THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. MRS. GARDINER : A HORTICULTURAL ROMANCE. BY THE EDITOR. CHAP. I. What sweet thoughts she thinks L. HUNT. "And so do I, and I, and I," exclaim in chorus all the he and she Fellows of the Horticultural Society. "And I," whispers the philosophical Ghost of Lord Bacon. "And I," sings the poetical Spirit of Andrew Marvel. "Et moi aussi," chimes in the Shade of Delille. "And I," says the Spectre of Sir William Temple, echoed by Pope and Darwin, and a host of the English Poets, the sonorous voice of Milton resounding above them all. "And I," murmurs the Apparition of Boccaccio. "And I, and I," sob two Invisibles, remembering Eden. "And I," shouts Mr. George Robins, thinking of Covent Garden. "And I," says Mr. Simpson-formerly of Vauxhall. "And I," sing ten thousand female voices, all in unison, as if June.-VOL. LXVIII. NO. CCLXX. L drilled by Hullah,—but really, thinking in concert of the Gardens of Gul. [What a string I have touched !] We all love a Garden!" shout millions of human voices, male, female, and juvenile bass, tenor, and treble. From the East, the West, the North, and the South, the universal burden swells on the wind, as if declaring in a roll of thunder, that we all love a Garden. But no-one solitary voice-that of Hamlet's Ghostly Father, exclaims in a sepulchral tone, “I don't !” No matter we are all but unanimous; and so, Gentle Readers, I will at once introduce to you my Heroine-a woman after your own hearts for she is a Gardiner by name, and a Gardener by nature. CHAP. II. AT Number Nine, Paradise-place, so called probably because every house stands in the midde of a little garden, lives Mrs. Gardiner. I will not describe her, for looking through the green-rails in front of her premises, or over the dwarf wall at the back, you may see her any day, in an old poke bonnet, expanded into a gipsy-hat, and a pair of man's gloves, tea-green at top, but mouldy-brown in the fingers, raking, digging, hoeing, rolling, trowelling, pruning, nailing, watering, or otherwise employed in her horticultural and floricultural pursuits. Perhaps, as a neighbour, or acquaintance, you have already seen her, or conversed with her, over the wooden or brick-fence, and have learned in answer to your kind inquiries about her health, that she was pretty well, only sadly in want of rain, or quite charming, but almost eaten up by vermin. For Mrs. Gardiner speaks the true "Language of Flowers," not using their buds and blossoms as symbols of her own passions and sentiments, according to the Greek fashion, but lending words to the wants and affections of her plants. Thus, when she says that she is "dreadful dry," and longs for a good soaking, it refers not to a defect of moisture in her own clay, but to the parched condition of the soil in her parterres: or, if she wishes for a regular smoking, it is not from any unfeminine partiality to tobacco, but in behalf of her blighted geraniums. In like manner she sometimes confesses herself a little backward, without allusion to any particular branch, or twig, of her education, or admits herself to be rather forward, quite irrelevantly to her behaviour with the other sex. Without this key her expressions would often be unintelligible, to the hearer, and sometimes indecorous, as when she told her neighbour, the bachelor at Number Eight, à propos of a plum-tree, that " she was growing quite wild, and should come some day over his wall." Others again, unaware of her peculiar phraseology, would give her credit, or discredit, for an undue share of female vanity, as well as the most extraordinary notions of personal beauty. "Well," she said one day, "what do you think of Mrs. Mapleson ?" meaning her hydrangea. Her head's the biggest-but I look the bluest." In a similar style she delivered herself as to certain other subjects of the rivalry that is universal amongst the suburban votaries of Flora: converting common blowing and growing substantives into horticul tural verbs, as thus: "Miss Sharpe crocussed before me,-but I snowdropped sooner than any one in the Row." But this identification of herself with the objects of her love was not confined to her plants. It extended to every thing that was connected with her hobby-her gardening implements, her garden-rails, and her garden-wall. For example, she complained once that she could not rake, she had lost so many of her teeth-she told the carpenter the boys climbed over her so, that he should stick her all over tenter-hooks-and sent word to her landlord, a builder, the snails bred so between her bricks, that he must positively come and new point her. "Phoo! whoo!" exclaims an incredulous, gentle Reader-" she is all a phantom!" Quite the reverse, sir. She is as real and as substantial as Mrs. Baines. Ask Mr. Cherry, the newsman, or his boy, John Loder, either of whom will tell you-on oath if you require it-that he serves her every Saturday with the Gardeners' Chronicle. CHAP. III. My first acquaintance with Mrs. Gardiner, was formed when she was "in populous city pent," and resided in a street in the very heart of the city. In fact in Bucklersbury. But even there her future bent developed itself as far as her limited ways and means permitted. On the leads over the back warehouse, she had what she delighted to call a shrubbery viz. A Persian Lilac in a tea-chest, A Guelder Rose in a washing-tub, A Laurustinus in a butter-tub, A Monthly Rose in a Portugal grape-jar, and about a score of geraniums, fuchsias, and similar plants in pots. But besides shrubs and flowers, she cultivated a few vegetables-that is to say, she grew her own sallads of "mustard and crest" in a brown pan; and in sundry crockery vessels that would hold earth, but not water, she reared some half dozen of Scarlet Runners, which in the proper season you might see climbing up a series of string ladders, against the back of the house, as if to elope with the Mignionette from its box in the second-floor window. Then indoors, on her mantelshelf, she had hyacinths and other bulbs in glasses-and from a hook in the ceiling, in lieu of a chandelier, there was suspended a wickerbasket, containing a white biscuitware garden-pot, with one of those pendent plants, which, as she described their habits and sustenance, are" fond of hanging themselves, and living on hare." But these