden-homage the unaffected, direct +delight in the sweets of a garden of an earlier day; to realise with old +Mountaine how your garden shall produce "a jucunditie of minde;" to +think with Bishop Hall, as he gazes at his tulips, "These Flowers are +the true Clients of the Sunne;" to be brought to old Lawson's state of +simple ravishment, "What more delightsome than an infinite varietie of +sweet-smelling flowers? decking with sundry colours the green mantle of +the Earth, colouring not onely the earth, but decking the ayre, and +sweetning every breath and spirit;" to taste the joys of living as, +taking Robert Burton's hand, you "walk amongst orchards, gardens, +bowers, mounts and arbours, artificial wildernesses, green thickets, +groves, lawns, rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, +between wood and water, in a fair meadow, by a river side, to disport in +some pleasant plain or park, must needs be a delectable recreation;" to +be inoculated with old Gerarde of the garden-mania as he bursts forth, +"Go forward in the name of God: graffe, set, plant, nourishe up trees in +every corner of your grounde;" to trace with Temple the lines and +features that go to make the witchery of the garden at Moor Park, "in +all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the Figure and +Disposition, that I have ever seen," and which you may follow if you are +not "above the Regards of Common Expence;" to hearken to Bacon expatiate +upon the Art which is indeed "the purest of all humane pleasure, the +greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man;" to feel in what he says the +value of an ideal, the magic of a style backed by passion--to have +garden precepts wrapped in pretty metaphors (such as that "because the +Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air--_where it comes and goes +like the warbling of Musick_--than in the Hand, therefore nothing is +more fit for that Delight than to know what be the Flowers and Plants +that do best perfume the Air;")--to be taught how to order a garden to +suit all the months of the year, and have things of beauty enumerated +according to their seasons--to feel rapture at the sweet-breathing +presence of Art in a garden--to learn from one who knows how to garden +in a grand manner, and yet be finally assured that beauty does not +require a great stage, that the things thrown in "for state and +magnificence" are but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden--this is +garden-literature worth reading! + +Compared with the frank raptures of such writings as these, the +laboured treatises of the landscape-school are but petty hagglings over +the mint and cummin of things. You go to the writings of the masters of +the old formality, to come away invigorated as by a whiff of mountain +air straight off Helicon; they shall give one fresh enthusiasm for +Nature, fresh devotion to Art, fresh love for beautiful things. But from +the other-- + + "The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I"-- + +they deal with technicalities in the affected language of +connoisseurship; they reveal a disenchanted world, a world of exploded +hopes given over to the navvies and the critics; and it is no wonder +that writings so prompted should have no charm for posterity; charm they +never had. They are dry as summer dust. + +For the honour of English gardening, and before closing this chapter, I +would like to recall that betweenity--the garden of the transition--done +at the very beginning of the century of revolution, which unites +something of the spirit of the old and of the new schools. Here is Sir +Walter Scott's report of the Kelso garden as he _first_ knew it, and +_after_ it had been mauled by the landscape-gardener. It was a garden of +seven or eight acres adjacent to the house of an ancient maiden lady: + + "It was full of long straight walks between hedges of yew and + hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were + thickets of flowering shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which + access was obtained through a little maze of contorted walks, + calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a + splendid Platanus or Oriental plane, a huge hill of leaves, one of + the noblest specimens of that regularly beautiful tree which we + remember to have seen. In different parts of the garden were fine + ornamental trees which had attained great size, and the orchard was + filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats + and trellis-walks, and a banqueting-house. Even in our time this + little scene, intended to present a formal exhibition of vegetable + beauty, was going fast to decay. The parterres of flowers were no + longer watched by the quiet and simple _friends_ under whose + auspices they had been planted, and much of the ornament of the + domain had been neglected or destroyed to increase its productive + value. We visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its + air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded was gone; + the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning + of this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, + and the whole character of the place so much destroyed that I was + glad when I could leave it."--("Essay on Landscape Gardening," + _Quarterly Review_, 1828.[33]) + +[Footnote 33: "The Praise of Gardens," pp. 185-6.] + +Another garden, of later date than this at Kelso, and somewhat less +artistic, is that described by Mr Henry A. Bright in "The English Flower +Garden."[34] + + "One of the most beautiful gardens I ever knew depended almost + entirely on the arrangement of its lawns and shrubberies. It had + certainly been most carefully and adroitly planned, and it had + every advantage in the soft climate of the West of England. The + various lawns were divided by thick shrubberies, so that you + wandered on from one to the other, and always came on something + new. In front of these shrubberies was a large margin of + flower-border, gay with the most effective plants and annuals. At + the corner of the lawn a standard _Magnolia grandiflora_ of great + size held up its chaliced blossoms; at another a tulip-tree was + laden with hundreds of yellow flowers. Here a magnificent + _Salisburia_ mocked the foliage of the maiden-hair; and here an old + cedar swept the grass with its large pendent branches. But the main + breadth of each lawn was never destroyed, and past them you might + see the reaches of a river, now in one aspect, now in another. Each + view was different, and each was a fresh enjoyment and surprise. + + "A few years ago and I revisited the place; the 'improver' had been + at work, and had been good enough to _open up_ the view. + Shrubberies had disappeared, and lawns had been thrown together. + The pretty peeps among the trees were gone, the long vistas had + become open spaces, and you saw at a glance all that there was to + be seen. Of course the herbaceous borders, which once contained + numberless rare and interesting plants, had disappeared, and the + lawn in front of the house was cut up into little beds of red + pelargoniums, yellow calceolarias, and the rest." + +[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, p. 296.] + +In this example we miss the condensed beauty and sweet austerities of +the older garden at Kelso: nevertheless, it represents a phase of +workmanship which, for its real insight into the secrets of +garden-beauty, we may well be proud of, and deplore its destruction at +the hands of the landscape-gardener. + +All arts are necessarily subject to progression of type. "Man cannot +escape from his time," says Mr Morley, and with changed times come +changed influences. But, then, to _progress_ is not to _change_: "to +progress is to live," and one phase of healthy progression will tread +the heels of that which precedes it. The restless changeful methods of +modern gardening are, however, not to be ascribed to the healthy +development of one consistent movement, but to chaos--to the revolution +that ensued upon the overthrow of tradition--to the indeterminateness of +men who have no guiding principles, who take so many wild leaps in the +dark, in the course of which, rival champions jostle one another and +only the fittest survives. + +In treating of Modern English Gardening, it is difficult to make our way +along the tortuous path of change, development it is not, that set in +with the banishment of Art in a garden. Critical writers have done their +best to unravel things, to find the relation of each fractured phase, +and to give each phase a descriptive name, but there are still many +unexplained points, many contradictions that are unsolved, to which I +have already alluded. + +Loudon's Introduction to Repton's "Landscape Gardening" gives perhaps +the most intelligible account of the whole matter. The art of laying out +grounds has been displayed in two very distinct styles: the first of +which is called the "Ancient Roman, Geometric, Regular, or Architectural +Style; and the second the Modern, _English_,[35] Irregular, Natural, or +Landscape Style." + +[Footnote 35: This is a little unpatriotic of Loudon to imply that the +_English_ had no garden-style till the 18th century, but one can stand a +great deal from Loudon.] + +We have, he says, the Italian, the French, and the Dutch Schools of the +Geometric Style. The Modern, or Landscape Style, when it first displayed +itself in English country residences, was distinctly marked by the +absence of everything that had the appearance of a terrace, or of +architectural forms, or lines, immediately about the house. The house, +in short, rose abruptly from the lawn, and the general surface of the +ground was characterised by smoothness and bareness. This constituted +the first School of the Landscape Style, introduced by Kent and Brown. + +This manner was followed by the romantic or Picturesque Style, which +inaugurates a School which aimed at producing architectural tricks and +devices, allied with scenery of picturesque character and sham +rusticity. The conglomeration at Stowe, albeit that it is attributed to +Kent, shows what man can do in the way of heroically wrong +garden-craft. + +To know truly how to lay out a garden "_After a more Grand and Rural +Manner than has been done before_," you cannot do better than get Batty +Langley's "New Principles of Gardening," and among other things you have +rules whereby you may concoct natural extravagances, how you shall prime +prospects, make landscapes that are pictures of nothing and very like; +how to copy hills, valleys, dales, purling streams, rocks, ruins, +grottoes, precipices, amphitheatres, &c. + +The writings of Gilpin and Price were effective in undermining Kent's +School; they helped to check the rage for destroying avenues and +terraces, and insisted upon the propriety of uniting a country-house +with the surrounding scenery by architectural appendages. The leakage +from the ranks of Kent's School was not all towards the Picturesque +School, but to what Loudon terms Repton's School, which may be +considered as combining all that was excellent in what had gone before. + +Following upon these phases is one that is oddly called the +"_Gardenesque_" Style, the leading feature of which is that it +illustrates the beauty of trees, and other plants _individually_; in +short, it is the _specimen_ style. According to the practice of all +previous phases of modern gardening, trees, shrubs, and flowers were +indiscriminately mixed and crowded together, in shrubberies or other +plantations. According to the Gardenesque School, all the trees and +shrubs are arranged to suit their kinds and dimensions, and to display +them to advantage. The ablest exponents of the school are Loudon in the +recent past, and Messrs Marnock and Robinson in the present, and their +method is based upon Loudon. + +To know how to lay out a garden after the most approved modern fashion +we have but to turn to the deservedly popular pages of "The English +Flower Garden." This book contains not only model designs and commended +examples from various existing gardens, but text contributed by some +seventy professional and amateur gardeners. Even the gardener who has +other ideals and larger ambitions than are here expected, heartily +welcomes a book so well stored with modern garden-lore up to date, with +suggestions for new aspects of vegetation, new renderings of plant life, +and must earnestly desire to see any system of gardening made perfect +after its kind-- + + ... "I wish the sun should shine + On all men's fruits and flowers, as well as mine." + +Gardening is, above all things, a progressive Art which has never had so +fine a time to display its possibilities as now, if we were only wise +enough to freely employ old experiences and modern opportunities. People +are, however, so readily content with their stereotyped models, with +barren imitations, with their petty list of specimens, when instead of +half-a-dozen kinds of plants, their garden has room for hundreds of +different plants of fine form--hardy or half-hardy, annual and +bulbous--which would equally well suit the British garden and add to its +wealth of beauty by varied colourings in spring, summer, and autumn. At +present "the choke-muddle shrubbery, in which the poor flowering shrubs +dwindle and kill each other, generally supports a few ill-grown and +ill-chosen plants, but it is mainly distinguished for wide patches of +bare earth in summer, over which, in better hands, pretty green things +might crowd." The specimen plant has no chance of displaying itself +under such conditions. + + * * * * * + +Into so nice a subject as the practice of Landscape-gardening of the +present day it is not my intention to enter in detail, and for two good +reasons. In the first place, the doctrines of a sect are best known by +the writings of its representatives; and in this case, happily, both +writings and representatives are plentiful. Secondly, I do not see that +there is much to chronicle. Landscape-gardening is, in a sense, still in +its fumbling stage; it has not increased its resources, or done anything +heroic, even on wrong lines; it has not advanced towards any permanent, +definable system of ornamentation since it began its gyrations in the +last century. Its rival champions still beat the air. Even Repton was +better off than the men of to-day, for he had, at least, his Protestant +formulary of Ten Objections to swear by, which "mark those errors or +absurdities in modern gardening and architecture to which I have never +willingly subscribed" (p. 127, "Theory and Practice of Landscape +Gardening," 1803, quoted in full above). + +But the present race of landscape-gardeners are, it strikes me, as much +at sea as ever. True they threw up traditional methods as unworthy, but +they had not learnt their own Art according to Nature before they began +to practise it; and they are still in the throes of education. Their +intentions are admirable beyond telling, but their work exhibits in the +grossest forms the very vices they condemn in the contrary school; for +the expression of their ideas is self-conscious, strained, and +pointless. To know at a glance their position towards Art in a garden, +how crippled their resources, how powerless to design, let me give an +extract from Mr Robinson. He is speaking of an old-fashioned garden, +"One of those classical gardens, the planners of which prided themselves +upon being able to give Nature lessons of good behaviour, to teach her +geometry and the fine Art of irreproachable lines; but Nature abhors +lines;[36] she is for geometers a reluctant pupil, and if she submits to +their tyranny she does it with bad grace, and with the firm resolve to +take eventually her revenge. Man cannot conquer the wildness of her +disposition, and so soon as he is no longer at hand to impose his will, +so soon as he relaxes his care, she destroys his work" (p. viii., +"English Flower Garden"). This is indeed to concede everything to +Nature, to deny altogether the mission of Art in a garden. + +[Footnote 36: For which reason, I suppose, Mr Robinson, in his model +"Non-geometrical Gardens" (p. 5), humbly skirts his ground with a path +which as nearly represents a tortured horse-shoe as Nature would permit; +and his trees he puts in a happy-go-lucky way, and allows them to nearly +obliterate his path at their own sweet will! No wonder he does not fear +Nature's revenge, where is so little Art to destroy!] + +And even the School that is rather kinder to Art, more lenient to +tradition, represented by Mr Milner--even he, in his admirable book upon +the "Art and Practice of Landscape Gardening" (1890), is the champion of +Nature, not of Art, in a garden. "Nature still seems to work in +fetters," he says, and he would "form bases for a better practice of the +Art" (p. 4). Again, Nature is the great exemplar that I follow" (p. 8). + +They have not got beyond Brown, so far as theory is concerned. "Under +the great leader Brown," writes Repton, with unconscious irony, "or +rather those who patronised his discovery, we were taught that Nature +was to be our only model"--and Brown had his full chance of manipulating +the universe, for "he lived to establish a fashion in gardening, which +might have been expected to endure as long as Nature should exist"; and +yet Repton's work mostly consisted in repairing Brown's errors and in +covering the nakedness of his hungry prospects. So it would seem that +Art has her revenges as well as Nature! "The way of transgressors is +hard!" + +The Landscape-gardener, I said, gets no nearer to maturity of purpose as +time runs on. He creeps and shuffles after Nature as at the first--much +as the benighted traveller after the will-o'-the-wisp. He may not lay +hands on her, because you cannot conquer her wildness, nor impose your +will upon her, or teach her good behaviour. He may not apply the "dead +formalism of Art" to her, for "Nature abhors lines." Hence his mimicry +can never rise above Nature. Indeed, if it remains faithful to the +negative opinions of its practitioners, landscape-gardening will never +construct any system of device. It has no creed, if you except that sole +article of its faith, "I believe in the non-geometrical garden." A +monumental style is an impossibility while it eschews all features that +make for state and magnificence and symmetry; a little park scenery, +much grass, curved shrubberies, the "laboured littleness" of emphasised +specimen plants--the hardy ones dotted about in various parts--wriggling +paths, flower-borders, or beds of shapes that imply that they are the +offspring of bad dreams, and its tale of effects is told. But as for +"fine gardening," that was given up long ago as a bad job! The spirit of +Walpole's objections to the heroic enterprise of the old-fashioned +garden still holds the "landscape-gardener" in check. "I should hardly +advise any of those attempts," says Walpole; "_they are adventures of +too hard achievement for any common hands_." + +It is not so much at what he finds in the landscape gardener's creations +that the architect demurs, but at what he misses. It is not so much at +what the landscape-gardener recommends that the architect objects, as at +what moving in his own little orbit he wilfully shuts out, basing his +opposition to tradition upon such an _ex parte_ view of the matter as +this--"There are really two styles, one strait-laced, mechanical, with +much wall and stone, or it may be gravel, with much also of such +geometry as the designer of wall-papers excels in--often poorer than +that, with an immoderate supply of spouting water, and with trees in +tubs as an accompaniment, and, perhaps, griffins and endless +plaster-work, and sculpture of the poorer sort." Why "poorer"? "The +other, with _right desire_, though _often awkwardly_ (!) accepting +Nature as a guide, and endeavouring to illustrate in our gardens, _so +far as convenience and knowledge will permit_, her many treasures of the +world of flowers" ("English Flower Garden"). How sweetly doth bunkum +commend itself! + +It is not that the architect is small-minded enough to cavil at the +landscape-gardener's right to display his taste by his own methods, but +that he strikes for the same right for himself. It is not that he would +rob the landscape-gardener of the pleasure of expressing his own views +as persuasively as he can, but that he resents that air of superiority +which the other puts on as he bans the comely types and garnered +sweetness of old England's garden, that he accents the proscription of +the ways of interpreting Nature that have won the sanction of lovers of +Art and Nature of all generations of our forefathers, and this from a +School whose prerogative dates no farther back than the discovery of the +well-meaning, clumsy, now dethroned kitchen-gardener, known a short +century since as "the immortal Brown." There is no reviewer so keen as +Time! