The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 96

_Iris._

Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with Stover, them to keep.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (62).

In this pa.s.sage, Stover is probably the bent or dried Gra.s.s still remaining on the land, but it is the common word for hay or straw, or for "fodder and provision for all sorts of cattle; from _Estovers_, law term, which is so explained in the law dictionaries. Both are derived from _Estouvier_ in the old French, defined by Roquefort--'Convenance, necessite, provision de tout ce qui est necessaire.'"--NARES. The word is of frequent occurrence in the writers of the time of Shakespeare. One quotation from Tusser will be sufficient--

"Keepe dry thy straw--

"If house-roome will serve thee, lay Stover up drie, And everie sort by it selfe for to lie.

Or stack it for litter if roome be too poore, And thatch out the residue, noieng thy door."

_November's Husbandry._

STRAWBERRY.

(1) _Iago._

Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief Spotted with Strawberries in your wife's hand?[279:1]

_Oth.e.l.lo_, act iii, sc. 3 (434).

(2) _Ely._

The Strawberry grows underneath the Nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality; And so the prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness.

_Henry V_, act i, sc. 1 (60).

(3) _Gloster._

My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good Strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you send for some of them.

_Ely._

Marry, and will, my Lord, with all my heart.

Where is my lord Protector? I have sent For these Strawberries.

_King Richard III_, act iii, sc. 4 (32).

The Bishop of Ely's garden in Holborn must have been one of the chief gardens of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for this is the third time it has been brought under our notice. It was celebrated for its Roses (_see_ ROSE); it was so celebrated for its Saffron Crocuses that part of it acquired the name which it still keeps, Saffron Hill; and now we hear of its "good Strawberries;" while the remembrance of "the ample garden," and of the handsome Lord Chancellor to whom it was given when taken from the bishopric, is still kept alive in its name of Hatton Garden. How very good our forefathers'

Strawberries were, we have a strong proof in old Isaak Walton's happy words: "Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of Strawberries: 'Doubtless G.o.d could have made a better berry, but doubtless G.o.d never did;' and so, if I might be judge, G.o.d never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." I doubt whether, with our present experience of good Strawberries, we should join in this high praise of the Strawberries of Shakespeare's or Isaak Walton's day, for their varieties of Strawberry must have been very limited in comparison to ours. Their chief Strawberry was the Wild Strawberry brought straight from the woods, and no doubt much improved in time by cultivation. Yet we learn from Spenser and from Tusser that it was the custom to grow it just as it came from the woods.

Spenser says--

"One day as they all three together went Into the wood to gather Strawberries."--_F. Q._, vi. 34;

and Tusser--

"Wife, into thy garden, and set me a plot With Strawbery rootes of the best to be got: Such growing abroade, among Thornes in the wood, Wel chosen and picked, prove excellent good.

The Gooseberry, Respis, and Roses al three With Strawberies under them trimly agree."

_September's Husbandry._

And even in the next century, Sir Hugh Plat said--

"Strawberries which grow in woods prosper best in gardens."

_Garden of Eden_, i, 20.[281:1]

Besides the wild one (_Fragaria vesca_), they had the Virginian (_F.

Virginiana_), a native of North America, and the parent of our scarlets; but they do not seem to have had the Hautbois (_F. elatior_), or the Chilian, or the Carolinas, from which most of our good varieties have descended.

The Strawberry is among fruits what the Primrose and Snowdrop are among flowers, the harbinger of other good fruits to follow. It is the earliest of the summer fruits, and there is no need to dwell on its delicate, sweet-scented freshness, so acceptable to all; but it has also a charm in autumn, known, however, but to few, and sometimes said to be only discernible by few. Among "the flowers that yield sweetest smell in the air," Lord Bacon reckoned Violets, and "next to that is the Musk Rose, then the Strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell." In Mrs. Gaskell's pretty tale, "My Lady Ludlow," the dying Strawberry leaves act an important part. "The great hereditary faculty on which my lady piqued herself, and with reason, for I never met with any other person who possessed it, was the power she had of perceiving the delicious odour arising from a bed of Strawberry leaves in the late autumn, when the leaves were all fading and dying." The old lady quotes Lord Bacon, and then says: "'Now the Hanburys can always smell the excellent cordial odour, and very delicious and refres.h.i.+ng it is. In the time of Queen Elizabeth the great old families of England were a distinct race, just as a cart-horse is one creature and very useful in its place, and Childers or Eclipse is another creature, though both are of the same species. So the old families have gifts and powers of a different and higher cla.s.s to what the other orders have. My dear, remember that you try and smell the scent of dying Strawberry leaves in this next autumn, you have some of Ursula Hanbury's blood in you, and that gives you a chance.' 'But when October came I sniffed, and sniffed, and all to no purpose; and my lady, who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously, had to give me up as a hybrid'" ("Household Words," vol. xviii.). On this I can only say in the words of an old writer, "A rare and notable thing, if it be true, for I never proved it, and never tried it; therefore, as it proves so, praise it."[282:1]

Spenser also mentions the scent, but not of the leaves or fruit, but of the flowers--

"Comming to kisse her lyps (such grace I found), Me seem'd I smelt a garden of sweet flowres That dainty odours from them threw around:

Her goodly bosome, lyke a Strawberry bed,

Such fragrant flowres doe give most odorous smell."[282:2]

_Sonnet_ lxiv.

There is a considerable interest connected with the name of the plant, and much popular error. It is supposed to be called Strawberry because the berries have straw laid under them, or from an old custom of selling the wild ones strung on straws.[282:3] In Shakespeare's time straw was used for the protection of Strawberries, but not in the present fas.h.i.+on--

"If frost doe continue, take this for a lawe, The Strawberies look to be covered with strawe.

Laid ouerly trim upon crotchis and bows, And after uncovered as weather allows."

TUSSER, _December's Husbandry_.

But the name is much more ancient than either of these customs.

Strawberry in different forms, as Strea-berige, Streaberie-wisan, Streaw-berige, Streaw-berian wisan, Streberilef, Strabery, Strebere-wise, is its name in the old English Vocabularies, while it appears first in its present form in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the fifteenth century, "Hoc ffragrum, A{ce} a Strawbery." What the word really means is pleasantly told by a writer in Seeman's "Journal of Botany," 1869: "How well this name indicates the now prevailing practice of English gardeners laying straw under the berry in order to bring it to perfection, and prevent it from touching the earth, which without that precaution it naturally does, and to which it owes its German _Erdbeere_, making us almost forget that in this instance 'straw' has nothing to do with the practice alluded to, but is an obsolete past-participle of 'to strew,' in allusion to the habit of the plant."