A garden of herbs

Front matter

Bo**>n**HcLtbnry

Boston Public Library

This book is to be returned to the Library on or before the date last stamped below.

Preface

" Were it not for the sake of Custom, which has made it as unfashionable for a Book to come abroad without an introduction as for a Man to appear at Church without a Neckcloth or a Lady without a Hoop-petticoat, I should not have troubled you with this." — E. Smith, The Compleat Housewife, 1736.

Nowadays every one who writes a book, especially a small book, offers an apology for doing so. But this book is so unpretentious that an apology for writing it would be absurd. There is an immense wealth of literature, both learned and charming, on the subject of herbs, but there is no small practical handbook tor those who are going to create an old-fashioned herb garden, and who want to know how to use these herbs as our great-grandmothers did. The fashion for " blue," " grey," " white " or Japanese gardens has died out ; the rock garden still fascinates, but, unless made and maintained by skilful hands, it is apt to look ridiculous, so let us hope that the herb garden is to be restored to its former pride of place. Even those of us with the smallest suburban plots can make a delightful herb garden, and no matter how tiny it is a perpetual joy. Herbs ask so little and they give so much. All that the majority of our common herbs want is a fairly poor soil (the poorer the better for the aromatic herbs) and plenty of sunlight. People who know nothing of herbs imagine that it might be a dull garden consisting of only foliage plants. But there is no blue more beautiful than that of borage, whilst valerian, mallows, marigold and the stately mullein (to mention only a few examples) make lovely splashes of colour. There need be no limit to the size of the garden, for, as one eminent herbalist tells us, there are on an average about seven hundred different remedies for most of the

vii viii

PREFACE common ailments, but it is undoubtedly the moderate-sized garden which is the most attractive. This little book only deals with the few well-known English wild and garden herbs which every one can grow and use.

No mention is made of the purely medicinal uses of herbs, the receipts being merely for the excellent old herbal teas, the syrups and conserves, the herbal drinks and home-made wines, the candied flowers and- leaves, the sweet waters, washing-balls, pomanders, etc., which our great -grandmothers were so skilful in preparing. I have included just a few recipes, which are, alas, of no use, in our sadly unimaginative age ! One of these will be found under the heading " Thyme " : "To enable one to see the Fairies," and I can only trust it will not fall under the eye of any severely practical person, but as William Coles says of some of the things in his Art of Simpling : "if there be any that are not true yet they are pleasant."

Note. — I should like to thank Miss Canziani and Miss Alice Smail for their kind help in copying the plans for me.

E. S. R.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface vi

I. Of Herb Gardens i

Chapter I Of Herb Gardens

" The worship of Demeter belongs to that older religion, nearer to the Earth, which some have thought they could discern behind the more definitely national mythology of Homer. She is the goddess of dark caves. . . . She knows the magic power of certain plants cut from her bosom to bane or bless ... She is the goddess of the fertility of the earth in its wildness." — Walter Pater.

" Talke of perfect happiness or pleasure and what place was so fit for that as the garden place where Adam was set to be the Herbarist." — John Gerard.

" All the wide world of vegetation blooms and buds for you ; the thorn and the thistle which the earth casts forth as evil are to you the kindliest servants ; no dying petal nor drooping tendril is so feeble as to have no help for you." — John Ruskin.

" Then there are some flowers, they always seem to me like over-dutiful children : tend them never so little and they come up and flourish and show as I may say their bright and happy faces to you." — Douglas Jerrold.

" Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare : Look how compounded, with what care, Time got his wrinkles reaping thee.

Sweet herbs from all antiquity."

Lanier.

" A garden of herbs, a vineyard, a garden enclosed — all these have the gravity of use and labour, and are as remote as memory, and as familiar, secluded and secret.' ' But what do we know of herb gardens ? — for we use so few herbs, and those we have relegated to an obscure corner of the kitchen garden. It is a little difficult even to imagine a time when " vegetables " occupied only an insignificant part of the herb garden, and a still earlier time when both the flower garden and the vegetable garden were nonexistent, and the herb garden reigned supreme, We know