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING.[37] + + "Nothing is more the Child of Art than a Garden." + + SIR WALTER SCOTT. + +[Footnote 37: These notes make no pretence either at originality or +completeness. They represent gleanings from various sources, combined +with personal observations on garden-craft from the architect's point of +view.--J. D. S.] + + +"For every Garden," says Sir William Temple, "four things are to be +provided--Flowers, Fruit, Shade, and Water, and whoever lays out a +garden without these, must not pretend it in any perfection. Nature +should not be forced; great sums may be thrown away without Effect or +Honour, if there want sense in proportion to this." Briefly, the old +master's charge is this: "Have common-sense; follow Nature." + +Following upon these lines, the gardener's first duty in laying out the +grounds to a house is, to study the site, and not only that part of it +upon which the house immediately stands, but the whole site, its aspect, +character, soil, contour, sectional lines, trees, &c. Common-sense, +Economy, Nature, Art, alike dictate this. There is an individual +character to every plot of land, as to every human face in a crowd; and +that man is not wise who, to suit preferences for any given style of +garden, or with a view to copying a design from another place, will +ignore the characteristics of the site at his disposal. + +Equally unwise will he be to follow that school of gardening that makes +chaos before it sets about to make order. Features that are based upon, +or that grow out of the natural formation of the ground, will not only +look better than the created features, but be more to the credit of the +gardener, if successful, and will save expense. + +The ground throughout should be so handled that every natural good +point, every tree, mound, declivity, stream, or quarry, or other chance +feature, shall be turned to good account, and its consequence +heightened, avoiding the error of giving the thing mock importance, by +planting, digging, lowering declivities, raising prominences, planting +dark-foliaged trees to intensify the receding parts, forming terraces on +the slope, or adding other architectural features as may be advisable to +connect the garden with the house which is its _raison d'etre_, and the +building with the landscape. + +What folly to throw down undulations in order to produce a commonplace +level, or to throw up hills, or make rocks, lakes, and waterfalls should +the site happen to be level! What folly to make a standing piece of +water imitate the curves of a winding river that has no existence, to +throw a bridge over it near its termination, so as to close the vista +and suggest the continuation of the water beyond! Nay, what need of +artificial lakes at all if there be a running stream hard by?[38] + +[Footnote 38: "All rational improvement of grounds is necessarily +founded on a due attention to the CHARACTER and SITUATION of the place +to be improved; the _former_ teaches what is advisable, the _latter_ +what is possible to be done. The _situation_ of a place always depends +on Nature, which can only be assisted, but cannot be entirely changed, +or greatly controlled by ART; but the _character_ of a place is wholly +dependent on ART; thus the house, the buildings, the gardens, the roads, +the bridges, and every circumstance which marks the habitation of man +must be artificial; and although in the works of art we may imitate the +forms and graces of Nature, yet, to make them truly natural, always +leads to absurdity" (Repton, p. 341).] + +It is of the utmost importance that Art and Nature should be linked +together, alike in the near neighbourhood of the house, and in its far +prospect, so that the scene as it meets the eye, whether at a distance +or near, should present a picture of a simple whole, in which each item +should take its part without disturbing the individual expression of the +ground. + +To attain this result, it is essential that the ground immediately about +the house should be devoted to symmetrical planning, and to distinctly +ornamental treatment; and the symmetry should break away by easy stages +from the dressed to the undressed parts, and so on to the open country, +beginning with wilder effects upon the country-boundaries of the place, +and more careful and intricate effects as the house is approached. Upon +the attainment of this appearance of graduated formality much depends. +One knows houses that are well enough in their way, that yet figure as +absolute blots upon God's landscape, and that make a man writhe as at +false notes in music, and all because due regard has not been paid to +this particular. By exercise of forethought in this matter, the house +and garden would have been linked to the site, and the site to the +landscape; as it is, you wish the house at Jericho![39] + +[Footnote 39: Not so thinks the author of "The English Flower +Garden":--"Imagine the effect of a well-built and fine old house, seen +from the extremity of a wide lawn, with plenty of trees and shrubs on +its outer parts, and nothing to impede the view of the house or its +windows but a refreshing carpet of grass. If owners of parks were to +consider this point fully, and, as they travel about, watch the effect +of such lawns as remain to us, and compare them with what has been done +by certain landscape-gardeners, there would shortly be, at many a +country-seat, a rapid carting away of the terrace and all its adjuncts." +Marry, this is sweeping! But Repton has some equally strong words +condemning the very plan our Author recommends: "In the execution of my +profession I have often experienced great difficulty and opposition in +attempting to correct the false and mistaken taste for placing a large +house in a naked grass field, without any apparent line of separation +between the ground exposed to cattle and the ground annexed to the +house, which I consider as peculiarly under the management of art. + +"This line of separation being admitted, advantage may be easily taken +to ornament the lawn with flowers and shrubs, and to attach to the +mansion that scene of 'embellished neatness' usually called a +pleasure-ground" (Repton, p. 213. See also No. 2 of Repton's +"Objections," given on p. 116).] + +As the point of access to a house from the public road and the route to +be taken afterwards not infrequently determines the position of the +house upon the site, it may be well to speak of the Approach first. In +planning the ground, care will be taken that the approach shall both +look well of itself and afford convenient access to the house and its +appurtenances, not forgetting the importance of giving to the visitor a +pleasing impression of the house as he drives up. + +In Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the usual form of approach was the +straight avenue, instances of which are still to be seen at Montacute, +Brympton, and Burleigh.[40] The road points direct to the house, as +evidence that in the minds of the old architects the house was, as it +were, the pivot round which the attached territory and the garden in all +its parts radiated; and the road ends, next the house, in a quadrangle +or forecourt, which has either an open balustrade or high hedge, and in +the centre of the court is a grass plot enlivened by statue or fountain +or sundial. And it is worthy of note that they who prefer a road that +winds to the very door of a house on the plea of its naturalness make a +great mistake; they forget that the winding road is no whit less +artificial than the straight one. + +[Footnote 40: As an instance of how much dignity a noble house may lose +by a meanly-planned drive, I would mention Hatfield.] + +The choice of avenue or other type of approach will mainly depend upon +the character and situation of the house, its style and quality. Repton +truly observes that when generally adopted the avenue reduces all houses +to the same landscape--"if looking up a straight line, between two green +walls, deserves the name of a landscape." He states his objections to +avenues thus--"If at the end of a long avenue be placed an obelisk or +temple, or any other eye-trap, ignorance or childhood alone will be +caught and pleased by it; the eye of taste or experience hates +compulsion, and turns away with disgust from every artificial means of +attracting its notice; for this reason an avenue is most pleasing +which, like that at Langley Park, climbs up a hill, and passing over the +summit, leaves the fancy to conceive its termination." + +The very dignity of an avenue seems to demand that there shall be +something worthy of this procession of trees at its end, and if the +house to which this feature is applied be unworthy, a sense of +disappointment ensues. Provided, however, that the house be worthy of +this dignity, and that its introduction does not mar the view, or +dismember the ground, an avenue is both an artistic and convenient +approach. + +Should circumstances not admit of the use of an avenue, the drive should +be as direct as may well be, and if curved, there should be some clear +and obvious justification for the curve or divergence; it should be +clear that the road is diverted to obtain a glimpse of open country that +would otherwise be missed, or that a steep hill or awkward dip is thus +avoided. The irregularity in the line of the road should not, however, +be the occasion of any break in the gradient of the road, which should +be continuously even throughout. In this matter of planning roads, +common sense, as well as artistic sense, should be satisfied; there +should be no straining after pompous effects. Except in cases where the +house is near to the public road, the drive should not run parallel to +the road for the mere sake of gaining a pretentious effect. Nor should +the road overlook the garden, a point that touches the comfort both of +residents and visitors; and for the same reason the entrance to the +garden should not be from the drive, but from the house. + +The gradient recommended by Mr Milner,[41] to whose skilled experience I +am indebted for many practical suggestions, is 1 in 14. The width of a +drive is determined by the relative importance of the route. Thus, a +drive to the principal entrance of the house should be from 14 to 18 +ft., while that to the stables or offices 10 ft. Walks should not be +less than 6 ft. wide. The width of a grand avenue should be 50 ft, and +"the trees may be preferably Elm, Beech, Oak, Chestnut, and they should +not be planted nearer in procession than 40 ft., unless they be planted +at intervals of half that distance for the purpose of destroying +alternate trees, as their growth makes the removal necessary." + +[Footnote 41: Milner's "Art and Practice of Landscape-Gardening," pp. +13, 14.] + +The entrance-gates should not be visible from the mansion, Repton says, +unless it opens into a courtyard. As to their position, the gates may be +formed at the junction of two roads, or where a cross-road comes on to +the main road, or where the gates are sufficiently back from the public +road to allow a carriage to stand clear. The gates, as well as the +lodge, should be at right angles to the drive, and belong to it, not to +the public road. Where the house and estate are of moderate size, +architectural, rather than "rustic," simplicity best suits the character +of the lodge. It is desirable, remarks Mr Milner, to place the entrance, +if it can be managed, at the foot of a hill or rise in the public road, +and not part of the way up an ascent, or at the top of it. + +If possible, the house should stand on a platform or terraced eminence, +so as to give the appearance of being well above ground; or it should be +on a knoll where a view may be had. The ground-level of the house should +be of the right height to command the prospect. Should the architect be +so fortunate as to obtain a site for his house where the ground rises +steep and abrupt on one side of the house, he will get here a series of +terraces, rock-gardens, a fernery, a rose-garden, &c. The ideal site for +a house would have fine prospects to the south-east and to the +south-west "The principal approach should be on the north-western face, +the offices on the north-eastern side, the stables and kitchen-garden +beyond. The pleasure-gardens should be on the south-eastern aspect, with +a continuation towards the east; the south-western face might be open to +the park" (Milner). + +If it can be avoided, the house should not be placed where the ground +slopes towards it--a treatment which suggests water draining into +it--but if this position be for some sufficient reason inevitable, or +should it be an old house with this defect that we are called to treat, +then a good space should be excavated, at least of the level of the +house, with a terrace-wall at the far end, on the original level of the +site at that particular point. And as to the rest of the ground, +Repton's sound advice is to plant up the heights so as to increase the +effect of shelter and seclusion that the house naturally has, and +introduce water, if available, at the low-level of the site. The air of +seclusion that the low-lying situation gives to the house is thus +intensified by crowning the heights with wood and setting water at the +base of the slope. + +The hanging-gardens at Clevedon Court afford a good example of what can +be done by a judicious formation of ground where the house is situated +near the base of a slope, and this example is none the less interesting +for its general agreement with Lamb's "Blakesmoor"--its ample +pleasure-garden "rising backwards from the house in triple terraces; ... +the verdant quarters backwarder still, and stretching still beyond in +old formality, the firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel and the +day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the centre." + +Before dealing with the garden and its relation to the house it may be +well to say a few words upon Planting. Trees are among the grandest and +most ornamental effects of natural scenery; they help the charm of hill, +plain, valley, and dale, and the changes in the colour of their foliage +at the different seasons of the year give us perpetual delight. One of +the most important elements in ornamental gardens is the dividing up and +diversifying a given area by plantations, by grouping of trees to form +retired glades, open lawns, shaded alleys, and well-selected margins of +woods; and, if this be skilfully done, an impression of variety and +extent will be produced beyond the belief of the uninitiated who has +seen the bare site before it was planted. + +To speak generally, there should be no need of apology for applying the +most subtle art in the disposal of trees and shrubs, and in the +formation of the ground to receive them. "_All Art_," as Loudon truly +says (speaking upon this very point), "_to be acknowledged as Art, must +be avowed._" This is the case in the fine arts--there is no attempt to +conceal art in music, poetry, painting, or sculpture, none in +architecture, and none in geometrical-gardening. + +In modern landscape-gardening, practised as a fine art, many of the more +important beauties and effects produced by the artist depend on the use +he makes of foreign trees and shrubs; and, personally, one is ready to +forgive Brown much of his vile vandalism in old-fashioned gardens for +the use he makes of cedars, pines, planes, gleditschias, robinias, +deciduous cypress, and all the foreign hardy trees and shrubs that were +then to his hand. + +Loudon--every inch a fine gardener, true lineal descendant of Bacon in +the art of gardening--recommends in his "Arboretum" (pp. 11, 12) the +heading down of large trees of common species, and the grafting upon +them foreign species of the same genus, as is done in orchard +fruit-trees. Hawthorn hedges, for instance, are common everywhere; why +not graft some of the rare and beautiful sorts of tree thorns, and +intersperse common