An A-Z of Animals in the Garden E-Book

Dr Twigs Way

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 229

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

From alpacas to zebus, crocodiles to wombats, journey through the individual histories of bizarre garden pets and their often bizarre owners. Who would dream of keeping a bear in the summerhouse, or a peccary in the park? Find out why the artist Rossetti favoured a wombat over a zebu, and if hares make good pets for depressed poets. Dr Twigs Way uncovers a secret world where crocodiles lurk in the fernery and flamingos stalk the shrubberies. From the Roman period to the modern day, discover the story of armadillos kept by merchants in London and Queen Charlotte's filthy-tempered zebra. These are quirky tales of animals in the garden.

Leseprobe

First published as A Crocodile in the Fernery in 2008

This paperback edition first published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Dr Twigs Way, 2008, 2023

Illustrations © Phillip Bentley, 2008, 2023

The right of Dr Twigs Way to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 388 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

This book is dedicated toBramble (1999–2006), Parsnip (1999–2007) and Sage (2004–2007)for whom the whole world was a garden; and to Sweet Pea, Blackberry, Pumpkin, Damson, Quince, Mulberry, Bluebell, Teasel, Willow and Robinia, who continue their work of destruction.

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the assistance of a great many people. Of those who responded to my pleas for information in 2007/8, I would like to especially thank the following: Caroline Holmes for being a constant fount of information; Nicola Campbell for her information on Devon sites and the emu-loving, eccentric Peek family in particular; Linden Groves for allowing me access to her MA dissertation on ‘Animals: Living Garden Features Not Incidental Occupants’; Robin Loder of Leonardslee for sharing his childhood with the wallabies; Patrick Phillips of Kentwell Hall for the entry on doves; Elizabeth Johnson for the history of the ducks at Cambridge University Library (and for the care she took in raising them); Susie Pasley-Tyler of Coton Manor for the history of the flamingos there; Jill Raggett of Writtle College for her advice on Japanese Gardens and goldfish; Andrew Widd (then at English Heritage) on the otter at Audley End; Sam Youd, Head Gardener at Tatton Park, on tree frogs; Karen Wisemen, Education Officer at Blenheim Palace; Ros Wallinger for her comments on Jack the donkey at Munstead Wood; and Kate Fielden, archivist at Bowood for very kindly leading me away from the lures of the orangutan in the Orangery!

I would like to add my thanks to The History Press for the opportunity to revisit this book in 2023.

‘Sir, to leave things out of a book, merely because people tell you they will not be believed, is meanness’

Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) quoted inJames Boswell’s Life of Johnson vol. 2

Contemplations on a Hare

Sunlight sits in her daytime ‘form’ amongst the roses and nepeta in the flower beds of our country garden. She is not the first hare to have sat there nor, one hopes, the last. She fills the hollow in our small world left by Sunshine Daydream the first hare who ran here, and of the ‘twins’ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, of Cosmic Charlie and little Luna who never left. For now Sunlight’s days are full of dreamy sleep and her nights of wary nibbling of clovers and the abundance of the garden. In fact, she may be a he. We did not subject her to the indignities of checking as adolescence arrived, as life and trust are more valuable than knowledge. Although she does not know it a world awaits her outside the garden gate as soon as she is ready but as a hand-reared hare she has not yet got the size and speed she will need to outrun her predators in the open fields and meadows. Come Autumn she will be ready to practice dashing over the stubbly ridges before the frosts and snows make the ground bare and hunters and humans cunning. Watching and waiting, how many more changes of moon until the fields beckon and only an empty hollow and an undefined sense of loss and hope remain in the garden?

Dr Twigs WayJuly 2023

Introduction

‘Let there be shade and let the windows of the pavilion look out upon the garden. Let fish-pools be made and diverse fishes placed therein. Let there also be hares, rabbits, deer and such-like wild animals that are not beasts of prey. And in the trees near the pavilion let great cages be made and therein place partridges, nightingales, blackbirds, linnets and all manner of singing birds. Let all be arranged so that the beasts and the birds may be easily seen from the pavilion’.

