Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 4

Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone.

Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend in my retreat."

To whom to whisper solitude is sweet.

Cowper lived and died a bachelor. In the case of a married man and a father, garden delights are doubled by the presence of the family and friends, if wife and children happen to be what they should be, and the friends are genuine and genial.

All true poets delight in gardens. The truest that ever lived spent his latter days at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had a s.p.a.cious and beautiful garden. Charles Knight tells us that "the Avon washed its banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers," In this garden Shakespeare planted with his own hands his celebrated Mulberry tree. It was a n.o.ble specimen of the black Mulberry introduced into England in 1548[009]. In 1605, James I. issued a Royal edict recommending the cultivation of silkworms and offering packets of mulberry seeds to those amongst his subjects who were willing to sow them. Shakespeare's tree was planted in 1609. Mr. Loudon, observes that the black Mulberry has been known from the earliest records of antiquity and that it is twice mentioned in the Bible: namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the Psalms. When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who was proud of its interesting a.s.sociation with the history of our great poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to cut down and root up that interesting--indeed _sacred_ memorial--of the Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his departure from a town whose inhabitants "doated on his very absence;"

but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which Shakespeare had lived and died. This was done, it is said, out of sheer spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed. His change of residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of squibs and satires. He "slid into verse," and "hitched in a rhyme."

Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, And the sad burden of a merry song.

Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of Shakespeare's Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices. The corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the poet. This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom. It was repeated on the stage and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences.

Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the self-styled "melancholy Cowley." When in the smoky city pent, amidst the busy hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat. As he paced the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and the pure air of the country. His imagination carried him into secluded groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet garden. "I never," he says, "had any other desire so strong and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature," The late Miss Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire. It is said that she had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a d.u.c.h.ess. Cowley is not contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden enjoyments. He repeatedly alludes to them in verse.

Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise) The old Corycian yeoman pa.s.sed his days; Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent; Th' amba.s.sadors, which the great emperor sent To offer him a crown, with wonder found The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground; Unwillingly and slow and discontent From his loved cottage to a throne he went; And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way: And oft looked back: and oft was heard to say Not without sighs, Alas! I there forsake A happier kingdom than I go to take.

_Lib. IV. Plantarum_.

Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement.

Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk In the Salonian garden's n.o.ble shade Which by his own imperial hands was made, I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk With the amba.s.sadors, who come in vain To entice him to a throne again.

"If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show All the delights which in these gardens grow, 'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, Than 'tis that you should carry me away: And trust me not, my friends, if every day I walk not here with more delight,

Than ever, after the most happy sight In triumph to the Capitol I rode, To thank the G.o.ds, and to be thought myself almost a G.o.d,"

_The Garden_.

Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes.

Where does the wisdom and the power divine In a more bright and sweet reflection s.h.i.+ne?

Where do we finer strokes and colors see Of the Creator's real poetry.

Than when we with attention look Upon the third day's volume of the book?

If we could open and intend our eye _We all, like Moses, might espy, E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity_.

In Leigh Hunt's charming book ent.i.tled _The Town_, I find the following notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to them:--

"It is not surprizing that _garden-houses_ as they were called; should have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observe _how fond the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to have made a point of having one_. The only London residence of Chapman which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames, (for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden; and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear.

They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are a.s.sociated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent."

Milton must have been a pa.s.sionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of _Paradise Lost_ and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS.

Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show"

says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house (the cradle of _Paradise Lost_) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pa.s.s backwards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"

No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in so n.o.ble a style as Milton. He has antic.i.p.ated the finest conceptions of the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpa.s.sed all the accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us.

His Paradise is a

Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis or renowned Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010]

The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the hundredth time on a n.o.ble picture. The mind and the eye are never satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

PARADISE.[011]

So on he fares, and to the border comes Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champaign head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, Access denied: and overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops, The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung: Which to our general sire gave prospect large Into his nether empire neighbouring round; And higher than that wall a circling row Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue, Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd; On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams, Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow.

When G.o.d hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd That landscape: and of pure now purer air Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair: now gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense Native perfumes and whisper whence they stole Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the spicy sh.o.r.e Of Araby the Blest; with such delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.

