Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth. Earle Alice Morse
eight hundred acres, and the house very large in ground extent, so the garden seems well-proportioned. This Rose Garden has an unusual attraction in the personal interest of every detail, such as is found in few American gardens of great size, and indeed in few English gardens. The gardens of the Countess Warwick, at Easton Lodge, in Essex, possess the same charm, a personal meaning and significance in the statues and fountains, and even in the planting of flower borders. The illustration on page 83 depicts the general shape of the Yaddo Rose Garden, as seen from the upper terrace; but it does not show how the garden stretches down the fine marble steps, past the marble figures of Diana and Paris, and along the paths of standard Roses, past the shallow fountain which is not so large as to obscure what speaks the garden's story, the statue of Christalan, that grand creation in one of Mrs. Trask's idyls, Under King Constantine. This heroic figure, showing to full extent the genius of the sculptor, William Ordway Partridge, also figures the genius of the poet-creator, and is of an inexpressible and impressive nobility. With hand and arm held to heaven, Christalan shows against the background of rich evergreens as the true knight of this garden of sentiment and chivalry.
"The sunlight slanting westward through the trees
Fell first upon his lifted, golden head,
Making a shining helmet of his curls,
And then upon the Lilies in his hand.
His eyes had a defiant, fearless glow;
Against the sombre background of the wood
He looked scarce human."
The larger and more impressive fountain at Yaddo is shown on these pages. It is one hundred feet long and seventy feet wide, and is in front of the house, to the east. Its marble figures signify the Dawn; it will be noted that on this site its beauties show against a suited and ample background, and its grand proportions are not permitted to obscure the fine statue of Christalan from the view of those seated on the terrace or walking under the shade of the pergola.
Especially beautiful is the sun-dial on the upper terrace, shown on page 86. The metal dial face is supported by a marble slab resting on two carved standards of classic design representing conventionalized lions, these being copies of those two splendid standards unearthed at Pompeii, which still may be seen by the side of the impluvium in the atrium or main hall of the finest Græco-Roman dwelling-place which has been restored in that wonderful city. These sun-dial standards at Yaddo were made by the permission and under the supervision of the Italian government. I can conceive nothing more fitting or more inspiring to the imagination than that, telling as they do the story of the splendor of ancient Pompeii and of the passing centuries, they should now uphold to our sight a sun-dial as if to bid us note the flight of time and the vastness of the past.
The entire sun-dial, with its beautiful adjuncts of carefully shaped marble seats, stands on a semicircular plaza of marble at the head of the noble flight of marble steps. The engraved metal dial face bears two exquisite verses – the gift of one poet to another – of Dr. Henry Van Dyke to the garden's mistress, Katrina Trask. These dial mottoes are unusual, and perfect examples of that genius which with a few words can shape a lasting gem of our English tongue. At the edge of the dial face is this motto:
"Hours fly,
Flowers die,
New Days,
New Ways,
Pass by;
Love stays."
At the base of the gnomon is the second motto: —
Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is
Eternity.
I have for years been a student of sun-dial lore, a collector of sun-dial mottoes and inscriptions, of which I have many hundreds. I know nowhere, either in English, on English or Scotch sun-dials, or in the Continental tongues, any such exquisite dial legends as these two – so slight of form, so simple in wording, so pure in diction, yet of sentiment, of thought, how full! how impressive! They stamp themselves forever on the memory as beautiful examples of what James Russell Lowell called verbal magic; that wonderful quality which comes, neither from chosen words, nor from their careful combination into sentences, but from something which is as inexplicable in its nature as it is in its charm.
To tree lovers the gardens and grounds at Yaddo have glorious charms in their splendid trees; but one can be depicted here – the grand native Pine, over eight feet in diameter, which, with other stately sentinels of its race, stands a sombrely beautiful guard over all this loveliness.
CHAPTER IV
BOX EDGINGS
"They walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the lines of Box, breathing its fragrance of eternity; for this is one of the odors which carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past; if we ever lived on another ball of stone than this, it must be that there was Box growing on it."
To many of us, besides Dr. Holmes, the unique aroma of the Box, cleanly bitter in scent as in taste, is redolent of the eternal past; it is almost hypnotic in its effect. This strange power is not felt by all, nor is it a present sensitory influence; it is an hereditary memory, half-known by many, but fixed in its intensity in those of New England birth and descent, true children of the Puritans; to such ones the Box breathes out the very atmosphere of New England's past. I cannot see in clear outline those prim gardens of centuries ago, nor the faces of those who walked and worked therein; but I know, as I stroll to-day between our old Box-edged borders, and inhale the beloved bitterness of fragrance, and gather a stiff sprig of the beautiful glossy leaves, that in truth the garden lovers and garden workers of other days walk beside me, though unseen and unheard.
About thirty years ago a bright young Yankee girl went to the island of Cuba as a governess to the family of a sugar planter. It was regarded as a somewhat perilous adventure by her home-staying folk, and their apprehensions of ill were realized in her death there five years later. This was not, however, all that happened to her. The planter's wife had died in this interval of time, and she had been married to the widower. A daughter had been born, who, after her mother's death, was reared in the Southern island, in Cuban ways, having scant and formal communication with her New England kin. When this girl was twenty years old, she came to the little Massachusetts town where her mother had been reared, and met there a group of widowed and maiden aunts, and great-aunts. After sitting for a time in her mother's room in the old home, the reserve which often exists between those of the same race who should be friends but whose lives have been widely apart, and who can never have more than a passing sight of each other, made them in semi-embarrassment and lack of resources of mutual interest walk out into the garden. As they passed down the path between high lines of Box, the girl suddenly stopped, looked in terror at the gate, and screamed out in fright, "The dog, the dog, save me, he will kill me!" No dog was there, but on that very spot, between those Box hedges, thirty years before, her mother had been attacked and bitten by an enraged dog, to the distress and apprehension of the aunts, who all recalled the occurrence, as they reassured the fainting and bewildered girl. She, of course, had never known aught of this till she was told it by the old Box.
Many other instances of the hypnotic effect of Box are known, and also of its strong influence on the mind through memory. I know of a man who travelled a thousand miles to renew acquaintance and propose marriage to an old sweetheart, whom he had not seen and scarcely thought of for years, having been induced to this act wholly through memories of her, awakened by a chance stroll in an old Box-edged garden such as those of his youth; at the gate of one of which he had often lingered, after walking home with her from singing-school. I ought to be able to add that the twain were married as a result of this sentimental memory-awakening through the old Box; but, in truth, they never came very close to matrimony. For when he saw her he remained absolutely silent on the subject