The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
sweetness." "Such things are for state and magnificence, but nothing to
the true pleasure of a garden."
Such was the Elizabethan garden in its general outlines; the sort of
garden which Shakespeare must have often seen both in Warwickshire and
in London. According to our present ideas such a garden would be far too
formal and artificial, and we may consider that the present fashion of
our gardens is more according to Milton's idea of Eden, in which there
grew--
"Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plaine."
_Paradise Lost_, book iv.
None of us probably would now wish to exchange the straight walks and
level terraces of the sixteenth century for our winding walks and
undulating lawns, in the laying out of which the motto has been "ars est
celare artem"--
"That which all faire workes doth most aggrace,
The art, which all that wrought, appeareth in no place."
_F. Q._, ii, xii, 58.
Yet it is pleasant to look back upon these old gardens, and to see how
they were cherished and beloved by some of the greatest and noblest of
Englishmen. Spenser has left on record his judgment on the gardens of
his day--
"To the gay gardens his unstaid desire
Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights;
There lavish Nature, in her best attire,
Poures forth sweete odors and alluring sights:
And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire
To excell the naturall with made delights;
And all, that faire or pleasant may be found,
In riotous excesse doth there abound.
* * * * *
There he arriving around about doth flie,
From bed to bed, from one to other border;
And takes survey, with curious busie eye,
Of every flowre and herbe there set in order."
_Muiopotmos._
Clearly in Spenser's eyes the formalities of an Elizabethan garden (for
we must suppose he had such in his thoughts) did not exclude nature or
beauty.
It was also with such formal gardens in his mind and before his eyes
that Lord Bacon wrote his "Essay on Gardens," and commenced it with the
well-known sentence (for I must quote him once again for the last time),
"God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of all
human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man,
without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man
shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegance, men come
to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the
greater perfection." And, indeed, in spite of their stiffness and
unnaturalness, there must have been a great charm in those gardens, and
though it would be antiquarian affectation to attempt or wish to
restore them, yet there must have been a stateliness about them which
our gardens have not, and they must have had many points of real comfort
which it seems a pity to have lost. Those long shady "covert alleys,"
with their "thick-pleached" sides and roof, must have been very pleasant
places to walk in, giving shelter in winter, and in summer deep shade,
with the pleasant smell of Sweet Brier and Roses. They must have been
the very places for a thoughtful student, who desired quiet and
retirement for his thoughts--
"And adde to these retired leisure
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure"--
_Il Penseroso._
and they must have been also "pretty retiring places for conference" for
friends in council. The whole fashion of the Elizabethan garden has
passed away, and will probably never be revived; but before we condemn
it as a ridiculous fashion, unworthy of the science of gardening, we may
remember that it held its ground in England for nearly two hundred
years, and that during that time the gardens of England and the flowers
they bore won not the cold admiration, but the warm affection of the
greatest names in English history, the affection of such a queen as
Elizabeth,[349:1] of such a grave and wise philosopher as Bacon, of such
a grand hero as Raleigh, of such poets as Spenser and Shakespeare.
FOOTNOTES:
[343:1] These beds (as we should now call them) were called "tables" or
"plots"--
"Mark out the tables, ichon by hem selve
Sixe foote in brede, and xii in length is beste
To clense and make on evey side honest."
_Palladius on Husbandrie_, i. 116.
"Note this generally that all plots are square."--LAWSON'S _New
Orchard_, p. 60.
[344:1] For an account of Levens, with a plate of the Topiarian garden,
see "Archæological Journal," vol. xxvi.
[347:1] Including shrubs--
"'Tis another's lot
To light upon some gard'ner's curious knot,
Where she upon her breast (love's sweet repose),
Doth bring the Queen of flowers, the English Rose."
BROWNE'S _Brit. Past._, i, 2.
[347:2] For a good account of mazes and labyrinths see "Archæological
Journal," xiv. 216.
[349:1] Queen Elizabeth's love of gardening and her botanical knowledge
were celebrated in a Latin poem by an Italian who visited England in
1586, and wrote a long poem under the name of "Melissus."--See
_Archæologia_, vol. vii. 120.
