THE OLD GARDEN.
[Illustration]
Just before the breaking forth of the French Revolution, the Abbé de
Lille composed a poem in four cantos, entitled _Les Jardins_, in which
he enthusiastically urged the abandonment of all formality in the
laying out of a garden, and the adoption of the new English style of
irregularity.
"Avant de planter, avant que du terrain
Votre béche imprudente entame le sein,
Pour donnez aux jardins une forme plus pure,
Observez, connoissez, imitez la nature."
An agreeable wildness--that was what was to be sought. The Revolution
came in, and hacked the gardens about, and reduced them all to the
state of wildness.
What the Abbé de Lille wrote against was the artificiality of the
garden arrangement that had been in vogue till then. Horace Walpole
had already written in the same strain. A rage had set in in England
for remodelling the gardens, and the new fashion was called "English
gardening."
Pliny the younger, in his delightful letters, speaks of his gardens.
As his Laurentine villa was his winter retreat, it is not surprising
that the gardens there take no prominent part of his account. All he
says of them is, that the _gestatio_, or exercise ground, surrounded
the garden, and was bounded by a box-hedge; where the box had perished,
there were planted tufts of rosemary. He mentions his vine-walk and his
trees, mostly mulberry and fig, as the soil was unsuited for other
trees. On his Tuscan villa he is more diffuse; the garden takes up
a good part of the description. He tells of the strange shapes into
which his box-trees were clipped, his slopes, his terraces, shrubs
methodically trimmed, a marble basin, fountain, a cascade, bay-trees
alternating with plane-trees, a long straight walk, from which
branched off others hedged by apple-trees in espalier, and by box, and
ornamented with obelisks. Something like a rural view was, indeed,
contrived amidst so much artificiality, but was speedily forgotten
amidst the stiff lines of box and the trimmed cypresses.
In the paintings of Herculaneum we see the representations of gardens;
they are square enclosures, formed by trellis-work and espaliers, and
regularly ornamented with vases, fountains, and statues, elegantly
symmetrical. Now this arrangement of a garden continued in Italy. It
never changed, and the villa gardens in and about Rome to this day
reproduce the plans and character of those that flourished there in the
classic age.
The villa-gardens in and about Rome! I cannot write the words
without an ache of heart, for I know that they are disappearing
rapidly, inevitably. Along the Via Salaria I saw three in process of
destruction during the late winter and spring of 1889. A great slice
of the Borghese grounds is being devastated to make room for hideous
streets and squares. The Wolkonski gardens have been curtailed; those
of Villa Massimo Arsoli adjoining, almost destroyed and built over;
the Rospigliosi gardens gone; others doomed; the glorious Ludovisi
gardens, with their cypresses and ilexes towering above the closed
Porta Pinciana and the ancient boundary wall, are in process of
extermination. "The grounds, which were of an extent extraordinary when
considered as being within the walls of a capital, were laid out by
Le Nôtre, and were in the stiff French style of high-clipped hedges,
and avenues adorned with vases and sarcophagi. With the fury against
trees which characterizes Italians, all the magnificent ilexes and
cypresses were cut down as soon as the land was secured, and the plots
of building-land rendered altogether hideous and undesirable. In a
few years not a trace will remain of the picturesque glories of this
once noble villa, which, if acquired by the municipality, who refused
to purchase it, might have been made into public gardens of beauty
unrivalled in any European capital."[4]
The railway station, with its sheds and sidings, occupies the once
matchless gardens of the Villa Massimo Negroni, celebrated for its
exquisite cypress avenues and its stately terrace, lined with ancient
orange-trees and noble sarcophagi. The ground was confiscated by the
State, and the destruction of this fair scene broke the heart of the
owner, Prince Massimo. The sweet gardens of the Villa Strozzi are
gone, now built over with ugly houses. Outside the Porta Pia grand old
gardens are being devastated also.
The Medici gardens remain; Hawthorn thus described them. "They are laid
out in the old fashion of straight paths, with borders of box, which
form hedges of great height and density, and are shorn and trimmed to
the evenness of a wall of stone at the top and sides. There are green
alleys, with long vistas, overshadowed by ilex-trees; and at each
intersection of the paths the visitor finds seats of lichen-covered
stone to repose on, and marble statues that look forlornly at him,
regretful of their lost noses. In the more open portions of the
gardens, before the sculptured front of the villa, you see fountains
and flower-beds; and, in their season, a profusion of roses, from which
the genial sun of Italy distils a fragrance to be scattered abroad by
the no less genial breeze."
