existence about 1595. It was largely the creation of John Parkinson
(1567-1650), who seems to have been the first person to insist that
flowers were worthy of cultivation for their beauty quite apart from
their value as medicinal herbs. Parkinson was also the first to make
of equal importance the four enclosures of the period: (1) the garden
of pleasant flowers; (2) the kitchen garden (herbs and roots); (3) the
simples (medicinal); and (4) the orchard.
One would hardly expect to find such esthetic appreciation of flowers
from Parkinson, because he was an apothecary, with a professional
attitude toward plants; and our ideas of an Elizabethan apothecary
picture a dusty seller of narcotics and "drams of poison," like the old
man to whom _Romeo_ and _Juliet_ repaired.
John Parkinson was of a different type. Our portrait illustration
depicts him, wearing a stylish Genoa velvet doublet with lace ruff
and cuffs, a man who could apparently hold his own in any company of
courtiers and men of fashion. Parkinson knew a great many distinguished
persons and entertained visitors at his nurseries, where he must have
held them spellbound (if he talked as well as he wrote) while he
explained the beauties of a new yellow gilliflower, the latest new
scarlet martagon lily, or the flower that he so proudly holds in his
hand--"the orange-color Nonesuch."
Parkinson's talents were recognized at court, for he was appointed
"Apothecary to James I." He had a garden of his own at Long Acre, which
he cultivated with enthusiasm, raising new varieties of well-known
flowers and tending with care new specimens of foreign importations
and exotics--"outlandish flowers" they were called in Shakespeare's
day--and, finally, writing about his floral pets with great knowledge,
keen observation, poetic insight, and quaint charm. His great book,
"Paradisi in Sole; Paradisus Terrestris," appeared in London in 1629,
the most original book of botany of the period and the most complete
English treatise until Ray came.
[Illustration: JOHN GERARD]
[Illustration: PARKINSON AND LOBEL]
Although published thirteen years after Shakespeare's death,
Parkinson's book describes exactly the style of gardens and the variety
of flowers that were familiar to Shakespeare; and to this book we may
go with confidence to learn more intimately the aspect of what we
may call the Shakespeare garden. In it we learn to our surprise that
horticulture in the late Tudor and early Stuart days was not in the
simple state that it is generally supposed to have been in. There were
flower fanciers in and near London--and indeed throughout England--and
there were expert gardeners and florists.
Parkinson was very friendly with the other London flower growers of
whom he speaks cordially in his book and with never the least shadow
of jealousy. He frequently mentions visiting the gardens of Gerard,
Nicholas Leate, and Ralph Tuggy (or Tuggie).
Everybody has heard of Gerard's "Herbal or General Historie of
Plants," published in 1597, for it is one of the most famous ancient
books on flowers. A contemporary botanist said that "Gerard exceeded
most, if not all of his time, in his care, industry and skill in
raising, increasing, and preserving plants." For twenty years
Gerard was superintendent of Lord Burleigh's famous gardens--one of
which was in the Strand, London, and the other at Theobald's in
Hertfordshire. Gerard also had a garden of his own at Holborn (then
a suburb of London), where he raised many rare specimens and tried
many experiments. He employed a collector, William Marshall, to travel
in the Levant for new plants. Gerard (1545-1607) was a physician,
as well as a practical gardener; but, although he possessed great
knowledge, he does not appear to have had the esthetic appreciation
of flowers that Parkinson had in such great measure. His name is also
written Gerade. Gerard's "Herbal" was not the first. Horticulturists
could consult the "Grete Herbal," first printed by Peter Treveris in
1516; Fitzherbert, "Husbandry" (1523); Walter Cary, "Herbal" (1525);
a translation of Macer's "Herbal" (1530); the "Herbal" by Dodoens,
published in Antwerp in 1544; William Turner's "The Names of Herbs in
Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duche and Frenche," etc. (1548), reprinted by
the English Dialect Society (1881); Thomas Tusser's "Five Pointes of
Good Husbandry," etc. (1573), reprinted by the English Dialect Society
(1878); Didymus Mountain's (Thomas Hill) "A Most Brief and Pleasant
Treatise Teaching How to Sow and Set a Garden" (1563), "The Proffitable
Art of Gardening" (1568), and "The Gardener's Labyrinth" (1577);
Barnaby Googe's "Four Books of Husbandry," collected by M. Conradus
Heresbachius, "Newly Englished and increased by Barnaby Googe" (1577);
William Lawson's "A New Orchard and Garden" (1618); Francis Bacon's
"Essay on Gardening" (1625); and John Parkinson's "Paradisi in Sole,
Paradisus Terrestris" (1629).
