THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
FLOWERS AND GARDENS
FLOWERS AND
GARDENS
NOTES ON PLANT BEAUTY
BY
FORBES WATSON
EDITED, WITH A PREFACE, BY
REV. CANON ELLACOMBE
VICAR OF BITTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON AND NEW YORK MDCCCCJ
All rights reserved
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &= Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
PREFACE
THE following papers have been written
during a last illness, which has often
made it impossible to examine the
specimens I could have wished. In
the Primrose, for example, I have only been
able to make out satisfactorily the drooping
aspect of the leaf: how this combines itself
with the more rigid character in the different
stages of the leaf I do not fully understand.
For the same reason many of the illustrations,
especially in the chapters on Gardening, have
been selected as being the most ready to hand
o /
rather than as the best. In my remarks on
Gardening I have no wish at all to disparage
the modern systems. My aim chiefly was to
point out the faults of modern gardening, be-
cause its merits are such as it is impossible
to overlook. Lastly, in many instances my
remarks bear more or less reference to the
works of Ruskin, the greatest and best of
M363174
Preface
art-teachers ; but where I have consciously
borrowed from him, I have said so. These
papers are left in charge of a friend for
publication.
FORBES WATSON.
The pen fell from the hand of my friend
when he had written the foregoing lines.
Within two days he was taken "home" to
his "Father's house" This short interval
was filled with intense suffering, save only
during a brief sleep, when the flowers of
which he had been writing, and which loving
hands brought to blossom near his bed, haunted
with their beauty and perfume the unsleeping
sense of the imagination, and lured him
through enchanted fields, where in his dream
he saw vision after vision of an unutterable
glory of floral splendour. The ecstasy of his
delight in that dream abode with him, and
lifted a bright light over the few hours of
agony that intervened ere he slept again in
the peace of Death. He believed a foretaste
had been given him of " that which remaineth
for them that love God" that He whose
dying lips were touched with gall had given
him a sweeter anodyne in his brief agony.
vi
Preface
'The papers published in .this little volume
were written to solace the languor of the last
months of life, when a malady, which had
crept by slow approaches upon him, broke
down his strength, and arrested a professional
career which had begun but recently. 'They
betoken a mind gifted with quick, clear, and
delicate perception, independency of judgment,
and unsparing truthfulness. 'These were my
friend's characteristic gifts. They are dimly
mirrored in these pages, but more clearly in
the memory of those who knew him well. 'To
them this little volume will be welcome,
because of him : to others, perchance, it may
be welcome for the worth it has, because it
tells of the beauty there is in God's fairest
frailest handiwork in flowers, and bears some
trace of the rarer amaranthine beauty of a
soul which wore "the white flower of a
blameless life."
J. B. PATON.
Vll
EDITOR'S PREFACE
NEARLT thirty years have passed
since this book was published. At
its first appearance it was fully
appreciated by a few persons^ among
whom Mr. Bright, the author of a "A Tear
in a Lancashire Garden" may be specially
mentioned ; but it has long been out of print
and is now very scarce^ so that the time for
a second edition seems to have fully come.
For it is not a book that should be buried
or forgotten. In many respects it stands quite
alone among the numberless books on gardening
and flowers, for it takes a special line of its
own, in which it really remains supreme ;
a few authors have touched upon the same
line, but only in a slight sketchy way as a
small part of the larger subjects on which
they were writing, and a few have attempted
some feeble imitations of the book and have
failed signally.
