PARADISE ROW 29 



the plague. He says : " We turned back with 

 great affright, I for my part in great disorder." 



On the land side the Garden of the Apothe- 

 caries was bounded by the road, which until 

 lately was Paradise Row (now Royal Hospital 

 Road). 



It is difficult to give with any certainty the 

 origin of its name. Mr. Reginald Blunt in 

 his book, Paradise Row, containing many 

 interesting biographies of its residents, states 

 that he has not been able to find any " clue 

 to its evolution." But it must have come from 

 one of two sources. 



The word "paradise" is used, as everyone 

 knows, for an enclosed pleasure garden or 

 park. John Parkinson, Apothecary to Charles I 

 and author of a Latin herbal and book on 

 gardens, in merry mood, translates his name 

 Paradisus-in-sole, " Park-in-sun." 



In the 1 6th century Sir Thomas More made 

 a great paradise in Chelsea. There Erasmus 

 and Holbein were among his guests. Heywood 

 describes it as : " Wonderfully charming, both 

 from the advantages of its site, . . . and 

 also for its own beauty ; it was crowned with 

 almost perpetual verdure ; it had flowering 

 shrubs, and the branches of fruit trees inter- 

 woven in so beautiful a manner that it appeared 

 like a tapestry woven by Nature herself." 

 Gardens in those days were works of art. 1 



1 The late Dr. Frank Payne, in a copy of a paper read by him 

 before the Bibliographical Society, on the early German herbals, 

 and which he kindly gave the writer, mentions that he found, in 

 the British Museum,^the signature of Sir Thomas More in one 

 of the copies of the Herbarius, printed at Mainz in 1484. The 

 book may have been a present from Holbein or Erasmus to their 

 hospitable host ! 