III.--GARDENERS.
(1) _Queen._
But stay, here come the gardeners;
Let's step into the shadow of these trees.
* * * * *
Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man?
Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed?
Darest thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfal?
_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 4 (24, 72).
(2) _Clown._
Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners,
ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.
_Hamlet_, act v, sc. 1 (34).
Very little is recorded of the gardeners of the sixteenth century, by
which we can judge either of their skill or their social position.
Gerard frequently mentions the names of different persons from whom he
obtained plants, but without telling us whether they were professional
or amateur gardeners or nurserymen; and Hakluyt has recorded the name of
Master Wolfe as gardener to Henry VIII. Certainly Richard II.'s Queen
did not speak with much respect to her gardener, reproving him for his
"harsh rude tongue," and addressing him as a "little better thing than
earth"--but her angry grief may account for that. Parkinson also has not
much to say in favour of the gardeners of his day, but considers it his
duty to warn his readers against them: "Our English gardeners are all,
or the most of them, utterly ignorant in the ordering of their
outlandish (_i.e._, exotic) flowers as not being trained to know
them. . . . And I do wish all gentlemen and gentlewomen, whom it may
concern for their own good, to be as careful whom they trust with the
planting and replanting of their fine flowers, as they would be with so
many jewels, for the roots of many of them being small and of great
value may soon be conveyed away, and a clean tale fair told, that such a
root is rotten or perished in the ground if none be seen where it should
be, or else that the flower hath changed his colour when it hath been
taken away, or a counterfeit one hath been put in the place thereof; and
thus many have been deceived of their daintiest flowers, without remedy
or true knowledge of the defect." And again, "idle and ignorant
gardeners who get names by stealth as they do many other things." This
is not a pleasant picture either of the skill or honesty of the
sixteenth-century gardeners, but there must have been skilled gardeners
to keep those curious-knotted gardens in order, so as to have a "_ver
perpetuum_ all the year." And there must have been men also who had a
love for their craft; and if some stole the rare plants committed to
their charge, we must hope that there were some honest men amongst them,
and that they were not all like old Andrew Fairservice, in "Rob Roy,"
who wished to find a place where he "wad hear pure doctrine, and hae a
free cow's grass, and a cot and a yard, and mair than ten punds of
annual fee," but added also, "and where there's nae leddy about the town
to count the Apples."
IV.--GARDENING OPERATIONS.
A. PRUNING, ETC.
(1) _Orlando._
But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and industry.
_As you Like It_, act ii, sc. 3 (63).
(2) _Gardener._
Go, bind thou up yon dangling Apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth:
All must be even in our government.
You thus employ'd, I would go root away
The noisome weeds, which without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.
* * * * *
O, what pity is it,
That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear and he to taste
Their fruits of duty; superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.
_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 4 (29).
This most interesting passage would almost tempt us to say that
Shakespeare was a gardener by profession; certainly no other passages
that have been brought to prove his real profession are more minute than
this. It proves him to have had practical experience in the work, and I
think we may safely say that he was no mere 'prentice hand in the use of
the pruning knife.
The art of pruning in his day was probably exactly like our own, as far
as regarded fruit trees and ordinary garden work, but in one important
particular the pruner's art of that day was a for more laborious art
than it is now. The topiary art must have been the triumph of pruning,
and when gardens were full of castles, monsters, beasts, birds, fishes,
and men, all cut out of Box and Yew, and kept so exact that they boasted
of being the "living representations" and "counterfeit presentments" of
these various objects, the hands and head of the pruner could seldom
have been idle; the pruning knife and scissors must have been in
constant demand from the first day of the year to the last. The pruner
of that day was, in fact, a sculptor, who carved his images out of Box
and Yew instead of marble, so that in an amusing article in the
"Guardian" for 1713 (No. 173), said to have been written by Pope, is a
list of such sculptured objects for sale, and we are told that the
"eminent town gardener had arrived to such perfection that he cuts
family pieces of men, women, and children. Any ladies that please may