Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 7

It has been stated that the French term _Ferme Ornee_ was first used in England by Shenstone. It exactly expressed the character of his grounds.

Mr. Repton said that he never strolled over the scenery of the Leasowes without lamenting the constant disappointment to which Shenstone exposed himself by a vain attempt to unite the incompatible objects of ornament and profit. "Thus," continued Mr. Repton, "the poet lived under the continual mortification of disappointed hope, and with a mind exquisitely sensible, he felt equally the sneer of the great man at the magnificence of his attempt and the ridicule of the farmer at the misapplication of his paternal acres." The "sneer of the great man." is perhaps an allusion to what Dr. Johnson says of Lord Lyttelton:--that he "looked with disdain" on "the petty State" of his neighbour. "For a while," says Dr. Johnson, "the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain." Mr. Graves, the zealous friend of Shenstone, indignantly denies that any of the Lyttelton family had evinced so ungenerous a feeling towards the proprietor of the Leasowes who though his "empire" was less "s.p.a.cious and opulent" had probably a larger share of true taste than even the proprietor of Hagley, the Lyttelton domain--though Hagley has been much, and I doubt not, deservedly, admired.[023]

Dr. Johnson states that Shenstone's expenses were beyond his means,-- that he spent his estate in adorning it--that at last the clamours of creditors "overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and that his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies." But this is gross exaggeration. Shenstone was occasionally, indeed, in slight pecuniary difficulties, but he could always have protected himself from the intrusion of the myrmidons of the law by raising money on his estate; for it appears that after the payment of all his debts, he left legacies to his friends and annuities to his servants.

Johnson himself is the most scornful of the critics upon Shenstone's rural pursuits. "The pleasure of Shenstone," says the Doctor, "was all in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks. Nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water." Dr. Johnson would have seen no use in the loveliest piece of running water in the world if it had contained nothing that he could masticate! Mrs. Piozzi says of him, "The truth is, he hated to hear about prospects and views, and laying out grounds and taste in gardening." "That was the best garden," he said, "which produced most roots and fruits; and that water was most to be prized which contained most fish." On this principle of the valuelessness of those pleasures which enter the mind through the eye, Dr. Johnson should have blamed the lovers of painting for dwelling with such fond admiration on the canvas of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. In point of fact, Dr. Johnson had no more sympathy with the genius of the painter or the musician than with that of the Landscape gardener, for he had neither an eye nor an ear for Art. He wondered how any man could be such a fool as to be moved to tears by music, and observed, that, "one could not fill one's belly with hearing soft murmurs or looking at rough cascades." No; the loveliness of nature does not satisfy the thirst and hunger of the body, but it _does_ satisfy the thirst and hunger of the soul. No one can find wheaten bread or wine or venison or beef or plum-pudding or turtle-soup in mere sounds and sights, however exquisite--neither can any one find such substantial diet within the boards of a book--no not even on the pages of Shakespeare, or even those of the Bible itself,--but men can find in sweet music and lovely scenery and good books something infinitely more precious than all the wine, venison, beef, or plum-pudding, or turtle-soup that could be swallowed during a long life by the most craving and capacious alderman of London! Man is of a dual nature: he is not all body. He has other and far higher wants and enjoyments than the purely physical--and these n.o.bler appet.i.tes are gratified by the charms of nature and the creations of inspired genius.

Dr. Johnson's gastronomic allusions to nature recal the old story of a poet pointing out to a utilitarian friend some white lambs frolicking in a meadow. "Aye," said, the other, "only think of a quarter of one of them with asparagus and mint sauce!" The story is by some supposed to have had a Scottish origin, and a prosaic North Briton is made to say that the pretty little lambs, sporting amidst the daisies and b.u.t.tercups, would "_mak braw pies_."

A profound feeling for the beautiful is generally held to be an essential quality in the poet. It is a curious fact, however, that there are some who aspire to the rank of poet, and have their claims allowed, who yet cannot be said to be poetical in their nature--for how can that nature be, strictly speaking, _poetical_ which denies the sentiment of Keats, that

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever?

Both Scott and Byron very earnestly admired Dr. Johnson's "_London_" and "_The Vanity of Human Wishes_." Yet the sentiments just quoted from the author of those productions are far more characteristic of a utilitarian philosopher than of one who has been endowed by nature with

The vision and the faculty divine,

and made capable, like some mysterious enchanter, of

Clothing the palpable and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn.