So said Pietro de’ Crescenzi (c.1230/5 – c.1320) in his early fourteenth century Italian text on estate and garden management. Pietro de’ Crescenzi was not to know that the fashion for introducing birds and beasts into the garden was already a long established one by the time of his writing, nor that it would still be alive and well in the twenty-first century. From the Mesopotamian kings who created parks, or paradesios, to house the animals of tribute brought to them, to the wallabies that still wander free in a twenty-first century Sussex garden, our parks and gardens have been enlivened by cries, calls and capers, as fauna join flora in delighting the human soul. Some creatures of course enliven more than others. Snaileries can never produce the same frisson as the presence of an elephant, whilst however charming a flock of demoiselle cranes, a single striped hyena prowling the lawn (even when called ‘Squeak’) will inevitably command more attention.

Down the centuries it would seem almost every conceivable type of beast, bird and fish have been kept as garden animals. Large or small, tame or wild, timid or terrifying, someone somewhere has attempted to integrate it into their horticultural schema. In his idyllic fourteenth century ‘Garden of Love’, Chaucer imagines hares, rabbits, timid deer, squirrels and all beasts of gentle kind, excluding only beasts of prey and the much maligned frog. The Reverend Theodore Wood, Victorian clergyman and naturalist, would have empathised with Chaucer, specialising as he did in keeping only those animals (and insects) that were native to this country. With a fernery full of toads, and a conservatory of glow-worms, the Reverend Theodore had no recourse to the importation of exotic animals. The Angora rabbit held no charms for the Reverend, whilst the humble guinea pig did not move him to even passing admiration. For others, the delight in all things natural combined perfectly with the challenge of the collector, and for several centuries menageries of exotic birds and beasts became a hallmark of any nobleman’s park or garden. Unusual and diverse collections demonstrated both the intellect and power of their owners, who might command the abduction of animals from newly discovered lands, paying vast sums for their global transportation. But even amongst these collections, individual attachments might be made, especially where an animal was more than usually long-lived. Menageries also had a way of growing, such that what might start as a small collection or individual specimen placed discretely in one part of a private pleasure ground, all too easily grew to invade the rest of the gardens, with bears in the summerhouse and tree frogs in the fernery.

For the less well-off, or those lacking the collectors’ zeal, animal care was a more personal affair. The animals collected up into these personal Edens would be prized not for their uncommonness, or perhaps we should say not just for their uncommonness, but also as individuals. Ranging from the cute and malleable to the downright ugly and vicious, these individuals would roam freely the gardens and pleasure grounds, and in some cases even into the houses of their owners. In the case of W.S. Gilbert’s cuddly lemurs, this presented no difficulties for even the most timorous visitor, but surely a crocodile, or even an over-affectionate capybara, might introduce barriers to neighbourly social intercourse. In fact neighbourly relations could be severely strained by the very presence of these animals. The artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti was bombarded with complaints from his wealthy London neighbours over his tunnelling armadillo and his discordant peacocks. Although no one appears to have had the temerity to complain to Emperor Charlemagne about his elephant.

Not all of the animals in this book, or in the history of the garden, are rare or exotic or even dangerous. Sentimentality towards the ‘lesser creatures’ increased enormously in the Victorian period and cats, dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs (not to mention salamanders, lizards, toads, monkeys and others) held sway over many households by the end of the nineteenth century. Gertrude Jekyll, that great Surrey gardener, was so inordinately fond of cats that she devoted an entire chapter to them in one of her many gardening books, whilst her contemporary William Robinson looked on fondly as his dog, Boy, crushed an entire bed of his prize-winning tufted pansies. William Cowper was lost without his hares, and the Reverend Wood entertained his neighbours by imitating the walk of his much loved chameleon. Even exotics might become naturalised, and the setting up of the original London Zoological Gardens (note the word ‘gardens’) owed much to the imperialist aim of ‘acclimatising’ a range of animals and birds to the climate of England. Once adapted, these ornaments could be of practical and decorative utility to country gentlemen in their gardens, parks and farms. The original design of the zoo was in the favoured landscape style of the time, mingling garden features with ferme ornée. Alas, as so many gardeners and pet-lovers have discovered, the battle between ferme and ornée is one that ornament is destined to lose in all but the largest gardens, and the site needed continual re-planting.

