Nothing so perfectly sets off a cottage, in external appearance, as the
presence of plants and shrubbery around it. A large tree or two, by
giving an air of protection, is always in place; and creeping vines, and
climbing shrubs about the windows and porch, are in true character;
while a few low-headed trees, of various kinds, together with some
simple and hardy annual and other flowers--to which should always be
added, near by, a small, well-tended kitchen garden--fill up the
picture.
In the choice of what varieties should compose these ornaments, one can
hardly be at a loss. Flanking the cottage, and near the kitchen garden,
should be the fruit trees. The elm, maples, oak, and hickory, in all
their varieties, black-walnut, butternut--the last all the better for
its rich kernel--are every one appropriate for shade, as _large_ trees.
The hop, morning-glory, running beans--all useful and ornamental as
summer climbers; the clematis, bitter-sweet, ivy, any of the _climbing_
roses; the lilac, syringa, snow-ball, and the _standard_ roses; while
marigolds, asters, pinks, the phloxes, peonies, and a few other of the
thousand-and-one simple and charming annuals, biennials, and perennials,
with now and then a gorgeous sunflower, flaunting in its broad glory,
will fill up the catalogue. Rare and costly plants are not required, and
indeed, are hardly in place in the grounds of an ordinary cottage,
unless occupied by the professional gardener. They denote expense, which
the laboring cottager cannot afford; and besides that, they detract from
the simplicity of the life and purpose which not only the cottage
itself, but everything around it, should express.
There is an affectation of _cottage_ building, with some people who,
with a seeming humility, really aim at higher flights of style in living
within them, than truth of either design or purpose will admit. But as
such cases are more among villagers, and those temporarily retiring from
the city for summer residence, the farm cottage has little to do with
it. Still, such fancies are contagious, and we have occasionally seen
the ambitious cottage, with its covert expression of humility,
insinuating itself on to the farm, and for the farmer's own family
occupation, too, which at once spoiled, to the eye, the _substantial
reality_ of the whole establishment. A farmer should discard all such
things as _ornamental_ cottages. They do not belong to the farm. If he
live in a cottage himself, it should be a _plain_ one; yet it may be
very substantial and well finished--something showing that he means
either to be content in it, in its character of plainness, or that he
intends, at a future day, to build something better--when this may serve
for the habitation of one of his laborers.
The cottage should never occupy a principal, or prominent site on the
farm. It should take a subordinate position of ground. This adds to its
expression as subordinate in rank, among the lesser farm buildings. A
cottage cannot, and should not aspire to be _chief_ in either position
or character. Such should be the farm house proper; although
unpretending, still, in style, above the cottage; and if the latter,
in addition, be required on the farm, it should so appear, both in
construction and finish; just what it is intended for--a tenement for
economical purposes.
There is another kind of cottage, the dwellers in which, these pages
will probably never reach, that expresses, in its wild structure, and
rude locality, the idea of Moore's pretty song--
"I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near."
Yet, in some parts of our country, landlords may build such, for the
accommodation of tenants, which they may make useful on the outskirts of
their estates, and add indirectly to their own convenience and interest
in so doing. This may be indulged in, _poetically_ too--for almost any
thinking man has a spice of poetry in his composition--vagabondism,
a strict, economizing utilitarian would call it. The name matters not.
One may as well indulge his taste in this cheap sort of charitable
expenditure, as another may indulge, in his dogs, and guns, his horses
and equipages--and the first is far the cheapest. They, at the west and
south, understand this, whose recreations are occasionally with their
hounds, in chase of the deer, and the fox, and in their pursuit spend
weeks of the fall and winter months, in which they are accompanied, and
assisted, as boon companions for the time, by the rude tenants of the
cottages we have described:
"A cheerful, simple, honest people."
Another class of cottage may come within the farm enclosures, half
poetical, and half economical, such as Milton describes:
"Hard by a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks;"
and occupied by a family pensioner and his infirm old wife--we don't
think _all_ "poor old folks" ought to go to the alms-house, because they
cannot work _every_ day of the year--of which all long-settled families
of good estate have, now and then, one near to, or upon their premises.
Thousands of kind and liberal hearts among our farming and planting
brethren, whose impulses are--
"Open as the day to melting charity,"
are familiar with the wants of those who are thus made their dependents;
and in their accommodation, an eye may be kept to the producing of an
agreeable effect in locating their habitations, and to rudely embellish,
rather than to mar the domain on which they may be lodged.
In short, cottage architecture, in its proper character, may be made as
effective, in all the ornament which it should give to the farm, as that
of any other structure; and if those who have occasion for the cottage
will only be content to build and maintain it as it should be, and leave
off that perpetual aspiration after something unnatural, and foreign to
its purpose, which so many cottage builders of the day attempt, and let
it stand in its own humble, secluded character, they will save
themselves a world of trouble, and pass for--what they now do not--men
possessing a taste for truth and propriety in their endeavors.