Distractions from the dirt include digging into the archive, although that can also be a messy task. My project of reinventing the suburban backyard for 2008 has inspired me to look at other cultures of the garden, of cultivation, of green stuff. Which has brought me to an 1831 text written by Charles Lawrence and entitled Practical Directions for the Cultivation and General Management of Cottage Gardens, with Plans for Laying Them Out for Five Years, also Hints on Keeping Pigs; -on Service, &c.
A vision of a classic cottage garden is a romantic one, evoking images of morning fog, ivy, and a quaint sort of cultivated bounty. Yet Lawrence’s text seems to present almost the opposite. Not only does it adopt a practical tone in regard to work on garden, but also a pragmatic (to put it politely) approach to managing people. Cultivation meets relations of social class. Messy. And interesting.
In this text, the gentleman speaks and instructs. Lawrence sets the book forth as a gentleman’s guide to managing the common folk in the establishment of their own country gardens, on land granted to these commoners by their self-same wealthy patron. Written for the patron, the text provides a language and plan by which he might instruct his people in the task of keeping a garden.
Apparently, the gentleman perceived a significant challenge in dealing with his less wealthy neighbors. “To those who feel an interest in improving the conditions of the labouring classes,” he writes, “and who are disposed to provide their own poor with gardens, I would urge the absolute necessity of frequent superintendance; either in person or through some judicious friend or agent; otherwise they may rely on it that a large proportion of these persons - careless, negligent, and improvident as they are - will never avail themselves of the advantages placed within their reach.” (Lawrence 1831, ii-iii)
A trepidation is marked by Lawrence and yet he also sees a clear hero or, to be precise, a collection of heroines to enlist as managers for the project. How best to “insure attention to the general management and condition of the garden, the cottage, the pig, &c.,” Lawrence muses… and then responds:
I wish to press my fair country-women into this service; it would be to them but a useful, graceful, and interesting amusement. –Such attention would operate as a constant stimulus to that care, and providence, and observance of neatness, and order, in the whole economy of the cottager, which, would not only promote very materially the success of the undertaking, but are often the bases of more important virtues. (iii)
Lawrence, stretching the virtues of genteel ‘womanity’ (a friend’s favorite term, not his), continues in his praise of her uniquely suited character for the project of cultivation - a cultivation, it would seem, of multitudinous qualities:
There is no agent as effective as a woman for this purpose - she has generally time, and the inclination to devote it to every humane project; her forbearance, patience, mildness, sympathy, and gentle, and engaging manners, have an irresistible influence, which we may endeavor in vain to exercise. (iii-iv)
That’s as far as I’ve read in this text, for now, though I look forward to reading Lawrence’s own musings on the pig. Will he bring a similarly florid prose to that topic, I wonder… For those interested in exploring the original text itself, the full version of an edition held by Oxford University is available at Google Books.
Image Credit: ‘Home of Thomas Hardy, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset‘
www.flickr.com/photos/57345946@N00/188913650 by Janice Lane.
This post is being written by my friend and guest editor, who goes by the pen name of Nae and who is four and a half years old. Nae reports that she likes gardens because both good things can grow there and bad things can grow there. And then she pulls up the bad things.
And I snuck out to both the garden shop and my backyard. The place is still wet from last weekend’s storm, but with sun and nearly 80 degree weather today, things have begun to dry out. Today’s summary: pulled bugs (many bugs, little green creatures) off the peas and continued to expand upon the herb garden: two types of thyme, plus rosemary, Italian parsley, chives (the one thing I know I can grow…), and, though it’s early, I couldn’t resist picking up a little basil plant.
With a Sunday morning of rainstorms and lightning, I’m camped indoors and catching up on garden reading. The latest local news is the Washington Post’s new series entitled “
