Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

“Where sprang the violet and the periwinkle rich of hue” – where “all the ground was poudred as if it had been peynt, and where every flower cast up a good savour.” Where amongst the trees “birdis sang with voices like unto the choir of angels, where sported also little conyes, the dreadful roo, the buck, the hert, and hynde, and squirrels, and bestes small of gentil kynde.” Where sweet musicians played, and where, as Chaucer wrote, with the naiveté of the early poets, that God who is Maker and Lord of all good things, he guessed, never heard sweeter music, “where soft winds blew, making sweet murmurs in the green trees, whilst scents of every holsom spice, and grass were wafted in the breeze.”

Then in the peace of that exquisite summer day, I saw as in a dream that blest region which Sir Philip Sidney has painted and called Arcadia, “where the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming of the sun, where nightingales sung their wrong-caused sorrow;” where the hills rose, their proud heights garnished with stately trees, beneath which silver streams murmured softly amidst meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers. Where pretty lambs with bleating outcry craved their dam’s comfort, and where a shepherd-boy piped as though he never could grow old, whilst a shepherdess sang and knitted all the while, so that it seemed “that the voice comforted her hands to work, and the hands kept time to the voice music.”

In that sweet and happy country, where light and sun and blue sky were constant joys, where the houses were all scattered, “but not from mutual succour,” where the joys of “accompanable solitariness were to be found combined with the pleasures of civil wildness,” I allowed my fancy to linger.

Then as butterflies flitted past in all the pomp of summer splendour in my Abbey garden, I thought for a moment of Mistress Tuggy’s bowers of passion-flower at Westminster, of which Gerard wrote, and of which he told us “there was always good plenty.” I thought also of that gay procession to the Parson of Tittershall, where merry maids went, bearing with them garlands of red roses, and of that wreath laid through many centuries, in beautiful Tong Church.

I liked to imagine Theobalds, where it was said a man might wander two miles and yet never come to the end of the great gardens; or to think of that great pleasaunce of Frederick, Duke of Würzburg, where it was said that it was easy for a stranger to lose his way, so vast was the space of the enclosure.

ELIZABETHAN GARDENS

Then I should have liked to have known the great gardens of Kenilworth, where proud Dudley entertained the Maiden Queen.

There, according to Master Humphrey Martin, every fruit tree had its place. In the centre of the pleasaunce stood, he wrote, an aviary and a fountain of white marble, where tench, bream, and carp, eel and perch “all did play pleasantly,” and “beside which delicious fruits, cherries, strawberries, might be eaten from the stalk.”

In the Elizabethan garden men were not content with gay blossoms alone; sweet odours were necessary to complete their standard of delight.

Bacon wrote, because the breath of flowers is “farr sweeter in the air, where it comes, and goes, like the warbling of music, then in the hand, so there is nothing more fit for delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that doe best perfume the aire.” He recommended amongst other sweet scents, two specially, that of violets, and the perfume of dying strawberry leaves, “an excellent cordial in autumn.” He also mentioned the perfume of sweet-briar, and recommended that wallflowers should be planted under a parlour or lower chamber window.

Andrew Borde, writing in the same century, declared that it was deemed necessary for the country house of his time to be surrounded by orchards well-filled with sundry fruits and commodious, and to have a fair garden “repleat with herbs aromatic and redolent of savours.”

Markham also talked of the nosegay garden, which was to be planted with violets, and gilly-flowers, marigolds, lilies, daffodils, hyacinths, “tulipas,” narcissus, and the like. There were to be knots, or parterres of delightful interlacing patterns, and amongst the ribbon borders such sweet plants and flowers as thyme, pinks, gilly-flowers, and thrift, all neatly bordered and edged, with turrets and arbours to repose in.

Thomas Hill, writing in 1568, also suggested that there should be parterres filled with hyssop, thyme, and lavender, for the pleasure of the perfume. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries folks sought their flowers in their gardens, which it can well be imagined was a much healthier form of enjoyment than the modern one of masses of flowers in stuffy rooms and of having tables laden with strong-smelling blossoms, during hot and crowded banquets.

The delight in the garden was essentially a sixteenth and seventeenth century pride. Lawson exclaimed, “What can your eye desire to see, your ear to hear, your mouth to taste, or your nose to smell, that is not to be had in a garden, with abundance of beauty?”

Lawson also loved the birds, as did the Scotch poet king, and Chaucer, and, in the early nineteenth century, Shelley and Keats. He wrote lovingly of a brood of nightingales that turned his orchard into a paradise. “The voice of the cock bird,” he declared, “did bear him company, both day and night.”

