GARDENS AND ORCHARDS
One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth.
The practice of painting gardens is almost as modern as that of
painting by ladies. The Flemings of the fifteenth century, it is true,
introduced in a delightful fashion conventional borders of flowers
into some of their pictures, probably because they felt that ornament
must be presented from end to end of them, and that in no way could
they do this better than by adding the gaiety of flowers to their
foregrounds. But all through the later dreary days no one touched the
garden, for the conglomeration of flowers in the pieces of the Dutchmen
of the seventeenth century cannot be treated as such. Flowers certainly
flourished in the gardens of the well-to-do in England in the century
between 1750 and 1850, but none of the limners of the drawings of
noblemen or of gentlemen's seats which were produced in such quantities
during that period ever condescended to introduce them. Even so
late as fifty years ago, if we may judge from the titles, the Royal
Academy Exhibition of that date did not contain a single specimen of
a flower-garden. The only probable one is a picture entitled "Cottage
Roses," and any remotely connected with the garden appear under such
headings as "Early Tulips," "Geraniums," "Japonicas and Orchids," "Will
you have this pretty rose, Mamma?" or "The Last Currants of Summer"!
Taste only half a century ago was different from ours, and asked for
other provender. Thus, the original owner of the catalogue from which
these statistics were taken was an energetic amateur critic, who has
commended, or otherwise, almost every picture, commendations being
signified by crosses and disapproval by noughts. The only work with
five crosses is one illustrating the line, "Now stood Eliza on the
wood-crown'd height." On the other hand, Millais' "Peace Concluded"
stands at the head of the bad marks with five, his "Blind Girl" with
two, which number is shared with Leighton's "Triumph of Music." Holman
Hunt's "Scapegoat," in addition to four bad marks, is described as
"detestable and profane." These pre-Raphaelites, Millais, Holman
Hunt, and their followers, then so little esteemed, may in truth be
said to have been the originators of the "garden-drawing cult," chief
amongst their followers being Frederick Walker. To the example of the
last-named more especially are due the productions of the numerous
artists--good, bad, and indifferent--who have seized upon a delightful
subject and almost nauseated the public with their productions. The
omission of gardens from the painter's _rôle_ in later times may in
a measure have been due to the gardens themselves, or, to speak more
correctly, to those under whose charge they were maintained. The ideal
of a garden to the true artist must always have differed from these as
to its ordering, even in these very recent days when the edict has gone
forth that Nature is to be allowed a hand in the planning.
The gardener, no matter whether the surroundings favour a formal
garden or not, insists upon his harmonies or contrasts of brilliant
colourings. If he takes these from a manual on gardening he will adopt
what is termed a procession of colouring somewhat as follows: strong
blues, pale yellow, pink, crimson, strong scarlet, orange, and bright
yellow. He is told that his colours are to be placed with careful
deliberation and forethought, as a painter employs them in his picture,
and not dropped down as he has them on his palette! Alfred Parsons and
George Elgood have on occasions grappled with creations such as these,
when placed in settings of yew-trimmed hedges, or as surroundings of a
central statue, or sundial; but who will say that the results have been
as successful as those where formality has been merely a suggestion,
and Nature has had her say and her way. Surroundings must, of course,
play a prominent part in any garden scheme. However much we may
dislike a stiff formality, it is sometimes a necessity. For instance,
herbaceous plants, with annuals of mixed colours, would have looked out
of place on the lawn in front of Brocket Hall (Plate 65), which calls
for a mass of plants of uniform colours. The lie of the ground, too,
must, as in such a case, be taken into account: there it is a sloping
descent facing towards the sun, and so is not easy to keep in a moist
condition. Geraniums and calceolarias, which stand such conditions, are
therefore almost a necessity.
When this book was proposed to Mrs. Allingham her chief objection
was her certainty that no process could reproduce her drawings
satisfactorily. Her method of work was, she believed, entirely opposed
to mechanical reproduction, for she employed not only every formula
used by her fellow water-colourists, but many that others would not
venture upon. Amongst those she tabulated was her system of obtaining
effects by rubbing, scrubbing, and scratching. But the process was not
to be denied, and she was fain to admit that even in these it has been
a wonderfully faithful reproducer. Now nowhere are these methods of
Mrs. Allingham's more utilised, and with greater effect, than in her
drawings of flower-gardens. The system of painting flowers in masses
has undergone great changes of late. The plan adopted a generation or
so ago was first to draw and paint the flowers and then the foliage.
This method left the flowers isolated objects and the foliage without
substantiality. Mrs. Allingham's method is the reverse of this. Take,
for instance, the white clove pinks in the foreground of Mrs. Combe's
drawing of the kitchen-garden at Farringford (Plate 71). These are
so admirably done that their perfume almost scents the room. They
have been simply carved out of a background of walk and grey-green
spikes, and left as white paper, all their drawing and modelling
being achieved by a dexterous use of the knife and a wetted and rubbed
surface. The poppies, roses, columbines, and stocks have all been
created in the same way. The advantage is seen at once. There are no
badly pencilled outlines, and the blooms blend amongst themselves and
grow naturally out of their foliage.
