BOX EDGINGS
"They walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the
lines of Box, breathing its fragrance of eternity; for this is one
of the odors which carry us out of time into the abysses of the
unbeginning past; if we ever lived on another ball of stone than
this, it must be that there was Box growing on it."
--_Elsie Venner_, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1861.
To many of us, besides Dr. Holmes, the unique aroma of the Box, cleanly
bitter in scent as in taste, is redolent of the eternal past; it is
almost hypnotic in its effect. This strange power is not felt by all,
nor is it a present sensitory influence; it is an hereditary memory,
half-known by many, but fixed in its intensity in those of New England
birth and descent, true children of the Puritans; to such ones the Box
breathes out the very atmosphere of New England's past. I cannot see in
clear outline those prim gardens of centuries ago, nor the faces of
those who walked and worked therein; but I know, as I stroll to-day
between our old Box-edged borders, and inhale the beloved bitterness of
fragrance, and gather a stiff sprig of the beautiful glossy leaves, that
in truth the garden lovers and garden workers of other days walk beside
me, though unseen and unheard.
About thirty years ago a bright young Yankee girl went to the island of
Cuba as a governess to the family of a sugar planter. It was regarded as
a somewhat perilous adventure by her home-staying folk, and their
apprehensions of ill were realized in her death there five years later.
This was not, however, all that happened to her. The planter's wife had
died in this interval of time, and she had been married to the widower.
A daughter had been born, who, after her mother's death, was reared in
the Southern island, in Cuban ways, having scant and formal
communication with her New England kin. When this girl was twenty years
old, she came to the little Massachusetts town where her mother had been
reared, and met there a group of widowed and maiden aunts, and
great-aunts. After sitting for a time in her mother's room in the old
home, the reserve which often exists between those of the same race who
should be friends but whose lives have been widely apart, and who can
never have more than a passing sight of each other, made them in
semi-embarrassment and lack of resources of mutual interest walk out
into the garden. As they passed down the path between high lines of Box,
the girl suddenly stopped, looked in terror at the gate, and screamed
out in fright, "The dog, the dog, save me, he will kill me!" _No dog was
there_, but on that very spot, between those Box hedges, thirty years
before, her mother had been attacked and bitten by an enraged dog, to
the distress and apprehension of the aunts, who all recalled the
occurrence, as they reassured the fainting and bewildered girl. She, of
course, had never known aught of this till she was told it by the old
Box.
[Illustration: House and Garden at Napanock. County Ulster, New York.]
Many other instances of the hypnotic effect of Box are known, and also
of its strong influence on the mind through memory. I know of a man who
travelled a thousand miles to renew acquaintance and propose marriage to
an old sweetheart, whom he had not seen and scarcely thought of for
years, having been induced to this act wholly through memories of her,
awakened by a chance stroll in an old Box-edged garden such as those of
his youth; at the gate of one of which he had often lingered, after
walking home with her from singing-school. I ought to be able to add
that the twain were married as a result of this sentimental
memory-awakening through the old Box; but, in truth, they never came
very close to matrimony. For when he saw her he remained absolutely
silent on the subject of marriage; the fickle creature forgot the Box
scent and the singing-school, while she openly expressed to her friends
her surprise at his aged appearance, and her pity for his dulness. For
the sense of sight is more powerful than that of smell, and the Box
might prove a master hand at hinting, but it failed utterly in permanent
influence.
Those who have not loved the Box for centuries in the persons and with
the partial noses of their Puritan forbears, complain of its curious
scent, say, like Polly Peacham, that "they can't abear it," and declare
that it brings ever the thought of old graveyards. I have never seen
Box in ancient burying-grounds, they were usually too neglected to be
thus planted; but it was given a limited space in the cemeteries of the
middle of this century. Even those borders have now generally been dug
up to give place to granite copings.
The scent of Box has been aptly worded by Gabriel d'Annunzio, in his
_Virgin of the Rocks_, in his description of a neglected garden. He
calls it a "bitter sweet odor," and he notes its influence in making his
wanderers in this garden "reconstruct some memory of their far-off
childhood."
