CHILDHOOD IN A GARDEN
"I see the garden thicket's shade
Where all the summer long we played,
And gardens set and houses made,
Our early work and late."
--MARY HOWITT.
How we thank God for the noble traits of our ancestors; and our hearts
fill with gratitude for the tenderness, the patience, the loving
kindness of our parents; I have an infinite deal for which to be
sincerely grateful; but for nothing am I now more happy than that there
were given to me a flower-loving father and mother. To that
flower-loving father and mother I offer in tenderest memory equal
gratitude for a childhood spent in a garden.
Winter as well as summer gave us many happy garden hours. Sometimes a
sudden thaw of heavy snow and an equally quick frost formed a miniature
pond for sheltered skating at the lower end of the garden. A frozen
crust of snow (which our winters nowadays so seldom afford) gave other
joys. And the delights of making a snow man, or a snow fort, even of
rolling great globes of snow, were infinite and varied. More subtle was
the charm of shaping certain _things_ from dried twigs and evergreen
sprigs, and pouring water over them to freeze into a beautiful
resemblance of the original form. These might be the ornate initials or
name of a dear girl friend, or a tiny tower or pagoda. I once had a real
winter garden in miniature set in twigs of cedar and spruce, and frozen
into a fairy garden.
In summertime the old-fashioned garden was a paradise for a child; the
long warm days saw the fresh telling of child to child, by that
curiously subtle system of transmission which exists everywhere among
happy children, of quaint flower customs known to centuries of
English-speaking children, and also some newer customs developed by the
fitness of local flowers for such games and plays.
The Countess Potocka says the intense enjoyment of nature is a sixth
sense. We are not born with this good gift, nor do we often acquire it
in later life; it comes through our rearing. The fulness of delight in a
garden is the bequest of a childhood spent in a garden. No study or
possession of flowers in mature years can afford gratification equal to
that conferred by childish associations with them; by the sudden
recollection of flower lore, the memory of child friendships, the
recalling of games or toys made of flowers: you cannot explain it; it
seems a concentration, an extract of all the sunshine and all the beauty
of those happy summers of our lives when the whole day and every day was
spent among flowers. The sober teachings of science in later years can
never make up the loss to children debarred of this inheritance, who
have grown up knowing not when "the summer comes with bee and flower."
[Illustration: Milkweed Seed.]
A garden childhood gives more sources of delight to the senses in after
life than come from beautiful color and fine fragrance. Have you
pleasure in the contact of a flower? Do you like its touch as well as
its perfume? Do you love to feel a Lilac spray brush your cheek in the
cool of the evening? Do you like to bury your face in a bunch of Roses?
How frail and papery is the Larkspur! And how silky is the Poppy! A
Locust bloom is a fringe of sweetness; and how very doubtful is the
touch of the Lily--an unpleasant thick sleekness. The Clove Carnation is
the best of all. It feels just as it smells. These and scores more give
me pleasure through their touch, the result of constant handling of
flowers when I was a child.
There were harmful flowers in the old garden--among them the
Monk's-hood; we never touched it, except warily. Doubtless we were
warned, but we knew it by instinct and did not need to be told. I always
used to see in modest homes great tubs each with a flourishing Oleander
tree. I have set out scores of little slips of Oleander, just as I
planted Orange seeds. I seldom see Oleanders now; I wonder whether the
plant has been banished on account of its poisonous properties. I heard
of but one fatal case of Oleander poisoning--and that was doubtful. A
little child, the sister of one of my playmates, died suddenly in great
distress. Several months after her death the mother was told that the
leaves of the Oleander were poisonous, when she recalled that the child
had eaten them on the day of her death.
Oleander blossoms were lovely in shape and color. Edward Fitzgerald
writes to Fanny Kemble: "Don't you love the Oleander? So clean in its
Leaves and Stem, as so beautiful in its Flower; loving to stand in water
which it drinks up fast. I have written all my best Mss. with a Pen that
has been held with its nib in water for more than a fortnight--Charles
Keene's recipe for keeping Pens in condition--Oleander-like." This,
written in 1882, must, even at that recent date, refer to quill pens.