[Illustration:
59. STUDY OF A ROSE BUSH
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._
Painted about 1887.]
A very interesting series of studies of various kinds might have been
included in this volume, which would have shown the thoroughness
with which our artist works, and it was with much reluctance that we
discarded all but two, in the interests of the larger number of our
readers, who might have thought them better fitted for a manual of
instruction. The Gloire de Dijon rose, however, is such a prime old
favourite, begotten before the days of scentless specimens to which
are appended the ill-sounding names of fashionable patrons of the
rose-grower, that we could not keep our hands off it when we came
across it in the artist's portfolio.
This rose tree, or one of its fellows, will be seen in the background
of two of the drawings of Mrs. Allingham's garden at Sandhills, namely,
Plates 61 and 64.
[Illustration:
60. WALLFLOWERS
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. G. Debenham._
Painted about 1893.]
Of the denizens of the garden there is perhaps none which appeals to
a countryman who has drifted into the city so much as the wallflower.
His senses both of sight and smell have probably grown up under its
influence, and it carries him back to the home of his childhood, for it
is of never-to-be-forgotten sweetness both in colour and in scent, and
it conjures up old days when the rare warmth of an April sun extracted
its perfume until all the air in its neighbourhood was redolent of it.
If my reader be a west countryman, like the author, he may best know it
as the gilliflower, but he will do so erroneously, for the name rightly
applies to the carnation, and was so used even in Chaucer's time--
Many a clove gilofre
To put in ale;
and again in Culpepper--
The great clove carnation Gillo-Floure.
But as a "rose by any other name would smell as sweet," every true
flower-lover cherishes his wallflower, which returns to him so
bountifully the slightest attention, which accepts the humblest
position, which thrives on the scantiest fare, which is amongst the
first to welcome us in the spring, and, with its scantier second bloom,
amongst the last to bid adieu in the autumn, sometimes even striving to
gladden us with its blossom year in and year out if winter's cold be
not too stark.
Old names give place to new, and in nurserymen's catalogues we search
in vain for its pleasant-sounding title, and fail to distinguish either
its reproduction in black and white, or its designation under that of
cheiranthus.
[Illustration:
61. MINNA
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Lord Chief Justice of
England._
Painted about 1886.]
This, and the drawing of a "Summer Garden" (Plate 64), are taken almost
from the same spot in Mrs. Allingham's garden at Sandhills.
Both are simple studies of flowers without any more elaborate effort
at arrangement or composition than that which gives to each a purposed
scheme of colour--a scheme, however, that is, with set purpose, hidden
away, so that the flowers may look as if they grew, as they appear
to do, by chance. The flowers, too, are old-fashioned inhabitants:
pansies, sea-pinks, marigolds, sweetwilliams, snap-dragons,
eschscholtzias, and flags, with a background of rose bushes; all of
them (with the exception, perhaps, of the flag) flowers such as Spenser
might have had in his eye when he penned the lines--
No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,
No arborett with painted blossomes drest
And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd
To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.
[Illustration:
62. A KENTISH GARDEN
_From the Drawing in the possession of the Artist._
Painted 1903.]
This scene may well be compared with that of Tennyson's garden at
Aldworth, reproduced in Plate 74, as it illustrates even more
appositely than does that, the lines in "Roses on the Terrace"
concerning the contrast between the pink of the flower and the blue
of the distance. But here the interval between the colours is not the
exaggerated fifty miles of the poem, but one insufficient to dim the
shapes of the trees on the opposite side of the valley. Of all the
gardens here illustrated none offers a greater wealth of colour than
this Kentish garden, situated as it is with an aspect which makes it a
veritable sun-trap.
[Illustration:
63. CUTTING CABBAGES
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. E. W. Fordham._
Painted about 1884.]
The cabbage is probably to most people the most uninteresting tenant of
the kitchen-garden, and yet its presence there was probably the motive
which set Mrs. Allingham to work to make this drawing, for it is clear
that in the first instance it was conceived as a study of the varied
and delicate mother-of-pearl hues which each presented to an artistic
eye. As a piece of painting it is extremely meritorious through its
being absolutely straight-forward drawing and brush work,
the high lights being left, and not obtained by the usual method of
cutting, scraping, or body colour. The buxom mother of a growing family
selecting the best plant for their dinner is just the personal note
which distinguishes each and every one of our illustrations.
[Illustration:
64. IN A SUMMER GARDEN
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. William Newall._
Painted about 1887.]
I cannot refrain from drawing attention to this reproduction as one
of the wonders of the "three colour process." If my readers could see
the three colours which produce the result when superimposed, first
the yellow, then the red, and lastly the blue--aniline hues of the
most forbidding character--they would indeed deem it incredible that
any resemblance to the original could be possible. It certainly passes
the comprehension of the uninitiated how the differing delicacies of
the violet hues of the flowers to the left could be obtained from
a partnership which produced the blue black of the flowers in the
foreground, the light pinks of the Shirley poppies, and the rich
reds of the sweetwilliams. Again, what a marvel must the photographic
process be which refuses to recognise the snow-white campanula, and
leaves it to be defined by the untouched paper, and yet records
the faint pink flush which has been breathed upon the edges of the
sweetwilliam. It is indeed a tribute to the inventive genius of the
present day, genius which will probably enable the "press the button
and we do the rest photographer" before many days are past to reel off
in colour what he now can only accomplish in monochrome.
