WILLIAM MYCAJAH CLARKE

LIBRARY OF

ARCHITECTURE AND

ALLIED ARTS

Gift of

WILLIAM M. CIAEKE

A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

A BOOK OF ENGLISH
GARDENS

WRITTEN . . .
BY M. R. GLOAG
ILLUSTRATED
BY KATHARINE
MONTAGU WYATT

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1906

Architecture &
Urban Planning
Library

DEDICATED

TO
MARY, COUNTESS OF ILCHESTER

BY
KATHARINE MONTAGU WVATT

IN MEMORY OF

MANY HAPPY HOURS

SPENT IN HER

GARDEN

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. ON GARDENS ...... I

II. ABBOTSBURY, DORSETSHIRE . -45

III. ALBURY, SURREY ...... 57

IV. AMPTHILL PARK, BEDFORDSHIRE. . . .69

V. ASHRIDGE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE . . . -85

VI. BECKETT, BERKSHIRE . . . . .II?

VII. BROWNSEA ISLAND, DORSETSHIRE . . -135

VIII. COTTAGE GARDENS. . . . '•,„;,;; . 155

IX. HAM HOUSE, SURREY . . . -175

X. HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE . . -195

XI. HOLLAND HOUSE, KENSINGTON .... 2IQ

XII. HUTTON JOHN, CUMBERLAND . . . .24!

XIII. KNOLE, KENT . . . . . . 257

XIV. A MODERN GARDEN, SURREY » . ( . 285

XV. SUTTON PLACE, SURREY ... -295

XVI. WREST PARK, BEDFORDSHIRE . . . 319

INDEX . . 336

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

THE DUTCH GARDEN, HOLLAND HOUSE . . Frontispiece

FALCONERI RHODODENDRONS, ABBOTSBURY . . 48

THE TERRACE, ALBURY . . . . . .64

THE EAST GARDEN, AMPTHILL . . . . -72

THE MONKS GARDEN, ASHRIDGE . . . 90

THE GARDEN HOUSE, BECKETT . . . . . I2O

THE WALL FOUNTAIN, BROWNSEA . . . .140

THE TERRACE, BROWNSEA . . . . .142

A COTTAGE GARDEN, ISLE OF WIGHT . . . . 1 68

THE ORANGERY, HAM HOUSE . . . . . 1 86

FATHER THAMES, HAM HOUSE . . . . . 1 88

THE TERRACE BORDER, HAM HOUSE . , . .190

THE PLEACHED ALLEY, HATFIELD . . . • 2O2

THE VINEYARD, HATFIELD . • « . .214

THE JAPANESE GARDEN, HOLLAND HOUSE . . .234

THE YEWS, HUTTON JOHN ..... 2$O

THE LAVENDER GARDEN, KNOLE .... 276

xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

RHODODENDRONS, KNOLE . ..... 282

THE TERRACE. A MODERN GARDEN . . . .288

HERBACEOUS BORDERS. A MODERN GARDEN . . . 2Q2

THE WALL ARBOUR, SUTTON PLACE .... 300

TREE-PEONY, WREST . . . "". . . " . . ; _._,. ; . 325

THE BOWLING GREEN HOUSE, WREST . . . -332

LILY POOL, WREST. . . -334

ON GARDENS

Written

With a love of all flowers,
A devotion to all Garden beauties.
An admiration for all the Makers of Beautiful Gardens.
And an everlasting gratitude to those who have left the

charm of their Presence for ever in the Gardens of the

Past and the Present.

A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

ON GARDENS

ARDENS and houses of Pleasure," for such
Gardens have been to all sorts and conditions
of men, each in his own way falling under their
spell. Philosophers have discoursed of wisdom and
happiness in Gardens — "As for myself," says
Epicurus (called the philosopher of the Garden),
" truly I am not only well content, but highly
pleased with the Plants and Fruits growing in
these my own little Gardens."

Statesmen, after gaining a country's gratitude,
have retired for a well-earned rest to their Gardens,
and artists ever delight in their gorgeous blossoms
and restful quiet, as well as poets, who have
loved, from Omar onward, to sing of " Rose
spring-laden Gardens " ; while fashionable wits,
like Horace Walpole, and learned divines, have

4 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

more than enough to tell of the making of
Gardens.

Thus it goes on from the day " God planted a
garden eastward of Eden ; and there He put the
man whom He had formed " ; and ever since the
cultivation of a Garden has been the simplest and
most pleasing of man's pleasures — "for Gardens
were before Gardeners, and but some hours after
the earth."

Egypt can claim the earliest historical Garden.
" Gardens are frequently represented in the tombs
of Thebes and other parts of Egypt," and much
that was claimed as a novelty at a later date was
already to be found in these pictures.

Imagination easily pictures the grandeur of the
hanging Gardens of Babylon, built by "a prince
called Cyrus for a beautiful courtesan, who, being
a Persian, coveted a meadow upon a mountain-
top," in imitation of her own land. These Gardens
were constructed in a curious manner — terraces,
thickly covered with earth, and forming terraced
groves with fountains and masses of trees to give
shade.

King Solomon, who in his wisdom overlooked
nothing great or small in this world, did not forget
to praise the glories of a Garden, nor to record his
love thereof. Perhaps no one among the great
number who have written about " Gardens fair "
has sung more exquisitely than the great king in

ON GARDENS 5

his beautiful love-poem. The finger of the un-
changing East has been laid upon the Gardens of
Persia, and they remain now very much the same
as they have always been. The Persians, accord-
ing to Xenophon, "cultivated their Gardens for
beauty as well as fruit," and Pliny mentions that
"the trees were planted in straight lines, and the
margins of the walks were covered with tufts of
Roses, Violets, and other odoriferous plants."

The Greeks copied from the Persians their
manner of making Gardens. Theophrastus men-
tions that " flowers and fruit were cultivated in the
winter, and the Violet was in profusion in the
market at Athens while snow was upon the
ground."

There were many celebrated Roman Gardens —
that of Tarquinius Superbus is mentioned in history
as early as 534 B.C. Unfortunately, little is known
about it save that it was beside the palace " within
the walls of the city, and was filled with a profusion
of Roses, Poppies, Lilies, and sweet-smelling
Herbs." Amongst the many other beautiful Roman
Gardens were the magnificent ones of Lucullus on
the promontory of Misenum, those of Sallust, and
the famous villa of Cicero at Arpinum. But the
Gardens of Pliny are of most interest, because they
can be clearly pictured to-day from his marvellously
minute descriptions. From these descriptions it
can be gathered that the style of Pliny's villa

6 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

gave the keynote to design in Gardening till the
end of the seventeenth century. The Mounts, the
Terraces, the Walks edged with Box, the Shrubs
cut into different shapes, the Fountains, and the
little flower Gardens with the Alleys and Summer-
houses, bear a very close resemblance to the French
and Dutch Gardens of later date.

As Horace Walpole remarks, "All the in-
gredients of Pliny's corresponded exactly with those
laid out by London and Wise on Dutch principles.
He talks of slopes, terraces, a wilderness, shrubs
methodically trimmed, a marble basin . . . Bay
Trees alternately planted with Planes . . . and
hedges of Box ; there wants nothing but the
embroidery of a parterre, to make a Garden in the
reign of Trajan serve for a description of one
in that of King William."

Strangely enough, not only was the formal style
in Gardening heralded in these early times, but the
Gardens of the Emperor Nero bore a great likeness
to the style of an English Park, and many people
consider that the modern Irregular School of
Gardening is as old as that of the Regular
Symmetrical style.

Clearly from the Romans came many interesting
Garden features. They made a special study of
odoriferous trees, planting those which would blend
best together to form the choicest aroma, thus
remembering that beauty of colour and charm of

ON GARDENS 7

effect were not all that was to be desired in a
Garden.

The Quincunx mode of planting trees was also
known and adapted by the Romans, and is dwelt
upon much later by Sir Thomas Browne "as the
Quincuncial Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of
the Ancients " in his book " The Gardens of
Cyrus," so delightfully alluded to by Pater in his
" Appreciations."

It was one Matius, Martial says, who first intro-
duced the clipping of trees into various shapes,
thus becoming the creator of Topiary work, the
merits of which became such a vexed question
in after-years and gave rise to endless vehement
discussions on Art versus Nature. The cinders
of this controversy are still smouldering, and
need but a spark at any moment to burst into
flame. This Topiary work brought another
art into the Garden — the fashion for Statues and
Fountains — the dark, clipped trees offering a
perfect background for the dull white Statuary,
and the Fountains, with their ripple of running
water, added to the effect.

Flowers in the Gardens of the Romans were
never a necessity of the arrangement. Very un-
like a modern English Garden where the Garden
is nothing without the flowers ; in fact, the flowers
create the Garden !

Under the Roman kings flowers were very

8 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

rare, but they became a luxury under Augustus,
and though never grown in profusion, were
cultivated for use at feasts and for garlands.
Heliogabalus carried this fashion to the length
of having his apartments strewn ankle-deep with
flowers.

England owes, like many greater gifts, her first
Gardens to these wonderful Romans — so practical,
yet such artists in the treatment of all they touched ;
possessing great knowledge, which included even
little tricks in Gardening often claimed as quite
modern.

Before the Roman Conquest, Gardens were
unknown in England. " The people of Britain,"
writes Strabo, "are generally ignorant of the art
of cultivating Gardens." The English climate
was praised by Tacitus, who declared it to be
suitable for all vegetables except the Vine and the
Olive. But the Emperor Probus urged the plant-
ing of the former, and the fact of the Vine being
grown is mentioned by Bede in the beginning of
the eighth century. The fall of the Roman Empire
caused the loss of all the knowledge gained in the
art of Gardening, in England as well as elsewhere
in Europe ; and horticulture and all pertaining to
it fell into the monks' hands, for such a quiet,
peaceful pleasure had no place in the lives of
the people during those troublous times. Fortu-
nately, the monks, in their retired and sheltered

ON GARDENS 9

life, had both time and inclination to turn their
attention to horticulture, tending with infinite
skill and care their quaint Physic Gardens. These
marvellous monastic Gardens were possessed by
men of learning, who had intercourse with foreign
Orders, and were thus enabled constantly to add
to their stock of " Simples," their Gardens being
chiefly cultivated for the growth of vegetables
and herbs used for drugs ; for, as learning and
love of books gradually crept within the grasp
of rich and poor through the monks, so did the
power and value of herbs as medicine become
known by their skill.

The earliest actual record in England of
monastic Gardens is in the eleventh century,
though they must have existed at a much earlier
date.

The Saxon people did not take to Gardening as
quickly as their French neighbours, and without
doubt William the Conqueror gave a great
impetus to horticulture, and many French fruits
and herbs were introduced into England by him
and his countrymen.

The first Englishman who wrote upon Gardens
was the fascinating Alexander Neckam, born 1157,
foster brother of Richard Cceur de Lion. Educated
at St. Albans, he went when very young to Paris,
where he became a celebrated professor at the
university. In 1213, he was made Abbot of the

10 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Augustinians at Cirencester, dying four years later.
Neckam's precious document, " De Naturis rerum "
(" Of the Natures of Things "), gives a most
interesting description of "a noble Garden," though
by the best authorities his account is considered
rhetorical. " The Garden," he declares, " should be
adorned with Roses and Lilies, Violets and Man-
drake, and the drowsy Poppy, the Daffodil all en-
noble a garden." Of fruits, Neckam says: "A
noble garden will give thee also Medlars, Quinces,
Warden - trees, Peaches, Pears, Pomegranates,
Lemons, Oranges, and Almonds." As can be seen
from this list, Neckam was apt to draw upon his
imagination, as many of these fruits could never
have braved the climate of England, though
possibly he may have seen them brought to the
monastic Garden at Cirencester by some foreign
friend or monk.

Henry I. ordered the first English Park to be made
at Woodstock, and there the celebrated " Bower "
of Fair Rosamund was hidden by Henry II. A
legend of fantastic charm has been woven round
this hiding-place of the " Rose of the Cliffords."
The Bower was placed in the centre of a ^Labyrinth
and entirely concealed from view, being only to be
found by one knowing the secret. These Labyrinths
were not uncommon, and existed at a very early
date, developing into the Maze of later times, so
charmingly described by Thomas Hill (1563), who

ON GARDENS 11

considered " a Maze as proper adournementes upon
pleasure to a Garden."

It is interesting to find that besides "the Royal
Gardens at Westminster, Charing, and the Tower,"
FitzStephen mentions, in his " Life of St. Thomas
a Becket," that attached to the houses in London
were Gardens containing large trees "both spacious
and pleasing to the sight," showing that a love
of green leaves in Spring is not a modern fancy of
Londoners.

Curious reading is the description of a Garden
in " Melbourne" in 1295, belonging to the Earl
of Lincoln, the records of which are to be found
in "the Record Office of the Duchy of Lancaster."
From these it appears that the property was so
large and well worked as to allow the owner to
sell Fruit, Vegetables, and Roses (the only flower
mentioned) in large quantities. From this time
onward the taste for Gardens and Gardening be-
came more and more general, and was helped in
no small measure by finding a place in current
literature.

Although to-day nothing of the quaint me-
diaeval Garden remains untouched, illuminated
MSS. and poems fortunately exist These two
beautiful mirrors of the past show very clearly what
the Gardens of old time must have been like. In
" Piers Plowman " many little Garden details are
given, while Lydgate writes of a Garden where

12 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

"all the Alleys were made playne with sand."
Then Chaucer seems to foreshadow Spenser's
joy and delight in English flowers and Gardens.
Of all the many poems written about Gardens,
fruits and flowers, John Gardener's (144°) was
perhaps the earliest original work. Little is known
of him, and his poem (in reality a treatise in verse)
is of so practical a nature that it is thought that
he himself was a Gardener. He gives excellent
descriptions of the grafting of trees and the setting
and sowing of seed, and the flowers and herbs
he mentions are of great interest as showing
what were commonly grown in England in his
day.

In an illuminated copy of the " Romance of the
Rose " in the British Museum a fascinating picture
is found of a Garden of the fifteenth century. A
wonderful Garden it represents, filled with quaint
beauties and devices ; it is surrounded with battle-
mented walls, and divided into two Gardens by a
lattice screen. One is "a Privy Garden," leading
into a Pleasance ; the latter is carpeted with grass,
patterned with daisies. A copper fountain, en-
circled by a marble curb, stands in the midst of
the grass, with Orange-trees in the background.
The second Garden is cut into grass plots edged
with Box, and in the distance, separated again by
a fence, are flower-beds. This type of Garden is
most aptly described by King James I. of Scot-

ON GARDENS 13

land. During his imprisonment at Windsor he
wrote the charming poem, the " King's Quhair,"
which is supposed to be a description of the Garden
beneath his window : —

" Now was there made, fast by the Towns wall,
A Garden fair; — and in the corners set
An Arbour green, with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with trees set,
Was all the place and Hawthorne hedges knet,
That lyf was none walking there forbye
That might within scarce any wight espy.

So thick the boughes and the leaves green

Beshaded all the Alleys that there were,

And raids of every Arbour might be seen

The sharpe greene sweet Juniper

Growing so fair with branches here and there,

That as it seemed to a lyf without,

The boughes spread the arbour all about."

It may be here noted that the mediaeval Gardens
were generally square ; possessed a fountain ; were
fully planted with hedges and alleys ; the little
paths sanded. Few Gardens, moreover, were
without a " Privy playing place." Lastly, all
Gardens were enclosed, either with thick-set
hedges or stone walls — made use of in the first
place as a safeguard, and later retained for their
beauty and the privacy they secured.

The "wandis" mentioned in King James's poem

14 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

were the wooden railings with which the beds were
divided, and can be seen in some of Holbein's
pictures, painted green and white.

In the Tudor period Gardens acquired many
new features — among them, " Mounts," "Arbours,"
" Galleries " and " Knottes," often in geometrical
patterns. For instance, in the Garden belonging to
the Earl of Northumberland in 1512, it is stated
"his household consisted of 160 people," and he
had only one Gardener, who "hourely attended in
the Garden for the setting of erbis, and clipping
of knottes and sweeping said Garden clean." The
chief and most popular innovation at this time
was opus toparium (topiary work) — and it soon be-
came general everywhere. Leland writes in his
" Itinerary " (in the beginning of the sixteenth
century) of the Gardens at Wresehill Castle, men-
tioning both topiary work and mounts. He says :
"The orchardes are exceeding faire. And in the
orchardes were mounts opere topiario writhen
about with degrees, like cokilshells to come to
the top without payne." Henry VIII.'s. reign —
an interesting period from many points of view
— is certainly very full of information for the
Garden lover, as during that time many celebrated
Gardens were created and mention was made of
them in the literature of the day.

A book could be written upon the glories of the
Gardens at Hampton Court. Cavendish gives a

ON GARDENS 15

good idea of all their beauties in his metrical
"Life of Wolsey"—

" My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong,
Embanked with benches to sytt and take my rest —
The knots, so enknotted, it cannot be exprest,
With Arbours and alyes so pleasant and so dulce."

The Gardens possessed besides "Mounts" at the
corners, Fishponds, Dials, Columns, Topiary work,
and " galleries fayre both large and small to walk in
them when it liked me best." These "galleries"
were made of wooden trellis-work, covered with
Vines, Roses, or Honeysuckle.

When Henry VIII. took Hampton Court from
his disgraced minister, Cardinal Wolsey, he intro-
duced into the Garden Statues and other foreign
novelties, traceable to Italian influence. About
this time Cardinal D'Este revived the taste for
statuary in Gardens and the custom of having
elaborate waterworks and fountains playing. Mon-
taigne mentions these fountains very fully in his
journal ; also from the " quaintly delightful pen
of John Evelyn " there are ample descriptions.
These novelties were quickly imitated by Francis I.,
that lover of art, and later Henry, eager to have
every treasure his rival possessed, copied the pre-
vailing taste.

At Nonsuch there were strange fountains " that

16 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

spout water, one round the other like a pyramid
upon which are perched small birds that stream
water out of their bills . . . and another pyramid
of marble full of concealed pipes, which spirt
upon all who come within their reach." So writes
Paulus Hentzner, a German who visited England
and describes the quaint conceits of the Garden of
Nonsuch.

Henry began Nonsuch about 1538, and its house
and Gardens rivalled many a larger palace. It was
a favourite residence with Queen Elizabeth and
Henrietta Maria. In the Parliamentary Survey
mention is made of the many beauties of Nonsuch,
"the walled Gardens, Alleys, thick Thorn Hedges,
Wilderness, Privy Garden."

Charles II. gave this beautiful Garden filled with
quaint devices to the Duchess of Cleveland, who
pulled down the house and sold the contents ! It
is strange to think that later in the eighteenth
century Nonsuch, once an extreme example of
the Formal Style, should have become the pro-
perty of the brother of George Whateley, one of
the chief writers upon the subject of modern
English Gardening. He altered the Garden and
Park to suit his own views, and Nonsuch ended
by being an extreme example of a diametrically
opposite school.

The Reformation and the dissolution of the
monasteries made havoc with the beautiful old

ON GARDENS 17

monastic Gardens, which became private pro-
perty, and only in a few cases is there any of
the original Garden left.

Thomas Tusser's ardent book on " Husbandrie "
did good service on behalf of the practical side of
Gardening. His chief work was published in 1557
a year before the accession of Elizabeth, the Queen
in whose reign every art and science flourished,
and none more so than the art of Gardening ;
an extraordinary impetus being given to the art
by the many men of genius of the time, who not
only took an absorbing interest in the culture of
flowers, but wrote upon the subject. Elizabethan
literature is rich in the names of these men, who
vied with one another in praising the joys of a
Garden. Bacon's essay "On Gardens" is known
and quoted all over the world, suiting every taste
and every school. Sir Philip Sidney mentions a
Garden "neither field, Garden, nor orchard"; and
Sir Henry Wotton says that " Gardens should be
irregular." All three are claimed as prophets of
the later Landscape School.

Spenser's descriptions of Gardens and flowers
leave a deep impression upon the reader of his
wish to impart his love of their beauties to
others, and there is no doubt that the praise
of Gardens so passing into literature had an
immense influence upon the culture and discovery
of plants.

18 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The following fascinating lines of Spenser sum
up the favourite flowers of those wonderful Eliza-
bethan days : —

1 Bring hither the Pinke and purple Cullambine

With Gelliflowers,
Bring Coronations, and Sops-in-wine,

Worne of paramoures.

Strowe me the ground with Daffadoundillies
And Cowslips and Kingcups and loved Lillies,

The pretty Pawnee

And the Chevisaunce
Shall match with the fayre flowre Delice."

Shakespeare is perhaps the King par excellence
of all flower-worshippers, his plays and poems
being full of charming fancies about English
flowers. He also notes in many places the features
of the Formal Garden by alluding to : —

'The quaint mazes in the wanton green";

' Through forthrights and meanders " ;

' A Garden circummured with brick " ;

' A planched gate " ;

'Thick pleached alley";

'Pleached alley where Honeysuckle ripen'd by the

sun " ;
"Curiously knotted Garden."

No notes upon Gardens would be complete with-
out the mention of the Herbal literature, which was

ON GARDENS 19

the outcome of Botanical or Herb Gardens. The
first Garden of Simples was founded at Padua in
J545> to be followed very shortly by others in
various places, but it was nearly a century later
before England followed suit. The first English
Herbal was that of William Turner, written about
fifty years before the celebrated one of Gerarde.
Gerarde was well known through having super-
intended for twenty years Lord Burleigh's Gardens,
and also on account of his wonderful Physic Garden
in Holborn.

One of the best remembered of these quaint old
writers is Parkinson, the author of " Paradisi-in-
Sole, Paradisus Terrestris, or a Garden of all sorts
of pleasant Flowers "; but they one and all did an
inestimable amount for Gardening by their travels
and research.

The Gardens in the time of Elizabeth were the
outcome of French and Italian influence, combined
with the formal ideas of design. This proved the
best style for an English Garden, and it was a pity
when fashion carried many of the foreign features to
extremes, and especially when the Dutch influence
became too marked. It may be safely said that
what is now meant by "an old English Garden " is
one very similar to those that existed during the
reign of Elizabeth. The architects of this date,
especially John Thorpe, had not a little to do with
the Gardens of the period. According to his plans,

20 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

he held, like the Romans, that the Garden was in
strict conjunction with the House, and needed as
much planning as the latter.

" Theobalds," created by Lord Burleigh, was the
most typical Garden of this time. Both Hentzner
and Mandelslo have left striking descriptions of its
beauties. The latter writes : " It is large and square,
having all its walls covered with Sillery and a
beautiful jet d'eau in the centre. The Parterre
hath many pleasant walks, many of which are
planted on the sides with espaliers, and others
arched over. Some of the trees are Limes and
Elms, and at the end is a small mount called the
Mount of Venus, which is placed in the midst of a
labyrinth, and is upon the whole one of the most
beautiful spots in the world."

It is this Garden and its style that Horace
Walpole calls "false," saying, "We are apt to
think that Sir William Temple and King William
were in a manner the introducers of Gardening
into England. By the descriptions of Lord
Burleigh's gardens at Theobalds and those at
Nonsuch we find that the magnificent though
false taste was known as early as the reigns of
Henry VIII. and his daughter. There is scarce
an unnatural and sumptuous impropriety at
Versailles, which we do not find in Hentzner's
descriptions of the Gardens above mentioned."
The method of Gardening in the time of James I.

ON GARDENS 21

was similar to that of Elizabethan days ; the same
men and their followers being still alive, and
forming a link with earlier times and by their
influence upholding the old ways, so frequently
discarded by the rising generation as being
primitive and unsatisfactory.

In 1618, William Lawson, "the Izaack Walton
of Gardens," published his " New Orchard and
Garden" — a book that contained practical knowledge
and an honest delight in flowers and birds. He
writes with genuine love of Nature, and flowers for
" the Flower Garden."

Each new work gave a stimulus to the increasing
love of Gardens. Early in King James's reign the
exchange between Sir Robert Cecil and his Royal
master took place, Theobalds for Hatfield.

The latter was soon planned out by its new
owner, and still retains much beauty of design and
character, especially the "Privy Garden" with its
" Pleached Alley " and the Vineyard long known
as "the rarity."

Much of the success of the Gardens at Hatfield
was owing to Lord Salisbury's Gardener, John
Tradescant, the second of the name — "that painful
industrious searcher and lover of all Nature's
varieties/' as Parkinson calls him. " His was the
age of florists, and the chief ornaments of the
Parterres were owing to his labours" in travelling
and discoveries. The Tradescants had a large

22 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

house in Lambeth, the Garden of which was filled
with an amazing number of trees, plants, and flowers
"particularly rich in those from South America."
In the churchyard of Old Lambeth Church there
is a tombstone erected to the Tradescants, from
the clever epitaph on which is learnt that the
three generations lie there; how they collected all
that was rare " in sea and land," and how they
were "both gardeners to the Rose and Lily
Queen," and that at the last day they will change
" this Garden for a Paradise."

Not many alterations were made in the style of
Gardens in the reigns of James I. and Charles I.,
but it was during this time that through the
influence of Inigo Jones the first Garden buildings
came to be erected, consisting of Tea Houses,
Banqueting Houses, and Fishing Lodges. That
extraordinarily versatile genius, John Evelyn, who
" first taught Gardening to speak proper English,"
first appears in Charles I.'s reign. What he did for
Gardens and Gardening can never be over-estimated,
as he wrote with not only great literary taste but
practical knowledge, and his name must ever stand
out in the history of English Gardens. His
delightful descriptions of Gardens at home and
abroad are treasuries of information to all interested
in the subject.

Evelyn's chief books were his translation of de La
Quintinye's " Compleat Gardener " and his " Sylva,"

ON GARDENS 23

a discourse upon Forest Trees, a subject very near
to Evelyn's heart. As Rene" Rapin sings in his
" Poem on a Garden " (translated by Evelyn) —

Long rows of trees and woods my Pen invites
With shady walks, and Garden's chief delight.
High shooting Linden next exact your care
With graceful shades to those who take the air.'

Evelyn had "a pleasant villa" himself at Dept-
ford — "a fine garden for walks and hedges
(especially a holly one), a pretty little green-
house with an indifferent stock in it. In his
Garden he had four large round philareas,
smooth-clipped, raised on a single stalk from the
ground in the fashion now much used. Part of
his garden, is very woody, and shady for walking ;
but his garden not being walled, has little of the
best fruits."

Among other Garden matters, Evelyn found time
to be interested in " The Medical Garden at West-
minster," and was a constant visitor there, making
notes in his Diary of the new plants he had seen
from time to time. The Westminster Physic
Garden was entirely superseded by the one made
at Chelsea by the Apothecaries Company in 1672.
Evelyn visited this Garden of Simples in 1685,
and notes that there is a collection of " innumerable
rarities."

24 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

A distinct change came over the style of Gardens
after the Restoration, and Charles II. returned to
his own country. Imbued with the beauty of the
French style, he determined to imitate it in Eng-
land. It was little wonder that the magnificence of
the brilliant Court of Louis XIV. dazzled Charles.
It was then at its height — the studied architecture
of Mansard and Perrault were " the complement of
the Monarchical and Formal Garden of Le Notre,"
the greatest name in the history of Gardens and
the one most detested by the later Natural or
Landscape School of Gardening. The life of
this great man, Andr6 Le Ndtre, reads like a
fairy-tale, telling as it does of his rising from
a humble position by his genius to a place of
trust and confidence. "His art" is summed up
by Gautier as "the supreme formula of a com-
plete art and the expression at its highest power
of a civilisation arrived at its full expression."

Le Ndtre's designs were all on a large scale — he
delighted in long Avenues (often radiating from one
centre-point), wide paths, Terraces adorned with
Statues, Fountains and Cascades, and Arbours with
high backgrounds of trellis work, and closely-cut
trees, as well as broad expanses of water. Yet all
this marvellous and complicated design was perfect
in proportion, and he without doubt carried the
Art of Garden Design to the highest point it has
ever reached. The " grand manner " and splendour

ON GARDENS 25

of Le N6tre influenced Garden design materially
in England, but chiefly the great Gardens, as Le
Notre's designs required space not forthcoming in
the grounds of many a small manor house. This
French influence can be especially traced in the
Gardens of Wrest Park, in Bedfordshire, where
extensive Avenues still partly remain.

Charles is said to have invited Le Notre to
England, but there is no proof that he ever came,
though it is known that French Gardeners laid
out the Gardens of Whitehall, St. James's, and
Hampton Court, where the semicircle of Limes
(enclosing nine and a half acres) was planted in
Charles's reign, and actually under the direction of
Le Notre.

The knot at this time had quite disappeared,
and the more complicated Parterre introduced from
France had taken its place. There are many kinds
of Parterres: (i) "Parterres de Broderie ; (2) Par-
terres of Compartiment ; (3) Parterres a 1'Anglaise ;
(4) Parterres of Cut- work," and as a whole they
can be technically described as " a level division of
ground which for the most part faces south, and is
best in front of a House, and is generally furnished
with Greens and flowers." The chief practical
English Gardener contemporary with the great
French master, was John Rose, who worked his
way up to be royal Gardener to Charles II. at
St. James's. Rose was sent to study the style of

26 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Le Notre at Versailles, and most of the French
design brought into England was introduced by
him or his favourite pupil, George London.
Another name that is connected at this time with
Gardens and Gardeners, is that of Sir William
Temple, the patient lover for seven years of
Dorothy Osborne and the happy possessor of her
charming love-letters — now acknowledged to be
"a precious piece of history."

Temple was a contemporary of Evelyn, who
mentions in his Diary his visits to Temple's Gardens
at Sheen. To these gardens Temple devoted him-
self till 1688, after a long life of diplomacy — and
then later to Moor Park, in Surrey, called by him
after the favourite Garden of his childhood's days,
and described by him " as the perfectest figure of a
Garden I ever saw at home or abroad." Temple
turned his attention to the fruit Garden, possess-
ing the pretty idea that the flower Garden " was
more the ladies' part than the man's," and it can
easily be imagined what a lovely Garden of
flowers the delightful Dorothy Osborne must
have created.

The Chinese mode of Gardening (which many
people think was the means of introducing the
irregular or natural style into England), was first
mentioned by Temple. He says that he is quite
aware that there may be other forms of Garden-
ing " wholly irregular that may have more beauty

ON GARDENS 27

than any of the others, but they must owe it to
some extraordinary dispositions of nature. . . .
Something of this I have seen in some places,
but heard more of it from others who have lived
among the Chinese."

A little over fifty years later the Chinese
mode of planting was copied, both in England
and abroad.

William and Mary, when they came to England,
were naturally in favour of Dutch ideas, and they
brought the Dutch style in Gardening into promi-
nence. They found small difficulty in introducing
alterations in Garden designs, Gardening having
become a fashionable hobby and every one vying
with one another in having the very last new
fashion carried out

The Dutch style was not unlike the French, but
everything was on a smaller scale. Such trivial
things as glass balls, coloured sand, and painted
perspectives were introduced to give a stiff effect,
the two great characteristics being symmetry and
masses of ornament.

One of the best examples of this style was the
Garden at Loo ; but Hampton Court was perhaps .
the finest in England. George London laid out
the great semicircular Parterre during the reign
of William and Mary. Later Queen Anne com-
plained there was too much Box as she disliked
the smell of it, and London lived to see it rooted

28 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

up, though it was replaced again owing to other
royal commands.

Of all the destructive forces which make havoc
in a Garden man himself is surely the greatest,
far outdoing either weather or time, dire as the
ravages of both may be. An excellent bird's-eye
view of Hampton Court exists in Kip's " Britannia
Illustrata," showing the great semicircular Parterre.
At this time stone walls were replaced by magnifi-
cent wrought-iron gates and railings known as
" clair-voye"es." A handsome example is to be
seen at Hampton Court designed by Stephen
Switzer.

Then came the vogue for clipping Yews and
Evergreens, which shortly developed such exag-
gerated proportions that every Garden was filled
with trees of all sorts and sizes cut into weird
shapes to represent animals, thus turning what
had once been a beauty into ridicule, and so giving
the next generation ample grounds for its contempt
of the practice.

The Gardens of this date are admirably described
in Celia Fiennes' interesting book, "Through
England on a Side-saddle in the Time of William
and Mary." That she admires the new Dutch
style more than the old is not surprising, women
having ever been lovers of change and variety.

Switzer declared that during King William's
reign (1697-1702) Gardens and Gardening were

ON GARDENS 29

at their zenith. Certainly there can be no doubt
that from this time the decadence of the Formal
style set in. All that had been introduced, such as
Terraces, Walks, Shorn Shrubs, Oranges and Myrtle
trees in boxes and — the greatest offender of all —
the "vegetable sculpture" had become exaggerated
and the beautiful old style gradually died of
misuse. About this time a succession of famous
Gardeners lived in England — among them
George London, who was a pupil of Rose's, and
had travelled abroad, especially to gain knowledge
of French methods. Later he entered Bishop
Compton's service as his head Gardener. In
conjunction with others London founded the
Nursery Gardens at Brompton (1694) and took
Wise (of whom very little is known) into partner-
ship. The firm became famous and superintended
all the Gardens in the kingdom belonging to any
one of note. London, after James 1 1. 's flight, and
on the accession to the throne of William and Mary,
was made superintendent of the Royal Gardens
(with a salary of £200 a year) and also page of
the back stairs. According to gossip of the day,
he had the "charge of conveying the Princess
Anne to Nottingham from the fury of the Papists,
previous to the Revolution being complete." The
style of London and Wise was supposed "to com-
bine the best features in the French and Dutch
styles," and gained them the admiration of Addison,

30 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

who likened them to the "heroic poets." London
died in 1713, eleven years after the accession of
Queen Anne. Stephen Switzer, at one time his
pupil, became principal Gardener, and after him
Bridgman. Though it was just at this period that
the old formal Garden was first turned into ridicule,
it must not be forgotten that from the contemporary
descriptions of them it would be difficult to picture
anything more charming than some of the Gardens
in the reign of good Queen Anne. They were
regular green bowers of beauty, with long walks
between tall stately Yews, clipped into straight,
severe walls, but allowed to grow in a natural and
feathery manner at the top. Strange instance of
the contrariety of human nature, that during one of
the most artificial periods known in English history
— when manners, habits, and literature were all
furthest removed from simplicity — there should
have been a cry raised for Nature, and nothing
but Nature, in Gardens !

Addison began the attack in the Spectator,
saying, "In laying out a Garden we are to
copy Nature as much as possible. Our British
Gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring
Nature, love to deviate from it as much as
possible."

Pope, the most artificial and the wittiest of
writers, soon followed suit in the Guardian, and he
lashed with a pen like a flail the "verdant green

ON GARDENS 31

sculpture," the quaint topiary work of earlier years,
that now had run riot. Pope supposes " an eminent
town Gardener" had lately supplied him with "a
catalogue of greens." He declares his correspon-
dent to be "a wag" and has arrived at "such
perfection in his art" that he "cuts family pieces of
men, women, or children." Then he proceeds with
the catalogue, "as sent for my recommendation": —

" Adam and Eve in Yew : Adam a little shattered by the fall
of the Tree of Knowledge in the great storm ; Eve and the serpent
very flourishing.

The Tower of Babel, not yet finished.

St. George in Box ; his arms scarce long enough, but will be in
condition to stick the dragon next April.

A green dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the
present.

N.B. — These two not to be sold separately.

Edward the Black Prince in cypress.

A laurustine bear in blossom, with a juniper hunter in berries.

A pair of giants, stunted, to be sold cheap.

A Queen Elizabeth in phylyraea, a little inclining to the green-
sickness, but full of growth.

Another Queen Elizabeth in myrtle, which was very forward,
but miscarried by being too near a Savine.

An old maid of honour in wormwood.

A topping Ben Jonson in laurel.

Divers eminent modern poets in bays, somewhat blighted, to
be disposed of, a pennyworth.

A quickset hog, shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a
week in rainy weather.

A lavender pig with sage growing in his belly.

Noah's ark in Holly, standing on the mount ; the ribs a little
damaged for want of water."

32 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Pope was, without doubt, one of the chief pioneers
of modern Gardening, and it was not a little due
to him that the natural manner in Gardening
became the fashion. At Twickenham, Pope made
his five acres of Garden into samples of every kind
of scenery — as artificial and clever as his poetry
and as far from real Nature as were ever the now
despised old Formal Gardens. Walpole, many years
later, gives a description of this Garden of Pope's :
" It was a little bit of ground of five acres, enclosed
with three lanes and seeing nothing. Pope has
twisted and twisted and rhymed and harmonised
this till it appeared two or three sweet little Lawns
opening and opening beyond one another, and the
whole surrounded with thick, impenetrable woods."

Then the " Grotto " — who has not heard of the
far-famed "Grotto" in Pope's Garden, with its
shells and pieces of looking-glass, all, according
to the poet, " in the natural taste " ? Stephen
Switzer agreed with Pope's views in his " Ichno-
graphia Rustica," but Bridgman was the first noted
Gardener to work in agreement with the views of
Addison and Pope. Bridgman " banished verdant
sculpture, but still retained green architecture,
straight alleys and palisades, and began to in-
troduce a little gentle disorder into the plantation
of his trees and bushes."

Horace Walpole declares in his essay "On
Modern Gardening" that the introduction of

ON GARDENS 33

" Ha-Ha's," was first thought of by Bridgman,
and this destruction of walls was the first step that
led to all the other innovations.

Even architects became followers of the new
school (sometimes called the Natural, Irregular,
Landscape, Romantic, English, or Chinese School,
in opposition to the Formal, which was often called
the Architectural, Classical, Regular, Symmetrical
or Italian, French or Dutch). Batty Langley pub-
lished a gorgeous book upon the " New Principles
of Gardening," setting out to prove the impossible,
viz., that the " Rural style" and " Grand manner"
could be made to agree together. Kent followed
Bridgman ; he was originally a coachbuilder, but
feeling that he was not in sympathy with his trade,
went to London, where he studied art for a short time.
He showed such distinct signs of ability that he
found patrons willing to supply him with the money
to travel. At Rome fortune favoured him, and he
met Lord Burlington, who became his patron and
devoted champion for the rest of his life.

Although Kent designed some very fine severe
buildings, and was an architect of ability, he joined
in the work of the fashionable destroyers, and
became one of the worst offenders in the destruc-
tion of old Gardens.

In the amusing language of Walpole, "he leaped
the fence and saw that all Nature was a Garden."
Lovers of old Gardens would have had great

34 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

cause for thankfulness had he resisted his impulse
to leap the fence, as many beautiful Gardens of the
past would have come down to this generation
untouched.

For, as Pope was the pioneer of the new
school, Kent was the originator of the Landscape,
or Painters' Garden, into which at one time it
developed. His great idea was to make in a
Garden a landscape composition resembling a
picture of Poussin or Claude. His ruling prin-
ciples were the great values of light and shade and
perspective, and " that Nature abhors a straight
line," which resulted in every path being twisted
and curved, and the rivers and lakes becoming
serpentine ; in fact, " a witty Frenchman suggested
that, in order to design an English or Natural
Garden, all that was required was to intoxicate
your Gardener and follow in his footsteps."

Kent's love of Nature was so great that " in
Kensington Garden he planted dead trees, to give
a greater air of truth to the scene ; — but he was
soon laughed out of this excess," adds Walpole.
Of the many places laid out by Kent, perhaps the
best remembered are the Gardens at Esher,

"Where Kent and Nature vied for Pelham's love,"

but Walpole thought that the most engaging of all
his works, " being the most elegant and antique,"

ON GARDENS 35

was Rousham, in Oxfordshire. His views were
soon copied, and Charles Hamilton made Pain's
Hill, in Surrey, " a perfect example of this mode."

Kent was followed by Lancelot Brown, a man
with little or no genius and less education. He
was nicknamed " Capability," from his favourite
habit of speaking of the "capabilities of the ground."
Brown was kitchen Gardener to Lord Cobham
at Stowe, where he rose, without possessing any
great ability, to be head Gardener, and was recom-
mended to the post of Royal Gardener at Hampton
Court by his master.

An amusing description of Brown was written
by Chatham in a letter to Lady Stanhope : " Lan-
celot Brown, Esquire, en titre d office ; please con-
sider he shares the private hours of the King,
dines familiarly with his neighbour of Sion, and
sits down at the tables of all the House of Lords."
As can be seen from this, Brown was fashionable ;
thus he had complete control over the art of
Gardening for half a century. Now came the
rapid destroying of all the old Formal beauties
of the English Garden. Croome, in Worcester-
shire, and Fisherwick, in Staffordshire, were Brown's
only creations, as he principally spent his time in
remodelling Gardens into " Park-like Scenery."
His methods were "declivities softened into gentle
slopes ; plantations belted the estate, while clumps
and single trees were sprinkled over its area." A

36 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

clump of trees and ornamental water were indis-
pensable to any place arranged by Brown. Twist-
ing water into serpentine shapes was his favourite
plan; "at Blenheim he covered a narrow valley
with an artificial river," and on surveying his
work he was heard to murmur, " Thames, Thames,
thou wilt never forgive me ! "

The grievance against this " consummate man-
nerist " would have been comparatively small if
he had contented himself with the creating of new
Gardens, but it is his wholesale destruction of the
old which must fill every one with regret.

This passion for the imitation of Nature was
passing like a wave over Europe, causing a re-
action, not only in Gardens, but in art and litera-
ture. For Rousseau preached Nature ; as Taine
says, he "made the dawn visible to people who
had never risen till noon, the landscape to eyes
that had only rested hitherto upon drawing-rooms
and palaces, the natural Garden to men who had
only walked between tonsured Yews and rectilinear
Flower Borders." Then Richardson, the novelist,
followed Rousseau, and helped, with others, to
weave " sentiment " as well as " Nature " into
Gardens. Thus the Landscape style had to be
made to express not only Nature, but to display
emotions and feelings like a human being.

Shenstone, the poet, carried his own Garden at
Leasowes, in Shropshire, to the highest pitch of

ON GARDENS 37

the Sentimental Garden style. "Art," he cried,
"should never be allowed to set foot in the pro-
vince of Nature." And forthwith he planned a
Garden with the most consummate art and shut
Nature out.

" Capability " Brown's desperate improvements
are well described by Cowper in " The Garden " : —

" Lo, he comes !

The omnipotent magician, Brown, appears !
Down falls the venerable pile, the abode
Of our forefathers — a grave, whisker'd race,
But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead,
But in a distant spot ; . . .
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn ;
Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise ;
And streams, as if created for his use,
Pursue the track of his directing wand."

Luckily before every delicious old Garden was
destroyed under Brown's fatal influence, a reaction
set in, and Brown was denounced by Gilpin, Price,
Knight, and Mason, who, in many ways approving
of the Landscape style, desired it to be " rational
Landscape." Knight was loud in his abuse, and in
a most amusing poem proves how incongruous the
new style is surrounding old houses : —

"Oft when I've seen some lonely mansion stand
Fresh from the improver's desolating hand,
'Midst shaven Lawns that far around it creep
In one eternal undulating sweep ;

38 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

And scattered clumps, that nod at one another,
Each stiffly waving to its formal brother ;
Tired with the extensive scene, so dull and bare,
To Heaven devoutly I've addressed my prayer :
Again the moss-grown terrace to raise ;
And spread the labyrinth's perplexing maze ;
Replace in even lines the ductile Yew
And plant again the ancient avenue."

Even Sir William Chambers — an enthusiastic
admirer of Chinese Gardens — while he was dotting
Kew Gardens with pagodas, and natural effects,
remonstrated about the wholesale destruction of
trees : " Our designers have scarcely left an acre of
shade or three trees growing in a line from Land's
End to the Tweed."

Nevertheless, regardless of remonstrance, there
were people who still admired Brown's work, and
at his death in 1783, his place was taken by his
devoted disciple, Humphrey Repton. "Amenity"
Repton was the first to call himself a " Landscape
Gardener," and if the character of his talents was
defined, it would be found to be more for elegant
ornament and prettiness than for any decided effort
of original genius. He liked discussing and writing
about his views, and he leaves no one in doubt as to
what he considers perfect Landscape Gardening —
viz., " Firstly, to display the natural beauties and
hide the natural defects of every situation ; secondly,
to give the appearance of extent and freedom by

ON GARDENS 39

disguising or hiding the boundary; thirdly, to conceal
every interference of art, however expensive, making
the whole appear the production of Nature only ;
and, fourthly, to remove or conceal all objects of
mere convenience and comfort if incapable of being
ornamental or becoming proper parts of the general
scenery." Besides possessing "views," Repton had
a system of " Red Books," and when asked to
improve a place he sent one of these books, illus-
trated with plans and pictures of the Garden as it
was ; while, by a clever arrangement of slides, the
picture could be changed to show how he proposed
to change the Garden. These Red Books give the
old Garden-lover a terrible shock ! How such
sweeping changes could have entered into the mind
of any man remains a mystery. Sir Uvedale Price's
famous passage of arms with Repton brought the
latter to greater reason in his alterations. Price was
one of the group of men called the " Picturesque
writers," and belonged to what was sometimes called
the " Picturesque Landscape School." They saw
the excesses of both schools, and advised that the
Formal Garden should be altered but not destroyed,
and " that the principles of Claude shall be
followed as a safe guide," so returning to Kent's
original views. To their efforts many a beautiful
old Garden owes its existence.