thorns between them? There are between twenty and +thirty beautiful species and varieties of thorn in our nurseries. Every +gardener can graft and bud. Or why should not scarlet oak and scarlet +acer be grafted on common species of these genera along the margins of +woods and plantations? + + * * * * * + +In planting, the gardener has regard for character of foliage and tints, +the nature of the soil, the undulations of ground and grouping, the +amount of exposure. Small plantations of trees surrounded by a fence are +the best expedients to form groups, says Repton, because trees planted +singly seldom grow well. Good trees should not be encumbered by peddling +bushes, but be treated as specimens, each having its separate mound. The +mounds can be formed out of the hollowed pathways in the curves made +between the groups. The dotting of trees over the ground or of specimen +shrubs on a lawn is destructive of all breadth of effect. This is not to +follow Nature, nor Art, for Art demands that each feature shall have +relation to other features, and all to the general effect. + +In planting trees the variety of height in their outline must be +considered as much as the variety of their outline on plan; the +prominent parts made high, the intervening bays kept low,[42] and this +both in connection with the lie of the ground and the plant selected. +Uniform curves, such as parts of circles or ovals, are not approved; +better effects are obtained by forming long bays or recesses with +forked tongues breaking forward irregularly, the turf running into the +bays. Trees may serve to frame a particular view and frame a picture; +and when well led up to the horizon will enhance the imaginative effect +of a place: a _beyond_ in any view implies somewhere to explore. + +[Footnote 42: "One deep recess, one bold prominence, has more effect +than twenty little irregularities." "Every variety in the outline of a +wood must be a _prominence_ or a _recess_" (Repton, p. 182).] + +All trees grow more luxuriantly in valleys than on the hills, and on +this account the tendency of tree-growth is to neutralise the difference +in the rise and fall of the ground and to bring the tops of the trees +level. But the perfection of planting is to get an effect approximating +as near as may be to the charming undulations of the Forest of Dean and +the New Forest. Care will be taken, then, not to plant the fast-growing, +or tall-growing trees in the low-ground, but on the higher points, and +even to add to the irregularity by clothing the natural peaks with +silver fir, whose tall heads will increase the sense of height. The +limes, planes, and elms will be mostly kept to the higher ground, +bunches of Scotch fir will be placed here and there, and oaks and +beeches grouped together, while the lower ground will be occupied by +maples, crabs, thorns, alders, &c. "Fringe the edges of your wood with +lines of horse-chestnut," says Viscount Lymington in his delightful and +valuable article on "Vert and Venery"--"a mass in spring of blossom, and +in autumn of colour; and under these chestnuts, and in nooks and +corners, thrust in some laburnum, that it may push its showers of gold +out to the light and over the fence." + +As to the nature of the soil, and degree of exposure suitable to +different forest-trees, the writer just quoted holds that, for exposure +to the wind inland, the best trees for all soils are the beech, the +Austrian pine, and the Scotch fir. + +For exposure in hedgerows, the best tree to plant ordinarily is the elm. +For exposure to frost, the Insignis pine, which will not, however, stand +the frosts of the valley, but prefers high ground. For exposure to +smoke, undoubtedly the best tree is the Western plane. The sycamore will +stand better than most trees the smoke and chemical works of +manufacturing towns. For sea-exposure, the best trees to plant are the +goat willow and pineaster. Among the low-growing shrubs which stand +sea-exposure well are mentioned the sea-buckthorn, the snow-berry, the +evergreen barberry, and the German tamarisk; to which should be added +the euonymus and the escallonia. + +With regard to the nature of the soil, Lord Lymington says: "Strong clay +produces the best oaks and the best silver fir. A deep loam is the most +favourable soil for the growth of the Spanish chestnut and ash. The +beech is the glorious weed of the chalk and down countries; the elm of +the rich red sandstone valleys. Coniferous trees prefer land of a light +sandy texture; ... but as many desire to plant conifers on other soils, +I would mention that the following among others will grow on most soils, +chalk included: the _Abies excelsa_, _canadensis_, _magnifica_, +_nobilis_, and _Pinsapo_; the _Pinus excelsa_, _insignis_, and +_Laricio_; the _Cupressus Lawsoniana_, _erecta_, _viridis_, and +_macrocarpa_; the _Salisburia adiantifolia_, and the _Wellingtonia_. The +most fast-growing in England of conifers is the Douglas fir.... It grows +luxuriantly on the slopes of the hills, but will not stand exposure to +the wind, and for that reason should always be planted in sheltered +combes with other trees behind it. + +"In moist and boggy land the spruce or the willow tribes succeed best." + +"In high, poor, and very dry land, no tree thrives so well as the Scotch +fir, the beech, and the sycamore." + +Avoid the selfishness and false economy of planting an inferior class of +fast-growing trees such as firs and larches and Lombardy poplars, on the +ground that one would not live to get any pleasure out of woods of oaks +and beech and chestnut. How frequently one sees tall, scraggy planes, or +belts of naked, attenuated firs, where groups of oaks and elms and +groves of chestnut might have stood with greater advantage. + +Avoid the thoughtlessness and false economy of not thoroughly preparing +the ground before planting. "Those that plant," says an old writer, +"should make their ground fit for the trees before they set them, and +not bury them in a hole like a dead dog; let them have good and fresh +lodgings suitable to their quality, and good attendance also, to +preserve them from their enemies till they are able to encounter them." + +Avoid trees near a house; they tend to make it damp, and the garden +which is near the house untidy. Writers upon planting have their own +ideas as to the fitness of certain growths for a certain style of house. +As regards the relation of trees to the house, if the building be of +Gothic design with the piquant outline usual to the style, then trees of +round shape form the best foil; if of Classic or Renascence design, then +trees of vertical conic growth suit best. So, if the house be of stone, +trees of dark foliage best meet the case; if of brick, trees of lighter +foliage should prevail. As a backing to the horizontal line of a roof to +an ordinary two-storey building, nothing looks better than the long +stems of stone pines or Scotch firs; and pines are health-giving trees. + +Never mark the outline of ground, nor the shape of groups of trees and +shrubs with formal rows of bedding plants or other stiff edging, which +is the almost universal practice of gardeners in the present day. This +is a poor travesty of Bacon's garden, who only allows low things to grow +naturally up to the edges. + +From the artist's point of view, perhaps the most desirable quality to +aim at in the distribution of garden space is that of breadth of +effect--in other words, simplicity; and the larger the garden the more +need does there seem for getting this quality. One may, in a manner, +_toy_ with a small garden. In the case of a large garden, where the +owner in his greed for prettiness has carried things further than +regulation-taste would allow, much may be done to subdue the +assertiveness of a multiplicity of interesting objects by architectural +adjuncts--broad terraces, well-defined lines, even a range of sentinel +yews or clipt shrubs--things that are precise, grave, calm, and +monotonous. Where such things are brought upon the scene, a certain +spaciousness and amplitude of effect ensues as a matter of course. + +One sees that the modern gardener, with his augmented list of +specimen-plants of varied foliage, is far more apt to err in the +direction of sensationalism than the gardener of old days who was exempt +from many of our temptations. Add to this power of attaining sweetness +and intricacy the artist's prone aspirations to work up to his lights +and opportunities, and we have temptation which is seductiveness itself! + +The garden at Highnam Court, dear to me for its signs and memories of my +late accomplished friend, Mr T. Gambier Parry, is the perfectest modern +garden I have ever seen. But here, if there be a fault, it is that Art +has been allowed to blossom too profusely. The attention of the visitor +is never allowed to drop, but is ever kept on the stretch. You are +throughout too much led by the master's cunning hand. Every known bit of +garden-artifice, every white lie of Art, every known variety of choice +tree or shrub, or trick of garden-arrangement is set forth there. But +somehow each thing strikes you as a little vainglorious--too sensible of +its own importance. We go about in a sort of pre-Raphaelite frame of +mind, where each seemly and beauteous feature has so much to say for +itself that, in the delightfulness of the details, we are apt to forget +that it is the first business of any work of Art to be a unit. There is +nothing of single specimen, or group of intermingled variety, or adroit +vista that we may miss and not be a loser; the only drawback is that we +see what we are expected to see, what everyone else sees. Here is +greenery of every hue; every metallic tint of silver, gold, copper, +bronze is there; and old and new favourites take hands, and we feel that +it is perfect; but the things blush in their conscious beauty--every +prospect is best seen "_there_!" England has few such beautiful gardens +as Highnam, and it has all the pathos of the touch of "a vanished hand," +and ideals that have wider range now. + +As to this matter of scenic effects, it is of course only fair to +remember that a garden is a place meant not only for broad vision, but +for minute scrutiny; and, specially near the house, intricacy is +permissible. Yet the counsels of perfection would tell the artist to +eschew such prettiness and multiplied beauties as trench upon broad +dignity. Sweetness is not good everywhere. Variations in plant-life that +are over-enforced, like variations in music, may be inferior to the +simple theme. A commonplace house, with well-disposed grounds, +flower-beds in the right place, a well-planted lawn, may please longer +than a fine pile where is ostentation and unrelieved artifice. + +Of lawns. Everything in a garden, we have said, has its first original +in primal Nature: a garden is made up of wild things that are tamed. The +old masters fully realised this. They sucked out the honey of wild +things without carrying refinement too far before they sipped it; and in +garnering for their _House Beautiful_ the rustic flavour is left so far +as was compatible with the requirements of Art--"as much as may be to a +natural wildness." And it were well for us to do the same in the +treatment of a lawn, which is only the grassy, sun-chequered, woodland +glade in, or between woods, in a wild country idealised. + +A lawn is one of the delights of man. The "Teutonic races"--says Mr +Charles Dudley Warner, in his large American way--"The Teutonic races +all love turf; they emigrate in the line of its growth." Flower-beds +breed cheerfulness, but they may at times be too gay for tired eyes and +jaded minds; they may provoke admiration till they are provoking. But a +garden-lawn is a vision of peace, and its tranquil grace is a boon of +unspeakable value to people doomed to pass their working-hours in the +hustle of city-life. + +The question of planting and of lawn-making runs together, and Nature +admonishes us how to set about this work. Every resource she offers +should be met by the resources of Art: avoid what she avoids, accept and +heighten what she gives. Nature in the wild avoids half-circles and +ovals and uniform curves, and they are bad in the planted park, both for +trees and greensward. Nature does not of herself dot the landscape over +with spies sent out single-handed to show the nakedness of the land, but +puts forth detachments that befriend each the other, the boldest and +fittest first, in jagged outlines, leading the way, but not out of touch +with the rest. And, since the modern landscape-gardener is nothing if +not a naturalist, this is why one cannot see the consistency of so fine +a master as Mr Marnock, when he dots his lawns over with straggling +specimens. (See the model garden, by Mr Marnock in "The English +Flower-Garden," p. xxi, described thus--"Here the foreground is a +sloping lawn; the flowers are mostly arranged near the kitchen garden, +partly shown to right; the hardy ones grouped and scattered in various +positions near, or within good view of, the one bold walk which sweeps +round the ground.") + +A garden is ground knit up artistically; ground which has been the field +of artistic enterprise; ground which expresses the feeling of beauty and +which absorbs qualities which man has discovered in the woodland world. +And the qualities in Nature which may well find room in a garden are +peace, variety, animation. A good sweep of lawn is a peaceful object, +but see that the view is not impeded with the modern's sprawling +pell-mell beds. And in the anxiety to make the most of your ground, do +not spoil a distant prospect. Remember, too, that a lawn requires a good +depth of soil, or it will look parched in the hot weather. + +And since a lawn is so delightful a thing, beware lest your admiration +of it lead you to swamp your whole ground with grass even to carrying it +up to the house itself. "Nothing is more a child of Art than a garden," +says Sir Walter, and he was competent to judge. If only out of +compliment to your architect and to the formal angularities of his +building, let the ground immediately about the house be of an ornamental +dressed character. + +Avoid the misplaced rusticity of the fashionable landscape-gardener, who +with his Nebuchadnezzar tastes would turn everything into grass, would +cart away the terrace and all its adjuncts, do away with all flowers, +and "lawn your hundred good acres of wheat," as Repton says, if you will +only let him, and if you have them. + +In his devotion to grass, his eagerness to display the measure of his +art in the curves of shrubberies and the arrangement of specimen plants +that strut across your lawn or dot it over as the Sunday scholars do the +croft when they come for their annual treat, he quite forgets the +flowers--forgets the old intent of a garden as the House Beautiful of +the civilised world--the place for nature-rapture, colour-pageantry, and +sweet odours. "Here the foreground is a sloping lawn; the _flowers are +mostly arranged near the kitchen garden_." Anywhere, anywhere out of the +way! Or if admitted at all into view of the house, it shall be with +little limited privileges, and the stern injunction-- + + "If you speak you must not show your face, + Or if you show your face you must not speak." + +So much for the garden-craft of the best modern landscape-gardener and +its relation to flowers. If this be the garden of the "Gardenesque" +style, as it is proudly called, I personally prefer the garden without +the style. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING--(_continued._) + + "I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring + forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like + herself; and when she collects her strength is abler still. Men are + decayed, and studies; she is not."