Ralph Tuggie, or Tuggy, so often spoken of by Parkinson, had a fine
show garden at Westminster, Where he specialized in carnations and
gilliflowers. After his death his widow, "Mistress Tuggie," kept it up.
Another flower enthusiast was the Earl of Salisbury, who placed his
splendid garden at Hatfield under the care of John Tradescant, the
first of a noted family of horticulturists. John Tradescant also had a
garden of his own in South Lambeth, "the finest in England" every one
called it. Here Tradescant introduced the acacia; the lilac, called in
those days the "Blue Pipe Flower"; and, if we may believe Parkinson,
the pomegranate. Among other novelties that attracted visitors to this
show garden he had the "Sable Flag," known also as the "Marvel of Peru."
Lord Zouche was another horticulturist of note. His fine garden at
Hackney contained plants that he himself collected on his travels in
Austria, Italy, and Spain. Lord Zouche gave his garden into the keeping
of the distinguished Mathias de Lobel, a famous physician and botanist
of Antwerp and Delft. Lobel was made botanist to James I and had a
great influence upon flower culture in England. For him the Lobelia was
named--an early instance of naming plants for a person and breaking
away from the quaint descriptive names for flowers.
Elizabethan gardens owed much to Nicholas Leate, or Lete, a London
merchant who about 1590 became a member of the Levant Company. As a
leading merchant in the trade with Turkey and discharging in connection
with commercial enterprise the duties of a semi-political character,
Leate became wealthy and was thus able to indulge his taste for flowers
and anything else he pleased. He had a superb garden and employed
collectors to hunt for specimens in Turkey and Syria. His "servant
at Aleppo" sent many new flowers to London, such as tulips, certain
kinds of lilies,--the martagon, or Turk's Cap, for instance,--irises,
the Crown-Imperial, and many new anemones, or windflowers. The latter
became the rage, foreshadowing the tulip-mania of later years. Nicholas
Leate also imported the yellow Sops-in-Wine, a famous carnation from
Poland, which had never been heard of before in England, and the
beautiful double yellow rose from Constantinople. Leate was a member
of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London, and Master of it
in 1616, 1626, and 1627, and his portrait, given here, said to be by
Daniel Mytens, hung in Ironmongers' Hall in London until this famous
building was destroyed by a German bomb in 1917. Leate died in 1630.
[Illustration: NICHOLAS LEATE]
Leate, being a most enthusiastic flower fancier and garden lover, not
only imported rare specimens but tried many experiments. Indeed we are
surprised in going through old garden manuals of Shakespearean days to
see how many and how varied were the attempts to produce "sports" and
novelties. We read of grafting a rosebush and placing musk in the cleft
in an effort to produce musk-roses; recipes for changing the color of
flowers; methods for producing double flowers; and instructions for
grafting and pruning plants, sowing seeds, and plucking flowers during
the increase, or waning, of the moon.
These professional florists and gentlemen amateurs valued their rare
specimens from foreign countries as they valued their emeralds from
Peru, Oriental pearls from Ceylon and rubies from India. Parkinson says
very earnestly:
"Our English gardeners are all, or most of them, ignorant in the
ordering of their outlandish[5] flowers, as not being trained to know
them. And I do wish all gentlemen and gentlewomen whom it may concern
for their own good, to be as careful whom they trust with the planting
and replanting of their fine flowers as they would be with so many
jewels; for the roots of many of them, being small and of great value,
may soon be conveyed away and a clean, fair tale told that such a root
is rotten, or perished in the ground, if none be seen where it should
be; or else that the flower hath changed in color when it had been
taken away, or a counterfeit one had been put in the place thereof; and
thus many have been deceived of their daintiest flowers, without remedy
or knowledge of the defect."