Then I should have liked to have visited Gerard in his physic garden in Holborn, overlooking the Fleet, and how delightful it would have been to have had a chat with the old man, or to have brought him some new plant or flower.

Or perhaps, if fortune had smiled upon me, I might another day have popped in and got a talk with John Tradescant, whose father and grandfather were both gardeners to Queen Bess, and who himself was gardener in his time, to ill-fated Charles I. These Tradescants travelled all over the world in search of plants for the royal gardens, and one of them even went to Virginia in order to bring back new specimens.

WHERE ARE THE GARDENS OF THE PAST?

Where are the gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? A few are the delight and joy of our own time, but most of them have perished, and are gone like the roses that Sir Philip Sidney picked for Stella, or the anemones that John Evelyn loved. The press of human feet has displaced nearly all the fair floral sites in London, and the hare and the partridges rove over many of those famed in Tudor and Stuart days in the country.

Of Nonsuch, Evelyn wrote, “they cut down the fair elms and defaced the stateliest seat that his Majesty possessed.”

Alone, near High Ercall, at Eyton, where George Herbert’s mother was born and bred, stands the old gazebo or pleasure-house that belonged to the ancient hall of the Newports. This still remains in red brick, a lovely sixteenth-century building. The old house has perished, and the old gardens have gone back into plough, or meadow-land. Alone the old pleasure-house stands and a gigantic ilex, which is said to have been planted at the same time.

Did “holy Mr. Herbert” ever pace that old pleasure-house, I have often asked myself, as a little lad? It is a pleasant thought. All loved him. Lord Pembroke, his kinsman, told the king, James I., that he loved him more for his learning and virtues than even for his name and his family, and all men sought his friendship. Amongst these the learned Bishop of Winchester and Francis Lord Bacon. Was it of such a man that the great essayist wrote, “A man having such a friend hath two lives in his desires”? If so, it was of the immortal side of life he spoke, for all George’s aspirations were for the treasure where “neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and where no thief can break through or steal.”

Then I let my fancy linger for a moment in the old bowling-green at Whitehall, all gone too; I thought of the prisoner, Sir Richard Fanshawe, in the chamber above: and of his devoted wife, standing morning after morning, whilst the rain fell in torrents, talking and listening with the desperation of love.

THE MASQUE OF FLOWERS

The shadows deepened, the sunlight faded, and the glory of red melted away into tender lavender and green. After a while I think I got drowsy, for in my imagination I saw a garden, gorgeous and resplendent. Loud music resounded within its precincts, and a pleasaunce extended before me of strange and fantastic beauty. In the centre I noted a beautiful fountain, reared on four columns of silver, with four golden masked faces, from whose lips clear water issued in sparkling streams. There were also curious beasts of gold and silver, in the shape of lions and unicorns.

The magic garden was hedged in with a sombre hedge of cypress. On the whole scene fell the brilliant glare of flaming torches. Gorgeous parterres of tulips, all a blaze of blossom, flashed with a hundred colours, whilst to me, borne on little eddying breezes, came wafted back the delicious sweetness of honeysuckle and eglantine. Then, as I looked, to the sound of lutes and to the tinkle of old stringed instruments, I saw nymphs clad in rich apparel dance a stately measure.

My book slipped off my knees, and fell with a flump upon the grass. A minute later I rubbed my eyes and laughed, and then remembered that I had not been to fairyland after all, as Bess would have said, but that I had fallen asleep, and had been dreaming about the Masque of Flowers, a great fête that was given in honour of the marriage of the Earl of Somerset and the Lady Frances, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, by the gentlemen of Grays Inn, in the long past year of 1613. I laughed, for I really believed, as the children say, it was all true, and Mouse, suspicious probably by my puzzled look, gave a long deep growl. My faithful friend had never left my side. Since my accident she had remained with me, troubled, and annoyed and sullen to everybody else.

Mouse had a bad opinion of the doctor (most dogs have). She did not like his carriage, and thought badly of his coachman. Just then the world for her was full of evil characters, and they taxed narrowly her powers of observation.

As I leant over the sofa to pick up my book, the oak door of the chapel hall was flung violently open, and the two children, Bess and little Hals, danced in together.

“Oh, mamsie!” they cried, for Hals had caught up Bess’s manner of addressing me. “Such fun! such fun! We did all kinds of things. We played games in the garden – Kiss in the Ring, Stag a Roarning, Bell Horses, Draw Buckets, and Shrewsbury Blind Man’s Buff, Wallflowers, Garden Jumps, and heaps of others. Aunty Constance called them ‘Shropshire games.’”