The early twentieth century saw, if anything, a rise in the numbers of people who shared their gardens with the sort of wildlife not usually envisaged by modern ‘wildlife gardeners’. No longer the preserve of the wealthy, exotic animals were seen in even middle-class establishments and gardens. Rather than crested newts and bird feeders, the seventy members of the Amateur Menagerie Club introduced monkeys and beaver dens. A short-lived society (1912–27) of men and women, the club’s yearbook is full of the joys of keeping individual animals of all types as pets. One typical article commences ‘A crocodile is distinctly an unconventional pet, and one likely to draw down remark and criticism upon the taste and judgement of the owner, but, in common with all reptiles, he has much to recommend him’. Similarly enthusiastic praises can be found in modern books on the keeping of unusual pets in house and garden. Now, the usual has become the unusual, as books appear on pot-bellied pigs, salamanders, and rats.

As an exploration of individual animals, ‘pets’ and those in small collections, this book largely avoids the history of the larger menagerie and eschews the zoo. One or two favoured animals may have crept in from the larger collections of royalty or nobility, but only where they appear to have been favoured by their owners or carers beyond the usual. This book is then both a tribute and a fond remembrance of all those who have stood by watching whilst cats uproot the catnip, rabbits prune the fruit trees and tree frogs spit venom amongst the ferns. Whilst there are still those that follow Pietro de’ Crescenzi in his love of flora and fauna combined there will always be gardens where the hyena and the hellebore mix, crocodiles inhabit the fernery and there are pelicans in the pond.

Author’s Note

On the theory that most readers will wish to turn to B for bear or W for wallaby rather than chase the Latin classification of U for Ursus and M for Macropus (except of course when they are D for Dorcopsis!) this book has been arranged using common English names. In many instances there is not enough information to surmise which varieties or sub-species of animals were kept, and in early days most owners would either not have known or not have cared. After all, an elephant is a pretty impressive garden pet whichever the species. Therefore in the admirably appropriate words of Mrs R Lee, in her 1852 book Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals: ‘Dry details of science and classification have been laid aside, but a certain order has been kept to avoid confusion.’

The Gardener and the Hog

A gard’ner, of peculiar taste,

On a young hog his favour placed;

Who fed not with the common herd;

His tray was to the hall preferred.

He wallowed underneath the board,

Or in his master’s chamber snored;

Who fondly stroked him every day,

And taught him all the puppy’s play;

Where’er he went, the grunting friend

Ne’er failed his pleasure to attend.

As on a time, the loving pair

Walked forth to tend the garden’s care,

The master thus address’d the swine:

‘My house, my garden, all is thine.

On turnips feast whene’er you please,

And riot in my beans and peas;

If the potato’s taste delights,

Or the red carrot’s sweet invites,

Indulge thy morn and evening hours,

But let due care regard my flowers:

My tulips are my garden’s pride,

What vast expense those beds supplied!’

The hog by chance one morning roamed,

Where with new ale the vessels foamed.

He munches now the steaming grains,

Now with full swill the liquor drains.

Intoxicating fumes arise;

He reels, he rolls his winking eyes;

Then stagg’ring through the garden scours,

And treads down painted ranks of flowers.

With delving snout he turns the soil,

And cools his palate with the spoil.

The master came, the ruin spied,

‘Villain, suspend thy rage,’ he cried.

