CHAPTER XIX

Summer-house at Ravensworth.

Beehives were once found in every garden; bee-skepes they were called when made of straw. Picturesque and homely were the old straw beehives, and still are they used in England; the old one shown in the chapter on sun-dials can scarcely be mated in America. They served as a conventional emblem of industry. They were made of welts or ropes of twisted straw, as were the heavy winnowing skepes once used for winnowing grain. In Maine, in a few out-of-the-waycommunities, ancient men still winnow grain with these skepes. I saw a man last autumn, a giant in stature, standing in a dull light on the crown of a hill winnowing wheat in one of these greatskepes with an indescribably free and noble gesture. He was a classic, a relic of Homer's age, no longer a farmer, but a husbandman. Bees and honey were of much value in ancient days. Honey was the chief ingredient in many wholesome and pleasing drinks—mead, metheglin, bragget (or braket), morat, erboule—all very delightful in their ingredients, redolent of meadows and hedge-rows; thus Cowslip mead was made of Cowslip "pips," honey, Lemon juice, and "a handful of Sweetbrier." "Athol porridge," demure of name, was as potent as pleasing—potent as good honey, good cream, and good whiskey could make it.

Sharpening the Old Dutch Scythe.

Rows of typical Southern beehives are shown in the two succeeding illustrations. From their home by the side of a White Rose and under an old Sweet Apple tree these Waterford bees did not wish to swarm out in a hurry to find a new home. These beehives are not very ancient in shape, but when I see a row of them set thus under the trees, or in a hive-shelter, they seem to tell of olden days. The very bees flying in and out seem steady-going, respectable old fellows. Such hives have a cosy look, with rows of Hollyhocks behind them, and hundreds of spires of Larkspur for these old bees to bury their heads in.

Beehives at Waterford, Virginia.

The sadly picturesque old superstition of "telling the bees" of a death in a family and hanging a bit of black cloth on the hives as a mourning-weed still is observed in some country communities. Whittier's poem on the subject is wonderfully "countrified" in atmosphere, using the word chore-girl, so seldomheard even in familiar speech to-day and never found in verse elsewhere than in this rustic poem. I saw one summer in Narragansett, on Stony Lane, not far from the old Six-Principle Church, a row of beehives hung with strips of black cloth; the house mistress was dead—the friend of bird and beast and bee—who had reared the guardian of the garden told of onpage 396et seq.

Beehives under the Trees.

A pretty and appropriate garden furnishing was the dove-cote. The possession of a dove-cote in England, and the rearing of pigeons, was free only to lords of the manor and noblemen. When the colonists came to America, many of them had never been permitted to keep pigeons. In Scotland persistent attempts at pigeon-raising by folks of humble station might be punished with death. The settlers must have revelled in the freedom of the new land, as well as in the plenty of pigeons, both wild and domestic. In old England the dove-cote was often built close to the kitchen door, that squab and pigeon might be near the hand of the cook. Dove-cotes in America were often simple boxes or houses raised on stout posts. Occasionally might be seen a fine brick dove-cote like the one still standing at Shirley-on-the-James, in Virginia, which is shaped without and within like several famous old dove-cotes in England, among them the one at Athelhampton Hall, Dorchester, England. The English dove-cote has within a revolving ladder hung from a central post while the Virginian squab catcher uses an ordinary ladder. The shelves for the birds to rest upon and the square recessesfor the nests made by the ingenious placing of the bricks are alike in both cotes.

Spring House at Johnson Homestead, Germantown, Pennsylvania.

A beautiful and fitting tenant of old formal gardens was the peacock, "with his aungelis federys bryghte." On large English estates peacocks were universally kept. A fine peacock, with full-spread tail, makes many a gay flower bed pale before his panoply of iridescence and color. The peahen is a demurely pretty creature. Peacocks are not altogether grateful to garden owners; on the old Narragansett farm whose garden is shown onpage 35, they were always kept, and it was one of the prides and pleasures of formal hospitality tooffer a roasted peacock to visitors. But, save when roasted, the vain creatures would not keep silence, and when they squawked the glory of their plumage was forgotten. They had an odious habit, too, of wandering off to distant groves on the farm, usually selecting the nights of bitterest cold, and roosting in some very high tree, in some very inaccessible spot. They could not be left in this ill-considered sleeping-place, else they would all freeze to death; and words fail to tell the labor in lowering twilight and temperature of discovering their retreat, the dislodging, capturing, and imprisoning them.