“Were they good games?” I asked.

The children were too excited to speak, but nodded their heads furiously, whilst their eyes shone with excitement.

“Can you repeat to me any of the rhymes?” I asked.

“Hals can,” answered Bess; “I can’t long remember poetry. Things fly into my head, but they soon fly out again.”

I turned to Hals, and begged him to tell me those that he could remember.

“Well,” he replied, “I’ll try. Anyway it was great fun. Aunty Constance taught us a lot, but most of the children came from her class, and, besides, they knew a lot. Shropshire children, I think, even Fräulein would call ‘very learned.’”

“They were all funny,” cried Bess; “and we danced on the grass, and Aunty Constance gave us sugar-plums, and red lolly-pops between the games, and we drank lemonade and orangeade.”

“Yes,” said Hals, grandly; “I don’t think even the king, or my father could have amused themselves better. They know how to be happy in Shropshire.”

Then Bess interrupted Hals and called out sharply, “Amuse mama.”

OLD SHROPSHIRE GAMES

“Do,” I said; “and begin by telling me all about the games, and repeat to me all the rhymes that you can remember.”

“Yes, we must,” said Bess, moved to pity, “for poor mama, she didn’t even go to Aunty Constance’s garden, although she was asked, or see Aunty Constance’s new flower with a long name that I am sure I can only misremember.”

There was a pause. Then Hals stood on the gravel path some five yards away, and said modestly, “I’ll do my best, but I am afraid all the games won’t come back to me. The first time you play at games, they are almost as hard as sums.”

“Oh no,” interrupted Bess, contemptuously. “Games can never be as bad as sums, for you can kick about and swing your feet in games. But in sums it’s always ‘keep quiet;’ and then,” added Bess sadly, with a note of pathos in her voice, “sums will always keep on changing, unless they are done by a governess.”

Then a hush fell upon us all, for Hals said he must try and think of the games pat, and we were silent. I saw Hals’ lips move, and a pretty vision rose before me of a little figure clad in green velvet, with fair flaxen curls clustering round his brow and resting on his lace collar. After a few minutes the little boy stepped a little nearer, and in a treble key, began to explain the character of the old games and to recite some of the old verses that once delighted lad and lass of the far West country.

“First we played Kiss in the Ring. We ran about,” he explained, “and the boys dropped handkerchiefs on the shoulders of the girls they liked, and they said in turn —

“‘I wrote a letter to my loveAnd on the way I lost it;Some one has picked it up,Not you, not you, not you.’

That they said,” said Hals, “when the boys didn’t like a girl. I didn’t play,“ he remarked grandly, ”because I didn’t like being kissed by strange girls; so I played with the others at Cat and Mouse, which is better, for the kissing is understood.”

“And after that?” I asked.

“Oh, after that we played Bingo.”

“Bobby Bingo,” corrected Bess, severely. “You should call things by their proper name, Hals.”

“It was a game about a dog, and we came up, and all said together,” continued Hals unmoved —

“‘A farmer’s dog lay on the floor,And Bingo was his name O.B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O,And Bingo was his name O.’

I cannot exactly say how that was played,” said Hals, puzzled, “but we danced and we sang, and one girl stood straight up in the middle, as if she had a punishment lesson to say. And when I’m grown up, I will get my father to buy me a dog, and I will call him Bingo.”

“Now I want to talk,” cried Bess, impatiently, “because I, too, know some of the games. We’ve often played at them, Nana and I and the maids, on Saturday afternoon when it was wet. There was Bell-horses. Nobody is so silly, mamsie, unless it’s members of parliament or governesses, as not to know ‘Bell-horses.’”

Then my little maid slipped off the wooden bench on which she had been swinging her feet, and went and stood by little Harry.

“Listen,” she cried, and blurted forth at double quick pace —

BELL-HORSES AND OTHER DELIGHTS“‘Bell-horses, bell-horses, what time of day?One o’clock, two o’clock, three and away.Bell-horses, bell-horses what time of day?Two o’clock, three o’clock, four and away.’”

Then we stood up, and cried out —

“‘Five o’clock, six o’clock, no time to stay.’”

At this point Hals came and sat quietly by me on the edge of my sofa, and Bess went on.

