I'm delighted to welcome Debra Brown to my blog. As well as writing the wonderfully evocative, The Companion of Lady Holmeshire, Debbie is the founder of the EHFA (English Historical Fiction Authors) of which I am proud to be a member. So without further ado - let me hand the stage to Debra.
Thumbing through my precious copy of the
newly released Castles, Customs, and
Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors, I came across an
interesting contrast by author Judith Arnopp. She wrote:
“Medieval literature depicts noblemen striding about the world,
galloping into battle in the service of the king, embarking upon arduous
pilgrimage and living and breathing upon a vastly dangerous, stimulating stage.
These men are shown to be invincible, self-assured, and in control, and there
were few limits placed upon them.
“The women in this literature are portrayed
very differently; they rarely travel, they never fight and are usually to be
found within the vicinity of the castle walls. Their role is to marry, provide
heirs, and be an asset to their husband. Life for most medieval woman was
closeted; we see them safe within the walls of the castle, sewing, strumming
musical instruments, listening to minstrels’ songs or to tales of courtly-love.
”The favoured place for these activities was
the garden, and many manuscripts illustrate this. We see women sitting among
the flowerbeds, sometimes planting and maintaining the gardens or, more often,
we find them in a lovers’ tryst. Other times they are shown sitting in the
shade of a tree listening to a minstrel’s tales and, paradoxically, the stories
they are listening to are of other women also dwelling within the safety of
their own gardens.”
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| A woodcut of a woman in a medieval kitchen garden |
Though
Judith’s lovely post goes on to discuss women and the garden as a literary
device, at this point I was temporarily lost in the beauty of imagined gardens.
This kind of beauty seems to be a part of us all—who doesn’t visit a garden
from time to time or if given the time and resources, surround their home with
greenery and colorful blooms?
If we
could bring together persons from past centuries and ask them to draw a picture
of “the typical garden”, what might they draw? Though of course at times and
for many peoples the picture would be a muddy plot or a strip filled with
common vegetables, herbs, or grain, M.M. Bennetts tells about the change in what
an Elizabethan woman might sketch and why the difference. She tells us:
“…in 1520, the Church owned roughly one-sixth
of the kingdom. By 1558, when Elizabeth ascended the throne—roughly twenty
years after the Dissolution of the Monasteries—three-fourths of that land had
been sold off, primarily into the hands of the gentry and the increasingly
monied middle class. And this substantial change in land ownership brought with
it equally substantial shifts in political, cultural, and economic power within
the kingdom….
“Translated into plain English, there was now
a land-owning gentry and burgeoning middle class who found themselves able to
spend more of their resources on pleasures and comforts, rather than on
self-defence and necessities as they previously would have done.
“So rather than the conversation between
husband and wife going something like, ‘I see York is getting resty. I think we
really should build another defensive tower and a moat...’ the conversation now
could go something like, ‘Hmm, I fancy having a garden over on the south side
of the house. With a rose pergola. What about you?’”
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| A recreation of an Elizabethan Garden in the grounds of Kenilworth Castle Photo courtesy of English Heritage. |
And
what did these Elizabethan gardens look like? M.M. describes them thus:
“Always the gardens of the period were walled
or enclosed in some way—by walls, hedges, fences, or even moats—and generally
built off the house, often accessible only from the family’s main room or
parlour.
“Enclosing the space ensured a measure of
protection from wild animals (hungry deer) or thieves, but it also protected
the plants from prevailing winds and provided a warmer microclimate. Then too,
in plans of Elizabethan manor houses, one will occasionally find several
unconnected walled gardens leading off from the different rooms in the
house—some for pleasure, others for the medicinal herbs or vegetables, still
others with their walls covered in espaliered apples, figs, and pear....
“Also, Elizabethan gardens were always laid
out formally, geometrically designed and as often as not symmetrically, with
knot gardens being the most common feature of the late 16th century garden.
Indeed, one could rightly call the knot garden a very English passion.”