How often it appears that the aim at a great
simplicity but results in a greater artificiality. Such

40 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

was the case with the Natural or Landscape school.
The latter school, which became the National
English style, began to pass into France about
1762. It is distressing to think what beauties were
recklessly destroyed in the name of Nature, and
these innovations bear a close resemblance to what
was done later in the name of liberty

It is difficult, in the maze of literature and the
disconnected lives of the principal actors in the
drama, to describe the exact evolution of Gardens —
especially to discover the actual source of the great
change from one style to the other.

Gray, the poet, claims " our skill in Gardening, or
rather in the laying out of ground," as being "the
only taste we can call our own, and the only proof
of original talent in the matter of pleasure," and
that the natural style was the invention of the
English.

Foreigners declare that the whole style was
borrowed from the Irregular Gardening of the
Chinese and made particularly pleasing in England
by the beautiful grass Lawns.

Be this as it may, the principles of modern Land-
scape Gardening have been laid down by English
authorities, chiefly Mason's " Essay on Design in
Gardening," Walpole's famous " Essay on Modern
Gardening," and last, but not least, Thomas
Whately's "Observations on Modern Gardening."

Loudon claims for the latter that it is " the

ON GARDENS 41

grand fundamental and standard work on English
Gardens." Mason, the poet, declared that " Bacon
was the prophet, Milton the herald of modern
Gardening, and Addison, Pope, and Kent the
champions of the taste." It is amusing to find that
both schools claim Bacon and Milton as exponents
of their views.

There is no doubt that the old Formal Garden
lost its simplicity and became filled with intricate
devices which needed moderation, but not destruc-
tion. The reformers who stepped in to remove this
prodigality of absurd taste fell into exactly the
same fault, in a different direction, as that they
attempted to correct.

Perhaps Sir Walter Scott shows most clearly the
merits of both schools in his " Essay on Landscape
Gardens," written in 1828, taking for "his keynote
the choice of the best that has been done in design-
ing, laying out, ' composing ' or building Gardens
in every age, adapted to the particular site and
its material and architectural surroundings."

To-day, from the vast advance of horticulture,
the face of a Garden is entirely changed. Flowers
exist and grow in English Gardens that the old
Gardeners never even dreamt of, much less could
imagine in their Gardens. Tropical trees help to
shade modern Lawns, and the people who walk on
them have changed as greatly as the flowers in
their Gardens by which they are surrounded.

42 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Travelling and science have both indirectly
touched Gardens. And though individuality is
supposed to have been checked in the last century
and to be dying hard in this, in the Gardens of
to-day it is to be found on every side. No one
feels bound to follow any distinct style — flowers run
riot, or a bedding-out system is followed, or more
often still the individual taste of the owner steps
in and moulds the Garden to his wish. Individuality
alas ! does not mean charm ; that is rarely met with
in the Gardens of to-day. There are beautiful
flowers and lovely green grass, but the charm which
used to linger in the beautiful Gardens designed by
Evelyn, and in such Gardens as Moor Park, Chis-
wick, and Nonsuch, has fled. Charm seems to
belong to the days when people wrote, thought
about, and planned their Gardens — not only grew
flowers in them.

It is the design, the simplicity of line — which the
Terraces and old Yew hedges, cool and green,
gave to a Garden — that are now lacking. The
gorgeous display of flowers, perfect in colour, wants
the shadow of the old Yews as a background, to
form a contrast and throw up their brilliance.

It is this lack of contrast and arrangement that
is partly responsible for the absence of charm in
most modern Gardens. Charm goes with propor-
tion and simplicity, such as is found in the old
Formal Garden. However well the colour scheme

ON GARDENS 43

in a Garden is arranged, though it may give pleasure
to the eye, it will not give charm to the Garden.
There still remains in the minds of a few a desire
to design the Garden in accordance with the house,
and many old Gardens altered in the days of Brown
and Repton have been as far as possible restored
to their original state. But the mystical charm that
hovered in the olden days like a perfumed fragrance
over beautiful Gardens, is only to be found in those
with a past. For what word conjures up such
varied memories, such delights of light and colour,
or such fragrant sadness as the word Garden? It
fills the mind with visions of the past, joys of people
long beyond earth's beauty ; yet the memory of the
paths they trod, the scent of the flowers that they
loved, the Gardens that they planned, and planted,
and made beautiful, do they not remain an ever-
lasting heritage?

ABBOTSBURY, DORSETSHIRE

" Now hath Flora robbed her bowers
To befriend this place with flowers."

THOMAS CAMPION

II

ABBOTSBURY, DORSETSHIRE

A X TITH what amazement and wonder would
V V Parkinson — who travelled for forty years
collecting rare treasures for his Garden — have
gazed on Abbotsbury with its beautiful mass of
flowers and trees, a perfect treasure-house of rare
plants !

It was this same John Parkinson, author of
" Paradisi-in-Sole, Paradisus Terrestris" — one of the
most fascinating of the Elizabethan Garden books
— who roughly divides flowers into two sections
" English Flowers " and " Outlandish Flowers."
Of the latter he says : " Flowers that being strangers
unto us, and giving the beauty and bravery of their
colours so early, before many of our owne-bred
flowers, the more to entice us to their delight."
Abbotsbury is indeed a Garden of " Outlandish
Flowers " ; in fact, a sub-tropical Garden by reason
of the rareness of "the strangers " within its beds.
Just beyond the little old-world village of

48 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Abbotsbury, which is hidden away in a valley
between Weymouth and Bridport, lies this sub-
tropical Garden belonging to Mary, Countess of
Ilchester. Sheltered under a hill which rises
between it and the sea, high walls and old Ilex
trees protecting it even further from all cold winds,
so successfully is it screened that foreign plants
of all kinds will grow and flourish in it, such
as Himalayan and Sikkim Rhododendrons,
Bamboos, Mimosa, Eucalyptus in thirty varieties,
Aloes, Agaves, the New Zealand Laburnum
(Edwardsia Grandiflora) with its yellow Papilio-
metus flowers, being a tree of from twelve to fifteen
feet high ; also a Chilian plant, Crinodendron
Hookeri, which grows to a height of about seven
feet, and is covered with blooms of scarlet
pendulous flowers, and other little-known plants
such as Cistus, Thea Bohea (the common tea),
Vaccinium Ovatum), Jamesia Americana, Eucry-
phia. For every part of the world, Japan, China,
America, Australia, etc., has been called upon to
contribute something to this "Earthly Paradise"!
This is indeed a Garden in the popular sense of
the word, viz., a Garden filled to overflowing with
flowers, a Garden which rejoices at every season of
the year in gay blossoms. In Spring, more
particularly from February to May, it is a perfect
blaze of colour, with a rippling carpet of yellow
Daffodils, Narcissi, Jonquils, and Polyanthus, and

FALCONERI RHODODENDRONS, ABBOTSBURY

ABBOTSBURY 49

all the foreign glories of Azaleas of every hue,
while Camellias, waxen white and coral pink,
bloom generally from January on to the end of
May.

When to these are added Rhododendrons and
Magnolias — (one of the most interesting genera
grown here, and embracing practically the whole
of the species and varieties, including the
beautiful Pink Campbelli, a tree quite thirty feet
in height) — imagination can hardly picture such a
Garden, much less pen describe it !

The avenue leading to this wonderful galaxy
of flowers is bordered with Ilex trees, strangely
un-English in character, and giving the keynote to
the Garden beyond. These Ilex trees proved so
difficult to grow that at last Pampas Grass was
planted to shelter the young trees from the
strong winds — an arrangement which has been so
successful that the Ilex trees have grown to a
height of over twenty-five feet, and have almost
completely ousted the Pampas Grass.

It is not difficult to realise the various phases
that this beautiful Garden must have passed
through, though there is no actual record of
them. The style of the Garden at the present
time is that of Irregular planting, "a.rAnglaise" — a
most successful treatment in this case on account of
the glorious flowers that are for ever bursting their
buds in the sunshine.

50 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

In 1026 Ore, the steward of King Canute's Royal
Palace, founded a Society of Secular Canons at
Abodesbury (as Abbotsbury was then called).
But it is not exactly known whether it was Ore
or his wife Tola (after she became a widow) who
turned the Society into a Monastery of the
Benedictine Order, dedicated to S. Peter, as was
the chapel, built in the same little village of
Abbotsbury, by a priest named Bertulfus, thus
giving the village an interest dating back to the
time when Christianity first came to the Britons.
Traces and picturesque ruins of the former glory
of this celebrated monastery remain to this day,
and seem still to dominate the village though the
abbots and monks have all long since passed away.
Those were times in which the art of building
was understood in its finest sense as the old Tithe
Barn and Pigeoncote still standing, and in use,
testify, as well as the chapel dedicated to S.
Catherine which stands as strong and sturdy as
on the day it was built. Of these magnificent
builders Ruskin wrote truly : " Of them and their
life and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one
evidence is left to us in those grey heaps of deep
wrought stone. They have taken with them to
the grave their powers, their honours, and their
errors, but they have left us their adoration."

The old chapel (which stands overshadowing
the monastery buildings), with its beautifully carved

ABBOTSBUBY £1

stone roof and curious stone buttresses, is almost
forgotten. No one goes to pray there now unless,
indeed, it be one of the village girls who goes up
on her marriage eve to invoke the good offices of
S. Catherine, ever the patron saint of maidens.
West of the Abbey, on the side of S. Catherine's
Down, lies a field of fourteen acres, said to have
been the Abbot's Garden. It still bears that name.
With its Terraces and fishponds it is easy in thought
to repeople it with the monks, who dug there long
ago among the Vines or lazily fished for their
Friday's fare.

A Garden in those days was only to be found
within a monastery or convent walls, and was
essentially a thing of use, not pleasure ; vegetables
were grown because they were the staple food, and
the "herbularis," or Physic Garden, was cultivated
so that the herbs it contained might be made use
of as drugs.

It is not till the fourteenth century that much can
be gathered about these early Monastic Gardens,
but once written accounts were kept all sorts of
interesting and amusing details are recorded, such
as — the cost of the gloves allowed for weeding,
"7/-"; for extracting "mosse" from the cloister
green, " 6d." The love of appearances was evi-
dently as strong in those days as in these !

During those old monastic times every one appears
to have laid claim to a Garden, for the plans still

52 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

existing show that there was one large Garden,
then the Prior's Garden, the Canon's Garden, the
Sacristy Garden, as well as the Infirmary and
Kitchen Gardens. Bede early testifies to the
English climate being suitable for the Vine, and
there is little doubt that at Abbotsbury there must
have been a Vineyard, as few monasteries were
without them, the monks being especially clever
in cultivating the Vine. Long before the monastery
was built or the village existed, the swans had
made themselves a home here; down past the church,
the barn, and the mill, at the end of a steep-banked
Dorset lane overhung with Elms, lies the celebrated
swannery, granted by King Canute to the monastery
by a Royal Saxon Charter, which the present
owner, Lord Ilchester, still possesses. Seen in
the spring the swannery is a wonderful sight, with
all the swans nesting close together on the low
ground bordering the Fleet inlet, and sheltered by
the curious high bank of shingle, called Chesil Beach.
There are as many as four or five hundred nests to
be seen, the hen bird sitting while the cock mounts
guard beside her. Swans are among the few birds
that take it in turns to sit on the eggs, and fre-
quent fights occur between the cock birds of the
adjoining nests when they go off to feed ; in this
way many young cygnets are killed. The swans
fly for many miles down the coast, and have some-
times been found as far distant as Milford Haven ;

ABBOTSBURY 53

they are all marked by a slit in the form of the
letter " I " made in the web of the foot when
quite young.

It was, of course, Henry VIII. who wrested
Abbotsbury from the Church, and after the final
dissolution of the monasteries he gave the abbey
and lands to Giles Strangeways, knight, who out
of its ruins built himself a " fair mansion house,"
where he and the Strangeways family often lived
till it was destroyed during the Civil Wars, and
with it, unhappily, the only register of the monastery
known to have existed, which register had been in
the possession of the Strangeways ever since the
lands became their property.

During the Parliamentary Wars Abbotsbury was
stormed on November 6, 1644, by Sir Anthony
Ashley Cooper, who was in command of Cromwell's
forces in Dorset. A very interesting report written
by him to the Committee of the Parliament in
Dorsetshire, still exists, describing the storming of
the house which belonged to Sir John Strangeways,
a staunch Royalist. When the house was finally
taken, by being set fire to, the gunpowder magazine
below it blew up, killing many of the Parliamentary
soldiers who had entered it in search of plunder. Sir
Anthony in his report says of one man, "Lieutenant
Hill, who went a volunteer and was sent in to get
out the soldiers, was blown up with the rest, yet
since we have taken him strongly out of the

54 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

rubbish and hope to preserve him." His descrip-
tions also of the fighting sounds very desperate,
with its guns, grenades, fire-balls, flaming furze
faggots, and scaling ladders.

Nothing now remains of this house but one Ivy-
covered gable, and the Strangeways family, after
the Civil Wars, added to and took up their abode
in the Manor House (which is now used as a
rectory and stands opposite the church) until 1780,
when the first Lady Ilchester built the present
castle, close to the sea and a mile from the village.
Lady Ilchester's eldest daughter, Lady Susan Fox-
Strangeways — whose romantic marriage with
Mr. O'Brien, the actor, was the talk of the town
and recorded by Walpole and all the gossips of
the day — mentions in her diary (still preserved at
Melbury) having assisted at her mother's removal
into the new house in 1780, and planned the Rock
Gardens in front of it, sloping down to the sea,
with stone Arbours at each of the four corners to
give shelter from whichever quarter the wind
might blow.

The Rock Garden she made, the Fig trees she
planted, and the Arbours she built are there un-
changed, and have an eighteenth-century air about
them, forming a veritable " souvenir heureux " of a
very charming woman. Seventy or eighty varieties
of Mesembryanthemum (commonly known as Ice
Plant) run wild over the stones ; and Orange Mari-

ABBOTSBURY 55

golds (single and double), Yellow Auricula, Calceo-
laria, and Aubretia bloom all the winter through,
and the early kind of Polyanthus Narcissi can
generally be picked here before Christmas, and
from February onwards they flower profusely.
The Garden at Abbotsbury was begun a few years
after the castle was built, and is a quarter of a mile
away from it ; great improvements were made in it
by William, fourth Earl of Ilchester, who was a
well-known botanist in his day. Being in the
diplomatic service for many years, and living
abroad, he was able to collect plants from all
parts of the world.

The fifth (and late) Lord Ilchester was equally as
devoted to the care of this Garden as his ancestors
were, and he and Lady Ilchester (the present owner)
have enlarged it to over treble its original size, and
it is now one of the finest collections in England.
In 1899 a catalogue was printed by Lady Ilchester
of all the different plants growing in the Garden,
and the number amounted to over 5,000, and the
list is always being added to.

Adjoining the house a large Winter Garden
has just been built, which is used chiefly for
plants which flower during the winter ; the walls
are covered with climbing plants, and also the
greater part of the roof; — the Kennedyas, for
instance, are represented by nearly a dozen species,
the best being Rubicunda and Violaca. Tacsonias

56 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

are represented by four species ; the free-flowering
Van Volxemii and the fiery red Ignea are the
finest. Everything is planted out, as a flowerpot
is forbidden inside the Winter Garden at any time.
In one part of the Garden there is a collection of
Acacias which flower from December to May,
and particularly fine is the Nicotiana Glauca, with
its pale yellow trumpet-flowers. Another yellow
flower is the Candollea Cuneiformi, a hard-wooded
plant from Western Australia, which is never out
of bloom.

On the little Rockeries grow rare Iris, Narcissi,
and Muscari, which flower early in the year.

Some of the distinct features of the Garden are
Plumbago, Clianthus, Streptosolen, and Rhodo-
chiton — all greenhouse climbers which will stand
the very moderately severe winter Abbotsbury
experiences.

The wild Garden is an interesting innovation of
Lord Ilchester's made within the last two or three
years. A brook runs right through it crossed by
various bridges, and at intervals are small ponds
bordered by Arum Lilies, Sagittari and Apono-
geton, Nymphaes, and other water-plants ; on either
side of the stream a choice selection of trees are
planted, and below them grow various British
plants, also Comfrey, and the wild Ragged Robin,
Campion, and Hyacinths are allowed to grow
there undisturbed.

ALBURY, SURREY

"Now birds record new harmony;
And trees do whistle melody !
Now everything that Nature heeds
Doth clad itself in pleasant weeds."

THOMAS WATSON

Ill

ALBURY, SURREY

OF all the fascinating characters of the Restora-
tion, none was more wholly delightful or
exercised a wider influence over his contemporaries
than John Evelyn. Living in the times of
Charles I., Oliver Cromwell, Charles II., James II.,
and William III., though a pronounced Royalist,
he was yet respected by Cromwell — no lover of the
King's friends — and much sought after by both the
learned and the rich for the charm of his conversa-
tion and the greatness of his abilities. Evelyn has
left behind him two living evidences of his genius —
his books and his Gardens. Of his many books
the one best known to-day is his Diary — a veritable
treasure-house of customs, habits, and fashions at
one of the most interesting periods of history. And
his Gardens have justly earned for him the title of
the Greatest of England's Garden Philosophers.
Infinite charm is to be found in the Gardens de-
signed by Evelyn — a charm apparently lost in these

60 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

modern days, and which no well-intentioned copy
ever achieves. So subtle and delicate is it that
it only lingers in the Gardens that he not merely
designed but whose progress was his personal
care.

How strongly the spirit of the man (who, Horace
Walpole says, " really was the neighbour of the
Gospel, for there was no man that might not have
been the better for him ") dwells in his Gardens
can best be realised by those who have paced the
Terraces at Albury Park, belonging to the Duke of
Northumberland, one of the many English Gardens
which owes its chief beauties to Evelyn's genius.
This Albury Park is often mentioned in the Diary ;
the first allusion to it being in 1648, when Evelyn
went to visit the Countess of Arundel ; Albury
Place (as it was then called) having been purchased
from the Duncombes by the Earl of Arundel and
becoming for some years the residence of the
Dukes of Norfolk.

Again, in 1655, Evelyn writes: "I went to
Alburie to visit Mr. Howard, who had begun to
build and alter the Gardens much." Then on
June 19, 1662: "I went to Alburie to visit Mr.
Henry Howard soon after he had procured the
Dukedom to be restored. We hunted and killed a
buck in the Park, Mr. Howard inviting most of the
gentlemen of the country near him." But it is not
till 1667 that he mentions the part he played in

ALBURY 61

laying out the Garden. In September the diarist
notes : " I accompanied Mr. Howard to his villa at
Albury where I designed for him the plot for his
canall and Garden, with a crypt thro' the hill."
And in 1670 : " To Alburie to see how the Garden
proceeded, which I found exactly don to the designe
and plot, I had made with the crypta thro' the
mauntaine in the park, 30 perches in length. Such
a Pausillippe is no where in England besides. The
canal now digging and the vineyard planted."
It is pleasant to think that little of the "designe
and plot " has been changed.

The long, green Terraces are flanked by wide
Herbaceous Borders, which in summer glow with
white Clematis, sweet-scented Roses, Crimson
Ramblers, and delicate pink Moss buds. Gay
Poppies, red and yellow, Foxglove with its velvet
leaves, pale mauve Iris, and the commoner stately
Purple Flags, Delphiniums pale and dark blue,
straight pointing to the sky, and Peonies bent
earthwards, are also to be found there.

Full of scent, colour, and song are these beautiful
Terraces, for in this happy Garden birds — many rare
ones, such as golden oriels, among the number —
enjoy such complete liberty that they gladly
make their homes here in the trees. On the red-
brick walls, designed by Evelyn, on which these
Terraces are raised, wall Creepers grow in tangled
masses, and Lavender bushes in wild profusion

62 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

shine silver-grey in the sunlight. In the midst of
the upper Terrace there stands a semicircular basin
and fountain, behind which runs a red-brick wall,
alcoved on either side of the entrance to the crypta
or subterranean passage, being a short cut to the
house. It is supposed that the alcoves were ori-
ginally meant to hold lead or stone statues. This all
speaks of the wave that was passing over Europe,
and had already touched England, the love of
Renaissance architecture and design ; for the semi-
circular stone water-basin which fills the recess, its
straight edge bringing the curve into line with the
Terrace, points to the Italian feeling. On one
side of the water-basin stands the little low fountain
which bubbles up for ever, fed by the wonderful
Shireburn springs, the water being celebrated for
its coolness and purity. Water was just the one
beauty that these green Terraces might have lacked ;
this splashing little fountain and pond filled with
darting goldfish, sweet-smelling Water Soldier with
its glossy leaves and waxen flowers, have made
them perfect.

The crypta, mentioned with such pride by Evelyn,
is quite twelve feet in height and wonderfully dry ; it
has only needed new brickwork to strengthen the
entrance which was endangered by the weight of a
splendid oak on the hill above, whose branches
spread out over the water below. Mr. Bray men-
tions, in his notes on Evelyn's Diary, that he adopted

ALBURY 63

the word Pausillippe, as a name for a subterranean
passage, from the famous grotto of Pausyllipo at
Naples. In an old book called "The Natural
History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey,"
by John Aubrey, written in 1718, there is a curious
statement concerning the crypta which is difficult to
credit, viz., the force of the Shireburn springs was
employed to clear the passage through the hill, a
method devised by Captain George Evelyn, a great
traveller and a kinsman of John Evelyn's.

This extraordinary story must have had some
foundation as Evelyn never contradicts it in the
many notes he made to Aubrey's book, in which
the size of the Vineyard at Albury is mentioned as
twelve acres, and Evelyn alludes to its existence in
his Diary. It was the fashion of that day to plant
Vineyards in Gardens, but few have survived the
chances and changes of the years till now. Addi-
tional proof of this Vineyard's existence is found
in Vertue's description of Hollar's celebrated en-
gravings, where we find a reference to his " Albury
in Surrey, the seat of Lord Arundel with its vine-
yard." There are also six very curious views of
the Park by the same artist. The Park can be
entered by the doors to the right and left of the
alcoves in the brick wall, behind the circular basin
and fountain, and is filled with splendid trees ; the
Oaks and Cedars being quite exceptionally fine, and
also a rare kind of Fir tree. England, it is said by

64 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

those who know, is greatly indebted to Evelyn for
many beautiful trees, and if this is the case no
doubt Albury Park owes its glorious trees to the
same hand.

At the top of the hill in the Park runs an ancient
path, worn by the feet of many pilgrims on their
way from the city of Winchester to Canterbury,
and the memory of their journeys to and fro still
clings to it, as it is always known by the name of
" The Pilgrim's Way."

To return to the grass Terraces with their flowers,
brick walls, fountain, and crypta — in all of which
lies the charm of Evelyn's work.

Each Terrace has its special feature ; the upper
one, the water-basin, fountain, and strange sub-
terranean passage through the hill ; while to the
lower belongs the beauty of a very fine Yew-tree
hedge extending the whole length of the Terrace —
(which is much wider than the upper one) — the
hedge serving as a screen to shut off the kitchen
Garden. Here, too, the old brick wall is a mass
of sweet-smelling Roses, Lavender bushes, and
Ilex trees leaning down over it from the Terrace
above.

Evelyn claims to have been the first to make use
of Yews for hedges — in fact, to be the first to bring
them into fashion ; he may well lay claim to any-
thing to do with Gardens and their love, as there
was little he did not know himself or learn from

ALBURY 65

La Quintinye, whose book, " The Complete
Gardiner," he translated into English.

The Yew hedge at Albury is quite remarkable
in its way : "It is rather a row of Yew trees the
trunks of which are bare and the tops of which
form one solid head of about ten feet high, while
the bottom branches come out on each side of the
row about eight feet horizontally. The grand old
Hedge is quite a quarter of a mile long. There is
a wide gravel path, that runs parallel with it and is
the most delightful walk in summer or winter."

It is supposed that Evelyn intended in his design
to terrace the whole of the Gardens at Albury.
Opinions differ as to the merit of this idea, and the
present design of the two Terraces, and the Irregular
Garden is much admired with its fine trees, Rose
Garden, and winding river. On a summer day it
is a delightful walk, up to the green Terraces — along
gravel paths, richly planted with handsome trees,
and across a rustic bridge, past a Rose Garden
laid out in old-fashioned shaped beds.

All this part of the Garden owes its irregular
charm of arrangement to the sixth Duke of North-
umberland, who planted the splendid row of Limes
along one of the prettiest paths, their tall, grey
stems contrasting delicately in the sunlight with
the masses of many-coloured Rhododendrons,
appearing in the undergrowth on each side.

These Gardens are so judiciously placed, facing

66 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

south and sheltered from harsh winds, that many
plants and ferns can be grown with ease, such as
Azaleas and the Osmunda Fern ; the latter flourishes
regally, there hardly being finer specimens to be
seen, even in Ireland, so famous for the graceful
grandeur of this fern. It is a case of walking up
and up to reach the kitchen Gardens and Orchards,
each distinct by itself, enclosed within hedges (in
which these Gardens greatly excel), the Gardens
being cut into squares by the short gravel walks,

After passing these Gardens the magnificenl
Yew hedge is reached, and from under its dark
arch of green what a beautiful sight meets the eye !
No wonder Cobbett called these green Terraces "the
most beautiful thing" he had ever seen "in the
Gardening way" — being "a quarter of a mile long
and between thirty and forty feet wide," and " oi
the greenest sward, as level as a die." Evelyr
evidently did not think the pretty windings of the
Tillingbourne stream sufficient water for his scheme
of design, hence he notes " the canall was now
digging " — which canal still remains with a little
rustic bridge across it ; but it is too close to the
clear running Tillingbourne stream for the arrange
ment to be a happy one, and there can be little
doubt that it is not quite as he intended.

The Bath house, a brick building which is sunl^
several feet below the level of the ground, ha<
a brick floor and alcoved walls similar to the wal

ALBURY 67

on the Terrace and meant as in the latter case to
contain busts or statues — thus again showing the
Italian feeling which entered so much into Garden
design at this time and was evidently particularly
admired by Evelyn, who had seen it at its finest in
the lovely Italian Gardens he visited whilst travel-
ling in Italy and which he mentions so often in his
Diary.

That Evelyn thought Albury Park possessed
great beauties and possibilities is clearly shown by
the fact that he wished to buy the property. In a
letter to Edward Thurland, one of the trustees, he
writes of " his singular inclination for Albury in
case (as I am confident it will) that seat be exposed
to sale. ... I suppose the place will invite many
candidates, but my money is good."

Whether he changed his mind or the trustees
changed theirs is not forthcoming, as Albury did
not pass out of the Duke of Norfolk's hands till
much later, and then this "darling villa," as Evelyn
calls it, was bought by Mr. Henage Finch, the
second son of the Earl of Nottingham, whose
nickname was "silver tongue," because of his
marvellous eloquence. Charles II. made him
Solicitor-General, and he took a celebrated part
in the defence of the seven Bishops, though his
impetuosity almost proved disastrous. Queen Anne
honoured him further and George I. created him
Earl of Aylesford ; and it is in connection with

68 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

him that Evelyn mentions for the last time in his
exhaustive Diary the name of " Albury," which he
loved so well: "August 5, 1687. — I went to see
Albury, now purchased by Mr. Finch (the King's
solicitor and son to the late Lord Chancellor).
I found the Garden, which I first designed for
the Duke of Norfolk, nothing improved."

It would indeed be difficult to improve upon
these green Terraces, which remain a lasting proof
of the taste of John Evelyn, and also demonstrate
most successfully the power of a straight line — a
power noticeable in design of any kind — and seen
to great advantage in the Terraces at Albury. In
these modern days when " Nouveau Art " has done
so much to impair the standard of general taste, it
is an unspeakable relief to turn from the tortured
curves of various forms of design founded in that
school to an earlier, simpler, purer taste.

AMPTHILL PARK, BEDFORDSHIRE

Second Gentleman. But, I beseech you, what's become of

Katherine,
The princess dowager ? how goes her business ?

first Gentleman. That I can tell you too. The archbishop
Of Canterbury, accompanied with other
Learned and reverend fathers of his order,
Held a late court at Dunstable, six miles off
From Ampthill, where the princess lay; to which
She was often cited by them, but appear'd not;
And, to be short, for not appearance, and
The king's late scruple, by the main assent
Of all these learned men she was divorc'd,
And the late marriage made of none effect :
Since which she was removed to Kimbolton,
Where she remains now, sick.

King Henry VIII., Act IV., Scene I.

IV

AMPTHILL PARK, BEDFORDSHIRE

TH E Gardens at Ampthill are not extensive ;
the magnificent trees create one of their
chief beauties, and owing to the undulating nature
of the ground their fine grouping is displayed to
perfection. Among these trees are the celebrated
Oaks for which Ampthill is justly famous. These
trees are extremely venerable, some being over five
hundred years old, and one claiming to be the
largest Oak tree in England.

In a survey taken by order of Parliament in
1653, these splendid trees were condemned "as
hollow and unfit " for the use of Cromwell's navy.
Many names are associated with Ampthill, but
perhaps the best remembered is that of the proud
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella — Katherine of
Arragon, Henry VIII. 's first Queen. Is it fanciful
to feel that the embittered Spanish princess has
bequeathed to the old place a pervading sensation
of gloom ? The memory of her sorrows, her fana-

72 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

tical religious beliefs, her shameful treatment,
seems to haunt for ever the Gardens and Park.

The present house was never Katherine's home.
The old castle where she spent those weary days
awaiting her sentence has ceased to exist ; the
Parliamentary survey of Ampthill, made as far back
as 1649, speaks of "the castle as long ago totally
demolished." It must have been a regal building,
this castle built by Lord Fanhope in the early years
of the fifteenth century, with its turrets, towers, and
courts. Close to the site of the old castle — which
stood on much higher ground than the new house —
is still to be seen the brickwork of an old well,
encircled by a group of fine Elms. Of this spot
one of those pretty stories woven about most great
houses is told. The legend describes Queen
Katherine as sitting here under the Elm trees
with her maids when she received the news of
her divorce from the King.

The house, though lower in position than the
castle, possesses a beautiful view over the Vale
of Bedford, and is little changed since it was built
by Lord Ashburnham in 1694. Plain in type, it
possesses two deep, projecting wings, a big frontage
pierced by many windows, and an angular pedi-
ment bearing the arms of the late Lord Ossory.
The chief entrance is reached by a flight of
steps.

The water-colour drawing of Ampthill shows a

THE EAST GARDEN, AMPTHILL

AMPTHILL PARK 73

very charming part of the Garden, lying on the
east side of the House. This Garden is laid out
in the Dutch style, with little geometrical beds
edged with Box and filled with all sorts of gay-
coloured flowers, such as pale blue Ageratums, red
Geraniums, French Marigolds, and purple Petunias,
which in the sunlight of a summer's day give a
brilliant effect.

The little stone Fountain, placed in the centre of
this part of the Garden by Lord Holland, is quite a
feature. Low, and shaped like a vase, it stands in
a large basin of water, which is surrounded by a
wreath-like border of Ivy and Periwinkle. The
quaint appearance of this old-fashioned Garden has
been greatly added to by the Dowager Lady
Ampthill, who has placed here at intervals huge
Spanish vases, which by their vivid hue give a
fresh touch of bizarre colour, and are filled during
the summer months with Palms and Hydrangeas of
delicate pink and mauve.

Beyond the Garden runs a wide walk, at right
angles to the house, leading to a beautiful narrow
alley of Limes. Standing under the shade of their
interlacing boughs, it is difficult to realise that the
trees were not planted hundreds of years ago,
instead of by Lady Holland. (Lord Holland
succeeded Lord Ossory in 1818.) Lady Holland
called the walk the Alameda, after the avenue in
Madrid, from which it had been copied.

74 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The Lime Walk (which is over a quarter of a mill
in length) rivals similar walks at Oxford and Cam
bridge, and is considered by many people to be th<
finest in England. It is difficult to decide at whicl
time of the year the Lime Walk looks its best — ii
Spring, when the trees are a mass of fresh buddinj
green leaves, or in the late Autumn, when they an
tinged with the palest yellow. A distant bu
charming view of the house can be seen down th<
full length of the Lime Avenue.

In another part of the Garden there is a handsomi
Herbaceous Border, with the artistic backgroun<
of tall Yew trees and various shrubs, the dark an<
light foliage intensifying the brilliant colour of th<
flowers. From the other side of this border tli
Lawn slopes down to the Park, which in the earl;
part of the year is a flowery mass of spring bulbs
It was in this Park that Henry VIII. hunted
and had the deer driven so that he and Am
Boleyn might shoot them with arrows as the]
passed.

" Mademoiselle Ann," as the people called her
prim-lipped and pale, had a fleeting, fatal fascinatioi
for all who first saw her. Without mercy sh<
ousted the proud Katherine from her throne onl]
to meet in her turn with an even more tragic fate.

The Manor of Ampthill in very early day
belonged to the family of Albini, from whom i
passed through the female line (as in so man]

AMPTHILL PARK 75

instances old places do) to the St. Amands and
the Beauchamps.

From the Beauchamps it passed by purchase to
one whose life might be described as being one long
romance. This hero was John, the son of Sir
John Cornwall, his mother being the niece of the
Duke of Brittany. From the circumstance of his
birth taking place at sea, in the bay of St. Michael's
Mount, he was nicknamed " Green Cornwall." He
grew up to be celebrated for deeds of valour and
chivalry, and at York, in 1401, when a tournament
was held in honour of Henry IV., Cornwall defeated
and overthrew in the King's presence two knights,
one an Italian, the other a Frenchman, and received
from the King's hand the Order of the Garter.
Besides gaining this distinction, he had the good
fortune to win the hand of the King's sister
Elizabeth (the second daughter of John, Earl of
Lancaster, generally known as John of Gaunt),
widow of the Duke of Exeter. On their marriage
the King loaded them with gifts, and the Prince of
Wales gave a large portion of land in the county of
Cornwall to the bridegroom. The old castle, built
by Cornwall in honour of his royal wife, made the
little market town of Ampthill famous through its
magnificence. Leland, "the King's Antiquary"
(born about 1506), in his delightful old " Itinerary,"
writes of Cornwall as a man of great fame and very
rich, and as having built the castle with " such

76 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

spoils that he wonne in France " ; and the same
chronicler gives a description of the castle, " its
many fair towers" and "basse court" (the outer
court for stables and servants), very necessary in
those days of huge retinues. Sir John Cornwall
greatly distinguished himself at the battle of
Agincourt, the battle so splendidly described by
Shakespeare, and for ever a glorious record in
English history.

In due course the lands and castle of Ampthill
became royal property, and Henry VIII. constituted
it a royal demesne and called it the " Honour of
Ampthill."

James I. is supposed to have visited Ampthill in
1605 and 1621, but Katherine of Arragon is thought
by many to have been the last royal person to stay
within its walls :

h Where is that Castle now, whose thick ribbed walls

The foe's assault so oft unshaken bore? —
Its battlements are swept away, its halls
Are sunk, — its very ruins are no more !

And many a heedless foot has pressed the spot
Where once it stood, — till yon fair Cross arose

Telling a tale that will not be forgot,

Of ill-starred Catherine, — of her wrongs and woes.

Yes — ere their doom was sealed, on Ampthill towers

Fortune a ray of parting glory cast ;
Though graced and honoured oft in happier hours,

The noblest guest they sheltered was the last."

AMPTHILL PARK 77

So wrote the witty Mr. Luttrell, Lord Holland's
friend, in his lines on Ampthill Park — a poem in
which not one of its beauties is left unsung. Well
might he write of Katherine as " ill-starred." Proud,
passionate, possessed of that austere religious
fervour so often found in Spain, small wonder
that she failed to keep Henry's fickle affections,
wandering as they did at the sight of every new
pretty face. Katherine unfortunately played her part
most unwisely. Firm in her religious belief, insist-
ing on the justice of her claims, she considered her
position as Queen unassailable. Unhappily she
was no fit opponent against Ann Boleyn.

Complacent Anne of Cleves fared better, and
bowed to her fate, and was willing, though the
King's wife, to be styled " his beloved sister," and
accepted a fair income and a goodly house. Not
so with Katherine, the daughter of a race of kings,
born Infanta of Spain, and wife of Harry of
England. Nothing could induce her to accept any
other position. The Pope might consider that her
marriage ought to be annulled — still, she was
Queen of England and the mother of Henry's
daughter and his son who had died in infancy.

Papers still exist in which the hated words,
" Princess Dowager," have been struck out by her
own hand and the word " Queen " substituted.
There is something almost terrible in the inexor-
able web of fate which wound itself round Katherine,

78 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

and in the defeat of her intrepid, manlike firmness,
by the pitiless determination of the King.

Few can read of the scene in the monastery at
Blackfriars on the iSth of June, 1529, without being
touched by the pathetic dignity of Katherine,
pleading for her love, her. child, and her broken
life.

It was Thomas Cranmer who finally ridded the
King of his distasteful wife. Meeting Fox and
Gardiner, who were discussing the divorce,
Cranmer suggested an appeal to the universities of
Christendom. The idea pleased Henry, though it
was discovered on putting it to the test that the
whole of Europe, Protestant and Catholic alike, was
absolutely against the King. Cranmer's willingness
to prove otherwise stood him in good stead, gaining
him later the see of Canterbury ; and once he was
Primate the Lady Ann felt there would be small
doubt as to her being Queen of England. Insult
upon insult was heaped upon Katherine ; her house-
hold was reduced to that of an ordinary person, her
arms were removed from Westminster Hall ; yet her
amazing husband wrote exhorting her to be "quiet
and merry " ! From Ampthill Katherine was
summoned to appear at the Primate's Court at
Dunstable — a command to which she was deaf. In
May, Cranmer declared her marriage null and void,
and Ann's valid, though it had taken place four
months before Katherine's marriage was annulled.

AMPTHILL PARK 79

In the Autumn of 1535 Katherine became
seriously ill. Never a strong woman, the long years
of bitter struggle had broken her health as well
as her heart. On January 8, 1536, her brave,
unconquered spirit fled from a world which for her
had been full of sorrow and deep humiliation.
There seems no doubt that her end was hastened
by poison.

Ampthill Park, where she spent many of the
bitterest days of her sorrow, will ever be associated
with the name of Katherine of Arragon, though
the old castle in which she lived does not remain
even as a ruin. But some old ground plans are
still in existence, giving a very good idea of what
it must have been. There is little of interest to
record of Ampthill till the Restoration, when
Charles II. gave the property to Mr. John Ash-
burnham in recognition of what he had done for the
Royalist cause. It was the first Lord Ashburnham
who built the existing house. The Ampthill estate
was bought later by Lord Fitzwilliam, and sold in
1736 to Lady Go wan, the grandmother of Lord
Ossory, who took a great interest in the beautiful
old place.

Horace Walpole was an ardent admirer of Lady
Ossory, and a constant visitor at Ampthill Park.
Lady Ossory was a vivacious and beautiful woman,
the only child of Lord Ravensworth. She made, in
1756, a brilliant but miserable marriage with the

80 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

well-known minister, the Duke of Grafton, who was
so severely censured in the " Letters of Junius."
Unable to tolerate her husband's manner of life (of
which Walpole gives a graphic description) she
divorced him and married, in 1769, Lord Ossory.
To-day she is chiefly known as the fervent friend
and frequent correspondent of Walpole. Of
Ampthill this fastidious judge deigns to say " that
it stands finely : the house is very good, and has a
beautiful park."

The origin of the cross put up in memory of
Katherine of Arragon, and mentioned in Luttrell's
poem, is discovered in a letter of Horace Walpole's
to a friend. " I have lately been at Lord Ossory 's
at Ampthill," he writes. "You know Katherine of
Arragon lived sometime there. Nothing remains
of the castle, nor any marks of residence, but a
very small bit of her garden. I proposed to Lord
Ossory to erect a cross to her memory on the spot,
and he will. I wish, therefore, you could, from your
collection of books or memory, pick out an authentic
form of a cross, of a better appearance than the
common run. It must be raised on two or three
steps : and if they were octagon would it not be
handsomer? Her arms must be hung like an order
upon it, the shield appendant to a collar. We will
have some inscription to mark the cause of
erection." And later he wrote again : " Lord
Ossory is charmed with Mr. Essex's cross, and

AMPTHILL PARK 81

wishes to consult him on the proportions. He is
determined to erect it at Ampthill, and I have
written the following lines to record the reason : —

"'In days of old, here Ampthill's towers were seen,
The mournful refuge of an injured queen ;
Here flowed her pure but unavailing tears;
Here blinded zeal sustained her sinking years.
Yet Freedom hence her radiant banner wav'd,
And love aveng'd a realm by priests enslav'd.
From Catherine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread,
And Luther's light from Henry's lawless bed.'

"I hope the satire on Henry VIII. will make
you excuse the compliment to Luther, which, like
most poetic compliments, does not come from my
heart."

When Walpole saw the cross he sent another
letter to his friend, from which the following may
be quoted : —

" I have lately been at Ampthill and saw Queen
Katherine's Cross. It is not near large enough
for the situation and would be fitter for a Garden
than a Park ; but it is executed in the truest and
best taste — Lord Ossory is quite satisfied."

Walpole's remarkable correspondence with Lady
Ossory extended from 1769 to 1797, and gives a
marvellous insight into the manners of the day.
He addresses her in a most stilted, formal way, but
with all his formality he repeats gossip hardly of

82 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

a pretty nature for a lady's ear. His range oi
subject is immense, nothing is too small, too vulgar,
or too great for this fastidious gentleman's pen.
The murder of Miss Ray, the popular singer, is
given with coarse details ; and disease of every
kind is discussed. The old cynic's keen eye dis-
covers, however, some good points in women, for
in describing the illness of Lady Blandford he
makes particular mention of the devotion of Miss
Stapleton to her. He says that she tended Lady
Blandford from the first moment and has scarcely
been in bed since. " She is a virtue personified,"
and a virtue " with ,£30,000, while Lady Blandford
has nothing." He adds, " I wish we had some of
these exalted characters in breeches."

Every birth, death, and marriage is recorded in
these chronicles. Good advice upon literature is
freely given by the writer who had seen Pope and
lived with Gray, and the fair recipient is scolded
for not admiring Madame de Se'vigne'. Old houses
are described with all the grace Walpole delights
to use when writing about anything old and
beautiful. The vision of a glorious Claude and
a fine Teniers is noted down. Gay breakfasts
and dull dinners are mixed up with the condemna-
tion of some popular actor and the lauding of a
pretty actress ; and though Lady Ossory had so
" little dogmanity " the illness of his favourite dog,
Rosette, is related to her. Anon his audacity even

AMPTHILL PARK 83

goes so far as to admire her "glorious figure" in
no veiled terms.

Of course the author of "Modern Gardening"
makes allusions to flowers. " My house is a
bower of Tuberose ; " also " no fruit, no flowers,
no blackbirds, no thrushes because of the belated
summer." In January, 1797, when he had not two
months to live, writing, for what must have been
the last time, to "his Duchess" (as he sometimes
called Lady Ossory), he touchingly tells her, " I
shall be quite content with a sprig of Rosemary
thrown after me when the parson of the parish
commits my dust to dust."

If Ampthill is bound up with the memory of
Katherine of Arragon and her presence there in
the past — which lends it a perpetual interest — it
is also not a little beholden to Horace Walpole,
for his love of its inmates and devotion to its
beauty. Admiration from a pen so brilliant and
unique as his, even if not always quite sincere, is a
tribute not lightly forgotten.

ASHRIDGE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

"Of the Bonehoms of Ashrige besyde Barkamstede,

That goodly place to Skelton moost kynde,
Where the sange royall is Christees blode so rede
Whereupon he metrefyde after his mynde ;
A pleasaunter place than Ashrige is harde were to fynde,
As Skelton rehersith with wordes few and playne,
In his distichon made on verses twaine :
Fraxinus in clivo frondet que viret sine rivo,
Non est sub divo similis sine flumine vivo."

— JOHN SKELTON

ASHRIDGE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

A SH RIDGE possesses an unique position in
*~\ the world of English Gardens, for it has a
great past, a beautiful present, and a marvellous
history.

Though much of this last is shrouded in un-
certainty, surmise can connect the missing links in
the chain of facts, and a fairly complete story can
be woven together.

In the past the Garden, like the old house, was
entirely surrounded with walls. From ancient
records, it appears that there must have been
within these walls a Garden such as delighted those
who loved to dwell among " Mazes," " intricate
Meanders," " fantastic Yews," and " evergreen
Sculpture" — those "absurd tastes," which Henry
VIII. and his successors found pleasure in,
abhorred though they were by later generations.

How much of this old Garden was found still
existing by "Capability Brown" (that eager spoiler)

88 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

is unknown. He is supposed to have improved the
Park, but fortunately it retains its characteristic wild
beauty and the splendid Beech and Oak trees.

When Humphrey Repton was asked to make
alterations in these historic Gardens he was an old
man, and had discovered the errors of his ways.