IX
Editor's Preface
The particular line is this Forbes Watson
had been from his early years a lover of flowers
and a student of botany, and he knew a great
deal of the scientific structure of plants. He
knew that there was nothing wasted in plant
life, and that each stem and leaf and flower
had its separate functions in building up the
life of the plant. But to his artistic mind
there was something in stem and leaf and
flower over and above their functions in the
growth of the plant; there was beauty, a
thing which some of his books noticed, but of
which they gave no account. He could not
stop there, he was a deeply religious man,
and he felt that nothing was made in vain,
and that the beauty of leaf and flower had
its functions, and was as necessary to the life
of the plant as any other part of it. So he
set himself to learn what the flowers could
tell him of this beauty which gladdened his
eyes, but which he felt sure could be made
to teach him more. 'Then he did as Job
advised his friends to do if they wanted to
know "how the hand of the Lord hath
wrought all this." Job said, " Ask the beasts
and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls of
the air and they shall tell thee; speak to
Editor's Preface
the earth and it shall teach thee, and the
fishes of the sea and they shall declare to
thee" 'This is exactly what he seems to
have done ; he went straight to the flowers
-for the most fart the commonest every-day
flowers and asked them to tell him the secret
of their beauty r , and he got his answer ', and
the answer was, that there was not a line
of colour in any part, not an outline in any
petal, not a curve in any leaf, that could be
s fared or altered ; every such line of colour,
outline, and curve had its work to do and
did it, not only in the best, but in the only
possible way. He must have worked long,
and steadily and patiently, but he had his
reward-, when he found out the secret of
beauty in one plant, he found in it also the
key to the beauty in another ; the study of
the Purple Crocus in his Nottingham meadows,
or of the Golden Crocus in his garden, helped
him to find analogies of beauty in the Snow-
drop, Snowflake, Lily, and Daffodil; and he
had his further reward in the pleasant
memories of the beauties he had studied,
which enabled him to enjoy them, and to
write of them even in his sick-room and on
his death - bed, from which he wrote the
Editor's Preface
last lines of his preface, for in his know-
ledge of the secret of their beauty he had
found real joy and thankfulness for him-
self.
But Forbes Watson was not only a student
of Plant-life and Plant-beauty ; he was also a
gardener, and the second half of the book
" On Gardens" was the most powerful ally
that natural gardening had at that time, and
the one that gave the most important help in
the destruction of the tyranny of bedding-out
gardening. If it did not give the actual
death-blow, it certainly gave the first of the
death-blows and the one that had most effect.
What that tyranny was at the time the book
was published few can nowadays realise : to
have hinted a doubt that bedding-out garden-
ing was the perfection of artistic taste was to
be ranked as a Philistine heretic, and to
have suggested its destruction, and the substi-
tution of any other style, would have been
considered only worthy of a lunatic. Even
such scientific books as the Botanical Maga-
zine, when describing hardy plants, gauged
their beauty and usefulness by their fitness
or otherwise for carpet beds. Against this
system Forbes Watson raised his voice, and
xn
Editor's Preface
he did so with power, because he was able
to point out one special but very large blot
in the system. He showed that it led to an
utter ignorance of, and an almost wicked
contempt for, the beauty of individual flowers.
The flower in itself had become nothing, it
was but one small spot in a large mass of
colour, and had no value except in so far
as it helped the mass. His words were:
" Our flower beds are mere masses of colour,
instead of an assemblage of living beings :
the plant is never old, never young, it de-
generates from a plant into a coloured orna-
ment" 'The trumpet gave no uncertain sound,
and it did its work against the most de-
termined opposition especially from gardeners
and nurserymen and one thing that helped
to the final victory was his often-repeated
advice to study and love the wild flowers.
With the advocates of bedding-out these could
have no place, but Forbes Watson showed that
the study of plant life and plant beauty could
be carried on without the help of grand
exotics or Museum Herbaria; that the plant
lover would find all he wanted in the fields
and hedgerows of his own land; and that
the more he studied them there, the more he
xiii
Editor's Preface
would love the plants in his garaen ; and
so would become a better gardener.
I said that Forbes Watson was a deeply
religious man : his religion permeates the whole
book, and indeed is the key to a great deal of
what he says. It was the feeling that God
had made everything very good that made
him love His works, not only for their use-
fulness, but for their beauty. 'There were a
few instances in which he could not see the
beauty, but he was quite sure that it was
there. And it was this same religious feeling
that made him see a great deal which others
would not look for. It has been said that the
book is too fanciful and sentimental, especially
in attributing to flowers such characters as
purity, passion, innocence, sensuousness, &c. y
but it is the bare fact that Forbes Watson
saw these things, and because he saw them,
and thought it almost the moral duty of others
to see the same, that he recorded his feelings ;
the flowers had been real teachers of good
things to him, and he felt it a religious duty
to hand on the lessons to others.