What
about the 17th Century woman who did not have the means for a
defensive tower or moat to scrap? The average 17th Century
housewife? Deborah Swift relates:
“The concept of a “pretty” garden would have been anathema to
most women of the 17th century, as gardens were primarily about producing food
and herbs, unless you were very wealthy, in which case the gardening was left
to your servants. The 17th century author of The English Housewife, Gervase Markham, claimed the “complete
woman” had:
‘skill in physic, surgery, cookery, extraction
of oils, banqueting stuff, ordering of great feasts, preserving of all sorts of
wines…distillations, perfumes, ordering of wool, hemp and flax: making cloth
and dying; the knowledge of dairies: office of malting; of oats…of brewing,
baking, and all other things belonging to a household.’
“Guess that did not leave much time for
planting pretty flowers!” Deborah says. “Because kitchen gardens were about
supplying the table, and as much ground as possible was covered with edible
plants, every garden was different, planted according to the whims of the women
of the household.”
M.M. Bennetts tells us:
“…with
the onset of the Civil War in 1642 and the subsequent Protectorate under Oliver
Cromwell, gardening, such as it had been, ground to a halt for many different
reasons. Armies tramping across the countryside, particularly armies of
Levellers, aren’t good for the preservation of gardens. Taxes were high and
remained very high under Cromwell which meant substantially less disposable
income….
“With the Restoration of Charles II, the idea
of a pleasure garden was once again permitted. But now, after their experience
on the Continent, the large landowners and fashionable gardeners sought to
recreate versions of the most splendid garden of their age: Versailles. And
this formal style, full of grand canals, classical statuary, fountains, and
extensive geometrical beds edged in box, held sway into the early years of the
18th century.
 |
| A garden party at the time of King Charles II. |
“But vast, formal gardens are very expensive
to maintain—they are not only labour intensive, they also take up so much land
that might be otherwise profitably employed. And it was the garden writer and
designer, Stephen Switzer, who suggested a cheaper alternative in his Ichnografia Rustica, published in
1718. He was writing mainly for the owners of villas—successful businessmen
mostly—whose smallish estates were near London.
“His proposal was that one should open up the
countryside so that one might enjoy ‘the extensive charms of Nature, and the voluminous Tracts of a pleasant
County...to retreat, and breathe the sweet and fragrant Air of gardens.’ He
went on to suggest that the garden be ‘open to all View, to the unbounded Felicities of distant Prospect, and
the expansive Volumes of Nature herself.’
“Switzer examined costs and expenses; he
proposed that the designs be more rural and natural and relaxed, that garden
walls were an unnecessary expense, etc. In short, Switzer proposed the
landscape movement which would transform the gardens of England….
“… as the eighteenth century progressed,
influenced by their experiences of the Grand Tour, by writers such as Pope and
Walpole, and by visiting other gardens, England’s landed classes began to
favour a less formal and more naturalistic approach to landscape design. In
developing the uniquely English concept of the landscape garden, William Kent,
Lancelot (‘Capability’) Brown, and the other great landscape architects of the
period were responding to a complex assortment of social and aesthetic ideals
among their clients.
“As well as the integration of forestry,
farming, and sport into the landscape, the ambition was in many respects to
create an almost ‘natural’ appearance, where trees, water, open grassland, and
carefully placed structures (bridges, temples, and monuments were popular)
created a carefully balanced microcosm of the English countryside.”
 |
| Capability Brown designed garden at Harewood House, nr Leeds. |
It is
interesting to see how and why gardens changed over the centuries in these
excerpts from various chapters. Castles,
Customs, and Kings records much of life in changing Britain from Roman
times through World War II. Battles, queens, fashions, and medicine are but a
few of the topics covered. Tom Williams says of the book, “As an author who is unashamedly old-fashioned in my approach to
historical writing, I rather enjoyed it. It did tell me things I didn't know
and sparked an interest in some people and places I hadn't heard of before, but
it is in no way a textbook. It's an amusing trot through British history and
excellent bedtime reading….”
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Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical
Fiction Authors is available at Amazon
US, Amazon
UK, and Kobo.
It will soon be available at additional online bookstores.
Thank you so much Debra, for dipping into Castles, Customs and Kings in such an interesting way.
And, dear reader, you might be interested to know that I have two pieces in the book!
