Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

Before I returned to the house, I made my way to my bed of annuals. They were on the southern side of the greengages. How gay and gorgeous they looked with a few orange-tip butterflies flying over them. There were patches of African marigold, all a blaze of rich velvety gold, pale Love-in-the-Mist, sea-tinted and mysterious. Love-in-the-Mist is just such a flower as one can imagine Venus wore when she appeared for the first time from the depth of the sea foam, with its curious shadow of green, and its sea-green petals of blue. Then I had in full flower little square beds of larkspur, raised from some wonderful seed I bought from Messrs. Smith, of Worcester, that had blossomed forth in a hundred shades of opalescent beauty. There were shadowy unreal reds, and purples of many shades and colours in one flower, and as I looked at them, they recalled the wonderful draperies of some Burne Jones figures in that great artist’s paintings from the Idylls of the King. A little further off there were lines of stocks of all colours, warm-tinted buff, like the hue of Scotch cattle browsing on a moorland, primrose, bluish rose, dusky red, and spotless white, with creamy hearts. Then flame-coloured nasturtiums ran along in places, black and brown, and twisted and twined wherever there was a little space. At the end of the long border there were patches of the primrose-tinted sweet sultan, with its exquisite scent, mixed with crimson cockscomb, over which old Gerard fell into ecstasies, and wrote of the “gentle,” as he called it, that it “far exceeded his skill to describe so beautiful, and excellent a plant.”

Before I returned to the Abbey, I slipped off to the kitchen garden to ascertain what progress my sweet peas had made. They were only as yet showing buds and long tendrils, but in another month they would be a glory of sweetness and brilliancy, I felt certain. As I retraced my steps to the Abbey, I was greeted by the children. During his visit to the Abbey little Hals had lost his delicate look, and fine pink roses bloomed on each cheek. He and Bess came dancing up the path hand-in-hand, and the little fox-terriers scampered behind them, joyously.

“I am sure we have found something,” cried Bess, excitedly. “Burbidge wouldn’t look because he’s been stung by a bee. ‘But,’ I said, ‘you don’t hear all that chattering for nothing. If only Thady were here we should soon know.’ I wanted to run off to the Bull Ring to fetch him, but Nana said I wasn’t to mess myself, as Aunty Constance was coming down to luncheon to-day. Much she’d care! She knows I can have as much soap as I like.”

THE GARDEN MYSTERY

“Much you’d use, miss, if you had your own way,” I answered laughing. And then I turned and begged Bess, pouting and looking rather irate, to show me where there was this wonderful chattering.

“It is a secret,” cried Bess, “I am sure – a real secret.”

Then, without another word, we turned in through the wooden door at the back of the great yew hedge. As we entered I heard such a twittering and indignant chirping, that I was thoroughly puzzled to guess the cause. The children and I peered through the branches.

“There must be a cat somewhere,” I said. I have read that birds will chatter round a sick cat or dying fox, but I could discover no beast about. At our approach, two brilliant greenfinches alone took flight with a beautiful flash of apple-green wings, and vanished into the recesses of the great walnut tree.

Still the harsh discordant cries continued. Suddenly I saw a nest.

“A nest!” I cried, “and the noise comes from there. What can it be?” I tried to touch it, but the nest of moss and twigs was beyond my reach. “We must get the steps and then we shall know what makes the noise,” I said. “But only Mouse amongst the dogs may see; Tramp and Tartar must be shut up in the shed, for if the birds fluttered down or could not fly, they would kill them, before we could save them.”

We shut up the terriers and fetched the steps. “I wish,” I said, “that one of the boys” – as Burbidge calls them – “were here to hold them.” For the ground at the back of the hedge was uneven, and it was difficult to get the steps reared firmly up.

“I’ll hold them, dear,” said Hals, politely. And added with pride, “You know I’m very good at doing any man’s job.”

But as they were heavy and rather clumsy, being an old-fashioned pair, I declined this and begged Hals to get out of the way, for fear of an accident happening to him. Then I mounted. I reached the summit of the ladder and looked down into the nest. As I did so I was conscious, at the “back of my head,” as Nana says, that the children were watching me intently.

“What is it?” they cried breathlessly.