The lines of Mary Howitt's, quoted at the beginning of this chapter,
ring to me so true; there is in them no mock sentiment, it is the real
thing,--"the garden thicket's shade," little "cubby houses" under the
close-growing stems of Lilac and Syringa, with an old thick shawl
outspread on the damp earth for a carpet. Oh, how hot and scant the air
was in the green light of those close "garden-thickets," those "Lilac
ambushes," which were really not half so pleasant as the cooler seats on
the grass under the trees, but which we clung to with a warmth equal to
their temperature.
[Illustration: The Children's Garden.]
Let us peer into these garden thickets at these happy little girls,
fantastic in their garden dress. Their hair is hung thick with Dandelion
curls, made from pale green opal-tinted stems that have grown long under
the shrubbery and Box borders. Around their necks are childish wampum,
strings of Dandelion beads or Daisy chains. More delicate wreaths for
the neck or hair were made from the blossoms of the Four-o'clock or
the petals of Phlox or Lilacs, threaded with pretty alternation of
color. Fuchsias were hung at the ears for eardrops, green leaves were
pinned with leaf stems into little caps and bonnets and aprons,
Foxgloves made dainty children's gloves. Truly the garden-bred child
went in gay attire.
That exquisite thing, the seed of Milkweed (shown on page 328),
furnished abundant playthings. The plant was sternly exterminated in our
garden, but sallies into a neighboring field provided supplies for fairy
cradles with tiny pillows of silvery silk.
One of the early impulses of infancy is to put everything in the mouth;
this impulse makes the creeping days of some children a period of
constant watchfulness and terror to their apprehensive guardians. When
the children are older and can walk in the garden or edge of the woods,
a fresh anxiety arises; for a certain savagery in their make-up makes
them regard every growing thing, not as an object to look at or even to
play with, but to eat. It is a relief to the mother when the child grows
beyond the savage, and falls under the dominion of tradition and
folk-lore, communicated to him by other children by that subtle power of
enlightenment common to children, which seems more like instinct than
instruction. The child still eats, but he makes distinctions, and seldom
touches harmful leaves or seeds or berries. He has an astonishing range:
roots, twigs, leaves, bark, tendrils, fruit, berries, flowers, buds,
seeds, all alike serve for food. Young shoots of Sweetbrier and
Blackberry are nibbled as well as the branches of young Birch. Grape
tendrils, too, have an acid zest, as do Sorrel leaves. Wild Rose hips
and the drupes of dwarf Cornel are chewed. The leaf buds of Spruce and
Linden are also tasted. I hear that some children in some places eat the
young fronds of Cinnamon Fern, but I never saw it done. Seeds of
Pumpkins and Sunflowers were edible, as well as Hollyhock cheeses. There
was one Slippery Elm tree which we know in our town, and we took ample
toll of it. Cherry gum and Plum gum are chewed, as well as the gum of
Spruce trees. There was a boy who used sometimes to intrude on our
girl's paradise, since he was the son of a neighbor, and he said he ate
raw Turnips, and something he called Pig-nuts--I wonder what they were.
Those childish customs linger long in our minds, or rather in our
subconsciousness. I never walk through an old garden without wishing to
nibble and browse on the leaves and stems which I ate as a child,
without sucking a drop of honey from certain flowers. I do it not with
intent, but I waken to realization with the petal of Trumpet Honeysuckle
in my hand and its drop of ambrosia on my lips.
[Illustration: Foxgloves in a Narragansett Garden.]
Children care far less for scent and perfection in a flower than they do
for color, and, above all, for desirability and adaptability of form,
this desirability being afforded by the fitness of the flower for the
traditional games and plays. The favorite flowers of my childhood were
three noble creatures, Hollyhocks, Canterbury Bells, and Foxgloves, all
three were scentless. I cannot think of a child's summer in a garden
without these three old favorites of history and folk-lore. Of course we
enjoyed the earlier flower blooms and played happily with them ere our
dearest treasures came to us; but never had we full variety, zest, and
satisfaction till this trio were in midsummer bloom. There was a little
gawky, crudely-shaped wooden doll of German manufacture sold in
Worcester which I never saw elsewhere; they were kept for sale by old
Waxler, the German basket maker, a most respected citizen, whose name I
now learn was not Waxler but Weichsler. These dolls came in three
sizes, the five-cent size was a midsummer favorite, because on its
featureless head the blossoms of the Canterbury Bells fitted like a high
azure cap. I can see rows of these wooden creatures sitting, thus
crowned, stiffly around the trunk of the old Seckel Pear tree at a
doll's tea-party.