Dove-cote at Shirley-on-James.

In Narragansett there is a charming old farm garden, which I often visit to note and admire its old-time blossoms. This garden has a guardian, who haunts the garden walks as did the terrace peacock of old England; no watch-dog ever was so faithful, and none half so acute. When I visit the garden I always ask "Where is Job?" I am answered that he is in the field with the cattle. Sometimes this is true, but at other times Job has left the field and is attending to his assumed duties. As he is not encouraged, he has learned great slyness and dissimulation. Immovable, and in silence, Job is concealed behind a Syringa hedge or in a Lilac ambush, and as you stroll peacefully and unwittingly down the paths, sniffing the honeyed sweetness of the dense edging of Sweet Alyssum, all is as balmy as the blossoms. But stoop for an instant, to gather some leaves of Sweet Basil or Sweet Brier, or to collect a dozen seed-pods of that specially delicate Sweet Pea, and lo!the enemy is upon you, like a fierce whirlwind. He looks mild and demure enough in his kitchen yard retreat, whereto, upon piercing outcry for help, the farmer and his two sons have haled him, and where the camera has caught him. But far from meek is his aspect when you are dodging him around the great Tree Peony, or flying frantically before him down the side path to the garden gate. This fierce wild beast was once that mildest of creatures—a petlamb; the constant companion of the farm-wife, as she weeded and watered her loved garden. Her husband says, "He seems to think folks are stealing her flowers, if they stop to look." The wife and mother of these three great men has gone from her garden forever; but a tenderness for all that she loved makes them not only care for her flowers, but keeps this rampant guardian of the garden at the kitchen door, just as she kept him when he was a little lamb. I knew this New England farmer's wife, a noble woman, of infinite tenderness, strength, and endurance; a lover of trees and flowers and all living things, and I marvel not that they keep her memory green.

The Peacock in His Pride.

GARDEN BOUNDARIES

"A garden fair ... with Wandis long and smallRailèd about, and so with treès setWas all the place; and Hawthorne hedges knet,That lyf was none walking there forbyeThat might within scarce any wight espy."

—Kings Qubair,King James I of Scotland.

OOne who reads what I have written in these pages of a garden enclosed, will scarcely doubt that to me every garden must have boundaries, definite and high. Three old farm boundaries were of necessity garden boundaries in early days—our stone walls, rail fences, and hedge-rows. The first two seem typically American; the third is an English hedge fashion. Throughout New England the great boulders were blasted to clear the rocky fields; and these, with the smaller loose stones, were gathered into vast stone walls. We still see these walls around fields and as the boundaries of kitchen gardens and farm flower gardens, and delightful walls they are, resourceful of beauty to the inventive gardener. I know one lovely garden in old Narragansett, on a farm which is now the country-seat of folk of great wealth, where the oldstone walls are the pride of the place; and the carefully kept garden seems set in a beautiful frame of soft gray stones and flowering vines. These walls would be more beautiful still if our climate would let us have the wall gardens of old England, but everything here becomes too dry in summer for wall gardens to flourish.

One who reads what I have written in these pages of a garden enclosed, will scarcely doubt that to me every garden must have boundaries, definite and high. Three old farm boundaries were of necessity garden boundaries in early days—our stone walls, rail fences, and hedge-rows. The first two seem typically American; the third is an English hedge fashion. Throughout New England the great boulders were blasted to clear the rocky fields; and these, with the smaller loose stones, were gathered into vast stone walls. We still see these walls around fields and as the boundaries of kitchen gardens and farm flower gardens, and delightful walls they are, resourceful of beauty to the inventive gardener. I know one lovely garden in old Narragansett, on a farm which is now the country-seat of folk of great wealth, where the oldstone walls are the pride of the place; and the carefully kept garden seems set in a beautiful frame of soft gray stones and flowering vines. These walls would be more beautiful still if our climate would let us have the wall gardens of old England, but everything here becomes too dry in summer for wall gardens to flourish.

The Guardian of the Garden.