The Boboli gardens at Florence remain to testify to the ancient
arrangement, with high walls of evergreens and long avenues hedged up
ten or twelve feet, dense and impervious, above which rise the spires
of cypress and the domes of the stone-pine.
[Illustration: Garden from Tapestry.]
Our English gardens were modelled on those of the Italian palaces, the
same subdivision of squares into sections, with trimmed box enclosing
them, and with a statue or a fountain, or a carved and shaped yew in
the midst. The gardens were invariably enclosed within walls. Where the
ground sloped, at great expense it was shaped into terraces, reached by
flights of steps. The greatest exactness in the design was aimed at. As
Pope observed--
"Each alley has a brother,
And half the garden just reflects the other."
When Pamela endured her persecution she was allowed to walk in
the garden, but this was so walled round that escape from it was
impossible. There were seats in it on which she might repose in the
sun. There was a fish-pond in which she might angle, but there was only
one garden-door by which egress could be obtained, and that was locked.
It was the same with Clarissa Harlowe. The garden of her father's house
was walled round.
The pleached alleys were constructed of lime or beech trees platted
and trimmed so as to form walls of green. They were over-arched, and
those walking in them were as in a green bower. I know an old château
on the Moselle with such a _berceau_, it has in it windows commanding
beautiful reaches of the river; otherwise it is completely enclosed by
leaves, and fresh and sweet it is as a walk on a hot day. In England
we required shade less than shelter, and the green funnels were not in
such request as the long lines of lofty yew or box hedge.
In King's _Views of the Seats of our Nobility and Gentry_, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, we see the utmost formality. Every
house is approached by two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of
a gravel-walk and two grass-plats, or borders of flowers. Each rises
above the other by two or three steps, and as many walls and terraces,
and so many iron gates.
[Illustration: Flaxley, from a print of 1714.]
Sir William Temple gives us his view of what constituted a perfect
garden in his day. "The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw,
either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park, in Hertfordshire. I
will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situation,
and are above the regards of common expense. It lies on the side of a
hill, upon which the house stands, but not very steep. The length of
the house, where the best rooms and of most use or pleasure are, lies
upon the breadth of the garden; the great parlour opens into the midst
of a terrace gravel-walk that lies even with it, and which may lie
about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; the border set
with standard laurels and at large distances, which have the beauty of
orange-trees out of flower and fruit. From this walk are three descents
by many stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large
parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel-walks, and adorned
with two fountains and eight statues, at the several quarters. At the
end of the terrace-walk are two summer-houses, and the sides of the
parterre are ranged with two large cloisters open to the garden; over
these two cloisters are two terraces covered with lead and fenced with
balusters; and the passage into these airy walks is out of the two
summer-houses at the end of the first terrace-walk. The cloister facing
the south is covered with vines. From the middle of the parterre is a
descent by many steps into the lower garden, which is all fruit-trees,
ranged about the several quarters of a wilderness, which is very
shady; the walks here are all green, and there is a grotto embellished
with figures of shell rock-work, fountains, and water-works."
Nothing could be more formal, and nothing, I think, could be more
charming. Why should we imitate wild nature? The garden is a product of
civilization. Why any more make of our gardens imitation wild nature,
than paint our children with woad, and make them run about naked in an
effort to imitate nature unadorned? The very charm of a garden is that
it is taken out of savagery, trimmed, clothed, and disciplined. The
wall and hedge are almost necessaries with us, to cut off the wind. See
how flowers of all kinds luxuriate, if given the screen from the biting
blast! If they like it, why should not we?
I allow that the hacking of trees into fantastical shapes deserved the
scourge administered in the one hundred and seventy-third number of
_The Guardian_, Sept. 29th, 1713. The writer there says--"How contrary
to simplicity is the modern practice of gardening; we seem to make it
our study to recede from nature, not only in the various tonsure of
greens into the most regular and formal shapes, but even in monstrous
attempts beyond the reach of the art itself; we run into sculpture,
and are yet better pleased to have our trees in the most awkward
figures of men and animals, than in the most regular of their own. A
citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews, but he entertains
thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. I know
an eminent cook, who beautified his country-seat with a coronation
dinner in greens, where you see the champion flourishing on horseback
at one end of the table, and the queen in perpetual youth at the other.
"For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious taste,
I shall here publish a catalogue of greens to be disposed of by an
eminent town gardener, who has lately applied to me upon this head. My
correspondent is arrived at such perfection, that he cuts family pieces
of men, women, or children. Any ladies that please may have their own
effigies in myrtle, or their husbands in horn-beam. I shall proceed to
his catalogue, as he sent it for my recommendation.
