The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
we know from St. Paul (Romans xi. 16-25) and other writers, and it is
sometimes the custom now. There are a great number of varieties of the
cultivated Olive, as of other cultivated fruit.
One reason why the Olive is not more grown as a garden tree is that it
is a tree very little admired by most travellers. Yet this is entirely a
matter of taste, and some of the greatest authorities are loud in its
praises as a picturesque tree. One short extract from Ruskin's account
of the tree will suffice, though the whole description is well worth
reading. "The Olive," he says, "is one of the most characteristic and
beautiful features of all southern scenery. . . . What the Elm and the
Oak are to England, the Olive is to Italy. . . . It had been well for
painters to have felt and seen the Olive tree, to have loved it for
Christ's sake; . . . to have loved it even to the hoary dimness of its
delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the
Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and to have traced line
by line the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed
fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the
sky, and the small, rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the
heads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs--the
right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow--and,
more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver-grey, and tender, like
the down on a bird's breast, with which far away it veils the undulation
of the mountains."--_Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. p. 176.
FOOTNOTES:
[186:1] _See_ Spenser's account of the first introduction of the Olive
in "Muiopotmos."
ONIONS.
(1) _Bottom._
And, most dear actors, eat no Onions nor
Garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 2 (42).
(2) _Lafeu._
Mine eyes smell Onions, I shall weep anon:
Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, act v, sc. 3 (321).
(3) _Enobarbus._
Indeed the tears live in Onion that should water this Sorrow.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, act i, sc. 2 (176).
(4) _Enobarbus._
Look, they weep,
And I, an ass, am Onion-eyed.
_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 2 (34).
(5) _Lord._
And if the boy have not a woman's gift
To rain a shower of commanded tears,
An Onion will do well for such a shift,
Which in a napkin being close conveyed
Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.
_Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, sc. 1 (124).
There is no need to say much of the Onion in addition to what I have
already said on the Garlick and Leek, except to note that Onions seem
always to have been considered more refined food than Leek and Garlick.
Homer makes Onions an important part of the elegant little repast which
Hecamede set before Nestor and Machaon--
"Before them first a table fair she spread,
Well polished and with feet of solid bronze;
On this a brazen canister she placed,
And Onions as a relish to the wine,
And pale clear honey and pure Barley meal."
_Iliad_, book xi. (Lord Derby's translation).
But in the time of Shakespeare they were not held in such esteem.
Coghan, writing in 1596, says of them: "Being eaten raw, they engender
all humourous and corruptible putrifactions in the stomacke, and cause
fearful dreames, and if they be much used they snarre the memory and
trouble the understanding" ("Haven of Health," p. 58).
The name comes directly from the French _oignon_, a bulb, being the bulb
_par excellence_, the French name coming from the Latin _unio_, which
was the name given to some species of Onion, probably from the bulb
growing singly. It may be noted, however, that the older English name
for the Onion was Ine, of which we may perhaps still have the
remembrance in the common "Inions." The use of the Onion to promote
artificial crying is of very old date, Columella speaking of "lacrymosa
cæpe," and Pliny of "cæpis odor lacrymosus." There are frequent
references to the same use in the old English writers.
The Onion has been for so many centuries in cultivation that its native
home has been much disputed, but it has now "according to Dr. Regel
('Gartenflora,' 1877, p. 264) been definitely determined to be the
mountains of Central Asia. It has also been found in a wild state in the
Himalaya Mountains."--_Gardener's Chronicle._
ORANGE.
(1) _Beatrice._
The count is neither sad nor sick, nor merry nor well; but
civil count, civil as an Orange, and something of that
jealous complexion.
_Much Ado About Nothing_, act ii, sc. 1 (303).
(2) _Claudio._
Give not this rotten Orange to your friend.
_Much Ado About Nothing_, act iv, sc. 1 (33).
(3) _Bottom._
I will discharge it either in your straw-coloured beard, your
Orange-tawny beard.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i, sc. 2 (95).
(4) _Bottom._
The ousel cock so black of hue
With Orange-tawny bill.
_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 1 (128).
(5) _Menenius._
You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause
between an Orange-wife and a fosset-seller.
_Coriolanus_, act ii, sc. 1 (77).
I should think it very probable that Shakespeare may have seen both
Orange and Lemon trees growing in England. The Orange is a native of the
East Indies, and no certain date can be given for its introduction into
Europe. Under the name of the Median Apple a tree is described first by
Theophrastus, and then by Virgil and Palladius, which is supposed by
some to be the Orange; but as they all describe it as unfit for food, it
is with good reason supposed that the tree referred to is either the
Lemon or Citron. Virgil describes it very exactly--
"Ipsa ingens arbor, faciemque simillima lauro
Et si non alium late jactaret odorem
Laurus erat; folia hand ullis labentia ventis
Flos ad prima tenax."--_Georgic_ ii, 131.