By the constant trampling of our childish feet the earth at the end of
the garden path was hard and smooth under the shadow of the Lilac trees
near our garden fence; and this hard path, remote from wanderers in the
garden, made a splendid plateau to use for flower balls. Once we fitted
it up as a palace; circular walls of Balsam flowers set closely together
shaped the ball-room. The dancers were blue and white Canterbury Bells.
Quadrilles were placed of little twigs, or strong flower stalks set
firmly upright in the hard trodden earth, and on each of these a flower
bell was hung so that the pretty reflexion of the scalloped edges of the
corolla just touched the ground as the hooped petticoats swayed lightly
in the wind.
[Illustration: Hollyhocks in Garden of Kimball Homestead, Portsmouth,
New Hampshire.]
We used to catch bumblebees in the Canterbury Bells, and hear them buzz
and bump and tear their way out to liberty. We held the edges of the
flower tightly pinched together, and were never stung. Besides its
adaptability as a toy for children, the Canterbury Bell was beloved for
its beauty in the garden. An appropriate folk name for it is
Fair-in-sight. Healthy clumps grow tall and stately, towering up as high
as childish heads; and the firm stalks are hung so closely in bloom.
Nowadays people plant expanses of Canterbury Bells; one at the
beautiful garden at White Birches, Elmhurst, Illinois, is shown on page
111. I do not like this as well as the planting in our home garden when
they are set in a mixed border, as shown opposite page 416. Our tastes
in the flower world are largely influenced by what we were wonted to in
childhood, not only in the selection of flowers, but in their placing in
our gardens. The Canterbury Bell has historical interest through its
being named for the bells borne by pilgrims to the shrine at Canterbury.
I have been delighted to see plants of these sturdy garden favorites
offered for sale of late years in New York streets in springtime, by
street venders, who now show a tendency to throw aside Callas, Lilies,
Tuberoses, and flowers of such ilk, and substitute shrubs and seedlings
of hardy growth and satisfactory flowering. But it filled me with
regret, to hear the pretty historic name--Canterbury Bells--changed in
so short a residence in the city, by these Italian and German tongues to
Gingerbread Bells--a sad debasement. Native New Englanders have seldom
forgotten or altered an old flower name, and very rarely transferred it
to another plant, even in two centuries of everyday usage. But I am glad
to know that the flower will bloom in the flower pot or soap box in the
dingy window of the city poor, or in the square foot of earth of the
city squatter, even if it be called Gingerbread Bells.
I think we may safely affirm that the Hollyhock is the most popular, and
most widely known, of all old-fashioned flowers. It is loved for its
beauty, its associations, its adaptiveness. It is such a decorative
flower, and looks of so much distinction in so many places. It is
invaluable to the landscape gardener and to the architect; and might be
named the wallflower, since it looks so well growing by every wall. I
like it there, or by a fence-side, or in a corner, better than in the
middle of flower beds. How many garden pictures have Hollyhocks? Sir
Joshua Reynolds even used them as accessories of his portraits. They
usually grow so well and bloom so freely. I have seen them in
Connecticut growing wild--garden strays, standing up by ruined stone
walls in a pasture with as much grace of grouping, as good form, as if
they had been planted by our most skilful gardeners or architects. Many
illustrations of them are given in this book; I need scarcely refer to
them; opposite page 334 is shown a part of the four hundred stalks of
rich bloom in a Portsmouth garden. There is a pretty semidouble
Hollyhock with a single row of broad outer petals and a smaller double
rosette for the centre; but the single flowers are far more effective. I
like well the old single crimson flower, but the yellow ones are, I
believe, the loveliest; a row of the yellow and white ones against an
old brick wall is perfection. I can never repay to the Hollyhock the
debt of gratitude I owe for the happy hours it furnished to me in my
childhood. Its reflexed petals could be tied into such lovely
silken-garbed dolls; its "cheeses" were one of the staple food supplies
of our dolls' larder. I am sure in my childhood I would have warmly
chosen the Hollyhock as my favorite flower.