Crabbe, also a prime favorite with the authors of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and _Childe Harold_, is recorded by his biographer--his own son--to have exhibited "a remarkable indifference to all the proper objects of taste;" to have had "no real love for painting, or music, or architecture or for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of landscape." "In botany, gra.s.ses, the most _useful_ but the least ornamental, were his favorites." "He never seemed to be captivated with the mere beauty of natural objects or even to catch any taste for the arrangement of his specimens. Within, the house was a kind of scientific confusion; in the garden the usual showy foreigners gave place to the most scarce flowers, especially to the rarer weeds, of Britain; and were scattered here and there only for preservation. In fact he neither loved order for its own sake nor had any very high opinion of that pa.s.sion in others."[024] Lord Byron described Crabbe to be

Though nature's sternest painter, yet _the best_.

What! was he a better painter of nature than Shakespeare? The truth is that Byron was a wretched critic, though a powerful poet. His praises and his censures were alike unmeasured.

His generous ardor no cold medium knew.

He seemed to recognize no great general principles of criticism, but to found all his judgments on mere prejudice and pa.s.sion. He thought Cowper "no poet," p.r.o.nounced Spenser "a dull fellow," and placed Pope above Shakespeare. Byron's line on Crabbe is inscribed on the poet's tombstone at Trowbridge. Perhaps some foreign visitor on reading the inscription may be surprized at his own ignorance when he learns that it is not the author of _Macbeth_ and _Oth.e.l.lo_ that he is to regard as the best painter of nature that England has produced, but the author of the _Parish Register_ and the _Tales of the Hall_. Absurd and indiscriminate laudations of this kind confound all intellectual distinctions and make criticism ridiculous. Crabbe is unquestionably a vigorous and truthful writer, but he is not the _best_ we have, in any sense of the word.

Though Dr. Johnson speaks so contemptuously of Shenstone's rural pursuits, he could not help acknowledging that when the poet began "to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks and to wind his waters," he did all this with such judgment and fancy as "made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers."

Mason, in his _English Garden_, a poem once greatly admired, but now rarely read, and never perhaps with much delight, does justice to the taste of the Poet of the Leasowes.

Nor, Shenstone, thou Shalt pa.s.s without thy meed, thou son of peace!

Who knew'st, perchance, to harmonize thy shades Still softer than thy song; yet was that song Nor rude nor inharmonious when attuned To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love.

English pleasure-gardens have been much imitated by the French. Viscomte Girardin, at his estate of Ermenonville, dedicated an inscription in amusing French-English to the proprietor of the Leasowes--

THIS PLAIN STONE TO WILLIAM SHENSTONE; IN HIS WRITINGS HE DISPLAYED A MIND NATURAL; AT LEASOWES HE LAID ARCADIAN GREENS RURAL.

The Viscomte, though his English composition was so quaint and imperfect, was an elegant writer in his own language, and showed great taste and skill in laying out his grounds. He had visited England, and carefully studied our modern style of gardening. He had personally consulted Shenstone, Mason, Whateley and other English authors on subjects of rural taste. He published an eloquent description of his own estate. His famous friend Rousseau wrote the preface to it. The book was translated into English. Rousseau spent his last days at Ermenonville and was buried there in what is called _The Isle of Poplars_. The garden is now in a neglected state, but the tomb of Rousseau remains uninjured, and is frequently visited by the admirers of his genius.

"Dr. Warton," says Bowles, "mentions Milton and Pope as the poets to whom English Landscape is indebted, but _he forgot poor Shenstone_." A later writer, however, whose sympathy for genius communicates such a charm to all his anecdotes and comments in ill.u.s.tration of the literary character, has devoted a chapter of his _Curiosities of Literature_ to a notice of the rural tastes of the proprietor of the Leasowes. I must give a brief extract from it.

"When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself const.i.tutes a claim on the grat.i.tude of posterity. Thus the private pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford; even the supercilious Gray only bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire whether they demand any great powers of mind.' Johnson, however, conveys to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the character of 'a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the enchanting eulogium of Whateley on the Leasowes; which, said he, 'is a perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant and amiable; and will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether in the scenes which he formed, he only realised the pastoral images which abound in his songs.' Yes! Shenstone had been delighted could he have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his 'Chateau Gothique, mais orne de bois charmans, don't j'ai pris l'idee en Angleterre;' and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had been proud to have witnessed a n.o.ble foreigner, amidst memorials dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to Shenstone himself; for having displayed in his writings 'a mind natural,' and in his Leasowes 'laid Arcadian greens rural;' and recently Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!"

