OF GARDENS:—LAVINGTON GARDEN, CHELSEY GARDEN.
[THE stately gardens of the seventeenth century were less remarkable
for the cultivation of useful or ornamental plants than for the formal
arrangement of their walks, arbours, parterres, and hedges. Amongst the
various decorations introduced were jets d’eau, or fountains,
artificial cascades, columns, statues, grottoes, rock-work, mazes or
labyrinths, terraces communicating with each other by flights of steps,
and similar puerilities. This style of gardening was introduced from
France; where the celebrated Le Notre had displayed his skill in laying
out the gardens of the palace of Versailles; the most important
specimens of their class. The same person was afterwards employed by
several of the English nobility.
The gardens at Wilton, described in the last chapter, were completely
in the style referred to. Solomon de Caus, to whom they are attributed
by Aubrey, is supposed by Mr. Loudon, in his valuable “Encyclopaedia of
Gardening”, to have been the inventor of greenhouses. The last
mentioned work contains the best account yet published of the gardens
of the olden time. Britton’s “History of Cassiobury” (folio, 1837), p.
17, also contains some curious particulars of the original plantations
and pleasure grounds of that interesting mansion.
The gardens at Lavington, which are described in the present chapter,
were evidently of the same character with those of Wilton.
Chelsey-garden is very minutely described by Aubrey, but our limits
forbid its insertion, especially as it is irrelevant to a History of
Wiltshire.—J. B.]
O janitores, villiciq{ue} felices:
Dominis parantur isti, serviunt vobis.
MARTIAL, Epigramm. 29, lib. x.
To write in the praise of gardens is besides my designe. The pleasure
and use of them were unknown to our great-grandfathers. They were
contented with pot-herbs, and did mind chiefly their stables. The
chronicle tells us, that in the reign of King Henry the 8th pear—mains
were so great a rarity that a baskett full of them was a present to the
great Cardinall Wolsey.
Henry Lyte, of Lyte’s Cary, in Somerset, Esq. translated Dodoens’
Herball into English, which he dedicated to Q. Elizabeth, about the
beginning of her reigne [1578]. He had a pretty good collection of
plants for that age; some few whereof are yet alive, 1660: and no
question but Dr. Gilbert, &c. did furnish their gardens as well as they
could so long ago, which could be but meanly. But the first peer that
stored his garden with exotick plants was William Earle of Salisbury,
[1612-1668] at his garden at [Hatfield?—J. B.] a catalogue whereof,
fairly writt in a skin of vellum, consisting of 830 plants, is in the
hands of Elias Ashmole, Esq. at South Lambeth.
But ’twas Sir John Danvers, of Chelsey, who first taught us the way of
Italian gardens. He had well travelled France and Italy, and made good
observations. He had in a fair body an harmonicall mind. In his youth
his complexion was so exceeding beautiful and fine that Thomas Bond,
Esq. of Ogbourne St. …. in Wiltshire, who was his companion in his
travells, did say that the people would come after him in the street to
admire him. He had a very fine fancy, which lay chiefly for gardens and
architecture.
The garden at Lavington in this county, and that at Chelsey in
Middlesex, as likewise the house there, doe remaine monuments of his
ingenuity. The garden at Lavington is full of irregularities, both
naturall and artificiall, sc. elevations and depressions. Through the
length of it there runneth a fine cleare trowt stream; walled with
brick on each side, to hinder the earth from mouldring down. In this
stream are placed severall statues. At the west end is an admirable
place for a grotto, where the great arch is, over which now is the
market roade. Among severall others, there is a very pleasant elevation
on the south side of the garden, which steales, arising almost
insensibly, that is, before one is aware, and gives you a view over the
spatious corn-fields there, and so to East Lavington: where, being
landed on a fine levell, letteth you descend again with the like
easinesse; each side is flanqued with laurells. It is almost impossible
to describe this garden, it is so full of variety and unevenesse; nay,
it would be a difficult matter for a good artist to make a draught of
it. About An°. 1686, the right honourable James Earle of Abingdon [who
had become possessed of the estate in right of his wife], built a noble
portico, full of water workes, which is on the north side of the
garden, and faceth the south. It is both portico and grott, and was
designed by Mr. Rose, of …… in Oxfordshire.
Wilton Garden was the third garden after these two of the Italian mode;
but in the time of King Charles the Second gardening was much improved
and became common. I doe believe I may modestly affirme that there is
now, 1691, ten times as much gardening about London as there was Anno
1660; and wee have been, since that time, much improved in forreign
plants, especially since about 1683, there have been exotick plants
brought into England no lesse than seven thousand. (From Mr. Watts,
gardener of the Apothecary’s garden at Chelsey, and other botanists.)
As for Longleate Garden it was lately made. I have not seen it, but
they say ’tis noble.
Till the breaking out of the civill warres, Tom ô Bedlam’s did travell
about the countrey. They had been poore distracted men that had been
putt into Bedlam, where recovering to some sobernesse they were
licentiated to goe a begging: e. g. they had on their left arm an
armilla of tinn, printed in some workes, about four inches long; they
could not gett it off. They wore about their necks a great horn of an
oxe in a string or bawdrie, which, when they came to an house for
almes, they did wind: and they did putt the drink given them into this
horn, whereto they did putt a stopple. Since the warres I doe not
remember to have seen any one of them. (I have seen them in
Worcestershire within these thirty years, 1756. MS. NOTE, ANONYMOUS.)
[This account of the “bedlam beggars” so well known to our forefathers,
is repeated by Aubrey in his “Remains of Gentilism,” (Lansdowne MSS.
No. 231,) portions of which have been printed in Mr. Thoms’s Anecdotes
and Traditions (1839). The passage corresponding with the above is
quoted by Mr. Charles Knight from the manuscript referred to, in
illustration of the character of “Mad Tom,” assumed by Edgar, in
Shakspere’s play of King Lear.—J. B.]