Repton's career was of a rather dilettante nature.
Designed for a merchant's office, he worked but
half-heartedly at acquiring the knowledge necessary
to gain him a good position in the firm. Learning
French and German was to him only a means of
enabling him to discover the views held by other
nations upon Gardens and Garden design. Directly
his father died, he threw up his work in the office
and retired to the country, where he cultivated his
Garden at Sustead, and unfortunately helped to
design other people's. In those days Repton was
an enthusiastic admirer and imitator of Brown,
speaking of him as " Master."

Fortunately, before every delicious old Formal
Garden in England had been uprooted, a reaction
set in against the Landscape school. After the
correspondence between Sir Uvedale Price and
Repton, the latter was forced to moderate his views,
and the Gardens at Ashridge were undertaken,
when he brought to bear on their alteration very
different ideas to those he had held in earlier days.
" Few subjects," he wrote, " excited so much
interest as Ashridge. When no longer able to

ASHRIDGE 89

undertake the more extensive plans of landscape,
I was glad to contract my views within the narrow
circle of the Garden — independent of its accom-
paniment of the distant landscape. Although the
Park abounds in fine woods and large trees, the
view from the windows of the landscape is naked
and uninteresting. I was permitted, therefore, to
suggest the plantation of about eight acres, and as
every part of a modern Garden is alike I ventured
boldly to go back to those ancient trim Gardens,
which formerly delighted the venerable inhabitants
of this curious spot, as appears from the trim Box
hedges to the Monks' Garden."

Repton apparently respected the latter, and also
refrained from felling to the ground any beautiful
long avenues of trees in order to gain a view, though
he hated them "as being inconsistent with natural
scenery." One of Repton's elaborate " Red Books"
was most likely compiled on Ashridge, giving plans
showing the alterations and improvements. Some
of these, judging by the appearance of the present
Garden, must have been carried out, and time has
mellowed his crude touches in many places.

The only remains left of the monastery, which
stood so many hundreds of years ago at Ashridge,
are to be found in the Monks' Garden, and consist
of a red-roofed Conventual Barn and what is called
the " Parlour " ; both of which appear in the water-
colour drawing illustrating Ashridge.

90 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The Barn is enriched with dormer windows and
a centre turret ; the front wall has been put back
some feet and the old oak posts placed under the
beams of the roof, to form a covered way or cloister
walk.

Sir Jeffrey Wyattville finished his uncle's elabo-
rate design for the immense house (begun in
1808), at the same time making a few improve-
ments in the Gardens, such as placing stone vases
about the Lawns and the Gothic Cross in the
centre of the Monks' Garden. The cross forms
a Fountain, and is surrounded by a basin of water,
octagonal in shape, with raised pedestals of Gothic
design at intervals to support pots of flowers. It
has the appearance of having been removed from
some roof, and is of painted iron.

The plan of the Monks' Garden is square, and
there is good authority for saying that, if this
Garden is not the actual one made by the monks
for their herbs and vegetables, it is carried out on
similar lines. Imagination, therefore, can repeople
it with the grey-clad monks wandering among the
gravel walks and Box-edged knots which form this
prototype of a mediaeval Garden — without fear of
disillusion in the garish light of uncompromising
fact. Parallel with the old pillars of the Barn (now
covered with creepers and Ivy) is a long border in
which tall Sunflowers tower above the neighbouring-
flowers. Beside this border a gravel path runs

ASHRIDGE 91

round the square of the Garden. Four flights of
stone steps in the grass slope beyond form the
entrances to this Garden, which is on a slightly
lower level than the surrounding ground. These
steps are very effective, with their pedestal pillars
and vases on each side ; straight gravel paths run
from them to the central Gothic Cross, forming
with the Box-edged knots an intricate pattern.
Many of these knots have been filled — from a
design of Lady Maria Alford (the mother of
Lord Brownlow) — with coloured gravel or sand, a
very old custom made use of in early days, but
chiefly copied from the Dutch. Lord Bacon de-
nounced the practice in no measured terms: "As
for the making of knots or figures, with divers
coloured earths that they may lie under the
windows of the house, on the side which the
Garden stands — they be but toys ; you may see
as good sight many times in tarts ! "

It may be a debased form of flower Gardening,
but as a decorative effect it has great value,
especially when the hand which starts the "sight "
knows when to stay it, as is the case at Ashridge,
where the idea is to give a kind of floral inter-
pretation of the arms of the family.

On an August day this Garden is ablaze with
every colour of the rainbow, scarlet predominating
owing to the masses of brilliant red Geraniums.
Opposite the Monks' " Parlour " are some Rose-beds

92 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

and a lightly made Rose Pergola, which is con-
tinued down the side of the Garden opposite the
Barn.

Arcades of every kind and Pergolas — those
borrowed delights — are a great feature at Ashridge.
They are everywhere, and almost any part of
the Garden can be reached under some covered
way. Slight in construction, these Pergolas are
as a rule well placed, having plenty of air and
light. The Laburnum Pergola is perhaps unique,
and a more exquisite sight can rarely be seen
in Spring than this Pergola covered with heavy
yellow flowers like a " Golden Rain."

Besides the Monks' Garden, there are many
other special Gardens : the Herb and Lavender
Garden, the Italian Garden, the Terrace Garden,
and the Rosary. This last is in Repton's plan,
but whether he designed it or merely adapted
what already existed is not forthcoming. At any
rate, the design, whatever its origin, is most happy.

The Rose Garden, or Rosary, is circular in plan
and entirely surrounded by a very high Yew
hedge, through which solid green wall are cut
four entrances opposite each other.

Within the hedge, and quite near it, is a Rose
Arcade constructed of light stone pillars of Italian
design connected at the top by a circle of stone,
on which Roses are wreathed and trained in
festoons. In the centre of the Rosary is a Fountain,

ASHRIDGE 93

very plain and simple in design, surrounded by
a number of Rose-beds. Charming glimpses of
the house (framed in dull green) can be seen
through the archways cut in the Yew hedge.
No contrast devised by Nature or Art could com-
bine anything more beautiful in its way than the
transparent delicacy of the Roses against the dark
background of Yew.

The Italian Garden lies on the north side of
the house, and is well planned, having in the
middle a large stone basin of water round which
are grouped handsome stone vases raised on
pedestals, in many cases wreathed with beautiful
mauve Clematis, standing in Flower-beds filled
with flowers of many kinds.

A ring of Irish Yews cut in the shape of trun-
cated cones is placed on triangular-shaped plots
of grass close to the stone vases, the Yews giving
just the depth of dark foliage required. The
Flower-beds in this Garden are cut out of grass
in geometrical patterns, thus gaining a grass
border as well as an inner edging of Box, in some
cases a double one, the space between the two
rows of Box being gravelled.

From here the Lavender and Herb Garden
(which lies east of the Italian Garden) may be
reached by walking across a Lawn like velvet.

A Lavender Garden ! What a delight ! It is
a simple herb, but beloved by all, and by none

94 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

more than the old Garden writers ; for instance,
Parkinson who writes so prettily of herbs, puts
Lavender first among the many at the end of
his " Garden of Pleasant Flowers " : " After all
these faire and sweete flowers, I must needes adde
a few sweete herbes, both to accomplish this
Garden, and to please your senses, by placing
them in your nosegays, or elsewhere, as you list.
And although I bring them in the end or last
place, yet are they not of the least account."
He goes on to say that the pretty blue " Lavender
is little used in inward physicke, but outwardly ;
the oyle for cold and benummed parts and is
almost wholly spent with us for to perfume linnen,
apparrell, gloves, leather, etc., and the dryed
flowers to comfort and dry up the moisture of
a cold braine." Perhaps this latter is the origin
of Lavender salts, which are thought so good for a
cold in its first stage.

A marvellous number of herbs are to be found
in this quaint and original Garden, and round an
Armillary Sphere, which forms an appropriate
centre-piece, Lavender bushes are planted in circles,
giving a most delicious scent. Outside these cir-
cular beds of Lavender is a semicircular bed filled
with herbs, their names quaintly cut beside them
in the terra-cotta edging, giving in an unobtrusive
manner additional interest to the border. Among
the herbs are : Bay, Sweet Basil, Burnet, Thyme,

ASHRIDGE 95

Rue, Mint, Sage, Pennyroyal, Tansy, Rosemary,
and Fennel, many of which are mentioned in the
delightful old ballad :—

"Here's fine Rosemary, Sage, and Thyme,
Come buy my Ground Ivy.
Here's Featherfew, Gillyflowers, and Rue, 4
Come, buy my Knotted Marjoram, ho !
Come, buy my Mint, my fine green Mint.
Here's fine Lavender for your cloaths,
Here's Parseley and Winter Savory,
And Heartsease, which all do choose,
Here's Balm and Hyssop and Cinquefoil,
All fine herbs it is well known.
Let none despise the merry, merry cries of famous
London Town.

Here's Penny-royal and Marygolds,
Come, buy my Nettle-tops.
Here's Water-cresses and Scurvy-grass,
Come, buy my Sage of virtue, ho !
Come, buy my Wormwood and Mugworts.
Here's all fine herbs of every sort,
Here's Southernwood that's very good,
Dandelion and House-leek.
Here's Dragon's Tongue and Wood Sorrel,
With Bears-foot and Horehound.
Let none despise the merry, merry cries of famous
London Town."

A delicious fragrance lingers in a Herb Garden,
one which seems to exist nowhere else and is never
enervating or sickly, but always bracing — almost,
in fact, health-giving. In these days of gorgeous

96 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

blossoms few people realise the subtle charm which
lies in these humbler plants, or how much suffering
they have soothed with faith to help their magic
power.

Ashridge is a very proper place for a " Garden
of Simples," as in the old days the monks spent
much of their time cultivating herbs, and were
the only doctors of the poor. Many a pilgrim
who came to worship at the shrine of the Precious
Blood received bodily as well as spiritual healing.

Strangely few care to possess Herb Gardens
now, being either careless or forgetful of their
delicate charms, and preferring some more brilliant
growth.

There is in the Garden at Ashridge a large
piece of ornamental water, made one severe winter
to give employment to a number of men out of
work. This pond is rectangular in shape, enclosed
on three sides with high banks and with a trimly
cut Yew hedge running round it. As the pond
was used for skating, several flights of stone steps
were made to lead down to the water's edge.
Though handsome in itself, the pond is of no
value as a feature of the Garden. Water as a
rule is a great additional beauty to any spot, but
here it has been sunk so much below the level
of the ground that no rippling reflection can be
seen ; indeed, it remains hidden from view unless
it is looked at almost from the bank.

ASHRIDGE 97

" Grotto and Garden for Rock Plants " is marked
on Repton's plan for the Garden at Ashridge, and
this still remains, though it is most likely vastly
improved since his day. The usual subterranean
passage leads down into this Grotto, planted every-
where among the rocks with luxuriantly growing
ferns of every sort and size, making an exquisite
green bower, the very place for thought and rest,
as Andrew Marvel says : —

" Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness; —
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ; —
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."

The wide Garden Terrace in front of the house
is gravelled, and the Box-edged Borders are filled
with such pleasant flowers as Snapdragon, Mig-
nonette, Geraniums of all kinds, and Calceolarias.
At intervals between these borders are little square-
clipped Yews and Boxes containing very old scented
Lemon Verbena, the stems of which are nearly
twelve inches round, gnarled and twisted with age.

On the Lawn just below the terrace beautiful blue
Agapanthus are planted in tubs, adding greatly
to the general effect. Straight from this Terrace

98 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

stretch vast Lawns planted with splendid trees ;
and avenues of Ilexes and other deciduous trees
fade far away into the blue distance. This is the
Ashridge of to-day, with its vast house and
magnificent grounds, so different in its modern
splendour from the Ashridge of Elizabeth and the
old monks. Yet with all its modernness, for those
who know its history, there is still the romantic
glamour of its past. Items of interest about the
beautiful old place may be gathered by the score in
turning over old records.

Precisely how early Ashridge existed is hardly
known. Some claim that it was one of the King's
palaces before it became a monastery. The name
was formerly written Ascherugge, and is derived
from "a hill set with Ash trees" the first part of
the word meaning Ashentree, and rugge standing
for steep place — afterwards written ridge.

Ashridge is in the parish of Pitstone, and lies in
two counties, the present house being in Bucking-
hamshire, and the stables in Hertfordshire. The
monastery was founded in 1283 by Edmund, the
son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and King of the
Romans (the younger brother of Henry II.) and
Senchia, daughter of the Earl and Countess of
Provence. Richard endowed his wife on his
wedding-day with the third of his vast possessions ;
and, according to Matthew Paris, the old monkish
chronicler, the wedding was kept with the greatest

ASHRIDGE 99

pomp and feasting, over 30,000 dishes being
provided.

This monastery or college of the Bonhommes
(founded by Edmund, Earl of Cornwall) consisted
of a rectory and twenty brethren (thirteen to be
priests). Their rule was that of S. Austen, and
they wore the "amice " grey habits as required by
their statutes. This was the first settlement of their
order in England, and there were never more than
two or three of their houses in this country, as their
influence was not wide.

The Bonhommes were brought from the South
of France by the Earl of Cornwall — many writers
think they held beliefs similar to those of the
Albigenses, who were a plain, uncorrupt people who
strove to attain a more perfect holiness and a purer
faith than what they thought were professed by the
Romish clergy. " There were likewise," says
Newcome, " in the South of France sects of
Religious who put themselves under monastic rules
and were incorporated by the Pope and dis-
tinguished by the name of the Bons Hommes. The
charter of the foundation of Ashridge was confirmed
by Edward I. at Langley, in Hertfordshire. By it
the founder "gave to God and the Blessed Mary
and the Rector and Brethren of the College his
manor of Ashridge and Pichelstorne and his manor
of Little Gaddesden and Hemel Hempstead and
other possessions with numerous rites and privileges."

100 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The college at Ashridge was founded primarily in
honour of the Precious Blood of the Saviour.

Hollinshed says : " Edmund, Earl of Cornwall,
saw among the relics and other precious ornaments
of the ancient Emperors a box of gold said to con-
tain a portion of the Blood of Christ." He obtained
the box and bestowed " a portion on Hailes in
Gloucestershire," and " he founded an Abbie a little
from his manor of Bircamsted, which Abbie was
named Ashrug."

This great treasure and relic proved a mine of
wealth to the college, bringing hundreds of pilgrims
who seldom came empty-handed.

The same relic had already procured for Hailes
the distinction of creating a national oath — such
is the irony of life ! The oath is mentioned by
Chaucer in " The Pardoneres Tale " thus : —

" That vengeance shal not parten from his hous,
That of his othes is outrageous.
By Goddes precious herte, and by his nailes,
And by the Blood of Crist, that is in Hailes."

The devout founder of the old college died there
in 1300 : for his generous and magnificent gifts he
was given the title of " Summus Religiosorum
Patronus " and the brethren joined his name to that
of his father in their prayers. His heart was
interred at Ashridge in a gold casket, already
holding that of his friend and father-confessor,

ASHRIDGE 101

S. Thomas de Cantelupe (the last Englishman
canonised). The treasures at Ashridge, as well as
the beauty of the place, attracted many benefactors,
among them the Black Prince, who was so lavish
with his gifts as often to be mistaken in later years
for the original founder, instead of the second, as he
is always called. Henry, Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop
of Winchester, assisted the monastery when it was
in dire straits and rebuilt the choir with his own
money. The quiet, peaceful reign of the monks,
or Bonhommes, amid their lovely surroundings
came to an end in the time of Thomas Waterhouse,
who was the last of the fifteen rectors. Waterhouse
was a scholarly man of good family, and lived for
many years after the dissolution of the monasteries.
Henry VIII. styled him "his Gentleman Priest."
Was it, perhaps, his non-resistance which gained
him this title from the impetuous Henry ?

In 1534 Waterhouse acknowledged Henry's
supremacy, and surrendered his house to the King,
during whose reign the college and its lands
remained in the possession of the Crown, the
revenue being at this time, according to Dugdale,
£416 143. 4d.

About this date the fraud of "the Precious
Blood " was discovered, " when the sunshine of the
gospel had pierced through such clouds of darkness
and men's eyes were opened to the fact that the
worshipped and reverenced relic was nothing but

102 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

clarified honey, coloured with saffron." This dis-
covery was proclaimed at S. Paul's Cross by the
Bishop of Rochester on February 24, 1538.

Edward VI., ever a generous and admiring
brother of his learned sister Elizabeth, granted her
the numerous " manors and lands, among them the
parcel of the lands and possession of the late college
of Ashridge, with all its edifices, curtilages, orchards,
Gardens." A goodly gift!

A very fair idea of these Gardens can be gained
from old monastic records. They were chiefly
planted with what would be suitable for domestic
use, the cultivation of a flower Garden for its actual
beauty having hardly yet come into existence,
especially within the precincts of a monastery.

Edward VI. is supposed to have planted the
Western Avenue, still called " Prince's Riding,"
but from its appearance and age it is much more
likely to have been planted in Charles II.'s reign,
when such Avenues were popular.

In 1552 the Princess Elizabeth grew weary of
the Court of her sister, Queen Mary, filled as it
was with intrigue, and where one day she was the
Queen's dearest sister and the next within an ace
of prison and perhaps death. At last, after frequent
delays — Mary never knowing her own mind —
Elizabeth gained permission to leave for the
country.

Sir Thomas Pope, her friend and the kindest of

ASHRIDGE 103

jailors, wrote of Elizabeth that "her amiable qualifi-
cations every day drew the attention of the young
nobility and rendered her universally popular ; the
malevolence of the vindictive Queen still increased.
The Princess therefore thought it most prudent to
leave Court, and before the beginning of 1554
retired to her house at Ashridge in Hertford-
shire." This retirement did not give Elizabeth
the peace she desired ; her footsteps, and even
those of her servants, were constantly dogged by
spies. The life of sport and country pleasure which
she loved was denied her, as well as her studies
with Ascham. New matrimonial schemes were
suggested to her day by day, only to be warded
off with some vain excuse in the marvellously
evasive manner so early adopted by Elizabeth in
any difficulty.

The idea of Mary's Spanish marriage had excited
great indignation amongst the English people, who
saw the dawn of Roman Catholic power already
creeping over the land, especially as the Act which
had declared the Queen legitimate had not done the
same by Protestant Elizabeth, whom Mary refused
to acknowledge as her heir. This and many other
signs of the times roused the nation to the point
of rebellion, and in different parts of England
simultaneous risings were planned. That in Kent
was headed by Sir Thomas Wyatt. The plan was
to put Elizabeth upon the throne, after marrying

104 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

her to Lord Courtney, a vain, foolish youth, whom,
gossip says, the Queen herself at one time wished
to marry. He, however, preferred Elizabeth as
being better-looking and nineteen years younger.
Gardiner, through this popinjay, soon discovered
the whole plot, thereby forcing Sir Thomas Wyatt
to take up arms sooner than he had intended, thus
marring many of his plans.

Soon a serious insurrection broke out which
might have ended very differently but for the
courage of the Queen, whose Tudor blood rose to
the occasion. Addressing the people from the
Guildhall in a stirring speech, she enrolled thousands
on her side. Wyatt's fate was sealed ! Fighting
bravely against desperate odds, deserted and ex-
hausted, he fell into his enemies' hands at Temple
Bar.

Everything pointed to Elizabeth being mixed up
in this fatal plot, and the Queen sent her a Royal
summons to appear immediately at Court, where
she would receive "a hearty welcome." The invita-
tion was mistrusted, and Elizabeth, feigning sick-
ness, retired to bed, sending a message to the
Queen that she was too ill to travel, but that as
soon as she was able she would come, and prayed
her Majesty's forbearance "for a few days."

Norden, in his description of Hertfordshire,
written in 1596, appears to think Elizabeth's
sickness real. He describes Ashridge "as a

ASHRIDGE 105

Hermitage," and goes on to say : " Wherin also
our most worth and ever famous Queene Elizabeth
lodged as in her owne (beinge then a more stately
house) at the time of Wyatt's attempt in Queen
Marys days. And from this place she was in all
post sent for by the Courte, by such severe Com-
missioners, that though she were sick, she was
forced to take her journey with them." Elizabeth's
excuses were accepted by the Queen for some days,
but then, as Elizabeth had been denounced by
Wyatt and others under horrible torture, Mary
sent her own doctors to ascertain if Elizabeth
could stand the journey. " Lord William Howard,
Sir Edward Hasting, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis,
attended by a troop of horse, were ordered to bring
her to Court. They found the Princess sick and
even confined to bed at Ashridge."

Bodily and mental weakness were conquered by
Elizabeth's courage, and on the approach to
London — ever wise, even in such small but telling
details as dress — she appeared robed entirely in
white as an outward sign of her innocence. And
she also ordered the cover of the Queen's litter (in
which she was travelling) to be opened, so that the
frankness of her countenance might be seen by the
people.

There is little doubt, according to the annals
of that time, that Elizabeth narrowly escaped death.
Every powerful Catholic was eager, on some

106 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

pretext or another, to accuse her of treason,
her existence being a perpetual menace to the
supremacy of their religion in England. Elizabeth's
behaviour, and the ties of relationship between her
and the Queen, undoubtedly saved her life at this
critical time. After a trying and anxious time of
imprisonment in the Tower, Elizabeth was removed
to Woodstock — a State prisoner, guarded by soldiers
night and day.

Elizabeth never again stayed at Ashridge, the
remembrance of the unhappy days she had spent
there perhaps rendering the place distasteful to
her, but she left behind her the proverbial shoes
— in this instance "two sumptuous" pairs — that
future generations should recognise the tiny
dimensions of her Royal foot.

On Elizabeth's succession to the throne, the
lands of Ashridge continually changed hands.
The Queen first granted the house and part
of the estate to William George, one of her
gentlemen pensioners, the papers recording this
gift being still in existence.

In the seventeenth year of her reign she gave
the whole estate with the house to John Dudley
and John Ayscough, who sold it within fourteen
days to Lord Cheyne, who, according to Norden,
kept it, for he writes, " This place (Ashridge) is
lately beautified by the Lord Cheyne."

Randolph Crewe bought Ashridge in 1602

ASHRIDGE 107

from Lady Cheyne, keeping it for two years,
when it was bought by Sir Thomas Egerton, who
with great trouble managed to get back the
lands which had passed away from the old
college estate.

The college of the Bonhommes at Ashridge was
originally a good specimen of thirteenth-century
work, but in Elizabeth's reign it fell into great
disrepair. It was, however, put in perfect order
by Sir Thomas Egerton, who also made extensive
alterations. From a view of the house published
in 1768, it appears that it was entirely enclosed
within a court, the entrance being through a hand-
some porch, which formed the porter's lodge.

The chief feature of the old building was the
hall, which had high Gothic windows and wings
at each end with huge bay windows. The two
smaller wings are thought to have been added
during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.
The cloisters remained intact till 1800, when Lord
Bridge water pulled the whole of the old house
down ; the cloisters being so damaged by the
destruction of the house that they too were destroyed.
Brown Willis says that at this date the painting on
the cloisters was still clearly to be seen, especially
the fresco of the Crucifixion. To this old house
belonged an old Garden, entirely surrounded by
walls, and described by a youthful poetess some
years later as "a perfect Eden" of delight.

108 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Sir Thomas Egerton was no ordinary man. His
name figures in the history of his day — Lord
Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth,
afterwards Baron Ellesmere and Lord Chancellor
to King James, and finally, in 1616, Viscount
Brackley. Lord Ellesmere when an old man
married for his third wife the celebrated Dowager
Countess of Derby (the cousin to whom Spenser
dedicated " The Teares of the Muses "), whose
daughter had married Lord Ellesmere's son John,
afterwards Earl of Bridgewater. There are many
amusing old documents concerning the Egerton
family, alluding to different festivities — such as
the "Christening" of "Mrs. Magdalen Egerton,
1615," and then follows an amazing list of require-
ments for the feast, among which are a list of
" comforts," such as Collyanders, Anneseeds,
Roses, Violets, Muske, Orringe, Rosemary — all
interesting from a Garden point of view.

Milton's Masque of " Comus " owes its origin to
John, eldest son of the Earl of Bridgewater, and
his sister, Lady Alice Egerton, who once lost their
way in a dense forest called Haywood, near Ludlow,
and were benighted, which incident forms the
subject of the Masque, with fantastic additions.

" Comus " was presented at Ludlow Castle in
1634 on the occasion of Lord Bridgewater's
installation as Lord President of Wales and the
Marches, when great feasts and entertainments

ASHRIDGE 109

took place, carried out with every possible magnifi-
cence. The parts were actually played by the
three children of the President, Lord Brackley,
Lady Alice, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, whose
adventure had first suggested the idea of the
Masque.

Ashridge fared badly at the hands of the Parlia-
mentary soldiers during the Civil War ; for Lord
Bridgewater complained to Cromwell " that Captain
Washington and Captain Kemsey with their
soldiers entered into his park and house at
Ashridge, detained his servants prisoners, beat
down the ceilings, broke open and hewed down the
doors of the house, notwithstanding they had been
set open to them, searched his evidence-rooms,
studies and closets, took away plate and arms
besides what household stuff he knew not of."

If this kind of damage had continued, the lovely
old house would have become uninhabitable, but
Lord Bridgewater evidently " purchased the
possession " of his home and was left in peace,
though Cromwell removed him from his appoint-
ments, and existing letters show that his loyalty to
the King across the water placed him in great
danger of imprisonment.

When Charles came by his own again, he did
not forget the owner of Ashridge, and wrote
letters to him about the preservation of game.
The game laws in those days were terribly severe,

110 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

the penalties of poaching being horrible mutilations
and even death. The liberty enjoyed in England
to-day is often forgotten, and only on reviewing the
past conditions does the advance of justice show in
its true light.

A very pretty story is attached to the broad,
sweeping Avenue of trees which runs from the fields
beyond the village to the very windows of the
house.

Lady Bridgewater's widowed mother lived in the
village, from which the great house seemed miles
away. Her only daughter found no glimpse could
be seen of her old home among the fields. But
love found out a way ! A wide Avenue, straight as
a die, was cut from one house to the other, and
signals and signs could then pass between the two
loving hearts, though it is sad to think so many
hundreds of beautiful trees were ruthlessly cut
down — for the sake of a woman's whim.

The first Duke of Bridgewater married Elizabeth,
the third daughter of the great Duke of Marl-
borough, and the acknowledged toast of the day.
Pope admired the lady, as well as Jervas, the
Court painter, and alluded to her in an " Epistle
to Mr. Jervas " :

"Thence Beauty, waking all her forms, supplies
An Angel's sweetness, or Bridgewater's eyes.

With Zeuxis' Helen they Bridgewater vie."

ASHRIDGE 111

Alas ! the angel died very young, and among the
virtues and accomplishments mentioned on her
tomb, it is recorded " that she could speak not
only English but French " !

The Duke soon filled her place by a very different
lady, and his second Duchess outlived her husband,
making later a marriage which was a nine days'
wonder. "We have been entertained," writes
Walpole, "with the marriage of the Duchess of
Bridge water and Dick Lyttelton — she forty, plain,
very rich, and with five children, he six-and-twenty,
handsome, poor, and proper to get her five more."
This strange marriage appears to have proved very
happy, possibly owing to the lady's riches and the
husband's good-nature. In 1764, when she was a
gouty old woman of sixty, he allowed himself to be
wheeled everywhere " in a gouty chair," as she was,
to prevent remarks upon the disparity of their
ages. Certainly such sympathy and tact must have
gone far in the making of a happy marriage.

This charming man was stepfather to the
beautiful Di Egerton, who "had her caprices" as
to whom she would and would not marry. In the
end her choice was not a wise one, and it would
perhaps have been better if she had married
Mr. Seymour, though he had declared her letters
were too affectionate and was " so unsentimental
as to talk of desiring to make her happy, instead
of being made so by her ! "

112 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The celebrated maker of the Bridgewater Canal
was the third and last Duke. He was always called
" the Father of Inland Navigation," having started
the huge enterprise of canal-making in England,
and seeing no use in rivers unless they fed
navigable canals.

Being decidedly eccentric, he took a great dislike
to both flowers and women. The latter aversion
may be traceable to his rejection by Elizabeth
Gunning in favour of another Duke ; for her sake
he remained a bachelor to the end of his days.

The beautiful Miss Gunnings had a romantic
history. Daughters of a Mr. Gunning, of Castle
Coote, in Ireland, they were so desperately poor
that they had thoughts of going on the stage,
instead of which Maria married Lord Coventry
and Elizabeth was twice a Duchess and the mother
of four Dukes! "You don't exchange prisoners,"
wrote Walpole to his friend Con way, Field- Marshal
and Statesman, " with half so much alacrity as
Jack Campbell (afterwards Duke of Argyle) and
the Duchess of Hamilton have exchanged hearts.
I had so little observed the negotiations, or sus-
pected any, that when your brother told me of it
yesterday morning, I would not believe a tittle — I
beg Mr. Pitt's pardon, not an iota. It is the
prettiest match in the world since yours, and every-
body likes it but the Duke of Bridgewater and
Lord Coventry. What an extraordinary fate is

ASHRIDGE 113

attached to those two women ! Who would have
believed that a Gunning would unite the two great
houses of Campbell and Hamilton ? For my part,
I expect to see my Lady Coventry Queen of
Prussia. I would not venture to marry either of
them these thirty years, for fear of being shuffled
out of the world prematurely to make room for
the rest of their adventures." A strange history,
indeed, for the girls who were so poor that they
borrowed clothes from Peg Woffington to go to
the Dublin Drawing-room !

As can be imagined, whatever the last Duke of
Bridgewater did for canals, he was not so successful
with Gardens ; and his cousin and heir, John
Egerton, must have found the Gardens at Ashridge
in a sorry plight, and certainly destitute of flowers.
It was this cousin, the seventh Earl (the Dukedom
had become extinct), who built the present magnifi-
cent house, in size as large as half a dozen German
or Italian palaces. This house was designed by
James Wyatt in 1808, and finished by Jeffrey and
Digby Wyatt successively, thus being the work of
three generations of famous architects.

Practically nothing remained of the old house,
the last Duke having had the greater part of it
pulled down, meaning to build a new one. When
his cousin came into the property hardly a room
had a roof, only the lodges remained standing.
The Duke had lived for years in the porter's lodge,

114 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

collecting material for the new house which stands
on the site of the old monastery.

This immense building has a frontage of a
thousand feet and possesses every excess of the
modern florid Gothic style, abounding in towers,
turrets, and battlements. The chapel which lies
by the side of the house is considered to be Wyatt's
masterpiece. The last Earl of Bridgewater was
as eccentric as the last Duke ; he is but remembered
as the originator of the famous " Bridgewater
Treatises," he having left in his will ^"8,000 to be
paid to the author of the best treatise on the
Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested
in the Creation. The sum was divided into eight,
and among those who received a part of it were
Dr. Chalmers, Sir Charles Bell, and Whewell.

In the lovely old Hotel Egerton in the Rue Saint
Honor6, Lord Bridgewater spent many years in
absolute seclusion. A little crowd of dogs and
cats dressed up as men and women shared his
meals, sat at his table, daily drove out in his car-
riage, and imitated all his doings. Perhaps he had
early in life learnt that the heart of a dog is more
faithful than that of most human beings.

This eccentric old gentleman died surrounded by
his dumb friends, leaving a most extraordinary will,
bequeathing everything to Viscount Alford, the
eldest son of the Earl of Brownlow, but stipulating
that if Lord Alford or his successor did not in a

ASHRIDGE 115

given time become either a Duke or a Marquis, the
estate should be relinquished. This condition
nearly ruined the property, but finally, after many
suits in Chancery, "the House of Lords granted the
property to Lord Alford's son " — although he was
neither a Duke nor a Marquis.

Ashridge, possessed of six and a half centuries
of historical interest, has remained in that family
ever since.

The words of the satirical old Laureate are indeed
still appropriate to Ashridge, with its Avenues,
Park, and mass of Gardens :

"A pleasanter place than Ashridge is harde were to fynde."

But the old man, who died about 1529, would
perhaps not recognise " the goodly place " in these
days !

BECKETT, BERKSHIRE

"But now let us conjecture that so presentient Auscultator
has handed in his Relatio ex Actis ; been invited to a glass of
Rhine-wine ; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to
his dusty Town-home, is ushered into the Garden-house, where
sit the choicest party of dames and cavaliers : if not engaged
in ^Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and
perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of " harps and pure voices
making the stillness live." Scarcely, it would seem, is the
Garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble mansion
itself." — Sartor Resartus.

T. CARLYLE

VI

BECKETT, BERKSHIRE

A WAY down near Faringdon, in Berkshire, is
•**• to be found one of the greatest treasures in
the way of Garden Architecture — no other than
the first reputed Garden-building in England ;
built and designed by Inigo Jones, the magnificent
designer of later Renaissance Art on the lines of
Palladio.

This Garden House has been called by various
names : " Banqueting Room," " Summer House,"
"Fishing Lodge," "Tea House," or "China
House." It overhangs an artificial piece of water,
close to the house at Beckett, belonging to Viscount
Barrington. A quaint, fantastic building, said to
be the forerunner of all the numerous Temples,
Banqueting-houses, and Casinos, built to suit the
fashion which sprang up during the Stuart period
for such Garden-houses. Like most fashions, in the
end it became an extravagance, but the first of

120 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

these houses was both effective and useful. The
celebrated one at Beckett is supposed, without
doubt, to bear upon it the seal of its master — the
princely Inigo Jones.

It distinctly shows the influence which Chinese
architecture and art exercised in Europe in those
days. The little Chinese figures and houses which
crept into England on the beautiful Oriental
porcelain were the originals of many designs of
a light and graceful nature. And on such lines
a number of these Garden-houses were carried
out.

Originally the Garden House at Beckett stood at
the edge of a small stream, long since turned into a
fair-sized lake, the alteration being due to the 6th
Viscount Barrington, and the effect now is certainly
pleasing — which cannot, unfortunately, be said for
many such changes.

The Garden House is placed on what might be
called a wide platform projecting into the lake.
From the house it is approached by a long
Terrace-walk of grass, bordered on each side
with gay flowers, behind which runs a railing
covered with trailing Roses. Below, against the
Terrace wall, there is a beautiful border of
Magnolias, Figs, Fuchsias, and Clematis, making
a bright spot of colour among the surrounding
green.

By going down the Terrace steps, another path

THE GARDEN HOUSE, BECKETT

BECKETT 121

can be taken leading to the lower room of the
Garden House, which is on the level of the water.
Built of a beautiful yellow-coloured stone, the
house is constructed with four high doors and
eight large windows. Round three sides runs a
wide balcony, the Terrace Walk approaching it on
the fourth side.

The most marked feature of the whole structure
is the heavy pointed roof of green slate (with a white
pinnacle in the centre), built with tremendously
overhanging eaves, quite seven feet wide. It is
this roof with its projecting eaves which gives the
decidedly Chinese appearance to the Garden
House, sometimes called in consequence " the
China House."

This little building of yellow stone and green
slates, and the bright flowers surrounding it, all
harmonise perfectly with the beautiful white and
yellow Water Lilies floating on the water under the
little white cradle bridge which is thrown across the
lake, the whole effect giving to this part of the
Garden a feeling of being for ever enf£te, so unlike
the character of the Garden elsewhere, with its sombre
green walks and high Yew hedges. Many a gossip
over a dainty tea-table — when first that woman's
luxury came into fashion in Queen Anne's day —
must have taken place here ; and if the walls of the
beautifully proportioned little building could speak,
they would be to tell of old-world tea parties, and

122 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

the fair ladies who talked over the latest scandal
while drinking scented tea out of tiny Chinese
cups.

The high road from London to Bath ran past
Beckett, and it is supposed that the Garden House
was built to enable the ladies of that day to watch
the coaches as they passed by. They must in this
way have often caught sight of friends, and possibly
have brought them in to hear their news and have
a few hours' rest. Quite a romantic little picture
could be painted of this fascinating House and its
fair inmates. Such a building as this Garden
House at Beckett must add greatly to the effect
of any Garden, and give constant pleasure by its
originality of design, while its position and whole
treatment is quite perfect. Long ago great artists
thought nothing too small to do well, and they
possessed the rare power, so seldom found in these
days, of being able to design churches and palaces
full of grave grace and dignity, as well as to erect
fantastic little buildings like the Garden House at
Beckett. They also had that nicety of judgment
which enabled them to know where to place their
buildings ; for instance, here, the little Garden
House stands just where it is wanted, and where
it looks well from every point of view. It is not,
however, surprising to find this exact knowledge
with regard to its design and position when the
name of the architect is remembered. Inigo Jones

BECKETT 123

is one of the many men whose name is associated
with great work, but of whose life there is little
authentically known.

Born on the 25th of July in 1572, in the parish
of S. Bartholomew-the-less in West Smithfield,
his baptism is recorded in the register of that
church, as well as many other references to the
family history. Evidently his strange name puzzles
the writer not a little, as he makes many attempts
at spelling it — " Enego," " Ennigo," etc. Inigo
Jones's father was a clothmaker by trade, and a
Roman Catholic. Opinions differ as to his position ;
some say he was a rich merchant, and others that
he was very poor and far from being a successful
man. The well-known pride of Inigo Jones rather
points to the latter; he is markedly reticent upon
the subject of his parents and his early life, which
is therefore shrouded in obscurity and can only be
conjectured. That he was apprenticed to a joiner
in S. Paul's Churchyard seems most likely, as he
and this humble trade are made a great jest of more
than once by his brilliant at one time friend, and
later bitter enemy, Ben Jonson. "It is perfectly
well known," writes Cunningham, in his Life of the
architect, "that In-and-in Medley, the Joiner of
Islington, was meant for Inigo Jones ; that the
ridicule which it threw on his name and history
caused him to complain, and that in consequence
the representation was forbidden." Certainly there

124 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

seems no doubt about the following passage from
" A Tale of a Tub " :—

" Medley.

Indeed there is a woundy luck in names, Sirs,
And a vain mystery, an a man knew where
To find it. My godsire's name I tell you
Was In-and-in Shuttle, and a weaver he was,
And it did fit his craft ; for so his shuttle
Went in-and-in still — this way and then that way.
And he named me In-and-in Medley, which serves
A joiner's craft, because that we do lay
Things in-and-in, in our work.

But I am truly

Architectonicus Professor, rather;
That is, as one would say, an architect."

The only occasion on which Inigo Jones himself
gives any information about his life is in his book,
" Stonehenge Restored," and then it is in a veiled
way. " Being naturally inclined, "he writes, " in my
younger years to study the arts of design, I passed
into foreign parts to converse with the great masters
thereof in Italy, where I applied myself to search
out the ruins of their ancient buildings which, in
despite of time itself and violence of barbarians, are
yet remaining. Having satisfied myself in these
and returning to my native country, applied my
mind more particularly to the study of archi-
tecture."

It was at the end of the sixteenth century that

BECKETT 125

Inigo Jones paid his first visit to Italy. This journey
is said to have been paid for by William, Earl of
Pembroke, though Inigo Jones's chief biographer is
strongly opposed to the idea that he had any liberal
patron. The language of the quotation from his
own book is certainly not that of a man supplied
with money by a patron, nor does it sound like that
of a man who spent his youth as a " Joiner in
Islington," " a maker of hobby-horses." The
fashion in vogue for Masques during the reigns of
King James I. and King Charles L, brought Inigo
Jones first into notice; for — "Whitehall, during
these reigns, vied with the Ducal Palaces of
Florence, Urbino, and Ferrara, in the pomp and
beauty of its Masques." Two great artists were
found in England to produce these Masques with
the most consummate art : Ben Jonson, who
brought to the task all his great learning, and
wrote the words, or libretto, in which some of his
most exquisite lyrics are to be found ; and Inigo
Jones, the disciple of Palladio and the architect of
Whitehall, who carried out the scenic effects —
called by Ben Jonson " Machinery," with more
than a master's hand. They were assisted by an
Italian composer, one Alfonso Ferrabosco, who
wrote the music, and " by an English chores-
grapher, Thomas Giles, who arranged the dances
and decided the costumes."

Masques were looked upon with favour by even

126 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

grave, serious people like Sir Francis Bacon, who
wrote an essay upon the subject of " Masques and
Triumphs," in which he gives little information con-
cerning them, but says, " Let the scenes abound
with light, specially coloured and varied ; and let
the Masquers and any other, that are to come down
from the scene, have some motions upon the scene
itself before their coming down ; for it draws the
eye strangely, and makes it with great pleasure to
desire to see that it cannot perfectly discern," and
much more concerning light and colour.

The first Court Masque that combined the great
talents of Jonson and Jones was given at White-
hall on Twelfth Night in 1609, and was called
"The Masque of Blackness." It was the first
entertainment given by the Queen (Anne of
Denmark), and the subject was suggested by
her.

Of all the necessary scenery, etc., Jonson gives a
minute description, and jealously adds at the end,
" So much for the bodily part which was of Master
Inigo Jones design and art."

This Masque cost ,£3,000 to produce, which
shows on what a lavish scale James I. was willing
to pay for his entertainments — very unlike his
economical predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, who only
cared for her subjects to provide such costly
pleasures for her amusement.

Of all the Masques arranged and written by

BECKETT 127

Jones and Jonson, perhaps the most charming is
that of "The Hue and Cry after Cupid." Venus
complains that Cupid has run away, and she bids
the Graces cry him, in those dainty, exquisite
lines : —

" Beauties, have you seen this toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind ;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say !
He is Venus' runaway.

He hath marks about him plenty,
You shall know him among twenty,
All his body is a fire,
And his breath a flame entire,
That being shot, like lightning in,
Wounds the heart, but not the skin."

This Masque was celebrated with the greatest
magnificence, being " intended for my Lord Had-
dington's marriage is now the only thing thought
upon at Court." Five English and seven Scotch
Lords took part in it — " it will cost them about
^300 a man," writes the same pen.

Successive Masques quickly brought Inigo Jones
into a prominent position in the eyes of the King,
the Court, and the fashionable world.

King James, poorest of kings, while governing
the richest of nations — dreamt of a palace grander
and greater than any in Europe, and soon enlisted

128 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

the genius of Inigo Jones in his ambitious project.
The Banqueting Hall is the sole sign of this would-
be magnificent Palace of Whitehall, which certainly,
if it had been built, would have rivalled the most
gorgeous palaces of the world. But it existed only
on paper. The empty exchequer and the fatal Civil
Wars in Charles I.'s reign finally put an end to all
idea of the building of this palace, and the splendid
designs have remained till now in a portfolio. King
James having determined to carry out a part at
least of Inigo Jones's plan, the first stone of the
Banqueting Hall was laid in 1619. It was finished
in two years, being much admired for its elegance
and proportion — ''hardly inferior to the best work of
the Italian masters."

Strange irony of fate, that Inigo Jones should
live to see his second " Royal Master step out of
his own Banqueting Hall at Whitehall on to the
scaffold to his death."

The quarrel of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones is
one that often results from very ordinary people
working together, and it is not at all surprising
that it occurred between these two men of genius.
Each considered the other the lesser star, and
neither wished to be subservient to the other.
The poet desired the chief glory for himself; in
his introduction to the " Hymenaei" he writes : "It
is a noble and just advantage that the things sub-
jected to understanding have of those which are

BECKETT 129

objected to sense ; that the one sort are but
momentary, and merely taking ; the other im-
pressing and lasting ; else the glory of all these
solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone
out, in the beholder's eyes. So short-lived are the
bodies of all things in comparison of their souls."

Inigo Jones was not the man to be willing to
take a secondary place, so they ceased to work
together and became as great enemies as they had
been friends. There is no doubt that Jonson was
right, and that his part in the Masques was the
greater, and that if Inigo Jones had not left behind
him other works his name would long ago have
been forgotten. He, however, managed to gain
and keep Court favour, while Jonson died, after a
lingering illness, in dire poverty. Unfortunately
he demeaned his last years by making allusions
and accusations of the very meanest kind against
his old friend. So much so that Howel, in one of
his letters to the poet, says : " I heard you cen-
sured lately at Court, that you have lighted too
foul upon Sir Inigo, and that you write with a
porcupine's quill dipt in too much gall ; excuse me
that I am so free with you, it is because I am in no
common way of friendship yours."

In consequence of Howel's remonstrances, " Jon-
son recalled and destroyed every copy of his ' Tale
of a Tub,' and after his death not a line of it was
found. One copy, however, escaped destruction,

130 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

to give evidence of the quarrel between poet and
architect to future generations."

During the Civil Wars Inigo Jones joined the
Royalist forces, and was taken prisoner by Oliver
Cromwell at the fall of Basing, as well as some
other notable men, such as Faithorne, Wenceslaus,
and Hollar (who engraved Vandyck's sketch of
Inigo Jones).

The latter end of the architect's life was filled
with sadness ; " he tasted early the misfortunes of
his Master (Charles I.)." "So in disgrace, grief,
misfortune and age ended his life — and death
found him willing of its embrace." He died in
June, 1653, at the age of eighty, and was buried in
S. Bennet's Church, Paul's Wharf.