‘Hast thou, thou most ungrateful sot,

My charge, my only charge forgot?

What, all my flowers!’ No more he said,

But gazed, and sighed, and hung his head.

The hog with stutt’ring speech returns:

‘Explain, sir, why your anger burns.

See there, untouched, your tulips strown,

For I devoured the roots alone.’

At this the gard’ner’s passion grows;

From oaths and threats he fell to blows.

The stubborn brute the blow sustains;

Assaults his leg, and tears the veins.

Ah! foolish swain, too late you find

That sties were for such friends designed!

Homeward he limps with painful pace,

Reflecting thus on past disgrace:

Who cherishes a brutal mate

Shall mourn the folly soon or late.

John Gay 1727Fable XLVIII

ALPACA

The donkey and the camel are the traditional beasts associated with the Christmas story, a story not notable for any garden setting, but in twenty first century at Barrow, Suffolk, the age-old story was given a rather different twist with the aid of three alpacas. Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar spent most of their days quietly munching grass in the idyllic gardens of The Rectory under the watchful eye of Father Peter Macleod Miller. In a truly Christian manner they shared their pasturage with two donkeys, a handful of sheep, some rather upmarket hens and an obstreperous goat called Margaret. However, come Christmas they threw aside both their South American roots and their quiet retirement and made the journey to the nearby ancient pilgrimage town of Bury St Edmunds. Here they took on the role of kingly camels in the ‘Living Nativity’ performance that drew in the surrounding parishes and the people of Bury St Edmunds. In a makeshift stable, in the otherwise commercial Christmas market, the ecumenical menagerie created an oasis of gentle lowing, bleating and clucking amongst the buying and selling. Palm Sunday again saw them lured away from their Garden of Eden into the wider world, to add a uniquely cross-continental view of the Christian story. Their normally quiet months of retirement were not however without their upsets. One summer’s day, in the long recess between public appearances, Melchior was found lying stiff and motionless in the rectory garden. A local, retired, vet was called, whose practice used to be in Scotland. Seeing the immediacy of the emergency, he called for whisky, and with great care he slipped the amber liquid down Melchior’s throat. Apparently, in the remoter wilds of Scotland fifty or sixty years ago, whisky was sometimes the only readily available medicine, and was often used with great effect. Certainly the alpaca staged a miraculous recovery and never looked back. Fortunately, Melchior and his supporting cast are not from a teetotal sect.

ARMADILLO

In his 1607 Historie of Four Footed Beastes, the English cleric Edward Topsell recorded that the merchantmen and citizens of London kept armadillos (then known as ‘the Guinean Beast’) and fed them on garden earthworms. Perhaps inspired by this precedent, the Victorian painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti decided that he too would have a pair of armadillos in his garden at Cheyne Walk, London. Convinced that the creatures were harmless to all, he allowed them the full freedom of the garden, where they proceeded to disabuse him of this notion by creating a trail of destruction. Although Rossetti’s own garden appears by then to have had little worth destroying – much already having been eaten by the wombats, raccoon and peacocks – his long-suffering neighbours still clung to some horticultural remnants, and it was to these that the armadillos turned their attention. Armadillos are constructed with excavation in mind. Short stout legs, strong claws, long tapered bodies, and armour plating, enable them to rapidly transform flower beds and lawn into a series of trenches in their search for insect and plant titbits.