The old Jesuit poet Rapin writing in the seventeenth century tells a
fanciful tale that--
"Gardens of old, nor Art, nor Rules obey'd,
But unadorn'd, or wild Neglect betray'd;"
that Flora's hair hung undressed, neglected "in artless tresses," until
in pity another nymph "around her head wreath'd a Boxen Bough" from the
fields; which so improved her beauty that trim edgings were placed ever
after--"where flowers disordered once at random grew."
He then describes the various figures of Box, the way to plant it, its
disadvantages, and the associate flowers that should be set with it, all
in stilted verse.
Queen Anne was a royal enemy of Box. By her order many of the famous Box
hedges at Hampton Court were destroyed; by her example, many old
Box-edged gardens throughout England were rooted up. There are manifold
objections raised to Box besides the dislike of its distinctive odor:
heavy edgings and hedges of Box "take away the heart of the ground" and
flowers pine within Box-edged borders; the roots of Box on the inside of
the flower knot or bed, therefore, have to be cut and pulled out in
order to leave the earth free for flower roots. It is also alleged that
Box harbors slugs--and I fear it does.
[Illustration: Box Parterre at Hampton.]
We are told that it is not well to plant Box edgings in our gardens,
because Box is so frail, is so easily winter-killed, that it dies down
in ugly fashion. Yet see what great trees it forms, even when untrimmed,
as in the Prince Garden (page 31). It is true that Box does not always
flourish in the precise shape you wish, but it has nevertheless a
wonderfully tenacious hold on life. I know nothing more suggestive of
persistence and of sad sentiment than the view often seen in forlorn
city enclosures, as you drive past, or rush by in an electric car, of an
aged bush of Box, or a few feet of old Box hedge growing in the beaten
earth of a squalid back yard, surrounded by dirty tenement houses. Once
a fair garden there grew; the turf and flowers and trees are vanished;
but spared through accident, or because deemed so valueless, the Box
still lives. Even in Washington and other Southern cities, where the
negro population eagerly gather Box at Christmas-tide, you will see
these forlorn relics of the garden still growing, and their bitter
fragrance rises above the vile odors of the crowded slums.
Box formed an important feature of the garden of Pliny's favorite villa
in Tuscany, which he described in his letter to Apollinaris. How I
should have loved its formal beauty! On the southern front a terrace was
bordered with a Box hedge and "embellished with various figures in Box,
the representation of divers animals." Beyond was a circus formed around
by ranges of Box rising in walls of varied heights. The middle of this
circus was ornamented with figures of Box. On one side was a hippodrome
set with a plantation of Box trees backed with Plane trees; thence ran a
straight walk divided by Box hedges into alleys. Thus expanses were
enclosed, one of which held a beautiful meadow, another had "knots of
Plane tree," another was "set with Box a thousand different forms." Some
of these were letters expressing the name of the owner of all this
extravagance; or the initials of various fair Roman dames, a very
gallant pleasantry of young Pliny. Both Plane tree and Box tree of such
ancient gardens were by tradition nourished with wine instead of water.
Initials of Box may be seen to-day in English gardens, and heraldic
devices. French gardens vied with English gardens in curious patterns in
Box. The garden of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV. had a stag
chase, in clipped Box, with greyhounds in chase. Globes, pyramids,
tubes, cylinders, cones, arches, and other shapes were cut in Box as
they were in Yew.
A very pretty conceit in Box was--
"Horizontal dials on the ground
In living Box by cunning artists traced."
Reference is frequent enough to these dials of Box to show that they
were not uncommon in fine old English gardens. There were sun-dials
either of Box or Thrift, in the gardens of colleges both at Oxford and
Cambridge, as may be seen in Loggan's _Views_. Two modern ones are
shown; one, on page 98, is in the garden of Lady Lennox, at Broughton
Castle, Banbury, England. Another of exceptionally fine growth and trim
perfection in the garden at Ascott, the seat of Mr. Leopold de
Rothschild (opposite page 100.) These are curious rather than beautiful,
but display well that quality given in the poet's term "the tonsile
Box."
[Illustration: Sun-dial in Box at Broughton Castle.]
Writing of a similar sun-dial, Lady Warwick says:--
"Never was such a perfect timekeeper as my sun-dial, and the
figures which record the hours are all cut out and trimmed in Box,
and there again on its outer ring is a legend which read in
whatever way you please: Les heures heureuses ne se comptent pas.