[Illustration:
65. BY THE TERRACE, BROCKET HALL
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Lord Mount-Stephen._
Painted 1900.]
Portraiture of time-worn cottages where Nature has its way, and
cottars' gardens where flowers come and go at their own sweet will, is
a very different thing from portraiture of a well-kept house, where the
bricklayer and the mason are requisitioned when the slightest decay
shows itself, and of gardens where formal ribbon borders are laid out
by so-called landscape gardeners, whose taste always leans to
bright colours not always massed in the happiest way. In portraits of
houses license is hardly permissible even for artistic effects, for not
only may associations be connected with every slope and turn of a path,
but the artist always has before him the possibility that the drawing
will be hung in close proximity to the scene, for comparison by persons
who may not always be charitably disposed to artistic alterations. It
speaks well, therefore, for Mrs. Allingham in the drawing of the garden
at Brocket that she has produced a drawing which, without offending
the conventions, is still a picture harmonious in colour, and probably
very satisfying to the owner. There are few who would have cared to
essay the very difficult drawing of cedars, and have accomplished it
so well, or have laboured with so much care over the plain-faced house
and windows. As to these latter she has been happy in assisting the
sunlight in the picture by the drawn-down blinds at the angles which
the sun reaches. The scene has clearly been pictured in the full blaze
of summer.
Brocket Hall is a mansion some three miles north of Hatfield,
Hertfordshire, and a short distance off the Great North Road. It is one
of a string of seats hereabouts which belong to Earl Cowper, but has
been tenanted by Lord Mount-Stephen for some years. The house, which,
as will be seen, has not much architectural pretensions, was built in
the eighteenth century, but it is, to cite an old chronicle, "situate
on a dry hill in a fair park well wooded and greatly timbered" through
which the river Lea winds picturesquely. It is notable as having
been the residence of two Prime Ministers, Lord Melbourne and Lord
Palmerston. The drawing of "The Hawthorn Valley" (Plate 37) is taken
from a part of the park.
[Illustration:
66. THE SOUTH BORDER
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._
Painted 1902.]
This is one of the borders designed on the graduated doctrine as
practised by Miss Jekyll in her garden at Munstead near Godalming. Here
we have the colours starting at the far end in grey leaves, whites,
blues, pinks, and pale yellows, towards a gorgeous centre of reds,
oranges, and scarlets, the whites being formed of yuccas, the
pinks of hollyhocks, the reds and yellows of gladioli, nasturtiums,
African marigolds, herbaceous sunflowers, dahlias, and geraniums.
Another part of the scheme is seen in the drawing which follows.
[Illustration:
67. THE SOUTH BORDER
_From the Water-colour in the possession of W. Edwards, Jun._
Painted 1900.]
A further illustration of the same border in Miss Jekyll's garden,
but painted a year or two earlier, and representing it at its farther
end, where cool colours are coming into the scheme. The orange-red
flowers hanging over the wall are those of the _Bignonia grandiflora_;
the bushes on either side of the archway with white flowers are
choisyas, and the adjoining ones are red and yellow dahlias, flanked by
tritonias (red-hot pokers); the oranges in front are African marigolds
(hardly reproduced sufficiently brightly), with white marguerites; the
grey-leaved plant to the left is the _Cineraria maritima_. Miss Jekyll
does not entirely keep to her arrangement of masses of colour; whilst,
as an artist, she affects rich masses of colour, she is not above
experimenting by breaking in varieties.
[Illustration:
68. STUDY OF LEEKS
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._
Painted 1902.]
I like the leeke above all herbes and flowers,
When first we wore the same the field was ours.
The Leeke is White and Greene, whereby is ment
That Britaines are both stout and eminent;
Next to the Lion and the Unicorn,
The Leeke's the fairest emblym that is worne.
When Mrs. Allingham in wandering round a garden came upon this bed of
flowering leeks, and, "singularly moved to love the lovely that are
not beloved," at once sat down to paint it in preference to a more
ambitious display in the front garden that was at her service, her
friends probably considered her artistic perception to be peculiar,
and some there may be who will deem the honour given to it by
introduction into these pages to be more than its worth. But it has
more than one claim to recognition here, for it is unusual in subject,
delicate in its violet tints, not unbecoming in form, and is here
disassociated from the disagreeable odour which usually accompanies the
reality.
[Illustration:
69. THE APPLE ORCHARD
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Dobson._
Painted about 1877.]
Originally, no doubt, a study of one of those subjects which artists
like to attack, a misshapen tree presenting every imaginable contortion
of foreshortened curvature to harass and worry the draughtsman,--a
tree, specimens of which are too often to be found in old orchards
of this size, whose bearing time has long departed, and who now only
cumber the ground, and with their many fellows have had much to do with
the gradual decay of the English apple industry.