CHAPTER I.

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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."