--BEN JONSON. + + +The old-fashioned country house has, almost invariably, a garden that +curtseys to the house, with its formal lines, its terraces, and beds of +geometrical patterns. + +But to the ordinary Landscape-gardener the terrace is as much anathema +as the "Kist o' Whistles" to the Scotch Puritan! So able and +distinguished a gardener as Mr Robinson, while not absolutely forbidding +any architectural accessories or geometrical arrangement, is for ever +girding at them. The worst thing that can be done with a true garden, he +says ("The English Flower Garden," p. ii), "is to introduce any feature +which, unlike the materials of our world-designer, never changes. There +are positions, it is true, where the _intrusion of architecture_ and +embankment into the garden is justifiable; nay, now and then, even +necessary." + +If one is to promulgate opinions that shall run counter to the wisdom of +the whole civilised world, it is, of course, well that they should be +pronounced with the air of a Moses freshly come down from the Mount, +with the tables of the law in his hands. And there is more of it. "There +is no code of taste resting on any solid foundation which proves that +garden or park should have any extensive stonework or geometrical +arrangement.... Let us, then, use as few oil-cloth or carpet patterns +and as little stonework as possible in our gardens. The style is in +doubtful taste in climates and positions more suited to it than that of +England, but he who would adopt it in the present day is an enemy to +every true interest of the garden" (p. vi). + +So much for the "deadly formalism" of an old-fashioned garden in our +author's eyes! But, as Horace Walpole might say, "it is not peculiar to +Mr Robinson to think in that manner." It is the way of the +landscape-gardener to monopolise to himself all the right principles of +gardening; he is the angel of the garden who protects its true +interests; all other moods than his are low, all figures other than his +are symbols of errors, all dealings with Nature or with "the materials +of our world-designer" other than his are spurious. For the colonies I +can imagine no fitter doctrines than our author's, but not for an old +land like ours, and for methods that have the approval of men like +Bacon, Temple, More, Evelyn, Sir Joshua, Sir Walter, Elia, Wordsworth, +Tennyson, Morris, and Jefferies. And, even in the colonies, they might +demand to see "the code of taste resting on any solid foundation which +proves" that you shall have any garden or park at all! + +"If I am to have a system at all," says the author of "The Flower +Garden" (Murray, 1852), whose broad-minded views declare him to be an +amateur, "give me the good old system of terraces and angled walks, the +clipt yew hedges, against whose dark and rich verdure the bright +old-fashioned flowers glittered in the sun." Or again: "Of all the vain +assumptions of these coxcombical times, that which arrogates the +pre-eminence in the true science of gardening is the vainest.... The +real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity. +If we review the various styles that have prevailed in England from the +knotted gardens of Elizabeth ... to the landscape fashion of the present +day, we shall have little reason to pride ourselves on the advance which +national taste has made upon the earliest efforts in this department" +("The Praise of Gardens," p. 270). + +"Large or small," says Mr W. Morris, "the garden should look both +orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outer world. It +should by no means imitate either the wilfulness or the wildness of +Nature, but should look like a thing never seen except near a house" +("Hopes and Fears"). + +The whole point of the matter is, however, perhaps best summed up in +Hazlitt's remark, that there is a pleasure in Art which none but artists +feel. And why this sudden respect for "the materials of our +world-designer," when we may ask in Repton's words "why this art has +been called Landscape-gardening, perhaps he who gave the title may +explain. I see no reason, unless it be the efficacy which it has shown +in destroying landscapes, in which indeed it is infallible!" But, +setting aside the transparent shallowness of such a plea against the use +of Art in a garden, it argues little for the scheme of effects to leave +"nothing to impede the view of the house or its windows but a refreshing +carpet of grass." To pitch your house down upon the grass with no +architectural accessories about it, to link it to the soil, is to +vulgarise it, to rob it of importance, to give it the look of a pastoral +farm, green to the door-step. To bring Nature up to the windows of your +house, with a scorn of art-sweetness, is not only to betray your own +deadness to form, but to cause a sense of unexpected blankness in the +visitor's mind on leaving the well-appointed interior of an English +home. As the house is an Art-production, so is the garden that surrounds +it, and there is no code of taste that I know of which would prove that +Art is more reprehensible in the garden than in the house. + +But to return. The old-fashioned country house had its terraces. These +terraces are not mere narrow slopes of turf, such as now-a-days too +often answer to the term, but they are of solid masonry with balustrades +or open-work that give an agreeable variety of light and shade, and +impart an air of importance and of altitude to the house that would be +lacking if the terrace were not there. + +[Illustration: PLAN OF ROSERY, WITH SUNDIAL.] + +The whole of the ground upon which the house stands, or which forms +its base, constitutes the terrace. In such cases the terrace-walls are +usually in two or more levels, the upper terrace being mostly parallel +with the line of the house, or bowed out at intervals with balconies, +while the lower terrace, or terraces, serve as the varying levels of +formal gardens, pleasure-grounds, labyrinths, &c. The terraces are +approached by wide steps that are treated in a stately and impressive +manner. The walls and balustrades, moreover, conform, as they should, to +the materials employed in the house; if the house be of stone, as at +Haddon, or Brympton, or Claverton, the balustrade is of stone; if the +house be of brick, as at Hatfield or Bramshill, the walls and +balustrades will be of brick and terra-cotta. The advantage of this +agreement of material is obvious, for house and terrace, embraced at one +glance, make a consistent whole. There is not, of course, the same +necessity for consistency of material in the case of the mere retaining +walls. + +As one must needs have a system in planning grounds, there is none that +will more certainly bring honour and effect to them than the regular +geometrical treatment. This is what the architect naturally prefers. The +house is his child, and he knows what is good for it. Unlike the +imported gardener, who comes upon the scene as a foreign agent, the +architect works from the house outwards, taking the house as his centre; +the other works from the outside inwards, if he thinks of the "inwards" +at all. The first thinks of house and grounds as a whole which shall +embrace the main buildings, the outbuildings, the flower and +kitchen-gardens, terraces, walls, forecourt, winter-garden, +conservatory, fountain, steps, &c. The other makes the house common to +the commonplace; owing no allegiance to Art, a specialist of one idea, +he holds that the worst thing that can be done is to intrude +architectural or geometrical arrangement about a garden, and speaks of a +refreshing carpet of grass as preferable. + +As to the extent, number, and situation of terraces, this point is +determined by the conditions of the house and site. Terraces come +naturally if the house be on an eminence, but even in cases where the +ground recedes only to a slight extent, the surface of a second terrace +may be lowered by increasing the fall of the slope till sufficient earth +is provided for the requisite filling. The surplus earth dug out in +forming the foundations and cellars of the house, or rubbish from an old +building, will help to make up the terrace levels and save the cost of +wheeling and carting the rubbish away. + +Like all embankments, terrace walls are built with "battered" fronts or +outward slope; the back of the wall will be left rough, and well +drained. A backing of sods, Mr Milner says, will prevent thrust, and +admit of a lessened thickness in the wall. The walls should not be less +than three feet in height from the ground-level beneath, exclusive of +the balustrade, which is another three feet high. + +[Illustration: PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER GARDEN.] + +The length of the terrace adds importance to the house, and in small +gardens, where the kitchen-garden occupies one side of the +flower-garden, the terrace may with advantage be carried to the full +extent of the ground, and the kitchen-garden separated by a hedge and +shrubs; and at the upper end of the kitchen-garden may be a narrow +garden, geometrical, rock, or other garden, set next the terrace wall. + +The treatment of the upper terrace should be strictly architectural. If +the terrace be wide, raised beds with stone edging, set on the inner +side of the terrace, say alternately long beds with dwarf flowering +shrubs or hydrangeas, and circles with standard hollies, or marble +statues on pedestals, that shall alternate with pyramidal golden yews, +have a good effect, the terrace terminating with an arbour or stone +Pavilion. Modern taste, however, even if it condescend so far as to +allow of a terrace, is content with its grass plot and gravel walks, +which is not carrying Art very far. + +Laneham tells of the old pleasaunce at Kenilworth, that it had a terrace +10 ft. high and 12 ft. wide on the garden side, in which were set at +intervals obelisks and spheres and white bears, "all of stone, upon +their curious bases," and at each end an arbour; the garden-plot was +below this, and had its fair alleys, or grass, or gravel. + +The lower terrace may well be twice the width of the upper one, and may +be a geometrical garden laid out on turf, if preferred, but far better +upon gravel. Here will be collected the choicest flowers in the garden, +giving a mass of rich colouring. + +Although in old gardens the lower terrace is some 10 ft. below the upper +one, this is too deep to suit modern taste; indeed, 5 ft. or 6 ft. will +give a better view of the garden if it is to be viewed from the house. +At the same time it is undeniable that the more you are able to look +_down_ upon the garden--the higher you stand above its plane--the better +the effect; the lower you stand, the poorer the perspective. + +Modern taste, also, will not always tolerate a balustraded wall as a +boundary to the terrace, but likes a grass slope. If this poor +substitute be preferred, there should be a level space at the bottom of +the slope and at the top; the slope should have a continuous line, and +not follow any irregularity in the natural lie of the ground, and there +should be a simple plinth 12 to 18 in. high at the bottom of the slope. + +But the mere grass slope does not much help the effect of the house, far +or near; a house standing on a grass slope always has the effect of +sliding down a hill. To leave the house exposed upon the landscape, +unscreened and unterraced, is not to treat site or house fairly. There +exists a certain necessity for features in a flat place, and if no +raised terrace be possible, it is desirable to get architectural +treatment by means of balustrades alone, without much, or any, fall in +the ground. The eye always asks for definite boundaries to a piece of +ornamental ground as it does for a frame to a picture, and where +definite boundaries do not exist, the distant effect is that of a +house that has tumbled casually down from the skies, near which the +cattle may graze as they list, and the flower-beds are the mere sport of +contingencies. + +[Illustration: GENERAL PLAN OF THE PLEASAUNCE, VILLA ALBANI, ROME.] + +Good examples of terrace walls are to be found at Haddon, Claverton, +Brympton, Montacute, Bramshill, Wilton, and Blickling Hall. If truth be +told, however, all our English examples dwindle into nothingness by the +side of fine Italian examples like those at Villa Albani,[43] Villa +Medici, or Villa Borghese, with their grand scope and array of +sculpture. (See illustration from Percier and Fontaine's "_Choix des +plus celebres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs_." Paris, +MDCCCIV.) + +[Footnote 43: See accompanying plans.] + +The arrangement of steps is a matter that may call forth a man's utmost +ingenuity. The scope and variety of step arrangement is, indeed, a +matter that can only be realised by designers who have given it their +study. As to practical points. In planning steps make the treads wide, +the risers low. Long flights without landings are always objectionable. +Some of the best examples, both in England and abroad, have winders; as +to the library quadrangle, Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Donibristle Castle, +Scotland; Villa d'Este, Tivoli; the gardens at Nimes. The grandest +specimen of all is the Trinita di Monte steps in Rome (see Notes on +Gardens in _The British Architect_, by John Belcher and Mervyn +Macartney). + +It is impossible to lay down rules of equal application everywhere as to +the distribution of garden area into compartments, borders, terraces, +walks, &c. These matters are partly regulated by the character of the +house, its situation, the section and outline of the ground. But gardens +should, if possible, lie towards the best parts of the house, or towards +the rooms most commonly in use by the family, and endeavour should be +made to plant them so that to step from the house on to the terrace, or +from the terrace to the various parts of the garden, should only seem +like going from one room to another. + +Of the arrangement of the ground into divisions, each section should +have its own special attractiveness and should be led up to by some +inviting artifice of archway, or screened alley of shrubs, or "rosery" +with its trellis-work, or stone colonnade; and if the alley be long it +should be high enough to afford shade from the glare of the sun in hot +weather; you ought not, as Bacon pertinently says, to "buy the shade by +going into the sun." + +Again, the useful and the beautiful should be happily united, the +kitchen and the flower garden, the way to the stables and outbuildings, +the orchard, the winter garden, &c., all having a share of consideration +and a sense of connectedness; and if there be a chance for a filbert +walk, seize it; that at Hatfield is charming. "I cannot understand," +says Richard Jefferies ("Wild Life in a Southern Country," p. 70), "why +filbert walks are not planted by our modern capitalists, who make +nothing of spending a thousand pounds in forcing-houses." + +A garden should be well fenced, and there should always be facility for +getting real seclusion, so much needed now-a-days; indeed, the provision +of places of retreat has always been a note of an English garden. The +love of retirement, almost as much as a taste for trees and flowers, has +dictated its shapes. Hence the cedar-walks,[44] the bower, the avenue, +the maze, the alley, the wilderness, that were familiar, and almost the +invariable features of an old English pleasaunce, "hidden happily and +shielded safe." + +[Footnote 44: One of the finest and weirdest cedar-walks that I have +ever met with is that at Marwell, near Owslebury in Hampshire. Here you +realise the wizardry of green gloom and sense of perfect seclusion. It +was here that Henry VIII. courted one of his too willing wives.] + +This seclusion can be got by judicious screening of parts, by +shrubberies, or avenues of hazel, or yew, or sweet-scented bay, with +perhaps clusters of lilies and hollyhocks, or dwarf Alpine plants and +trailers between. And in all this the true gardener will have a thought +for the birds. "No modern exotic evergreens," says Jefferies, "ever +attract our English birds like the true old English trees and shrubs. In +the box and yew they love to build; spindly laurels and rhododendrons, +with vacant draughty spaces underneath, they detest, avoiding them as +much as possible. The common hawthorn hedge round a country garden shall +contain three times as many nests, and be visited by five times as many +birds as the foreign evergreens, so costly to rear and so sure to be +killed by the first old-fashioned frost." + +Another chance for getting seclusion is the high walls or lofty yew +hedge of the quadrangular courtyard, which may be near the entrance. +Such a forecourt is the place for a walk on bleak days; in its borders +you are sure of the earliest spring flowers, for the tender flowers can +here bloom securely, the myrtle, the pomegranate will flourish, and the +most fragrant plants and climbers hang over the door and windows. What +is more charming than the effect of hollyhocks, peonies, poppies, +tritomas, and tulips seen against a yew hedge? + +The paths should be wide and excellently made. The English have always +had good paths; as Mr Evelyn said to Mr Pepys, "We have the best walks +of gravell in the world, France having none, nor Italy." The comfort and +the elegance of a garden depend in no slight degree upon good gravel +walks, but having secured gravel walks to all parts of the grounds, +green alleys should also be provided. Nothing is prettier than a vista +through the smooth-shaven green alley, with a statue or sundial or +pavilion at the end; or an archway framing a peep of the country beyond. + +As to the garden's size, it is erroneous to suppose that the enjoyments +of a garden are only in proportion to its magnitude; the pleasurableness +of a garden depends infinitely more upon the degree of its culture and +the loving care that is bestowed upon it. If gardens were smaller than +they usually are, there would be a better chance of their orderly +keeping. As it is, gardens are mostly too large for the number of +attendants, so that the time and care of the gardener are nearly +absorbed in the manual labour of repairing and stocking the beds, and +maintaining and sweeping the walks. + +[Illustration: PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN, YEW WALK, +AND TENNIS COURT.] + +But if not large, the grounds should not have the appearance of being +confined within a limited space; and Art is well spent in giving an +effect of greater extent to the place than it really possesses by a +suitable composition of the walks, bushes, and trees. These lines should +lead the eye to the distance, and if bounded by trees, the garden should +be connected with the outer world by judicious openings; and this rule +applies to gardens large or small. + +Ground possessing a gentle inclination towards the south is desirable +for a garden. On such a slope effectual drainage is easily accomplished, +and the greatest possible benefit obtained from the sun's rays. The +garden should, if possible, have an open exposure towards the east and +west, so that it may enjoy the full benefit of morning and evening sun; +but shelter on the north or north-east, or any side in which the +particular locality may happen to be exposed, is desirable. + +The dimensions of the garden will be proportionate to the scale of the +house. The general size of the garden to a good-sized house is from four +to six acres, but the extent varies in many places from twelve to +twenty, or even thirty acres. (See an admirable article on gardening in +the "Encyclopaedia.") + +Before commencing to lay out a garden the plan should be prepared in +minute detail, and every point carefully considered. Two or three acres +of kitchen garden, enclosed by walls and surrounded by slips, will +suffice for the supply of a moderate establishment.