I saw below me a greenfinch’s nest made out of green moss and twigs and lined with cow’s hair, and in it, filling almost the entire space, was a gigantic grey-barred bird with an enormous mouth, which he opened at me in great wrath. Nothing daunted, I stretched out my hand to seize him, and obtained my prize; but in the effort, of doing so, I overbalanced myself, the steps clattered down with a crash, and I fell, bird in hand, to the ground.

In my endeavour to save the bird from harm, I came in contact with a projecting piece of lime rock. I felt a sharp pain in my right knee, and then a giddy, confused sensation possessed me, and a hundred lights, red, blue, and white, danced before my eyes. The bird escaped from my hand and fluttered into the hedge with a guttural cry. Hals and Bess approached me in terror.

“Mum, Mum, you’re not dead?” asked Bess. I saw the little face twitching above me, and as she spoke, hot tears ran down her cheeks.

“No, no,” I whispered dreamily; and then all the trees and the hedge seemed to mingle in a senseless dance, and everything bobbed up and down before me. But I did not entirely lose consciousness, for I heard the children whisper together. At last Bess took Hals’ hand and came quite close to where I was lying.

“They do not always die,” Hals said soothingly.

“No, not mothers,” Bess answered, with a gulp. But my poor little maid looked white with fear – she was trembling, and added, “But mothers can die.”

I tried to say something to reassure them, but all my words seemed to die on my lips, and as I lay there everything seemed to get further and further off, and to become indistinct and unreal.

At last Hals seemed to remember what to do in the emergency. “Run, Bess, run, and get some one,” I heard him say.

MOUSE’S ROUGH KIND TONGUE

As the two children started off to the house, Mouse gave a whimper, and I felt her rough, kind tongue against my face. Then a mist gathered round me and I remembered nothing more.

In a little while, however, I heard voices. Kindly Auguste led the way, talking volubly. “Madame est morte,” I heard him call out in theatrical tones. Then old Mrs. Langdale followed, wringing her hands; then Célestine, like a whirlwind; and Nana and Burbidge a second later hobbled up across the lawn.

“Madame, vite,” exclaimed Célestine, and then followed a string of proposed remedies in the most astonishingly quick French. As she spoke, she tried to raise me, but I could not move without acute pain; and Mouse, watching my face, growled angrily. At this, Burbidge forced himself to the front.

“Have done with your gibberish,” he cried, in a surly tone. “For an English blow an English remedy. Yer might have broken my steps, marm,” he said to me, with a catch in his throat. Burbidge is full of kindness; “but at times his tongue is as rough as pig bristles,” as his old wife, Hester says, and just then he was thoroughly angry with me for having hurt myself chasing “mere wild birds, like a village loseller.”

Then he called to his boys, and somehow, with their aid, I got back to the house. The children were both in tears.

“She has broken her leg,” cried Bess. “Mothers can, I know it, besides beggars and princes.”

But Hals would not allow this, and said, with dogged steadfastness, “Mothers don’t break like dolls, I know that.”

For this remark Burbidge commended him. “Stick to it, young squire,” he said; and then he bade Roderick run for the doctor, like greased lightning.

After a minute or two, Nana begged all to go out, and took possession of the injured knee, and began to bathe it with a decoction of arnica and boiled lily-root, which last is an excellent remedy, still used in Shropshire, for cuts or bruises. Gradually the pain diminished, and as I lay, feeling much shaken and a little foolish, the doctor made his appearance.

He begged me to remain on the sofa, to rest, and discontinue all exercise for the present; and before going wrote out the prescription for another lotion. When he had left, I weakly suggested I would use both, and hoped for the best. But this “trimming” course did not pacify Nana, who declared “he might say what he liked, but Dr. Browne had no call to change her lotion.”

After luncheon I felt better, and was carried out on a sofa to the lawn on the east side of the house, some favourite books were placed near me, and the letters I had received that morning. Burbidge was by that time very penitent and full of compunction, now that he was no longer terrified, and was sure that my leg was not broken. He brought me a sprig of lavender, “to have summat nice to sniff,” and assured me “that them birds of mine in the aviary should be looked after proper;” and added, by way of gloomy consolation, “I wouldn’t let ’em nohow suffer, not even if you’d broken both legs.”

When Burbidge had left me, I took up my letters sadly, and felt grieved that I must forego that week the pleasure of calling on friends and of visiting their lovely gardens, decked in the full glory of summer; and that I could not see, as I had intended to do, the stately garden of Cundover, the glowing borders of Burwarton, or the splendour of the Crimson Rambler at Benthall. All these beautiful things, as far as I was concerned, must remain unseen, and flower their sweetness away in the desert air.