As Harry Dunn, Rossetti’s artistic assistant, recalled, ‘Now and then our neighbour’s garden would be found to have large heaps of earth thrown up, and some of his choicest plants lying waste over the beds. This was the work of the armadillos’. One even managed to tunnel through to the floor of a neighbouring basement kitchen. When the hysteria subsided, the cook was heard to exclaim ‘If it isn’t the Devil, there is no knowing what it is’. In desperation Rossetti’s neighbour attempted to poison the beasts with beef saturated with prussic acid, but after an absence of three months, the armadillos suddenly re-appeared. Looking sadly mangy and ‘out at the elbows’ the armadillos had (literally) gone underground in an attempt to avoid early death, and lived for several months on grubs and beetles in relative retirement. Unfortunately they did not appear to have learnt their lesson, and were soon wreaking havoc again through the gardens of Cheyne Walk. Fortunately for Rossetti’s neighbours he was made to see horticultural sense, and the armadillos were eventually handed over to the London Zoological Gardens. Rossetti’s fascination with animals had commenced in childhood with visits to this zoological establishment, which had inspired him to ‘adopt’ a dormouse and a ‘hedgehog of unpredictable behaviour’. It was lucky for all on Cheyne Walk that Rossetti’s penchant for an elephant to replace the armadillo was never fulfilled, although a much longed for wombat did eventually join the merry gardening throng (and can be found under W).

ASSAPANICK

On 26 July 1788 William Thornton, American physician and architect of the U.S. Capitol, wrote the following to Dr John Coakley Lettsom (1744–1815), English amateur botanist.

‘I have sent you four assapanick or flying squirrels and four ground squirrels. The flying squirrels are a family, male and female, with two young ones; the young are very easily tamed; the ladies here have them running all over them, and carry them in their pockets or bosoms, with a small collar of leather round their necks, and a little chain. They do not bite, but soon grow familiar. The old ones and ground squirrels are more difficult, but may, by constantly handling them in gloves, be tamed. You may keep the old, male and female, of the flying variety, and one of each sort of the ground, to breed.’

Lettsom took his correspondent at his word and installed the squirrels in his large Surrey garden as a delight to his visitors, friends and family. Here they joined his tortoises, pyramidal bee-houses, and the collection of mangle-worzels that this eccentric man was attempting to introduce into England. The assapanick were apparently a success in their new home and word spread of these charming and hardy pets. Fifty years later the fellows of the Zoological Society were recording that there was no creature ‘more graceful, or one better fitted for a lady’s pet’. Its diminutive size, the singularity of its form, the expression of its physiognomy, the vivacity of its motions, and the gentleness of its disposition all combine to render it one of the most interesting as well as one of the most beautiful’. President Theodore Roosevelt also took to the assapanick, continuing the tradition set by Dr Lettsom by allowing the creatures run of the house and gardens.

AXOLOTL

Not content with admiring his father’s Victorian crocodile pond (see C for Crocodile), the young Harry Boyle at Eller How in the Lake District kept axolotl, a type of salamander. Looking back in his later years he recalled the wonders of watching these strange amphibians seemingly turn from fish to reptiles, changing colours, looks and habit as they moved through the garden. Now he thought, he had them safe in the pond when lo and behold the next day they had all turned white and were scuttling about the bushes in the garden, forever getting lost and having to be found. According to his wife and biographer the axolotl were his cherished pets. Each were named and each tamed, although how one tames a free-ranging axolotl is a mystery.

BABOON

Unlike their counterparts in early zoos and travelling shows, animals in private gardens and collections were rarely subjected to the unreliable actions of the public. However, the unfortunate ‘Man Tyger’ which formed part of the small royal collection in the eighteenth century appears to have created an exception in the normally polite reactions of the upper-class visitors to the establishment. On sighting strangers he would ‘heave anything within his reach’ at them, and they would in turn ‘heave’ it back. Perhaps more dexterous than his human opponents he would apparently catch anything flung at him. His dexterousness took another turn when women approached as he was lecherous to a ‘surprising degree’ and would, in the words of polite contemporaries, ‘make motions’ of his desires’. His youth was taken as an excuse for such indecorous behaviour, although whether he grew out of it is not recorded. An older and less sexually indiscreet baboon in the same royal collection also had the unfortunate habit of ‘heaving’ various objects at passers-by. Included within the list of his weapons were stones, stools, bowls, and even a canon shot of nine pounds in weight, the last having killed a cabin boy during the sea journey over. Baboons apparently do not make good cruise companions. Royal hospitality seemed to have improved his manners slightly, and this older baboon would, at times, sit on a stool rather than throwing it. Both baboons were reported as behaving with actions ‘nearly approaching to the human species’, although as this included throwing objects, fighting and masturbating it seems to reflect poorly on eighteenth century London society. Lechery is a theme in the history of baboons in close contact with humans, as a specimen at Chester was recorded by the eighteenth century naturalist Thomas Pennant as also being excessively libidinous.