Opinions differ very widely as to Inigo Jones's
position as an architect, but the school of to-day
would agree with Horace Walpole's comment,
" Were a table to be formed for men of real
and undisputed genius in every country, this
name (Inigo Jones) alone would save England
from the reproach of not having her representa-
tive among the arts; she adopted Holbein and
Vandyke ; she borrowed Rubens ; she produced
Inigo Jones."

The country all round Beckett is of the greatest
interest, lying near the Vale of the White Horse,
so closely associated with the great King Alfred,
the King having been born at Faringdon, only

BECKETT 131

five miles from Beckett, and the whole neighbour-
hood is filled with quaint old legends of him and
his people.

In former days Beckett used to be written
" Becote," and belonged to the Earls of Evreux,
who gave it to the Priory of Norion, in Normandy.
King John, coveting the house and lands, seized
them in 1 204, and liked the place so well that he
lived there for some time — a fact proved by an
existing mandate sent by him to the Sheriff of
Oxfordshire, which bears his signature and was
written at Becote. Later the Manor belonged to a
family who took their name from it, calling them-
selves " De Beckote," and who held it by tenure of
a very fanciful kind, reading quite like a passage
from Malory's " Morte d' Arthur" — it was that they
were to meet the King, whenever he should pass
Fowyeares Mill Bridge, Shrivenham, with two
white capons in their hands, saying, " Ecce Domine
istos duos capones quos alias habebitis sed non
nunc."

Beckett is much altered since the days of Inigo
Jones. The old Manor House has disappeared ;
it was partly destroyed during the Civil Wars, and
was finally pulled down to make way for the new
house, which is placed a little further back than the
old site, and was built in 1831 by the sixth Viscount
Barrington from the designs of his brother-in-law,
the Hon. Thomas Liddell.

132 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The house is surrounded by a small and
picturesque Park, filled with many beautiful trees,
but the gardens are not extensive, being chiefly
of the same date as the present house. Traces of
older Gardens, though, still remain, testified to
by the masses of clipped Yew and Box in which
the Garden abounds. It is these beautiful dark
Yews and close-clipped Box hedges which, with the
Garden House, are the chief beauties of Beckett,
it being one of those Gardens possessing a beauty
of green instead of a glory of flowers.

A large piece of ornamental water, already men-
tioned with the Garden House, lies close to the
Terrace of the house, nearly encircling the green
Lawns which surround it. This lake was made out
of what used to be a stream in Inigo Jones's time.
The alteration was made when the house was built
by the 6th Lord Barrington, and the present
Gardens were laid out from plans made by the
Hon. Thomas Liddell, vistas being cut in the trees
to allow the distant hills to be seen.

On the far side of the lake there is a wood —
or Wilderness, as it was called in the old days.
Long grass walks, clipped hedges of Laurel,
Box or Yew, and a beautiful green Bower —
enclosing high Elms and Beeches — are all rem-
nants of an older Garden. The large modern
Lawns which surround the House slope gradually
down to the water's edge, and are planted with

BECKETT 133

many fine trees, Cedars of various kinds, and
Umbrella Pines (both planted by the 6th Lord
Barrington), also Catalpas, and some very hand-
some Elms.

There are many fascinating walks at Beckett ;
one, particularly charming, is the " Old Lord's
Terrace " (often called the Haunted Walk) ; it runs
from the House across the lake — on stone piers —
and has beautiful springy Moss underfoot. It is
very dark, very green, and very solemn, with its
edge of venerable Yews trimly clipped. At the end
of this walk stands a magnificent old Yew, like
a huge pillar — just the spot to be haunted by any-
thing from wicked little sprites to an unrestful soul.
There is an old legend which says the place is haunted
by a lady, but the story is wrapt in mystery.

On the west side of the House there is a grass
Terrace with a sloping bank, edged on one side by
high, cut Yews, allowed to grow freely at the top.
It leads down to the water's edge ; on the other
side the bank rises more gently, and is edged on
either side by high Elms and Beeches, which form
part of the wilderness.

The geometrical Parterres containing flowers,
which were arranged along the space between the
west Terrace and the Yew plantation, were turfed
over by the 6th Viscount Barrington.

The alteration of an old Garden must always
create a feeling of regret — regret at the loss of the

134 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

original whole, so seldom to be met with nowadays ;
and whatever charm alterations may bring in their
train, they rarely atone for this loss.

The old Manor House and Garden at Beckett
possessed, in all probability, much interest and
beauty, to judge from the Garden House built by
the great architect on the side of the lake, where it
is set like a rare gem in the midst of flowers, with
a rich background of dark Yews.

BROWNSEA ISLAND, DORSETSHIRE

"... And yet studded with gardens ; where the salt and
tumbling sea receives clear rivers running from among reeds
and lilies ; fruitful and austere ; a rustic world ; sunshiny, lewd,
and cruel. What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing-
time ? What means the sound of the rain falling far and wide
upon the leafy forest ? To what tune does the fisherman whistle,
as he hauls in his net at morning, and the bright fish are heaped
inside the boat ? These are all airs upon Pan's pipe ; . . .
some, like sour spectators at the play, receive the music into
their hearts with an unmoved countenance, and walk like
strangers through the general rejoicing. But let him feign never
so carefully, there is not a man but has his pulses shaken when
Pan trots out a stave of ecstasy and sets the world a-singing." —
Virginibus Puerisqtie.

ROBERT Louis STEVENSON

VII

BROWNSEA ISLAND, DORSETSHIRE

PLINY the elder says "that Plautus assigneth
the custodie of Gardens to the protection of
the Goddess Venus." This gives birth to the vain
fantasy that once upon a time the ever-changing
beauty of the Gardens at Brownsea enticed Venus
to visit the Island where they lay. And as she
wandered flowers sprang up at her feet, and the
fragrance of her floating garment perfumed the air
for ever. Her presence laid such a spell upon the
spot that since then many a man and woman living
on the Island became enchanted with its beauty,
desirous of living there for all time, happier
within its sea-lapped meadows than anywhere else
in the wide world. In remembrance of the
Goddess of Love and Beauty, the Island has
ever been a favourite with birds of every kind ;
the Plover, the Red-Shank, the Green-Shank, the
Crossbill, and the beautiful Kingfisher, and many
others live in the Gardens and marsh-land.

138 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

And the trees and flowers have flourished
luxuriantly ever since her visit! For, truth to
tell, the whole Island is like one vast wild
Flower-garden, all the year round, carpeted with
Daffodils, blue Hyacinths, and pale Primroses in
Spring, and in the Summer months decked in a
dainty ball-dress of pink Bell Heather. Dyed
golden during Autumn with the orange-coloured
Bracken and yellow Furze, the many Pines and
Shrubs with which the Island abounds keep it
green throughout the Winter.

That all this wonderful wild-flower beauty is to
be found upon a small island adds greatly to the
charm. Nothing shows the delicate transparency
and colour of a flower like the clear sea air, and
nothing is quite so lovely as a Garden of flowers
by the sea.

To gain this enchanted Island by boat is only a
matter of a few minutes. The Garden entrance is
found after landing at a stone pier, by passing
through a door in the pier-house, into a long
passage (built out over the water) which leads to it.
Coming so suddenly into the warm, sheltered spot,
from the fresh sea-breeze, gives quite an exotic
feeling to the atmosphere of the Garden, especially
when on every side — Lavender, Roses, Honey-
suckle, Mignonette, Lemon Verbena, Tobacco
Plant, Jessamine, scented Geranium, and Helio-
trope perfume the air with their fragrance. The

BROWNSEA ISLAND 139

present owner of Brownsea, Mr. Van Raalte, has
greatly changed and improved this Garden.
Formerly it had a very large Conservatory across
one end, with a glass passage from it, leading round
the side of the Garden, and forming a covered way
from the pier to the house. But when the house
was rebuilt, after the fire in 1896, this was done
away with, the whole effect being vastly improved.

Conservatories and glass passages are great blots
upon any Garden ; the only method of reducing this
necessary evil to a minimum being to sink them
almost out of sight.

Roses have been planted, at the lower end
of the Garden, where the Conservatories formerly
stood. Against the north wall, amid a mass of
green foliage of every shade, is a stone Fountain
supported by dolphins ; little stone cupids hang
over the water, which splashes unceasingly on to
the dolphins below, and runs over two steps into
the semicircular basin beneath, which basin is
surrounded by a narrow verge of grass.

Near the Fountain, against the wall, grows a fine
Eucalyptus tree (showing the mildness of the
climate), its dull, silvery leaves being a charming
background and delightful contrast to the delicate
pink Roses growing there.

A little flagged stone path runs round the
Fountain, beside the wall, past a semicircular lattice
window in the latter, through which are to be seen

140 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

glorious glimpses of the sea, often the colour in the
sunlight of the deepest turquoise.

Another charming feature is a Sundial, formed by
a little lead figure of Cupid, supporting the dial
above his head. It stands on the grass in the
centre of the Rose Garden, between the Fountain
and two large Irish Yews.

The whole feeling of this little Rose Paradise —
if it may be so called — with its Fountain, Amorini,
dark Yews, and flagged pathway is deliciously
Italian. For on a vivid Summer's day in the heavy,
scented air, and with the gentle lapping of the sea,
it might easily be thought to be some old Garden
upon the shores of the Mediterranean. Only,
beautiful as Italy is, and ever will be, there is here
a glimmer of some inexplicable light and shade —
some touch of colour, some dreamy sadness not
found in the land of Petrarch and Tasso, but only
in sad, grey England, the home of Chaucer and
Shakespear. A Rose Garden must always possess
a magic fascination, perhaps because, as old Gerade
writes: " The Rose doth deserve the chiefest and
most principall place among all flowers whatsoever ;
being not only esteemed for his beautie, virtues, and
his fragrant smell, but also because it is the honour
and ornament of our English Sceptre." A book of
many volumes could be written upon this one
flower, of its beauty, its pride, its perfume, and last,
but not least, its exquisite grace.

THE WALL FOUNTAIN, BROWNSEA

BROWNSEA ISLAND 141

Every poet, from Omar onward, has chanted lays
in honour of this Queen of Flowers. The words
of Cowper picture very nearly the little Rose
Garden at Brownsea, save that here the Roses are
chiefly pink : —

"The scentless and the scented Rose; the red
And of an humbler growth, the other tall
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighbouring Cypress or more sable Yew.
Her silver globes, light as the foaming surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave."

This Rose plot is divided from the rest of the
Garden (which is on a slightly higher level) by a
low Terrace wall. Four enormous Irish Yews stand
sentinel near by, emphasising the Italian feeling
that lingers over this Garden.

The walls of the Terrace are covered with
Roses, Fig trees, and Honeysuckle, and down the
two sides of the Garden, under the upper Terrace
wall, are long beds of herbaceous plants glowing
with colour.

This upper Terrace has its own special charm and
beauty, and many picturesque effects. For instance,
the Terrace wall possesses the uncommon feature
of not being level along the top, but drops down
in a graceful curve at intervals, like a chain sus-
pended between posts. Stone vases — some of
which are filled with flowers — stand on this wall

142 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

between each curve. At equal distances along the
stone-flagged Terrace boxes are planted with Bay
trees, clipped into the shape of balls at the top
of their long, thin stems. Everything is in keeping
with the general decorative design of this Terrace
Garden. An old-world Sundial, of vase-like shape,
standing on a low octagonal step, marks the hours
of sunshine — and they are many — in the midst of
this Garden. In the grass round the Sundial are
Flower-beds, the colour scheme of which is arranged
with great artistic knowledge. The flowers chosen
shade from the palest pink to the deepest crimson,
and are framed in a border of grey Rabbit's Ear
(Stachys lanata) and sweet-smelling Mignonette.

The ground on which the house is built is so
uneven that above this Garden is another paved
Terrace, on the level of the first floor of the house,
and from it steps lead down and down till they
reach the sea-shore. From this upper Terrace the
view is one of ever-changing beauty and interest ;
ships of various kinds are for ever passing and
repassing along the water highway. Three-masted
schooners laden with wood, or picturesque London
barges with red sails swelling in the wind, a fishing
smack, or perhaps a little rowing boat, come and
go, appearing and disappearing between the Ilex
trees and Pines that fringe the shore.

Towards the centre of the Island lies the Kitchen
Garden, far-famed for its wonderful Lavender

BROWNSEA ISLAND 143

hedges (Lavender flourishing almost like a weed
in the sandy soil) and a Pergola of Apple trees,
which in spring is like a fairy web of interlacing
boughs, covered with delicate white gossamer
blossoms. Though this is called a Kitchen Garden,
it has no appearance of the ordinary Garden of that
name, but is rather a fantastic maze of walks among
a mass of flowers. Down the centre of this Garden
runs a long gravel path, which is kept gay right up
to October by a border filled to overflowing with
herbaceous plants, its whole length edged with
Cushion Pinks, which are indigenous to the soil.
In the middle of this pathway, to break the long
line, a Maypole, or pillar, is set up, hung with
festoons of Roses, while branching to right and
left are Pergolas of Roses. Under this sweet-
smelling shade grow clustering bunches of White
Pinks and other flowers. On three sides this Garden
is confined by hedges of close-clipped Laurel, and
on the fourth by the Grape and Peach Houses.

In the very midst of the Island, near the Kitchen
Garden, are two lakes, one below the other, both fed
by springs. These lakes are surrounded by trees,
and are so sheltered and quiet that the spot is
beloved by wild duck and other water-birds.

From this lovely Garden, with its Terraces,
Fountains, and perfumes, it is necessary to turn to
find out a little of the history of the Island on which
it lies — though in reality the Garden is the Island,

144 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

and the Island a Garden — and also to learn who
helped to make all its present beauty. Brownsea
Island is oval in shape and lies at the east end of
Poole Harbour. It is a mile and a half in length,
and three-quarters of a mile wide at the broadest
part, and contains about 800 acres of land, which
has the great advantage of being very well watered.
In early days Brownsea was covered with Heath,
Furze, and Fern, but the sandy soil has proved
splendid for a large number of plants and flowers.
Mr. Benson, one of the owners of the house,
was devoted to Gardening and had a collection —
numbering many hundreds — made of the varieties
of plants growing on the Island.

The name Brownsea has been written many
different ways — Brunsi, Branksey, Bronksey, Brink-
sea, or Brink of the Sea. The origin of the name
is difficult to trace. According to Mr. Van Raalte
it is derived from " Bruno," to whom the Island
belonged in Edward the Confessor's time.

Brownsea is not mentioned in the Doomsday
Book, but was probably included in the Survey
of Studland. Leland, on one of his many journeys
for Henry VIII., gives the earliest description of
Brownsea : " There ly three isles in the haven of
Poole, whereof the most famous is Brunkesney,
sum say that there has been a paroch in it. There
is yet a Chappel for an H eremite. It longeth to
Cerne Abbey." In the records of Cerne Abbey

BROWNSEA ISLAND 145

the " Chappel " is mentioned ; it was dedicated to
St. Andrew.

The Island in early days seems to have been a
convenient place of retreat for the Danes after
raiding and pillaging along the coast.

In an old MS. Life of St. Ethel wold (brother of
King Edmund), the monkish chronicler writes :
" Canutus, having spoiled the church and monastery
of Cerne, took to the haven, and sailed thence to
Branksey, i.e., Brank's Island : which is two miles
from Poole ; having in it no buildings save a
chapel only."

The wreck of the sea at Brownsea was granted
to the Abbot of Cerne by Henry II., showing that
the Island at that date was still in the hands of
the monks. It continued to be so till the dissolu-
tion of the monasteries by Henry VIII., who had a
square tower built, as a block-house, on the Island,
to protect the harbour of Poole, that town agreeing
to send six men to " watch " it. Afterwards this
was construed into their providing a garrison and
also repairing the fort, on which the inhabitants of
Poole had to spend large sums of money.

John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the first
private possessor of Brownsea, Henry VIII. grant-
ing him the "Island and water surrounding" it.
He, however, soon passed the gift on, having
gained permission to dispose of it to Richard Duke,
and his heirs.

146 A BOOK 0$ ENGLISH GARDENS

A very good idea of the appearance of the Castle,
or Block-house, in 1552, can be gained from docu-
ments of that date. The square of the tower was
44 feet, and the height 176 feet, the walls being
6J feet thick and built of freestone, forming
altogether a pretty solid piece of work — very
different to what is done in these jerry-building
days. Later, in Elizabeth's reign, the mayor and
burgesses of Poole petitioned the Privy Council to
help them in repairing the Castle, it having become
a source of danger. Elizabeth graciously granted a
" delivery of cannon and ammunition," but shrewdly
insisted upon the mayor and the town supplying, as
of old, " the six men to watch and ward." After
this grant the Castle was styled "the Queen's
Majesty's Castell of Brounecksey." By far the
most interesting possessor of Brownsea in those
days was Sir Christopher Hatton. Owing little to
his birth (being the third son of a gentleman in
Northamptonshire), perhaps less to his brains, and
all to his graceful appearance, Sir Christopher was
indeed born under a lucky star. Sir Richard
Naunton writes of him as "a gentleman that
besides the graces of his person and dancing, had
also the endowment of a strong and subtile
capabilitie, and that could soone learne the
Discipline and Garbe, both of the times and Court,
and the truth is, he had a large proportion of gifts
and endowments, but too much of the season of

ISLAND 14?

envy, and he was a mere vegitable of the Court
that sprang up at night and sunke againe at his
noone." In 1561 the members of the Inner Temple
celebrated Christmas by representing a splendid
Masque in which Hatton played the part of " Master
of the Games " ; the notice of the Queen, who was
present, was immediately attracted by his appear-
ance. As Camden says : " Being young and a
comely talleness of body and countenance he got
into such favour with the Queen, that she took him
into her band of fifty Gentlemen pensioners."
Unlike most Royal favourites, Hatton made more
friends than enemies. But he roused the jealousy
of Leicester, who, on account of the Queen's admira-
tion for Hatton's dancing, suggested to his royal
mistress the introduction of a dancing-master, who
excelled her favourite in every way. " But Eliza-
beth drew a proper distinction between the merit
of an artist and the skill of an amateur." " Pish,"
she said contemptuously, " I will not see your man
— it is his trade."

The Queen's partiality caused " much envy, and
some scandal " ; perhaps calling her favourite such
nicknames as "Lydds" (Lids) and "sheep" was un-
dignified in so great a sovereign. It was in 1 574 that
Sir Christopher Hatton, with the Queen's consent,
applied to Dr. Cox, the Bishop of Ely, for the lease
of the episcopal house in Ely Place, Holborn —
afterwards Hatton Garden. The Bishop made a

148 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

desperate effort to save the property of his see, and
refused to relinquish his house to Sir Christopher,
thus calling down upon his head the well-known
reprimand from the Queen : " Proud Prelate ! I
understand you are backward in complying with
your agreement, but I would have you know, that I
who made you what you are can unmake you ; and
if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement by
God I will immediately unfrock you. Elizabeth."

Sir Christopher Hatton's appointment to the
Chancellorship was very unpopular at the time, he
being put above many men who had a greater right
to the position. His marvellous tact, however, as
usual smoothed his way — in time. It was wittily
saifl " that he made up for his want of law by his
constant desire to do what was just ! " Perhaps
those who were indifferent as to justice were
reconciled to the Lord Chancellor by his far-famed
dinners, and the excellent sack which flowed at
them. Queen Elizabeth granted Brownsea to Sir
Christopher Hatton in 1576, with Corfe Castle.
And at the same time he was made Admiral of
Purbeck. The people of Poole were not best
pleased with this gift of the Queen's, and a dispute
arose between them and Sir Christopher Hatton
with regard to the right of the Castle to the profits
of the ferry between the haven points. The quarrel
ended in a small fight, a bark, The Bountiful
Gift, being fired on from Brownsea for not obey-

BROWNSEA ISLAND 149

ing orders, and the captain and one of the crew
were killed. This incident is all quaintly described
in the register of St. James's Church at Poole.

The many letters Sir Christopher Hatton wrote
to the Queen might almost be called love-letters, so
passionate is their language. In one of the last he
ever wrote — after he had fallen under her dis-
pleasure, he writes : "If the wounds of thought
were not most dangerous of all without speedy
dressing, I should not now trouble your Majesty with
the tones of my complaint, and if whatsoever came
from you were not either very gracious or grievous
to me, what you said would not sink so deeply in
my bosom. . . .

" My profession hath been, is, and ever shall be
to your Majesty, all duty, within order, all reverent
love without measure, and all truth without blame ! "

Shortly before his death, in 1591, he was much
harassed by the Queen's insisting on the repayment
of a large sum of money which he owed to the
Crown. The sum amounted to ,£42,000, so it was
small wonder that his last days were filled with
anxiety. According to old Fuller, "It brake his
heart, that the Queen (which seldom gave boons,
and never forgave due debts) rigorously demanded
payment for some arrears." Nowadays it has been
proved that Elizabeth, though desiring the money,
was not so heartless as old historians represent, for
she visited him and prescribed a cordial. But

150 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

sorrow at her displeasure, and anxiety about his
debts, as well as disease, all combined to kill him at
the age of fifty-one.

A greater man than Hatton possessed Brownsea
Island for a very short time. No other, in fact,
than Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury ;
who already owned Hatfield, having exchanged
Theobald's for it with King James. Nothing is
known of Brownsea during his ownership of it —
whether he ever stayed there, or if he only used
it as a means of gaining money for other pleasures.
The Castle was well fortified by the Parliamentary
party at the time of the Civil War. Bury, the
treasurer for the county, mentions " large chests of
musquets " as coming from Weymouth. Old books
say that Charles II.'s visit to Poole and Brownsea
was owing to his fear of the Plague — which conduct
appears somewhat out of keeping with the character
of the Merry Monarch. But whatever the cause,
he certainly visited Poole ; and the record of his
visit runs thus : " After dinner it pleased His
Majesty with the Duke of Monmouth and Lord
Ashley to take Coll. William Skult's boat to
Brownsea, steered by the sayd Collonel and rowed
by six masters of shipps, where his Majesty tooke
an exact view of the said island, castle, and bay,
and this harbour, to his great contentment, and
then returned in the said boat unto the key of
Poole, where the said mayor had the honour to

BROWNSEA ISLAND 151

hand his Majesty on shore, from whence he went
on foot to the house of the said Collonel."

It was Richard Haycalt, who first established
copperas works at Brownsea. And it was in
Charles II.'s reign that the works were opened
again by Sir Robert Clayton, at one time Lord
Mayor of London, and a very rich, clever, business
man, who thought to gain money by working them.
They were finally closed in 1704.

An interesting allusion is made to Brownsea and
these works in Celia Fienne's book, " Through
England on a Side-saddle in the Time of William
and Mary": "Thence to Poole, a little seaport town
4 miles off where a very good minister in ye publick
Church Mr. Hardy. From thence we went by
boat to a little Isle called brownsea 3 or 4 leagues
off where there is much Copperice made, the stones
being found about ye Isle in ye shore in great
quantetyes, there is only one house there wch is
the Governour's ; besides little fisherman's houses
they being all taken up about ye Copperice
works."

The next owner, Mr. William Benson (" auditor
of the imprest") bought the Island for the ridiculous
sum of ^300. He at once started to rebuild the
Castle as a house for himself, much to the indigna-
tion of the people of Poole, who declared that the
Castle was Crown property and a means of defence
for the coast, and Poole in particular. Benson

152 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

replied that he had bought the Island and every-
thing on it, the Castle being naturally included.
The Mayor of Poole appealed to George II., but
the matter was finally dropped for some reason which
remains a mystery. The fascination and beauty
of Brownsea appealed to Benson, and he did a
great deal for the Island in every way. He
restored the Castle and built the great hall (now
the music-room), and started cultivating the land,
lavishly planting it with trees of every kind.
Perhaps it is to him and Mr. Humphrey Sturt
that the Island owes some of its Palms and Orange
and Lemon trees, as well as the beautiful slopes
covered with Rhododendrons, Juniper, Scotch Firs,
Cedars, Corsican Pines, and many kinds of ever-
green and deciduous trees.

Sir Gerard Napier and Mr. Humphrey Sturt,
who were later joint owners of Brownsea, beautified
the place in every way, especially Mr. Humphrey
Sturt who, when it became entirely his property,
spent both time and money (^"50,000) upon doing
everything in his power to improve it. It was he
who began the Garden close to the house, and
planted hundreds of beautiful trees, realising early
the truth of John Evelyn's words, " Men seldom
plant trees till they begin to be wise, that is till
they grow old, and find by Experience the Prudence
and Necessity of it." Mr. Humphrey Sturt's son,
Charles, inherited Brownsea, and was so passionately

BROWNSEA ISLAND 153

attached to the Island that he made it his home,
and spent his life improving the grounds. In 1818
the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) — so
celebrated for his fashion in clothes, and his
manners, which gained for him the nickname of
" the First Gentleman in Europe " — paid Brownsea
a visit, and candidly acknowledged "that he had
no idea there was such a delightful spot in the
kingdom" — the balls and routs of London being
doubtless better known to him than English
scenery.

Colonel Waugh was attracted to Brownsea chiefly
because of the clay to be found there which he
desired to use for a Pottery. He bought the
Island in 1852, and spent a great deal of money
on promoting this industry at the west end of the
Island, building cottages, which still exist, though
the Pottery works have long been given up. One
of the most important of Colonel Waugh's improve-
ments at Brownsea was the reclaiming of a hundred
acres of land, and the building of an embankment
and sea-walls round it.

The many beautiful Italian works of art which
are in the house were brought there by Mr.
Cavendish Bentinck when he owned Brownsea.

During Major Kenneth Balfour's possession of
the Island the house was burnt and the interior
entirely ruined. It was rebuilt in 1897 and came
into Mr. Charles Van Raalte's hands in 1900, since

154 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

when he has never ceased to improve, beautify, and
add interest to it in every way.

Truly an Island of enchantment, the glamour of
its beauty carries the beholder, in memory, not to
one but many a lovely spot. For near the front of
the house, looking through the Ilex trees on a
sunny day, the white towers of the pier-house and
the long stone steps leading down to the clear,
green water, appear like a little glimpse of the
Riviera. Then looking towards Corfe Castle,
standing rugged and grand across a stretch of
water, which suggests a still, dark Scotch loch,
with Heather growing down to the water's edge,
between the Firs can be seen the Heather-
covered islets and far-away hills fading into a
blue mist.

To be in Holland it is only necessary to visit
what is called the Marsh, with its windmill (used for
pumping the water) and long, low sand dunes,
stretching away into the distance. Even Venice,
that peeress of cities, is often suggested when
looking across the harbour towards Poole, which
lies very low, the wooden posts which mark the
sand-banks rising out of the water, and making long,
green shadows on the still, opalescent surface.

COTTAGE GARDENS

' Well may'st thou halt, and gaze with brightening eye !
The lovely Cottage in the guardian nook
Hath stirred thee deeply; with its own dear brook,
Its own small pasture, almost its own sky !
But covet not the Abode ; forbear to sigh.
As many do, repining while they look;
Intruders — who would tear from Nature's book
This precious leaf with harsh impiety.
Think what the home must be if it were thine,
Even thine, though few thy wants ! Roof, window, door,
The very flowers are sacred to the Poor,
The Roses to the porch which they entwine ;
Yea, all that now enchants thee, from the day
On which it should be touched, would melt, and melt away.'

W. WORDSWORTH

VIII

COTTAGE GARDENS

FLOWERS woven together with love make
the garland of the poets, especially of the
English poets — for the people of England adore
flowers more than any other nation in the world.

The poet who wrote of the beauty of the stately
homes of England was praising, no doubt, what
most appealed to her ; while her choice of the
obviously beautiful for the subject of her poem
suggests the Gardens already described in these
notes, yet it leaves unsung all the beauties belong-
ing to the Cottage homes of England.

The passion for flowers and the love of colour
which is born of their beauty is to be seen more
than anywhere else in Cottage Gardens. Many a
green English lane is adorned with gorgeous spots
of colour, the little Gardens of these flower-lovers.

Dame Nature has given the most beautiful lesson
in love in these "Gardens trim," belonging to the
poor; for clever, gentle, loving tending of the

157

158 A BOOK OF ENGLISEt GARDENS

flowers is repaid with much finer results in these
tiny plots than in the great Gardens cared for by
the best of paid Gardeners and planted with seeds
and cuttings of the most expensive kinds. People
often wonder what magic power causes the lovely
blossoms to bloom so profusely when crowded in
the small corner of ground belonging to a work-
man's Cottage, the same flowers proving very
ordinary under a trained Gardener's care. Love
is the magic power, which the flowers, with that
exquisite generosity for which they are renowned,
repay a thousandfold, by blooming with a lavish
abundance and beauty.

Few realise that flowers live and feel, and that
plucking a Rosebud (if not carelessly thrown aside)
is an act of appreciation, and produces that
marvellous prodigality of blossoms, seen more in
Cottage Gardens than elsewhere. In large Gardens
the flowers are tied up, straight, and tall, and left as
decorative features in the whole effect, while in tiny
Gardens the pretty buds are tended with a loving
care and grow unfettered at their own sweet will.

A Cottage Garden ! Who cannot picture one or
more, the memory of which are linked with far-off
childish days, and the remembrance of the sweet-
smelling, gay-coloured, old-fashioned flowers is
wafted across the years with a delightful fragrance ?
The joy of having lived in one dear little
village all through childhood's years is a lifelong

COTTAGE) GARDENS 159

possession. A friend writes : " Oh, to be back once
again in the little old-world village in the heart of
old England, to see the dear old people who petted
and spoilt us as children, and gave us at any hour
an ever-ready welcome! Our favourite was Mrs.

P , the wife of the village carpenter, whose

little plot we so often raided, neither Hall nor
Vicarage Garden holding Gooseberries such as hers.
At the top of the little flagged pathway, under a
trellis of Vine and Honeysuckle we would see our
beaming hostess standing, her little red, apple-
cheeked face, framed in a snowy, frilled cap, over
which she wore a wide-brimmed, black mushroom
hat. She was never seen without that hat, indoors
or out of doors ; it was as well known to every
one as the peacock, bravely cut out of the Yew
hedge, at the little wicket-gate, beside the bushes
of Lad's-love and Lavender.

" The owner of the small village shop was another
favourite ; she possessed a Cottage and Garden quite

near Mrs. P 's, but how different ! Tea with

Hannah was a keen delight, her parlour ornaments
consisting of a castellated cottage, cows, stags,
dogs — in fact, a perfect farmyard was fingered by
us with the pleasure that children always have in
other people's possessions when unlike their own.
Among these wonders was a doll quite a hundred
years old, with which we were never tired of
playing.

160 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

" Hannah looked upon her flowers as children,
always alluding to them as 'her' or 'him,' and she
insisted on our calling upon them in turn, and
recounted to us their histories, how long she had
had them, where they came from, and with whom
she had divided them (the poor are so generous
with their flower treasures, unlike the rich ; with the
former it is certainly a case of 'what I gave I have').
Before we said goodbye to Hannah in the little
red-tiled kitchen, the sunlight, streaming in between
the Geraniums and French Lavender which filled
the lattice window, making pretty patterns on the
floor, she presented us each with a posy of flowers,
varying in size according to our ages. They were
stiff, like altar bouquets in shape, built up on a
background of stiff Box and Lad's-love, and made
of Carnations and Lavender and a plentiful supply
of Monthly Roses, Honeysuckle, scented Geraniums,
Snapdragon, and a white 'paper flower,' as we
called it, never discovering its real name.

" There was another Garden which was a great
joy to us children — though rather a fearful joy,
owing to its somehow filling us with a sense of awe ;
it belonged to Mrs. B , the village school-
mistress, and was prim, like herself — a type that has
long since passed away from English village life.
She taught us needlework, and seldom now do you
see such 'stitchery.' People in the twentieth
century have not time to do work like hers.

COTTAGE GARDENS 161

"Her Cottage possessed great and rare treasures,
in an arched porch of beautiful clipped Yew, and
a hedge of mixed Yew and Box, both planted by
her husband, the village sexton. They were much
prouder of the Yew hedge and porch than of any of
the flowers which grew in the small Garden, for
Yew recalled happy memories to them both ; the
Garden of her old home had been full of such
hedges, and the first words of her 'courting' had
been spoken, she told us, beneath the arch of
a Yew porch, and the tree had been beloved by
them both ever since. The first green thing planted
beside their new home, it became part of their lives,
for they had tended and watched its growth for
years. She has gone to rest now ; and no one was
surprised when the old man planted a Yew tree
on her grave and clipped it into the shape of a
cross."

To define a Cottage Garden is difficult, especially
now that the present-day craze for spending week-
ends in the country has resulted in many an old
Cottage and Garden passing out of the villagers'
hands into the possession of a very different class,
to be adapted, changed, and added to by their new
owners ; the one thing remaining unchanged being
their name. There may be little in a name — "a
Rose by any other name " may smell as sweet, but
it takes more than the name to make a Cottage
Garden. Some ingenious person defined a Cottage

162 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Garden as one that "the hireling knave" had no
part in. But this brings under the name many that
have no right to it. Many suburban Gardens are
worked in the most praiseworthy manner, entirely
by their owners, yet no one would dream of calling
them Cottage Gardens.

It may appear a dogmatic statement, but ex-
perience seems to show that a true Cottage Garden
can only be created by a villager. Of course they
have been imitated, but in the imitation a strange
under-current of educated taste peeps out that spoils
in the copy the character of the original ; much of
the charm of which lies in the simple combination
of flowers and vegetables that only a cottager can
produce.

There is always an exception to every rule, and
the friend who writes so lovingly of the village of
her childhood mentions the Garden which stands
out in her memory. " Of all the Gardens long
ago, that which perhaps has the greatest hold on
my imagination is one which belonged to a dear
old French lady who, nurse declared, was very well
born, and had seen better days, and who took
a quaint cottage in our village. The little building
was thatched, and but for a Vine growing over its
whitewashed walls, the Garden was represented by
a perfect wilderness of weeds, a storehouse of mis-
cellaneous rubbish so apt to be attracted by any

COTTAGE GARDENS 163

piece of waste land in a village. With the rude
curiosity of children we watched her arrival from
a point of vantage. She had few belongings, and
the odd hamper or two of old roots and cuttings did
not foretell future Garden beauties to our childish
eyes. But as if by magic, before a year had passed,
the Garden, under her care, became a mass of
blossoms. And in time over the porch grew a
sweet-smelling white Clematis, while on the cottage
walls climbed Gloire de Dijon and Monthly Roses ;
and in summer a long row of white Madonna Lilies
showed their heads above the white palings like
a procession of beautiful white saints. Striped
Carnations — which for size, scent, and shape could
seldom be equalled, if ever surpassed — scented the
Garden. Everything the old lady touched grew,
apparently not by rule but by love. She planted
like her neighbours, only with greater success, and
only where it excelled the others could her garden
be distinguished from a villager's. In Spring her
bulbs were always in bloom, and the Garden was
gay with Daffodils, Jonquils, Scillas, Grape Hya-
cinths, Wallflower, and ' Polly-urns,' as we used to
call them.

" Memory still brings back the delicious scent of
her Garden. The perfume was wafted across the
little field lying between it and the church, where
we sat on Sunday evenings, all the doors wide open
during the hot, sultry summer weather. It was the

164 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

only lady's Garden in my experience which was at
the same time a true Cottage Garden possessing all
the little touches and arrangements peculiar to
one."

The absence of the intimate knowledge of one
village and the delight of watching the little well-
known plots of ground changing their dark Winter
dress for the fresh beauty of Spring, and later to the
full glory of Summer, is to a certain extent com-
pensated for by the interest of a wider if less
intimate acquaintance with many a village, and the
different ways of doing things in various counties.

Truly there is no race in the world in which so
many flower-lovers are to be found as among the
English. England is just a large Garden, made
up of a number of smaller ones, with a fringe of
little Cottage Gardens.

Travellers abroad know that the little oases of
colour and green are not to be found attached to
each tiny homestead as in England. Here even
the hideous railway line which has cut through
many a glorious park is not without its brightening
touch of flowers, grown often by the stationmaster,
in a rich profusion which proclaims a born Gardener.

So deeply rooted in the English race is this love
of flowers, that wherever an English man or woman
goes, be it to the uttermost parts of the earth,
among the most adverse conditions, a Garden is
made. For instance, from Africa comes the follow-

COTTAGE GARDENS 165

ing example of perseverance in Garden-making :
"A man fond of Gardening and a good Garden
started one last Spring. It did well till one day
the locusts swarmed over it and the Garden was
devoured. Nothing daunted, the man started again,
and the Garden soon looked well, and with pride
he cut his first Cucumber. Then hail fell for three-
quarters of an hour and there was no Garden left !
Undaunted, again he started and again everything
flourished, when tremendously heavy rain fell (really
a sort of waterspout) and caused a flood — and the
Garden left for Delagoa Bay ! All he has in that
Garden now is a crop of mealies, which are not his,
for they were washed down by the same flood from
a Garden higher up !

" But he will never own himself defeated, and is
making another Garden."

Such men are the Garden-makers of the world,
and would succeed at any cost. The beautiful idea
of planting, in toil and trouble, for others' gain is so
often to be seen in the Gardens of the East. Trees,
flowers, and vegetables are all planted, tended, and
cared for by some man who will never reap the
benefit, but leaves his work as a legacy from one
unknown Englishman to another.

Cottage Gardens have some special features in
every county. Down in Worcestershire there is
hardly one, even the very smallest, that has not
a little orchard of Apple trees, laden with snowy

166 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

blossoms in Spring and rosy fruit in Autumn, giving
to the small Gardens an additional beauty.

Then in Cornwall and Devonshire, where the
climate is mild, bushes of Myrtle and Tamarisk,
besides Hydrangea, grow by the side of the cottage
door, in quite an everyday manner.

The Hop is the hallmark of the little Kentish
Garden plots. One Garden to be seen down there
stands out from among many in the exceeding
beauty and abundance of its flowers. Even in its
surrounding walls, old and grey, nestle Houseleeks
and Stonecrops. Flags, Foxgloves, Primroses,
Leopard's Bane, clumps of Forget-me-not, mixing
their delightful blue with the rich brown of the
Wallflowers, all and every kind of flower in turn
blossoms gaily. From the first of Spring flowers —
that " pleasant plant " the Crocus — to the last flower
of Autumn, all blooms appear at their best, almost
tumbling over each other in their lavish growth.
The only attempt at order in this tiny Garden, with,
its marvellous wealth of flowers, is the edging of
Thrift.

"This is an everlasting greene herbe," says
Parkinson, " which many take to border their
beds, and set their knots and trayles, and therein
much delight because it will grow thick and
bushie, and may be kept, being cut with a pair
of Garden sheeres, in some good handsome
manner and proportion for a time and besides

COTTAGE GARDENS 167

in the summer time send forth many short stalks
of pleasant flowers, to decke up an house among
other sweete herbes."

Bordering the little path up to the porch
(covered with Hops) are standard Rose bushes,
rising from beds of "pretty Fancy," or Heartsease,
the flower so beloved that it has been named
again and again. Many of these names are
curious, such as " Pink of my John," " Love in
Idleness," "Three faces under one hood," "Herb
Trinity," " Cuddle me to you," " Paunce or
Pensee," and " Flame Flower."

The great desire in a Cottage Garden always
seems to be to cover the earth with some kind of
living thing. Among the little groups of Rasp-
berry canes the ground was closely planted with
vegetables, among which some enormous Primroses
had seeded themselves. They were pointed out
with pride, and strangely enough alluded to in the
expressive language of Mr. Pepys as "mighty
pretty."

This tiny Garden looks for all the world as if
here many of the "Good Pointes in Husbandrie,"
by Tusser — that man of sense and humour — had
been carried out. As he sings : —

" In March and April from morning till night,
In sowing and setting, good housewife's delight,
To have in a Garden or other like plot
To turn up their house, and furnish their pot."

168 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

And again : —

"At Spring (for the Summer) sewe Garden ye shall
At harvest (for Winter) or sowe not at all
Oft digging and remooving and weeding (ye see)
Makes herbe the more holesome and greater to be."

The Cottage Garden pictured is to be found in
the Isle of Wight, and belongs to an old lady
who has lived there for forty years, doing all the
village washing, and bringing up a large family on
the money thus earned. The Fuchsia tree, growing
as high as the bedroom windows, was planted by
her when she first came to the cottage ; and the
Japanese Honeysuckle is also stricken in years,
though its appearance is young and sprightly. It
is a strange little Garden, and the well is most
quaint, quite an uncommon type, being only about
three feet deep and having a large stone with a
hole cut in the middle for a curb.

Many lovely flowers and plants have first been
grown in cottages, or their Gardens. For instance,
the Fuchsia, that graceful plant, with its delicate
little hanging flowers, was first reared in England, in
a cottage. Not, however, in fresh country air, but
in a little house at Wapping, and the following
story is told of its discovery : Old Mr. Lee, the
well-known nursery gardener, happened to be in
Wapping one day, and seeing in a cottage window
"an elegant plant with flowers hanging in rows

A COTTAGE GARDEN, THE ISLE OF WIGHT

COTTAGE GARDENS 169

like tassels from pendant branches, their colour
the richest crimson in the centre, with a fold of
deep purple," he eagerly went in and asked the
owner, an old woman, where she got her original
plant. She told him that her husband was a
sailor and had brought it to her from the West
Indies, and that nothing would induce her to part
with it. After much persuasion, Mr. Lee managed
to buy the little pot of Fuchsia for ^"8 8s., and he
promised the old woman that the first new plant
reared should be hers. He kept his promise and
sent her the first successful plant, reaping a little
fortune from the original, making from it in one
year alone over ^300. This took place about
1825, and is considered by many the first introduc-
tion of Fuchsia into England. But this statement
is not strictly accurate, though it was the first time
it came to stay. In 1703 a monk, Father Plumier,
discovered it, or rather described it in his writings
and named it Fuchs, after Leonhard Fuchs, one of
the founders of German botany.

In some villages the people seem to vie with
each other over their Gardens, many cultivating
a special flower. This charming fancy is to be
seen at its best in an old-world village in one of
the southern counties ; the prettiest of these
Gardens being perhaps the one whose special
feature was the Poppy — a typical, though fanciful
Cottage Garden. The cottage to which it belonged

170 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

stood looking across a strip of Garden, with its
gable end to the road, described in old deeds as
" the King's Highway." A narrow, raised brick
path, almost like a terrace, ran from the little
white gate along the front of the cottage round to
the back, where it lost itself in a little patch of
cobble-stones.

In the time of the Poppies this Garden is a
brilliant sight, filled with Poppies ranging in
colour from the palest pink to the deepest blood-
red, from cream to flaring yellow. They grow
all together in clumps, with the old red brick
wall of the terrace-like path behind them, a most
fitting background. The Poppy is a flower which
must always attract attention by its immense
decorative value ; either singly, among the corn, or
grouped in masses, it may always be counted on to
produce a most glorious effect. For the gorgeous-
ness of their beauty they pay, alas! with a
delicacy of petal, giving them but a fleeting exist-
ence. The only other flowers allowed to show
their heads among the Poppies are great bushes
of Lavender, Ribbon Grass, Rosemary, and Rue.

Part of the ground beside this cottage is
described in old papers as " the ballad Singer's
Plot " — a title which is a reminder of other times,
when wandering minstrels went round the country
singing their songs and carrying the news of those
days to the little country villages, which otherwise

COTTAGE GARDENS 171

often remained strangely ignorant of the doings of
the outside world.

Near the gate of this Garden there are manifest
signs of the age of the village, for by the roadside
are a pair of stocks, twisted, crooked, crumbling
away with age and exposure, and half-buried in
the grass. It is not known when stocks were first
introduced into England, but " the Commons
prayed Edward III. that they should be set up in
every village." The last time they were made
use of was at Rugby, in 1858. Their usual position
in a village was close to the churchyard.

Hardly a cottage in this village, even the
smallest, is without extraordinarily large cellars,
almost like miniature dungeons — pointing clearly
to the existence of extensive smuggling in olden
days. Within sound of the sea, this village was
one of the centres of illicit trade, and old people
tell of many a skirmish with the soldiers, and
point to the spot where the last man was killed
in a smuggling fray.

The love of flowers, " the cottager's treasurer,"
as Ruskin calls them, is not a love of years,
but of centuries. Even before Tudor days the
peasant planted flowers by his cottage door, and
the old Vines, still to be found near many old
cottages, tell the same tale of devotion.

In Gardens, such as have been described, the
following flowers are frequently found and easily

172 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

grown : Crocuses, Double Daffodils, Snowdrops,
Christmas Roses, Wallflowers, Forget-me-nots,
Primroses, Grape Hyacinths, White Arabis,
Violets, Flags, Snakes' Heads, Solomon's Seal,
Stonecups, Columbines, Thrift, Tulips, Foxgloves,
Woodruff, Leopard's Bane, Peonies, Polyanthus,
Hose in Hose, Monthly Roses, Hollyhocks,
Lilies, Monkshood, Borage, Phlox, Evening
Primroses, Sunflowers, Snapdragons, Candy-tuft,
Periwinkles, Heartsease, Lavender, Rue, Rosemary,
Lad's-love, Love-in-a-puzzle, Love-lies-bleeding,
Marigolds, Poppies, Honesty, Honeysuckle, Fuch-
sias, Cornflowers, Everlasting Peas, Sweet Peas,
Valerian, Rochet, Carnations, Pinks, Sweet Sultan,
Canterbury Bells, Ribbon Grass, Michaelmas
Daisies, Everlasting Flower, Jacob's Ladder,
China Asters, Double Dahlias, and Stocks.