Rhode Island farmers for two centuries have cleared and sheltered the scanty soil of their state by blasting the ledges, and gathering the great stones ofledge and field into splendid stone walls. Their beauty is a gift to the farmer's descendants in reward for his hours of bitter and wearying toil. One of these fine stone walls, six feet in height, has stood secure and unbroken through a century of upheavals of winter frosts—which it was too broad and firmly built to heed. It stretches from the Post Road in old Narragansett, through field and meadow, and by the side of the oak grove, to the very edge of the bay. To the waterside one afternoon in June there strolled, a few years ago, a beautiful young girl and a somewhat conscious but determined young man. They seated themselves on the stone wall under the flickering shadow of a great Locust tree, then in full bloom. The air was sweet with the honeyed fragrance of the lovely pendent clusters of bloom, and bird and bee and butterfly hovered around,—it was paradise. The beauty and fitness of the scene so stimulated the young man's fancy to thoughts and words of love that he soon burst forth to his companion in an impassioned avowal of his desire to make her his wife. He had often pictured to himself that some time he would say to her these words, and he had seen also in his hopes the looks of tender affection with which she would reply. What was his amazement to behold that, instead of blushes and tender glances, his words of love were met by an apparently frenzied stare of horror and disgust, that seemed to pierce through him, as his beloved one sprung at one bound from her seat by his side on the high stone wall, and ran away at full speed, screaming out, "Oh, kill him! kill him!"

Now that was certainly more than disconcerting to the warmest of lovers, and with a half-formed dread that the suddenness of his proposal of love had turned her brain, he ran after her, albeit somewhat coolly, and soon learned the reason for her extraordinary behavior. Emulous of the tempting serpent of old, a great black snake, Mr.Bascanion constrictor, had said complaisantly to himself: "Now here are a fair young Adam and Eve who have entered uninvited my Garden of Eden, and the man fancies it is not good for him to be alone, but I will have a word to say about that. I will come to her with honied words." So he thrust himself up between the stones of the wall, and advanced persuasively upon them, behind the man's back. But a Yankee Eve of the year 1890a.d.is not that simple creature, the Eve of the year ——b.c.; and even the Father of Evil would have to be great of guile to succeed in his wiles with her.

A farm servant was promptly despatched to watch for the ill-mannered and intrusive snake who—as is the fashion of a snake—had grown to be as big as a boa-constrictor after he vanished; and at the end of the week once more the heel of man had bruised the serpent's head, and the third party in this love episode lay dead in his six feet of ugliness, a silent witness to the truth of the story.

Throughout Narragansett, Locust trees have a fashion of fringing the stone walls with close young growth, and shading them with occasional taller trees.

Terrace Wall at Van Cortlandt Manor.

These form an ideal garden boundary. The stone walls also gather a beautiful growth of Clematis, Brier, wildPeas, and Grapes; but they form a clinging-place for that devil's brood, Poison Ivy, which is so persistent in growth and so difficult to exterminate.

The old worm fence was distinctly American; it had a zigzag series of chestnut rails, with stakes of twisted cedar saplings which were sometimes "chunked" by moss-covered boulders just peeping from the earth. This worm fence secured to the nature lover and to wild life a strip of land eight or ten feet wide, whereon plant, bird, beast, reptile, and insect flourished and reproduced. It has been, within a few years, a gardening fashion to preserve these old "Virginia" fences on country places of considerable elegance. Planted with Clematis, Honeysuckle, Trumpet vine, Wistaria, and the free-growing new Japanese Roses, they are wonderfully effective.

Rail Fence Corner.

On Long Island, east of Riverhead, where there are few stones to form stone walls, are curious and picturesquehedge-rows, which are a most interesting and characteristic feature of the landscape, and they are beautiful also, as I have seen them once or twice, at the end of an old garden. These hedge-rows were thus formed: when a field was cleared, a row of young saplings of varied growth, chiefly Oak, Elder, and Ash, was left to form the hedge. These young trees were cut and bent over parallel to the ground, and sometimes interlaced together with dry branches and vines. Each year these trees were lopped, and new sprouts and branches permitted to grow only in the line of the hedge. Soon a tangle of briers and wild vines overgrew and netted them allinto a close, impenetrable, luxuriant mass. They were, to use Wordsworth's phrase, "scarcely hedge-rows, but lines of sportive woods run wild." In this close green wall birds build their nests, and in their shelter burrow wild hares, and there open Violets and other firstlings of the spring. The twisted tree trunks in these old hedges are sometimes three or four feet in diameter one way, and but a foot or more the other; they were a shiftless field-border, as they took up so much land, but they were sheep-proof. The custom of making a dividing line by a row of bent and polled trees still remains, even where the close, tangled hedge-row has disappeared with the flocks of sheep.