BABOON II

In his diary entry for 16 August 1872, the nineteenth century parson-diarist Francis Kilvert (1849–79) noted that ‘the baboon at Maesllwch Castle’ had full run of both the gardens and castle itself. It had chased his neighbours the Baskervilles, who, in mortal fear, were forced to put spurs to their horses to outrun the baboon as it chased them out of the grounds. When not seeing off visitors, the baboon occupied its time carrying cats to the highest tower and dropping them off. Kilvert firmly believed that it was only a matter of time before it carried out the same deed with the young heir to the castle.

BADGER

The naturalist Frances Pitt (1888–1964) kept a wide variety of animals, mostly native wildlife that had been abandoned or orphaned. Many of these lived in her study or her attic (a most appropriate place for her bats), but Diana and Jemima Muggins, her pet badgers, found a home in her garden. Badgers taken as adults never made satisfactory pets according to Frances, but Diana and Jemima had been rescued as cubs after their mother had been trapped and killed. Fortunately old enough to have been weaned, the six-week-olds arrived hungry, frightened and very angry. It might have been any of these three emotions which caused them to bite into everything within reach on their arrival, but Miss Pitt had the naturalist’s instinct and the proffering of freshly killed rabbit soon satisfied everyone, except the rabbit. The two badgers were found a home in an old pigsty, once so common in country gardens, and fed on a diet of dog biscuits, kitchen scraps, and dead rats (also once common in country gardens). Diana was the tamest of the two and would follow Frances around like a dog, whimpering to be picked up and carried when her short legs became tired, quickly learning to sit up and beg to be carried on these daily outings. As a baby this presented no problems, but dead rats and dog biscuits soon resulted in a considerably weightier burden for Miss Pitt. When out in the garden the badgers would play with the dogs; a retriever, a terrier, and a spaniel named Geff (sic.) with whom Diana would roll on the ground, chase, snort, and run in circles, before collapsing in an exhausted heap. Strangers made the sisters nervous and Diana would hide under Frances Pitt’s skirts, or if she was indoors when they called, under the furniture, from where she was very difficult to extract. From her sub-furnishings den she would sally forth only to offers of cake or thin bread and butter, but once alone with the family Diana would sit comfortably on the armchairs. The outside world still called to Diana and Jemima’s hearts however, and their walks around the garden and down the lane must have stirred a longing for freedom. One summer’s evening Diana slipped her lead and disappeared into the shrubbery. From the shrubbery to the wilderness is a short journey, whether horticulturally or literally, and Diana was soon living wild in the woods again. Taking sympathy on the remaining sister, Frances Pitt took Jemima to her native Shropshire woods and let her free. Badgers were obviously once relatively common pets, as the Amateur Menagerie Club (of whom Frances was a member) declared that there were few of its members who did not keep a badger or otter.

BEAR

When Dr John Coakley Lettsom moved to Camberwell (Surrey) in 1779 it was, according to the parish records, a parish plagued by caterpillars, hedgehogs and sparrows. Dr Lettsom’s arrival at his especially commissioned house, Grove Hill, added an air of exoticism to the parish’s burdens with his collection of flying squirrels, a great white American owl, and an escaping bear. Primarily a physician, plant collector and botanist, Lettsom exchanged plants and seeds with his contacts throughout England, Europe, America, India and the East Indies. Amongst these were the famous William Curtis, founder of Curtis’ Botanical Magazine