For the edging of borders, where plants are
preferred to "leade, boards, bones or tyles,"
Thrift, Box, Daisies, and London Pride are the
most easily grown and need least attention.

All Gardens need much care and tending, and
one of the chief charms of a Cottage Garden
grows out of the loving care of its owner — its
cultivation is a labour of love, and repays its
possessor a thousandfold.

However tiny a Garden may be it needs
endless time spent upon it, and the old saying
"one year's seeding, seven years' weeding," is

COTTAGE GARDENS 173

only too true. People often think that cottagers
never weed, but this is a great mistake. Weeds
are looked upon by them as great evils. Their
views on weeds are, in fact, very similar to Bocca-
cio's, who writes very plainly on the subject :
" Let the painfull gardiner expresse never so
much care and diligent endeavour ; yet among
the very fairest, sweetest, and freshest Flowers,
as also Plants of the most precious virtue ill
savouring and stinking weeds, fit for no use but
the fire or mucke-hill, will spring and sprout up."

This patient labour of the man who so often
starts to work in his Garden at the end of a hard
day's toil, produces in the onlooker a feeling of
the deepest admiration and amazement — till Gray's
words to his friend are remembered : "So you
have a Garden of your own, and you plant and
transplant and are dirty and amused"

It is this passion for Gardening, which is planted
in the hearts of rich and poor alike, that has been
one of the chief joys of the world — a pleasure
born of the love of beauty and the delight in even
" a slip of ground for a Cabbage and a Gooseberry
bush," and " to sit under my own Vine and
contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I
now understand in what sense they speak of
Father Adam. I recognise the paternity, while
I watch my Tulips."

" I should like to influence the whole world with

174 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

my taste for Gardens," cried the Prince de Ligne.
"It seems to me impossible for an evildoer to
share it. Fathers, instil into your children the

garden-mania."

HAM HOUSE, SURREY

" Then will we turn

To where the silver Thames first rural grows,
There let the feasted eye unwearied stray;
Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods
That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat
And, stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks."

THOMSON'S Seasons

IX

HAM HOUSE, SURREY

T F ever Garden was planned with reference
•*• to the house it encircles it is the Garden
belonging to Ham.

The House stands in the midst of Garden within
Garden. Green Lawns, dark Fir trees, and Terraces
rich with gay flowers are its varied surroundings;
while long, straight avenues —

" Like footmen running before coaches
To tell the Inn what Lord approaches ! "

lead up to the House, their entrance being guarded
by fine old iron gates.

Tradition says of one gate that it has never been
opened since the day on which a Stuart king passed
out. Alas ! this pretty legend is untrue, but it is as
difficult now as in Walpole's day to gain an
entrance — if the right way is unknown — for the

N 177

178 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

gates opposite "the sweetest river in the world"
are seldom opened.

Behind the charm of this old Garden lies much
romance, and no figure stands out more strongly
in the history of Ham than that of the great
Duchess, whom Bishop Burnett describes thus
graphically : " She was a woman of great beauty,
but far greater parts ; she had a wonderful quickness
and an amazing vivacity in conversation ; she had
studied not only divinity, history, but mathematics
and philosophy. She was violent in everything,
a violent friend and a much more violent enemy."
To such a degree has the Duchess impressed
herself on the old place, that it is almost a
temptation to write her history, instead of that
of the quaint old Garden. Described by one who
had seen it just as it was left by the Duchess :
" The very flowers are old-fashioned, none but
flowers of the oldest time, gay, formal knots of
Pinks and Sweet Peas and Larkspur and Lilies and
Hollyhocks, mixed with solid Cabbage Roses and
round Dutch Honeysuckle."

Some mention, however, must be made of the
history of Ham House and its Gardens before
the time of this extraordinarily clever woman (for
may she not lay claim to this title, when more
than one historian admits she was the mistress of
the austere Oliver Cromwell ?).

The Gardens and Walks lie within the parish

HAM HOUSE 179

of Petersham, but the land on which the House
stands has generally gone with the Manor of Ham,
an old Saxon word meaning "house."

It appears that this Manor (of Ham) belonged
for many years to the Crown, till Henry II.
granted it to his favourite, Maurice de Creoun.
Anne of Cleves was the next person of interest
who possessed the Manor of Ham. Divorced by
Henry VI II., barely six months after her marriage,
he granted her "divers manors and estates, amongst
which was this Manor of Ham," the latter being
kept by her till the second year of Edward VI.'s
reign.

Coveted, perhaps on account of its delightful
situation, many people desired to possess the estate,
but it remained Crown property for many years.
At length, however, King James granted it to
his son Henry, Prince of Wales, and on his death
it was held in trust for his brother Charles, during
which time Ham House was erected. It is a very
interesting specimen of Jacobean architecture, and
was built by Sir Thomas Vavasor, and appears to
have been finished in 1610, that date being carved
over the principal doorway. How Sir Thomas
Vavasor became possessed of this property has
not been ascertained, but it did not remain his
property long, though with him lies the honour
of building the original House. Ostensibly simple
in treatment, it has one particularly happy feature

180 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

of great decorative value in a row of oval niches
above the ground-floor windows on the river
front, filled with lead and stone busts.

The Murray family were the next owners of
Ham, becoming possessed of it in a strange fashion.
Thomas Murray was tutor to Henry, Prince of
Wales, and King James borrowed money from
him (being always sorely in need of it), and in
return made Murray Provost of Eton, he being
the only layman who has ever held the post.
Through Thomas Murray his nephew, William
Murray, was made "whipping boy" to Prince
Charles — an undignified post much sought after,
leading, as it often did in later years, to the
highest honours and distinctions, as in Murray's
case.

Charles I. never forgot his "whipping boy,"
making him, soon after he became King, a Gentle-
man of the Bedchamber. Bishop Burnett, if he
is to be trusted, makes William Murray appear
far from a desirable character ; in fact, the pungent
pen of the writer of the history of his own times
has no good to tell of the Murray family. He
writes : " Murray of the bedchamber had been
page and whipping boy to Charles I., and had
great credit with him, not only in procuring private
favours, but in all counsels. Well tuned for Court,
very insinuating, but very false and very revenge-
ful. Generally believed that he discovered most

HAM HOUSE 181

important of his (the King's) secrets to his
enemies."

However false Murray may have been, the King
evidently had no knowledge of his treachery, for
he granted him the Manor of Ham and Petersham,
and created him "Peer of Scotland, Baron Hunting-
tower and Earl of Dysart," Murray persuading the
King to antedate the warrant that he might take
precedence at Court of many whom, from one
cause and another, he cordially detested. That
he was seldom called by his title is perhaps
accounted for by Burnett's remark that the warrant
did not pass the Great Seal during the King's
lifetime.

William Murray married Catherine Bruce, by
whom he had no son, but five daughters. Elizabeth,
the eldest, afterwards became the great Duchess,
who left the impress of her personality so strongly
on Ham House and its Gardens. The date of
her marriage with Sir Lionel Tollemache, heir
to the Helmingham estates in Suffolk, is unknown,
but he succeeded his father in 1640. Elizabeth
Murray did not hesitate, on her father's death, to
style herself Countess of Dysart, and being more
than a friend of Cromwell's, her estates were safe
under his rule, especially as she pretended to be-
come an anti- Royalist and allowed his soldiers to be
quartered in Ham House. Burnett declares that
this clever woman, to whom political intrigue was

182 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

second nature, was in correspondence with John
Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, after he had been
made prisoner at the Battle of Worcester, and
made him believe that his life was in danger and
only saved by her efforts, made successful through
Cromwell's devotion to her. The result of this
fatal Battle of Worcester is pithily described in
Carlyle's " Life of Oliver Cromwell " : "At Wor-
cester, the while, thousands of Prisoners are getting
ranked, ' penned-up in the Cathedral,' with sad
out-looks : carcasses of horses, corpses of men,
frightful to sense and mind, encumber the streets
of Worcester; ' we are plucking Lords, Knights, and
Gentlemen from their lurking-holes,' into the un-
welcome light. Lords very numerous ; a Peerage
sore slashed. The Duke of Hamilton has got his
thigh broken ; the Earl of Derby, also wounded,
is caught, and tried for Treason against the State ;
lays down his head at Bolton, where he had once
carried it too high. Lauderdale and others are put
in the Tower; have to lie there, in heavy dormancy,
for long years. The Earls of Cleveland and
Lauderdale came to Town together, about a fortnight
hence. ' As they passed along Cornhill in their
coaches with a guard of horse, the Earl of Lauder-
dale's coach made a stand near the Conduit : where
a Carman gave his Lordship a visit, saying, " Oh,
my Lord, you are welcome to London ! I protest,
off goes your head, as round as a hoop ! " But

HAM HOUSE 183

his Lordship passed off the fatal compliment only
with a laughter, and so fared along to the Tower.'
His Lordship's big red head, has yet other work
to do in this world. Having, at the Ever-blessed
Restoration, managed, not without difficulty, 'to
get a new suit of clothes,' he knelt before his now
triumphant Sacred Majesty on that glorious Thirtieth
of May."'

Upon Charles II.'s restoration, Lady Dysart did
not consider that Lauderdale was sufficiently grate-
ful for her share in saving his life, and they were
estranged for some years ; she turning her atten-
tion to other matters, one being the acquiring of a
new patent from the King creating her Countess of
Dysart and Baroness Huntingtower in her own right.

But Lauderdale, the cleverest and most un-
scrupulous of all the Merry Monarch's ministers,
was destined to link his life sooner or later with
Lady Dysart, and after her husband's death they
made up their quarrel and lived so openly together
that his wife, Lady Lauderdale, retired to Paris,
and after her death, which took place there, Lord
Lauderdale married Lady Dysart, who, though
she may have had undue influence over him, and
often separated him from his friends, certainly
worked loyally in his interest. It was owing to
her that Charles gave him a dukedom, which title
lapsed (as they had no children), the Dysart titles
passing into the Tollemache family.

184 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Ham House and its Gardens are beholden for
many beauties to this brilliant woman. Sir John
Reresby, in his " Memoirs," alludes to her thus :
" I went to visit the Duke and Duchess of Lauder-
dale at their fine house at Ham. After dinner the
Duchess in her chamber entertained me with
long discourse on matters of State. She had been
a beautiful woman and the supposed mistress of
Oliver Cromwell, and was even then a woman
of great parts." The Garden owes her much if
she did for it what she undoubtedly did for the
House.

The Duke held an important position in the
Government, being one of the corrupt ministry
called the " Cabal " — a nickname originated by the
first letter of their names spelling the word, causing
it ever afterwards to have an odious significance.
Through his position presents of the richest kind
were showered upon him and the Duchess, and in
all probability the Gardens were as richly favoured
as the House.

Certainly it would seem so from Evelyn's
account : " After dinner I walked to Ham to see
the house and Garden of the Duke of Lauderdale,
which is, indeed, inferior to few of the best villas
in Italy itself; the house furnished like a great
Prince's ; the Parterres, Flower Gardens, Orangeries,
Groves, Avenues, Courts, Statues, Perspectives,
Fountains, Aviaries, and all this at the bank of

HAM HOUSE 185

the sweetest river in the world, must needs be
admirable."

This shows that the Gardens of Ham possessed
every whimsical device of that period — a time
which carried its taste for Garden cult to a fine
art.

The design of these Gardens at Ham is interest-
ing from many points of view, but chiefly as illus-
trating that form of Garden, the plan of which
resembles a house, room within room, as they
were built in Elizabeth's days, distinctly suggest-
ing, in some ways, the Roman type of Gardens,
which " were only the amplification of the
House."

There is a feeling of completeness gained by
carrying the design of the house into that of the
Garden, making them entirely belong to each
other. Besides which, this room-like arrangement
of a Garden provides the charm of perpetual change,
the Garden never being seen as a whole, but only
as it were room by room, the hedges taking the
place of the walls.

This idea of a Garden within a Garden is seldom
if ever used now. Fine open spaces with long,
wide Flower-borders are preferred, being better
adapted to show to advantage the modern develop-
ment of flowers and the genius which the twentieth-
century Gardener possesses of growing tropical
plants in this changeable climate.

186 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The Terrace and small Garden at Ham are said
to have been designed by John Rose, the celebrated
pupil of the great French Master Le Notre.

Rose, who was chiefly a horticulturist, was
successively gardener to the Earl of Essex, the
Duchess of Cleveland and Somerset, and ended by
being Royal Gardener at Hampton Court. This
small Garden is a mass of little Flower-beds, shaded
by some very old Cedars and a beautiful Tulip tree,
which must have been one of the first grown in
England, as these trees were only brought over
from America in 1688. The cultivation of Pine-
apples is always associated with Rose's name, and
though they were not properly understood till much
later he managed to grow the first English
Pineapple (which he presented to Charles II.), his
portrait appearing in the Pineapple picture at Ham.
John Rose is also remembered as author of " The
English Vineyard " which appeared at the end of
" Evelyn's French Gardens."

The Orangery at Ham — mentioned by Evelyn —
was probably arranged by Rose, who was more
interested in fruit-growing than in Gardening. It is
often thought Evelyn's allusion to " Orangeries "
can only mean an Orange plantation, and that
Ham cannot claim to have had one of the earliest
Orange-houses (in those days merely large rooms
with a fireplace and big windows). The first
Orange-house with a glass roof is supposed to have

THE ORAXGERY, HAM HOUSE

HAM HOUSE 187

been built at Woolaton in 1696. At the foot of
the stone steps of the gravel Terrace, at the west
side of the Garden the old Orangery at Ham is
found, placed at the end of a walled Garden,
chiefly grass, planted with Apple trees. Down the
middle is a wide grass path flanked on each side
by borders containing a gay selection of well-
grouped herbaceous plants. The Orangery faces
down the grass path (as shown in the water-colour
drawing), at the bottom of which runs a most
delightful Avenue of Ilex trees — the most beautiful,
perhaps, of all the evergreens.

In the midst of this Ilex Avenue is a statue of
Bacchus. Like the busts round the house (in 1679
there were thirty-eight of lead and six made of
marble), this little statue is made of lead — the
favourite material for Garden Statuary, as it acquires
such a beautiful colour when unpainted — which
these, alas! are not.

Ham House stands low near the banks of the
Thames, opposite the village of Twickenham, so
loved by Pope, Gay, and Prior, also Horace Walpole.
Round it lie beautiful grassy meadows, which,
according to Walpole, always attracted showers of
rain when mown. " I remember," he writes,
" Lady Suffolk telling me, that Lord Dysart's
great meadows (at Ham) have never been mown
but once in forty years without rain. I said, ' All
that that proved was, that rain was good for hay,'

188 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

as I am persuaded the climate of a country and its
productions are suited to each other."

The meadow by the river front is separated from
the Avenue by a sunk wall, or Ha- Ha, showing
that at one time or another some ideas of the
Landscape school found their way into this Garden.
Walpole always claims this as the first move to-
wards the new school of Gardening ; he says : " The
leading step to all that has followed was (I believe
the first thought was Bridgeman's) the destruction
of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses
— an attempt then deemed so astonishing that the
common people called them Ha ! Has ! to express
their surprise at finding a sudden and unexpected
check to their walk." Neither Bridgemann or Kent
really invented the Ha- Ha ; it was thought of and
invented long before by French Garden designers.
The great Gates lead into the Forecourt, which still
possesses an old circular stone-flagged drive, and
is enclosed at the sides by brick walls. An unique
appearance is given to them by a row of niches
containing lead busts, similar to those above the
ground-floor windows on the north side of the House.

It is amusing to know that an enterprising but
dishonest person once attempted to remove these
busts from the walls, but not having calculated on
the weight of the material hidden under the disguise
of paint, was compelled to drop them — and the busts
were afterwards replaced in their respective niches.

STATUE OF FATHER THAMES IN THE FORE COURT,
HAM HOUSE

HAM HOUSE 189

By these walls, coloured so exquisitely by time, are
planted clipped Bay trees.

Immediately facing the chief entrance is a wide
Terrace paved with stone, and edged with ever-
greens ; it is reached by two flights of well-pro-
portioned steps, which lead into the arcading on
either side of the doorway.

A colossal statue of Father Thames in stone
coloured terra-cotta stands facing the river in the
centre of the grass Lawn, in the middle of the
Forecourt. Nothing is known of the statue, but on
a small shield are to be found the arms of the City
of London. Still in existence is "an old book, tall
and narrow, bound in calf skin, which contains a
minute inventory of everything inside and outside
of the house," bearing witness to the Duchess of
Lauderdale having been as good a chatelaine as
she was an intriguant in politics.

The river front in this book is called "the Fore-
court and Cloisters " — certainly a prettier name.
The old wooden seats (mentioned in this exhaustive
list) are still to be seen to-day — the " Longe Benche
of Deale painted, which is in the melancholy walk."

On the south side of the House runs a long gravel
Terrace 530 feet long and 238 feet wide, with shallow
flights of steps at either end leading to a gravel
path that encircles the splendid Bowling Green, or
Great Lawn, as it is now usually called, which
covers nearly two and a half acres.

190 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

An interesting old oil painting exists in the House
at Ham, which, to judge from the dress of the
people appearing in it, must date from about the
time of Queen Anne. It shows the Garden at the
south side much as it is now, only with a wall on
both sides of the House, and opposite it a grass path
with Statues, cut evergreens in boxes, and cut Yew
hedges, but of course, without the long Herbaceous
Border which was added when such borders
came in again within the last few years. It is
from the east side that the water-colour drawing
is taken showing this Herbaceous Border, with
the beautiful old red-brick House forming a
most perfect background to the flowers ; the
border runs close beside the Terrace wall and is
filled with a mass of Lavender, Iris, Delphiniums,
Pinks, Lilies (Liteum candidum) Roses, Monks-
hood, Hollyhocks, Larkspur, Spirsea, Phlox,
Canterbury Bells — all blended delightfully as to
colour — and having an edge of Thrift and white
Pinks with an outer border of grass.

The old brick walls here are allowed the added
beauty of creepers — and many plants find a home
in the nooks and crannies — for no ruthless hands
plucks the pretty pink flowering Valerian out of the
low Terrace walls. One of the best and most
artistic of modern Gardeners declares that this
fancy for creepers and plants on old walls, is a
matter to be carefully considered ; when an ugly,

THE TERRACE BORDER, HAM HOUSE

HAM HOUSE 191

ill-proportioned wall is hidden, well and good,
but often the trailing creeper hides an exquisite
piece of architecture. In which case the taste is
decidedly at fault, and the admirer of the flower
is forgetful of the beautiful work it hides, and
which in time it will seriously damage.

Beyond the old Bowling Green, which has a
little Shrubbery on one side, lies the Wilderness,
filled with trees, shrubs, and Rhododendrons, as
well as beautiful Scotch Fir trees, the first ever
grown in England. These were planted by John,
Duke of Argyll, the well-known general and
statesman, grandson of the Duchess of Lauder-
dale. This Duke of Argyll had a passion for
Gardening, and laid out many Gardens for his
friends, and at Ham, his birthplace, he left a
living example of his taste, viz., these Firs, which
can be seen from every point of view.

With Ham it is the same as with many old
Gardens, their written history is but what gossips
of each fleeting day thought fit to record. The
owners loved their Gardens for their beauty,
but did not think of making notes of their form
and design, or of the planting of a new seed, or
any such matters ; they simply left the Garden
to speak for itself. Among the chance records
of Ham and its Gardens is an allusion by
Evelyn in his scholarly Diary to "the Orangeries,"
and "the Aviary," while in 1678 Defoe, in his

192 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

" Tour through Great Britain," mentions " Ham
and Petersham, little villages, the first famous for
a pleasant palace of the late Duke of Lauderdale,
close by the river, possessed by the late Earl of
Dysart, a house, King Charles II. used to be
frequently at, and was exceedingly pleased with
the avenues of this fine house." Then Horace
Walpole, that mainstay of lovers of gossip, has
much to say about his niece's secret marriage, in
1760, with Lord Dysart's son. He writes: "I
announce my Lady Huntingtower to you. I hope
you will approve the match a little more than
I suppose my Lord Dysart will, as he does not
yet know, though they have been married these
two hours, that at ten o'clock this morning, his
son espoused my niece, Charlotte, at St. James'
Church. The moment my Lord Dysart is dead
I will carry you to see Ham House ; it is pleasant
to call cousins, with a charming prospect over
against one."

He gives a long description of Ham, and
biassed as all his remarks and judgments are,
they are too valuable to omit, as they throw
such side-lights on every nook and corner. " I
went yesterday to see my niece in her new
principality of Ham. It delighted me and made
me peevish." "Close to the Thames, in the centre
of a rich and verdant beauty, it is so blocked up and
barricaded with walls, vast trees, and gates, that

HAM HOUSE 193

you think yourself an hundred miles off and an
hundred years back. The old furniture is so
magnificently ancient, dreary and decayed, that at
every step one's spirits sink, and all my passion
for antiquity could not keep them up. Every
minute I expected to see ghosts sweeping by ;
ghosts I would not give sixpence to see — Lauder-
dales, Tollemaches, and Maitlands. ... In this
state of pomp and tatters my nephew intends
it shall remain ; and is so religious an observer
of the venerable rites of his house, that because
the gates never were opened by his father but
once for the late Lord Granville, you are locked
out and locked in, and after journeying all round
the house, as you do round an old French forti-
fied town, you are at last admitted through the
stable-yard to creep along a dark passage by
the housekeeper's room, and so by a back
door into the great hall. He seems as much
afraid of water as a cat ; for though you might
enjoy the Thames from every window of three
sides of the house, you may tumble into it before
you would guess it was there."

To modern eyes the iron gates and red-brick
walls of Ham are beautiful, with their elaborate
brick coping, and tall piers crowned with large
urns wreathed and festooned with flowers.

To twentieth-century ideas "to feel an hundred
miles off and an hundred years back " when only a

194 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

short distance from London, is something not easily
gained nor to be lightly forsworn. But to Walpole
everything which shut out " Nature " was an abhor-
rence, and with his witty pen he lustily preached
the new fashion in Gardening. Once again very
sadly the old cynic mentions Ham — the pretty
niece is dying. " From my own windows I see
the tall avenues and chimneys of Ham House,
where my poor niece lies languishing and dying."
How well he describes the views of Ham which
peep through the trees !

Much later, Miss Mary Berry, the faithful friend
and champion of Horace Walpole against Macaulay's
fiery denunciations, writes in her journal : " We went
to Ham House ; the house and Gardens are in old
style; that is to say, the style of Charles II. I
was much pleased with the house and its situa-
tion, surrounded as it is by large avenues of trees,
with its terraced Gardens and its great Bowling
Green, and it needs only to cut down a few trees,
to enjoy a most smiling scene, yet as perfectly quiet
and secluded as if the house were placed in the
furthermost county from London."

HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE

1 1 noted that from side to side
The Garden was nigh broad as wide,
And every angle duly squared.
The careful planter had not spared
To set of every kind of tree. . . .

Moreover, in this Garden rare
Grew many a tree familiar.

And all around this pleasant close
Holly and Laurel and Holm arose,
With Yew and Hornbeam, fit, I trow,
For flitting shaft, and speeding bow ;

But wherefore should I tell of more?

For wearied would your heart be ere

I numbered half that flourished there.

But this I say, such skilful art

Had planned the trees, that each apart

Six fathoms stood, yet like a net

The interlacing branches met,

Through which no scorching rays could pass.''

The Romance of the Rose

X

HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE

T T ATFIELD. like many another beautiful
Al English house, was once a Bishop's palace.
It lies in the county of Hertford, and appears to
have received its name from two words — " Heath "
and " Field," meaning "Cleared Heath." In Anglo-
Saxon times Hatfield belonged to the Crown, but
before the Norman Conquest King Edgar granted
it to the Abbot of Ely, whose ownership is recorded
in the Doomsday Book, where " Hatfield " figures
as " Hetfelle." It was in Henry I.'s reign that "the
golden rhetoric" of the Abbot persuaded him to
make Ely into a Bishop's See, after which Hatfield
became an Episcopal residence, and the Manor in
consequence was called Bishop's Hatfield.

From the earliest days the Abbots of Ely were
renowned for their Gardens and wonderful Grapes —
it being almost certain that Hatfield possessed large
Vineyards long before the celebrated one planted by
Sir Robert Cecil — and this reputation the Bishops

198 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

of Ely were careful to keep up ; having not only
a Garden, but a Vineyard also attached to their
London house, " Ely Place, Melbourne." The
site of this Vineyard is commemorated in the name
of the street which now partly covers the ground —
viz., Vine Street.

Allusion is often made in old books to the
glorious Park surrounding Hatfield, as, for instance,
when, in 1269, the Earl of Pembroke forcibly
entered it, and after following the chase broke
into the Palace, and evidently enjoyed the Bishop's
cellar as well as his game !

Each successive Bishop of Ely seems to have
been more powerful and influential than the last ;
but of them all John Morton was the most famous,
and was mentioned in " Utopia " in terms of the
highest praise by his great pupil, Sir Thomas More.
Morton's life practically forms some chapters in the
history of England, for he became successively
Bishop of Ely, Chancellor of England, Archbishop
of Canterbury, and finally Cardinal. Famous not
only for his statesmanship, but for his distinction in
every branch of learning, as well as for his liberality
of thought, he cultivated every art, especially that
of architecture, rebuilding Hatfield in Edward IV.'s
reign (it having been largely destroyed during the
Wars of the Roses). As his biographer says : " He
bestowed great cost upon his house at Hatfield,"
part of which is still standing to bear evidence in no

HATFIELD HOUSE 199

small measure to its designer's magnificent powers
as an architect, and to the durability of the material
used in those days, being in this case small red
bricks without stone copings.

To Bishop Morton the arranging of the marriage
between Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York is due,
and through it the uniting of the two factions of the
Red and White Rose, thus giving England at last
the long-desired peace. The Bishop is without
doubt one of the most interesting of the many
people connected with this beautiful old place, and
Hatfield will be for ever associated with his name.
He died in 1500 at the great age of ninety. No
actual proof exists that Bishop Morton added to the
Gardens at Hatfield, as he did to the Palace, but it is
more than likely that the Garden was a glory of
flowers of the rarest kind, as in everything he was in
advance of his time. For with the House of Tudor
came the first real birth of Gardens as modern people
understand them, and in Henry VIII.'s reign they
took a very definite shape and design, and were in
some cases of a most elaborate nature. His reign
might indeed almost be said to have formed the
style of the English Garden until the ruthless
so-called reformation of the Landscape school,
which, like all reformations, went too far and fell
in the end into exactly the same faults that it
started to uproot.

Thirty-eight years after the death of the Cardinal,

200 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

on the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII.
coveted the magnificence of Hatfield ; but fearing
the anger of the people should he possess himself of
it, or give it to one of his favourites (as in many
instances he had done before), he effected an
exchange with the Bishop of Ely, giving him lands
in Cambridgeshire, Essex, and Norfolk in the place
of the Manor of Hatfield, which became a Royal
residence and entered upon a new epoch of interest.
Henry gave his new Palace to his son Prince
Edward, who received there the news of his
father's death in 1547. Two years later Edward
granted Hatfield to his step-sister, the Lady Eliza-
beth, with whom the beautiful old Gardens (on the
west side of the present House) are for ever linked
in memory. Elizabeth's love of the open air and
of manly pursuits, as well as her devotion to books,
contributed to that happy combination of physical
force and mental capacity which stood England in
such good stead when the country was at its lowest
ebb. Daily she must have walked under the shade
of the Pleached Alley, book in hand, reading one of
her favourite authors — Plato, perchance— for Roger
Ascham never failed to find his apt and witty pupil
in the Garden or Park when the hour for study
came. Elizabeth never lost this craving for the
open air, and many a time an important Council
was held under the huge trees of some park, or
amid the flowers of some beautiful old Garden.

HATFIELD HOUSE 201

There are few places in England so absolutely
untouched by the spoiling hand of fashion as the
quaint, fascinating little square, called the " Privy
Garden," or "Queen's Garden," which lies quite
near the Cardinal's old Palace. The very rooms
used by the Princess Elizabeth are said to have
been in what now remains of the old House,
and she may have looked down from her window
on wet winter days, longing for the weather to
allow her the enjoyment of her daily walk there,
and doubtless sent her maids to gather the first
flower bold enough to brave windy March.

If Chaucer be the father of English poetry,
Bacon is the parent of the English essay ; 'mid a
life filled to the brim with stormy politics, and thick
with intrigues, he, the great philosopher, found time
to write one of the best remembered and the
oftenest quoted essays on Gardens. The little
Privy Garden at Hatfield is planted somewhat as
described in the language of that essay, only in a
simpler fashion, not so " prince-like." Bacon
declares " The Garden is best to be square, en-
compassed on all the four sides with a stately
arched hedge." There must also be "green,"
4 'because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than
green grass kept finely shorn" ; and fountains, "for
they are a great beauty and refreshment " ; also,
"you are to frame some of them (the alleys) like-
wise for shelter, that when the wind blows sharp

202 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

you may walk as in a gallery ; and these closer
alleys must be ever finely gravelled, and no grass,
because of going wet."

The Pleached Alley would indeed shut out any
wind, and the gravel (urged so earnestly by Bacon
instead of "grass, because of going wet ") has been
superseded by an even drier substance, namely,
asphalt — one quite out of his knowledge, man of
science as he was.

There is always some old-world charm to be
found in this little Garden, filled as it is with the
many Garden delights belonging to the days of
Elizabeth. Entering it from the north-west side,
passing down a few steps, the Pleached Alley, a
perfect covered way runs round the four sides of
the Privy Garden, formed of closely planted Lime
trees, whose branches are so wonderfully inter-
woven that they form overhead quite a thick roof
of boughs and leaves. Pleached is an old word
and comes from a French root, "plesser," to plait ;
and the art too is a very old one, as old as the
Romans and freely used in their day. The north-
east corner of the Pleached Alley is closed up by a
wall, on which is a bas-relief representing Queen
Elizabeth opening the first Royal Exchange, Sir
Thomas Gresham presenting the keys, and Lord
Burleigh as Prime Minister. This relief was part
of the pediment of the second Royal Exchange,
built on the site of Sir Thomas Gresham's, which

HATFIELD HOUSE 203

was burnt in 1666. The late Lord Salisbury, into
whose possession it came, had it placed here
recently. The stone is charred and broken by the
heat of the fire. Like most Gardens of its date,
the Privy Garden is very small, being only
250 feet square ; in the centre is a wide plot of
grass, planted at equal distances with one Chestnut
and four Mulberry trees. These latter are of great
interest, as Queen Elizabeth is said to have planted
them ; and if this is the case they are the first
Mulberry trees grown in England. Later, in 1607,
James I. made a very vigorous attempt to establish
a silk manufactory in England, and to help the
breeding of silkworms Mulberry trees were planted
by the thousand ; the Lord Lieutenant of each
county being informed that any one who wished
could buy the trees for three farthings each, or at
the rate of six shillings per hundred. The common
or Black Mulberry was chosen as the only one
considered hardy enough to stand the English
climate, but this being of slow growth and un-
suitable for silkworms the whole scheme fell
through, although James pursued his idea with
great enterprise.

Among the manuscripts at Hatfield is one men-
tioning the importation of Mulberry trees ; and Sir
Robert Cecil, to ingratiate himself with the King,
had five hundred planted at Hatfield.

The wide grass plot in the little Privy Garden

204 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

is divided from the knots of flowers by a clipped
Yew hedge ; and in the days of the Princess
Elizabeth, as well as in more modern times, the
Parterres were no doubt filled with Bachelor's
Buttons, Cornflowers, Daisies, Iris, Lavender,
Peonies, Periwinkles, Stocks, and Gilliflowers. In
the centre stands a small Fountain with a basin
containing goldfish — a feature Bacon "liked not."
North of the Privy Garden, with "its covert way,"
entered by a flight of steps, lies the sunken Rosary,
laid out in a series of half-circles with a round Pond
in the centre. This Rosary looks very quaint,
placed as it is on a large grass Lawn, planted with
splendid Chestnut trees, standing on the west side
of the great courtyard of the present House, and
flanked by the old Palace on the east. Fancy
depicts the Cardinal as having walked in this
"Garden of Perfumes," as it was sometimes called,
sweet with the scent of the Briar hedges and the
delicate fragrance of the dusky red damask Roses,
such Roses as the folk long ago loved to plant (the
virtue of size versus scent being left to the nine-
teenth century to discover) — to say nothing of the
scented Marjoram and the wild Thyme. Such herbs
were planted for the sake of their blended perfume.
The delight of this Rosary would undoubtedly
appeal very strongly to the great Churchman, who
possessed such a keen eye for the beautiful in
everything.

HATFIELD HOUSE 205

Passing round to the front of the old Palace
and along the drive, a gateway is reached leading
down into yet another Garden — in early Summer
a perfect blaze of colour. Against the low brick
wall which separates the two Gardens, are Flower-
beds filled with Phloxes, Delphiniums, and every
variety of Herbaceous plant. Three flights of
steps lead up to the Privy Garden above, and
from there lovely vistas of the smaller Garden
can be seen. A path runs from the centre steps
down the middle of the Garden, flanked on each
side by two quadrant shaped Lawns surrounded
by shrubs and flowers. This path, ornamented
with a Sundial, leads right round past the south end
of the Privy Garden into the " Wilderness."

At Edward VI. 's death and by Queen Mary's
command, Elizabeth left Hatfield to return as a
prisoner under the care of Sir Thomas Pope, the
founder of Trinity College, Oxford. His genuine
admiration for his illustrious charge made him do
all in his power to relax the severity of the Queen
to her step-sister, of whom she was bitterly jealous.
Sir Thomas Pope writes of his future Queen in
glowing terms ; he says: "She is not only gracious,
but most learned, as ye right well know."

Perhaps these last years of Mary's reign, full as
they were of intrigues and cruel religious persecu-
tions, were for Elizabeth the most peaceful years of
her life. She was living in the midst of a glorious

206 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Park and Garden, surroundings which she loved,
and in the society of cultured and intellectual people,
with whom she could converse when tired of reading
Greek, "embroidering in gold and silver," or playing
on the virginal. The part of " Sweet Sister
Temperance," given to her by King Edward, was
acted by her to perfection during those last days at
Hatfield. Elizabeth, like Edward VI., first heard
of Her succession to the Crown while at Hatfield ;
and tradition points out the very Oak under
which she was sitting in the Park, when, among
others, the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Richard
Sackville informed her that she was their Queen ;
and it was here that she held her first Privy Council.
Whether Elizabeth often returned to Hatfield after
she became Queen is very doubtful, but that she
did so once on a grand progress into Essex is
certain. On her ascent to the throne, however, her
glory ceased to shine on the old place, though the
memory of her presence ever abides there. As an
old writer remarks : "It will be for ever famous,
for that it first offered forth our most worthy
Elizabeth to the Regal Diademe and to receive
the triumphant cepter of the Realme, happie in
her Royal Maiestie, and therefore let Hautfeyld be
ever famous." A new and very different splendour
was shortly to burst over Hatfield — a splendour that
was the comment of all. The man who wrought
this change was thus described by one of his

HATFIELD HOUSE 207

contemporaries : " For his person he was not
much beholding to Nature, though somewhat for his
face, which was the best part of his outside ; for his
inside it may be said, and without offence, that he
was his Father's owne sonne, and a pregnant presi-
dent in all his discipline of state ; he was a courtier
from his cradle ; and he soon made shew what he
was and would be." "He" was no other than
Sir Robert Cecil, the sometime " imp " and after-
wards "the staff" of Elizabeth's declining years;
the proud owner of "Theobalds," with all its
fascinating conceits, walls covered with Phillyrea,
a Maze, a Mount, and a jet d'eau; all quaintly
described by Mandelslo and Paulus Hentzner in
their " Travels." Theobalds was indeed a typical
" princely " Garden of the time of Elizabeth, and one
often cited to show the foolishness of the Formal
style, especially by Horace Walpole, in his well-
known "Essay on Gardening."

Sir Robert Cecil kept James of Scotland well
informed as to the failing health of the Queen,
and made up to the lesser star when he saw the
great light waning — two facts which did him no
injury in that King's eyes ! The Scotch King left
Edinburgh on April, 1603, for his progress to "the
Land of Promise," as he called his new kingdom.
Sir Robert Cecil writes in one of his letters : "His
Majesty is now come on his journey as far as
Burghley House (which belonged to Lord Burleigh's

208 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

eldest son, afterwards created Earl of Exeter) and
on Tuesday is expected at Theobalds." The
chief reason that made King James desire the
possession of Cecil's house was its nearness to
an immense expanse of land suitable for hunting,
and it was not long before he had persuaded
his minister to make the celebrated exchange
of "Hatfield" for "Theobalds," Hatfield thus
becoming, with all its memories, the property of
Sir Robert Cecil, the founder of the great house.
Cecil was the youngest son of the celebrated
Lord Burleigh, whose taste in Gardens was
admittedly the best in his day.

It was he who planned the delights of Theobalds
and the beauties of Burghley, and retained for
twenty years as his Gardener, Gerard, the famous
herbalist, author of "The Herbal," dedicated to
Lord Burghleigh, and with his help many unknown
flowers were introduced into English Gardens.
For instance, Gerard writes : " The Red Lillie of
Constantinople groweth wilde in the fields and
mountains many daies journies beyonde Constanti-
nople, whither it is brought by the poore peasants
to be solde, for the decking up of Gardens. From
thence it was sent by Master Harbran ambassor
there unto my honorable and good Lord and
Master the Lord Treasurer of England who
bestowed them upon me for my Garden." It was
not surprising under these circumstances that Lord

HATFIELD HOUSE 209

Burleigh's son should possess a Garden as well as
a House which was the envy of all. Sir Robert
Cecil changed the site of his new House at Hat-
field to a more commanding position, eastward of
the old Palace. John Thorpe, the architect of
Holland House, Kensington, has often been men-
tioned as the designer of Hatfield, and though
there is nothing to prove this the two houses bear
a strong resemblance. On the other hand, it is
said on good authority that Sir Robert was his
own architect ; if so, he should be remembered as
much on account of the beautiful House he designed
as for his cautious statesmanship. Hatfield is the
first House said to have been designed with refer-
ence to the landscape with which it would be
surrounded. Certainly it is most happily placed,
both sides of the great House facing down long
Avenues of double rows of trees, beyond which lies
the Park beautifully wooded, the trees being princi-
pally Oak. Elm, and Ash, while the undergrowth
of Rhododendrons makes the woods a lovely sight
in the Spring. Pepys evidently thought that the
first Lord Salisbury (Sir Robert Cecil had been
created Earl of Salisbury in 1605) nad bestowed
as much care upon his Gardens as on his
House, for he writes in his celebrated Diary, 1661 :
"July 22nd I came to Hatfield before 12 o'clock,
where I had a very good dinner with my hostess at
my Lord Salisbury's inn and after dinner though

210 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

weary I walked all alone to the Vineyard, which is
now a very beautiful place again, and coming back
I met with Mr. Looker, my Lord's Gardener (a
friend of Mr. Eglin's) who showed me the House,
the Chapell with brave pictures, and above all the
Gardens, such as I never saw in all my life ; nor so
good flowers, nor so great Gooseberrys as big as
nutmegs."

Lord Salisbury was fortunate in not only in-
heriting a taste for Gardening but in possessing
two very celebrated Gardeners ; the first was
Montague Jennings, the second, even better known,
was John Tradescent (one of a famous family of
Gardeners), whose father was Gardener to Queen
Elizabeth ; the son John succeeding him in the
post in the latter years of her reign, and at her
death passing into the service of Lord Salisbury,
becoming finally Gardener to Charles I. It is
interesting to note that John Tradescent, the son
of John, founded the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford. With such guidance, as well as his own
knowledge, it is not surprising that Lord Salisbury
created a Garden at Hatfield almost perfect of its
kind. The Gardens on the east side of the House
and those on the south front both date from this
period. On coming up the far-famed Elm Avenue,
with its double rows of trees on each side, and
crossing the great courtyard on the north front of
the House, an entrance leads on to the Terrace,

HATFIELD HOUSE 211

the open-work stone wall of which has on the inner
side a low, primly cut hedge ; from this Terrace
the Gardens are reached by a wide flight of steps
which project like a bridge across the path below.
In a line with the flight of steps is a broad gravel
walk ; on each side six Yew trees are planted in
the green turf, out of which the Parterres are cut.
The Flower-garden, with its elaborately designed
geometrical Parterres are now, as in Cecil's time,
worked into the initials B and S. From old
designs it appears that these upper Gardens were
never completed, and even what remains of them
is not as originally planned, when they possessed
beautiful fountains and were to have had others
even more elaborate, but they, like " the water-
works " in the Vineyard, were never finished owing
to Cecil's death. Lying somewhat lower than this
Garden, and entered by steps cut in the grass slope,
is a beautiful Bowling Green — a feature without
which no Garden of that period was complete.
Then, sunk again at the foot of another grass
bank, is the Maze, with its windings and intricate
turnings planned in squares, the top of its hedges
being on a level with the Bowling Green, thus
recalling the remark of William Lawson in his
" New Orchard and Garden" : — " Mazes well framed
a man's height may perhaps make your friend
wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot re-
cover himselfe without your helpe."

212 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Beyond the Maze is a Pergola, and parallel with
it is another little Sunk Garden, very charmingly
planned ; it is oblong in shape, enclosed by a
hedge on three sides ; the east side being shaped
in the middle into a semicircle, with very pleasing
effect.

A small plantation of trees, intersected with
paths, slopes down to the water's edge, and then
comes the Park, with its Bracken Fern and magnifi-
cent trees. On all sides, except on the north where
the great courtyard stands, Hatfield House is sur-
rounded by Gardens, and one of these remains to
be mentioned. Laid out immediately in front of
the smaller courtyard, on the south side of the
House, it is on a level with the Terrace, and can
be approached from almost any side. The green
foliage of a noticeably handsome row of Orange
trees (planted in boxes) contrasts most pleasantly
with the pierced stone arcading of the House.

The Garden is enclosed by the same pierced
stone balustrade as that found on the east side.
Here, as in many other places, this balustrade is
covered with Ivy and creepers, having Pavilions at
the four corners. A wide path encircles the
Garden, while a still wider one runs from the
courtyard down the centre till it reaches the Park
which it overlooks, being on a line with a magnifi-
cent Avenue, consisting again of double rows of
trees, and similar to the one leading to the court-

HATFIELD HOUSE 213

yard on the north front of the House. On each
side of the central path lie large grass Lawns (edged
with stone) in which are cut Beds also with stone
edging. Well-designed stone Fountains are placed
in the middle of the central Bed, and stone Vases
stand at some of the corners of the grass Lawns,
very typical of the Elizabethan Flower-garden.

The Parks were enclosed especially for " red and
fallow deer ' by Sir Robert Cecil, and in one of
them he planted the Vineyard, about half a mile
away from the House, and even in his day, as well as
afterwards, thought " surpassing rare." John Evelyn
mentions it in his Diary in 1643: "March n. I
went to see my Lord of Salisbury's Palace at Hat-
field, where the most considerable rarity besides
the House (inferior to few then in England for its
architecture) was the Garden and Vineyard rarely
well watered and planted."

To reach the Dell, as it was often called
in the old days, it is necessary to take a
beautiful walk down the great Elm Avenue and
through many smaller ones (for the Park is a
perfect network of leafy lanes), and on amid the
Bracken and undergrowth till " the rarity " is
reached. It is enclosed on three sides with a
castellated brick wall, the entrance being through
a Garden House, which is apparently quite modern.
Across the wide gravel Terrace, down a flight of
stone steps, with banks of thick, glossy Laurels on

2U A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

each side, is seen a wonderful and unique vista
through an arch cut in the thick, straight-clipped
Yews, down over the greenest of green grass slopes,
across the shimmering river to great clipped trees
beyond, and up a straight cut path with only a
streak of sky showing between the living walls of
green. It is a wonderful sight, especially when
seen on a summer's evening with the afterglow of
sunset still lingering, and the glorious harvest moon
gradually rising, a brilliant ball of orange in the
mauve sky. The mysterious light brings out to the
full the weird wonder of the place, with its varied
depths and shades of green, so subtly blended, and
vanishing in the blue blackness of the Yews. Little
paths wander over the banks, in many instances
perfect green Bowers, for the branches of the trees
planted on each side, being twisted downwards to
form an archway over the path, make a kind of
Pleached Alley. The whole of this strange Garden
is cut into three Terraces out of the bank of the
River Lee which runs at the foot.