"'Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree
of knowledge in the great storm, Eve and the serpent very flourishing.
"'The Tower of Babel, not yet finished.
"'St. George in box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in
condition to strike the dragon by next April.
"'A Queen Elizabeth in phylyræa, a little inclining to the
green-sickness, but of full growth.
"'An old maid-of-honour in worm-wood.
"'Divers eminent poets in bays, somewhat blighted, to be disposed of a
pennyworth.
"'A quickset hog shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a week
in rainy weather,' &c."
But these absurdities do not affect the question of hedges. I know a
hedge of clay and stone built up eight feet, and above that crowned
with holly and thorn, running from east to west, but with a point or
two of west in its face. I remember an old man, a rector, chronically
affected with bronchitis for fifteen years, who felt the solace of this
charming hedge through the whole time. He could crawl out there when
the sun shone, and disregard the north and east winds. In that hedge
the primrose and the foxglove were out prematurely. The rabbits loved
it dearly, and made it untidy with their burrowings in the warm dry
clay under the roots of the bushes.
If a ruthless craving for vistas had not prevailed in and after Horace
Walpole's time, every one of our country houses and parsonages would
have had these sweet sheltered walks, where invalids could creep along
and bask in the sun. We have had them demolished, and so must away to
the Riviera. Evelyn had a great holly hedge in his garden at Sayes
Court, four hundred feet in length, five feet in diameter, and nine
feet high; and when the Court was let to the Czar Peter, during his
visit to the Deptford dockyard, that barbarian drove his wheel-barrow
through it, and so injured the hedge that Evelyn claimed damages, and
received one hundred and fifty pounds in compensation.
Another charming feature of the old garden--and one that was costly
to execute--was the terrace. The slope of the hillside was taken in
hand and was cut away, so as to produce a level lawn with a level,
horizontal terrace-walk above it, and perhaps, where the slope admitted
of it, a second and superior terrace. These terrace walls gave shelter,
and as walks were always dry, the drainage from them being rapid.
Trees, shrubs, flowers planted on them throve; there was no stagnation
of water about their roots, and the sun, striking against the wall that
enclosed the earth for their roots, made it warm, cherishing to the
plants, as a hot bottle is a comfort to you who suffer from cold feet
in your bed.
Nowhere have I seen roses so revel, go mad with delight and gratitude
as in these terrace gardens. The rose is peculiarly averse to wet feet.
See how the wild rose thrives in the clay-banked-up hedge!--a hedge
that seems to have no moisture in it, the earth of which crumbles
between the finger and thumb like snuff.
Then, again, the rose hates wind, and the terrace wall serves as a
screen to it against its enemy. And--for human roses!
Last summer I attended a garden-party at an ancient country house
with an old-fashioned garden. From the lawn in front of the porch a
flight of granite steps led to a terrace nine feet above the lawn. This
terrace was planted with venerable yew-trees, under which were little
tables spread with fruit and cool drinks, and cakes. A second flight
of steps gave access to a second terrace some twelve or fourteen feet
higher, planted with flowers, and backed to the north by a lofty garden
wall.
I do not think that, off the stage, I have seen any effect more
beautiful than that of the young girls in their bright and many-tinted
summer dresses, flitting about; some under the shade of the yews on
terrace number one, some looking at the flowers a stage higher, on
terrace number two, and some ascending and others descending the broad
flight of steps that led to these terraces, like the angels in Jacob's
vision.
[Illustration: A Town-House Garden Front, Launceston.]
The walls supporting the terraces served another purpose than that
of sustaining the roots of trees and flowers on the stages; as rain
fell on the terraces, it exuded between the joints of the stones and
nourished a fairy world of lichen, moss, and ferns. This was the wall
shaded by the yews. The other was hugged and laughed over by roses,
honeysuckle, and wisteria.
We have got almost no gardens left in England in their primitive
condition, only the wreckage of their beauty. But, as the old woman
said who sniffed the empty amphora of old Falernian wine, "If what
remains be so good, what must you have been when full!"
Now let us see what Horace Walpole tells us of the devastation of
these beautiful old gardens. "No succeeding generation," he says, "in
an opulent and luxurious country contents itself with the perfection
established by its ancestors; more perfect perfection was still sought,
and improvements had gone on, till London and Wise had stocked all our
gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms and mottoes,
in yew, box, and holly. Bridgman, the next fashionable designer of
gardens, was far more chaste--he banished verdant sculpture, and
did not even revert to the square precision of the foregoing age.