Something must be said about the literary
style of the book. Had his life been spared
and he had given himself to authorship, he
XIV
Editor's Preface
f
would surely have taken a high rank among
English authors. The language is everywhere
clear and concise^ so that there is never any
mistaking his meaning-^ and though he was
evidently both a traveller and a great reader^
there is no padding^ no display *~ of book
learning^ and a very marked absence of
technical scientific language. It is quite de-
lightful to read a book on Flowers and
Gardens so entirely free from the numberless
hackneyed quotations which generally over-
burden such books; and he must have put
much restraint upon himself in keeping clear
of such additions. This is very marked in
his references to Ruskin, whom he reverenced
as "the greatest and best of art teachers"
yet though we may see Ruskin's influence
there is not a single passage from his works.
It is this that makes the book so fresh and
original: it is all his own; he wrote ^ not to
make a pretty book^ but to help others to find
the same delights that had brightened his
life; and his object has been gained^ though
he did not live to know of it.
1 The beauty of his language is in every page, but I
would specially call attention to his fine description of the
scorner,p. 162,- and of the real beauty of decay, p. 199.
xv b
Editor's Preface
/ must add a few lines on my share in
this new edition. The book has been exactly
reprinted from the first edition^ verbatim and
literatim, with the exception of printers' errors,
so that no alteration has been made in the
text; but I have thought it well to add a
few short footnotes here and there^ mostly in
confirmation of what Forbes Watson had
written^ and in a very few cases in correction.
H. N. E.
n^ March 25, 1901.
xvi
BIOGRAPHY
FOR the facts and dates in the
following short biography I am
indebted to the kindness of Forbes
Watson's brother, Watson Fother-
gill, Esq., of Nottingham, to whom I re-
turn my best thanks.
Forbes Watson was born at Mansfield,
Notts, on February 7, 1840. He was
educated at a private school at Clapham,
and was articled to Dr. Regworth, of
Birmingham. He then entered at St.
Thomas's Hospital, London, and after a
brilliant career as a student there, 1 he
was unanimously elected, though only
1 In 1859, at St. Thomas's, scholar in Physics and
Natural History ; in 1859, at Apothecary's Hall, Silver
Medal for Botany ; in 1860, at London University, the
Gold Medal and Scholarship in Materia Medica and
Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and the Gold Medal in
Botany ; and in 1861 he was admitted Licentiate of
Apothecaries and M.R.C.S.
xvii
Biography
twenty-one, and from a large number of
older candidates, as surgeon to the Not-
tingham Union, a post which he held till
a short time before his death. He died
at Nottingham, August 28, 1869.
He was a born artist and a born natu-
ralist. As an artist he made a special
study of the old masters of the Italian
and Dutch schools, and he was known
from his early youth as a very clever
draughtsman ; and his later botanical
drawings were so exact, and yet so
artistic, that they won the warm appre-
ciation of Ruskin.
As a naturalist he was noted for his
close observation and patience in research,
and for his accuracy in the minutest par-
ticulars, to which he attached a value
which casual observers overlooked. His
love of flowers and botany was indeed
hereditary, for on his mother's side he
was descended from Dr. John Fothergill,
F.R.S. (1712-1780), who was in his day
one of the most noted English botanists ;
he had a garden at Upton, West Ham,
which had a European reputation, and
was a correspondent of Linnaeus. On
XVlll
Biography
his father's side he was descended from
James Forbes, F.R.S. (1749-1819), of
Stanmore, who was a well-known student
in Indian botany. This hereditary taste
in botany was strengthened by his own
deep study, and by his occasional holidays
in Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, and the
Pyrenees.
Among his friends and acquaintances
he was known as a man of unblemished
character and pure life ; an intense lover
of truth, wherever he could find it, and
a hater of shams and falsehoods of every
sort; a warm friend, especially to the
poor, to whom he was most liberal, even
with limited means, and a labourer among
them, teaching the boys, and sparing no
labour to help them in leading good lives ;
a deeply religious man, to whom his re-
ligion was a part of his life, and a very
strong Nonconformist.
As an author he did not leave as
much behind him as his friends, who
knew his high literary ability, would
have wished. He wrote some magazine
articles and many religious tracts, and
one article in the British Quarterly on
XIX
Biography
Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"; but
the only book published with his name
was the " Flowers and Gardens," which
was published nearly three years after
his death.
H. N. E.
XX
CONTENTS
PORTRAIT
PREFACE .