Topiary Work at Levens Hall.

These hedge-rows were an English fashion seen in Hertfordshire and Suffolk. On commons and reclaimed land they took the place of the quickset hedges seen around richer farm lands. The bending and interlacing was called plashing; the polling, shrouding. English farmers and gardeners paid infinite attention to their hedges, both as a protection to their fields and as a means of firewood.

There is something very pleasant in the thought that these English gentlemen who settled eastern Long Island, the Gardiners, Sylvesters, Coxes, and others, retained on their farm lands in the new world the customs of their English homes, pleasanter still to know that their descendants for centuries kept up these homely farm fashions. The old hedge-rows on Long Island are an historical record, a landmark—long may they linger. On some of the finest estates on the island they have been carefully preserved, toform the lower boundary of a garden, where, laid out with a shaded, grassy walk dividing it from the flower beds, they form the loveliest of garden limits. Planted skilfully with great Art to look like great Nature, with edging of Elder and Wild Rose, with native vines and an occasional congenial garden ally, they are truly unique.

Oval Pergola at Arlington.

Yew was used for the most famous English hedges; and as neither Yew nor Holly thrive here—though both will grow—I fancy that is why we have ever had in comparison so few hedges, and have really no very ancient ones, though in old letters and account books we read of the planting of hedges on fine estates. George Washington tried it, so did Adams, and Jefferson, and Quincy. Osage Orange, Barberry, and Privet were in nurserymen's lists, but it has not been till within twenty or thirty years that Privet has become so popular. In Southern gardens, Cypress made close, good garden hedges; and Cedar hedges fifty or sixty years old are seen. Lilac hedges were unsatisfactory, save in isolated cases, as the one at Indian Hill. The Japan Quinces, and other of the Japanese shrubs, were tried in hedges in the mid-century, with doubtful success as hedges, though they form lovely rows of flowering shrubs. Snowballs and Snowberries, Flowering Currant, Altheas, and Locust, all have been used for hedge-planting, so we certainly have tried faithfully enough to have hedges in America. Locust hedges are most graceful, they cannot be clipped closely. I saw one lovely creation of Locust, set with an occasional Rose Acacia—and the Locust thus supported the brittle Acacia. Ifit were successful, it would be, when in bloom, a dream of beauty. Hemlock hedges are ever fine, as are hemlock trees everywhere, but will not bear too close clipping. Other evergreens, among them the varied Spruces, have been set in hedges, but have not proved satisfactory enough to be much used.

French Homestead with old Stone Terrace, Kingston, Rhode Island.

Buckthorn was a century ago much used for hedges and arches. When Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College, was in Congress in 1809, he obtained from an English gardener, in Georgetown, Buckthorn plants for hedges in his Massachusetts home, which hedges were an object of great beauty for many years.

The traveller Kalm found Privet hedges in Pennsylvania in 1760. In Scotland Privet is called Primprint. Primet and Primprivet were other old names. Box was called Primpe. These were all derivative of prim, meaning precise. Our Privet hedges, new as they are, are of great beauty and satisfaction, and soon will rival the English Yew hedges.

I have never yet seen the garden in which there was not some boundary or line which could be filled to advantage by a hedge. In garden great or garden small, the hedge should ever have a place. Often a featureless garden, blooming well, yet somehow unattractive, has been completely transformed by the planting of hedges. They seem, too, to give such an orderly aspect to the garden. In level countries hedges are specially valuable. I cannot understand why some denounce clipped hedges and trees as against nature. A clipped hedge is just as natural as the cut grass of a lawn, and is closely akin to it. Others think hedges "too set"; to me their finality is their charm.

Hedges need to be well kept to be pleasing. Chaucer in his day in praising a "hegge" said that:—

"Every branche and leaf must grow by mesurePleine as a bord, of an height by and by."