He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every division tally to
its opposite, and though he still adhered much to straight walks
with high-clipped hedges, they were only his great lines; the rest
he diversified by wilderness, and with loose groves of oak, though
still within surrounding hedges. As his reformation gained footing,
he ventured to introduce cultivated fields and even morsels of forest
appearance, by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks.
"But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed,"--I
shiver as I write these words,--"_was the destruction of walls for
boundaries_, and the invention of fosses--an attempt then deemed so
astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha's! to express
their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk.
No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing, and
rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk
fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its
turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort
with the wilder country without. At that moment appeared Kent, painter
enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough
to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great
system from the twilight of imperfect essays."
The man Kent deserved the gallows much more than many who have been
hung. No one who pretended to be in fashion dared to maintain a hedge
or a wall. Down went the walls, and the beautiful roses bent their
heads and died; the great yew hedges were stubbed up, and the delicate
children and feeble old gentlemen who had basked under the lea, also,
like the roses, stooped to earth and died. All the shelter, sweetness,
sun, restfulness went away. These hedges had taken a century and more
to grow, they were levelled without compunction, never perhaps again to
reappear.[5]
No doubt there was folly in our forefathers in trimming yews into
fantastical shapes; but Kent and his followers were as extravagant in
their way. Kent actually planted _dead_ trees in lawns and parks, to
give a greater air of reality to the scene. Where he was allowed he cut
down, or mutilated avenues, because unnatural; but just as unnatural
were his absurd vistas, dug through woods so that the eye might reach a
pagoda, an obelisk, or a temple at the end.
A traveller in France in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution, gives an
account of the garden of Ermenonville, laid out by M. de Girardin on
the English system. "He has succeeded better in closely imitating the
steps of nature than any spot I have ever seen; nothing seems laboured,
nothing artificial. The ground is irregular, and the ornaments rude,
though the latter approach to too great an excess. I can see no reason,
if ornaments are to be made use of in such places as these (which in
itself is a deviation from nature), why they should not be handsome. To
see a miserable obelisk built of brick, and resembling more a chimney
than a monument, is carrying the refinement of wildness to too high
a pitch. If they are designed to be rude and natural, they may at
the same time be grotesque and elegant. Winding along a lovely walk,
through the bosom of a young wood, a gentle stream meandering by its
side, we reached a charming and retired spot. A large space here opens,
shaded by the thick branches of the trees, which just leave room for
a softened light to insinuate itself, and for the zephyrs to breathe
through; over interrupting rocks and heaps of pebbles, the water dashes
along with a noise grateful and composing. Here an altar is erected,
sacred to Reverie; on a rock that overhangs the stream are inscribed
some pleasing lines. Hence through a varied and highly pleasing
path we continued our route along the grove, meeting with different
inscriptions. From thence we ascended the forest, and traversing a path
rugged and grotesque, were presented with many interesting and pleasing
views. Arriving on the plain, in the bosom of a wood, we reached an
extended area, in the midst of which stood a large oak, and at the end
an edifice."[6]
I had written thus far, when last night there came to see me an old
village singer of nigh on eighty years, always to me a welcome guest.
I seated him by the fireside on a settle, and we fell to talking
about gardens, when he said, "I reckon, your honour, I know a rare
old-fashioned song about flowers and gardings, and them like. If your
honour 'ud plase to hear me, I'll zing 'n."
Then he struck up the following quaint ballad, to an air certainly two
hundred years old--
[Music: "IN A GARDEN SWEET."
_Arranged by_ F. W. Bussell, Esq., M.A.]
Two lovers in a garden sweet
Were walking side by side,
I heard how he the maid addressed,
I heard how she replied.
The garden it was very great,
With box trees in a row;
And up and down the gravell'd walk
These lovers fond did go.
"Said he, 'I prithee fix the day
Whereon we shall be wed.'
Said she, 'Thou hast a wanton mind,
I like thee not,' she said.
'For now you look at brown Nancy,
And dark eyes pleasure you;
But next declare you like the fair
Julian with eyes of blue.'
"'O pretty maid, in garden sweet,
Are flowers in each parterre,
I turn and gaze with fond amaze
At all--for all are fair.
But one I find--best to my mind,
Of all I choose but one;
I stoop and gather that choice flower,
And wear that flower alone.'"
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Hare, _Walks in Rome_.
[5] Having got rid of the wall, and finding that flowers now suffer
from the wind, gardeners are fond of _sinking_ beds, and not a few
gardens are thus furnished.
[6] _A Reflective Tour through Part of France._ London: 1789.