B from the greatest authority 1 on the history of gardening that even in Tudor days only very wealthy men had separate gardens merely for pleasure, whilst all the small manors and farm-houses throughout the country still retained the old herb garden. For over seven centuries before that time, all the gardens in England were herb gardens, and very beautiful they must have been, for roses, lilies, gillyflowers, lavender, rosemary, fennel, poppies, marigolds, honeysuckle, periwinkles, peonies and violets were all used as herbs. Our ancestors ate such enormous quantities of meat, that for " vegetables/' as we understand them, they would have had very little use, and what they needed in large quantities were all sorts of herbs, for stuffings and stewings, for decorations, for perfume and for medicine. Indeed, " vegetables " are quite newcomers in England. They declined in favour throughout Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire, and though they were reintroduced after the Renaissance, they were not in common use till at least a hundred years later We were far behind our continental neighbours in our knowledge of them, and vegetables which figured in the old Roman menus were considered luxuries in this country in the days of the later Stuarts. Though potatoes were introduced into England in Elizabeth's reign, they were not grown to any extent, and the working people did not eat them for another two hundred years. Gilbert White, "writing late in the eighteenth century, says of them : " They have prevailed by means of premiums within these twenty years only, and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarcely have ventured to taste them in the last reign." Of Jerusalem artichokes we knew nothing till we learnt about them from the Red Indians; and they were only introduced into England in Tudor days. It was about the same time that French beans were first cultivated in this country, but scarlet runners were unknown till Stuart times. The wild carrot is an indigenous plant in the British islands, but of the cultivated carrot we were ignorant till

1 The Honourable Mrs. Evelyn Cecil, History of Qwfoning in England.

the Flemish immigrants in the early seventeenth century introduced them. To them also we owe our present garden

' spinach, which has had a long journey to reach us, for it is said to have come from Asia through Spain. The wild cabbage was used by our ancestors from Saxon days, and one of the Saxon names for March was " sprout -kale month"; but otherwise the whole brassica tribe were unknown to us till the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sir Anthony Ashley, of Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, who died in 1627, has always had the reputation of being the first to introduce the modern cabbage into England, and on his tomb there is a cabbage portrayed at his feet. His monument was seriously damaged by a fire a few years ago, but fortunately the cabbage was saved ! Mrs. Earle, in her Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden, pointed out that even as late as 1824 there were no roses and no strawberries in our sense of the word. Samuel Hartlib, writing in 1659, says : " About fifty years ago this art of gardening began to creep into England, into Sandwich and Surrey, Fulham and other places. Some old men in Surrey where it flourisheth very much at present, report that they knew the first gardeners that came into those parts to plant cabbages, colleflowers and to sow turneps and carrots and parsnips, and raith-rape peas, all which at that time were great rarities, we having few or none in England but what 1 came from Holland and Flanders. These gardeners with much ado procured a plot of good ground and gave no lesse than eight pounds per acre; yet the gentleman was not content, fearing they would spoil his ground because they did use to dig it. So ignorant were they of gardening in

■ those days."

^ The kitchen garden, therefore, as we know it, is quite modern, and during the many centuries when " vegetables " were almost unknown, our ancestors relied on the health-giving properties of herbs. Even as late as the middle of the l^st century the herb garden retained an honoured place, and the old-fashioned herbs were still cherished for their rare virtues. Like the wise man, described by Solomon, our forefathers did not despise the God-given virtues of these humble plants. Much of the old lore has been lost, and patent medicines have been allowed to usurp the place of the herbal teas ; but at last herbs are coming into their own again, and we are beginning to realise our folly in making so little use of them, and especially of the sun-loving aromatic herbs. The mere scent of them is a tonic, and even in winter their leaves give one a delicious reminder of sunshine and joyous vitality. Why waste their virtues, which since Chaldaean days have been extolled by the wisest men of all ages? We have come to look upon health as the mere absence of disease — with us it is a negative thing ; but the word " health," with its cognates " holy," " whole," " wholesome," has a positive sense, and the old herbalists were never weary of preaching the use of herbs, not only to cure, but also to keep one in perfect health. Just because it is the custom, we make use of all the showier " herbs," which now fill our kitchen gardens, not only because they are pleasant, but also because of their health-giving properties; but why neglect the older herbs — sage, thyme, yarrow, wild strawberry leaves, violet and primrose leaves, angelica, balm, rosemary, fennel, agrimony, borage, betony, cowslip flowers and leaves, elder, tansy and many others ? The old herbal teas are wonderful tonics, and some of them — balm tea, for instance — are delicious. Why have modern housewives abandoned making rose-petal conserve? (This is far too delicate and fairy-like a concoction to be called " jam.") Why do we never make strawberry wine, which was Sir Walter Raleigh's favourite cordial? Why are our salads such dull affairs compared with the salads of Tudor and Stewart days ? Why do we not flavour vinegar with gillyflowers^ rosemary and many other herbs? Why do we never serve syrups made from flower-petals (roses, violets, cowslips, etc.) with sweet dishes ? Recipes for these and many others will be found in the following pages.