Not even my own garden might I visit, for my orders were to lie down and not to put foot to the ground for some days; so I said sadly to myself I must only think of gardens. I remained therefore quite quiet, for the children had both gone off to tea at the Red House, and Mouse, and I were left alone, to enjoy each other’s society.

I lay back amongst the cushions, and thought of all the beautiful gardens that I had ever seen.

THE GARDEN OF MY CHILDHOOD

My mind flew back to the old Hampshire garden, where I had played as a child, with its glowing anemones in May, its auriculas, and its golden patches of alyssum, which we called as children, “golden tuft.” Its great hedges of lavender, its masses of fruit trees, and its big beds of hautbois strawberries all returned to me. How well I remembered the quinces, medlars, and mulberries, and a hundred other delights. I recollected also, the groves of filberts and great coverts of gooseberries and raspberries, where the old gardener used to allow us to “forage,” as he termed it, for ten minutes at a time, and never more, by his great silver watch, presented to him years ago “by the earl,” in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Then how beautiful the walls were in summer and autumn, laden with apricots, peaches, delicious black figs, and later on, with beautiful pears of brilliant colours and gigantic proportions.

How carefully the fruit trees were trained – some in toasting-forks and others to make perfect fans. And then what beautiful long alleys of close-shorn turf there were, and what plantations of beautiful standard roses he grew for my mother.

SHIPTON GARDEN

Then my mind flew back to the beautiful pleasaunces of Highclere, just seven miles away. How magnificent were the great cedars round the house, the masses of gorgeous rhododendrons, and the wonderful beds of azaleas. Then, amidst shady groves with sparkling patches of sunlight, I remembered, also, beautiful examples of the great tree or Moutan peony – the highest and biggest bushes that I have ever seen; and across the park, delicious Milford, with its islands of blossom, its swans, and its sunlit lake. Gardens are great pleasures. The state gardens of the world remain with us as beautiful and wonderful pictures of the tastes and manners of past centuries. They are the living splendours of past ages. I recalled such examples as Levens, Hatfield, Longleat, and Littlecote. Then I turned in thought to homelier, what Bess calls, “more your own kind of places;” and I thought of the lovely little old manor-house gardens that I had seen. There is one not far from Wenlock, by name Shipton. A little terraced garden, with old stone vases of Elizabethan time. The present house dates mostly from Mary Tudor’s reign, and belonged later to Sir Christopher Hatton, the Maiden Queen’s dancing Chancellor, who won all hearts by his grace and amiability, it is said. On each side of the little narrow garden run high walls, festooned with roses – and such old-fashioned roses! Old kinds that I have never seen elsewhere – such as Waller might have thought of when he penned his exquisite verses to Saccharissa – dainty, small, and deliciously fragrant. Then, just outside the garden are big bushes of brilliant berberries, that turn in autumn, red, like a regiment of English soldiers in peace-time, and that were so highly esteemed for the making of “conserves,” in the Middle Ages.

How pretty such old-fashioned gardens are – very tiny, very dainty, and meant to be very formal and trim. They seem little worlds all of their own; little centres of human care and affection, and outside all appears a wilderness in comparison.

Then, as I lay idly back, looking into the blue mist and enjoying the far green of the poplars, my mind turned to all the lovely gardens that I had read about. I thought of “that railit garden,” that James I. of Scotland – poet, musician, and artist – loved; and where he fell in love with the Lady Jane, the fair daughter of the Earl of Somerset. There, he tells us, he passed his deadly life – “full of peyne and penance.” From a grim tower he first saw his lady-love. He tells us in the “King’s Quhair,” how he saw her walking in a fair garden, and how, in seeing her, “it sent the blude of all my body to my hert;” and how, for ever afterwards, “his heart became her thrall,” although “there was no token of menace in her face.”

There, amidst “a garden fair,” by towered walls, knit round with hawthorn hedges, where thick boughs beshaded long alleys, and where the sweet green juniper gave out its aromatic fragrance, he, poor poet-king, sang of love, listening all the while to the “little sweet nightingale that sat on small green twists, and that sang ‘now soft, now lowd,’ till all the garden and the walls rung ‘right of the song.’”