Southward through Eden went a river large, Nor changed his course, but through the s.h.a.ggy hill Pa.s.s'd underneath ingulf'd; for G.o.d had thrown That mountain as his garden mould, high raised Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Water'd the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome pa.s.sage now appears; And now, divided into four main streams, Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm And country, whereof here needs no account; But rather to tell how, if art could tell, How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, With mazy error under pendent shades, Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierced shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this place A happy rural seat of various view; Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm; Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind, Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste: Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed; Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: Another side, umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.

The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field and grove attune, The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring.

Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and the cultivation of flowers. I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats of these poets are not now what they were. The lovely nest of the little Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands. And when Mr.

Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he "found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin."

Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his garden. It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is said to have given a charming variety. He enumerates amongst the friends who a.s.sisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of Peterborough "whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines."

Know, all the distant din that world can keep, Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.

There my retreat the best companions grace Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place.

There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl The feast of reason and the flow of soul; And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines; Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.

Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope's tasteful Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his "laurel circus or to terminate his points." His famous grotto, which he is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience. His property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his highly ornamented pa.s.sage under the road to preserve privacy and to connect the two portions of his estate.

The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively description of his subterranean embellishments. But his verse will live longer than his prose. He has immortalized this grotto, so radiant with spars and ores and sh.e.l.ls, in the following poetical inscription:--

Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave s.h.i.+nes a broad mirror through the shadowy cave, Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil, And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill, Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow, And latent metals innocently glow, Approach! Great Nature studiously behold, And eye the mine without a wish for gold Approach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot, Where, n.o.bly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought, Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole, And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul; Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor Who dare to love their country, and be poor.

Horace Walpole, speaking of the poet's garden, tells us that "the pa.s.sing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the retiring and again a.s.sembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, and the solemnity at the cypresses that led up to his mother's tomb, were managed with exquisite judgment."

Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,

alluded to by Pope in his sketch of the character of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, though laid out by Kent, was probably improved by the poet's suggestions. Walpole seems to think that the beautiful grounds at Rousham, laid out for General Dormer, were planned on the model of the garden at Twickenham, at least the opening and retiring "shades of Venus's Vale." And these grounds at Rousham were p.r.o.nounced "the most engaging of all Kent's works." It is said that the design of the garden at Carlton House, was borrowed from that of Pope.

Wordsworth was correct in his observation that "Landscape gardening is a liberal art akin to the arts of poetry and painting." Walpole describes it as "an art that realizes painting and improves nature." "Mahomet," he adds, "imagined an Elysium, but Kent created many."

Pope's mansion was not a very s.p.a.cious one, but it was large enough for a private gentleman of inexpensive habits. After the poet's death it was purchased by Sir William Stanhope who enlarged both the house and garden.[012] A bust of Pope, in white marble, has been placed over an arched way with the following inscription from the pen of Lord Nugent:

The humble roof, the garden's scanty line, Ill suit the genius of the bard divine; But fancy now displays a fairer scope And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope.

I have not heard who set up this bust with its impudent inscription. I hope it was not Stanhope himself. I cannot help thinking that it would have been a truer compliment to the memory of Pope if the house and grounds had been kept up exactly as he had left them. Most people, I suspect, would greatly have preferred the poet's own "unfolding of his soul" to that "_unfolding_" attempted for him by a Stanhope and commemorated by a Nugent. Pope exhibited as much taste in laying out his grounds as in constructing his poems. Sir William, after his attempt to make the garden more worthy of the original designer, might just as modestly have undertaken to enlarge and improve the poetry of Pope on the plea that it did not sufficiently _unfold his soul_. A line of Lord Nugent's might in that case have been transferred from the marble bust to the printed volume:

His fancy now displays a fairer scope.

Or the enlarger and improver might have taken his motto from Shakespeare:

To my _unfolding_ lend a gracious ear.

This would have been an appropriate motto for the t.i.tle-page of "_The Poems of Pope: enlarged and improved: or The Soul of the Poet Unfolded_."