[45] The form of the +kitchen garden advocated by the writer in the "Encyclopaedia" is that of +a square, or oblong, not curvilinear, since the work of cropping of the +ground can thus be more easily carried out. On the whole, the best form +is that of a parallelogram, with its longest sides in the proportion of +about five to three of the shorter, and running east and west. The whole +should be compactly arranged so as to facilitate working, and to afford +convenient access for the carting of heavy materials to the store-yards, +etc. + +[Footnote 45: As the walls afford valuable space for the growth of the +choicer kinds of hardy fruits, the direction in which they are built is +of considerable importance. "In the warmer parts of the country, the +wall on the north side of the garden should be so placed as to face the +sun at about an hour before noon, or a little to east of south; in less +favoured localities it should be made to face direct south, and in the +still more unfavourable districts it should face the sun an hour after +noon, or a little west of south. The east and west walls should run +parallel to each other, and at right angles to that on the north side."] + +There can, as we have said, be no fixed or uniform arrangement of +gardens. Some grounds will have more flower-beds than others, some more +park or wilderness; some will have terraces, some not; some a pinetum, +or an American garden. In some gardens the terraces will lie immediately +below the main front of the house, in others not, because the +geometrical garden needs a more sheltered site where the flowers can +thrive. + +[Illustration: PLAN OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN AND YEW HEDGES.] + +Of the shapes of the beds it were of little avail to speak, and the +diagrams here given are only of use where the conditions of the ground +properly admit of their application. The geometrical garden is capable +of great variety of handling. A fair size for a geometrical garden is +120 ft. by 60 ft. This size will allow of a main central walk of seven +feet that shall divide the panel into two equal parts and lead down to +the next level. The space may have a balustrade along its length on the +two sides, and on the garden side of the balustrade a flower-bed of +mixed flowers and choice low-growing shrubs, backed with hollyhocks, +tritoma, lilies, golden-rod, etc. The width of the border will +correspond with the space required for the steps that descend from the +upper terrace. For obtaining pleasant proportions in the design, the +walks in the garden will be of two sizes, gravelled like the rest--the +wider walk, say, three feet, the smaller, one foot nine inches. The +centre of the garden device on each side may be a raised bed with a +stone kerb and an ornamental shrub in the middle, and the space around +with, say, periwinkle or stonecrop, mixed with white harebells, or low +creepers. Or, should there be no wide main walk, and the garden-plot be +treated as one composition, the central bed will have a statue, sundial, +fountain, or other architectural feature. Each bed will be edged with +box or chamfered stone, or terra-cotta edging. Or the formal garden may +be sunk below the level of the paths, and filled either with flowers or +with dwarf coniferae. + +Both for practical and artistic reasons, the beds should not be too +small; they should not be so small that, when filled with plants, they +should appear like spots of colour, nor be so large that any part of +them cannot be easily reached by a rake. Nor should the shapes of the +beds be too angular to accommodate the plants well. In Sir Gardner +Wilkinson's book on "Colour" (Murray, 1858, p. 372), he speaks of design +and good form as the very _soul_ of a dressed garden; and the very +permanence of the forms, which remain though successive series of plants +be removed, calls for a good design. The shapes of the beds, as well as +the colours of their contents, are taken cognisance of in estimating the +general effect of a geometrical garden. This same accomplished author +advises that there should always be a less formal garden beyond the +geometrical one; the latter is, so to speak, an appurtenance of the +house, a feature of the plateau upon which it stands, and no attempt +should be made to combine the patterns of the geometrical with the beds +or borders of the outer informal garden, such combination being +specially ill-judged in the neighbourhood of bushes and winding paths. + +Of the proper selection of flowers and the determination of the colours +for harmonious combination in the geometrical beds, much that is +contradictory has been preached, one gardener leaning to more formality +than another. There is, however, a general agreement upon the necessity +of having beds that will look fairly well at all seasons of the year, +and an agreement as to the use of hardy flowers in these beds. Mr +Robinson has some good advice to give upon this point ("English Flower +Garden," p. 24): "The ugliest and most needless parterre (!) in England +may be planted in the most beautiful way with hardy flowers alone." (Why +"needless," then?) "Are we not all wrong in adopting one degree, so to +say, of plant life as the only fitting one to lay before the house? Is +it well to devote the flower-bed to one type of vegetation only--low +herbaceous vegetation--be that hardy or tender?... We have been so long +accustomed to leave flower-beds raw, and to put a number of plants out +every year, forming flat surfaces of colour, that no one even thinks of +the higher and better way of filling them. But surely it is worth +considering whether it would not be right to fill the beds permanently, +rather than to leave them in this naked or flat condition throughout the +whole of the year.... If any place asks for permanent planting, it is +the spot of ground immediately near the house; for no one can wish to +see large, grave-like masses of soil frequently dug and disturbed near +the windows, and few care for the result of all this, even when the +ground is well covered during a good season." Again our author, on p. +95, states that "he has very decided notions as to arrangement of the +various colours for summer bedding, which are that the whole shall be so +commingled that one would be puzzled to determine what tint predominates +in the entire arrangement." He would have a "glaucous" colour, that is, +a light grey or whitish green. Such a colour never tires the eye, and +harmonises with the tints of the landscape, "particularly of the lawn." +This seems to be neutralising the effects of the flowers, and this +primal consideration of the lawn is like scorning your picture for the +sake of its frame! + +Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who writes of gardens from quite another point of +view, says: "It is by no means necessary or advisable to select rare +flowers for the beds, and some of the most common are the most eligible, +being more hardy, and therefore less likely to fail, or to cover the bed +with a scanty and imperfect display of colour. Indeed, it is a common +mistake to seek rare flowers, when many of the old and most ordinary +varieties are far more beautiful. The point to note in this matter of +choosing flowers for a geometrical garden is to ascertain first the +lines that will best accord with the design, and make for a harmonious +and brilliant effect, and to see that the flowers best suited to it +blossom at the same periods. A succession of those of the same colour +may be made to take the place of each, and continue the design at +successive seasons. They should also be, as near as possible, of the +same height as their companions, so that the blue flowers be not over +tall in one bed, or the red too short in another.... Common flowers, the +weeds of the country, are often most beautiful in colour, and are not to +be despised because they are common; they have also the advantage of +being hardy, and rare flowers are not always those best suited for +beds" (Wilkinson on "Colour," p. 375). + +With regard to the ornamental turf-beds of our modern gardens. To judge +of a garden upon high principles, we expect it to be the finest and +fittest expression that a given plot of ground will take; it must be the +perfect adaptation of means to an end and that end is beauty. Are we to +suppose, then, that the turf-beds of strange device that we meet with in +modern gardens are the best that can be done by the heir of all the ages +in the way of garden-craft? A garden, I am aware, has other things to +attend to besides the demands of ideal beauty; it has to embellish life +to supply innocent pleasure to the inmates of the house as well as to +dignify the house itself; and the devising of these vagrant beds that +sprawl about the grounds is a pleasure that can be ill spared from the +artistic delights of a modern householder. It is indeed wonderful to +what heights the British fancy can rise when put to the push, if only it +have a congenial field! So here we have flower-beds shaped as crescents +and kidneys--beds like flying bats or bubbling tadpoles, commingled +butterflies and leeches, stars and sausages, hearts and commas, +monograms and maggots--a motley assortment to be sure--but the modern +mind is motley, and the pretty flowers smile a sickly smile out of their +comic beds, as though Paradise itself could provide them with no fairer +lodgings! + +And yet if I dare speak my mind "sike fancies weren foolerie;" and it +were hard to find a good word to say for them from any point of view +whatever. Their wobbly shapes are not elegant; they have not the +sanction of precedent, even of epochs the most barbarous. And though +they make pretence at being a species of art, their mock-formality has +not that geometric precision which shall bind them to the formal lines +of the house, or to the general bearings of the site. Not only do they +contribute nothing to the artistic effect of the general design, but +they even mar the appearance of the grass that accommodates them. Design +they have, but not design of that quality which alone justifies its +intrusion. No wonder "Nature abhors lines" if this base and spurious +imitation of the "old formality," that Charles Lamb gloats over, is all +that the landscape-garden can offer in the way of idealisation. + +One other feature of the old-fashioned garden--the herbaceous +border--requires a word. It is worthy of note that, unlike the modern, +the ancient gardener was not a man of one idea--his art is not bounded +like a barrel-organ that can only play one invariable tune! While the +master of the "old formality" can give intricate harmonies of inwoven +colours in the geometric beds--"all mosaic, choicely planned," where +Nature lends her utmost magic to grace man's fancy--he knows the value +of the less as well as the more, and finds equal room for the +unconstrained melodies of odd free growths in the border-beds, where you +shall enjoy the individual character, the form, the outline, the colour, +the tone of each plant. Here let the mind of an earlier generation +speak in George Milner's "Country Pleasures": + + "By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed, where + only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to grow. Here + there is always delight; and I should be sorry to exchange its + sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless + bedding-plants, mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This bed + is from fifty to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in + width. A thorn hedge divides it from the orchard. In spring the + apple-bloom hangs over, and now we see in the background the apples + themselves. The plants still in flower are the dark blue monkshood, + which is 7ft. high; the spiked veronica; the meadow-sweet or + queen-o'-the-meadow; the lady's mantle, and the evening primrose. + This last may be regarded as the characteristic plant of the + season. The flowers open about seven o'clock, and as the twilight + deepens, they gleam like pale lamps, and harmonise wonderfully with + the colour of the sky. _On this bed I read the history of the + year._ Here were the first snowdrops; here came the crocuses, the + daffodils, the blue gentians, the columbines, the great globed + peonies; and last, the lilies and the roses." + +And now to apply what has been said. + +Since gardening entails so much study and experience--since it is a +craft in which one is so apt to err, in small matters as in large--since +it exists to represent passages of Nature that have touched man's +imagination from time immemorial--since its business is to paint living +pictures of living things whose habits, aspects, qualities, and +character have ever engaged man's interest--since the modern gardener +has not only not found new sources of inspiration unknown of old, but +has even lost sensibility to some that were active then--it were surely +wise to take the hand of old garden-masters who did large things in a +larger past--to whom fine gardening came as second nature--whose success +has given English garden-craft repute which not even the journeyman +efforts of modern times can quite extinguish. + +These men--Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, and their school--let us follow for +style, elevated form, noble ideals, and artistic interpretation of +Nature. + +For practical knowledge of trees and shrubs, indigenous or exotic--to +know _how_ to plant and _what_ to plant--to know what to avoid in the +practice of modern blunderers--to know the true theory and practice of +Landscape-gardening, reduced to writing, after ample analysis--turn we +to those books of solid value of the three great luminaries of modern +garden-craft, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon. + +And it were not only to be ungenerous, but absolutely foolish, to +neglect the study of the best that is now written and done in the way of +landscape-gardening, in methods of planting, and illustration of botany +up to date. One school may see things from a different point of view to +another, yet is there but one art of gardening. It is certain that to +gain boldness in practice, to have clear views upon that delicate +point--the relations of Art and Nature--to have a reliable standard of +excellence, we must know and value the good in the garden-craft of all +times, we must sympathise with the point of view of each phase, and +follow that which is good in each and all without scruple and +doubtfulness. That man is a fool who thinks that he can escape the +influence of his day, or that he can dispense with tradition. + +I say, let us follow the old garden-masters for style, form, ideal, and +artistic interpretation of Nature, and let us not say what Horace +Walpole whimpered forth of Temple's garden-enterprise: "These are +adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands." Have we not +seen that at the close of Bacon's lessons in grand gardening he adds, +that the things thrown in "for state and magnificence" are but nothing +to the true pleasure of a garden? + +The counsels of perfection are not to be slighted because our ground is +small. In gardening, as in other matters, the true test of one's work is +the measure of one's possibilities. A small, trim garden, like a sonnet, +may contain the very soul of beauty. A small garden may be as truly +admirable as a perfect song or painting. + +Let it be our aim, then, to give to gardening all the method and +distinctness of which it is capable, and admit no impediments. A garden +not fifty yards square, deftly handled, judiciously laid out, its beds +and walks suitably directed, will yield thrice the opportunity for +craft, thrice the scope for imaginative endeavour that a two-acre +"garden" of the pastoral-farm order, such as is recommended of the +faculty, will yield. The very division of the ground into proportionate +parts, the varied levels obtained, the framed vistas, the fitting +architectural adjuncts, will alone contribute an air of size and scale. +As to "codes of taste" (which are usually in matters of Art only +someone's opinions stated pompously), these should not be allowed to +baulk individual enterprise. "Long experience," says that accomplished +gardener and charming writer, E. V. B., in "Days and Hours in a Garden" +(p. 125), "Long experience has taught me to have nothing to do with +principles in the garden. Little else than a feeling of entire sympathy +with the diverse characters of your plants and flowers is needed for +'Art in a Garden.' If sympathy be there, all the rest comes naturally +enough." Or to put this thought in Temple's words, "The success is +wholly in the gardener." + +If a garden grow flowers in abundance, _there_ is success, and one may +proceed to frame a garden after approved "codes of taste" and fail in +this, or one may prefer unaccepted methods and find success beyond one's +fondest dreams. "All is fine that is fit" is a good garden motto; and +what an eclectic principle is this! How many kinds of style it allows, +justifies, and guards! the simplest way or the most ornate; the fanciful +or the sweet austere; the intricate and complex, or the coy and +unconstrained. Take it as true as Gospel that there is danger in the use +of ornament--danger of excess--take it as equally true that there is an +intrinsic and superior value in moderation, and yet the born gardener +shall find more paths, old and new, that lead to Beauty in a plot of +garden-ground than the modern stylist dreams of. + +The art of gardening may now be known of all men. Gardening is no longer +a merely princely diversion requiring thirty wide acres for its display. +Everyone who can, now lives in the country, where he is bound to have a +garden; and I repeat what I said before, let no one suppose that the +beauty of a garden depends on its acreage, or on the amount of money +spent upon it. Nay, one would almost prefer a small garden plot, so as +to ensure that ample justice shall be done to it.[46] In a small garden +there is less fear of dissipated effort, more chance of making friends +with its inmates, more time to spare to heighten the beauty of its +effects. + +[Footnote 46: "Embower a cottage thickly and completely with nothing but +roses, and nobody would desire the interference of another +plant."