In England, hedge-clipping has ever been a gardening art.

Italian Garden at Wellesley, Massachusetts.

In the old English garden the topiarist was an important functionary. Besides his clipping shears hehad to have what old-time cooks calledjudgmentorfaculty. In English gardens many specimens of topiary work still exist, maintained usually as relics of the past rather than as a modern notion of the beautiful. The old gardens at Levens Hall,page 404, contain some of the most remarkable examples.

In a few old gardens in America, especially in Southern towns, traces of the topiary work of early years can be seen; these overgrown, uncertain shapes have a curious influence, and the sentiment awakened is beautifully described by Gabriele d' Annunzio:—

"We walked among evergreens, among ancient Box trees, Laurels, Myrtles, whose wild old age had forgotten its early discipline. In a few places here and there was some trace of the symmetrical shapes carved once upon a time by the gardener's shears, and with a melancholy not unlike his who searches on old tombstones for the effigies of the forgotten dead, I noted carefully among the silent plants those traces of humanity not altogether obliterated."

The height of topiary art in America is reached in the lovely garden, often called the Italian garden, of Hollis H. Hunnewell, Esq., at Wellesley, Massachusetts. Vernon Lee tells in her charming essay on "Italian Gardens" of the beauty of gardens without flowers, and this garden of Mr. Hunnewell is an admirable example. Though the effect of the black and white of the pictured representations shown on these pages is perhaps somewhat sombre, there is nothing sad or sombre in the garden itself. The clear gleam of marble pavilions and balustrades, the formalrows of flower jars with their hundreds of Century plants, and the lovely light on the lovely lake, serve as a delightful contrast to the clear, clean lusty green of the clipped trees. This garden is a beautiful example of the art of the topiarist, not in its grotesque forms, but in the shapes liked by Lord Bacon, pyramids, columns, and "hedges in welts," carefully studied to be both stately and graceful. I first saw this garden thirty years ago; it was interesting then in its well thought-out plan, and in the perfection of every inch of its slow growth; but how much more beautiful now, when the garden's promise is fulfilled.

Steps in Italian Garden at Wellesley, Massachusetts.

The editor ofCountry Lifesays that the most notable attempt at modern topiary work in England isat Ascott, the seat of Mr. Leopold de Rothschild, but the examples there have not attained a growth at all approaching those at Wellesley. Mr. Hunnewell writes thus of his garden:—

"It was after a visit to Elvaston nearly fifty years ago that I conceived the idea of making a collection of trees for topiary work in imitation of what I had witnessed at that celebrated estate. As suitable trees for that purpose could not be obtained at the nurseries in this country, and as the English Yew is not reliable in our New England climate, I was obliged to make the best selection possible from such trees as had proved hardy here—the Pines, Spruces, Hemlocks, Junipers, Arbor-vitæ, Cedars, and Japanese Retinosporas. The trees were all very small, and for the first twenty years their growth was shortened twice annually, causing them to take a close and compact habit, comparing favorably in that respect with the Yew. Many of them are now more than forty feet in height and sixty feet in circumference, the Hemlocks especially proving highly successful."

This beautiful example of art in nature is ever open to visitors, and the number of such visitors is very large. It is, however, but one of the many beauties of the great estate, with its fine garden of Roses, its pavilion of splendid Rhododendrons and Azaleas, its uncommon and very successful rock garden, and its magnificent plantation of rare trees. There are also many rows of fine hedges and arches in various portions of the grounds, hedges of clipped Cedar and Hemlock, many of them twenty feet high, which compare well in condition, symmetry, andextent with the finest English hedges on the finest English estates.

Topiary Work in California.

Through the great number of formal gardens laid out within a few years in America, the topiary art has had a certain revival. In California, with the lavish foliage, it may be seen in considerable perfection, though of scant beauty, as here shown.

Serpentine Brick Wall at University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Happy is the garden surrounded by a brick wall or with terrace wall of brick. How well every color looks by the side of old brick; even scarlet, bright pink, and rose-pink flowers, which seem impossible, do very well when held to the wall by clear green leaves. Flowering vines are perfect when trained onold soft-red brick enclosing walls; white-flowered vines are specially lovely thereon, Clematis, white Roses, and the rarely beautiful white Wistaria. How lovely is my Virgin's-bower when growing on brick; how Hollyhocks stand up beside it. Brick posts, too, are good in a fence, and, better still, in a pergola. A portion of the fine terrace wall at Van Cortlandt Manor is shownfacing page 286. This wall was put in about fifty years ago; ere that there had been agrass bank, which is ever a trial in a garden; for it is hard to mow the grass on such a bank, and it never looks neat; it should be planted with some vine.