EDITOR'S PREFACE .
BIOGRAPHY
Frontispiece
vn
xi
xix
PART I
FLOWERS
I. THE SNOWDROP ....
II. THE YELLOW CROCUS
III. THE PURPLE CROCUS
IV. THE VIOLET . .
V. THE COWSLIP
VI. THE PRIMROSE ....
VII. THE GLOBE FLOWER
VIII. THE BLACKTHORN, OR SLOE .
IX. THE POET'S NARCISSUS .
x. THE SNOWFLAKE (Leucojum astivum)
XI. THE WHITE LILY ....
XII. THE DAFFODIL ....
xxi
3
18
27
37
45
55
67
7i
75
78
83
85
Contents
PART II
GARDENS
I. FAULTS IN GARDENING . -97
ii. ON GARDENERS' FLOWERS . . .138
PART III
VEGETATION
I. SPRING AND SUMMER VEGETATION . . 187
II. ON THE WITHERING OF PLANTS . .198
PART I
FLOWERS
The Snowdrop
IF we examine our garden borders a
little after Christmas, we are gene-
rally pretty sure of discovering the
first signal of returning spring in
the green points of the Snowdrop clus-
ters just peeping through the ground.
Looking rather more closely, we find
that each plant has put forth two leaves,
which cohere so as to form at the sum-
mit a short conical beak, tipped with
a blunt, protective, callous point. This
green beak is all that is visible at this
early stage of growth, and is admirably
fitted by its wedge-like character for thrust-
ing through the soil. The flower lies
at present deep sunk between the leaves,
and undeveloped, waiting till they have
cleared its way to light and air. Then
the leaves separate and expand, the flower
rapidly outgrows them, and before they
have attained full size it has withered.
Flowers and Gardens
But what I wish more particularly to
notice now is the white callous tip of the
beak to which I have just alluded as fitting
it for piercing the ground. This is not a
mere temporary provision. It persists in
the full-grown leaf, and is common to many
of the Endogenous l plants, being particu-
larly well seen in the Snowdrop, Daffodil,
and Hyacinth, in all of which it resembles
a little waxen point. And how wonder-
fully it adds to the beauty of these plants !
Every artist knows what a striking effect
can be given by a few well-placed dots to
a broken line. And just so is it here.
Their sparkling, dotty appearance makes
the Snowdrop clusters look interesting
and animated from the first moment that
their tips pierce the ground. And in
every later stage the leaves of both Snow-
drop and Daffodil would seem tame and
meaningless without it. But this is only a
very small part of the matter. The dot
has a much higher purpose than that of
merely giving pleasure to the eye by con-
trast, like dewdrops scattered over grass.
It is most essential for the thorough en-
joyment of beauty that we should get at it
1 Endogenous plants are those whose leaves have
parallel veins like grasses, as distinguished from Exo-
genous plants, like Foxglove, c., whose leaves are net-
veined.
4
The Snowdrop
as rapidly and with as little effort as pos-
sible, for some of the most delightful
sensuous impressions are very transient,
and remain but for an instant in their full
intensity. Look, for example, at a bright
scarlet Ranunculus in the sunlight. You
see the scarlet for a second, and then it
changes into brown. You must turn your
eyes away before you can renew the im-
pression. And what is true of colour-
beauty is to some extent true also of
every other kind. This does not at all
interfere with the fact that the longer we
look the more we shall discover, and that
some of the deepest impressions come
latest. I only mean that no impression
can last unimpaired. Every moment we
may be gaining something fresh, but we
are also losing hold of something which
we had the moment before. There is a
good illustration of this in the difference
between childhood and maturity. The
man in most respects may see deeper than
the child, but he has lost the freshness
and vividness of childhood's first percep-
tions. The eye then needs to get at
beauty rapidly, and also needs something
to assist it in holding the main bearings in
view as it passes from part to part, or in
recovering them when it has lost them.
5
Flowers and Gardens
Now all this the dot helps to accomplish.
It emphasises just that point which should
catch the eye at once, guiding it straight
to the outlines or leading lines, and res-
cuing the whole plant from what might
otherwise appear but a confused patch of
green. This plan of leading the eye is
continually adopted by painters. There
is a good example of it in Leonardo da
Vinci's " Last Supper," where the radi-
ating beams of the roof and main lines of
the bodies of the disciples converge to-
wards the head of Christ, thus carrying us
at once to the grand point of the picture.