With the substitution of foreign spices for our own English herbs in flavouring the old herbalists have little patience. " As for fiery spices," said Sir John Hill, " God designed those for the countries where they grow ; with us they have continually disagreed." Like all herbalists, he was equally severe with those who preferred foreign drugs to our own medicinal herbs. " Nature has in this country and doubtless also in all others provided in the Herbs of its own growth the remedies for the several diseases to which it is most subject, and although the addition of what is brought from abroad should not be supposed superfluous, there is no occasion it should make the other neglected." Tea is described by Tryon as a " pretty, innocent, harmless liquor " ; but he continues, " its great esteem is chiefly for Novelty's sake, and because 'tis outlandish and dear and far fetcht, and therefore admired by the multitude of ignorant people, who have always the greatest esteem for those things they know not." For fruits and vegetables unnaturally forced, and all other " improvements " on Nature's methods, the old herbalists had nothing but censure. " Whether men should attempt the forcing of Nature," wrote one, " may best be judged by observing how seldom God Almighty does it Himself." " The foreign plants brought into our stoves with so much expense and kept there with so much pains may fill the eye with empty wonder ; but it would be more to the honour of the possessor of them to have found out the use of one common herb at home than to have enriched our country with an hundred of the others. Why should he who has not yet informed himself thoroughly of the Nature of the meanest Herb which grows in the next Ditch ransac the earth for foreign wonders ? Does he not fall under the reproach with the generality of those who travel for their Improvement, while they are ignorant of all they left at home, and who are ridiculous in their Inquiries concerning the Laws and Government of other Countries, while they are not able to give a satisfactory answer to any question which regards their own? "

But apart from the use to be made of the herbs, how beautiful an old herb garden is, and how altogether lovable. Instead of the restless activities needed in a modern garden, the very name " herb garden " suggests rest and tranquillity, a quiet enclosure full of sunlight, and delicious scents, and plants whose peace is never disturbed; and where the humblest of newcomers can always find its own niche, and a welcome from the older inhabitants. If ever we revive the beautiful old English herb garden, it is to be hoped that it will be the garden of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which will claim its old place in our affections, for at no time were herb gardens more beautiful. They were square enclosures surrounded by a wall or a very thick hedge, and all round was a bank of earth planted with sweet-smelling herbs. At intervals recesses were cut to serve as seats, and they were covered with turf, " thick yset and soft as any velvet," or camomile. This idea of a bank of earth thrown up all round was borrowed from the thirteenth-century monastic gardens, nearly all of which had them, and they were soon copied in all the gardens. How thick the hedges were may be gathered from the old poem, " The Flower and the Leaf."

" The hegge as thicke as a castle wall, That who that list without to stond or go Though he would all day prien to and fro, He should not see if there were any wight within or no."

Sometimes there was a pergola or covered way round three sides of the wall, but more commonly only on one side. Illustrations of these covered ways may be seen in the old missals. The covered-in alley of the Dutch garden in Kensington gardens is just like an illustration from The second booke of Flowers, Fruits, Becistes, Birds and Flies (1650), and would be a very good model for any one wishing to make one of the old covered ways. There was usually a cistern or simple fountain in some part of the garden, and nearly always a " herber." This herber, one hastens to add, bore little or no resemblance to that modern atrocity the summer-house, for herbers consisted merely of poles with rosemary or sweetbriar or dog-roses growing over them. As in Chaucer's day the herber might have a medlar tree growing by it, and for seats inside the low-growing camomile, or just turf. Dethicke suggested that herbers should be covered with plants 14 of a fragrant savoure," such as rosemary, and that they should be so constructed " that the Owner's friends sitting in the same may the freelier see and beholde the beautie of the garden to theyr great delyght."

What they grew in the fifteenth- century herb gardens can easily be ascertained. The earliest original English treatise on gardening extant is a manuscript now in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is called The Feate of Gardening, and was written by Mayster Jon Gardener in 1440. Miss Amherst gives a complete list of the herbs which Mayster Jon Gardener directs to be grown. They include strawberries (wild strawberries, of course), hyssop, woodruff, betony, borage, henbane, lavender, southernwood, tansy, thyme, violets, waterliles, hollyhocks, yarrow, mint, rue, roses, saffron, camomile, foxgloves, centaury, agrimony, Herb Robert, lily candidum, wormwood, sage, horehound, groundsel, hart's tongue fern, pimpernel, clary, comfrey, valerian and cowslips, besides many others. There is in the British Museum a fifteenth-century manuscript (Sloane MS. 1201) which is a book of cookery receipts, and this gives a complete list of herbs used in cooking, and in addition to those mentioned in Mayster Jon Gardener's enumeration ; this list includes Alexanders, mugwort, basil, bugloss, burnet, chervil, caraway, chives, daises, dittany, dandelion, dill, elecampane, eyebright, agrimony, fennel, marigold, gillyflowers, germander, borage, mercury, mallow, mint, marjoram, nettles, orage, parsley, primroses, rocket, savory, smallage, sorrel, sow-thistle, vervain, rosemary and roses. These two lists give a very fair idea of the herbs grown in an ordinary fourteenth or fifteenth-century garden, and the vision of the sweet, homely flowers with their delicious scents rises before one, when one reads Chaucer's description m the Romaunt of the Rose.