A very curious garden wall is the serpentine brick wall still standing at the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville. It is about seven feet high, and closes in the garden and green of the row of houses occupied by members of the faculty; originally it may have extended around the entire college grounds. I present a view from the street in order to show its contour distinctly; within the garden its outlines are obscured by vines and flowers. The first thought in the mind of the observer is that its reason for curving is that it could be built much more lightly, and hence more cheaply, than a straight wall; then it seems a possible idealization in brick of the old Virginia rail fence. But I do not look to domestic patterns and influences for its production; it is to me a good example of the old-time domination of French ideas which was so marked and so disquieting in America. In France, after the peace of 1762, the Marquis de Geradin was revolutionizing gardening. His own garden at Ermenonville and his description of it exercised important influence in England and America, as in France. Jefferson was the planner and architect of the University of Virginia; and it is stated that he built this serpentine wall. Whether he did or not, it is another example of French influences in architecture in the United States. This French school, above everything else, replaced straight lines with carefully curving and winding lines.

A MOONLIGHT GARDEN

"How sweetly smells the HoneysuckleIn the hush'd night, as if the world were oneOf utter peace and love and gentleness."

—Walter Savage Landor

GGardens fanciful of name, a Saint's Garden, a Friendship Garden, have been planted and cherished. I plant a garden like none other; not an everyday garden, nor indeed a garden of any day, but a garden for "brave moonshine," a garden of twilight opening and midnight bloom, a garden of nocturnal blossoms, a garden of white blossoms, and the sweetest garden in the world. It is a garden of my dreams, but I know where it lies, and it now is smiling back at this very harvest moon.

Gardens fanciful of name, a Saint's Garden, a Friendship Garden, have been planted and cherished. I plant a garden like none other; not an everyday garden, nor indeed a garden of any day, but a garden for "brave moonshine," a garden of twilight opening and midnight bloom, a garden of nocturnal blossoms, a garden of white blossoms, and the sweetest garden in the world. It is a garden of my dreams, but I know where it lies, and it now is smiling back at this very harvest moon.

The old house of Hon. Ben. Perley Poore—Indian Hill—at Newburyport, Massachusetts, has been for many years one of the loveliest of New England's homes. During his lifetime it had extraordinary charms, for on the noble hillside, where grew scattered in sunny fields and pastures every variety of native tree that would winter New England's snow and ice, there were vast herds of snow-white cows,and flocks of white sheep, and the splendid oxen were white. White pigeons circled in the air around ample dove-cotes, and the farmyard poultry were all white; an enthusiastic chronicler recounts also white peacocks on the wall, but these are also denied.

On every side were old terraced walls covered with Roses and flowering vines, banked with shrubs, and standing in beds of old-time flowers running over with bloom; but behind the house, stretching up the lovely hillside, was The Garden, and when we entered it, lo! it was a White Garden with edgings of pure and seemly white Candytuft from the forcing beds, and flowers of Spring Snowflake and Star of Bethlehem and Jonquils; and there were white-flowered shrubs of spring, the earliest Spiræas and Deutzias; the doubled-flowered Cherries and Almonds and old favorites, such as Peter's Wreath, all white and wonderfully expressive of a simplicity, a purity, a closeness to nature.

I saw this lovely farmstead and radiant White Garden first in glowing sunlight, but far rarer must have been its charm in moonlight; though the white beasts (as English hinds call cattle) were sleeping in careful shelter; and the white dog, assured of their safety, was silent; and the white fowl were in coop and cote; and

"Only the white sheep were sometimes seenTo cross the strips of moon-blanch'd green."

But the White Garden, ah! then the garden truly lived; it was like lightest snow wreaths bathed in silverymoonshine, with every radiant flower adoring the moon with wide-open eyes, and pouring forth incense at her altar. And it was peopled with shadowy forms shaped of pearly mists and dews; and white night moths bore messages for them from flower to flower—this garden then was the garden of my dreams.