They were outlined for me, those words, in baby sprigs of Box by a
friend who is no more, who loved my garden and was good to it."
Box hedges were much esteemed in England--so says Parkinson, to dry
linen on, affording the raised expanse and even surface so much desired.
It can always be noted in all domestic records of early days that the
vast washing of linen and clothing was one of the great events of the
year. Sometimes, in households of plentiful supply, these washings were
done but once a year; in other homes, semi-annually. The drying and
bleaching linen was an unceasing attraction to rascals like Autolycus,
who had a "pugging tooth"--that is, a prigging tooth. These linen
thieves had a special name, they were called "prygmen"; they wandered
through the country on various pretexts, men and their doxies, and were
the bane of English housewives.
The Box hedges were also in constant use to hold the bleaching webs of
homespun and woven flaxen and hempen stuff, which were often exposed for
weeks in the dew and sunlight. In 1710 a reason given for the disuse and
destruction of "quicksetted arbors and hedges" was that they "agreed
very ill with the ladies' muslins."
Box was of little value in the apothecary shop, was seldom used in
medicine. Parkinson said that the leaves and dust of boxwood "boyld in
lye" would make hair to be "of an Aborne or Abraham color"--that is,
auburn. This was a very primitive hair dye, but it must have been a
powerful one.
Boxwood was a firm, beautiful wood, used to make tablets for
inscriptions of note. The mottled wood near the root was called dudgeon.
Holland's translation of Pliny says, "The Box tree seldome hath any
grain crisped damaske-wise, and never but about the root, the which is
dudgin." From its esteemed use for dagger hilts came the word
dudgeon-dagger, and the terms "drawn-dudgeon" and "high-dudgeon,"
meaning offence or discord.
I plead for the Box, not for its fragrance, for you may not be so
fortunate as to have a Puritan sense of smell, nor for its weird
influence, for that is intangible; but because it is the most becoming
of all edgings to our garden borders of old-time flowers. The clear
compact green of its shining leaves, the trim distinctness of its
clipped lines, the attributes that made Pope term it the "shapely Box,"
make it the best of all foils for the varied tints of foliage, the many
colors of bloom, and the careless grace in growth of the flowers within
the border.
Box edgings are pleasant, too, in winter, showing in grateful relief
against the tiresome monotony of the snow expanse. And they bear
sometimes a crown of lightest snow wreaths, which seem like a white
blossoming in promise of the beauties of the border in the coming
summer. Pick a bit of this winter Box, even with the mercury below zero.
Lo! you have a breath of the hot dryness of the midsummer garden.
Box grows to great size, even twenty feet in height. In Southern
gardens, where it is seldom winter-killed, it is often of noble
proportions. In the lovely garden of Martha Washington at Mount Vernon
the Box is still preserved in the beauty and interest of its original
form.
[Illustration: Sun-dial in Box at Ascott.]
The Box edgings and hedges of many other Southern gardens still are
in good condition; those of the old Preston homestead at Columbia, South
Carolina (shown on pages 15 and 18, and facing page 54), owe their
preservation during the Civil War to the fact that the house was then
the refuge of a sisterhood of nuns. The Ridgely estate, Hampton, in
County Baltimore, Maryland, has a formal garden in which the perfection
of the Box is a delight. The will of Captain Charles Ridgely, in 1787,
made an appropriation of money and land for this garden. The high
terrace which overlooks the garden and the shallow ones which break the
southern slope and mark the boundaries of each parterre are fine
examples of landscape art, and are said to be the work of Major Chase
Barney, a famous military engineer. By 1829 the garden was an object of
beauty and much renown. A part only of the original parterre remains,
but the more modern flower borders, through the unusual perspective and
contour of the garden, do not clash with the old Box-edged beds. These
edgings were reset in 1870, and are always kept very closely cut. The
circular domes of clipped box arise from stems at least a hundred years
old. The design of the parterre is so satisfactory that I give three
views of it in order to show it fully. (See pages 57, 60, and 95.)