" Ful gay wis al the ground, and queynt And poudred as men had it peynt, With many a fresh and sundry flour That casten up a ful good savour."

Of the earlier herb gardens we have, alas, very little definite knowledge. We know from Pliny that the Druids used large numbers of medicinal herbs, and we gather from his account that the knowledge of herbal medicine was confined to the priesthood. He tells us, moreover, that they gathered herbs with such striking ceremonies that it might seem as if the British had taught them to the Persians, whose country was supposed to be the home of superstitious medicine. All the written lore on herbs previous to Alfred's reign has been lost, and any books there were, were probably destroyed during the terrible Danish invasion, when so many valuable monastic libraries were burnt. That these books on herbs existed is almost certain, for we know that in the eighth century, Boniface, " the Apostle of the Saxons," received letters from various persons in England asking him for books on simples. The oldest herbal in England is an MS. in the British Museum which was written under the direction of one, Bald, who, if he was not a personal friend of King Alfred's, had at any rate access to the king's correspondence, for he gives certain prescriptions sent by Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the king. In a lecture delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1903, Doctor J. F. Payne commented on the remarkable fact that this and several other Saxon manuscripts on herbs were written in the vernacular, and thus they were unique in Europe at that time. "In no other European country was there at that time any scientific literature written in the vernacular. The Saxons had a much wider knowledge of herbs than the doctors of Salerno, the oldest school of medicine in Europe and also the oldest European university. No treatise of the school of Salerno contemporaneous with the Leach book of Bald is known, so that the Anglo-Saxons had the credit of priority. . . . The Leach book of Bald was the first medical treatise written in Western Europe which can be said to belong to modern history, that is produced after the decadence and decline of the classical medicine. ... In fact it is the earliest medical treatise produced by any of the modern nations of Europe." This old manuscript to which

Doctor Payne referred is supposed to have been written under the direction of some one called Bald, who is described in the manuscript 1 as the owner of the book, the name of the actual scribe being Cild. It is evident that Bald was a leech, and he was probably a monk, for at that time very few books were written except in monasteries. Bald had a remarkably wide knowledge of native plants and garden herbs, but though he gives exact prescriptions for the giving of these herbs in drinks, with ale, vinegar or milk and honey, and how to make them into ointments with butter, it is quite impossible to ascertain exactly what cultivated and wild herbs were included in the herb gardens of those days. We only know that they called their herb gardens wyrtzerd, or wyrttun, and that they certainly grew sunflowers, peonies, gillyflowers, marigolds, violets and periwinkles, to which last they gave the delightful name " Joy of the Ground."

In Norman days the principal herb gardens were those attached to the monasteries, and it is interesting to remember that the present little cloister of Westminster Abbey and the College garden once formed part of the old Infirmary garden, where the herbs for the healing of the sick and for Church decorations were grown. But if the monks maintained the knowledge of herbs in one way, it must also be remembered that, on the other hand, they were largely responsible for the loss of what remained of the Druidical knowledge of plants, which was discountenanced by the Church, because much of it had become associated with witchcraft. The seventh book of Alexander Neckham's poem, " De laudibus divinae Sapientiae " {circa 1200) is on herbs, and in his De Naturis Rerum he gives a description of what a " noble garden " should be. His list of herbs includes

1 At the end of the second part of the MS. is written in Latin verse : —

" Bald is the owner of this book which he ordered Cild to write^ Ernestly I pray here all men, in the name of Christ That no treacherous person take this book from me, Neither by force nor by theft nor by any false statement. Why ? Because the richest treasure is not so dear to me As my dear books which the grace of Christ attends."

roses, lilies, violets, mandrakes, parsley, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, lettuce, garden cress, peonies, onions, garlic, leeks, beets, herb mercury, orach, sorrel and mallows. But it is not till we come to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries that we have any definite knowledge of what the gardens looked like and what they grew in them.