[5] Exotic.
The influence of the Italian Renaissance upon the Elizabethan garden
has already been shown (see page 15), but the importance of this may be
appropriately recalled here in the following extract from Bloom:
"The Wars of the Roses gave little time for gardening; and when matters
were settled and the educational movements which marked the dawn of the
Renaissance began, the gardens once again, after a break of more than
a thousand years, went back to classical models, as interpreted by the
Italian school of the time. Thus the gardens of the Palace of Nonesuch
(1529) and Theobald's (1560) showed all the new ideas: flower-beds
edged with low trellises, topiary work of cut box and yew, whereby
the natural growth of the trees was trained into figures of birds and
animals and especially of peacocks; while here and there mounts were
thrown up against the orchard or garden wall, ascended by flights of
steps and crowned with arbors, while sometimes the view obtained in
this manner was deemed insufficient and trellised galleries extended
the whole length of the garden. In 1573 the gardens of Kenilworth,
which Shakespeare almost certainly visited, had a terrace walk twelve
feet in width and raised ten feet above the garden, terminating at
either end in arbors redolent with sweetbrier and flowers. Beneath
these again was a garden of an acre or more in size divided into four
quarters by sanded walks and having in the center of each plot an
obelisk of red porphyry with a ball at the top. These were planted with
apple, pear and cherry while in the center was a fountain of white
marble."
II
_The Elizabethan Garden_
The Elizabethan garden was usually four-square, bordered all around
by hedges and intersected by paths. There was an outer hedge that
enclosed the entire garden and this was a tall and thick hedge made of
privet, sweetbrier, and white thorn intermingled with roses. Sometimes,
however, this outer hedge was of holly. Again some people preferred to
enclose their garden by a wall of brick or stone. On the side facing
the house the gate was placed. In stately gardens the gate was of
elaborately wrought iron hung between stone or brick pillars on the
top of which stone vases, or urns, held brightly blooming flowers and
drooping vines. In simple gardens the entrance was a plain wooden door,
painted and set into the wall or hedge like the quaint little doors we
see in England to-day and represented in Kate Greenaway's pictures that
show us how the style persists even to the present time.
Stately gardens were usually approached from a terrace running along
the line of the house and commanding a view of the garden, to which
broad flights of steps led. Thence extended the principal walks,
called "forthrights," in straight lines at right angles to the
terrace and intersected by other walks parallel with the terrace. The
lay-out of the garden, therefore, corresponded with the ground-plan
of the mansion. The squares formed naturally by the intersection of
the "forthrights" and other walks were filled with curious beds of
geometrical patterns that were known as "knots"; mazes, or labyrinths;
orchards; or plain grass-plots. Sometimes all of the spaces or squares
were devoted to "knots." These ornamental flower-beds were edged with
box, thrift, or thyme and were surrounded with tiny walks made of
gravel or colored sand, walks arranged around the beds so that the
garden lovers might view the flowers at close range and pick them
easily.
It will be remembered that in "Love's Labour's Lost" Shakespeare speaks
of "the curious knotted garden." There are innumerable designs for
these "knots" in the old Elizabethan garden-books, representing the
simple squares, triangles, and rhomboids as well as the most intricate
scrolls, and complicated interlacings of Renaissance design that
resemble the motives on carved furniture, designs for textiles and
ornamental leather-work (known as strap-work, or _cuirs_). Yet these
many hundreds of designs were not sufficient, for the amateur as well
as the professional gardener often invented his own garden "knots."
Where the inner paths intersected, a fountain or a statue or some other
ornament was frequently placed. Sometimes, too, vases, or urns, of
stone or lead, were arranged about the garden in formal style inspired
by the taste of Italy. Sometimes, also, large Oriental or stone jars
were placed in conspicuous spots, and these were not only intended for
decoration but served as receptacles for water.
There were four principles that were observed in all stately
Elizabethan gardens. The first was to lay out the garden in accordance
with the architecture of the house in long terraces and paths of right
lines, or "forthrights," to harmonize with the rectangular lines of the
Tudor buildings, yet at the same time to break up the monotony of the
straight lines with beds of intricate patterns, just as in the case of
architecture bay-windows, clustered and twisted chimneys, intricate
tracery, mullioned windows, and ornamental gables relieved the straight
lines of the building.