“Besides that we had Green Gravel, Green Gravel, and even Mrs. Burbidge says that is not a wicked game to play,” cried Bess; and repeated the old lines with a funny little tilt of her head —

“‘Green gravel, green gravel, the grass is so green,She is the fairest young lady as ever was seen.I’ll wash her in milk,And I’ll clothe her in silk,And I’ll write down her nameWith a gold pen and ink.’”

Then came what Bess called “them that laughed,” who said —

“‘O Sally, O Sally, your true love is dead,He sent you a letter to turn round your head.’”

“I like that,” remarked Bess. “The words are pretty. ‘Green gravel, green gravel,’ but I shouldn’t like to be washed in milk, soap and water are bad enough, but I should like letters to be written with a pen of gold. They sound as if they ought to be letters all about holidays or Christmas presents; leastways, they never ought to be rude or disagreeable, or have anything to do with lessons.’”

“Yes,” agreed Harry, “written only for fun, and because everybody may do as they like.”

Then we discussed Wallflowers. And as the children stood talking, for Hals had run to Bess’s side, old Nana came out of the Chapel Hall and joined our group.

“It is time, mam, for them to be in bed,” said Nana, sourly; “and I’m sure it will be a mercy if both childer are not ill to-morrow. By their own accounts they’ve eaten as many lolly-pops as they had a mind to. I did think as Mrs. Legarde had more sense than that. But them as feasts children, should physic ’em.”

“Wallflowers, wallflowers,” interrupted Bess, rudely. “Come and amuse mama, poor mamsie hasn’t had tea out, or done anything to please herself.”

So old Nana – whose bark, all the household acknowledges, is far worse than her bite – came and began to recite the old rhymes of her youth, and of the old days before that.

“I am just ashamed of the old nonsense,” she said, blushing like a girl, “but since it will amuse your mama,” and she turned to Bess, “I’ll try my best.” And Nana, in a funny old husky voice, with the Shropshire accent growing stronger and stronger at every line repeated —

“‘Wallflowers, wallflowers, wallflowers up so high,Us shall all be maidens, and so us will die.Excepting Alice Gittens – she is the youngest flower,She can hop, and she can skip, and she can play the hour,Three and four, and four and five,Turn your back to the wall side.’”

And thereupon old Nana, animated by old recollections, turned her back upon me and stood facing the old bowling-green.

QUEEN BESS’S GAME

“Well done!” cried both children simultaneously. And then Bess called for “Nuts in May.” “You know, what we played last Christmas, when we could’nt go out,” she explained, “because the snow was so deep.”

For a moment Nana looked puzzled.

“You ought to recollect that,” cried Bess, “because it was you that learnt us it before.”

Nana thought for a minute, and then repeated the old Shropshire version of the ancient game, which, tradition says, was written by Queen Bess one Christmas time for Lord Burleigh’s children. But Nana first of all explained to us the action of the game.

“You must know, mam,” she said, “that there are two parties – one of lads and the other of lasses.” “The first come up and call (the lads) —

“‘Here we come gathering nuts in May,Nuts in May, nuts in May,Here we come gathering nuts in MayOn a cold and frosty morning.’

“Then the second lot,” as Nana called the lasses, “answer back, and shout —

“‘Who have ye come to gather away?’

And the first lot (the lads) reply —

“‘We have come to gather sweet Maude away.’‘And who will you send to fetch her away?’‘We’ll send Corney Rodgers to fetch her away.’

“Then the two parties pull,” she added, “and in the end a lass has to leave, and to go over to the lads’ side.”

“Who was sweet Maude, and who was Corney Rodgers?” I asked of Nana.

But she declared she didn’t know for certain, “but most-like he was some bad bold man who lived in the hills, and took off any maid he had a mind to.”

“Go on, go on!” cried the children enthusiastically, and clapped Nana vociferously.

“You know them all,” exclaimed Bess, “although you like pretending; but nurses always do.”

At this Nana, for all her head of snow, fell a laughing. She forgot all about “bedtime,” and stood before us with pink cheeks, whilst she exclaimed —

“They comes back! They comes back, the old plays.” And therewith begins to repeat “Here comes Three Dukes a Riding.” “Us used to play that – and a right pretty game it was,” she explained, – “on the village green, when the leaves were budding, betwixt the hours of school.”

And she recited aloud in her dear, funny, old cracked voice —

“‘Here comes three dukes a ridingWith a ransome, dansome, day.’

“Then the lasses used to answer,” she told us, “and cry out —

“‘And what is your intent, sirs, intent, sirs?With a ransome, dansome, day.’

“At this the lads used to shout —

“‘My intent is to marry, to marry.’

“And the maids would reply —

“‘Will you marry one of my daughters, one of my daughters?’