--LEIGH HUNT.] + +To some extent the success of a garden depends upon favourable +conditions of sun, soil, and water, but more upon the choiceness of its +contents, the skill of its planting, the lovingness of its tendence. +Love for beauty has a way of enticing beauty; the seeing eye wins its +own ranges of vision, finds points of vantage in unlikely ground. "I +write in a nook," says the poet Cowper, "that I call my boudoir; it is a +summerhouse, not bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opens into +the garden that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles, _and +the window into my neighbour's orchard_. It formerly served an +apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, however, it is dedicated to +sublimer uses." What a mastery of life is here! + + "As if life's business were a summer mood; + As if all needful things would come unsought + To genial faith, still rich in genial good; + + * * * * * + + By our own spirits are we deified." + +But I must not finish the stanza in this connection. + +A garden is pre-eminently a place to indulge individual taste. "Let us +not be that fictitious thing," says Madame Roland, "that can only exist +by the help of others--_soyons nous_!" So, regardless of the doctors, +let me say that the best general rule that I can devise for +garden-making is: put all the beauty and delightsomeness you can into +your garden, get all the beauty and delight you can out of your garden, +never minding a little mad want of balance, and think of proprieties +afterwards! Of course, this is to "prove naething," but never mind if +but the garden enshrine beauty. To say this is by no means to allow that +the garden is the fit place for indulging your love of the +out-of-the-way; not so, yet a little sign of fresh motive, a touch of +individual technique, a token, however shyly displayed, that you think +for yourself is welcome in a garden. Thus I know of a gardener who +turned a section of his grounds into a sort of huge bear-pit, not a +sunk-pit, but a mound that took the refuse soil from the site of his new +house hollowed out, and its slopes set all round with Alpine and +American garden-plants, each variety finding the aspect it likes best, +and the proportion of light and shade that suits its constitution. This +is, of course, to "intrude embankments" into a garden with a vengeance, +yet even Mr Robinson, if he saw it, would allow that, as in love and +war, your daring in gardening is justified by its results, where, as +George Herbert has it-- + + "Who shuts his hand, hath lost its gold; + Who opens it, hath it twice told." + +A garden is, first and last, a place for flowers; but, treading in the +old master's footsteps, I would devote a certain part of even a small +garden to Nature's own wild self, and the loveliness of weed-life. Here +Art should only give things a good start and help the propagation of +some sorts of plants not indigenous to the locality. Good effects do not +ensue all at once, but stand aside and wait, or help judiciously, and +the result will be a picture of rude and vigorous life, of pretty colour +and glorious form, that is gratifying for its own qualities, and more +for its opposition to the peacefulness of the garden's ordered +surroundings. + +A garden is the place for flowers, a place where one may foster a +passion for loveliness, may learn the magic of colour and the glory of +form, and quicken sympathy with Nature in her higher moods. And, because +the old-fashioned garden more conduces to these ends than the modern, it +has our preference. The spirit of old garden-craft, says: "Do everything +that can be done to help Nature, to lift things to perfection, to +interpret, to give to your Art method and distinctness." The spirit of +the modern garden-craft of the purely landscape school says: "Let be, +let well alone, or extemporise at most. Brag of your scorn for Art, yet +smuggle her in, as a stalking-horse for your halting method and +non-geometrical forms." + +And, as we have shown, Art has her revenges as well as Nature; and the +very negativeness of this school's Art-treatments is the seal to its +doom. Mere neutral teaching can father nothing; it can never breed a +system of stable device that is capable of development. But old +garden-craft is positive, where the other is negative; it has no +niggling scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment except +the unwritten laws of good taste. Hence its permanent value as a +standard of device--for every gardener must needs desire the support of +some backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts--he must +needs have some basis of form on which to rest his own device, his own +realisations of natural beauty--and what safer, stabler system of +garden-craft can he wish for than that of the old English garden--itself +the outcome of a spacious age, well skilled in the pictorial art and +bent upon perfection? + +The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are beauty, animation, +variety, mystery. A garden's beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured +by its capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, and we need +not fear to use embellishment or strong colour, or striking device, +according to the adage "The richly provided richly require." + +[Illustration: (PERSPECTIVE VIEW). + +PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A +LARGE GARDEN.] + +Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the grace of a garden, +because all gardening is Art or nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art +in a garden, nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its charm. +I have no more scruple in using the scissors upon tree or shrub, where +trimness is desirable, than I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that +once represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm in the results +of the topiary art, in the prim imagery of evergreens, that all +ages have felt. And I would even introduce _bizarreries_ on the +principle of not leaving all that is wild and odd to Nature outside of +the garden-paling; and in the formal part of the garden my yews should +take the shape of pyramids or peacocks or cocked hats or ramping lions +in Lincoln-green, or any other conceit I had a mind to, which vegetable +sculpture can take. + +[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN PLAN FOLLOWING.] + +As to the other desirable qualities--animation, variety, mystery--I +would base my garden upon the model of the old masters, without adopting +any special style. The place should be a home of fancy, full of +intention, full of pains (without showing any); half common-sense, half +romance; "neither praise nor poetry, but something better than either," +as Burke said of Sheridan's speech; it should have an ethereal touch, +yet be not inappropriate for the joyous racket and country cordiality of +an English home. It should be + + "A miniature of loveliness, all grace + Summ'd up and closed in little"-- + +something that would challenge the admiration and suit the moods of +various minds; be brimful of colour-gladness, yet be not all pyramids of +sweets, but offer some solids for the solid man; combining old processes +and new, old idealisms and new realisms; the monumental style of the old +here, the happy-go-lucky shamblings of the modern there; the page of +Bacon or Temple here, the page of Repton or Marnock there. At every turn +the imagination should get a fresh stimulus to surprise; we should be +led on from one fair sight, one attractive picture, to another; not +suddenly, nor without some preparation of heightened expectancy, but as +in a fantasy, and with something of the quick alternations of a dream. + +[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, WITH CLIPPED +YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER BEDS.] + +Your garden, gentle reader, is perchance not yet made. It were indeed +happiness if, when good things betide you, and the time is ripe for your +enterprise, Art + + ... "Shall say to thee + I find you worthy, do this thing for me." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ON THE OTHER SIDE.--A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY. + + "I am tired of civilised Europe, and I want to see a wild country + if I can."--W. R. GREG. + + "Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley + Hall!"--TENNYSON. + + +We have discussed the theory of a garden; we have analysed the motives +which prompt its making, the various treatments of which it is +susceptible; we have made a kind of inventory of its effects, its +enchantments, its spendthrift joys. Now we will hear the other side, and +find out why the morbid, tired man, the modern Hamlet, likes it not, why +the son of culture loathes it as a lack-lustre thing, betokening to him +the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. Having +made our picture now we will turn it round, and note why it is that the +garden, with its full complement of approved ornament, its selected +vegetation, its pretty turns for Nature, its many-sided beauty-- + + "Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern was there + Not less than truth designed" + +--shall never wholly satisfy. + +Your garden will serve you in many ways. It will give a sense of +household warmth to your home. It will smile, or look grave, or be +dreamily fanciful almost at your bidding. If your bent be that way it +will minister to your imaginative reverie, and almost surfeit you with +its floods of lazy music. If you are hot, or weary, or dispirited, or +touched with _ennui_, its calm atmosphere will lay the dust and lessen +the fret of your life. Yet--let us not blink the fact--just because +_all_ Nature is not represented here; because the girdle of the garden +walls narrows our view of the world at large, and excludes more of +Nature's physiognomy than it includes; because the garden is, as Sir +Walter truly says, entirely "a child of Art"; the place, be it never so +fair, falls short of man's imaginative craving, and, when put to the +push, fails to supply the stimulus his varying moods require. Art's +sounding-line will never fathom human nature's emotional depths. + +Nay, one need not be that interesting product of civilisation, the +over-civilised artist who writes books, and paints pictures, and murmurs +rhyme that-- + + "Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, + Telling a tale not too importunate + To those who in the sleepy region stay, + Lulled by the singer of an empty day." + +There is the _ennuye_ of the clubs whom you are proud to meet in Pall +Mall, not a hair of his hat turned, not a wrinkle marring the sit of his +coat; meeting him thus and there you would not dream of supposing that +this exquisite trophy of the times is a prey to reactionary desires! Yet +deep down in the hidden roots of his being lies a layer of unscotched +savagery--an unextinguished, inextinguishable strain of the wild man of +the woods. Scratch him, and beneath his skin is Rousseau-Thoreau. +Scratch him again in the same place, and beneath his second skin see the +brown hide of the aboriginal Briton, the dweller in wattled abodes, who +knew an earlier England than this, that had swamps and forests, roadless +wastes and unbridled winter floods, and strange beasts that no man could +tame. Even he ("the sweetest lamb that ever loved a bear") will prate to +you of the Bohemian delights of an ungardened country, where "the white +man's poetry" has not defiled the landscape, and the Britisher shall be +free to take his pleasure sadly. + +Let us not be too hard, then, on that dislike of beauty, that worship of +the barbaric which we are apt to condemn as distempered vagaries, for +they denote maladies incident to the age, which are neither surprising +nor ignoble. This disdain for Art in a garden, this abhorrence of +symmetry, this preference for the rude and shaggy, what is it but a new +turn given to old instincts, the new Don Quixote sighing for +primaevalism! This ruthlessness of the followers of the "immortal Brown" +who would navvy away the residue of the old-fashioned English gardens; +who live to reverse tradition and to scatter the lessons of the past to +the winds; what is it but a new quest of the bygone, the knight-errantry +of the civilized man, when turned inside out! + +And for yet another reason is the garden unable to meet the moods of the +age. In discussing the things it may rightly contain, we saw that the +laws of artistic presentment, no less than the avowed purpose for which +a garden is made, require that only such things shall be admitted, or +such aspects be portrayed there, as conduce to gladness and poetic +charm. And, so far as the garden is concerned, the restriction is +necessary and desirable. As with other phases of Art, Sculpture, +Painting, or Romance, the things and aspects portrayed must be +idealistic, not realistic; its effects must be select, not +indiscriminate. The garden is a deliberately contrived thing, a +voluntary piece of handicraft, purpose-made; and for this reason it must +not stereotype imperfections; it may toy with Nature, but must not +wilfully exaggerate what is ordinary; only Nature may exaggerate +herself--not Art. It must not imitate those items in Nature that are +crude, ugly, abnormal, elementary; it may not reproduce the absolutely +repellent; or at most, the artist may only touch them with a light hand, +by way of imaginative hint, but not with intent to produce a finished +picture out of them. + +On this point there is a distinct analogy between the guiding principles +of Art and Religion. Art and Religion both signify effort to comply with +an ideal standard--indeed, the height of the standard is the test of +each--and what makes for innocence or for faultiness in the one, makes +for innocence or faultiness in the other. Innocence is found in each, +but to be without guile in Art or in Religion means that you must be +either flawlessly obedient to a perfect standard, or be beyond the pale +of law through pure ignorance of wrong. Where no law is, there can be +no transgression. Between these two points is no middle-ground, either +in the fields of Art or of Religion. + +To apply this to a garden. Untaught, lawless Nature may present things +indiscriminately, as they are, the casual, the accidental, the savage, +in their native dress, or undress, in all their rugged reality, and not +be ashamed. But the artist-gardener, knowing good and evil, exercising +free-will in his garden-craft, must choose only what he may rightly +have, and employ only what his trained judgment or the unwritten +commandments of good taste will allow. + +There you have the art of a garden. But because of its necessary +exclusiveness, because all Nature is not there, the garden, though of +the best, the most far-reaching in its application of art-resources, +fails to satisfy all man's imaginative cravings. + +Your garden, I said, will serve you many a good turn. Here one may come +to play the truant from petty worries, to find quiet harbourage in the +chopping sea of life's casual ups and downs; but when _real_ trouble +comes, on occasions of spiritual tension, or mental conflict, or heavy +depression, then the perfect beauty of the garden offends; the garden +has no respect for sadness--then it almost mocks and flaunts you; it +smiles the same, though your child die, and then instinct sends you away +from the lap of Art to the bosom of Nature-- + + "Knowing that Nature never did betray + The heart that loved her." + +All of man, then, asks for all of Nature, and is not content with less. +Just as a stringed instrument, even when lying idle, is awake to +sympathetic sound but refuses to vibrate to notes that are not kindred +to its compass, so the garden, with all its wakeful magic, will voice +only such of your moods as it is in touch with; and there are many +chords missing in the cunningly encased music of a garden--many human +notes find no answering pulsation there. + +Let us not blink the fact, then; Art, whether of this sphere or of that, +is not all. If you want beauty ready-made, obvious gladness of colour, +heightened nobleness of form, suggested romance, Nature idealised--all +these things are yours in a garden; and yet the very "dressing" of the +place which heightens its appeal to one side of man's being is the bar +to its acceptance on another side. To have been baptised of Art is to +have received gifts rich and strange, that enable the garden's contents +to climb to ideal heights; and yet not all men care for perfectness; the +most part prefer creatures not too bright or good for human nature's +daily food. So, to tell truth, the wild things of field, forest, and +shore have a gamut of life, a range of appeal wider than the gardens; +the impunities of lawless Nature reach further than man's finished +strokes. Nay, when man has done his best in a garden, some shall even +regret, for sentimental reasons, that he brought Art upon the scene at +all. "Even after the wild landscape, through which youth had strayed at +will, has been laid out into fields and gardens, and enclosed with +fences and hedges; after the footsteps, which had bounded over the +flower-strewn grass have been circumscribed within firm gravel-walks, +the vision of its former happiness will still at times float before the +mind in its dreams." ("Guesses at Truth.") + +Beauty, Romance, and Nature await an audience with you in the garden; +but it is Beauty after she has been sent to school to learn the tricks +of conscious grace; Beauty that has "the foreign aid of ornament," that +walks with the supple gait of one who has been well drilled; but gone +are the fine careless raptures, gone the bounding step, the blithe +impulses of unschooled freedom and gipsy life out of doors. + +Romance awaits you, holding in her hand a picture of things bright and +jocund, full of tender colour and sweet suggestion; a picture designed +to prove this world to be unruffled Arcadia, a sunlit pageant, a dream +of delectation, a place for solace, a Herrick-land + + "Of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers;" + +and human life a jewelled tale with all the irony left out. + +Nature awaits you, but only as a fair captive, ready to respond to your +behests, to answer to the spring of your imaginings. To man's wooing, "I +love you, love me back," she resigned herself, not perceiving the drift +of homage that was paid, not so much to the beauty that she had, but to +the beauty of a heightened sort that should ensue upon his cultivation, +for the sake of which he sought her. So now her wildness is subdued. +The yew and the holly from the tangled brake shall feel the ignominy of +the shears. The "common" thorn of the hedge shall be grafted with one of +the twenty-seven rarer sorts; the oak and maple shall be headed down and +converted into scarlet species; the single flowers, obedient to a +beautiful disease, shall blow as doubles, and be propagated by +scientific processes that defy Nature and accomplish centuries of +evolution at a stride. The woodbine from the vernal wood must be nailed +to the carpenter's trellis, the brook may no more brawl, nor violate its +limits, the leaves of the hollybush and the box shall be variegated, the +forest tree and woodland shrub shall have their frayed hedges shorn, and +their wildness pressed out of them in Art's dissembling embrace. + +And as with the green things of the earth, so with the creatures of the +animal world that are admitted into the sanctuary of a garden. Here is +no place for nonconformity of any kind. True, the spruce little squirrel +asks no leave for his dashing raids upon the beech-mast and the sweet +chestnuts that have escaped the range of the gardener's broom; true, the +white and golden pheasant and