"The Leasowes," says William Howitt, "now belongs to the Atwood family; and a Miss Atwood resides there occasionally. But the whole place bears the impress of desertion and neglect. The house has a dull look; the same heavy spirit broods over the lawns and glades: And it is only when you survey it from a distance, as when approaching Hales-Owen from Hagley, that the whole presents an aspect of unusual beauty."

Shenstone was at least as proud of his estate of the Leasowes as was Pope of his Twickenham Villa--perhaps more so. By mere men of the world, this pride in a garden may be regarded as a weakness, but if it be a weakness it is at least an innocent and inoffensive one, and it has been a.s.sociated with the n.o.blest intellectual endowments. Pitt and Fox and Burke and Warren Hastings were not weak men, and yet were they all extremely proud of their gardens. Every one, indeed, who takes an active interest in the culture and embellishment of his garden, finds his pride in it and his love for it increase daily. He is delighted to see it flourish and improve beneath his care. Even the humble mechanic, in his fondness for a garden, often indicates a feeling for the beautiful, and a genial nature. If a rich man were openly to boast of his plate or his equipages, or a literary man of his essays or his sonnets, as lovers of flowers boast of their geraniums or dahlias or rhododendrons, they would disgust the most indulgent hearer. But no one is shocked at the exultation of a gardener, amateur or professional, when in the fulness of his heart he descants upon the unrivalled beauty of his favorite flowers:

'Plants of his hand, and children of his care.'

"I have made myself two gardens," says Petrarch, "and I do not imagine that they are to be equalled in all the world. I should feel myself inclined to be angry with fortune if there were any so beautiful out of Italy." "I wish," says poor Kirke White writing to a friend, "I wish you to have a taste of these (rural) pleasures with me, and if ever I should live to be blessed with a quiet parsonage, and _another great object of my ambition--a garden_, I have no doubt but we shall be for some short intervals at least two quite contented bodies." The poet Young, in the latter part of his life, after years of vain hopes and worldly struggles, gave himself up almost entirely to the sweet seclusion of a garden; and that peace and repose which cannot be found in courts and political cabinets, he found at last

In sunny garden bowers Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken, And buds and bells with changes mark the hours.

He discovered that it was more profitable to solicit nature than to flatter the great.

For Nature never did betray The heart that loved her.

People of a poetical temperament--all true lovers of nature--can afford, far better than more essentially worldly beings, to exclaim with Thomson.

I care not Fortune what you me deny, You cannot bar me of free Nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky Through which Aurora shows her brightening face: You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns and living streams at eve: Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the _great children_ leave:-- Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.

The pride in a garden laid out under one's own directions and partly cultivated by one's own hand has been alluded to as in some degree unworthy of the dignity of manhood, not only by mere men of the world, or silly c.o.xcombs, but by people who should have known better. Even Sir William Temple, though so enthusiastic about his fruit-trees, tells us that he will not enter upon any account of _flowers_, having only pleased himself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled himself with the care of them, which he observes "_is more the ladies part than the men's_." Sir William makes some amends for this almost contemptuous allusion to flowers in particular by his ardent appreciation of the use of gardens and gardening in general. He thus speaks of their attractions and advantages: "The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking, but above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease of the body and mind." Again: "As gardening has been the inclination of kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has been the common favorite of public and private men, a pleasure of the greatest and the care of the meanest; and indeed _an employment and a possession for which no man is too high or too low_." This is just and liberal; though I can hardly help still feeling a little sore at Sir William's having implied in the pa.s.sage previously quoted, that the care of flowers is but a feminine occupation. As an elegant amus.e.m.e.nt, it is surely equally well fitted for all lovers of the beautiful, without reference to their s.e.x.

It is not women and children only who delight in flower-gardens. Lord Bacon and William Pitt and the Earl of Chatham and Fox and Burke and Warren Hastings--all lovers of flowers--were a.s.suredly not men of frivolous minds or of feminine habits. They were always eager to exhibit to visitors the beauty of their parterres. In his declining years the stately John Kemble left the stage for his garden. That st.u.r.dy English yeoman, William Cobbett, was almost as proud of his beds of flowers as of the pages of his _Political Register_. He thus speaks of gardening:

"Gardening is a source of much greater profit than is generally imagined; but, merely as an amus.e.m.e.nt or recreation it is a thing of very great value. It is not only compatible with but favorable to the study of any art or science; it is conducive to health by means of the irresistible temptation which it offers to early rising; to the stirring abroad upon one's legs, for a man may really ride till he cannot walk, sit till he cannot stand, and lie abed till he cannot get up. It tends to turn the minds of youth from amus.e.m.e.nts and attachments of a frivolous and vicious nature, it is a taste which is indulged at home; it tends to make home pleasant, and to endear to us the spot on which it is our lot to live,--and as to the _expenses_ attending it, what are all these expenses compared with those of the short, the unsatisfactory, the injurious enjoyment of the card-table, and the rest of those amus.e.m.e.nts which are sought from the town." _Cobbett's English Gardener_.