The broad Terraces are gravelled, while narrow
paths ending in steps run down by the walls to the
river, bordered by a grassy sward planted with
clipped Yews. It is all severe, dark, and solemn,
and as one writer says, "its primly cut, methodical
Yews with their parallel alleys, carry imagination
back to Donne, Herbert, and Burton, such poetry,
such prose, so fresh, so scholarly, so contemplative

THE VINEYARD, HATF1ELD

HATFIELD HOUSE 215

solemn as those Yews, quaint and fantastic as
they could only have been in a retreat like this."

From the first moment of seeing this retreat filled
with solitude the question arises, Who designed
this beautiful green Dell ? and only one answer
can be given — a Frenchman, viz., Simon Sturtivant.
But from all accounts not half the wonders planned
were accomplished, and even many that were dis-
appeared in the lapse of years ; such as Arbours and
flowers, to say nothing of the Fountain and the
marvellous ''waterworks" planned by the French-
man, so popular in those days. Bridges across
the river gave access to the Vineyard on the
other side, from which Vineyard this strange
Garden still takes its name, though the Vines
have all disappeared.

Long before this date, however, Hatfield pos-
sessed a Vineyard, in which grew the Grapes used
first by the Abbots and then by the Bishops of Ely
to make their wine. But from all accounts the
Grapes grown in England were generally very poor,
and consequently the wine made from them was
bad in quality, probably not unlike the vin ordinaire
drunk by the French peasants ; and this was no
doubt why Vineyards ceased to be cultivated in
England.

When Sir Robert Cecil determined to replant
the old Vineyard, which had been associated
with Hatfield for so many centuries, he did every-

216 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

thing in his power to make it a success. In the
library at Hatfield is a document showing that over
20,000 Vines were planted, and the following letter
to Cecil shows where they came from : " Under-
standing your Lordship's speech yesterday, that you
are about to send some present of gratification to
Mde de la Boderye (the wife of the French
Ambassador) in regard to your Vines, Lest your
Lordship's bounty which knows the true limitts of
honor of itself, should be misledd by my disesteeming
the things upon a sodayne when I valued them but
att ^40, I thought good to let your Lordship know
before it be too late that I misreckned myselfe for
20,000 at 8 crowns the thousand, cometh to near
^50 sterling, besydes the carriage and besydes, the
Ambassador sent me word yesterday by his Maistr-
d'- Hostel that there are 10,000 more a coming
which he hath consigned to be delivered heer to me
for your Lordship's use." Besides all these plants,
Cecil had a present of 500 sent to him by the
Queen of France. " This evening came to me the
French Queen's gardener, that hath brought over
the fruit trees for the King and your Lord-
ship," writes his steward. The Gardener mentioned
here was probably Pierre Collin, to whom the
arrangement and planting was left. Notwithstand-
ing these efforts the Vineyard at Hatfield was
doomed to failure and only existed a few years,
the last mention of it being in 1638.

HATFIELD HOUSE 217

Lord Salisbury seems to have been fortunate in
receiving presents of fruit for his new Garden ; for
Lady Tresham, at Lyndon, sent him fifty Cherry
trees ; Nectarines came from Sir Edmund Sulyard ;
and Sir Edmund Coke "a Norfolk Tumbler for his
Warren."

But to return to the so-called Vineyard, so
beautiful, and so impossible to describe ; it delighted
even Pepys' coarse old soul, for he alludes to it
again in 1667. "As soon as we had dined we
walked out into the Park, through the fine walk of
trees, and to the Vineyard, and there showed them
that, which is in good order, and indeed a place of
great delight ; which together with our fine walk
through the Park, was of much pleasure, as could
be desired in the world for country pleasure and
good ayre." The old Dell and Vineyard is always
associated with the " wicked Marchioness," whose
exquisite portrait is still to be seen at Hatfield
House — a lady possessed of a love for gorgeous
and picturesque effects, and of posing in them as
the central figure. On Sundays, seated in a vividly
painted state barge, rowed by servants in blue
liveries, her appearance roused much interest and
amazement among the village people who watched
the proceedings from the banks of the river Lee.
This lady was burnt to death in one of the wings
of the House (since restored), and people said the
devil had come to fetch her, setting fire to the

218 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

house as he left, the infernal flames being stayed at
the chapel.

It is almost a sorrow to try to paint with such a
cold medium as a pen the quaint beauties of these
Gardens at Hatfield. They possess, like most
Gardens, that strange power of conjuring up the
past for those with eyes to see, making the little
Privy Garden re-echo with footsteps of famous
men and women from Queen Elizabeth to the late
celebrated Prime Minister of England. Then the
old Palace, strangely bound up with the flowers
near by as life is with stern realities and pretty
follies, stands a living record of five hundred years
of ecclesiastical grandeur. And the Vineyard — that
"rarity" — what if much of its glory has departed,
does it not still remain a beautiful stately poem, a
possession to be revered as well as loved? To
none of its lovers is it more delightsome than to
the mischievous Titania, Queen of the Fairies, who
eagerly leaves her flowery bowers for the cool,
green Garden, ready to play her pranks on any
mortal who dares venture to invade it, and her
fairies snatch with tiny, greedy hands at many a
treasure which is lost — sought for — but never
found.

HOLLAND HOUSE, KENSINGTON

" ' The blind bow-boy,' " who smiles upon us from the end of
terraces in old Dutch gardens, laughingly hails his bird-bolts
among a fleeting generation. But for as fast as ever he shoots,
the game dissolves and disappears into eternity from under his
falling arrows ; this one is gone ere he is struck ; the other has
but time to make one gesture and give one passionate cry ; and
they are all the things of a moment." — Virginifrus Puerisque

XI

HOLLAND HOUSE, KENSINGTON

Garden must perforce, if it possess
•*--' any history, be a Garden of memories, but
none perhaps is so rich in varied recollections of
the past as that of Holland House. There are
Gardens where kings and queens have walked and
little princes played, where learned prelates have
enjoyed the sunshine and the flowers while ceasing
to think of dogmas or political intrigues, and where
poets have dreamt of love ; but few Gardens have
witnessed and lived through such strange vicissi-
tudes as those round Holland House : every path,
tree, and flower has its story.

Kings and queens have enjoyed their beauty,
for surely Charles's fascinating Queen, Henrietta
Maria, paid flying visits here to her bien aimd, "the
gay, gallant, vacillating Henry Rich." King James
must have paced some walk anxiously awaiting
news of his dying son — the excellent Prince Henry.
Was it perhaps some memory of the past which

222 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

made William II. prefer my Lord Nottingham's
house as a Royal residence to Holland House with
its beautiful gardens ? Here among the flowers
poets wrote verses, wits laughed at each other's
sallies, and Luttrell, the last of the conversational-
ists, made speech appear golden. Statesmen have
wandered under the old trees pondering weighty
matters that might make or mar a kingdom. Here
Fox, beloved of all, laughed, and planned the
helping of mankind. In the Green Lane lovers
have met and whispered vows — broken and for-
gotten, actors have glibly rehearsed witty plays
amongst the winding paths, and in the glorious
trees Vandyke may have found the inspiration for
his leafy backgrounds. And in some shaded
corner brave men and true have huskily told the
fate of the world's greatest conqueror — of England's
justice without mercy to a fallen foe. Here, too,
the famous Shippen — immortalised by Pope, and
whom even Walpole declared incorruptible —
walked, dreaming perhaps of Jacobite successes
and the restoration of a Stuart king.

These are a few of the memories awakened
by a visit to the Gardens of Holland House.
The House and Garden are, however, so intimately
bound up together that it would be ruthless to
divorce them, especially as each gains interest from
the other, and both together have grown into a
beautiful whole. The Manor of Kensington —

HOLLAND HOUSE 223

or " Chenesiton," as it is called in the Dooms-
day Book — belonged to the De Veres for many
generations and then became, through marriage, the
property of the Argylls. In 1607 Sir Walter Cope
purchased the property and built the present house,
being fortunate enough to have John Thorpe for
his architect, his original drawings for it being still
to be seen in the Soane Museum.

Old books say that the Garden round the old
Manor House was laid out in Elizabeth's reign, but
though there is now no evidence of this remaining
it is very improbable that either the old Manor
House or Sir Walter's new House were gardenless.
In all likelihood the fashion of the day was followed
by Sir Walter Cope of a regular Formal Garden
with green Lawns and a Bowling Green. The
latter is mentioned by Samuel Rogers ; in his
" Recollections" he notes that "the Bowling Green
at Holland House is mown every day."

Chance and change being the unwritten motto of
this old House, it again passed into other hands,
this time through the marriage of Sir Walter Cope's
daughter and heiress (who brought as a marriage
portion the manor and seat of Kensington) with
Henry Rich, the second son of the Earl of
Warwick and the favourite of James I., who
arranged the marriage. Henry Rich, son of
Penelope — the Stella immortalised by Sir Philip
Sidney — was destined to inherit the personal charm

224 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

and beauty of his mother to such a degree that
few could resist him. Magnificently lavish in all he
did, he enlarged Holland House by building on the
wings and arcades, said to have been designed by
Inigo Jones. He also gave his name to the House,
Charles creating him first Baron Kensington, and
later Earl of Holland, in recognition of his many
services, one being the escorting, with the Duke of
Buckingham, of his beautiful Queen to England.
Gossip whispers of more than a tender friendship
which existed between Holland and his Queen ; but
be that as it may, it was of brief duration. The
Queen's quick, imperious nature could ill brook his
wavering allegiance to the Royal cause, and when
danger threatened it Clarendon more than hints
that she finally drove Lord Holland to declare
himself openly for Cromwell.

Thus Holland House became the meeting-place
of the Parliamentary leaders. The following ex-
tract from a journal of the time mentions this : —

" Perfect Diurnal, 2nd August to 9th August,

"1647.

"Aug. 6tk. — This morning the members of
Parliament which were driven by tumults from
Westminster, met General (Fairfax) at the Earl of
Holland's House, Kensington, and subscribed to
the declaration of the army."

HOLLAND HOUSE 225

It is evident that Lord Holland felt remorse
for the part he had played, as towards the end of
the struggle between the King and Cromwell he
made a brave stand for the Royalists at Kingston,
was defeated, taken and imprisoned in his own
house at Kensington. Horace Walpole alludes to
his death thus : "It was a remarkable scene,
exhibited on the scaffold on which Lord Capel
fell. At the same time was executed the once
gay, beautiful, gallant Earl of Holland, whom
neither the honours showered on him by his
Prince, nor his more tender connection with the
Queen, could preserve from betraying and engaging
against both."

Cromwell and Ireton (the latter being deaf) dis-
cussed their secret designs in the middle of the
field in front of Holland House, thus making it
impossible for any one to overhear their plans.

For some months after Lord Holland's death
General Fairfax took up his quarters at Holland
House. " The Lord General Fairfax is removed
from Queen Street to the late Earl of Holland's
House at Kensington, where he intends to reside."
Later the House was restored to the Countess of
Holland, who lived there till her death.

During the Commonwealth, when the theatres
were closed, the players who had bravely joined
the King's army, were almost starving — only being
able to act privately with the greatest caution.

226 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Sometimes they played at great houses, and
Holland House is particularly mentioned as ever
having its doors open to befriend them ; and
Colley Gibber writes : " Holland House at Ken-
sington, where the Nobility and Gentry who met
(but in no great Numbers) used to make a
Sum for them, each giving a broad Peice, or the
like."

For some time after the Restoration, it appears
that Holland House was let out in suites of rooms,
and strangely most of the occupants were celebrities,
thus adding to the marvellous list of great names
that have ever been associated with this House.
Among these tenants was Chardin,the famous French
traveller (knighted by Charles II.), who, as he was
especially interested in trees, may perhaps have
been the means of planting the grounds with some
of the choice foreign specimens to be found there.
A very different character was William Penn, the
Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, who lived for
more than a year at Holland House ; as well as
many other well-known people. It was through his
marriage with Lady Warwick (the second Earl of
Holland had succeeded his cousin as Earl of
Warwick) that Joseph Addison became connected
with the Hollands. Doctor Johnson writes in his
life of Addison : "In this year Addison married
the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had
solicited by a very long and anxious courtship. At

HOLLAND HOUSE 227

last the lady was persuaded to marry him on the
terms much like those on which the Turkish princess
is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to
pronounce, ' Daughter, I give thee this man for thy
slave.'" Addison's genius will be for ever associated
with Holland House and its Gardens, especially as
like many men of letters he found relaxation in
the pleasures of a Garden, and has written most
charmingly in the Spectator about its joys, for-
getting when writing of them the severe classical
style he usually affected.

He calls himself a " humorist in Gardening," and
says that his neighbours call him "very whimsical "
because he prefers the glory of the birds to the red
cherries they destroy. He very aptly compares
Poetry to Gardening. " I think there are as many
kinds of Gardening as of poetry ; your makers of
Parterres and Flower Gardens are epigrammatists
and sonneteers in this art ; contrivers of Bowers
and Grottos, Treillages, and Cascades are romance
writers. Wise and London are our heroic poets."
This last remark shows at once the school of
Gardening Addison belonged to — in fact, there is
no doubt that he helped to bring in the Landscape
style ; its admirers always called "Bacon the prophet,
Milton the herald, and Addison, Pope, and Kent
the champions of this true taste in Gardening
because they absolutely brought it into execution."
Addison declares that " an Orchard in flower looks

228 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

infinitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths
of the most finished Parterre."

Notwithstanding his new principles in Gardening
— if it is his Garden at Bilton, in Warwickshire,
he describes — it must have possessed great charm,
and can have been little marred by the faults of the
style he admired. He writes: " It is a confusion of
Kitchen and Parterre, Orchard and Flower Garden,
which lie so mixed and interwoven with one another
that if a foreigner who had seen nothing of our
country should be conveyed to my Garden at his
landing, he would look upon it as a natural wilder-
ness, and one of the uncultivated parts of our
country. My flowers grow up in several parts of
the Garden in the greatest luxuriancy and profusion.
I am so far from being fond of any particular one by
reason of its rarity, that if I meet with any one in a
field which pleases me I give it a place in my
Garden."

It is doubtful whether Addison was allowed by
his imperious Countess to put any of his views into
practice in the Garden at Holland House, as most
probably the two held different opinions on this
subject as on most other points. The marriage did
not prove a happy one, and some wit cleverly
remarked, " Holland House, although a large house,
could not contain Mr. Addison, the Countess of
Warwick, and one guest — Peace."

In 1719 Addison died — it is said of a broken

HOLLAND HOUSE 229

heart — at Holland House, which he admired and
loved so dearly.

It was growing time for "the brave Old House "
to pass on again into other hands, and when the
young Earl of Warwick died without an heir, Mr.
Henry Fox (Sir Stephen Fox's second son) took a
long lease of it in 1 746 and afterwards purchased it
from the Kensington family, living there till his
death. Both Pepys and Evelyn, the two great
Diarists, have much to say about Sir Stephen Fox
and his extraordinary political career, extending
over four reigns ; and his popularity is not to be
wondered at judging from the description of his
character in Evelyn's Diary. " He is generous
and lives very honourably, of a sweet nature, well-
spoken, well-bred, and is so highly in his Majesty's
esteem."

Mr. Henry Fox (the first Lord Holland) made a
most romantic marriage ; he ran away with Lady
Caroline Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of
Richmond. Of this marriage — which turned out
most happily — Walpole, as usual, has some amusing
remarks to make. He also writes to Sir Horace
Mann in 1747 : "Mr. Fox gave a great ball last
week at Holland House, which he has taken for a
long term, and where he is making great improve-
ments. It is a brave old house and belonged to
the gallant Earl of Holland, the lover of Charles I.'s
Queen."

230 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The first Lord Holland was much concerned
about his Garden, and was constantly writing to
a friend, Peter Collinson, about it : "If you will
permit us, Lady Caroline has a thousand Questions
to ask you about Flowers and I not much fewer
about Plants." Then, in 1750, he writes to the
same friend, saying he wants to " raise a Quantity
of spreading Cypress from seed, also Scarlet Oak
and Chestnuts " ; and his friend writes back to
remind him in March to sow " Candy Tuft, Rock
Stock, Venus' Looking-Glass " — such delightfully
old-fashioned plants.

It was in 1767 that Lord Holland got his great
friend, Charles Hamilton, of Pain's Hill, to lay out
the Grounds of Holland House. Horace Walpole
mentions Hamilton in his well-known essay on
" Modern Gardening." Both Walpole and Hamil-
ton were aiming at the same goal — viz., the natural
school of Gardening — and could, therefore, afford to
be good friends ! For the making of Gardens has
been, like many better and worse pleasures, the
cause of more than one quarrel. Even now
partisans of formal or natural Gardens are apt to
become too eager for friendship.

Hamilton introduced various American trees into
the Garden and also some curious Oaks, and he is
supposed to have suggested the turfing of the
Green Lane, though the original idea of shutting
up the road to form this Avenue was the first Lady

HOLLAND HOUSE 231

Holland's. Lord Holland and his son both died
in the same year, 1774, and were succeeded by
Henry Richard, third Lord Holland. It was in
his time that Holland House became the intellectual
centre for every one distinguished in art, letters,
or science throughout Europe, many celebrated
foreigners carrying away a vivid memory of the
House, its brilliant inmates and its beautiful
Gardens.

Lady Holland's reunions were, in fact, the nearest
approach to those fascinating salons, so difficult
to create and even more difficult to hold together,
which appear as if they were only in reality to be
found in Paris, the home of every art, where the
genius of Mademoiselle de L6spinasse, the brilliance
of Madame de Stae'l, and the beauty of Madame
Recamier, gathered together men of every calibre.

Holland House is no longer surrounded by green
lanes and flowering meadows, as in the good old
days of Queen Bess ; it now lies in the heart of a
bustling, busy suburb of London, called Royal
Kensington, where alas ! it will soon be the only
remaining green oasis left, the ruthless hand of the
builder having pulled down nearly all the beautiful
country houses in the neighbourhood, building over
both their sites and their Gardens. Parallel with
the fine Elm Avenue (which is a quarter of a mile
long) there runs beside it a leafy, shady Lane, which
was given to the public by the fourth Lord Holland

232 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

when he closed the right of way in front of the
Terrace on the south side of the House. When
this was done Lord Holland made a grass Terrace
by raising the ground there, and a carriage entrance
by lowering it on the east side of the House, doing
away with the more ancient one at the south front.
In this alteration the beautiful old stone piers
designed by Inigo Jones in 1629, and carved by
Nicholas Stone, were removed from their position
at the south front of the House, where they stood,
not supporting a gateway as might be supposed
but at each end of a railing. They were placed
at right angles to the new carriage entrance at
the east side of the House and are approached
by a double flight of steps, on either side of a
fountain in the wall below. The piers are sur-
mounted by the arms of Rich, quartering Bouldry
and impaling Cope, telling a chapter in the history
of the House. The north front of the House
(reached by passing up the steps and through the
gateway) faces on to a wide green expanse of
Lawn, with some fine old Cedar trees planted by
Charles Fox. Beyond this Lawn is a lovely Rose
Garden (wonderful as well as lovely, for it must
never be forgotten that this is a London Garden),
having as its leading feature a long Grass Path
bordered by those pink beauties, "Caroline Testout."
To the left lies the Rock Garden, only separated
from the Rose Garden by a well-placed mass of

HOLLAND HOUSE 233

Rhododendrons, that give a radiance of colour to
the Garden in Spring. Among the Rock-plants
are to be noticed many varieties of Sedums,
Thymus, Dranthus, Saxifrage, Aubrietia, Cistus,
Cytisus, Iberis, Helianthemum, Campanula, Hy-
pericum, and many other Rock-growing plants too
numerous to mention.

Flagged stone steps lead down through the
Rock Garden, past a Sundial, and on through the
Rockeries to a Grotto containing a spring, from
which the water flows in fascinating little rivulets
through the Japanese Garden.

Both the Rock Garden and the Japanese Garden
are innovations designed by the late owner of
Holland House, Lord Ilchester, who, with Lady
Ilchester, took such exceptional interest in their
Gardens. Few people realise (according to Mr.
Conder) what mystery and superstition lie behind
the making of a Garden in Japan — for while
attempting to express nature (being followers of the
Landscape school which they adopted from the
Chinese), Japanese designs are symbolical and
intended to convey such abstract ideas as " Medi-
tation," " Retirement," etc. Even the very stones,
so essential to their arrangement, have all sex,
name, and meaning. There are three styles of
Gardening in Japan, " The Finished Style," " The
Intermediate Style," and "The Bold Style";
which, unlike English methods, are never blended

234 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

in one Garden, but kept completely apart. With
this marvellous nation, to attempt is to succeed,
and their Gardens possess not only artistic value
but practical merit.

The Japanese Garden at Holland House is very
charming ; there is, of course, an old Stone
Lantern, of grey granite, quaintly carved and
dating back four hundred years ; no Japanese
Garden being complete without one. It stands at
the top of a sloping Lawn, planted with numerous
flowers and shrubs, such as Bamboos, Yuccas,
endless varieties of Lilies, Hydrangeas, Chrysan-
themums, Roses, Dracaenas, and various kinds of
Grasses. The little stream from the Rock Garden
runs down through the Lawn, between the cleverly-
placed stepping-stones, clear and rippling and
bordered by plants, till it reaches a basin, covered
with pure white Water Lilies, which can be
crossed in the correct Japanese way by stepping-
stones, or by a little rustic bridge ; while below it
lies another Lawn even greener than the last
(well might Pepys exclaim at the beauty " of the
green of England — no way to be found in
France ! "), and planted with standard Wistaria,
feathery Bamboos, and the lovely Japanese Iris
Ksempferi.

At the foot of the second Lawn lies another
pool or basin of water covered with rose-coloured
Marliac Water Lilies.

THE JAPANESE GARDEN, HOLLAND HOUSE

HOLLAND HOUSE 235

This unique Garden — such a surprise among
its English surroundings — is surely a sign of the
cosmopolitan taste of the English people, who
have so often imitated Italian, Dutch and French
Gardens with all their particular beauties : a new
note, in fact, is struck by this strange, mystic Garden
of Japan. Where it ends, and a little to the left,
runs the Terrace of the Italian Garden, bordered
on one side by an " evergreen curtain " — an Ivy-
framed Arcade — cleverly constructed from one of
the old stable walls, with charming effect. Joining
this Arcade is the old ballroom, so celebrated for
the breakfasts given there by the late Lady Holland
when wit sparkled, politics were discussed, and love
whispered.

It was near here, in 1804, that the well-known
duel took place between Captain Best and Lord
Camelford. Little need to say that the quarrel
was about a woman, and that there was little cause
for a duel at all. Lord Camelford was impetuous,
as well as eccentric. As an instance of his eccen-
tricity may be mentioned his preference for rooms
over a Bond Street grocer's shop to his own
magnificent house. At the Prince of Wales' coffee
house in Conduit Street, near his rooms, the fatal
words were spoken. No arrangement could be
made to settle the affair amicably as Captain Bes
had the reputation of being the finest shot in
England, and his opponent fancied any overtures

236 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

to him would betoken cowardice. As was ex-
pected, the duel proved fatal to Lord Camelford,
who died declaring that no blame attached to
Captain Best as he (Lord Camelford) was the
sole aggressor, and imploring to be buried on the
borders of the Lake of Lampierre, in the Canton
of Berne, and leaving ^1,000 as compensation to
the owners.

The Orangery lies beyond the ballroom at the end
of the Terrace, below which, on the right, is the
Italian Garden, only separated by a path from
the Green Lane. This latter is a long avenue
of magnificent trees, turfed from end to end, a
marvellous possession in the midst of the wilderness
of bricks and mortar which form modern London.
And it was here that in his later years
Charles Fox loved to wander. In Trotter's
Memoirs of the great orator he says : " It (Holland
House) was the place where he had spent his
youthful days Every Lawn, Garden, Tree and
Walk were v£wed by him with peculiar affection.
He pointed out its beauties to me, particularly
showed me the Green Lane, or Avenue, which
his mother, the first Lady Holland, had made by
shutting up a road." There is another walk which
always goes by the name of the Alley Louis
Philippe; as in 1848, when they were exiled from
France, Lady Holland lent King Louis Philippe
and Queen Marie Amelie Holland House for

HOLLAND HOUSE 237

some weeks, and the King took his daily morning
walk there.

The prettiest entrance to the Dutch Garden —
the Garden of "our grandmothers, the Chloes
and Delias of the i8th century," as Leigh Hunt
calls it — is close to the House, from where an un-
interrupted view of the whole Garden can be seen,
including the little Dahlia plot lying at the end of
it, shut in by its high hedges. This Dutch Garden
is delightfully set out, the geometrical Parterres
of black earth, edged with closely-clipped Box, are
intersected by narrow Gravel Paths converging
diagonally towards two Fountains and an Armillary
Sphere, which are placed in a line, some distance
apart, in the centre of the Garden. Perhaps, to
get the full charm of the design, it should be looked
at from a height, when it is seen to cover the ground
like a gorgeous carpet, an intricate blaze of colour
framed in an edging of dull green Box. This view
is made quite possible by walking along the Terrace
running from the south front of the House to the
flat roof of the ballroom.

This Terrace lies on the south side, and helps —
with the House on the east, a long brick wall on the
north, and the stable arcading on the west — to
enclose the Garden. Its being thus entirely en-
circled greatly adds to its beauty and emphasises
the fact that it is a Garden within a Garden. At
its foot, enclosed within prim Privet and Yew

238 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

hedges, lies the little Dahlia plot, so full of interest.
In it, built in the wall, stands the Arbour in which
the poet Samuel Rogers used to sit, of whom the
third Lord Holland (whose friend he was) wrote
the following distich in his honour : —

"S. Rogers, author of

' Pleasures of Memory.'
Here Rogers sat and here for ever dwell
With me, those Pleasures that he sings so well.

V»- H.D. 1818."

Framed and hung up in the Arbour is a long
poetical attempt of Henry Luttrell's, who appears
to have found poetry more difficult than prose. The
following lines are, perhaps, worth recording : —

" Not a line can I hit on, that Rogers would own,
Though my senses are ravished, my feelings in tune,
And Holland's my host and the Season is June ! "

Opposite this Arbour a delightful little Fountain
splashes, fills, runs over, and fills again, sprinkling
the Dahlias behind it with a perfect shower of
spray. This Dahlia bed is of great note, for it was
here that the first Dahlias ever grown in England
were planted. For though they had been brought
into England from America by Lady Bute in 1789,
the attempt to grow them was an absolute failure,
and it was not till 1804 that they were successfully

HOLLAND HOUSE 239

introduced by Lord Holland. When travelling in
Spain he met the celebrated botanist, Joseph
Cavanilles, who gave him some seeds, which he
had planted on his return to England. When they
had reached seven inches in height they were
planted out in this little spot and grew to "great
height, and were rich and varied in colour," being
the first Dahlia grown in this country, and be-
coming in a few years a perfect rage.

The origin of their name is said to have been
that of Dahl, the Swedish botanist, after whom
Cavanilles (who first described the genus) named
them. Ever since then this little corner has been
dedicated to these handsome regal flowers. Behind
the bed of Dahlias, placed on the path in front of
the Yew hedge, stands, on a granite column, a
Bust of Napoleon, by the famous sculptor, Canova,
done by him when Napoleon was Commander-in-
Chief in Italy. The words on the pillar, translated,
run thus : —

He is not dead, he breathes the air
In lands beyond the deep !

Some distant sea-girt island where
Harsh men the hero keep."

The third Lord Holland, a most enthusiastic
admirer of the great Napoleon, was, in those days,
perhaps, his solitary champion ; he used all his

240 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

influence to get the Emperor imprisoned in
England, but completely failed. Rightly or
wrongly, the English Government preferred the
gloomy solitude of S. Helena as a place of exile.
Bertrand, however, and other devoted admirers of
Napoleon were visitors at Holland House.

Of Statues and Busts in this Garden there are
singularly few. One among them is a replica of
the colossal Statue of Charles James Fox by
Westmacott ; it was moved into the Garden from
the front hall of the House some years ago. The
words, "Charles James Fox. Whom all nations
unite in esteeming to have been the chief man of
the people," are written below.

The fifth Lord Ilchester placed an Italian stone
Fountain, built into a wall, in the West Garden ;
and also a larger Fountain, with a circular stone
basin, in the centre of the Grass Terrace by the
south front of the House, in which the Marliac
Water-lilies grow beautifully.

From this Terrace, on a clear day, a distant view
of the Surrey hills may be dimly seen on the
horizon, and perhaps it is only when standing
here, looking over the hazy, blue mass of houses,
churches, workshops and their chimneys, which
surround so closely Holland House, that it comes
with full force upon the spectator that this beautiful
Garden lies like a perfect Eden in the midst of the
greatest city in the world.

HUTTON JOHN, CUMBERLAND

A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot !
Rose plot,

Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot —

The veriest school
Of peace ; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not —

Not God ! in Gardens ! when the eve is cool ?
Nay, but I have a sign ;
Tis very sure God walks in mine."

J. E. BROWN

XII

HUTTON JOHN, CUMBERLAND

EXQUISITE glimpses of hill and dale can be
seen on the way to Hutton John, which lies
up the valley of Dacre, not far from Wordsworth's
country. The old house stands in the Garden like
a grim giant, with a shower of flowers at his feet.
These brilliant blossoms at first strike the beholder
as incongruous, near this typical border manor
house, with its beautiful Pele tower. But the
flowers are so carefully blended, so tenderly
arranged, that they must be admired, though
perhaps without them the grey walls, grass Ter-
races, and stately Yews would have been simpler
and more in keeping with the character of the
place. For it must be remembered that Hutton
John is one of a chain of border towers, from
which, in early days, war was waged, not only with
the Scot over the border, but with near neighbours.
In those days and in those parts the great aim of
life was to gain some one else's cattle or posses-

244 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

sions. If possible, in these broils, life was not
sacrificed, but it was held cheap, and the loss of
many a brave man was thought a good exchange
for two or three hundred head of cattle.

As the invaders, ranging from a dozen to some
hundreds, were generally the stronger, the only
hope for the invaded was the resource suggested
by Pele towers.

In border counties these towers (or Pele towers,
as they are usually called) are square, solid buildings
of three storeys, with a newel staircase leading on
to an embattled roof, with a small turret watch-
tower overhanging one corner. The dwelling-
rooms inside were limited, and on the second floor,
the only access being from outside by means of a
ladder, which was easily removed in time of danger.
The ground floor was strongly vaulted and reserved
for cattle, but oftener used for those abundant stores
and home-made produce which people of long ago
so wisely made and more wisely ate, knowing they
were pure and good. This storeroom was fre-
quently only entered by a trap-door from above,
and was perfectly secure from invaders.

From this solid stone house (the walls were often
seven or eight feet thick) the owner was safe from
molesters, and could shower arrows or shot at them
until they were forced to retreat. When the
ground floor was used as a storehouse, there was
an enclosure or " barmkin " attached to the Pele

HUTTON JOHN 245

tower, in which the cattle were kept, and those
captured from some neighbour driven, after a
successful raid.

As can easily be imagined, flowers — "those deli-
cate darlings of Nature's brood " — are almost out of
place around such a style of dwelling, and their
very presence nowadays at Hutton John denotes
that those exciting times are past and that these are
the " piping days of peace." The owners of these
Pele towers were slow to give up their houses of
defence, and it was not till Tudor days that the
richer owners of the larger towers began to enlarge
their dwellings, building low, rambling, two-storied
wings on to each side of the tower, in many cases
almost obliterating its mediaeval character, so com-
pletely was it disguised.

Hutton John is most beautifully situated, with
glorious views ; and through a meadow quite close
to the house runs a stream — the Dacre beck — a
"petulant, prattling beck," quite in harmony with its
severe surroundings. The Pele tower at Hutton
John is of very early date, rectangular, castellated,
and made of rubble, the walls in many places being
quite eight feet thick. A wing was built on to the
north side of the tower by " Andrew and Dorothie
his wife, A.D. 1662," so the inscription runs, the
same wall bearing the arms of the Hudlestons and
Flemings impaled. This wing has a very fine
appearance and is built in the Italian style, which

246 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

was coming into fashion in James I.'s reign.
Carved on the gable wing appears the emblem of a
cross patte", with the date 1662, and the words
underneath :

" Hoc Signo Vinces."

Most of the windows are as late as the
eighteenth century, but the old heart-shaped ones
have great decorative value.

The house with its additions forms the letter L,
and on three sides lie the Gardens. On the right
of the house, is what must have been without doubt
the old " Pleasaunce " — now called the Dutch
Garden.

Over the entrance door leading into it (in the
high wall) stands a finely carved lintel, with three
shields and the crest of the Hudlestons, with the
following words : —

ANDREAS HUDLESTON HOC FIERI FECIT
SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA 1662.

The Garden is square and is enclosed by three
walls (including the wall of the house), and has a
high Yew hedge pierced with archways leading to
the grass Terrace beyond. This little Garden is
laid out with Box-edged borders, filled with flowers.
The use of that popular edging always recalls John
Evelyn's remarks as to its value. " Box is infinitely
to be preferred for bordering of Flowerbeds, and flat

BUTTON JOHN 247

Embroideries to any sweeter less lasting Shrub
whatever, subject after a year or two to grow dry,
sticky, and full of gaps ; which Box is so little
obnoxious to, that having all seasons, it needs not to
be renewed for twenty years together, nor kept in
order with the Gar den- sheers, above once or twice a
year. But whilst I speak in favour of this sort of
edging, I only recommend the use of the Dutch Box
(rarely found growing in England) which is z.pumil
dwarf kind, with a smaller Leaf and slow of growth,
and which needs not to be kept above two Inches
high, and yet grows so close that Beds bordered
with Boards, keep not the Earth in better order ;
besides the Pleasantness of the Verdue is incom-
parable." In the angle of the two walls in the
Dutch Garden is a Columbarium or Dovecote,
without which few old houses were thought com-
plete, but, as a rule, they were not placed in the
Garden, for though a picturesque and delightful
feature, they are not, strictly speaking, Garden
Architecture. Walking past the house on the
left side of the entrance, there is a stretch of
grass, planted with hardy shrubs, which the soil
suits admirably.

From here the Kitchen Garden is easily reached ;
it is a typical old-fashioned one entirely enclosed by
walls, and ought to be an excellent Fruit Garden, for
which it is chiefly used.

On entering the Kitchen Garden, a herbaceous

248 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

border is seen running straight up the centre, making
in summer a dazzling line of colour, the border
being filled with a clever selection of plants all care-
fully thought out as to colour. A distinct note in
this Garden is the attention given to the colour
scheme, upon which too rruch thought can scarcely
be expended. Many Gardens are quite spoilt by
the haphazard planting of otherwise beautiful flowers.
This disregard of the combination of colour produces
a most unfortunate result, very unpleasing to a
cultivated eye.

Snapdragon {Antirrhinum) of every shade,
beautifully blended, is the most noticeable flower
in this centre Herbaceous border, being planted
right up the whole length in such luxurious masses
that the soil it grows in is entirely hidden from
view by this perfect bank of colour.

Snapdragon looks most decorative when grown
on old walls and buildings such as Hutton John.
Being a popular flower, there are now more
varieties than of old ; those of plain, brilliant
colours should always be chosen. Perhaps the
favourite is Antirrhinum majus.

June and July are the months for many old-
fashioned flowers — the Carnation, Gillyflower, or
Sops-in-wine, to give it the pretty old-world
names, being the most loved of all, with its delicate,
sweet scent. This universal favourite flourishes
splendidly in this Cumberland soil (which is a light

BUTTON JOHN 249

red loam) and is to be seen everywhere in this
Garden in perfect beauty. The old crimson Clove
Carnation which now can be procured in many
shades, should be seen in every Garden, being a
most necessary flower, grown in groups or masses
arranged with other well-chosen blooms.

Great character is given to the Garden at Hutton
John by the arrangement of the Terrace, which,
though simple, carries with it charm and dignity.
Whoever designed this Terrace can claim to have
realised the exact note of colour and the correct
Garden feature required by the old house. Raised
somewhat from the Lawn beneath by a low Terrace
wall, is the wide grass Terrace on which are planted,
equidistant, six fantastically shaped Yew trees.
Huge, solemn, and severe they stand, their dark
green foliage contrasting deliciously with the cold
grey background of the old house behind.

These Yews are such a marvellously impressive
sight in their severe beauty, that even Pope, that
railer against Garden extravagancies, would have
had to acknowledge them the exception which
proved the rule.

The age of these beautiful trees is said to be
three hundred years, and they are named " Queen
Elizabeth's Maids of Honour." The lovely view of
the Ullswater hills, seen in the distance, greatly
adds to the charm of the Terrace.

This steep ridge of hills is called the "High

250 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Street" from an old Roman road that runs along
the top.

Against the Terrace wall pink Roses are planted,
climbing along it in graceful trails, growing from
a bed of pale mauve Violas.

The Garden gradually slopes down from this
Terrace to a grass Lawn — grass as green as that in
the Emerald Isle, owing its beauty to the fact that
this part of the country has the heaviest rainfall in
England. On this Lawn there are to be found
borders of different Herbaceous plants, artistically
arranged with regard to combinations of colour,
such as pale and dark mauve. In the Beds are
Monkshood, Larkspur, Wormwood (Artemisia),
Phloxes, and dainty Clematis trained quite low to
cover the ground with a soft veil of mauve blossoms.

Though there may be a doubt as to the suitability
of gay colour on this Lawn, it must be acknowledged
that it has been placed there with great skill, and
with a distinctly decorative result.

Another Terrace wall stands at the edge of this
sloping Lawn, hidden by a very handsome Fuchsia
hedge. The value and beauty of Fuchsias in a
Garden is seldom realised, though they are
among the most graceful of plants, with their
crimson stems and hanging flowers, called by
children "painted manikins." A Fuchsia hedge
is quite a possession in any Garden ; and it is a
great pity that more are not planted, especially as

THE YEWS AT HUTTOX JOHN, CUMBERLAND

HUTTON JOHN 251

some kinds of Fuchsias are quite hardy plants and
will thrive without any care or trouble. Beyond this
hedge, through a meadow, runs the Dacre beck,
adding in no small measure to the delight of the
Garden by its rippling chant.

On the left-hand side of the grass Terrace in front
of the house, a flight of steps leads into a Shrubbery,
and then into a little Rock Garden, filled with the
usual rock-living plants, such as Rockfoil (Saxi-
fraga), Purple Rock Cress (Aubrietia\ Campion
(Lychnis], and Stonecrop (Sedum).

The old house at Hutton John stands in such
a commanding relation to the Garden that a little
of its history and that of its owners is distinctly
necessary to the complete appreciation of this
wonderful old place.

In Edward 1 1 1. 's reign, " William de Hoten John
held this manor of Hoten John by the barony
of Greystock by homage and 2os. coinage," and
there is evidence among the original documents at
Hutton John of the existence of the De Hotens as
far back as 1282, while it may be presumed that
parts of the Pele tower are quite as old as the
thirteenth century. In fact, some people consider
it one of the oldest in the kingdom. The name
Hutton John originated most probably owing to
the family descending from a younger brother of
that name ; but who this John was is not actually
known.

252 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The property remained in the family till Cuthbert
Hutton died. His wife Elizabeth, the daughter
of Sir Robert Bellingham, had been educated
with Lady Katherine Parr at Kendal Castle, and
when Henry VIII. made Katherine his sixth wife,
she sent for Elizabeth to be " the Mother of the
Maids " at Court. The Princess Mary stood
godmother to Elizabeth Hutton's daughter Marie,
to whom Hutton John passed, as her brother
Thomas died childless. In 1564 Marie Hutton
married Andrew, younger son of Sir John Hud-
leston, of Millum Castle, and Hutton John, with
its beautiful Yews and grass Terraces, has remained
in the Hudleston's possession ever since.

Andrew Hudleston was an officer in the body-
guard of Edward VI. and his two sisters, Queen
Mary and Queen Elizabeth. He rejoiced in the
possession of seven sons and three daughters ; one
of his sons, John, stands out in the annals of the
family as a most romantic figure.

Educated at Douai, in Flanders, as a priest, on
the outbreak of the Civil War he volunteered to
serve under Sir John Preston. After the battle
of Worcester, John Hudleston helped to save
Charles II.'s life by hiding him from the rebels
in an Oak tree at Boscobel — ever after called
the " Royal Oak." Boscobel possessed such a
fascinating Garden, that when it was thought
safe Charles left his leafy hiding-place ; as Thomas

HUTTON JOHN 253

Blount says in his quaint little book : " His
Majesty, finding himself now in hopeful security,
spent some part of the Lord's Day in a pretty
Arbor in Boscobel Garden, which grew upon a
mount, and wherein there was a stone table and
seats about it. In this place he passed away some
time in reading, and commended the place for its
retirement." Perhaps it was on that day that
Hudleston gave the King a treatise upon the
Romish Church, which so impressed Charles that
ever afterwards he belonged, in heart, to that
Communion.

Having hidden Charles for some days, John
Hudleston and other friends successfully disguised
him, and he made his escape to France. Some
say the faithful priest travelled with him, and
suffered many privations through his devotion.

At the Restoration Charles rewarded John
Hudleston, and he was exempt from the terribly
severe laws against Papists.

Years later, when the priest had become a
Benedictine monk, and the King was dying, his
friends, knowing his real views upon religion, were
anxious to get a priest to confess him secretly and
administer the last Sacrament. Strangely enough,
the priest found was none other than the faithful
John Hudleston. The King recognised him at
once, and said, "You have saved me twice, my body
after the battle of Worcester, and now my soul ! "

254 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

There are many interesting portraits of the
priest ; the one at Hutton John was painted by
Housman in 1685.

All the Hudlestons suffered cruelly at Crom-
well's hands on account of their loyalty to the two
Charles's, and this branch of the family lost every
possession but Hutton John, and even this was
many years "under sequestration," and not returned
to them till Charles II. became King.

It was the grandson of Marie, the heiress of
Hutton John, who married Dorothy Fleming, and
added to the old house, having his name and that
of his wife carved on the wings. Their son was
the first Protestant in the family, a man of dis-
tinction and a great admirer of the Prince of
Orange — in fact, he was the initiator of the first
hostilities against King James. Hearing, in
October, 1688, that a ship loaded with arms, for
a garrison at Carlisle, had put in at Workington,
he rode over and consulted Sir James Lowther
(also a keen supporter of the Dutch William) how
the ships could be gained for the use of the Prince
of Orange, his landing in England being daily
expected. They armed their servants and tenants
and marched secretly during the night to be in
readiness for the attack in the early morning.
They were successful, the crew quickly surrender-
ing. William III. was delayed by storms from
landing at the time he was expected, which delay

HUTTON JOHN 255

caused Sir James Lowther and Andrew Hudleston
a few days of great anxiety. But when William at
last arrived in England, their prompt action received
ample recognition.

Though Hutton John possesses an ample share
of beauty of its own, it must ever gain a reflected
glory from being near the homes of so many great
men. Wordsworth has immortalised the surround-
ing country in his verse. Southey, Coleridge, and
De Quincey lived amongst its glories, while Gray,
always somewhat coldly severe towards most
beauties of Nature, seems to have appreciated the
exquisite pearl-like shades in the light and shadow
of the country near Hutton John. He alludes
thus to the old place : " Farther on appears
Hatton St. John, a castle-like old mansion of
Mr. Huddleston " — but not a word of the Garden,
with its distinctive feature, the old Yews on the
Terrace, which are shown in their full beauty in
the water-colour drawing of Hutton John.

Though " comparisons are odious," it is interest-
ing to compare old Gardens with new, the
comparison generally resulting in the conviction
that modern Gardens lack style, both in design
and effect. The rage for flower growing has
produced glorious specimens, but in many cases
has banished any real arrangement or plan of
design, without which no Garden can possess any
true repose or charm. In old Gardens there was a

256 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

place for everything, but in many new Gardens
there is everything with no allotted place ! and,
without a colour scheme and a definite plan, a
Garden, as a whole, can only produce a feeling of
decided chaos. Then it is seldom that a modern
Garden creates a leading feature, like the Yews
at Hutton John — modern ideas being opposed to
artificial effects — such as Topiary work — preferring
less design and character, and in their place
gorgeous specimens of beautiful flowers.

KNOLE, KENT

" While, with slow eyes, we these survey,
And on each pleasant footstep stay,
We opportunely may relate
The progress of this house's fate.

"No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green."

ANDREW MARVEL

XIII

KNOLE, KENT

1P\R. JOHNSON'S words, -the inaudible and
i-' noiseless foot of time," flash across the
memory at the first sight of Knole Park — standing
like a little walled town amid an undulating Park.

Time has touched the old place lightly, yet its
age is manifest on every side ; many of these grand
stone walls stood in the thirteenth century, when
castles were strongholds for the community within,
and every inmate, from chaplain to scullion, had an
allotted place at the great dining-table.

Those were stirring times, and if the walls of
Knole could speak, many a brave deed of the past
would be extolled. Alas ! now it remains a body
without a spirit, as it were, drear and cold, for the
light of its glory has fled — the bustle and life of
cardinals and princes with their retinues have
vanished with the "noiseless foot of time."