Thoreau complained to himself that he had not put duskiness enough into his words in his description of his evening walks. He longed to have the peculiar and classic severity of his sentences, the color of his style, tell his readers that his scene was laid at night without saying so in exact words. I, too, have not written as I wished, by moonlight; I can tell of moonlight in the garden, but I desire more; I want you to see and feel this moonlight garden, as did Emily Dickinson her garden by moonlight:—

"And still within the summer's nightA something so transporting brightI clap my hands to see."

But perhaps I can no more gather it into words than I can bottle up the moonlight itself.

This lovely garden, varied in shape, and extending in many and diverse directions and corners, bears as its crown a magnificent double flower border over seven hundred feet long; with a broad straight path trimly edged with Box adown through its centre, and with a flower border twelve feet wide on either side. This was laid out and planted in 1833 by the parents of Major Poore, after extended travel in England, anddoubtless under the influences of the beautiful English flower gardens they had seen. Its length was originally broken halfway up the hill and crowned at the top of the hill by some formal parterres of careful design, but these now are removed. There are graceful arches across the path, one of Honeysuckle on the crown of the hill, from which you look out perhaps into Paradise—for Indian Hill in June is a very close neighbor to Paradise; it is difficult to define the boundaries between the two, and to me it would be hard to choose between them.

Standing in this arch on this fair hill, you can look down the long flower borders of color and perfume to the old house, lying in the heart of the trees and vines and flowers. To your left is the hill-sweep, bearing the splendid grove, an arboretum of great native trees, planted by Major Poore, and for which he received the prize awarded by his native state to the finest plantation of trees within its bounds. Turn from the house and garden, and look through this frame of vines formed by the arch upon this scene,—the loveliest to me of any on earth,—a fair New England summer landscape. Fields of rich corn and grain, broken at times with the gray granite boulders which show what centuries of grand and sturdy toil were given to make these fertile fields; ample orchards full of promise of fruit; placid lakes and mill-dams and narrow silvery rivers, with low-lying red brick mills embowered in trees; dark forests of sombre Pine and Cedar and Oak; narrow lanes and broad highways shaded with the liveliergreen of Elm and Maple and Birch; gray farm-houses with vast barns; little towns of thrifty white houses clustered around slender church-spires which, set thickly over this sunny land, point everywhere to heaven, and tell, as if speaking, the story of New England's past, of her foundation on love of God, just as the fields and orchards and highways speak of thrift and honesty and hard labor; and the houses, such as this of Indian Hill, of kindly neighborliness and substantial comfort; and as this old garden speaks of a love of the beautiful, a refinement, an æsthetic and tender side of New England character whichweknow, but into which—as Mr. Underwood says inQuabbin, that fine study of New England life—"strangers and Kiplings cannot enter."

Seven hundred feet of double flower border, fourteen hundred feet of flower bed, twelve feet wide! "It do swallow no end of plants," says the gardener.

Chestnut Path in Garden at Indian Hill.

In spite of the banishing dictum of many artists in regard to white flowers in a garden, the presence of ample variety of white flowers is to me the greatest factor in producing harmony and beauty both by night and day. White seems to be as important a foil in some cases as green. It may sometimes be given to the garden in other ways than through flower blossoms, by white marble statues, vases, pedestals, seats.

We all like the approval of our own thoughts by men of genius; with my love of white flowers I had infinite gratification in these words of Walter Savage Landor's,written from Florence in regard to a friend's garden:—

"I like white flowers better than any others; they resemble fair women. Lily, Tuberose, Orange, and the truly English Syringa are my heart's delight. I do not mean to say that they supplant the Rose and Violet in my affections, for these are our first loves, before we grewtoo fond of considering; and too fond of displaying our acquaintance with others of sounding titles."

In Japan, where flowers have rank, white flowers are the aristocrats. I deem them the aristocrats in the gardens of the Occident also.

Having been informed of Tennyson's dislike of white flowers, I have amused myself by trying to discover in his poems evidence of such aversion. I think one possibly might note an indifference to white blossoms; but strong color sense, his love of ample and rich color, would naturally make him name white infrequently. A pretty line inWalking to the Mailtells of a girl with "a skin as clean and white as Privet when it flowers"; and there were White Lilies and Roses and milk-white Acacias in Maud's garden.