Dr. Daubeny, who very carefully studied the plants of classical writers,
decides that the fruit here named is the Lemon, and says that it "is
noticed only as a foreign fruit, nor does it appear that it was
cultivated at that time in Italy, for Pliny says it will only grow in
Media and Assyria, though Palladius in the fourth century seems to have
been familiar with it, and it was known in Greece at the time of
Theophrastus." But if Oranges were grown in Italy or Greece in the time
of Pliny and Palladius, they did not continue in cultivation. Europe
owes the introduction or reintroduction to the Portuguese, who brought
them from the East, and they were grown in Spain in the eleventh
century. The first notice of them in Italy was in the year 1200, when a
tree was planted by St. Dominic at Rome. The first grown in France is
said to have been the old tree which lived at the Orangery at
Versailles till November, 1876, and was called the Grand Bourbon. "In
1421 the Queen of Navarre gave the gardener the seed from Pampeluna;
hence sprang the plant, which was subsequently transported to Chantilly.
In 1532 the Orange tree was sent to Fontainebleau, whence, in 1684,
Louis XIV. transferred it to Versailles, where it remained the largest,
finest, and most fertile member of the Orangery, its head being 17yds.
round." It is not likely that a tree of such beauty should be growing so
near England without the English gardeners doing their utmost to
establish it here. But the first certain record is generally said to be
in 1595, when (on the authority of Bishop Gibson) Orange trees were
planted at Beddington, in Surrey, the plants being raised from seeds
brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh. The date, however, may be
placed earlier, for in Lyte's "Herbal" (1578) it is stated that "In this
countrie the Herboristes do set and plant the Orange trees in there
gardens, but they beare no fruite without they be wel kept and defended
from cold, and yet for all that they beare very seldome." There are no
Oranges in Gerard's catalogue of 1596, and though he describes the trees
in his "Herbal," he does not say that he then grew them or had seen them
growing. But by 1599 he had obtained them, for they occur in his
catalogue of that date under the name of "Malus orantia, the Arange or
Orange tree," so that it is certainly very probable that Shakespeare may
have seen the Orange as a living tree.
As to the beauty of the Orange tree, there is but one opinion. Andrew
Marvel described it as--
"The Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night."
_Bermudas._
George Herbert drew a lesson from its power of constant fruiting--
"Oh that I were an Orenge tree,
That busie plant;
Then should I ever laden be,
And never want
Some fruit for him that dressed me."
_Employment._
And its handsome evergreen foliage, its deliciously scented flowers,
and its golden fruit--
"A fruit of pure Hesperian gold
That smelled ambrosially"--
TENNYSON.
at once demand the admiration of all. It only fails in one point to make
it a plant for every garden: it is not fully hardy in England. It is
very surprising to read of those first trees at Beddington, that "they
were planted in the open ground, under a movable covert during the
winter months; that they always bore fruit in great plenty and
perfection; that they grew on the south side of a wall, not nailed
against it, but at full liberty to spread; that they were 14ft. high,
the girth of the stem 29in., and the spreading of the branches one way
9ft., and 12ft. another; and that they so lived till they were entirely
killed by the great frost in 1739-40."--MILLER.[191:1] These trees must
have been of a hardy variety, for certainly Orange trees, even with such
protection, do not now so grow in England, except in a few favoured
places on the south coast. There is one species which is fairly hardy,
the Citrus trifoliata, from Japan,[191:2] forming a pretty bush with
sweet flowers, and small but useless fruit (seldom, I believe, produced
out-of-doors); it is often used as a stock on which to graft the better
kinds, but perhaps it might be useful for crossing, so as to give its
hardiness to a variety with better flower and fruit.
Commercially the Orange holds a high place, more than 20,000 good fruit
having been picked from one tree, and England alone importing about
2,000,000 bushels annually. These are almost entirely used as a dessert
fruit and for marmalade, but it is curious that they do not seem to have
been so used when first imported. Parkinson makes no mention of their
being eaten raw, but says they "are used as sauce for many sorts of
meats, in respect of the sweet sourness giving a relish and delight
whereinsoever they are used;" and he mentions another curious use, no
longer in fashion, I believe, but which might be worth a trial: "The
seeds being cast into the grounde in the spring time will quickly grow
up, and when they are a finger's length high, being pluckt up and put
among Sallats, will give them a marvellous fine aromatick or spicy tast,
very acceptable."[192:1]
FOOTNOTES:
[191:1] In an "Account of Gardens Round London in 1691," published in
the "Archæologia," vol. xii., these Orange trees are described as if