the speckled goligny may moon about in +their distraught fashion down the green alleys and in and out the +shrubberies; the foreign duck may frisk in the lake; the white swan may +hoist her sail, and "float double, swan and shadow;" the birds may sing +in the trees; the peacock may strut on the lawn, or preen his feathers +upon the terrace walls; the fallow deer may browse among the bracken on +the other side of the ha-ha--thus much of the animal creation shall be +allowed here, and not the most fastidious son of Adam will protest a +word. But note the terms of their admission. They are a select company, +gathered with nice judgment from all quarters of the globe, that are +bound over to respectable behaviour, pledged to the beautiful or +picturesque; they are in chains, though the chains be aerial and not +seen. + +It is not that the gardener loves pheasants or peacocks, ducks or swans +or guinea-fowls for themselves, or for their contribution to the music +of the place. Not this, but because these creatures assist the garden's +magic, they support the illusion upon which the whole thing is based; as +they flit about, and cross and recross the scene, and scream, and quack, +and cackle, you get a touch of actuality that adds finish to the +strangeness and piquancy that prevail around; they verify your doubting +vision, and make valid the reality of its ideality; they accord with the +well-swept lawn, the scented air, the flashing radiance of the fountain, +the white statuary backed by dark yews or dim stone alcoves, with the +clipt shrubs, the dreaming trees, the blare of bright colours, in the +shapely beds, the fragrant odours and select beauties of the place. +These living creatures (for they _are_ alive), prowling about the +grounds,[47] looking fairly comfortable in artificial surroundings from +whence their clipped wings will not allow them to escape, incline you to +believe that this world is a smooth, genteel, beneficent world after +all, and its pastoral character is here so well sustained that no one +would be a bit surprised if Pan with his pipe of reeds, or Corydon with +his white-fleeced flock, should turn the corner at any moment. + +[Footnote 47: Lord Beaconsfield adds macaws to the ornament of his ideal +garden. "Sir Ferdinand, when he resided at Armine, was accustomed to +fill these pleasure grounds with macaws and other birds of gorgeous +plumage." But Lord Beaconsfield is Benjamin Disraeli--a master of the +ornate, a bit of a dandy always. In Italy, too, they throw in porcupines +and ferrets for picturesqueness. In Holland are our old friends the tin +hare and guinea-pigs, and the happy shooting boy, in holiday attire, +painted to the life.] + +It is only upon man's terms, however, and to suit his scheme of scenic +effects, that these tame things are allowed on the premises. They are +not here because man loves them. Woe to the satin-coated mole that +blindly burrows on the lawn! Woe to the rabbit that sneaks through the +fence, or to the hare that leaps it! Woe to the red fox that litters in +the pinetum, or to the birds that make nests in the shrubberies! Woe to +the otter that takes license to fish in the ponds at the bottom of the +pleasaunce! Woe to the blackbirds that strip the rowan-tree of its +berries just when autumn visitors are expected! Woe to the finches that +nip the buds off the fruit-trees in the hard spring frost, presuming +upon David's plea for sacrilege! Death, instant or prolonged, or dear +life purchased at the price of a torn limb, for the silly things that +dare to stray where the woodland liberties are forbidden to either plant +or animal! + +So much for the results of man's manipulation of the universe in the way +of making ornamental grounds! And the sketch here given applies equally +to the new style or to the old, to the garden after Loudon or to the +garden after Bacon; the destiny of things is equally interfered with to +meet the requirements of the one or the other; the styles are equally +artificial, equally remorseless to primal Nature. + +But one may go farther, and ask: What wonder at the outcry of the modern +Nature-lovers against a world so altered from its original self as that +Hawthorne should say of England in general that here "the wildest things +are more than half tame? The trees, for instance, whether in hedgerow, +park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are +never ragged; there is a certain decorous restraint in the freest +outspread of their branches!" Nay, so far does this mistaken man carry +his diseased appetite for English soil, marred as it is, that he shall +write: "To us Americans there is a kind of sanctity even in an English +turnip-field, when we think how long that small square of ground has +been known and recognised as a possession, transmitted from father to +son, trodden often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery +by old acquaintance with civilised eyes" ("Our Old Home," p. 75). + +What wonder, I say, that a land that is so hopelessly gardened as +this--a land so sentimentalised and humanised that its very clods, to +the American, are "poesy all ramm'd with life"--shall grate the nerves +of the Hamlets of to-day, who live too much in the sun, whom man +delights not, nor woman neither! + +What a land to live in! when its best landscape painters--men like +Gainsborough or Constable--are so carried away by the influence of +agriculture upon landscape, so lost to the superiority of wild solitude, +that they will plainly tell you that they like the fields the farmers +work in, and the work they do in them; preferring Nature that was +modified by man, painting a well-cultivated country with villages and +mills and church-steeples seen over hedges and between trees![48] + +[Footnote 48: See P. G. Hamerton's "Sylvan Year," p. 112.] + +What a land to live in! when even Nature's wild children of field and +forest hug their chains--preserve their old ways and habits up to the +very frontier-line of civilisation. For here is Jefferies (who ought to +know) writing thus: "Modern progress, except where it has exterminated +them, has scarcely touched the habits of bird or animal; so almost up to +the very houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns to her +old haunts. If we go a few hours' journey only, and then step just +beyond the highway, where the steam ploughing-engine has left the mark +of its wide wheels on the dust, and glance into the hedgerow, the copse, +or stream, there are Nature's children as unrestrained in their wild, +free life as they were in the veritable backwoods of primitive +England." + +What wonder that a land where Nature has thus succumbed wholesale to +culture, should exasperate the man who has earned a right to be morbid, +or that he should cry aloud in his despair, "I am tired of civilised +Europe, and I want to see a _wild_ country if I can." Too many are our +spots renowned for beauty, our smiling champaigns of flower and fruit. +For "Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but, alas, if times be +not fair!" Hence the comfort of oppressive surroundings over-sadly +tinged, to men who suffer from the mockery of a place that is too +smiling! Hence the glory of a waste like Egdon to Mr Hardy! ("The Return +of the Native," pp. 4, 5). For Egdon Heath, "Haggard Egdon appealed to a +subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion than +that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair. +Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty +is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a +gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and +closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to +our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually +arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain +will be all of Nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of +the more thinking of mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, +spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of +South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed +unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand-dunes of Scheveningen." + +I admit that it is strange that time should hold in reserve such +revenges as this ascetic writing denotes--strange that man should find +beauty irksome, and that he should feel blasted with the very ecstasy +himself has built up in a garden! strange this sudden recoil of the +smooth son of culture from the extreme of Art, to the extreme of Nature! +Stranger still that the "Yes" and "No" of the _Ideal_ Hyde and the +_Real_ Jekyll should consist in the same bosom, and that a man shall be, +as it were, a prey to contrary maladies at one and the same time! Yet we +have found this in Bacon--prince of fine gardeners, who with all his +seeming content with the heroic pleasaunce that he has made, shall still +betray a sneaking fondness for the maiden charms of Bohemia outside. +Earthly Paradise is fine and fit, but there must needs be "mounts of +some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high to +look abroad in the fields"--there must be "a window open, to fly out at, +a secret way to retire by." Nay, after all, what are to him the charms +that inspire his rhapsody of words--the things that princes add for +state and magnificence! They are Delilah's charms, and "but nothing to +the true pleasure of a garden!" + +"Our gardens in Paris," says Joubert, "smell musty; I do not like these +ever-green trees. There is something of blackness in their greenery, of +coldness in their shade. Besides, since they neither lose anything, nor +have anything to fear, they seem to me unfeeling, and hence have little +interest for me.... Those irregular gardens, which we call English +gardens, require a labyrinth for a dwelling." + +"I hate those trees that never lose their foliage" (says Landor); "they +seem to have no sympathy with Nature; winter and summer are alike to +them." Says Thomson, + + ... "For loveliness + Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, + But it is when unadorned adorn'd the most." + +Or Cowley's + + "My garden painted o'er + With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, + Horace might envy in his Sabine field." + +Or Addison: "I have often looked upon it as a piece of happiness that I +have never fallen into any of these fantastical tastes, nor esteemed +anything the more for its being uncommon and hard to be met with. For +this reason I look upon the whole country in spring-time as a spacious +garden, and make as many visits to a spot of daisies, or a bank of +violets, as a florist does to his borders or parterres. There is not a +bush in blossom within a mile of me which I am not acquainted with, nor +scarce a daffodil or cowslip that withers away in my neighbourhood +without my missing it." Or Rousseau: "I can imagine, said I to them, a +rich man from Paris or London, who should be master of this house, +bringing with him an expensive architect to spoil Nature. With what +disdain would he enter this simple and mean place! With what contempt +would he have all these tatters uprooted! What fine avenues he would +open out! What beautiful alleys he would have pierced! What fine +goose-feet, what fine trees like parasols and fans! What finely fretted +trellises! What beautifully-drawn yew hedges, finely squared and +rounded! What fine bowling-greens of fine English turf, rounded, +squared, sloped, ovaled; what fine yews carved into dragons, pagodas, +marmosets, every kind of monster! With what fine bronze vases, what fine +stone-founts he would adorn his garden! When all that is carried out, +said M. De Wolmar, he will have made a very fine place, which one will +scarcely enter, and will always be anxious to leave to seek the +country." + +Or Gautier, upon Nature's wild growths: "You will find in her domain a +thousand exquisitely pretty little corners into which man seldom or +never penetrates. There, from every constraint, she gives herself up to +that delightful extravagance of dishevelled plants, of glowing flowers +and wild vegetation--everything that germinates, flowers, and casts its +seeds, instinct with an eager vitality, to the wind, whose mission it is +to disperse them broadcast with an unsparing hand.... And over the +rain-washed gate, bare of paint, and having no trace of that green +colour beloved by Rousseau, we should have written this inscription in +black letters, stonelike in shape, and threatening in aspect: + + 'GARDENERS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ENTERING HERE.' + +"Such a whim--very difficult for one to realise who is so deeply +incrusted with civilisation, where the least originality is taxed as +folly--is continually indulged in by Nature, who laughs at the judgment +of fools." + +Or Thoreau--hero of the Walden shanty, with his open-air gospel--all +Nature for the asking--to whom a garden is but Nature debauched, and all +Art a sin: "There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning towards +wildness.... We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn's +'Sylva,' 'Acetarium,' and 'Kalendarium Hortense,' but they imply a +relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants +the vigour and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.... It is true there +are the innocent pleasures of country-life, and it is sometimes pleasant +to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their +season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter +retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its +_parterres_ elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by +the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as +berries. We should not be always soothing and training Nature.... The +Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the +greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her +midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar +and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble and +cleanly in the former's distance.... There are other savager, and more +primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white +man's poetry." + +To sum up the whole matter, this unmitigated hostility of the cultured +man (with Jacob's smooth hands and Esau's wild blood) to the amenities +of civilised life, brings us back to the point from whence we started at +the commencement of this chapter. While men are what they are, Art is +not all. Man has Viking passions as well as Eden instincts. Man is of +mixed blood, whose sympathies are not so much divided as double. And all +of man asks for all of Nature, and is not content with less. To the +over-civilised man who is under a cloud, the old contentment with +orthodox beauty must give place to the subtler, scarcer instinct, to +"the more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort +of beauty called charming and fair." Fair effects are only for fair +times. The garden represents to such an one a too careful abstract of +Nature's traits and features that had better not have been epitomised. +The place is to him a kind of fraud--a forgery, so to speak, of Nature's +autograph. It is only the result of man's turning spy or detective upon +the beauties of the outer world. Its perfection is too monotonous; its +grace is too subtle; its geography too bounded; its interest too full of +intention--too much sharpened to a point; its growth is too uniformly +temperate; its imagery too exacting of notice. These prim and trim +things remind him of captive princes of the wood, brightly attired only +that they may give romantic interest to the garden--these tame birds +with clipped wings, of distraught aspect and dreamy tread--these docile +animals with their limp legs and vacant stare, may contribute to the +scenic pomp of the place, but it is at the expense of their native +instincts and the joyous _abandon_ of woodland life. If this be the +outcome of your boasted editing of Nature, give us dead Nature +untranslated. If this be what comes of your idealisation of the raw +materials of Nature--of the transference of your own emotions to the +simple, unsophisticated things of the common earth, let us rather have +Nature's unspoilt self--"God's Art," as Plato calls Nature--where + + "Visions, as prophetic eyes avow, + Hang on each leaf, and cling to each bough." + + * * * * * + + "But stay, here come the gardeners!" + + (_Enter a gardener and two servants!_)--_King Richard II._ + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +IN PRAISE OF BOTH. + + "In small proportions we just beauties see, + And in short measures life may perfect be."--BEN JONSON. + + "The Common all men have."