"Other fine arts," observes Lord Kames, "may be perverted to excite irregular and even vicious emotions: but gardening, which inspires the purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to promote every good affection. The gaiety and harmony of mind it produceth, inclining the spectator to communicate his satisfaction to others, and to make them happy as he is himself, tend naturally to establish in him a habit of humanity and benevolence."

Every thoughtful mind knows how much the face of nature has to do with human happiness. In the open air and in the midst of summer-flowers, we often feel the truth of the observation that "a fair day is a kind of sensual pleasure, and of all others the most innocent." But it is also something more, and better. It kindles a spiritual delight. At such a time and in such a scene every observer capable of a religious emotion is ready to exclaim--

Oh! there is joy and happiness in every thing I see, Which bids my soul rise up and bless the G.o.d that blesses me

_Anon._

The amiable and pious Doctor Carey of Serampore, in whose grounds sprang up that dear little English daisy so beautifully addressed by his poetical proxy, James Montgomery of Sheffield, in the stanzas commencing:--

Thrice welcome, little English flower!

My mother country's white and red--

was so much attached to his Indian garden, that it was always in his heart in the intervals of more important cares. It is said that he remembered it even upon his death-bed, and that it was amongst his last injunctions to his friends that they should see to its being kept up with care. He was particularly anxious that the hedges or railings should always be in such good order as to protect his favorite shrubs and flowers from the intrusion of Bengalee cattle.

A garden is a more interesting possession than a gallery of pictures or a cabinet of curiosities. Its glories are never stationary or stale. It has infinite variety. It is not the same to-day as it was yesterday. It is always changing the character of its charms and always increasing them in number. It delights all the senses. Its pleasures are not of an unsocial character; for every visitor, high or low, learned or illiterate, may be fascinated with the fragrance and beauty of a garden.

But sh.e.l.ls and minerals and other curiosities are for the man of science and the connoisseur. And a single inspection of them is generally sufficient: they never change their aspect. The Picture-Gallery may charm an instructed eye but the mult.i.tude have little relish for human Art, because they rarely understand it:--while the skill of the Great Limner of Nature is visible in every flower of the garden even to the humblest swain.

It is pleasant to read how the wits and beauties of the time of Queen Anne used to meet together in delightful garden-retreats, 'like the companies in Boccaccio's Decameron or in one of Watteau's pictures.'

Ritchings Lodge, for instance, the seat of Lord Bathurst, was visited by most of the celebrities of England, and frequently exhibited bright groups of the polite and accomplished of both s.e.xes; of men distinguished for their heroism or their genius, and of women eminent for their easy and elegant conversation, or for gaiety and grace of manner, or perfect loveliness of face and form--all in harmonious union with the charms of nature. The gardens at Ritchings were enriched with Inscriptions from the pens of Congreve and Pope and Gay and Addison and Prior. When the estate pa.s.sed into the possession of the Earl of Hertford, his literary lady devoted it to the Muses. "She invited every summer," says Dr. Johnson, "some poet into the country to hear her verses and a.s.sist her studies." Thomson, who praises her so lavishly in his "Spring," offended her ladys.h.i.+p by allowing her too clearly to perceive that he was resolved not to place himself in the dilemma of which Pope speaks so feelingly with reference to other poetasters.

Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I, Who can't be silent, and who will not lie.

I sit with sad civility, I read With honest anguish and an aching head.

But though "the bard more fat than bard beseems" was restive under her ladys.h.i.+p's "poetical operations," and too plainly exhibited a desire to escape the infliction, preferring the Earl's claret to the lady's rhymes, she should have been a little more generously forgiving towards one who had already made her immortal. It is stated, that she never repeated her invitation to the Poet of the Seasons, who though so impatient of the sound of her tongue when it "rolled" her own "raptures," seems to have been charmed with her _at a distance_--while meditating upon her excellencies in the seclusion of his own study. The compliment to the Countess is rather awkwardly wedged in between descriptions of "gentle Spring" with her "shadowing roses" and "surly Winter" with his "ruffian blasts." It should have commenced the poem.

O Hertford, fitted or to s.h.i.+ne in courts With unaffected grace, or walk the plain, With innocence and meditation joined In soft a.s.semblage, listen to my song, Which thy own season paints; when nature all Is blooming and benevolent like thee.