The second principle was to plant the beds with _mixed_ flowers and
to let the colors intermingle and blend in such a way as to produce a
mosaic of rich, indeterminate color, ever new and ever varying as the
flowers of the different seasons succeeded each other.
The third principle was to produce a garden of flowers and shrubs
for all seasons, even winter, that would tempt the owner to take
pleasure and exercise there, where he might find recreation, literally
re-creation of mind and body, and become freshened in spirit and
renewed in health.
The fourth principle was to produce a garden that would give delight to
the sense of smell as well as to the sense of vision--an idea no longer
sought for by gardeners.
Hence it was just as important, and infinitely more subtle, to mingle
the perfumes of flowers while growing so that the air would be
deliciously scented by a combination of harmonizing odors as to mingle
the perfumes of flowers plucked for a nosegay, or Tussie-mussie, as the
Elizabethans sometimes quaintly called it.
Like all cultivated Elizabethans, Shakespeare appreciated the delicious
fragrance of flowers blooming in the garden when the soft breeze is
stirring their leaves and petals. There was but one thing to which this
subtle perfume might be compared and that was ethereal and mysterious
music. For example, the elegant Duke in "Twelfth Night," reclining on
his divan and listening to music, commands:
That strain again! It had a dying fall.
O it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets
Stealing and giving odor.
Lord Bacon also associated the scent of delicate flowers with music.
He writes: "And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the
air (whence it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the
hand, therefore nothing is more fit for delight than to know what be
the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask,
and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a
whole row of them and find nothing of their sweetness, yea though it
be in a morning's dew. Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow,
rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields
the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, especially the white
double violet, which comes twice a year--about the middle of April
and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk-rose, then the
strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell,
then the flower of the vines, it is a little dust, like the dust of a
bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth; then
sweetbrier, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set
under a parlor or lower chamber window; then pinks and gilliflowers;
then the flowers of the lime-tree; then the honeysuckles, so they be
somewhat afar off; of bean flowers, I speak not, because they are field
flowers. But those which perfume the air most delightfully not passed
by as the rest but being trodden upon and crushed are three: burnet,
wild thyme and water-mints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of
them to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."
[Illustration: THE KNOT-GARDEN, NEW PLACE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON]
Shakespeare very nearly follows Bacon's order of perfume values in his
selection of flowers to adorn the beautiful spot in the wood where
_Titania_ sleeps. _Oberon_ describes it:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
Fairies were thought to be particularly fond of thyme; and it is for
this reason that Shakespeare carpeted the bank with this sweet herb.
Moreover, as we have just seen, Bacon tells us that thyme is one of
those plants which are particularly delightful if trodden upon and
crushed. Shakespeare accordingly knew that the pressure of the Fairy
Queen's little body upon the thyme would cause it to yield a delicious
perfume.
The Elizabethans, much more sensitive to perfume than we are to-day,
appreciated the scent of what we consider lowly flowers. They did not
hesitate to place a sprig of rosemary in a nosegay of choice flowers.
They loved thyme, lavender, marjoram, mints, balm, and camomile,
thinking that these herbs refreshed the head, stimulated the memory,
and were antidotes against the plague.
The flowers in the "knots" were perennials, planted so as to gain
uniformity of height; and those that had affinity for one another were
placed side by side. No attempt was made to group them; and no attempt
was made to get _masses_ of separate color, what Locker-Lampson calls
"a mist of blue in the beds, a blaze of red in the celadon jars" and
what we try for to-day. On the contrary, the Elizabethan gardener's
idea was to mix and blend the flowers into a combination of varied hues
that melted into one another as the hues of a rainbow blend and in
such a way that at a distance no one could possibly tell what flowers
produced this effect. This must have required much study on the part
of the gardeners, who kept pace with the seasons and always had their
beds in bloom. Sir Henry Wotton, Ambassador to Venice in the reign
of James I, and author of the "Elements of Architecture," but far
better known by his lovely verse to Elizabeth of Bohemia beginning,
"You meaner beauties of the night," was an ardent flower lover. He was
greatly impressed by what he called "a delicate curiosity in the way of
color":
"Namely in the Garden of Sir Henry Fanshaw at his seat in Ware Park,
where I well remember he did so precisely examine the _tinctures_ and
_seasons_ of his _flowers_ that in their _settings_, the _inwardest_ of
which that were to come up at the same time, should be always a little
_darker_ than the _outmost_, and so serve them for a kind of gentle
_shadow_, like a piece not of _Nature_ but of _Art_."