experiments rather tantalized than satisfied her passion. Warehouseleads, she confessed, made but indifferent gardens or shrubberies, whilst the London smoke was fatal to the complexion of her mop rose and the fragrance of her southernwood, or in her own words, "I blow dingy-and my old man smells sutty." Once, indeed, she pictured to me her beau ideal of " a little Para dise," the main features of which I forget, except that with reference to a cottage ornée, she was to have "a jessamy in front, and a creeper up her back." As to the garden, it was to have walks and a lawn of course, with plenty of rich loam, that she might lay herself out in squares, and ovals, and diamonds-butter-tubs and tea-chests were very well for town, but she longed for elbow room, and earth to dig, to rake, to hoe, and trowel up,-in short, she declared, if she was her own missis, she would not sleep another night before she had a bed of her own-not with any reference to her connubial partner, but she longed, she did, for a bit of ground, she did not care how small. wish that her husband at last gratified by taking a bit of ground, he did not care how small, in Bunhill Fields. A The widow, selling off the town house, immediately retired to a villa in the country, and I had lost sight of her for some months, when one May morning taking a walk in the suburbs, whilst passing in front of Number Nine, Paradise-place, I overhead a rather harsh voice, exclaiming, as if in expostulation with a refractory donkey. "Come up! Why don't ye come up?" It was Mrs. Gardiner, reproaching the tardiness of her seeds. I immediately accosted her, but as she did not recognise me; determined to preserve my incognito, till I had drawn her out a little to exhibit her hobby. Wery, sir,-wery much so indeed. Lord knows when I shall be out of the earth, I almost think I'm rotted in the ground." "The flowers are backward indeed, ma'am. I have hardly seen any except some wall-flowers further down the row." 66 Ah, at Number Two-Miss Sharp's. She's poor and single-but I'm double and bloody." "You seem too to have some fine stocks." "Well, and so I have, though I say it myself. I'm the real Brompton -with a stronger blow than any one in the place, and as to sweetness, none of 'em can come near me. Would you like to walk in, sir, and smell me?" Accepting the polite invitation, I stepped in through the little wicket, and in another moment was rapturously sniffing at her stocks, and the flower with the sanguinary name. From the walls I turned off to a rosebush, remarking that there was a very fine show of buds. "Yes, but I want sun to make me bust. You should have seen me last June, sir, when I was in my full bloom. None of your wishy washy pale sorts (this was a fling at the white roses at the next door)— none of your Provincials, or pale pinks. There's no maiden blushes about me. I'm the regular old red cabbage !" And she was right, for after all that hearty, glowing, fragant rose is the best of the species-the queen of flowers, with a ruddy embonpoint, reminding one of the goddesses of Rubens. Well, next to the rosebush there was a clump of Polyanthus, from which by a natural transition we come to discourse of Auriculas. This was delicate ground, for it appeared there was a rivalry between Number Nine and Number Four, as to that mealiness which in the eye of a fancier, is the chief beauty of the flower. However, having assured her, in answer to her appeal, that she was "quite as powdery as Mr. Miller," we went on very smoothly through Jonquils, and Narcissuses, and Ranunculus, and were about to enter on 66 Anymonies," when Mrs. Gardiner suddenly stopped short, and with a loud "whist!" pitched her trowel at the head of an old horse, which had thrust itself over the wooden fence. "Drat the animals! I might as well try flowering in the Zoological, with the beasts all let loose! It's very hard, sir, but I can't grow nothing tall near them front rails. There was last year,-only just fancy me, sir—with the most beautiful Crown Imperial you ever sawwhen up comes a stupid hass and crops off my head." I condoled with her of course on so cruel a decapitation, and recovered her trowel for her, in return for which civility she plucked and presented to me a bunch of Heartsease, apologizing that "she was not Bazaar (pro Bizarre) but a very good sort." "It's along of living so near the road," she added, recurring to the late invasion. 66 Yesterday I was bullocked, and to-morrow I suppose I shall be pigged. Then there's the blaggard men and boys, picking and stealing as they go by. I really expect that some day or other they'll walk in and strip me!" I sympathized again; but before the condolement was well finished there was another "whist!" and another cast of the missile. "That's a Dog! They're always rampaging at my front, and there goes the cat to my back, and she'll claw all my bark off in scrambling out of reach! Howsomever that's a fine lupin, ain't it?" I assured her that it deserved to be exhibited to the Horticultural Society. "What, to the flower show? No thankee. Miss Sharp did, and made sure of a Bankside Medal, and what do you think they gave her? Only a cerkittifit!" "Shameful!" I ejaculated, "why it was giving her nothing at all," and once more I restored the trowel, which, however, had hardly settled in it's owner's hand, than with a third "whist !" off it flew again like a rocket, with a descriptive announcement of the enemy. "Them horrid poultry! Will you believe it, sir, that 'ere cock flew over, and gobbled up my Hen-and-Chickens!" "What! all your pretty chickens and their dam?'" "Yes, all my Daisy." [Reader!-if ever there was a verbal step from the Sublime to the Ridiculous, that was it.] CHAP. IV. My mask fell off. That destructive cock was as fatal to my incognito, as to the widow's flowers: for coming after the cat and the dog, and the possible pigs, and the positive bullock, and the men, and the boys, and the horse, and the ass, I could not help observing that my quondam acquaintance would have been better off in Bucklersbury. 66 "Lord! and is it you," she exclaimed with almost a scream; well, I had a misgiving as to your woice," and with a rapid volley of semiarticulate sounds the Widow seized my right hand in one of her own, whilst with the other she groped hurriedly in her pocket. It was to |