The means which are used in different
kinds of leaves to make the outlines more
noticeable are often well worth examining.
Sometimes it is by thickening, as in the
case we have already mentioned, some-
times by means exactly opposite. Very
frequently, as in the Lily of the Valley, a
thin line of cuticle surrounds the leaf, and
gleams in the light by its transparency.
In the common purple Iris of the gardens,
where the leaf is like a broad sharp sword-
blade, there is a gradual thinning from
the centre towards the edges, as well as
a translucent margin. So that, look at
what distance you will, the large broad
surfaces are easily distinguishable from
6
The Snowdrop
each other by mere differences of light
and shade.
We now pass on to the flower of the
Snowdrop. This, as every one knows,
droops from the end of a slender stalk,
which arises at the top of the stem from
a sheath-like bract or spathe. Now look
at that slender stalk, and notice parti-
cularly the character of the bend it makes.
This is not, as it is sometimes represented
in drawings, a gradual, arching curve.
The stalk would then look weak, as if
bent by the weight of the flower, and
such a condition can never naturally be
found, except in a sickly Snowdrop, or
else in double blossoms, where it is ex-
tremely common. And notice, if you have
met with any such specimen, how com-
pletely all its beauty is destroyed. In a
healthy Snowdrop this stalk is for the
most part nearly straight, bending slightly,
and only slightly, to the weight of the
flower. 1 Slender though it be, it seems
to assert its own freedom and perfect
ability to stand as upright as it pleases.
But just at the end it makes a sudden
1 If the flower be young, there will be hardly any per-
ceptible bend in the slender flower-stalk ; it will bend
just slightly in an older specimen. [In the older speci-
men the weight is increased by the swelling seed-vessel.
H. N. E.]
7
Flowers and Gardens
hook downwards, and this little hook per-
mits the drooping. And how exquisite
is the result ! We have said that the
little flower-stalk is nearly straight. But
it must be saved from an appearance of
over-straightness, and this is effected by
the investing sheath-like bract, which
curves over it like a pruning-hook. Cut
away the bract, and notice how you spoil
the arch. Now take up the blossom, and
hold it upside downwards, with the cup
erect, the contrary position to that in
which it was meant to be seen. How
completely its loveliness has vanished !
What an insipid flower it would be if that
were its natural posture, the petals want-
ing in breadth, the whole aspect destitute
of character ! Everything is right if seen
just as was originally intended, and wrong
otherwise.
But here a difficulty presents itself. I
notice that the three inner petals are care-
fully ribbed on their internal surface with
bright green parallel veins, evidently for
the purpose of ornament, and that Nature
has furthermore taken the trouble to colour
the stamens orange, so as to complete the
harmony. Now, in the ordinary position
of the flower, the only position in which
it can appear beautiful as a whole, these
8
The Snowdrop
green lines and stamens are scarcely to
be seen. Where was the necessity for
troubling about them if the flower was
never intended to be looked at upside
downwards ? The answer, I think, must
be this. We make the acquaintance of
any individual existence under an immense
number of different aspects, and it is the
sum of all these aspects which constitutes
that existence to us. A Snowdrop, for
instance, is not to me merely such a figure
as a painter might give me by copying
the flower when placed so that its loveli-
ness shall be best apparent, but a curious
mental combination or selection from the
figures which the flower may present when
placed in every possible position, and in
every aspect which it has worn from birth
to grave, and coloured by all the associa-
tions which have chanced to cling around
it. , To the bodily eye which beholds it
for the first time, it might be of no conse-
quence what lay within the petals, though
even then the imagination would be whis-
pering some solution of the secret ; but
to the eye of mind, when the flower has
been often seen, that hidden green and
yellow which is necessary to complete
the harmony becomes distinctly visible
visible, that is, in that strange, indefinite
9
Flowers and Gardens
way in which all things, however appa-
rently incompatible, seem present and
blended together when the imaginative
faculty is at work. The common Star of
Bethlehem (Ornithogalum wnbellatum) is
a good illustration of the working of this
principle. When I look at the beautiful
silver white of the inner surface of the