Then I thought of that still garden at St. Mary’s chapel, at Westminster, where the great father of English poetry wrote his treatise on the “Astrolabe” for his little son Lewis. I imagined him with his wise and tender face, and far-off, deep-set grey eyes looking out on the world kindly, serious, gentle.

I liked to remember the great man’s peaceful deathbed, and thought of his last sweet verses —

“Flie fro the prese, and dwell with sothfastnesse;Suffise unto thy Goode, though it be small,For horde hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse.”

It is an old, old story, and yet always a new one; but in Chaucer’s time, failure met with a sharp ending.

I thought also of that fair garden near the Temple, which our greatest poet has touched with the divine intuition of genius, and made bloom with roses that no frost can kill, or smoke can soil. Where Plantagenet plucked the white rose of York, and Somerset the red one of Lancaster.

Then I thought of unfortunate Richard’s queen in the garden at Langley, and of the old faithful, rugged gardener and of his bitter cry of pity. “Here did she drop a tear. Here in this place I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.”

BACON’S GARDEN

Then I thought of Lord Bacon’s beautiful garden of “prince-like” proportions. According to him, the ideal garden did not measure less than thirty acres, and was to be divided into three parts – a garden proper, a greene, a heath, or desert.

In the garden there was to be a succession of flowers. Germander, sweet briars, and gilly flowers, were some of those named, and the garden was always to be gay. He advocated many kinds of fruit, “cherries, rasps, apples, pears, plummes, grapes, and also peaches.”

In the heath or desert, were to be planted thickets of honeysuckle, and garlands of wild vine; while mole-hills were to be skilfully covered with wild thyme, with pinks, and in opening glades, sheets of violets, cowslips, daisies, and beare-foot, were each to have their place. Then long alleys were to be planted with burnet, wild thyme, and water-mint, which, when crushed, would, he tells us, “give out rich perfume.”

“Great Princes may add statues and such things for state and magnificence,” wrote Bacon; “but beyond these things is the true pleasure of a garden.” And there the great Chancellor was right, for we all know little plots and tiny greenhouses, worked and tended by loving hands, where the owner, and toiler, gets more pleasure out of a very small enclosure or a single frame, than a ducal proprietor out of many acres of horticultural magnificence. God is very just in pleasure, if not in wealth.

It was in his own beautiful garden at Gorhambury, that the great philosopher and master-mind wrote much that was beautiful. His was a strange character. He soared to heaven by his intellect, and fell to hell by his baseness. Ben Johnson wrote, “In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength, for greatness he could not want.”

Bacon, be it said in sorrow, was one of the last of the bench who descended to torturing his victims. He wrote of the unfortunate Peacham, when he refused to answer his questions, “that he had a dumb devil.” Yet this man loved at other moments pure pleasures. His love of a garden was real, and deep, and no man understood more fully the heights and depths of the Christian Faith, or the higher flights of redeemed souls. “Prosperity,” he wrote, “is the blessing of the Old Testament; Adversity, the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer evidence of God’s favour.” “Prosperity,” he declared, “was not without many fears and distastes, and Adversity not without comforts and hopes. Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue.” Nobody has ever approached Bacon for his beauty of expression. Shelley wrote of his style, “His language has a sweet, majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect.” Such natures as Lord Verulam’s are difficult for commonplace mortals to understand, for the head is of a god, and the feet, those of a beast. The young or inexperienced might call such men humbugs, or hypocrites; but, perhaps, the real truth is, that such men possess dual natures. In them is a spirit that knows the light, and seeks it, as the Chancellor swore he would seek the light; but to whom, also, the ways of darkness are not repellent, and who cannot resist the favour of man, and the false glamour of courts.

Then I thought of the fair gardens of history. I imagined the splendours of Nonsuch, laid out by bluff Harry, of which men said, “that the palace was encumbered with parks full of deer, and surrounded with delicious gardens and groves, ornamented with trellis works and cabinets of verdure, so that it seemed a place pitched upon by Pleasure herself, to dwell in along with Youth.”

It was also good to think of John Evelyn in his plantings, and during his long rides. I thought of him journeying in the south of France, along the Mediterranean coast, enjoying the sight there of the vineyards and olives. In fancy I beheld him scenting the orange and citron groves, and stopping to gaze “at the myrtle, pomegranates, and the like sweet plantations,” as he passed villa after villa, built, as he said, of glittering free-stone, which, in that clear atmosphere, made him think “of snow dropped from the clouds, amongst the verdure of the ilexes and perennial greens.”

