The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1890-11-02
TWENTY BUSHELS
OF ROSES"
A Poetic Little Incident Plncked
Right Out of Sober History.
Housemaids Who Csms Out While the Morn.
ing Dew Lay on the Garden and Peltsd
Each Other With Roses.

unheard-of one it was-and coming from a
man!
1t is a poetic little incident which l have
plucked right out of sober history. 1t I'M
mediately brings picture before me of an
old, very OLD, English garden. The man
was the unfortunate Bishop of Ely of Eliza
beth's reign. He was unfortunate not only
because he lost the favor of his tickle SOW
ereign, but because through one of her ca
prices he lost his garden. 1t is the last
named loss that engages our sympathies.
and it is the one with which we have to do
England had had pleasant gardens from
the time of the conquest, with shady walks,
hedges. fountains. and many fruit trees.
And those gardens had been, as rule, in
the hands of men who had chosen an eccleS-
iastic life. The monks and bishops found
the pursuit of horticulture congenial to their
Quiet tastes and their ways of seclusion.
Even now, in the neighborhood of some of
the old abbeys and other religious houses,
may he seen few half winding rose-buShes,
descendants of those once cultivated by ten
der hands; and along the moldering walls are
still clinging vines and scraggly fruit trees.
Elizabeth's bishops were great horticulture
lists. DR.. Cox, Bishop of Ely, rich, honored,
scholarly, and a man of fine taste, had a
palace in London land fair gardens, called
Ely-place, ON Holborn-hill." This great
estate had long been held by the bishops of
Ely and it appears in history that the Duke
of Gloster, afterward Richard Ill, once
asked for strawberries from that place. In
the play of ''King Richard III, Shakespeare
makes use of the Incident:
My lord of Ely, when was last in Holborn.
saw good straw berries in your garden there;
do beseech you. send some OF them.
Our Bishops garden covered several acres
of land ana a right fertile tract it was, too,
with just the needed moisture, for once, be-
fore London had become so densely peo-
pied. a stream had flowed there, called the
Oldbourne, from which the hill Holborn
had taken its name. The Bishop had a
princely establishment in this, his town
house, which he kept up, besides maintain
ing his country place at Stanton; and there
was no lack of upper gardeners and under
gardeners to keep things in order.
We may be sure that, according to the Gus
tom, this ample domain was inclosed by a
high wall Of brick or stone, against which
fruit trees were trained, so that
IN THE GENIAL WARMTH,
Where the sunshine could strike them, the
abundance of peaches, plumS, pears, april
COTS nectarines-how tempting the names
might ripen in their time. Think of this
great garden, with its cool. green vistas, its
orchard trees, where pippinS and other IA
yorte apples grew, its gravel walks bOrdered
with box, its beds of lavender and thyme
and all sweet herbs. Fragrant and beautiful,
musical with the hum of bees and songs of
birds, il was peaceful, flower adorned re-
treat. Right in the busy London of trades
men and guilds. PROFESSIONS and pageantS, of
hawkers who cried their wares Just outside
the walls, the stir and diScordant noises
must have come to the good Bishop as he
walked and medtated, like the turmoil of a
world he was glad to escape from.
We know that he took great delight in it,
especially in his roses. One cannot help
wondering about the kinds he mad there.
Roses past counting, "a gardenful," had the
Bishop of Ely,
Red roses white roses.
Roses past season.
Perhaps he had collected all the varieties
which once grew wild in Britain. the Scotch
roses, the sweet-briers, all the red, red roses,
the pale pink ones, the white ones, from
thickets and hedges all over the dominion.
He must have had the blended roses of York
and Lancaster, the Provence and Burgundy
roses and others, which came into England
with hequeeu consorts from the south OF
Europe. The daintiest, dearest most de-
liciouS, the damask rose, could hardly have
been among them. unless some crusader of
kindred tastes with the Bishop had brought
one when he came home.
We might never have known of this rosa
passion of his but for the misfortune that
befell him. He had offended the Queen by
rebuking her for some Popish ceremonalS,
and she had never forgiven him. Elizabeth
was good hater; and the time came when
she could have her revenge. Her new fav-
Orite, Sir Christopher Hatton, of whom she
was foolishly fond, had long had his eye on
wanted them. When 1t came to her
knowledge the Queen commanded the Bis
hop to give them up. He resisted. Then
she wrote him a brief letter. in which she
used some of the strong language habitual to
her when she was wr0th. The Bishop was
lid - I'll Doe %I..,
privilege of free access to the gate-house,
liberty to walk in the garden. and ''leave 10
gather twenty bushels of roses yearly there
in" The same was 10 be granted to his
successor in the bishopric.
And now light dawns upon me. Can 1t
have been that the good man wanted the
roses for c0nfections and conserves.
DID HE PURPOSE HAVING THEM DIS
TITLED?
Let us not harbor such thought for a
moment We viii remember how many
men have been almost passionate lovers of
flowers how Linn8us fell down on his
knees when he first beheid the golden furze
of England; now great American divine
expressed the eXtraYagant desire to have
mignonette growing in his garden in such a
quantity that lie could NOW il with a scythe.
We will remember our two distinguished
historians, Bancroft and Parkman, among
their roses.
How such men would revel in the flowers
that certain recent travellers tell US of-the
acres of blood-red anemones on the hill
sides of Ephraim; the vast Solitudes of daft
fodil far as the eye could reach, splashed
with gladiolus and purple iris, that Pierre
Lott came upon in Morocco. and the plains
of lavendar, he saw; the miles of prairie
roses in the far West; the fOrget-me-nots of
Western Siberia described by KEENAN,; 1.-THE
steppe to the very horizon was blue ocean of
forget-me- nots. | do not mean simply that
the ground was sprinkled with them, nor
merely that they grew in great abundance.
mean that the grass everywhere was COM
pletelv hidden by them, so that the plain
looked as if a sheet of blue gauze had bee n
thrown over it. or as if it was great ex-
panse of tranquil water rejecting pale
blue sky"
We win believe that the Bishop, grown
gray among his flowers, stipulated for these
twenty bushels now that the garden was to
be taken away from him. so that he might
have the rapture once year of reveling in
roses within the walls of his own home.
To be let in through the gate house by Sir
Christopher's gate-keeper, and suffered to
walk ND and down and look at them would
be tantalizing after all those years of own
ershp. He would have carnival of roses
till every old oak-paneled room in his house
should be Frightened by their glow and made
sweet by their fragrance. From hall to
lady's boudoir, everywhere within there
should be feast of loses.
SO the house-maids came out while the
morning dew lay on the garden; and with
much chattering and girlish laughter and
pelting one another with roses till the paths
were strewn with petals, filled their baskets
and bore them into the great house. And this
continued till the Bishop of Ely was gath
cred to his fathers.
Years after, Gerard the botanist had a
garden on Holborn Hill, containing 100
plants. as cataogued by himself. There
were all sorts of pleasant flowers; and who
can doubt that some of the identical roses
beloved by the Bishop were among them,
and that they chung to the spot ntil the hill
was dug over for building purposes and not
trace remained to show that garden had
ever been there Amanda B. Harris, in
November Wide Awake.