From the Tudor days onwards began the separation of the flowers from the herbs. As new vegetables were introduced, the modern kitchen garden was gradually established, and the herb garden decreased in size ; but in importance not for another two centuries at least. It became the special province of the housewife, and in it she grew all the herbs she needed for the kitchen : for teas, ointments and simple medicines, for making distilled waters, for sweet bags to scent the linen, for washing-balls and pomanders. The post of still-room maid in those days was not a sinecure. There was no lack of books to guide the housewife of Tudor and Stewart days : the most notable being Hill's Art of Gardening, William Lawson's The Country Housewife's Garden, and Gervase Markham's various works. Gervase Markham gives a delightful description of the ideal gardener who should be " religious, honest and skilful." " Religious,'' he proceeds to explain (" because many thinke religion but a fashion or custome to goe to Church"), to be one " who cherishes above all God's word and the Preachers thereof " (so much as he is able), and by " honest " he means " one who will not hinder your pleasures in the garden," and he adds that he must not be a " lazy lubber." When he comes to gillyflowers (why have we given up this delightful name for carnations?) in his list of herbs he gives one of those personal touches, which are so irresistibly charming in the old writers. With a childlike faith in his readers' sympathy he tells us, " I have of them nine or ten severall colours and divers of them as bigge as Roses.

Of all flowers (save the Damaske Rose) they are the most pleasant to smell. There use is much in ornament and comforting the spirits by the sense of smelling." Biographies full of facts and ii dates sometimes leave one cold, but those few words bridge the centuries in a flash, and one sees the old gardener in the glory of the July sunshine working happily amongst his gillyflowers. It is Lawson also who gives the sage advice to the housewife, that if her maids help her with the weeding she must teach them the difference between herbs and weeds. Thomas Hill (who adopted the nom de plume of " Didymus Mountain " for one of his books !) is in some ways the quaintest of these three writers ; but one cannot help feeling that like most Tudor authorities on gardening he did not mean to be taken quite literally, and it is pleasant to find that in those days, as now, between book gardening and practical gardening there was a great gulf fixed ! It is doubtful whether any one could suggest a more appropriate hedge for the herb garden than his idea of young elder trees at intervals. There should, of course, be an elder tree in every herb garden ; for have not herbs since time immemorial been under the protection of the spirit of the elder tree? A hedge of briars, as Hill truly observes, " within three years would well defend out both thefe and beaste, nor would it be in danger of the wanton wayf airing man's firebrand passinge by, although he should put fire to it." Time apparently was of no object, for he suggests that the briars should be grown from seed. Like the majority of gardeners and herbalists in those days, Hill believed firmly that the sowing of seeds should be done whilst the moon was waxing, and all cutting back when the moon was waning. He also gives us this astonishing secret, " That many savours and tastes may be felte in one herb : take first of the lettuce two or three seeds, of the endive so many, of the smallage the lyke, of the Basil, the Leek and the Parsley. Put altogether into a hole and there will spring up a plant having so many savours or tastes." He cautions one to pay respect to the stars, " whose Beames of lighte and influence boothe quicken, comforte, preserve and mayntayne or ells nippe, drye, wyther, consume and destroye by sundrye ways the tender seedes." After a lengthy and confusing astrological discourse, he adds apologetically that perchance " the most part of the common sort of his readers will think these things above their capacity, but his conscience bounde him somewhat to put such matter into their heades."

When one reads the curious instructions in these old books one cannot help wondering whether any anxious learner took them seriously. Did they ever sprinkle seeds with wine to strengthen them, and drag speckled toads about the garden to safeguard the young herbs ? Did they hang hyena and crocodile skins in the alleys to protect them from lightning, and hippopotamus' skins or owls' wings outspread against tempests? Were eagles' feathers planted in the four corners and in the middle to ward off mists and frosts ? And to avert disease in the plants did they burn the left horn of an ox? Was any one ever seen creeping stealthily into his neighbour's garden to purloin caterpillars, in order to seethe them with the herb dill and sprinkle the mixture in order to abolish caterpillars for ever from his own garden ? (" Take very dilegent hede," Hill thoughtfully adds, " that none of this water fall neither on your face, nor hands.") Did they put a solitary mole into a pot so that when " he crieth out the others minding to help him forth will also fall into the pot " ? Were mice frightened away by the beds being sprinkled with water in which the cat had been washed, or by a mixture of wild cucumber, henbane and bitter almonds? "No adder," says Hill, "will come into a garden in which grow wormwood, mugwort and southernwood, and therefore it should be aptly planted in the corners or round about the garden." Did any one follow the advice to run after adders and throw green oak leaves on them that they might die forthwith? Adders it seems love fennel " as toads love sage and snakes rocket." And if after a strenuous day the croaking of the frogs disquieted the gardener, did he go and hang up lanterns to make them think the sun was shining ?