ELIZABETH OF YORK’S BOWER

Besides these fair gardens, I thought in the dawn of gardening, of Elizabeth of York’s bower, “in the little park of Wyndsor,” and I liked to dream of that arbour in Baynarde’s Castle in London put up for her, by order of the king. I should have liked also to have walked with Sir Thomas More in that fair garden (probably his) from which he imagined the one in his “Utopia,” where “we went and sat down on a green bank and entertained one another in discourse.”

Then I should have liked to have crept into the great gardens at Hampton Court laid out by the great cardinal, where “there was a flower garden to supply the queen’s bower with roses, and where John Chapman, the most famous gardener of his time, grew his herbs for the king’s table.”

I should have liked to have had the invisible cap, and to have stepped past the guard and entered the Privy garden, and have read the mottoes on the sundials, and to have slyly scented the roses, and pinched the rosemary, juniper, and lavender.

Had I possessed the magic cap, I should not have forgotten to wander into the Bird garden and to have seen “the beestes,” holding in stone their vanes; and I should have liked also dearly to have seen all the strange animals, amongst which there were harts, badgers, hounds, dragons, antelopes, and one stately lion.

Could I have walked there, perhaps I might have caught a glance of that “sweetest lady from Spain” whom Shakespeare honoured most of all women; or perhaps in the joyous hey-day of her youth have met Anne of the slender neck, for whom Fate had reserved so terrible a fate, although for a time all seemed to go so smilingly with her.

Then I should have liked to have been a favourite guest at Moor Park, in the days when the stately Countess of Bedford lived there, and to have heard the wits talk, and perhaps have followed the countess and Doctor Donne up the trim gravel walks, and have admired the standard laurels, and rejoiced in the stately fountains in a garden that, in the words of the great Minister of the Hague, “was too pleasant ever to forget.” I should have liked also to have walked into Sir William Temple’s own garden at Sheen, had a chat with him about his melons, of which he was so proud, or have paced with him the trim alleys of his own Moor Park in Surrey. Later, I should have liked to have seen his stiff beds, reflections of the parterres of Holland, and have heard from his own lips the account of the Triple Alliance. And beyond this garden of men’s hands, I should like to have seen the glorious extent of firs and heather that enclosed his garden, and to have heard the murmur of the distant rivulet, and to have felt the charm of the distant view that he gazed upon.

Perhaps even, if fortune had been kind, I might have seen Lady Gifford in all the splendour of silk or satin, or heard some brilliant witticism from the lips of young Jonathan, or even have caught a fleeting glimpse of lovely Stella.

Now all these pretty, all these interesting shades of the past are gone. Yet Sir William’s sundial still stands in his favourite garden, and below it lies buried his heart, placed there by his own desire, whilst the rest of his remains lie in Westminster Abbey, beside those of his charming wife, Dorothy Osborne.

THE GARDENS OF THE EAST

No sound anywhere, on this lovely July day, greeted me, but the trilling jubilation of a thrush in a lilac, so I could dream on at will about gardens and their delights. After a while my mind wandered to the gardens of the ancients. I thought of those deep groves where Epicurus walked and talked, of the rose-laden bowers where Semiramis feasted and reposed, of the moonlit gardens where Solomon sung his Oriental rhapsodies, where fountains played day and night, and in which hundreds of trees flowered and fruited.

Where were the gardens of “the Hesperides?” I asked myself. That spot of wonderful delight which none ever wished to leave, where flowers blossomed all the year, and where fair nymphs danced and sang through all the seasons.

Then where was the garden of Alcinous, where the trees formed a dark and impenetrable shade, where fountains refreshed the weary and where fruit followed fruits in endless succession?

With us in England, a garden means a place of joyous sunlight, a place where flowers glitter in the sunshine, and where throughout the day feathered songsters sing in joyous chorus. In the Oriental imagination, a garden means cool alleys, flowing water, marble basins; a place to wander in beneath the stars, and to hear the nightingale sing his chant of melody and grief. Even in the matter of gardens, the aspirations of the West must always be different from those of the East. Then my mind turned to the gardens of fancy.