The sixty-two folk names of the Foxglove give ample proof of its
closeness to humanity; it is a familiar flower, a home flower. Of these
many names I never heard but two in New England, and those but once; an
old Irish gardener called the flowers Fairy Thimbles, and an English
servant, Pops--this from the well-known habit of popping the petals on
the palm of the hand. We used to build little columns of these Foxgloves
by thrusting one within another, alternating purple and white; and we
wore them for gloves, and placed them as foolscaps on the heads of tiny
dolls. The beauty of the Foxglove in the garden is unquestioned; the
spires of white bloom are, as Cotton Mather said of a pious and painful
Puritan preacher, "a shining and white light in a golden candlestick
improved for the sweet felicity of Mankind and to the honour of our
Maker."
Opposite page 340 is a glimpse of a Box-edged garden in Worcester, whose
blossoming has been a delight to me every summer of my entire life. In
my childhood this home was that of flower-loving neighbors who had an
established and constant system of exchange with my mother and other
neighbors of flowers, plants, seeds, slips, and bulbs. The garden was
serene with an atmosphere of worthy old age; you wondered how any man so
old could so constantly plant, weed, prune, and hoe until you saw how he
loved his flowers, and how his wife loved them. The Roses, Peonies, and
Flower de Luce in this garden are sixty years old, and the Box also; the
shrubs are almost trees. Nothing seems to be transplanted, yet all
flourish; I suppose some plants must be pulled up, sometimes, else the
garden would be a thicket. The varying grading of city streets has left
this garden in a little valley sheltered from winds and open to the
sun's rays. Here bloom Crocuses, Snowdrops, Grape Hyacinths, and
sometimes Tulips, before any neighbor has a blossom and scarce a leaf.
On a Sunday noon in April there are always flower lovers hanging over
the low fences, and gazing at the welcome early blooms. Here if ever,
"Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring."
A close cloud of Box-scent hangs over this garden, even in midwinter;
sometimes the Box edgings grow until no one can walk between; then
drastic measures have to be taken, and the rows look ragged for a time.
[Illustration: An Autumn Path in a Worcester Garden.]
I think much of my love of Box comes from happy associations with this
garden. I used to like to go there with my mother when she went on what
the Japanese would call "garden-viewing" visits, for at the lower end of
the garden was a small orchard of the finest playhouse Apple trees I
ever climbed (and I have had much experience), and some large trees
bearing little globular early Pears; and there were rows of bushes of
golden "Honeyblob" Gooseberries. The Apple trees are there still, but
the Gooseberry bushes are gone. I looked for them this summer eagerly,
but in vain; I presume the berries would have been sour had I found
them.
[Illustration: Hollyhocks at Tudor Place.]
In many old New England gardens the close juxtaposition and even
intermingling of vegetables and fruits with the flowers gave a sense of
homely simplicity and usefulness which did not detract from the garden's
interest, and added much to the child's pleasure. At the lower end of
the long flower border in our garden, grew "Mourning Brides," white,
pale lavender, and purple brown in tint. They opened under the shadow of
a row of Gooseberry bushes. I seldom see Gooseberry bushes nowadays in
any gardens, whether on farms or in nurseries; they seem to be an
antiquated fruit.
I have in my memory many other customs of childhood in the garden; some
of them I have told in my book _Child Life in Colonial Days_, and there
are scores more which I have not recounted, but most of them were
peculiar to my own fanciful childhood, and I will not recount them here.
One of the most exquisite of Mrs. Browning's poems is _The Lost Bower_;
it is endeared to me because it expresses so fully a childish
bereavement of my own, for I have a lost garden. Somewhere, in my
childhood, I saw this beautiful garden, filled with radiant blossoms,
rich with fruit and berries, set with beehives, rabbit hutches, and a
dove cote, and enclosed about with hedges; and through it ran a purling
brook--a thing I ever longed for in my home garden. All one happy summer
afternoon I played in it, and gathered from its beds and borders at
will--and I have never seen it since. When I was still a child I used to
ask to return to it, but no one seemed to understand; and when I was
grown I asked where it was, describing it in every detail, and the only
answer was that it was a dream, I had never seen and played in such a
garden. This lost garden has become to me an emblem, as was the lost
bower to Mrs. Browning, of the losses of life; but I did not lose all;
while memory lasts I shall ever possess the happiness of my childhood
passed in our home garden.
[Illustration: An Old Worcester Garden.]