“Then the lads used to look highty-tighty, for all they had in their bones only the making of ploughmen, ditchers, and shepherds,“ Nana declared, “and they would say —

“‘You be as stiff as pokers, as pokers.’

And turn up their noses and strut back.

“Then the maids would answer, mincing like —

“‘We can bend like you, sirs, like you, sirs!’

“Then the lads would scan the lasses up and down, and sing back, as if every one of ’em had been born a lord, or high sheriff of the county at least —

“‘You’re all too black and too blowsy, too blowsyFor a dilly-dally officer.’

“Then the maids would sing with a bit of spite —

“‘We’re good enough for you, sirs, good enough for you.’

“Then a lad would leave his fellows, and say with a shrug of his shoulders, and crestfallen like —

“‘If I must have one I will have this,So away with you my pretty miss.’”

And then old Nana told us that the maids would laugh and the lads would jeer, for in turn each lad had to choose a lass, and sometimes the lass he had a mind to wouldn’t go.

A RING OF ROSES

Then Nana, after a short pause, said, “Then there be another game as us used to play. Ring of Roses, some used to call it, and others Grandfather’s Rheum. But I cannot remember but one verse —

“‘A ring, a ring of roses,A pocket full of posies.One for Jack, and one for JanAnd one for little Moses.A-tisha, a-tisha, a-tisha.’

and the fun was who could sneeze loudest. I remember Mike Mallard and Mary Wilston was wonderful at it. ‘Yer’ll die in a sneeze,’ folk used to tell them.”

“Nana can you think of no more, just one more.” For Nana had beckoned to Bess to say good night and go.

“Yes,” I said, “just one more.”

So old Nana yielded to our united pleadings, asserted it must be only one, as it was high time for her lad and lass to be in bed, and ended by reciting aloud a strange old Shropshire rhyme —

“‘Walking up the green grass,A dust, a frust, a dust.We want a pretty maidTo walk along with us.’

“The lads used to say that in a chorus,” Nana explained. “Then the maids would answer —

“‘Fiddle faddle – fiddle faddle.’

“Then the boys would say —

“‘We’ll take a pretty maid,We’ll catch her by the hand,She shall go to Derby,For Derby be her land.She shall have a duck, my dear,She shall have a lamb,Hers shall be a nice young man,A-fighting for her sake.“‘Suppose this young man was to die,And leave the lass alone,Our bells would ring, and we should singAnd clap our hands together.’

“And the maids said —

“‘Fiddle faddle – fiddle faddle.’”

“I don’t like it,” said Bess, impulsively. “Why should they all be jolly because the poor gentleman died?”

“THERE’S THINGS AS GIRLS CAN’T UNDERSTAND”

But Hals did not take that view. “There’s things,” he said loftily, “as girls can’t understand.”

At this Bess turned very red, and in the spirit of the modern woman declared, “What she couldn’t understand, Hals couldn’t neither.” And in deep dudgeon she followed Nana into the house.

As the little party passed out of the garden Hals called back to me, “We’ve forgotten Stag a Roarning. The best of all the games we’ve not told you about. One that I played last year with my papa at a school feast.”

The twilight turned into night. The servants came out, and I was helped back to the Chapel Hall. After all it had not been a dull afternoon. One can go many miles in one’s room, if one knows how to ride on the wings of fancy, and many is the garden that I had visited that day, borne along on the pinions of imagination, for were not the gardens of all time open to me? No dragons or mailed warriors guarded the entrance gates, not even a modern policeman.

An hour after dinner I found myself in bed. The window of my chamber was wide open, an old lancet window of Norman days, one out of which Roger de Montgomery may have gazed, and, later, many of the Henry’s of England in succession. All was very still outside. In the little bit of dark sapphire-blue sky that met my eye as I lay in bed, I saw a mist of silver stars, and the scent of the creepers entered with entrancing sweetness. I was no longer in pain, but not sleepy, so I stretched out my hand and took hold of a book. My hand closed upon a volume of Milton, well worn, and much used; for John Milton has a solemn, sacred power, and touches you with the solemnity of some grand chords heard upon a cathedral organ, and the melody of his verse is often welcome in this holy place. But it was not to his “Paradise Lost” or “Regained” that I turned, nor to his exquisite sonnets. I was in a lighter mood; I turned to the most beautiful masque that ever was written; whilst I thought of the most beautiful of all ruins, Ludlow Castle, the early home of Sir Philip Sidney, England’s ideal knight, and the mirror of her chivalry.