Bear Garden

“ Finally, among the Alleyn papers of Dulwich College is an interesting bill, or advertisement, of an afternoon's performance at the Bear Garden:
To-morrow being Thursday shall be seen at the Bear Garden on the Bankside a great match played by the gamesters of Essex, who hath challenged all comers whatsoever to play five dogs at the single bear for five pounds, and also to weary a bull dead at the stake; and for your better content [you] shall have pleasant sport with the horse and ape and whipping of the blind bear. ”

“ The Hope, on the Bankside, in Southwarke, commonly called the Bear Garden, a playhouse for stage-337plays on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and for the baiting of Bears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the stage being made to take up and down when they please. ”

“ It looked like a herd of cattle had stamped the earth, only the tracks were bear tracks. Little ones no longer than a child's hand, and larger, up to huge tracks a foot long and almost as wide. Many were old, but some were fresh. This little spot smelled of bear so strongly that it reminded me of the bear pen in the Bronx Park Zoological Garden. I had been keen for sight of bear trails and scent of bear fur, but this was a little too much. I thought it was too much because the place was lonely and dark and absolutely silent. I went on down to the gully that ran down the middle of the canyon. ”

“ Godfrie’s Bears, by command of Thomas Pride, then High Sheriff of Surrey, were then shot to death on Saturday, the 9th of February, 1655, by a company of soldiers. A few years later, after the Restoration, the Bear Garden, was renamed, and continued giving exhibitions until 1691. In an advertisement, dated 1682, the Hope is still styled by its old name. This paragraph, which appeared in the Loyal Protestant, must refer to some new building, or perhaps the old name was still in use. ”

“ Soon after this date the "royal sport of bulls, bears, and dogs" was moved to Hockley-in-the-hole, Clerkenwell, where, as the advertisements inform us, at "His Majesty's Bear Garden" the baiting of animals was to be frequently seen. [566] Strype, in his Survey of London, thus describes Bear Garden Alley on the Bankside:341
Bear Alley runs into Maiden Lane. ”

“ There are green walks between Yew hedges and flower borders, Beech hedges, and a long green tunnel—the Allée Verte—so named in remembrance of a bower-walk in an old family place, no longer in existence. There are nooks and corners, and a grand, well-shaded tennis-lawn, and crown of all, there is the “Fantaisie”! This is a tiny plantation in the field—I mean the Park—date 1874, connected with the garden by a turf walk, with a breadth of flowers and young evergreen trees intermixed, on either hand. Here all my most favourite flowers grow in wild profusion. ”

“ Tree seeds sprout where the grass is killed, and these seedlings in turn produce trees with long limbs reaching into the park. These shade and smother more grass and thus advance the forest another limb's length. Slowly but surely the park is diminished.
Struggling trees may sometimes obtain a place in advance of the others or a start in the centre of the park, and thus hasten the death of the park and speed the triumph of the trees. A mere incident may shorten the life of a park. A grizzly bear that I followed one day, paused on a dry point in a park to dig out some mice. ”

“ Beneath the overhanging verdure, around and upon the mossy rocks, the ever-present twinflowers open their delicate petals and sweeten the air, and from clumps of coarse grass rise cones of minute white blossoms, the bear-grass, one of the most curious of the mountain flowers. This ranger knows the common names of nearly all the plants, and at every turn new varieties spring up. He stops to gather each kind of bloom until we have a great bouquet—a potpourri of all the floral beauty of the multitudes that people our path. ”

“ There was not enough wind even to rustle the leaves overhead. The park stretched down the slope from where I lay, shadowless, until it reached the deep, dark wood which surrounded it about half-a-mile away, and the many-leaved wood itself seemed motionless in the still, summer air. The only sound that broke the silence was the murmur of a little brook which wandered round the bend of the neighbouring garden hedge. As I lay in the chequered shadow, lulled by the stillness of the scene and the musical murmur of the rippling stream, dreamy thoughts and fancies passed through my mind. ”