InThe Last Tournamentthe street-ways are depicted as hung with white samite, and "children sat in white," and the dames and damsels were all "white-robed in honor of the stainless child." A "swarthy one" cried out at last:—

"The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the year,Would make the world as blank as wintertide.[Pg 421]Come!—let us gladden their sad eyesWith all the kindlier colors of the field.So dame and damsel glitter'd at the feastVariously gay....So dame and damsel cast the simple white,And glowing in all colors, the live grass,Rose-campion, King-cup, Bluebell, Poppy, glancedAbout the revels."

Seven hundred feet of double flower border, fourteen hundred feet of flower bed, twelve feet wide! "It do swallow no end of plants," says the gardener.

Foxgloves in Lower Garden at Indian Hill.

In the garden borders is a commonplace little plant, gray of foliage, with small, drooping, closed flowers of an indifferently dull tint, you would almost wonder at its presence among its gay garden fellows. Let us glance at it in the twilight, for it seems like the twilight, a soft, shaded gray; but the flowers have already lifted their heads and opened their petals, and they now seem like the twilight clouds of palest pinkand lilac. It is the Night-scented Stock, and lavishly through the still night it pours forth its ineffable fragrance. A single plant, thirty feet from an open window, will waft its perfume into the room. This white Stock was a favorite flower of Marie Antoinette, under its French name the Julienne. "Night Violets," is its appropriate German name. Hesperis! the name shows its habit. Dame's Rocket is our title for this cheerful old favorite of May, which shines in such snowy beauty at night, and throws forth such a compelling fragrance. It is rarely found in our gardens, but I have seen it growing wild by the roadside in secluded spots; not in ample sheets of growth like Bouncing Bet, which we at first glance thought it was; it is a shyer stray, blossoming earlier than comely Betsey.

The old-fashioned single, or slightly double, country Pink, known as Snow Pink or Star Pink, was often used as an edging for small borders, and its bluish green, almost gray, foliage was quaint in effect and beautiful in the moonlight. When seen at night, the reason for the folk-name is evident. Last summer, on a heavily clouded night in June, in a cottage garden at West Hampton, borders of this Snow Pink shone out of the darkness with a phosphorescent light, like hoar-frost, on every grassy leaf; while the hundreds of pale pink blossoms seemed softly shining stars. It was a curious effect, almost wintry, even in midsummer. The scent was wafted down the garden path, and along the country road, like a concentrated essence, rather than a fleeting breath of flowers. One of these cottage borders is shown onpage 292,and I have named it from these lines fromThe Garden that I Love:—

"A running ribbon of perfumed snowWhich the sun is melting rapidly."

At sundown the beautiful white Day Lily opens and gives forth all night an overwhelming sweetness; I have never seen night moths visiting it, though I know they must, since a few seed capsules always form. In the border stand—

"Clumps of sunny PhloxThat shine at dusk, and grow more deeply sweet."

These, with white Petunias, are almost unbearably cloying in their heavy odor. It is a curious fact that some of these night-scented flowers are positively offensive in the daytime; try yourNicotiana affinisnext midday—it outpours honeyed sweetness at night, but you will be glad it withholds its perfume by day. The plants of Nicotiana were first introduced to England for their beauty, sweet scent, and medicinal qualities, not to furnish smoke. Parkinson in 1629 writes of Tobacco, "With us it is cherished for medicinal qualities as for the beauty of its flowers," and Gerarde, in 1633, after telling of the beauty, etc., says that the dried leaves are "taken in a pipe, set on fire, the smoke suckt into the stomach, and thrust forth at the noshtrils."

Snake-root, sometimes called Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa), is one of the most stately wild flowers, and a noble addition to the garden. A picture of a single plant gives little impression of its dignityof habit, its wonderfully decorative growth; but the succession of pure white spires, standing up several feet high at the edge of a swampy field, or in a garden, partake of that compelling charm which comes from tall trees of slender growth, from repetition and association, such as pine trees, rows of bayonets, the gathered masts of a harbor, from stalks of corn in a field, from rows of Foxglove—from all "serried ranks." I must not conceal the fact of its horrible odor, which might exile it from a small garden.

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