Browne also gives a splendid idea of the color effect of the garden
beds of this period:
As in a rainbow's many color'd hue,
Here we see watchet deepen'd with a blue;
There a dark tawny, with a purple mix'd;
Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt;
A bloody stream into a blushing run,
And ends still with the color which begun;
Drawing the deeper to a lighter strain,
Bringing the lightest to the deepest again;
With such rare art each mingled with his fellow,
The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow;
Like to the changes which we daily see
Around the dove's neck with variety;
Where none can say (though he it strict attends),
Here one begins and there another ends.
Using such cunning as they did dispose
The ruddy Piony with the lighter Rose,
The Monkshood with the Buglos, and entwine
The white, the blue, the flesh-like Columbine
With Pinks, Sweet-Williams; that, far off, the eye
Could not the manner of their mixture spy.
By the side of the showy and stately flowers, as well as in kitchen
gardens, were grown the "herbs of grace" for culinary purposes and
the medicinal herbs for "drams of poison." Rosemary--"the cheerful
Rosemary," Spenser calls it--was trained over arbors and permitted to
run over mounds and banks as it pleased. Sir Thomas More allowed it to
run all over his garden because the bees loved it and because it was
the herb sacred to remembrance and friendship.
In every garden the arbor was conspicuous. Sometimes it was a handsome
little pavilion or summer-house; sometimes it was set into the hedge;
sometimes it was cut out of the hedge in fantastic topiary work;
sometimes it was made of lattice work; and sometimes it was formed of
upright or horizontal poles, over which roses, honeysuckle, or clematis
(named also Lady's Bower because of this use) were trained. Whatever
the framework was, plain or ornate, mattered but little; it was the
creeper that counted, the trailing vines that gave character to the
arbor, that gave delight to those who sought the arbor to rest during
their stroll through the gardens, or to indulge in a pleasant chat, or
delightful flirtation. Shakespeare's arbor for _Titania_
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine,
was not unusual. Nor was that retreat where saucy _Beatrice_ was lured
to hear the whisperings of _Hero_ regarding _Benedick's_ interest in
her. It was a pavilion
Where honeysuckles ripened by the sun
Forbid the sun to enter.
Luxuriant and delicious was this bower with the flowers hot and sweet
in the bright sunshine.
Eglantine was, perhaps, the favorite climber for arbors and bowers.
Browne speaks of
An arbor shadow'd with a vine
Mixed with rosemary and with eglantine.
Barnfield, in "The Affectionate Shepherd," pleads:
I would make cabinets for thee, my love,
Sweet-smelling arbors made of eglantine.
And in Spenser's "Bower of Bliss":
Art, striving to compare
With Nature, did an arbor green dispread
Framed of wanton ivy, flow'ring fair,
Through which the fragrant eglantine did spread
His prickling arms, entrayl'd with roses red,
Which dainty odors round about them threw;
And all within with flowers was garnished,
That when Zephyrus amongst them blew
Did breathe out bounteous smells and painted odors shew.
A beautiful method of obtaining shady walks was to make a kind of
continuous arbor or arcade of trees, trellises, and vines. This arcade
was called poetically the "pleached alley."[6] For the trees, willows,
limes (lindens), and maples were used, and the vines were eglantine and
other roses, honeysuckle (woodbine), clematis, rosemary, and grapevines.
[6] _Pleaching_ means trimming the small branches and foliage of trees,
or bushes, to bring them to a regular shape. Certain trees only are
submissive to this treatment--holly, box, yew privet, whitethorn,
hornbeam, linden, etc., to make arbors, hedges, bowers, colonnades and
all cut-work.