“ The bear dens are next to be seen, near a duck-pond, upon which were swimming hundreds of ducks. There are four polar bears housed near here. Passing the wapiti and moose yards, we come to a large aviary, outside which is a monument to Darwin. More than 100,000 pairs of birds are annually bought and sold in these Gardens.
Next in order is a large children’s playground, replete with swings for their amusement. There is a very picturesque rockery for wild sheep and aurochs, and American bison enclosures backed with rockwork. ”

“ The various evergreens, many of which are rare with us,—delicate and beautiful specimens of the larch, arbor-vitæ, ball-spruce, and fir-balsam, from a few inches to many feet in height,—lined its sides, in some places like a long front yard, springing up from the smooth grass-plots which uninterruptedly border it, and are made fertile by its wash; while it was but a step on either hand to the grim, untrodden wilderness, whose tangled labyrinth of living, fallen, and decaying trees only the deer and moose, the bear and wolf can easily penetrate. ”

“ Through the long grass on the lawn little twisted paths, like sheep tracks, wound back and forth under the fine old elms, from which a rain of bronze leaves fell slowly and ceaselessly in the wind. Nearer at hand, on the upper terrace, a few roses were blooming; and when I passed between two marble urns on the right of the house, my feet crushed a garden of “simples” such as our grandmothers used to grow.
As I stepped on the porch I heard a child’s voice on the lawn, and a moment afterwards a small boy, driving a cow, appeared under the two cedars at the end of the avenue. ”

“ Through the wooded land the soil appeared to be simply a tangle of fallen and decayed tree-trunks grown over with thick moss of another variety, in which you sank ankle deep, while dark perilous looking holes yawned on every side, making you feel that if once you went in you might never appear again. Sometimes our way led along a fine bear trail on a sandy terrace where the wood growth was small and scattered, and where the walking was smooth, and even as that of a city street, but much softer and pleasanter. ”

“ When it revived, the joyful parents, with their brood fairly launched on the journey of life, proudly led them down the cottage hill, through the garden, and along an osage orange hedge into the cherry orchard. These charming birds even enter towns and villages, where the gardens are of good size and guns are forbidden, sometimes going several miles to feed, and returning every evening to their roosts in ivy or brushy trees and shrubs. ”

“ Chief among the wooded areas of this mighty inland empire of crag and stream is the Bear Tooth Forest, containing nearly eight hundred thousand acres of rock and trees, whose seat of administration is Bear Tooth Springs, the small town in which our young traveler found himself. ”

“ You enter an unpaved yard, in fact after a few days’ rain you may call it a garden, for grass grows up without any other encouragement, just as it does in all Eastern gardens. Before you stands a wooden house, shrouded with vine and overshadowed by a fig-tree; there is yet another fig-tree in the garden, and a walnut-tree and another sitting-out-under tree, which finds that sufficient avocation, and therefore yields no fruit of any kind. ”

“ Then, just outside the garden are big bushes of brilliant berberries, that turn in autumn, red, like a regiment of English soldiers in peace-time, and that were so highly esteemed for the making of “conserves,” in the Middle Ages.
How pretty such old-fashioned gardens are—very tiny, very dainty, and meant to be very formal and trim. They seem little worlds all of their own; little centres of human care and affection, and outside all appears a wilderness in comparison. ”

“ Sometimes I passed the ford and wandered up the pasture, a vast park-like meadow, broken by clumps of oaks and chestnuts, trees that in that country mark good soil as poplars indicate a poor site. Or I might venture into the forest and amid the undergrowth of sweet-scented myrtle and dogwood and honeysuckle—and other shrubs less healthy—I would put up a deer or come on the tracks of a bear ”

“ A most comfortably clad set of plantigrade creatures, as fond, most of them, of fruits as they are of flesh. No creatures are more amusing in zoological gardens to children, who wonder at their climbing powers. Who is so heartless as not to have pitied the roving polar bear, caged, on a sultry July day, in a small paddock with a puddle, and wandering about restlessly in his few feet of ground, as the well-dressed mob lounged to hear the military band performing in the Regent's Park Zoological [Pg 57] Gardens? Even young bears have an adult kind of look about them. ”