Walpole's graphic pen describes lovingly and
sadly its wonderful past, and the feeling of desertion

359

260 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

and loneliness which struck him on visiting the
great palace. " I came to Knole, and that was
a medley of various feelings ! Elizabeth and
Burleigh and Buckhurst, and then Charles and
Anne, Dorset and Pembroke and Sir Edward
Sackville : and then a more engaging Dorset
and Villiers and Prior, and then the old Duke
and Duchess and Lady Betty Germaine and the
Court of George II.! The place is stripped of
its Beeches and honours, and has neither beauty
nor prospects.

" The house, extensive as it is, seemed dwindled
to the front of a college and has the silence and
solitude of one. It wants the cohorts of retainers,
and the bustling jollity of the old nobility to
disperse the gloom. I worship all its faded splen-
dour and enjoy its preservation and could have
wandered over it for hours with satisfaction."

Something of the story of Knole is told in
these words of Walpole, but to realise fully the
various phases the House and Gardens have gone
through, the pages of history must be turned still
further back. Old books state that in King John's
reign the manors of Knole, Kemsing, and Scale
were in the possession of Baldwin de Betun, Earl of
Albemarle, who gave his daughter and estates to
William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke.

Pembroke's brother, who succeeded to the title
and estates, took part in the rebellion against

KNOLE 261

King John. " The patriotic efforts of Langton,
Archbishop of Canterbury," Hume says, "were
warmly seconded by William Earl of Pembroke;
and to these two distinguished men the English
nation is under the deepest obligations for the
foundation of their liberties."

Pembroke's " patriotic efforts " cost him his
estates, which John granted to an adventurer,
who was later banished in disgrace by Henry III.,
and Pembroke came by his own again. Dying
without an heir, he was succeeded by his nephew,
Roger Bigod, who, in turn, left the estates to the
Grandisons. In this last family they remained for
some generations, during which time the property
was divided and the manor of Knole transferred
to Geoffrey de Say, "Admiral of all the King's
Fleets."

Records do not appear to mention how the
manor and house of Knole passed away from the
De Say family ; it was probably by marriage.

After the Wars of the Roses, the owner of Knole
was forced to sell the greater part of his estates.
The Manor of Knole, with its great house, had
long been the envy of the Archbishops of Canter-
bury, who delighted in palaces suitable to show off
to advantage their splendid retinues ; so a willing
purchaser was found in Thomas Bourchier, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. Thus Knole became an
ecclesiastical Palace, and the new owner enclosed

262 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

the House, it is said, in a great Park. Archbishop
Bourchier's successor, Morton — who left such a
beautiful life record behind him " of being born
for the good of England" — added extensively to
Knole till it was, indeed, a Palace worthy of a
great Cardinal of the Church and Chancellor of
England.

Henry VII. paid Archbishop Morton a Royal
visit at Knole, and the old walls and courtyards
must have resounded with the noise and clatter of
horses and men-at-arms.

Archbishop Morton, priest, statesman, architect,
and patron of every art, died at Knole, the spot which
shared his affections with Hatfield of earlier days.

His successor, William Warham, is chiefly
remembered for being a friend of Erasmus, who
wrote : " Had I found such a patron in my youth,
I, too, might have been counted among the fortu-
nate ones."

These two friends were both enthusiastic over
the " new learning." Green gives a most fasci-
nating picture in the " History of the English
People" of the life the Archbishop led: "In the
simplicity of his life the Archbishop offered a
striking contrast to the luxurious nobles of the time.
He cared nothing for the pomps, the sensual plea-
sures, the hawking and dicing in which they too
commonly indulged. An hour's pleasant reading,
a quiet chat with some learned newcomer alone

KNOLE 263

broke the endless round of civil and ecclesiastical
business. Few men realised so thoroughly as War-
ham the new conception of an intellectual and moral
equality before which the old social distinctions of
the world were to vanish away."

Thomas Cranmer, a very different man, occupied
the see of Canterbury after Warham's death. Cran-
mer played vigorously into Henry's hands over the
royal divorce, and has not been left unscathed by
comment for diminishing the lands of his see by
giving the King Knole Palace, which Henry had
always coveted. A quaintly written letter from
Cranmer 's secretary attempts to vindicate his
master from the charge of pandering to the King's
whim. "As touching the exchange," urges the
secretary, " men ought to consider with whom he
had to do, especially with such a Prince, as would
not be bridled nor gainsaid in any of his requests.
My Lord, minded to have retained Knole unto
himself, said that it was too small a house for his
Majesty. ' Marry,' said the King, ' I will rather
have it than this house (meaning Otford), for it
standeth on a better soil. This house standeth
low and is rheumatic, like unto Croydon, where I
could never be without sickness ; and as for Knole,
it standeth on a sound, perfect, wholesome ground,
and if I should make abode there, as I do surely
mind to do, now and then, I will live at Knole, and
most of my house shall live at Otford.' And so

264 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

by this means both houses were delivered up into
the King's hands."

Thus the Church lost by gift one of her most
beautiful palaces, but perhaps it is only fair to the
imperious Henry to state that some writers say he
paid handsomely for his new house.

Edward VI. gave Knole to the unscrupulous
Duke of Northumberland, who sold part of the
manor, reserving " the house of Knole, its
Orchards and Gardens " — this being the first men-
tion of any Gardens attached to Knole. " Filled
with the fumes of ambition," the Duke attempted,
at Edward's death, to put his daughter-in-law, the
Lady Jane Grey, upon the throne ; his dreams,
however, were short-lived, and he was attainted
of high treason and executed.

Knole, after this event, passed again into the
sovereign's possession, and Queen Mary, being a
true daughter of Rome, gave back to the Church
the gift of Cranmer, and it became the Palace of
Reginald Pole, Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury
(a man of whom history has given such widely
diverse accounts) ; he is said to have been much
attached to Knole, and died there, strangely
enough, on the same day as his unhappy Queen.

The reformed religion, proving, in the eyes of
Elizabeth, the better policy for the good of her
people, Knole became her property and severed for
ever its connection with the Church, which had

KNOLE 265

added so considerably to its beauty and magnifi-
cence. Elizabeth granted Knole and its lands to
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who, however,
surrendered them in the eighth year of her reign.

The next name connected with Knole, and the
one that is generally linked with the fine old place,
is Sackville. The Sackvilles were of an old family
of Norman extraction, a race renowned for wit and
wisdom. Walpole calls Thomas Sackville the owner
of Knole, "the patriarch of a race of genius and
wit." Thomas Sackville was the only son of Sir
Richard Sackville (a kinsman of Queen Elizabeth
through her mother Anne Boleyn) and was born at
Buckhurst, in Sussex, in 1536 ; he studied at Oxford
and Cambridge, and was a distinguished scholar in
Latin and English verse. Later he entered at the
Inner Temple. Literature places him in an unique
position, viz., that of being the joint author of the
first tragedy in the English language — Thomas
Morton having written the first three acts, and
Sackville the fourth and fifth. " Ferrex and
Porrex," or " Gorboduc " as it was oftener called,
was written in the then prevailing style, derived
from the school of Seneca in England. Sir Philip
Sidney speaks highly of this tragedy in his
" Defence of Poesy " : " ' Gorboduc,' which, notwith-
standing as it is full of stately speeches and well-
sounding phrases climbing to the height of Seneca,
his style, and is full of notable morality, which it

266 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

doeth most delightfully teach, and so obtain the
very end of poesy."

The tragedy was written when Sackville was
only twenty-five; he took his plot from "The
History of the British Kings," by Geoffry of
Monmouth. Each act began with a dumb show
and ended with a chorus (save the last) ; the former
custom was very usual in the early English drama,
and gave scope for a series of pageants greatly
appreciated by the audience.

The first authorised edition of "Gorboduc"
appeared in 1571, but the play was performed
before Queen Elizabeth by the gentlemen of the
Inner Temple at Whitehall in January, 1561.

Court entertainments were nearly as dear to
Elizabeth as were her magnificent progresses
through England, and although she was forced to
curtail the expense of her amusements, they were
ever costly affairs, though nothing to the splendour
and beauty of the masques of later date given by
James I. and Charles I.

Through the recommendation of Pope, one of
Sackville's greatest admirers, "Gorboduc," the first
of English tragedies, was revived at Drury Lane
in 1736, oddly enough with marvellous success, as
it is a tedious and gory play at best. It is curious
to note that the first tragedy was produced and
the first comedy printed when Shakespeare was a
child of a few years old ; therefore it might prac-

KNOLE 267

tically be said that the English drama and the
world's greatest dramatist were born simulta-
neously. Sackville is remembered by another
work of more interesting character, the finest parts
of " The Mirror of Magistrates," a collection of
poems, which, according to J. A. Symonds, "has
justly been said to connect the work of Lydgate
with the work of Spenser."

Besides playing such an important part in letters,
Sackville's life is bound up in the history of his
day. Wild and extravagant in his youth, Elizabeth
severely reproved him and declared "she would
not know him till he knew himself." When he
gained this knowledge and deserted pleasures and
poetry for politics, the Queen extended to him
her royal favour and he was rapidly promoted.

At Lord Burleigh's death, Sackville was made
Lord High Treasurer, and created Lord Buck-
hurst, later by James I. Earl of Dorset. He
restored and greatly added to Knole. The
beautifully worked lead water-spouts bear his
initials and the dates 1605 and 1607. To such
an extent did he impress the Jacobean style on
the old house that it is often forgotten that the
oldest part dates back to Roger Bigod ; but it
is chiefly Tudor, the Archbishops Bourchier and
Morton having added to and restored it during
that period. The house at this time, with all
its stables, outhouses, and buildings, is said to

268 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

have covered five acres of land. In no old book
of this date is there a detailed account of any
Garden attached to the house at Knole, yet
Gardens there must have been.

Fancy, that fickle fairy, that may be called forth
at will, can paint vividly the delightful charm that
must have lingered over the green Box-edged
bowers, and gay knots of flowers, which lay hidden
centuries ago behind the high grey walls that still
encircle the Garden at Knole.

The fifth Earl of Dorset made many improve-
ments in the house and Park, living a great deal
at Knole; he married an heiress, Frances Cranfield,
and had her arms inpaled with his own on the
Garden gates and Sundial as well as in other
places.

The house of Dorset has ever been celebrated
for its wit and genius, though, according to the old
rhyme, these good gifts invariably skip a generation.

"Folly and sense in Dorset's race,
Alternately do run ! "

Of all the witty Sackvilles the wittiest was
Charles, sixth Earl of Dorset, " who was the first
gentleman in the voluptuous court of Charles II.
and the gloomy one of King William," a boon
companion of Villiers, Sedley, and Rochester — the
worst of profligates but the sweetest of singers.

KNOLE 269

14 1 know not how it is, but my Lord Dorset can do
anything, and yet is never to blame," said Lord
Rochester, in those early days, when they indulged
in all the mad, riotous pleasures that a man of rank
and fashion thought necessary at the time of the
Restoration.

Sackville was a special friend of Charles II., and
he was the first to introduce the King to the saucy
orange-girl, Nell Gwyn, when she was his own
mistress.

Evelyn, in his Diary, alludes disapprovingly to
the King's intimacy with "pretty, witty Nell." He
writes : "His Majesty's Surveyor, Mr. Wren, faith-
fully promised me to employ him (Gibbon), I
having also bespoke his Majesty for his worke at
Windsor, which my friend Mr. Man the architect
there was going to alter and repaire universally;
for on the next day I had a fair opportunity of
talking to his Majesty about it, in the lobby next
the Queenes side, where I presented him with some
sheets of my Historic. I thence walk'd with him
thro' St. James's Parke to the Garden, where I
both saw and heard a very familiar discourse
between . . . (the King) and Mrs. Nellie as they
cal'd an impudent comedian, she looking out of her
Garden on a Terrace at the top of the wall, and
. . . (the King) standing on the Greene Walke
under it. 1 was heartily sorry at this scene."

When the Dutch war broke out, Sackville

270 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

joined the Duke of York as a volunteer and was
with him when the Dutch ships were destroyed ; it
was on the eve of this battle that he is supposed to
have written his graceful ballad, " To all you ladies
now at land," showing great calmness of character
as well as wit, The following verses — the first and
the last — give some idea of its character : —

"To all you ladies now at land,

We men at sea indite;
But first would have you understand,

How hard it is to write :
The Muses now, and Neptune too,
We must implore to write to you —

With a fa, la, la, la, la.

And now we've told you all our loves

And likewise all our fears,
In hopes this declaration moves

Some pity for our tears :
Let's hear of no inconstancy —
We have too much of that at sea —

With a fa, la, la, la, la."

Dr. Johnson comments shrewdly upon this story ;
" Seldom any splendid story is wholly true, I have
heard, from the late Earl of Orrery, who was likely
to have good hereditary intelligence, that Lord
Buckhurst had been a week employed upon it, and
only retouched or finished it on the memorable
evening. But even this, whatever it may subtract
from his facility, leaves him his courage."

KNOLE 271

In 1674 Charles Sackville succeeded to the
Middlesex estates, and the next year was created
Earl of Middlesex and Baron Cranfield, becoming
the sixth Earl of Dorset three years later.

His taste turned to literature rather than to
politics, and he was justly admired for his Ana-
creontic poetry. He was an honest partisan of
James II., till he found that monarch's injustice,
cruelty, and bigotry past enduring, then he became
a friend and favourite of King William's. Dorset
is a marvellous case of universal popularity. There
was never a dissenting voice in the praise showered
upon him.

The whole literary world of his day looked
up to him in the matter of letters ; as Prior
(whose genius was fostered under Dorset's care)
writes : " Dryden determines by him, under the
character of Eugenius, as to the laws of dramatic
poetry. Butler owed to him that the Court tasted
his ' Hudibras ' ; Wycherly that the Town liked his
' Plain Dealer ' ; and the Duke of Buckingham
deferred to publish his ' Rehearsal ' till he was sure
that my Lord Dorset would not rehearse upon him
again. La Fontaine and St. Evremont have acknow-
ledged that he was a perfect master in the beauty
and fineness of their language and all that they call
Les Belles Lettres. Nor was this nicety of his
judgement confined only to books and literature,
but was the same in statuary and painting.

272 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Bernini would have taken his opinion upon the
beauty and attitude of a figure, and King Charles
did not agree with Lely that my Lady Cleveland's
picture was finished till it had the approbation of
my Lord Buckhurst."

Curiosity searches for a reason for the popularity
of this man — to find that behind his gracefi
manner and witty tongue beat the kindest heart in
the world. " He was a friend to the unfortunate,
charitable to excess, tender-hearted to a fault, and
lastly, most wonderful of all, a man of letters without
envy ! "

Knole, in his day, became a home for many an
unfortunate man of letters ; Killigrew, unscrupulous,
gifted and witty, and also D'Urfey had apartments
there for some years.

Prior and Dryden constantly stayed with Dorset
at Knole, and their poems are dedicated to him
in the odiously fulsome fashion of the day.

Their gorgeous, generous patron, with his keen
sense of humour, must have seen through much of
this servile flattery, and no wonder that his true
opinion of mankind slipped out almost unawares
in his poetry : —

" For pointed satires I would Buckhurst chuse,
The best good man with the worst-natured muse/

sang Rochester in their youthful days, and till the

KNOLE 273

hour of his death Dorset had the world of
fashion and letters at his feet, captivated by his
wit.

Congreve, who visited him on his death-bed,
declared that " Dorset slabbered more wit dying
than most men living."

Without doubt the graceless, graceful, witty
Charles is the most interesting figure among the
many in the Sackville Annals, though his ances-
tor, Thomas Sackville, holds a superior place in
literature. Scarce a mention is there in the maze
of history of a Garden or Park at Knole. How-
ever, in 1709 four publishers, Mortier, Midwinter,
Overton, and Smith, brought out the " Britannia
Illustrata," a series of elaborate views of the great
country seats of England. Very fortunate it was
that these and other designs were made, as other-
wise no record would have remained of the beauties
that the ruthless hands of Kent, Brown, and others
were to wipe out as if from a slate.

Knyff made the drawings, and they were en-
graved on copper by John Kip, who was born at
Amsterdam in 1652, and came over to England
in the reign of Charles II. Valuable as these
engravings are, the idea sometimes suggests itself
that Knyff perhaps improved upon the originals.
In any case, his work gives a wonderfully clear
conception of what the Gardens of that period
were like.

274 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

But the thought of their destruction causes
genuine distress — that men, from a so-called love
of Nature, should have dared to tamper with the
Gardens that age had mellowed, love had watched,
and Art had designed with such symmetrical grace
— Gardens which possessed a fascination seldom,
if ever, found in those based on imitations of
natural landscapes. In Kip's view of Knole no
Bowling Green is to be seen, but twenty years
later, in Badeslade's " Views of Noblemen's and
Gentlemen's Seats in the County of Kent," in
which Knole appears, many alterations are notice-
able, among them a Bowling Green, this being just
about the time when the game was most fashion-
able— though Bowling Greens had been in existence
for quite a hundred years. Many old English
writers mention them ; William Lawson writes in
1618, "it shall be a pleasure to have a Bowling
Green."

In Badeslade's engraving of the west prospect
of Knole the house has two large grass Lawns
in front of it, divided by a wide Avenue, coming
up from the Park beyond ; and trees are planted
at equal distances round the Lawn inside the
railings. To the right of the entrance tower is
a handsome gate opening on to a Terrace leading
to the Bowling Green, which is oval in shape,
and stands on a higher level, being approached
by a double flight of steps. Thick Yew hedges

KNOLE 275

surround it, with two Arbours cut in the hedge,
on the west and east sides. A vista can be
seen from the house (which stands behind some
well-executed Parterres) across the Bowling Green
and Plantation beyond, to the wide gate, with
railings on each side let into the wall, which divides
the Garden from the Park.

Badeslade draws attention, in a note, to the
Mount in the Park, " it having a very fine pros-
pect." Further west, past the Bowling Green,
are Cabinets of Verdure, Statues, Ponds, Arbours,
and a Wilderness.

It is a decided change to turn from this picture
of a Formal Garden full of dainty whims, to that
which fashion has allowed to remain at Knole.

For though the present Garden possesses interest
of a different character, there must always remain a
feeling of regret for what has been swept away in
the past.

The entrance to Knole Park is through an
Avenue of Beeches, which runs down to a gate-
way with a lodge on each side. From there the
Avenue stretches up a wooded hill, and then sweeps
through a green sward to the house, a magnificently
triste pile of grand grey stones.

Passing under the great doorway in the central
tower, the Green Court comes as a delightful note
of colour after the sombre effect of the great house
outside. Old walls covered with creepers, gay

276 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

flowers in stone Vases, and good reproductions in
lead of antique Statues, all help to make up the
wonderful effect of this unique Court.

Passing on to the Stone Court — the beauty of
which must fill any one with admiration — and
through the house, the great hall where so
many celebrated scenes must have taken place is
entered. One of these was most likely the
amusing incident which occurred when Charles, the
witty Earl of Dorset, was entertaining some boon
companions, amongst whom were poets and wits.
The conversation flagged, and Dorset suggested
that every one should write an impromptu, and
that Dryden should decide which was the best.
Every one worked anxiously and hard except their
host, who in a minute threw his paper down on
the table. At length, when all the paper lay
beside his, Dryden was called upon to decide,
and without hesitating gave the palm to Dorset ;
an opinion endorsed by every one when they
read the following : "I promise to pay Mr. John
Dryden, or order, ^500 on demand. — DORSET."

After crossing a third Court, an iron gateway is
reached, which leads to the Gardens on the east
side of the house. To the left lies an old Walled
Garden filled with a mass of delicious old Lavender
bushes and Fig trees, the foliage of the latter pos-
sessing greater artistic value than almost any other
tree. The contrast formed by the large glossy

THE LAVENDER GARDEN, KNOLE

KNOLE 277

Fig leaves with the sweet-smelling, misty mauve
Lavender is a very delightful one.

The water-colour drawing shows this charming
little Garden.

Beyond the Lavender bushes is shown a fasci-
nating view of the great house, with its dormer
windows and red gable roofs, rising one behind the
other like a little mediaeval town.

The idea in old days of reserving one Garden
for one flower cannot be too much admired : it
gives a delicacy of effect and also the charm of
individuality. The modern fashion of long borders
stretching away into the distance, and filled with
flowers regardless of colour or species — simply
creating a gorgeous display — is very wearisome,
smaller Gardens, on a different plan, being turned
to with relief.

On leaving the Lavender Garden and walking
down a long grass path, the Sunk Garden is
reached. It is enclosed by a wide verge of grass,
with a huge bank of Rhododendrons between it
and the high wall which separates the Garden
from the Park.

Again, these Sunk Gardens are seldom made
now, when panoramic effects are desired, and the
fascination of mystery in a Garden is forgotten. To
come across a little Sunk Garden, filled with its own
special flowers, in the centre of which lies a pool of
water, as at Knole, is like turning over a page in a

278 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

book and finding a new chapter containing some-
thing of rare interest. Continuing down the grass
path that runs parallel with the Sunk Garden
(between the latter and the Wilderness), the Park
can be entered through handsome gates.

The clumps of trees and gentle undulations which
characterise the Park impress upon the beholder
that " Capability " Brown, or some such hand, had
to do with its arrangement. Walpole in 1752 ex-
presses his views about the Park pretty freely —
as indeed he does on any subject, but more
especially on Gardens : " From Sevenoaks we
went to Knole. The Park is sweet, much old
Beech and an immense Sycamore before the great
gate, that makes me more in love than ever with
Sycamores. A vista cut through the wood has a
delightful effect from the front, but there are
some trumpery fragments of Gardens that spoil
the view from the State apartments." Evidently
every one was impressed by these Beeches.
Daniel Defoe, in his tour through England,
notes them : "I saw Knole, the ancient and
magnificent seat of the Duke of Dorset. It is
situate in the middle of a very large Park
remarkable for its fine woods and spreading
Beeches."

Two great features of the old Garden happily
remain — its old Walls and green Pa|hs. The first
give a feeling of privacy and restfulness not to

KNOLE 279

be found in a Garden which boldly overlooks a
Park. And the constantly recurring vistas to be
seen down the long grass paths make a remarkably
striking feature in the Gardens at Knole, always
creating a sense of constant expectation of some
new and delightful prospect. From the little
dormer windows of the suite of rooms belonging
in old days to Lady Betty Germaine a delightful
glimpse can be caught of one of these green grass
Walks, with two old pillars, the remains of some
vanished gateway.

The quaint little suite of rooms that Lady
Betty Germaine used remain unchanged ; they
have not shared the fate of the Gardens of her
day. And what of Lady Betty, whose name is
so often associated with Knole and its Gardens ?
Gossip whispers that, plain and portionless, she
managed to dance through a long life with amazing
gaiety, if not wholly without misfortunes. Lady
Betty was the daughter of Charles, second Earl
of Berkeley, whose chaplain for a short time was no
other than Swift. Between Lady Betty and the
author of " A Tale of a Tub " a strange friendship
sprang up, a friendship which lasted the incongruous
pair through life, only broken now and then by the
mad irascibility of the brilliant cynic. Lady Betty
married Sir John Germaine, of Drayton, the
notorious adventurer and gambler, on whose
account the Duke of Norfolk divorced his wife,

280 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Lady Mary Mordaunt. Through her, Sir John
became possessor of Drayton, in Northampton-
shire, a beautiful old place, with a perfect Dutch
Garden. He left it to Lady Betty, who enjoyed
the possession of it for fifty-one years — as she lived
to be " nearly a thousand ! " Lady Betty left
everything to the second son of her great friend,
the Duchess of Dorset, Lord George Sackville,
who afterwards took the name of Germaine.

Was it, perchance, in the quaint Dutch Garden
at Drayton, or when staying at Knole, that Lady
Betty Germaine learnt to make her celebrated
Pot-pourri ? Both Gardens, most likely, were filled
with sweet-smelling, old-fashioned flowers, and both
perhaps could supply her with the happy combina-
tion of scents needed to make, when dried, the
delicious aroma of Pot-pourri.

What a fragrance there is in the mere name
of that scented treasure — so beloved of the grand-
mothers of the past — 'Pot-pourri, whose home was
always in some priceless piece of old china !

The old recipe for Lady Betty Germaine's
Pot-pourri in 1750 was as follows: "Gather dry
Double Violets, Rose leaves, Lavender, Myrtle
flowers, Verbena, Bay leaves, Rosemary, Balm,
Musk, Geranium. Pick these from the stalks and
dry on paper in the sun for a day or two before
putting them in a jar. This should be a large
white one, one well glazed, with a close-fitting

KNOLE 281

cover; also a piece of card the exact size of the
jar, which you must keep pressed down on the
flowers. Keep a new wooden spoon, and stir the
salt and flowers from the bottom, before you put in
a fresh layer of bay salt, above and below every
layer of flowers.

" Have ready of spices, plenty of cinnamon, mace,
nutmeg, and pepper and lemon peel pounded.

" For a large jar :

" £ Ib. oris root, i oz. storax, i oz. gum Benja-
min, 2 oz. Calamino armatico, 2 grs. Musk, and
a small quantity of oil of Rhodium.

" The spice and gums to be added when you
have collected all the flowers you intend to put in.

" Mix all well together, press it down well, and
spread bay salt on the top to exclude the air until
January or February following. Keep the jar in
a cool place."

To return to the Gardens at Knole. At the end
of the long gravel Terrace, which runs in front of the
south side of the house, lies a little Rose Garden,
on passing through which is found another Walled
Garden, entered by a flight of steps, and surrounded
on three sides by walls covered with Wistaria; it
is laid out with square beds filled with mauve
Rhododendrons. These hardy shrubs, so popular
because of their beautiful flowers, will grow almost
anywhere (if the soil is free from lime), though they
do best in a sandy peat soil. In many parts of

282 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Ireland, where the soil is peaty, Rhododendrons
grow too quickly, and so spoil their effect by over-
crowding. Within the memory of the present
generation, this Garden was an elaborate formal
one, with prim edges and Parterres. But fashion
decreed change, and change has indeed been
accomplished. Though lacking in its old charm,
a new Garden has been created, much helped by
having as a background a picturesque view of the
house.

On retracing the steps back to the gravel Terrace,
through the Rhododendron Garden, on the left,
coming west, will be found a Rose Pergola. This
Rose Pergola is raised high above the Lawn, which
it divides from the last Garden ; it is curved in
form and Early Victorian in type. The picturesque
effect of this Rose Pergola is partly due to its
admirable position, the trailing Roses being seen
from many parts of the Garden. At the end of
this sweet-scented Pergola is the " Duchess Walk,"
a long grass path, which extends nearly the full
length of the south side of the Garden. It is
planted with flowering shrubs, among the number
Wistaria, Lilac, and Laburnum, all beautiful in
colour and grace. Yet many people disdain to
plant these three, as being " too ordinary and
common." As if any shrub or flower, beautiful in
form, colour, and growth, could rightly have either
adjective applied to it.

KNOLE 283

On turning to the right on reaching the "Duchess
Walk," another green path is encountered, which
runs down, as in old days, to the gates at the
entrance of the Park. From here a vista with the
house at the end of it can be seen, across what
was once the old oval Bowling Green. Here, on
either side of the last-named path, are beautiful
green Lawns — the largest on the right, is arranged
with stone Vases filled with flowers. The second
Lawn on the left is more a grass Plat, and is
planted regularly with Apple trees and Herbaceous
plants, with most excellent effect. Crossing the
grass amongst the Apple trees, which in spring
are a glorious sight, a gravel Walk is found, edged
next the wall with handsome Herbaceous plants.
This gravel Walk leads past the large gateway
(into the Park) on the west side. On the wall on
either side of this gateway stands a handsome lead
Vase, with dolphins twisted into handles, placed
there, most likely, when such work was fashionable
in the eighteenth century.

Quite near this gateway, on the left, is the
Orangery, and on the right, facing the south front
of the house, is a beautiful green Lawn, like velvet.

The Terrace is separated actually from the
house by a wide division of grass, planted with
Palms, and with stone Vases, placed equidistant,
filled with bright-coloured flowers, according to the
time of year.

284 A BOOK OP ENGLISH GARDENS

Walking down this Terrace, past where the old
Bowling Green was, looking across the green paths
to the Park, the old plan of the Garden is clearly
discernible. At the end of the Lawn the Rose
Pergola is again reached, and strikes the spectator
freshly with the excellence of its position.

At Knole, as at few places, is seen most clearly
the value of the old idea of the Gardens being
placed at the side of a great House, standing in the
midst of a magnificent Park.

Beautiful as some Gardens may be, they are
always dominated by the house they lie near. Such
is the case with the Gardens at Knole : they are
overshadowed by the glory of the old House by
their side. Their green beauties of grass Walks
and Lawns only touch the austere magnificence of
the great House with a softer charm — a charm greatly
intensified by the Gardens being encircled by walls
and lying like an oasis in the splendid Park.

A MODERN GARDEN, SURREY

" Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest,
the most divine, the most solemn." — Stones of Venice

" All men, completely organised and justly tempered, enjoy
colour ; it is meant for the perpetual comfort and delight of the
human heart ; it is richly bestowed on the highest works of
creation, and the eminent sign and seal of perfection in them;
being associated with life in the human body, with light in the
sky, with purity and hardness in the earth — death, night, and
pollution of all kinds being colourless." — Modern Painters

XIV

A MODERN GARDEN, SURREY

A SENSE of colour and the power to use it is
**• a gift rarely met with ; and especially rare is
it for such a gift to take a Garden as its form of
expression.

Few people realise that once man has deliberately
grown his flowers within a wall — leaving Nature
outside that line of division — Art must be the guide
in the arrangement and selection of colours, not
Nature, whose slavish imitation under conventional
limitations will only prove disastrous and tantalising.
For Nature, ever prodigal with colour, as she is
lavish with life, paints too bold a picture for mortals
to copy.

Most modern Gardens lack not only this art of
design with its accompanying colour scheme, but
also the value of scent is partly, if not wholly, for-
gotten. The twin sisters, Scent and Colour,
should go hand in hand in the making of a Flower
Garden, and they do in at least one modern

288 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Garden in the county of Surrey, lying, walled in,
between three roads.

It is interesting to pass from Gardens which
have existed (in some shape) for hundreds of
years to one which, as far as age is concerned,
might be said to be still in swaddling clothes.
Delightful to find that its youth is no barrier to its
holding its own in beauty of design and originality
of thought, a cheering discovery in these days so
lacking in both.

This Garden belongs to an artist in the highest
sense of the word, and is one in which hours, days,
and months could be spent among its beauties.
Every moment leads to the discovery of a new
colour effect or audacious colour contrast, the
whole delicately harmonising against a dark foliage
background.

Rough stone terrace steps, edged with cut shrubs,
a little hedge, and groups of grand Lilium auratum,
lead down from the yellow stone-built House across
a Lawn to a beautiful Herbaceous Border, as care-
fully planted with flowers as a painter arranges
colour on his canvas ; " not dropped down in lifeless
dabs as he has them on the palette," but placed
with " forethought and deliberation." The wild
grace of Nature allied to the controlling influence
of Art produces in this border an exquisite com-
bination of colour, showing the amazingly beautiful
result obtainable by skilled eyes and clever hands.

THE TERRACE. A MODERN GARDEN

A MODERN GARDEN 289

The colour scheme of blue, fading into grey, has
just enough yellow introduced to catch the sunlight,
and to prevent the whole looking chill on dull days.
All sorts of flowers, herbs, and even vegetables, are
requisitioned to contribute to the general harmony : —
Wormwood, Rosemary, Catmint, Lavender, Sea-
kale, Santolina (Lavender Cotton), the little fluffy
silver-leaved Rabbit's Ear or Woundwort, Sea
Holly, Globe Thistle ; and even a coloured Kale,
is inserted without hesitation to complete the colour
scheme.

This blue-grey colour runs like a ribbon through
the Garden, and is lost in a border — the arrange-
ment of which is yellow, orange, and red— only to
be found again and again, the keynote, in fact, of
this wonderful harmony in colour.

An arched doorway, wreathed with creepers,
leads into another Garden, filled to overflowing
with all sorts and conditions of flowers. In corners,
on the walls, even overrunning the edges of the
walks, owing to their luxuriant growth — here,
there, and everywhere, in perfectly delicious con-
fusion— are to be found masses of Lavender,
Roses and Pinks, Double Hollyhocks, Michaelmas
Daisies, Marigolds, Snapdragon, Ageratum, Cherry
Pie, and Gypsophila.

There are two charming fancies to be found
embodied in this Modern Garden, viz., the planting
of flowers for every month, and a " special region "

290 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

being set apart for a special plant, making a kind of
Garden for it alone. The surprise is great when the
eye first catches sight of the Garden of Michaelmas
Daisies, mauve, purple, and white all blended in
a feathery mist. Planted in a wide border, on
each side of a walk, with a hedge of Filberts
and some dark Portugal Laurels as a background,
the effect is most picturesque. White Dahlias are
the only other plants allowed near the Daisies, their
colouring harmonising perfectly together.

In the wild Garden, near the wood, there is a
special early spring Garden for Primroses —

" Pale Primroses,

That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength " ;

while in June the Peonies spread a crimson glory
over their "special region."

Near the house is a stone Pergola, and lower
down in the Garden is to be found that rarity, a
regular rough Italian type of Pergola, covered with
the giant Gourds, the leaves of which are magnifi-
cently decorative. The Flower Garden is cleverly
separated by this Pergola from another half Kitchen
and half Flower Garden. The latter is intersected
with clipped hedges of different kinds, one being
particularly fine and high, of Lawson's Cypress,
proving a great protection for the flowers from the

A MODERN GARDEN 291

cold winds besides possessing a very pleasant
aromatic scent.

Hedges, both for use and for decorative purposes,
are introduced all through this Garden. The value
of walls is also clearly shown ; wonderful climbers
wreathe the gateways, and creepers find a home in
the loose stones of the walls, growing with fasci-
nating freedom. Along one side of the house runs
a splendid bank of Scotch Briars, about twenty-five
yards long and six feet wide. To use the artist's
words about them, " Scotch Briars have the great
merit as Garden plants — a merit that scarcely any
other family of Roses can claim — of being in some
kind of beauty throughout the year."

The Rock Gardens are to be found by crossing
the Lawn from here and going towards the wood.
The upper one is made of ridges of stone, planted
with small shrubs, such as Gaultheria and Alpine
Rhododendrons, some Ferns, and " various good
foliage plants like Saxifraga peltata, and Rodgersia
podophylla"

The other Rock Garden lies at the lower end of
the Lawn, and to quote again, "is absolutely
artificial, and only pretends to be a suitable home
for certain small plants that I love." Made with
shallow steps leading from the path, the joints in
the "dry walling" are filled with Stonecrops and
small Ferns. In cooler places Ramondin, and in
vacant spots " Mossy Saxifrage, coolest and freshest

292 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

of Alpine herbage," are to be found. Groups of
Othonnopsis and Hieracium are placed on the
sunny side of this Rock Garden, as well as Iris
cristata, and Violets, including the white Dog
Violet, are to be seen in a little corner; while a
place is found for the Cuckoo plant, no longer,
alas ! known by its quaint old name of " Lady's
Smocks."

Noticeable at once is the delicious scent which
fills the whole of this Modern Garden, the result of
skilful and judicious planning, as are the perfectly
blended combinations of colour to be found on
every side. To pass from the scent of Roses,
Honeysuckle, Lavender, and Carnations, into the
aromatic odour of Bay, Rosemary, Thyme, and
Rue, is a pleasure rarely, if ever, to be met with
elsewhere. In the midst of these delights stands a
house designed by a clever architect and super-
intended by the artist of the Garden, and with equal
success. Everything within and without is old-
fashioned, nothing is sham, but all honestly made
in the good old way. For instance, the beams are
fastened with wooden pins, and the oak doors have
iron latches and bolts, and long hinges of the old
country pattern ; and the oak woodwork is a
delicate grey colour, untouched by stain or varnish
of any kind — a shade of oak very seldom seen, as
most people prefer it darker in colour, under the
impression that old age — not stain — is responsible

A MODERN GARDEN 293

for it. Oaken beams, almost in their natural tree
shape, run across the ceiling of the long upstairs
passage with excellent effect. Heavy beams also
cross the low ceilings of the sitting-rooms.

Attached to this original house is a workshop,
the owner's sanctum, pervaded by the aroma of
dried herbs and seeds, and filled with tools for
clever hands to use. A huge writing-table and a
carpenter's bench form part of the furniture ; while
shelves and drawers for every conceivable thing
take up nearly the whole of one wall. Off the
workshop opening into the Garden is a little
room fitted with a sink, shelves full of baskets,
and boxes of seeds, and all sorts of gardening
paraphernalia.

A description of this charming place would
certainly not be complete without an allusion to
the pets — "the pussies" — who are such important
members of the household, and are allowed to run
hither and thither all over the place, ever sure of
a warm welcome from their mistress.

On leaving this Modern Garden, the impressions
which remain are certainly the delicious scent, the
lavish growth of flowers in masses of colour,
grouped against suitable backgrounds, and planned
in each instance as an artist plans his picture. No
corner of this domain but has its value— the potting
sheds thatched with wood chips, a by-product of a
rural winter industry, the making of barrel-hoops ;

294 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

the low seed loft, built of stone and weather-board,
with an outside stair such as is more often to be
seen in Scotland. Everything teaches the same
lessons, the value of simplicity, the nobility of work,
and the joy of colour.

SUTTON PLACE, SURREY

" But before all things, to be sure you lay the Foundation of
your Husbandry upon the Blessing of Almighty God : continually
imploring His divine aid and assistance in all your labours. For
it is God that gives the increase ; and believing this is the Quint-
essence and Soul of Husbandry.

" I therefore desire all country people to endeavour to know
these plants which grow at their doors (for God had not planted
these there for no purpose — for He doth nothing in vain). . . ."
A Treatise of Husbandry, R. WESTON

XV

SUTTON PLACE, SURREY

PERFECT in design and proportion, Sutton
A Place, near Guildford, remains a glorious
memento of past genius and artistic power. The
usual additions and alterations which most houses
suffer from time to time this beautiful old house
has fortunately escaped, and stands much the same
now as it did in the days of its keen, shrewd creator,
Sir Richard Weston— a man to be remembered as
having built Sutton Place and kept the favour of
Henry VIII. for thirty-two years.

There is a unique fascination about any old
place which has been left alone, only tended and
cared for but not changed by the taste of each
fleeting generation. True to the date of the House,
the Gardens at Sutton Place are entirely enclosed.

Great trees and clipped Yews stand near the
House, but no sign of a flower can be seen from
any window, nothing to break in upon the perfect
harmony of the beautiful old building, so exquisite

298 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

in colour and design. The nearest bed of flowers
is an exceptionally fine Herbaceous Border which
runs parallel with the house, the enclosed Gardens
lying in a line with it. Beyond the walls of these
Gardens the Herbaceous Border lies like a flash of
colour, flanked by a grass walk, which has on the
other side a delightful old Holly hedge, cut in
quaint shapes, round and square — quite a precious
heirloom from past days ; the beautiful mass of
glossy leaves contrasting well with the varied
colours of the flowers close by.

Lord and Lady Northcliffe, who have taken
Sutton Place on a long lease, possess a genuine
love for the old House, and entering into the spirit
of its past, jealously guard it from innovation,
allowing nothing to be introduced there which is out
of keeping with the style of the house or Gardens.
The wrought-iron gates to both the walled Gardens
were designed by Lady Northcliffe, and carried out
by the village blacksmith. Entering by the first of
these original gates, a Garden is found full of
interest, filled with old-fashioned flowers, such as
Lavender and Roses, blending delightfully both as
to colour and scent. The flowers are planted in
four square beds in the centre of the Garden, inter-
sected by grass paths. A Pergola of Roses and
Honeysuckle runs across the middle of the Garden,
appearing to bind the two halves of the Rose-beds
together, and giving a very fanciful effect to the

BUTTON PLACE 299

whole. A gravel path runs round the Rose-beds,
beyond which are the fine old brick walls. In the
four corners of these walls there used to be — when
Sutton Place was built — four octagonal Arbours.
These delightful resting-places, which in very early
days were only made of trellis work covered with
creepers, formed perfect green Bowers, and were
found even in mediaeval Gardens. In Tudor times
these Arbours were made of brick — and at Loseley,
in Surrey, three out of the original four still remain
in the old Walled Garden. Here at Sutton Place
only one has braved the stress of years, but it
clearly shows how charming an effect the four would
have made. The remaining little Arbour was built
about 1520, of the same material as the old House,
viz., red brick, but such beautiful brick, coloured
most exquisitely by the hand of Time. Octagonal in
shape, it stands very gracefully in the corner of the
wall ; consisting of two floors, the ground floor
lighted only by the two doors. This lower room
has been panelled with old oak by Lord Northcliffe,
and contains some oak chairs, a gate table, and a
quaint old press. The upper floor is approached by
a little ladder ; it has a tiny fireplace, and is lit by
two dormer windows in the roof; the walls are
simply whitewashed. Being a very fresh, sunny
little chamber, it is delightful for the purpose to
which it has been put, viz., a library for Garden
books, an ideal spot in which to enjoy Garden

300 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

literature. It is also used as a place for classifying
plants and arranging the colour schemes for
borders — a very necessary consideration, and one
too often neglected, to judge from the crude effects
often seen ; though in these days colour is put
before everything (but not always successfully), and
often the dignity of design is forgotten, as well
as the power of simplicity. From this Arbour a
covered way, having a little roof of red tiles sup-
ported on oak pillars stretches out to the wall
beyond. A post-and-rail trellis for climbing Roses
runs all round one side of the Garden, and when the
trees are in bloom the effect must be quite that
of a Rose Bower.

Close to the wall near the Arbour is a most
magnificent bed of Michaelmas Daisies, ranging in
colour from deepest purple to palest mauve, and
intermixed with white. Hardly any flower of the
kind has more decorative value in masses than
this delicate, feathery-looking Daisy, which glows
with star-like beauty even during the dull Autumn
days, when hardly any colour is to be seen in the
Garden, except the glorious reds and yellows of the
Autumn tints in the dying leaves.

The ordinary name Aster applied to Michaelmas
Daisies would surprise the uninitiated, who always
associate the word with the prim, stiff-looking China
Aster (Callistephus chinensis] the annual so often
used for bedding-out purposes in villa Gardens.

THE WALL ARBOUR, SUTTON PLACE

BUTTON PLACE 301

But the Michaelmas Daisy, or Starwort, is the
rightful owner of the name Aster.

There are over a hundred species of Michaelmas
Daisies — chiefly natives of North America ; they
are easy to grow, but need a good soil. The
chief matter is where to place them in a Garden,
their freedom of growth often causing them to
destroy other plants. But grown as in this old
Walled Garden — in masses — quite freely, they give
colour and effect late into the Autumn.

The beauty of this Garden is greatly enhanced
by its background of old brick walls — in places
almost rose-pink in colour — always of such great
value as an effective setting for flowers.

The second Walled or Kitchen Garden is well and
artistically stocked with Apple trees, vegetables and
flowers, all cleverly mixed up together, and in arrange-
ment all in keeping with the date of the House.

These two walled Gardens are all that remain of
the old Gardens belonging to Sutton Place. They
possess a pensive charm always to be found in an
enclosed Garden, for without doubt the perfect
Garden is one that is walled or hedged round— the
very word Garden itself means " enclosed space."
The cry for views does not come from the true
Garden-lover, but one in love with wide extending
landscape beauties and the lovely woods and valleys
created by Nature, all of which surely lie apart from
the simple beauties of a Garden.

302 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

The other Gardens at Sutton Place are quite
modern. The Wild Garden is to be found on the
other side of the Lawn opposite the House. The
Water Garden, the construction of which Lady
Northcliffe is now superintending, is to be formal in
style. A number of men are now engaged in
digging out the ponds, and when it is all finished
there is no doubt it will be a great additional beauty
to the place.

The dear little Rosary, or Rose Garden, is
reached by crossing the Lawn to the right of
the House, or by the little narrow path that
runs between the beautiful old Hollies. It is
square in design, with a low hedge of clipped Yew
all round, with passage-ways cut in three sides.
By looking through one of these openings a pretty
glimpse of the Rosary is seen, with its carpet of
grass, Sundial, Fountain, and Stone Seat. It is a
dainty little spot, planned with thought and care.

" A Roser charged full of Rosis
That with an hedge about enclosis,"

as the old poet says.

Being all grass underfoot, it is chiefly a summer
Garden, a delightful retreat for rest and thought —
always more readily found in a Garden than in any
other place.

A Fountain stands in a stone Basin in the centre

BUTTON PLACE 303

of the grass, in which are cut four Rose-beds, curved
on the side next the Fountain, and so forming round
it a pleasing pattern. A Pillar Sundial is placed
beyond the Fountain. All Sundials have a fascina-
tion about them, as well as a great decorative value,
but Pillar Sundials must ever recall the memory of
a brilliant woman who lived long ago, viz., Anne
Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Mont-
gomery, and who put up the earliest Pillar Sundials
on the wayside between Appleby and Brougham
in 1556 — "for a memorial of Her Last Parting in
This Place with Her Good and Pious Mother."