A Box-edged garden of much beauty and large extent existed for some
years in the grounds connected with the County Jail in Fitchburg,
Massachusetts. It was laid out by the wife of the warden, aided by the
manual labor of convicted prisoners, with her earnest hope that working
among flowers would have a benefiting and softening influence on these
criminals. She writes rather dubiously: "They all enjoyed being out of
doors with their pipes, whether among the flowers or the vegetables; and
no attempt at escape was ever made by any of them while in the
comparative freedom of the flower-garden." She planted and marked
distinctly in this garden over seven hundred groups of annuals and hardy
perennials, hoping the men would care to learn the names of the flowers,
and through that knowledge, and their practise in the care of Box
edgings and hedges, be able to obtain positions as under-gardeners when
their terms of imprisonment expired.
The garden at Tudor Place, the home of Mrs. Beverley Kennon (page 103),
displays fine Box; and the garden of the poet Longfellow which is said
to have been laid out after the Box-edged parterres at Versailles.
Throughout this book are scattered several good examples of Box from
Salem and other towns; in a sweet, old garden on Kingston Hill, Rhode
Island (page 104) the flower-beds are anchor-shaped.
In favorable climates Box edgings may grow in such vigor as to entirely
fill the garden beds. An example of this is given on page 105, showing
the garden at Tuckahoe. The beds were laid out over a large space of
ground in a beautiful design, which still may be faintly seen by
examining the dark expanse beside the house, which is now almost solid
Box. The great hedges by the avenue are also Box; between similar ones
at Upton Court in Camden, South Carolina, riders on horseback cannot be
seen nor see over it. New England towns seldom show such growth of Box;
but in Hingham, Massachusetts, at the home of Mrs. Robbins, author of
that charming book, _The Rescue of an Old Place_, there is a Box bower,
with walls of Box fifteen feet in height. These walls were originally
the edgings of a flower bed on the "Old Place." Read Dr. John Brown's
charming account of the Box bower of the "Queen's Maries."
[Illustration: Garden at Tudor Place.]
Box grows on Long Island with great vigor. At Brecknock Hall, the family
residence of Mrs. Albert Delafield at Greenport, Long Island, the
hedges of plain and variegated Box are unusually fine, and the paths are
well laid out. Some of them are entirely covered by the closing together
of the two hedges which are often six or seven feet in height.
[Illustration: Anchor-shaped Flower-beds. Kingston, Rhode Island.]
In spite of the constant assertion of the winter-killing of Box in the
North, the oldest Box in the country is that at Sylvester Manor, Shelter
Island, New York. The estate is now owned by the tenth mistress of the
manor, Miss Cornelia Horsford; the first mistress of the manor, Grissel
Sylvester, who had been Grissel Gardiner, came there in 1652. It is
told, and is doubtless true, that she brought there the first Box
plants, to make, in what was then a far-away island, a semblance of her
home garden. It is said that this Box was thriving in Madam Sylvester's
garden when George Fox preached there to the Indians. The oldest Box is
fifteen or eighteen feet high; not so tall, I think, as the neglected
Box at Vaucluse, the old Hazard place near Newport, but far more massive
and thrifty and shapely. Box needs unusual care and judgment, an
instinct almost, for the removal of certain portions. It sends out tiny
rootlets at the joints of the sprays, and these grow readily. The
largest and oldest Box bushes at Sylvester Manor garden are a study in
their strong, hearty stems, their perfect foliage, their symmetry; they
show their care of centuries.
[Illustration: Ancient Box at Tuckahoe.]
The delightful Box-edged flower beds were laid out in their present form
about seventy years ago by the grandfather of the present owner. There
is a Lower Garden, a Terrace Garden, which are shown on succeeding
pages, a Fountain Garden, a Rose Garden, a Water Garden; a bit of the
latter is on page 75. In some portions of these gardens, especially on
the upper terrace, the Box is so high, and set in such quaint and
rambling figures, that it closely approaches an old English maze; and it
was a pretty sight to behold a group of happy little children running in
and out among these Box hedges that extended high over their heads,
searching long and eagerly for the central bower where their little tea
party was set.
Over these old garden borders hangs literally an atmosphere of the past;
the bitter perfume stimulates the imagination as we walk by the side of
these splendid Box bushes, and think, as every one must, of what they
have seen, of what they know; on this garden is written the history of
over two centuries of beautiful domestic home life. It is well that we
still have such memorials to teach us the nobility and beauty of such a
life.