“ A single petunia plant against a background of foliage is worth a dozen similar plants in the center of the lawn.... The open-centered yard may be a picture; the promiscuously planted yard may be a nursery or a forest. A little color scattered in here and there puts a finish to the picture. A dash of color gives spirit and character to the brook or pond, to the ledge of rocks, to the old stump, or to the pile of rubbish." The flower garden, if there is one, should be at one side of the residence or at the rear, "for it is not allowable to spoil a good lawn even with flowers." ”

“ Once, slumping through, I looked down ten feet, into a dark and cavernous region, and saw the stem of a spruce, on whose top I stood, as on a mass of coarse basket-work, fully nine inches in diameter at the ground. These holes were bears’ dens, and the bears were even then at home. This was the sort of garden I made my way over, for an eighth of a mile, at the risk, it is true, of treading on some of the plants, not seeing any path through it,—certainly the most treacherous and porous country I ever traveled. ”

“ Earle when she says, “I am all for reducing lawns and turf except for paths in small gardens;” and elsewhere we are advised to have red gravel or a bricked or tiled square to sit on while we admire a wide border of flowers all round the edge. I should not like such a garden as this at all, and could never feel at home in it. Fancy no kindly turf to throw one’s self down upon in the noonday heat, with a book in hand and a tree overhead, or if not a tree, a parasol. ”

“ Owls hoot in these woods after twilight and at dawn. Great boulders lie in confusion in the perpetual shadows of the trees, and in the caverns between and under them are dens of porcupines, foxes, and skunks.
Not until we reached the torrent at the foot of the west ridge was the wagon abandoned and the horse tethered. The forest at this point consists mainly of poplars, birches, and oaks. The bear-slayer led the way through them, and his more muscular satellite followed at his heels, cutting saplings in order to form a path for our descent with the bear. ”

“ On one side of the garden runs a narrow lane, losing itself presently in the meadows, a quieter backwater of the quiet village life, in whose old walls and deep-browed hedgerows many birds find lodging. On the other side, beyond a row of picturesque old sheds and ruinous old buildings, with brown roofs of thatch and crowns of thick-growing ivy, stretch the bird-haunted aisles of an orchard. ”

“ A part of the arboretum is more particularly devoted to this kind of decoration, and will eventually form a very wild wood and wild garden, where the Poet’s Narcissus may be found among Sweet Briers, Lilacs, and many kinds of fragrant–flowering shrubs and vigorous perennials. While carrying out the scheme of wild gardening, pure and simple, that is to say, the naturalisation of foreign hardy plants, opportunity has been taken to establish beautiful native kinds where they do not happen to be present in sufficient abundance. ”

“ But you did not go so far if you wanted to find where the Little Brother to the Bear lived.
As you followed the wood road you came suddenly to a little clearing, with a brook and a wild meadow and a ledge all covered with ferns. The road twisted about here, as a road always does in going by a pretty place, as if it were turning back for another look. There was a little old house under the ledge wherein some shy, silent children lived; and this was the only dwelling of man on the three-mile road. ”

“ It follows closely a brook of considerable size which is one long series of pools, falls, and dashing rapids. The forest on both sides of the brook bed is of high growth and generous proportions. Every few moments a vista view of Bear Mountain charmed us as we wound down the steep incline, while behind and above us the ledges of Paugus, gleaming with ice and capped by snow, showed at intervals through the trees. ”

“ You know as well as I the curious bowery garden beyond the lower window of the parlour, stocked with riches and sweets of all kinds, rows of bee-hives standing in the sun, roses and raspberries growing side by side. The breaths of thyme and balm, lavender and myrtle, were always in that parlour. You know the sheep-fold and the paddock, the old tree over the west gable where the owl made his nest—the owl that used to come and sit on our school-room windowsill and hoot at night. ”