Against the Yew hedge at the end of the Rosary
is a semicircular Stone Seat, to which the dark
background of Yew forms an exceptionally good

&
contrast.

Sutton Place has only one short avenue of Elms,
no longer used as a drive to the House, the
approach now being made through some green
meadows. It is interesting to note that one is
generally sown with clover, for in 1 645 Sir Richard
Weston introduced the "Great Clover" into
England, so this pretty grass is most appropriately
found at Sutton.

Not one, but many celebrated people must have
wandered in the old Gardens at Sutton Place, all
more or less linked with the history of the House.
For instance, Pope, the poet of satires and intrigues,
had a romantic attachment to Elizabeth Weston,

304 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

sister of Viscount Gage and wife of John, the last
male heir of the sturdy old founder of the house,
Sir Richard Weston.

In all likelihood, in early days, before the quarrel
between the husband and wife, Pope must have
stayed at Sutton Place, and may have thought out
many poems in the old Garden, or have written
some of his bitter letters in the wall Arbour. The
poem " To an Unfortunate Lady " is now known
to have been written about Mrs. Weston, though
entirely fictitious in its detail. For though Mrs.
Weston was separated for a time from her husband
(Pope writes to Caryll, his friend, in 1711, that
it was "her ill-fate to be cast as a pearl before
swine"), she did not commit suicide abroad,
friendless, but returned to her husband, and died
comfortably at home.

Pope writes to this lady in the most passionate
language, " Your own guardian angels cannot be
more constant ; nor more silent."

Nevertheless, he did mischief by his interference,
and evidently was banished from the house. He

writes to Caryll in 1712, "Mr. W is gloomy

upon the matter — the tyrant meditates revenge ;
nay, the disturbed dame herself has been taught
to suspect I served her but by halves and without
prudence." From old letters it appears that Pope
did not outlive his fancy ; and even much later he can-
not allude to Mr. Weston without passionate abuse.

SUTTON PLACE 305

A very different person was William Harvey,
who also stayed at Sutton Place when Ann,
Countess of Arundel, occupied the house; she
sent to London in 1619 for a doctor, as her
grandson was very ill, and shortly afterwards
died. The doctor who came was no other than
the celebrated William Harvey, the discoverer of
the circulation of the blood.

Two celebrated women have inherited the manor
of Sutton at different times, viz., Joan, "The Fair
Maid of Kent," and the famous Countess of Rich-
mond. Joan, "The Fair Maid," was the mother of
Richard II., having married as her third husband
the Black Prince. Her son (by Sir Thomas
Holland) inherited the estates, and was one
among the many possessors of these lands who
early met with a violent death. After many
vicissitudes, deaths, attainders, and constant revo-
lutions, the manor of Sutton became the property of
Margaret, Countess of Richmond, "whose merit
exceeds the highest commendation that can be
given, and from whom the Royal Family of
England is descended," as writes old Camden.

Margaret, who was the mother of Henry VIII.,
was "by descent a Lancaster, by birth a Somer-
set, and by marriage a Tudor, a Stafford, and a
Stanley."

At an early age — realising what an heiress she
was (the estate of Sutton being only one among

306 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

many that death and war had thrown into her hands)
— many sought her in marriage for their sons.

The Duke of Suffolk wished his son, John de la
Pole, to marry her; and Henry VI. wooed her
for his half-brother, Edmund Tudor, Earl of
Richmond.

This rival courtship, which is mentioned in
Bacon's Life of Henry VII., worried the little girl,
and she consulted an old gentlewoman whom she
much loved. The advice she received was to com-
mend herself to St. Nicholas, the helper of all true
maidens, and, as she told her spiritual director,
" this counsel she followed, and made her prayers
so full often, but especially that night, when she
should the morrow after make answer of her mind
determinately. A marvellous thing ! The same
night as she lay in prayer, calling upon St. Nicholas,
whether sleeping or waking she could not assure,
but about four of the clock in the morning, one
appeared unto her arrayed like a bishop, and
naming unto her Edmund, bade her take him unto
her husband."

In her fifteenth year, in 1455, she married
Edmund Tudor, and "became allied by birth and
marriage to thirty Kings and Queens." Sadly
enough, the Earl of Richmond died the following
year, leaving her with a tiny son, afterwards
Henry VII.

The Countess of Richmond, wisely considering

SUTTON PLACE 307

the times and her vast estates, very shortly
married Sir Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of
Buckingham. Margaret was a woman of religious
fervour combined with great mental endowments ;
she translated many books into English, among them
"The Mirroure of Golde for the Sinful Soule "
from the French, and " De Imitatione Christi"
from the Latin.

Margaret naturally withdrew from the Court
during the reign of Richard III., considering her
son, Henry Richmond, the rightful heir to the
throne.

In 1485 she had the joy of writing to him as
"my own sweet and most dear King and all my
worldly joy," besides welcoming him many times to
her estates at Sutton. The latter, at her death in
1509, she left to her grandson, Henry VIII., who
erected to her memory a splendid monument.

Henry VIII. granted the manor of Sutton, with
its "woods, meadows, pastures, fisheries, water,
vineyards, ponds, etc.," "to his noble and well
beloved Privy Counsellor, Sir Richard Weston."
Sir Richard Weston came of an old family, and
was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, also
Master of the Court of Wards, Treasurer of Calais,
and Under-Treasurer of England. A remarkable
man was Sir Richard, for though his name does
not appear actually in history, it constantly occurs
in the State Papers of the time ; and he is recorded

308 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

as having taken no small part in State affairs. And,
marvellous to relate, he kept the King's favour —
even more wonderful, his affection — for over thirty-
two years, never once incurring his displeasure ; an
extraordinary achievement, considering Henry's
fickle temperament. Doubtless Weston was most
useful to the King in secret affairs, and also to the
ambitious Wolsey ; taking part in many a dark
tragedy. He writes to the Cardinal as his most
humble servant, "through whose goodness and
medyacion all that I have now proceeded and
came."

Sir Richard was a soldier, ambassador, Privy
Councillor — in fact, a "new man," meaning a man
after Henry's own heart ; not over-scrupulous,
grasping, and an absolute time-server, but ever
faithful to his Royal master and his own friends.

Such was the man who built the beautiful House,
and who was supposed by many to have been
his own architect. " Sutton Place," says Mr.
Frederic Harrison in a most interesting article
upon the House, "is indeed one of the very earliest
extant examples in England of a house designed
and built with a purely domestic character — without
any trace of fortification or military purpose. It is
singular also in that its northern and southern
fa£ades are entirely the work of one hand, con-
taining no earlier structure and no later additions.
It may be said to be unique in showing Gothic

SUTTON PLACE 309

features in peculiar combination with the best Italian
art of the Renaissance. And lastly, it is one of
the rare examples of a pre- Reformation house in
which, by tradition of the owner's family, the Mass
has been celebrated, openly or in secret, without
interruption, for 350 years."

The simplest explanation with regard to the
designer of the house seems to be that it was
planned by some one who had seen a great deal of
foreign architecture, especially in France, such as
the Chateau of the Loire, slightly earlier in date
than Sutton. Possibly that person was Sir Richard
Weston himself, who attended Henry at the Field
of the Cloth of Gold. Whoever the builder was,
he was certainly helped in the design and details
by Girolamo da Trevizi, often called Trevisano,
who introduced both terra-cotta and moulded brick-
work into England.

Aubrey, in his " Natural History of Antiquities
of Surrey," mentions Sutton Place. " The place,"
he says, ''is a noble seat, built of Brick, and has
a stately Gate-house with a very high Tower bear-
ing a Turret at each angle. In it is a square court.
The windows are made of baked earth of whitish-
yellow colour (like Flanders Bricks). The mould-
ings within the House are adorned with Pendants
of fruit and flowers. The Fabrick was erected by
Sir Richard Weston, Master of the Court of
Wards."

310 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Seldom in the history of any house is there
to be found a darker tragedy than that told of Sir
Richard Weston and his only son Francis.

It was in the year 1526 that Francis Weston was
made one of the King's pages, and from that time
he chiefly lived at Court. The King took a great
fancy to Francis Weston, and played games of
"dyce," " Imperiall," and "tennis" with him,
allowing the spoilt boy often to win immense
sums of money.

In old records, such as the " Chronicles of Calais
and the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII.,"
there are constant allusions to the expenditure of
"young Weston," as he is called. For instance,
there is an entry, " Hose for Master Weston, Mark
(Mark Smeaton, the musician of Anne Boleyn, who
shared later the same fate as Weston), and Patche,
the King's fool." Then later, " the King lends
young Weston £20" (equal to .£240 nowadays).
Again, ;£i8 is noted as lost to Weston by the
King, "at popes July's game" ; 45. is paid to the
servant " who brings the brawn and pudding from
Lady Weston to the King." For many years Sir
Richard had planned a marriage for his only son
with his ward, Ann, daughter and heiress of Sir
Christopher Pickering. The young bridegroom
was only nineteen when he made this brilliant
match. The gambling between the page and his
master still continued after this marriage, as much

SUTTON PLACE 311

as ^"46 (equal to ^560) being lost and won at a
sitting at " dyce."

Henry VIII. married Anne Boleyn privately in
January, 1533, but he did not dare to acknowledge
her publicly as his wife till Cranmer had finally
decreed that his marriage with Katherine was null
and void. On their Coronation-day Francis Wes-
ton was made a Knight of the Bath. Friedman,
who writes the life of Anne so ruthlessly, says :
" Among the friends of Anne there was a young
courtier named Sir Francis Weston, the son of
Richard Weston, Under-Treasurer of the Ex-
chequer. He had just been a royal page, but
had risen to the rank of Groom of the Privy
Chamber, and was now one of the Gentlemen
of it. For the last eight years, by reason of
his office, he had resided constantly at Court,
and he had obtained a good many grants and
pensions."

Before ten months had elapsed after the Coro-
nation, Henry paid a State visit to the beautiful
house of his faithful servant Sir Richard Weston,
" Concernying newis here be non wourthe the
writing, saving that God be thankid the Kinges
highnes is in prossperous estate at this present
tyme at Sir Richard Weston." It was on such occa-
sions as these that the "grete carpete to lay under
the Kyng's fete" was used.

Anne — "pale Anne"— who would not, or could

312 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

not, resist flirting, was the undoing of handsome
young Francis Weston, as well as herself. His-
tory, apparently, is unable to solve the mystery
connected with the whole of the story. Each
account varies — some even leaving Francis Wes-
ton's name out of the list of Anne's lovers. Poor
Anne, with her short-lived triumph ! Whatever
truth there may have been in the accusations made
against the unhappy woman, the reason of her
condemnation is not far to seek — Henry was tired
of his second wife, and could devise no means of
getting rid of her, though he had already chosen
her successor in Jane Seymour — demure, placid,
and false.

Cromwell stepped into the breach, and in his
Machiavelian way suggested a means of compass-
ing the Queen's downfall. So one day he left
Henry's Council Chamber with a "signed secret
commission authorising certain persons named and
nine judges to enquire into every kind of treason
and to try the offenders." It was a commission to
find some flaw in Anne's conduct, to prove her
guilty of a crime worthy of death.

Anne's fatal fascination, her overwhelming love
of admiration, which was readily gratified by her
many friends, gave ample scope to scandal-loving
tongues, only too eager to eclipse the waning star.
The first person Cromwell turned upon was Anne's
unfortunate favourite and musician, Mark Smeaton,

SUTTON PLACE 313

who under torture made terrible statements about
the Queen.

Anne was shortly arrested and taken to the
Tower, in desperate fear and trembling. Hysterical
with horror, she talked almost incoherently of first
one and then another, making matters go from
bad to worse. Francis Weston's name was soon
heard, and the next day he was arrested and sent
to the Tower.

Anne defended herself ably and well, and would
have been acquitted in any court worthy of the
name of justice.

An attempt was made to save Francis Weston,
whose family was powerful and rich, but it does
not appear that his father lifted a finger to avert
the sentence passed upon his only son. All
remonstrance was useless : Henry determined to
spare no one. Jane Seymour appeared to be more
within his grasp at each step that Anne took towards
the block. His gross heart felt no pang at the cruel
execution of his Queen on such slight evidence.

The letter that the poor boy, Francis Weston,
wrote to his young wife and his parents is very
touching.

" Father and mother and wyfe, I shall humbly
desyre you for the salvacyon of my sowle to
dyschardge me of thys byll, and for to forgyve me
of all the offences that I have done to you. And
in especyall to my wyfe, which I desyre for the

314 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

love of God to forgive me, and to pray for me,
for I believe prayer wyll do me good. Goddys
blessing have my chylderne and meyne. By me
a great offender to God.

" Endorsed — detts to divers by

" SR- FRANCIS WESTON."

The list of his " detts " at the end of the letter
are interesting in many ways. Some of the items
are, " Browne, the draper, ^50 " ; " item to a poor
woman at the Tennes play for bawles, I cannot tell
howe muche ! — to the Kynges Hyghness, £4.6 "
(equal now to ^552) : the same amount he owes
to the shoemaker.

All the victims were beheaded on Tower Hill.
None confessed their guilt, nor did they protest
their innocence, their silence being the price paid
to avert confiscation of property. Thus died
Francis Weston, a gay, worthless, light-hearted
boy, whose life paid the penalty of his folly.

The old veteran, Sir Richard Weston, bore the
execution of his only son with absolute calmness,
and served his royal master none the less well.

Three days after Queen Anne's execution, Sir
Richard attended the King's marriage with Jane
Seymour. And this "prudent and most gentle
knight" welcomed to Sutton Place, Cromwell,
who more than any one brought about the murder
of his son. Indeed, a case of " other times, other
manners." But the old man's remaining in the

SUTTON PLACE 315

service of the King under the circumstances is
almost horrible. Nothing causes him to swerve
in his allegiance ; minister after minister goes to
his death, but the old knight still basks in Henry's
favour, and nothing but old age causes him to
resign his office. He died in 1542, leaving every-
thing to his little grandson, Henry Weston. He
married a lady who was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth,
Dorothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Arundell of
Wardour. Her family have an extremely in-
teresting history, being allied to every great family
in England, and possessing besides the awful record
of fourteen members having been beheaded, all
near relations of Dorothy's, including her father!

Queen Elizabeth paid Sir Henry Weston a
visit at Sutton Place very early in her reign, the
first of many subsequent visits. If the Queen's
eventful life left time for thoughts of the past,
she must have recalled the tragic fate of her
host's father and the execution of her mother,
both victims of her relentless father. It was
during Elizabeth's first visit to Sutton that a
fire broke out in the great gallery, through neglect
on the part of the servants, and that side of the
house was reduced to ruins. Sir Henry Weston
gradually ceased to hold any appointments under
Elizabeth, though he always retained her regard.
As a staunch Catholic he could not hold office
after the Reformation was firmly established, and

316 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

from that time the Westons ceased to play any
part in the history of England. Sir Henry did
not even fight for the Queen in 1584, though his
name is mentioned as a captain, and it is stated
that " Sir Henry Weston having great occasion
to be in the north this summer desires to be dis-
charged as captain." It is almost certain from
this and other facts that Sir Henry was a secret
supporter of the old faith. In 1591 a search was
made at Sutton Place for one Morgan, a priest ;
and Sir Henry was ever a friend of that dangerous
rebel and traitor, Sir Thomas Copley.

The next Weston of any interest is Sir Henry's
grandson, the third Sir Richard ; he was a clever,
capable man, who passed a great deal of his life
abroad, living much in Flanders. While on the
Continent he took note of many things which he
rightly considered would be of great advantage to
his countrymen in England. Thus he introduced
the system of locks in canals, determining to
put the invention into practice on his own estate,
making the river navigable from Guildford to
Weybridge. Aubrey says of him : " That worthy
knight Sir Richard Weston conveyed the water
from Stoke river to his manor of Sutton, whereby
he floated 6 score acres of land, which before was
most of it dry." This same Sir Richard was a
great agriculturist, and introduced " clover and
sainfoin from Brabant and Flanders," as well as

SUTTON PLACE 317

turnips in 1545. The value of the latter "cannot be
over-estimated." Not content with such efforts in
farming, he wrote a most interesting and uncommon
book, published in 1645 by Milton's friend, Samuel
Hartlib, under the name of " Enlargement of the
Discourse of Husbandry used in Brabant and
Flanders — Sir Richard Weston's Legacy to his
Sons." He is an enthusiast, and declares that the
growing of turnips will bring in an enormous profit.
He says: "Regina Pecunia" (" Monie is the Queen
that commands all "), and turnips will be the means
of gaining it !

Though Sir Richard kept himself clear of politics,
he was arrested for holding communications with
Cromwell's enemies, and was denounced for being
a Papist and a recusant, his estates being
sequestered. From the time of Sir Richard
Weston, the agriculturist, till to-day, the annals of
the Weston family are without interest, they having
devolved simply into those of an ordinary county
family.

With the death of Melior Mary, the daughter of
Mrs. Weston— who was so much admired by Pope
— the last of the race passed away. For though she
was rich and considered a beauty, she remained
unmarried, and left the property and beautiful
old house, which for so many years it had been
her joy to tend and care for, to John Webbe, a
descendant of her aunt, Frances Weston.

318 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

John Webbe- Western took an immense interest
in the estate, and made many changes, fortunately
not all he intended. He had the old gatehouse and
the north tower and wing removed — a proceeding
that George III. did not approve of at all, for when
he was shown over the house, after returning from
a stag-hunt, he said, " Very bad, very bad ! Tell
Mr. Weston the King says he must build it up
again ! " This chance visit of prosaic King George
adds yet another distinguished name to the many
that appear in the memoirs of Sutton Place.

WREST PARK, BEDFORDSHIRE

Fresh shadows, fit to shroud from sunny ray ;
Fair Lawns, to take the sun, in season due ;
Sweet springs, in which a thousand Nymphs did play ;
Soft-rumbling brooks, that gentle slumber drew ;
High-reared mounts, the lands about to view ;
Low-looking dales, disloigned from common gaze;
Delightful bowers, to solace Lovers true."

EDMUND SPENSER

XVI

WREST PARK, BEDFORDSHIRE

' I "HERE is a delicate sense of magic in the
•*• beauty of the Gardens at Wrest Park, a magic
that comes from the touch of a master hand, for the
old French Gardens at Wrest were laid out by no
other than Le Notre, the greatest genius in the
history of the world's Gardens. Thus it is no
wonder that the courtly charm and fascinating grace
of the great Frenchman peeps out on every side,
regardless of the continual changes Time carries on
its wings.

Few Gardens, however, remain as they were
originally designed : each owner in turn adds and
takes away from them. Sometimes the beauty of
variety is gained, but generally the first great
influence rules throughout as it does here, and
Le Notre speaks, and is felt in much that never
came from his hand. An old inscription on the
" Rustic Column " at Wrest mentions many of
these changes— changes extending even to the

Y 381

322 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

moving of the column itself — originally placed in
view of the " Bath House," but moved to its
present position, near the Chinese Bridge, by the
Countess de Grey, in 1828. The inscription
runs thus : —

" These Gardens, originally laid out by Henry,
Duke of Kent, were altered and improved by
Philip, Earl of Hardwicke, and Jemima, Mar-
chioness Grey, with the professional assistance
of Lancelot Brown, Esq., in the years 1758, 1759,
1760-"

The old house was built between 1655 and 1695
by the Countess of Kent, commonly called "the
good Countess," and altered by Philip, Earl of
Hardwicke, when he married the Marchioness
Grey, and again altered by her in 1795.

It is of this building that Horace Walpole writes
in such condemnation : " Wrest and Hawnes are
both ugly places ; the house at the former is ridi-
culously old and bad." Walpole's taste is not always
to be trusted, as he considered the Garden at Wrest
"execrable too, but is something mended 'by Brown,"
that arch-spoiler of Formal Gardens !

The present house was begun in 1834, in the
French style, by Lord de Grey, who, apparently
thinking the old house too unsatisfactory to alter
or improve in any way, designed and personally
superintended the building of a new house, changing
the site by moving it further back. An interesting

WREST PARK 323

book of sepia drawings of the house is to be found
at Wrest, containing a plan of the Garden as it was
about 1827 ; also a long account in manuscript —
written in the form of a letter to a lady, by Lord
Grantham, afterwards Lord de Grey — describing
exactly how he designed and built the present house
in the French style, taking his ideas chiefly from an
old French book he picked up for sixty francs on
one of the quays in Paris, and in which he found
some excellent designs. It is curious that the only
other Garden at all similar to the beautiful one of
Wrest is Melbourne, also partly laid out by Le
Notre, and which passed into the possession of the
late owner of Wrest, Lord Cowper, through his
mother.

Coming out on the wide stone terrace of Lord
de Grey's new French house, its claim to the name
" Little Versailles " is very evident. For there
below stretches a delightful vista of Garden after
Garden — quite a French motif, laid out in a series
of patterns — and then in the distance the long water
with its broad transepts, which, skirted on each side
by magnificent trees and high Yew hedges, leads
up to the beautiful old Pavilion. The Pavilion was
erected by the Duke of Kent about 1710 from a
design by Archer, a favourite pupil of Sir John
Vanbrugh, the famous architect of Blenheim.
Circular in shape, built of brick with a lead dome,
it is a perfect example of a Garden house in the

324 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

English Renaissance style ; these houses having
first been built by Inigo Jones in Charles I.'s reign.

The interior is decorated with columns and
cornices of the Corinthian order in chiaroscuro or
monochrome by a French artist called Handuroy,
whose name, with the date 1712, remained quite
clearly written till lately, when the plaster became
loose from damp and the inscription was effaced.

Just in front of this Pavilion, perfect in its design
and proportion, stands a Statue of William of
Orange, afterwards William III., "of glorious and
immortal memory." This Statue was erected by
the Duke of Kent to commemorate William's
landing in England, the Duke being one of his
staunchest partisans. The Statue is cast in lead — a
very favourite material, and much used in England
for Garden statuary. As Lethaby says, " What is
tame in stone, contemptible in marble, is charming
in lead." There are many examples of lead work
at Wrest, among them two urns in "the Duke's
Square," put up to the memory of Antony, Earl
of Harrold, and Lady Glenorchy, the eldest son and
daughter of the Duke of Kent, who both died before
him. Unfortunately many of the Statues have
disappeared ; for instance, down one of the side
walks from the Pavilion — a regular tapis-verte — are
the stone Arbours in old days called " My Lady's
Alcoves." They are sometimes called the " Harle-
quin Half Houses," because the niches once held

WREST PARK 325

Harlequins, one of the designs most frequently
used by lead sculptors.

To return to the stone terrace of the house. In
front of it lies Lord de Grey's new French Garden
all in keeping with its Statues and little Box-edged
borders, that were designed and actually planned
out by him with tape and pins on the ground.
This little French Garden is enclosed by an iron
railing ; on the right of it lies the sweet-smelling
Rosery, in the grass of which the same hand planted
Tree Peonies, now seventy years old and considered
to be some of the finest specimens in England. In
no place could these pink Peonies have been
planted with better result than in this grass, their
colour being invaluable, and when out of flower
they cause no disfigurement, as happens in a border
with other mixed flowers. There is always a
difficulty in deciding the arrangement of plants
which at certain times of the year are of no value
in the colour scheme, and this knowledge can be
gained by studying the arrangement followed in
large Gardens, for as a rule such important details
are carried out to perfection. The Wistaria,
trained on a wall near, also does well, as the
soil is light and warm and the situation sunny.
These two plants, the pink Peonies and the pale
mauve Wistaria, both growing so luxuriantly, are
another French note, as few Gardens across the
water are without these favourites.

326 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Among the many trees in which this Garden
abounds (too many to mention), there is a Judas
tree, a very fine specimen, and being an old tree, it
fully shows its picturesque growth. It is trained
over the wall near the entrance to the Kitchen
Garden, from which point a series of gateways form
a delightful vista.

At the right end of the house is another little
Formal Garden, laid out geometrically, with stone-
edged borders, also of Lord de Grey's designing,
being particularly arranged to make a pretty
pattern from Lady de Grey's boudoir windows.
Outside the railings that enclose the Gardens a
straight path runs (bordered on each side with cut
Portugal Laurel trees in boxes), as far as the
Fountain, which stands on the site of the old house
that was pulled down in 1830, and to which the
older Garden, with its mysterious Pools, Yew
hedges, and trees, seems more specially to belong.

In front of the old house stood a marble Sundial,
placed there by Amabel, Countess of Kent, and to
this day it remains untouched. It is a refined piece
of workmanship, with an elaborate copper dial,
giving the solar time for different parts of the
world, and bears the date 1682. Several Latin
inscriptions, reminding the reader of the flight of
time, are to be found on it, and the arms of the
Kent, Crewe, and Lucas families appear on the
gnomon with the motto " Foy est Tout."

WREST PARK 327

Wrest has been the property of the De Grey
family since the time of Roger de Grey, who lived
in the fourteenth century, and many honours and
titles have been bestowed upon them. Edmund,
Baron Grey, Lord Treasurer of England, was
created Earl of Kent by Edward IV. in 1465.
The ninth Earl married Amabel, called " the good
Countess," who spent so many years of her widow-
hood at Wrest improving the Gardens that she
loved. The last Earl of Kent was Henry, born in
1671, and created Duke of Kent by Queen Anne.
Having no son to succeed him, many of his . titles
passed to his granddaughter, who married Philip,
son of the celebrated Earl of Hardwicke, Lord
High Chancellor of England. Horace Walpole
mentions this marriage thus : " What luck the
Chancellor has ! marries his son into one of the
first families of Britain, obtains a patent for a
Marquisate and eight thousand pounds a year
after the Duke of Kent's death ; the Duke dies in
a fortnight and leaves them all ! People talk of
Fortune's Wheel, that is always rolling! troth, my
Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel and
rolled along with it ! " The path by the Fountain
is crossed by another at right angles, leading on the
right to the Orangery and the Yew hedge, per-
haps the finest in existence, and over 350 years
old, thick and broad, a veritable dense mass of
green. Another of these beautiful Yew hedges

328 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

partly surrounds the little Orchard in which the
Statue of Atlas stands in the centre of a pool
covered with Water Lilies and encircled by pink
Peonies.

Of the Orange trees (put out on the path near
the Orangery, to enjoy the summer sunshine), the
finest boast a history, having come from the
Garden of Louis Philippe, who sold them to Lord
de Grey when the latter was building the new
Orangery. Where this now stands (near the old
Yew hedge) the earlier " Greenhouse " stood, built
in a grotesque fashion by the Duke of Kent from
Lord Burlington's design ; it was the last improve-
ment he carried out. Behind the Orangery, which
stands high, is the old Roman Bath House, on to
which Lord Hardwicke built a Roman temple, the
architect being Sir William Chambers. This
temple is now thickly covered with Ivy.

The beautiful old Sundial marks the beginning
of the older Garden designed by Le Notre, that
great Gardener who must indeed have been an
exceptional man to have earned in the corrupt Court
of the Grand Monarch such an appreciation as
that written by that greatest of gossips, St. Simon.
"He was illustrious as having been the first
designer of those beautiful Gardens which adorn
France, and which indeed have so surpassed the
Gardens of Italy that most famous masters of that
country come here to admire and learn. . . .

WREST PARK 329

" Le Notre had a probity and exactitude and an
uprightness which made him esteemed and loved
by everybody. He worked for private people as
for the King, and with the same application, and
seeking only to aid Nature and to attain the
beautiful by the shortest road.

"All he did is still much superior to everything
that has been done since, whatever care may have
been taken to imitate and follow him as closely as
possible."

Andre le N6tre was educated to be an architect
(some say a painter), and this early training is often
revealed in his effects, and may have given him
his first ideas as to the architectural treatment of
Gardens, a treatment which well entitles him to
be described as an Architect of Gardens.

For Madame de Maintenon, Le Notre worked
marvels in her Convent Garden at Noisy-le-Roi,
and created among other things a canal out of a
dirty ditch.

He soon gained the notice of Louis XIV., who,
ever ready to employ a genius willing to create
novelties for his amusement and pleasure, made
him Comptroller-General of Buildings and Gardens,
and Le Notre, till his death, remained a favourite
of the King's.

Perhaps no man has been more abused or
admired than Le Notre. His designs are perfect in
their proportion and magnificent in execution ; it

330 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

is only in the hands of his imitators that a flaw in
his style can be detected.

Versailles was his masterpiece ; a very different
Versailles from that of to-day. Only to look at a
picture of its marvels, as it was in the time of
Louis XIV., is to be bewildered by the vastness
of its size, the perfection of its design, and the
elaborateness of its details.

This wonderful man, Le Notre, appears to have
planned his designs to suit the taste of the
Court who loved to masquerade as shepherds
and shepherdesses — the originals of Watteau and
Lancret's exquisite pictures. Desiring " their
houses to extend into their Gardens," Le Notre
made them architectural and formal, a proper back-
ground for his fascinating artificial patrons.

As yet Rousseau's blast in the cause of Nature
had not swept across France, influencing indirectly
the whole of Europe.

Charles II. invited both Le Notre and Perrault
to England. The latter declined the invitation, and
it is still uncertain whether Le Notre came or not,
but that he designed Gardens in England there is
no doubt, especially Melbourne and Wrest, and
that his influence was greatly felt in this country.
Among the many delightful features of the older
Garden is a Berceau (or Pleached alley), the
twisted boughs of the Lime trees making a regular
leafy canopy overhead. The Berceau is called

WREST PARK 331

" The Lover's Walk," and at the end of it, to greet
the lovers who may walk there, stands a little
stone Amorini.

Another interesting feature is the Bowling Green
and the Bowling Green House ; the latter designed
by that great connoisseur, Lord Burlington, though
the exact date of its erection is uncertain. It is
to be noticed in an old plan of 1735. A character-
istic example of Queen Anne work, it is quite
worthy of its designer whose name at that time was
frequently associated with the arts. The Portico is
handsome but simple in treatment, with six well-
proportioned pillars ; inside there is a fine banquet-
ing room with an old chimney-piece supposed to
date back to 1570. The west front of the Bowling
Green House overlooks the canal and the old Park,
which till the Duke of Kent's time was the old
deer Park. There was another Garden house at
Wrest, of the same date — a temple of Diana — but
it was pulled down when the old house was
rebuilt.

Paradoxical as it may seem, Wrest is a Garden
without flowers, but there is an enchantment about
the beauty of the green depth of this magical
Garden of Statues, clipped Hedges, and Pools that
is never felt in any bright Flower Garden, however
laden with scent or gorgeous with colour.

The beauties and charms of Wrest would
be difficult to imitate, especially on a small

332 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

scale, as it is a Garden in which the design
dominates and the beauty of flowers is practically
out of place. There are many lessons to be learnt
within its green Alleys, chiefly the power of propor-
tion, the value of masses of green, and that flowers
are in reality only an addition, not a necessity, to
this type of Garden. This beauty of proportion
is a legacy from the genius of the original designer ;
and obliterated as it is in many places by the lapse
of years, it is still felt in the same way as in a
beautiful old building.

There is no doubt that a clever artist could
introduce flowers, carefully chosen, into some parts
of the Garden if desired, but the whole is so perfect
that a false note would sound more discordant at
Wrest than in other Gardens.

The climax of charm is reached in the Wilderness
at Wrest, so full of mystery, with its little intersecting
grass paths, hedges of cut Yew, Laurel or Box, and
tal) trees, below which in Spring is spread a carpet
of Primroses. Hidden in the depths of these
Bosquets are many Altars, Rustic Columns, and
Statues in memory of people who have lived, loved,
and walked in these Gardens, the owners of Wrest
possessing the rare gift of remembrance. Some of
these are of too great interest to be ignored —
among them the altar erected by Lord Hardwicke
to commemorate the completion of " The Athenian
Letters," a book written by him and some of his

WREST PARK 333

friends. The altar bears on one side an inscription
written in Greek by Daniel Wray, one of the joint
authors, and on the other a Persian quotation.

Another monument (put up by the Duke of Kent
to his friend Thomas Hutton, whose society he
had often enjoyed among the delightful surroundings
of Wrest) is almost hidden by huge Yews.

Even the dogs are not forgotten, and a statue
in Portland stone, called "the Dog Monument,"
was put up by Lord de Grey in remembrance of
many faithful dog friends who lie buried in this
cemetery.

Outside the Wilderness, encircling the grounds, is
a large canal, fed by a stream springing near the
old Bath House. It is in this canal (altered and
enlarged for Lord Hardwicke and Lady Grey, in
1760, by Lancelot Brown) that the natural school
of Gardening steps into the arrangement of this
wonderfully blended Garden.

From Le Notre to "Capability Brown" — as he
was nicknamed — is not such a big step as it
appears, for the ruthless changes introduced by the
landscape school came in gradually at first, leaving
Wrest only touched with a fresh charm. Later,
running riot with a madness quite equal to all
Pope and Addison denounced as " formalities and
whimsicalities," "Capability" could never resist
planning, or re-planning, a piece of water ;
therefore out of the canal was twisted " the

334 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS

Serpentine River." Fortunately for the present
generation, Brown did not tamper with other parts
of the Garden, nor with the formal ponds that
give such a delicious feeling of old-worldness to
Wrest.

One of these, a beautiful long-shaped pool, almost
classical in the severity of its treatment, is called
" the Lady's Canal," or "the Lily Pool " ; it is shut
in with high Yew hedges (cut in a fashion started in
Queen Anne's reign, the lower part clipped close
and the top allowed to grow quite feathery), and
against it, at the end of the pond, is a small statue
of a Greek goddess, with tall trees standing like
sentinels behind ; all round the water is a wide
grass verge, sprinkled with little white Daisies in
the springtime, while later in the year the Lily
leaves begin to rise to the surface of the water,
covering it with a carpet of shining leaves.

It is all so quiet, this green solitude, that fancy
repeoples it with the men and women who took
such pride and pleasure in planning and making
this Garden, and who must have had great powers
of imagination to plant by faith, realising, as if
in a mirror, how beautiful it would be for the
generations yet to come.

In a circular space amidst the trees near "the
Lady's Canal " are the antique altars (supposed to
be genuine), placed there by Lady de Grey in 1817.
The ornamentation, of flowers and the usual rams'

LILY POOL, WREST

WREST PARK 335

heads, is worked into wreaths, and there is a Greek
inscription on the centre one.

The Chinese Bridge, which was originally made
of wood (replaced twice before the present stone
one was built), crosses the Serpentine River not
far from the imitation Chinese Temple, designed by
Sir William Chambers, and built by Lord Hard-
wicke close to the water's edge. The wood painted
in strips gives a strange touch of colour in this
sombre, subdued spot. For verily the spell of
enchantment lies in this Garden, with its Groves,
Statues, and Ponds ; in every green shadow lurks
a laughing nymph, and dryads rise at every turn
from out the many pools, for Pan's pipe most surely
sounds at nightfall and fairies dance on the grass
paths in the moonlight.

INDEX

ABBOTSBURY, 47

Addison, Joseph, 29, 32, 226

Albury, 59

Alford, Lady Maria, 91

Alleys, 6

Amorini, 140, 331

Ampthill Park, 71

Anne, Queen, 27

Arbours, 14, 24

„ at Abbotsbury, 54

„ at Holland House, 238

„ at Sutton Place, 299

Arcades, 92

Armillary Sphere at Ashridge, 94
„ „ atHollandHouse,

237

Ashmolean Museum, 210

Ashridge, 88

Aubrey, John, 63, 309

Avenues, 24

„ at Ampthill Park, 73
„ at Hatfield House, 209
„ at Holland House, 231
„ at Wrest Park, 25

BABYLON, Hanging Garden of, 4
Bacon, 17, 41, 91
Badeslade, 274
Banqueting Houses, 22
Barrington, Lord, 119

Basse Court, 76

Bath House, 66

Beckett, 119

Bede, 52

Berceaux, 330

Bilton, Addison's Garden at, 228

Blenheim, 36, 323

Boccacio, 173

Boleyn, Anne, 74, 311

Bonhoinmes, Ashridge, 99

Bosquet, 332

Botanical Gardens, 19

Bowling Greens at Ham, 189

„ at Hatfield House,

211

„ „ at Holland House,

223

„ „ at Knole, 274

„ „ at Wrest, 331

Bowling Green House, 331

Box Edging, 27, 246

Bridgman, 32, 33, 188

Bridgewater, Duke of, no

Britannia Illustrata, 28, 273

Brown, L., 35, 273, 278, 322, 333

Browne, Sir T., 7

Brownlow, Lord, 91

Brownsea Island, 137

Burton, Robert, 214

Burleigh, Lord, 208

INDEX

337

Burlington, Lord, 33, 331
Burnett, Bishop, 178

CAMDEN, 147
Canute, 50
"Capability Brown," 35 -273, 278
322, 333

Casinos, 119

Cavendish, 15

Cecil, Sir R, 150, 207

Chambers, Sir W., 38

Charles I., 22

Charles II., 24

Charing, Garden at, n

Chaucer, 12, 100

China House, 119

Chinese Bridge, 335

Chinese Mode, 26

" Clair-voyees," 28

Claude, 34

Clover, 316

Cobbett, William, 66

Columbarium, or Dovecote, at

Hutton John, 247
"Comus," 108

" Compleat Gardener, The," 22
Cottage Gardens, 157
Cowper, W., 37, 141
Cranmer, T., 78, 263
Cromwell, O., 181
Croome, 35
Crypta, 62

DAHLIAS, 238

Defoe, 191, 278

Dell at Hatfield, 213

Deptford, Evelyn's Garden at, 23

D'Este, Cardinal, 15

Donne, 214

Dutch Garden at Holland House,

237
z

Dutch Garden at Hutton John, 246
Dutch Style, 27
Dysart, Countess of, 181

EGERTON, Sir T., 107
Egyptian Gardens, 4
Elizabethan Gardens, 19
Elizabeth, Queen, 102, 146, 200,

3i5

Erasmus, 262
Evelyn, John, 15, 22, 26, 59, 64,

184, 246

FIENNES, Celia, 28, 151
Finch, H., 67
Fishponds, 51
Fisherwick, 35
Fishing Lodge, 22, 119
Flowers, 7

at Abbotsbury, 48, 49, 55
„ at Brownsea Island, 138
„ in Cottage Gardens, 172
„ at Holland House, 234
„ in Modern Garden, 289
Formal Gardens, 41, 326
•ormal Style, 16, 24
Fountains, 6, 15, 24

„ at Albury, 62

„ at Ampthill Park, 73

„ at Ashridge, 92

„ at Brownsea Island, 139

,, at Hatfield House, 213,

215
at Holland House, 237,

240

„ at Nonsuch, 15
„ at Sutton Place, 302
\>x, Charles, 236
Yench Garden, 325
„ Style, 24, 329
uchsia, 168, 250

338

INDEX

Galleries, 14
Garden Buildings, 22
" Gardens of Cyrus," 7
Garden House, Beckett, 119
Gardener, John, 12
Gerade, 141, 208
Germaine, Lady B., 279
Gilpin, W., 37
" Gorboduc," 265
Gray, T., 40
Greek Garden, 5
Grotto at Ashridge, 97

„ at Twickenham, 32
"Guardian," 30
Gunning, 112
Gwyn, Nell, 269

Ha-ha, 33

„ at Ham House, 188
Ham House, 178
Hamilton, C., 35, 230
Hampton Court, 14, 25, 27
Harrison, F., 308
Hartlib, S., 317
Hatfield House, 198
Hatton, Sir C., 146
Hentzner, P., 16, 20
Herbals, 18
Herbert, G., 214
Herb Garden, 95
Hill, T., 10
Holland House, 222
Holland, Lord, 229
Holbourne, Garden in, n
Holly Hedge, 298
Hutton, John, 244

" ICHNOGRAPHIA RUSTICA," 32

Ilchester, Earl of, 233
Irregular Gardens, 40

Italian Garden at Ashridge, 93
„ „ at Holland House,

235

JAMES I. of Scotland, 12

James I., 22, 127

Japanese Gardenat Holland House,

233

Jennings, Montague, 210
Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, 305
Johnson, S., 260
Jonson, B., 126, 128
Jones, Inigo, 22, 120, 123, 224

KATHERINE of Arragon, 71
Kent, William, 33, 273
" King's Quhair," 13
Kip, John, 28, 273
Knight, R. P., 37
Knole, 259
Knots, 25, 91
Knyff , 273

Labyrinth, 10

Landscape Style, 36

Landscape Gardens, Essay on, 41

Langley, Batty, 33

Lauderdale, Duke of, 183

Lavender Garden at Ashridge, 94
„ „ at Knole, 277

„ Hedges at Brownsea, 143

Lawson, W., 21, 211, 274

Lead Statues, 324

Leasowes, 36

Leland, 14, 75

Ligne, Prince de, 174

London, George, 26, 29

Loo, Garden at, 27

Loudon, 40

Luttrell, 77

Lydgate, n

INDEX

339

MANDELSLO, 20
Mansard, 24
Marvel, A., 97
Mason, G., 40
Masques, 125, 266
Matius, 7
Maze, 10

„ at Hatfield, 212
Mediaval Gardens, 13
Midwinter, 273
Milton, 41

Modern Garden, A, 287
" Modern Gardening," Essay on, 32
" Modern Gardening," Observa-
tions on, 40

Monastic Gardens, 9, 51, 90
Montaigne, 15
Moor Park, 26
Mortier, 273

Morton, Archbishop, 202
Mounts, 6, 12, 20, 275
Mulberry Trees, 203

NATIONAL English Style, 40
Neckam, A., 9
Nero, Gardens of, 6
Nonsuch, Garden of, 16
Norden, 104
Northcliffe, Lord, 298
Northumberland's, Earl of, Gar-
den, 14

Northumberland, Duke of, 60
Notre, A. Le, 24, 25, 186, 321, 328

OLIVES, 8

Orangery at Ham, 186

at Holland House, 236
Ossory, Countess of, 79, 81
Overton, 273

PAIN'S Hill, 35

Parkinson, John, 19, 48, 94, 166
Parterre, 25, 133
Pavilion at Hatfield, 212

„ at Wrest, 323
Pepys, S., 209, 217
Pergola at Ashridge, 92

„ at Brownsea Island, 143
at Hatfield, 212

„ at Knole, 282

„ at Sutton Place, 298
Perrault, 24
Persian Gardens, 5
Physic Gardens at Chelsea, 23

„ „ at Holborn, 19

„ at Westminster^
Pineapples, 186
Pleached Alley, 202, 330
Pleasance, 12, 246
Pliny, Garden of, 5
Plowman, Piers, n
Pope, A., 30, 32, 34
Pol-Pourri, 280
Poussin, 34
Price, Sir U., 39, 88
Privy Garden, 12, 201

Quincunx, 7
Quintinye, de la, 65

Raalte, C. Van, 139

Rapin, Rene, 22

Repton, H., 38, 88

Rich, H., Earl of Holland, 223

Richmond, Countess of, 305

Rock Gardens, 291

„ „ at Abbotsbury, 54

atHollandHouse,232

„ „ at Hutton John, 251
Roman Gardens, 5
" Romance of the Rose," 12
Rose, John, 25, 186

340

INDEX

Rosary at Ashridge, 92

„ at Brownsea Island, 140
„ at Hatfield House, 204
„ at Sutton Place, 302

Rousham, 35

Rousseau, 36

SACKVILLE, Thomas, 265
Sackville, Charles, 268
Saint-Simon, 328
Schools of Gardening, 33
Scott, Sir W., 41
Sentimental Garden Style, 37
Serpentine River, 333
Shakespear, 18
Shenstone, 36
Sidney, Sir P., 17
Solomon, 4
" Spectator," 30, 227
Spenser, 12, 18
Special Gardens, 289
Statues, 15, 24, 187, 324
Stowe, 35
Sturtivant, S., 215
Summerhouses, 6, 119
Sundials, 140, 326
Sunk Gardens at Hatfield, 212

„ „ at Knole, 277

Sutton Place, 297
Switzer, S., 28, 32

TARQUINIUS Superbus, Garden

of, 5

Tea-houses, 22, 119
Temple, Sir W., 26
Terraces, 6, 24, 51
„ at Albury, 61

Terraces, at Beckett, 133

„ at Brownsea Island, 141

at Ham, 189

Theobalds, Garden of, 20, 207
Thorp, T., 19, 209
Topiary Work, 7, 31
Tradescant, 7, 21, 210
Tudor Gardens, 14
Tulip Trees, 186
Turner, W., 19
Turnips, 317
Tusser, T., 17, 167

VANBRUGH, Sir J., 322
Vavasor, Sir J., 179
Vineyards, 8, 52, 63, 198, 215

Walls in Gardens, 298
Walled Gardens, 276, 298, 301
Walpole, H., 6, 32,40, 187, 192, 260,

278, 322

Water Garden, 302
Weston, Francis, 310
Weston, Sir R., 307
Whateley, T., 40
Wild Garden, 56, 291, 302
Wilderness, 132, 278, 332
Winter Garden, 55
Wise, H., 29
Woolaton, 187
Wotton, Sir H., 17
Wrest Park, 25, 321

XENOPHON, 5
YEWS, 64, 66, 249

CNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
Architecture & Urban Planning Library, 825-2747.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

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APR 04 1991

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