--GEORGE HERBERT. + + +What shall we say, then, to the two conflicting views of garden-craft +referred to in my last chapter, wherein I take the modern position, +namely, that the love of Art in a garden, and the love of wild things in +Nature's large estate, cannot co-exist in the same breast? Is the +position true or false? + +To see the matter in its full bearings I must fetch back a little, and +recall what was said in a former chapter (p. 85) upon the differing +attitudes towards Nature taken by the earlier and later schools of +gardening. There is, I said, no trace in the writings, or in the +gardening, of the earlier traditional school, of that mawkish sentiment +about Nature, that condescending tenderness for her primal shapes, that +has nursed the scruples, and embarrassed the efforts of the +"landscape-gardener" from Kent's and Brown's days to now. + +The older gardener had no half-and-half methods; he made no pretence of +Nature-worship, nursed no scruples that could hinder the expression of +his own mind about Nature, or check him from fathoming all her +possibilities. Yet with all his seeming unscrupulousness the old +gardener does not close his eyes or his heart to Nature at large, but +whether in the garden sanctuary or out of it, he maintains equally +tender relations towards her. + +But the scruples of the earlier phase of the landscape school, about +tampering with Nature by way of attaining Art effects, are as water unto +wine compared with what is taught by men of the same school now-a-days. +We have now to reckon with an altogether deeper stratum of antipathy to +garden-craft than was reached by the followers of Brown. We have not now +to haggle with the quidnuncs over the less or more of Art permissible in +a garden, but to fight out the question whether civilisation shall have +any garden at all. Away with this "white man's poetry!" The wild +Indian's "intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the +greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her +midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar +and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something noble and +cleanly in the former's distance." "Alas!" says Newman, "what are we +doing all through life, both as a necessity and a duty, but unlearning +the world's poetry, and attaining to its prose?" + +One does not fear, however, that the English people will part lightly +with their land's old poetry, however seductive the emotion which we are +told "prefers the oppression of surroundings over-sadly tinged, and +solitudes that have a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities to +the old-fashioned sort of beauty called charming and fair." + +The lesson we have to learn is the falsehood of extremes. The point we +have to master is, that in the prodigality of "God's Plenty" many sorts +of beauty are ours, and nothing shall be scorned. God's creation has a +broad gamut, a vast range, to meet our many moods. "There are, it may +be, so many kinds of music in the world, and none of them is without +signification." + + "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty." + +There is nothing contradictory in the variety and multiformity of +Nature, whether loose and at large in Nature's unmapped geography, or +garnered and assorted and heightened by man's artistry in the small +proportions of a perfect garden. Man, we said, is of mixed blood, whose +sympathies are not so much divided as double, and each sympathy shall +have free play. My inborn Eden instincts draw me to the bloom and wonder +of the world; my Viking blood drives me to the snap and enthusiasm of +anarchic forms, the colossal images, the swarthy monotony, the sombre +aspects of Nature in the wild. "Yet all is beauty." + +Thus much by way of preamble. And now, after repeating that the gardener +of the old formality, however sternly he discipline wild Nature for the +purposes of beauty, is none the less capable of loving and of holding +friendly commerce with the things that grew outside his garden hedge, +let me bring upon my page a modern of moderns, who, by the wide range of +his sympathies, recalls the giants of a healthier day, and redeems a +generation of lopsided folk abnormally developed in one direction. + +And the poet Wordsworth, self-drawn in his own works, or depicted by his +friends, is one of the old stock of sane, sound-hearted Englishmen, who +can be equally susceptible to the _inward_ beauties of man's created +brain-world, and the _outward_ beauties of unkempt Nature. So the +combination we plead for is not impossible! The two tastes are not +irreconcilable! Blessed be both! + +We may trust Wordsworth implicitly as an authority upon Nature. No one +questions his knowledge of wild woodland lore. There is no one of +ancient or of modern times who in his outward mien, his words, his +habits, carries more indisputable proof of the prophet's ordination than +the man who spent a long noviciate in his native mountain solitudes. +There is no one so fully entitled, or so well able to speak of and for +her, as he who knows her language to the faintest whisper, who spent his +days at her feet, who pored over her lineaments under every change of +expression, who in his writings drew upon the secret honey of the beauty +and harmony of the world, telling, to use his own swinging phrases, of +"the joy and happiness of loving creatures, of men and children, of +birds and beasts, of hills and streams, and trees and flowers; with the +changes of night and day, evening and morning, summer and winter; and +all their unwearied actions and energies." + +Of all Nature's consecrated children, he is the prince of the +apostolate; he is, so to speak, the beloved disciple of them all, whose +exalted personal love admits him to the right to lean upon her breast, +to hear her heart-beats, to catch knowledge there that had been kept +secret since the world began. None so familiar with pastoral life in its +varied time-fulness, sweet or stern, glad or grim, pathetic or sublime, +as he who carries in his mind the echoes of the passion of the storm, +the moan of the passing wind with its beat upon the bald mountain-crag, +the sighing of the dry sedge, the lunge of mighty waters, the tones of +waterfalls, the inland sounds of caves and trees, the plaintive spirit +of the solitude. There are none who have pondered so deeply over "the +blended holiness of earth and sky," the gesture of the wind and cloud, +the silence of the hills; none so free to fraternise with things bold or +obscure, great or small, as he who told alike of the love and infinite +longings of Margaret, of the fresh joy of + + "The blooming girl whose hair was wet + With points of morning dew," + +of the lonely star, the solitary raven, the pliant hare-bell, swinging +in the breeze, the meadows and the lower ground, and all the sweetness +of a common dawn. + +Thus did Wordsworth enter into the soul of things and sing of them + + "In a music sweeter than their own." + +Nay, says Arnold, "It might seem that Nature not only gave him the +matter of his poem, but wrote his poem for him" ("Essays in Criticism," +p. 155). + +So much for Wordsworth upon Nature out of doors; now let us hear him +upon Art in a garden, of which he was fully entitled to speak, and we +shall see that the man is no less the poet of idealism upon his own +ground, than the poet of actuality in the woodland world. + +Writing to his friend Sir Geo. Beaumont,[49] with all the outspokenness +of friendship and the simplicity of a candid mind, he thus delivers +himself upon the Art of Gardening: "Laying out grounds, as it is called, +may be considered as a Liberal Art, in some sort like poetry and +painting, and its object is, or ought to be, to move the affections +under the control of good sense; that is, those of the best and wisest; +but, _speaking with more precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the +affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauties of +Nature, who have the most valuable feelings, that is, the most +permanent, the most independent, the most ennobling with Nature and +human life_." + +[Footnote 49: See Myres' "Wordsworth," English Men of Letters Series, p. +67.] + +Hearken to Nature's own high priest, turned laureate of the garden! How +can this thing be? Here is the man whose days had been spent at Nature's +feet, whose life's business seemed to be this only, that he should extol +her, interpret her, sing of her, lift her as high in man's esteem as +fine utterance can affect the human soul. Yet when he has done all, +said all that inspired imagination can say in her praise, in what seems +an outburst of disloyalty to his old mistress, he deliberately takes the +crown himself had woven from off the head of Nature and places it on the +brows of Art in a garden! + +Not Bacon himself could write with more discernment or with more fervour +of garden-craft than this, and the pronouncement gains further +significance as being the deliberately expressed opinion of a great +poet, and him the leader of the modern School of Naturalists. And that +these two men, separated not merely by two centuries of time, but by the +revolutionary influences which coloured them, should find common ground +and shake hands in a garden, is strange indeed! Both men loved Nature. +Bacon, as Dean Church remarks,[50] had a "keen delight in Nature, in the +beauty and scents of flowers, in the charm of open-air life;" but his +regard for Nature's beauties was not so ardent, his knowledge of her +works and ways not so intimate or so scientifically verified, his senses +not so sympathetically allured as Wordsworth's; he had not the same +prophet's vision that could see into the life of things, and find +thoughts there "that do often lie too deep for tears." That special +sense Wordsworth himself fathered. + +[Footnote 50: "Bacon," English Men of Letters Series, R. W. Church.] + +Points like these add weight to Wordsworth's testimony of the high rank +of gardening, and we do well to note that the wreath that the modern man +brings for Art in a garden is not only greener and fresher than the +garland of the other, but it was gathered on loftier heights; it means +more, it implies a more emphatic homage. + +And Wordsworth had not that superficial knowledge of gardening which no +gentleman's head should be without. He knew it as a craftsman knows the +niceties of his craft. "More than one seat in the lake-country," says Mr +Myres ("Wordsworth," p. 68), "among them one home of pre-eminent beauty, +have owed to Wordsworth no small part of their ordered charm." + +Of Wordsworth's own garden, one writes: "I know that thirty years ago +that which struck me most at Rydal Mount, and which appeared to me its +greatest charm, was the union of the garden and the wilderness. You +passed almost imperceptibly from the trim parterre to the noble wood, +and from the narrow, green vista to that wide sweep of lake and mountain +which made up one of the finest landscapes in England. Nor could you +doubt that this unusual combination was largely the result of the poet's +own care and arrangement. _He had the faculty for such work._" + +Here one may well leave the matter without further labouring, content to +have proved by the example of a four-square, sane genius, that those +instincts of ours which seem to pull contrary ways--Art-wards or +Nature-wards--and to drive our lopsided selves to the falsehood of +extremes, are, after all, not incompatible. The field, the waste, the +moor, the mountain, the trim garden with its parterres and terraces, +are one Nature. These things breathe one breath, they sing one music, +they share one heart between them; the difference between the dressed +and the undressed is only superficial. The art of gardening is not +intended to supersede Nature, but only "to assist Nature in moving the +affections of those who have the deepest perceptions of the beauties of +Nature, who have the most valuable feelings, ... the most ennobling with +Nature and human life." + +One need not, if Wordsworth's example prove anything, be less the child +of the present (but rather the more) because one can both appreciate the +realities of rude Nature, and that deliberately-contrived, purpose-made, +piece of human handicraft, a well-equipped garden. One need not be less +susceptible to the black forebodings of this contention-tost, modern +world, nor need one's ear be less alert to Nature's correspondence to + + "The still, sad music of humanity," + +because one experiences, with old Mountaine, "a jucunditie of minde" in +a fair garden. There is an unerring rightness both in rude Nature and in +garden grace, in the chartered liberty of the one, and the unchartered +freedom of unadjusted things in the other. Blessed be both! + +It is worth something to have mastered truth, which, however simple and +elementary it seem, is really vital to the proper understanding of the +relation of Art to Nature. It helps one to appraise at their proper +value the denunciations of the disciples of Kent and Brown against Art +in a garden, and to see, on the other hand, why Bacon and the Early +School of gardeners loved Nature in the wild state no less than in a +garden. It dispels any lingering hesitation we may have as to the amount +of Art a garden may receive in defiance of Dryasdust "codes of taste." +It explains what your artist-gardener friend meant when he said that he +had as much sympathy with, and felt as much interest in, the moving +drama of Nature going on on this as on that side of his garden-hedge, +and how he could pass from the rough theme outside to the ordered music +inside, from the uncertain windings in the coppice-glade to the pleached +alley of the garden, without sense of disparagement to the one or the +other. It explains why it is that nothing in Nature goes unobserved of +him; how you shall call to see him and hunt the garden over, and at last +find him idling along the bridle-path in the plantation, his fist full +of flowers, his mind set on Nature's affairs, his ear in such unison +with local sounds that he shall tell you the dominant tone of the wind +in the tree-tops. Or he is in the covert's tangle enjoying + + "Simple Nature's breathing life," + +surprising the thorn veiled in blossom, revelling in the wealth of +boundless life there, in the variety of plant-form, the palpitating +lights, the melody of nesting birds, the common joy and sweet assurance +of things. + + "Society is all but rude + To this delicious solitude." + +Or it may be he is on the breezy waste, lying full length among the +heather, watching the rabbits' gambols, or the floating thistle-down +with its hint of unseen life in the air, or sauntering by the stream in +the lower meadows, learning afresh the glory of weed life in the lush +magnificence of the great docks, the red sorrel, the willow-herb, the +purple thistles, and the gay battalions of fox-gloves thrown out in +skirmishing order, that swarm on each eminence and hedgerow. Or you may +meet him hastening home for the evening view from the orchard-terrace, +to see the solemn close of day, and the last gleam of sunshine fading +over the hill. + +It is worth something, I say, to win clear hold of the fact that Nature +in a garden and Nature in the wild are at unity; that they have each +their place in the economy of human life, and that each should have its +share in man's affections. The true gardener is in touch with both. He +knows where this excels or falls behind the other, and because he knows +the range of each, he fears no comparison between them. He can be +eloquent upon the charms of a garden, its stimulus for the tired eye and +mind, the harmony that resides in the proportions of its lines and +masses, the gladness of its colour, the delight of its frankly +decorative arrangement, the sense of rest that comes of its symmetry and +repeated patterns. He will tell you that for halcyon days, when life's +wheels run smooth, and the sun shines, even for life's average days, +there is nothing so cheery, nothing so blithely companionable, nothing +that can give such a sense of household warmth to your home as a +pleasant garden. And yet none will be more ready to warn you of the +limits of a garden's charms, of its sheer impotence to yield +satisfaction at either end of the scale of human joy or sorrow. + +And so it is. Let but the mist of melancholy descend upon you, let but +the pessimistic distress to which we moderns are all prone penetrate +your mind, let you be the prey of undermining sorrow, or lie under the +shadow of bereavement, and it is not to the garden that you will go for +Nature's comfort. The chalices of its flowers store not the dew that +shall cool your brow. Nay, at times like these the garden poses as a +kind of lovely foe, to mock you with its polite reticence, its look of +unwavering complacency, its gentle ecstasy. Then the ear refuses the +soft and intimate garden-melodies, and asks instead for the rough +unrehearsed music of Nature in the wild, the jar and jangle of winds and +tides, the challenge of discords, + + "The conflict and the sounds that live in darkness," + +the wild rhetoric of the night upon some "haggard Egdon," or along the +steep wild cliffs when the storm is up, and the deeps are troubled, and +the earth throbs and throbs again with the violence of the waves that +break and bellow in the caves beneath your feet; and then it perhaps +shall cross your mind to set this brief moment of your despair against +the unavailing passion of tides that for ten thousand years and more +have hurled themselves against this heedless shore. Or you shall find +some sequestered corner of the land that keeps its scars of old-world +turmoil, the symptoms of the hustle of primeval days, the shock of grim +shapes, long ago put to sleep beneath a coverlet of sweet-scented turf; +and the unspoiled grandeur of the scene will prick and arouse your +dulled senses, while its peaceful face will assure you that, as it was +with the troubled masonry of the hills in the morning of the world, even +so shall it be with you--time shall tranquillise and at length cancel +all your woes. Or again, + + "Should life be dull, and spirits low + 'Twill soothe us in our sorrow + That earth has something yet to show, + The bonny holms of Yarrow." + +Better tonic, one thinks, for the over-wrought brain than the soft +glamour of the well-swept lawn, the clipt shrubs, the focussed beauty of +dotted specimens, the ordered disorder of wriggling paths and sprawling +flower-beds of strange device, the ransacked wardrobe of the gardener's +stock of gay bedding-plants, or other of the permitted charms of a +modern garden; better than these is the stir and enthusiasm of Nature's +broad estate, the boulder-tossed moor, where the hare runs races in her +mirth, and the lark has a special song for your ear; or the high +transport of hours of indolence spent basking in the bed of purple +heather, your nostrils filled with gladsome air and the scent of thyme, +your eyes following the course of the milk-white clouds that ride with +folded sails in the blue heavens overhead and cast flying shadows on +the uplands, where nothing breaks the silence of the hills but the song +in the air, the tinkle of the sheep-bells, and the murmur of the +moorland bee. + +And the upshot of the matter is this. The master-things for the +enjoyment of life are: health, a balanced mind that will not churlishly +refuse "God's plenty," an eye quick to discern the marvel of beautiful +things, a heart in sympathy with man and beast. Possessing these we may +defy Fortune-- + + "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny: + You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, + You cannot shut the windows of the sky + Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; + You cannot bar my constant feet to trace + The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve: + Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, + And I their toys to the great children leave; + Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave." + + * * * * * + + PRINTED BY + TURNBULL AND SPEARS + EDINBURGH + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Garden-Craft Old and New, by John D. 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