THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Makch 9, 1858. 
350 
order that lie may live on labourer’s wages, and keep 
a respectable coat on liis back. You may find him 
long past the midnight hour poring over books, bought 
or borrowed. It is not the pleasures of knowledge 
alone that thus prompt him; but hopes of apply¬ 
ing it-visions of a Sir Joseph Paxton buoy up his 
spirits to exertion. He gets into what is called a good 
place; his character from every employer being the 
very highest. The very moment of success becomes 
the period of danger. Sudden contrasts are always 
dangerous. Had he gone into a comfortable cottage, 
his increased means would have given an increase to 
the comforts he chiefly valued. But he ives a le 
housekeeper’s and steward s table; and, very i e y, 
with the exception of a small bed-room, without fire, 
has no other place to retire to, to study or plan. 
Many even there contrive to maintain the simple 
habits of their boyhood ; but it cannot be questioned 
that there is something very attractive m getting the 
legs ensconced under such a mahogany table, and m 
such nice-dressed, well-behaved company. Whatever 
the gardener is doing, however particular, he must 
leave it and go to his meals at the minute ; and, more 
than that, he must clean and dress, too, unless the 
place is one in which he is not expected to do any 
manual labour. The wearing of extra clothes—if this 
dressing must go on- - forms a serious item m his 
wages. He finds, with all his grandeur, he is not so 
well off as he expected to be. Habits gam upon him, 
and study is exchanged for a careless perusal of the 
newspaper. How many with bright hopes here stand 
still, that otherwise might have progressed! Others 
there are that, wishing to get rid of habits that they 
find getting too powerful,leave the place, that they may 
leave these habits behind them ; and thus master and 
servant part, that otherwise might have been comfort¬ 
able in their mutual relations for years. 
But this is not all. The gardener, if he loves Ins 
flowers, can hardly help loving everything that is beau¬ 
tiful. He must have rather a strange heart if he had no 
admiration to bestow on the sweetest of all flowers his 
sisters of humanity. We do not think there is any¬ 
thing very extraordinary, under certain circumstances, 
in those who love flowers, as most ladies do, just cast¬ 
ing a thought athwart the person who rears them. 
There is nothing unnatural in this. Wb may have 
doubts of the prudence of deciding that a bachelor 
gardener only shall be employed; that prudence would 
only be carried out if the gardener was kept, as much 
as possible, to his loves of the flowers. Bring him to 
your steward’s room among all your young, nicely- 
dressed and agreeable female servants, and need you 
be surprised that, now and then, things transpire that 
do more than disturb your equanimity. 
Some of our best gardeners have got so used to 
bacherlorism, that when they have houses they occupy 
them in solitary grandeur, as respects female com¬ 
panionship. I can well enter into, and make excuses 
for, such hermitism. It does not absolutely place all 
parties in the position of a Tantalus. A man con¬ 
ceived a dislike to the whole sex: he had one son, 
and he was brought up to his fifteenth year without 
ever having seen a woman ; so goes the tale. Unfor¬ 
tunately, when father and son were out one day they 
saw some females. The inquisitive bump of the boy 
was soon at play, and his father told him they were 
goslings, and very dangerous. But it was of no use; 
the boy could not sleep, and got into a fever; his whole 
cry was for the goslings. The application is obvious. 
Let gardeners have the chance of marrying, or refrain¬ 
ing from marrying, as they will. The more intelligent 
and moral they are, they will be the more prudent in 
taking such a serious step. 
Human happiness is not to be measured so much 
by abundance of this world’s means as by content¬ 
ment ; and that contentment is not easily gained when 
we are acting in opposition, and not in unison, to 
natural emotions. There have lately been a series of 
letters in the Times, discussing the question whether 
a young fellow might venture to marry on £300 a-year. 
The writers evidently place most of their anticipated 
happiness on realising a certain social position, a cer¬ 
tain allowance of cigars, a certain style of living, and 
giving a certain number of dull, insipid parties. It 
requires little penetration to perceive, that they are 
too much in love with themselves ever to realise much 
of the sweets of a united home. We hardly know 
Punch's drift in stereotyping this folly. He pre¬ 
sents us with a fine strapping dandy carrying home 
the joint from the baker, and a beautiful boy running 
by his side with the foaming tankard of porter. Who 
that knows anything of family happiness, but would say 
that that fine fellow would cut up that joint with a 
pleasure, which your position-hunting fast-man never 
could know. The evil at the present day is, in such 
cases, not so much an excess of prudence, as a thorough 
stereotyped selfishness. 
Hoes it require a moralist to lift the veil to point 
to the results? Gardeners, as a body, would not be 
alarmed at marrying on a third of that magical sum. 
The Duke of Cambridge has spoken out plainly, and 
said it was not desirable that soldiers should marry. 
But as yet we have not been presented with the incon¬ 
sistency in a barrack-room, of the men sitting at dinner 
on one side of the table, and fine-dressed young women 
on the other. 
I have no means of knowing the exact proportion 
in which gardeners are reckoned as in-door and out¬ 
door servants in England, but we frequently meet 
with proofs, that the in-door system exerts a consider¬ 
able influence over the whole, as exemplified in our 
professional literature. I almost feel ashamed to send 
a gardener’s newspaper to any one not a gardener, 
for if a gentleman advertises for a gardener, or a gar¬ 
dener for a place, there is always something about 
the partner of the gardener, if married, and the olive 
plants that God has placed around their table, as so 
much, and so many in the way of “ encumbrances.” 
And there can be no doubt, that many an honourable 
man and first-rate gardener has left his place, without 
any given definite reason, and, perhaps, is now making 
a fortune, by turning up the virgin soil of Australia 
or Canada, who would never have left England, but 
that he could not brook the implied, if not open, dis¬ 
approbation expressed, when an additional young 
stranger came home. 
I would be the last to wish to interfere with the 
rights of employers deciding in what manner they 
should be served, but when a country is thus deprived 
of some of its best men, I may be permitted to 
inquire if all is perfectly right in this our model state. 
In Scotland, gardeners are, at least, not behind their 
brethren in England; they are quite as much, or 
rather more, respected by their employers ; and if not 
better paid, they occupy, on the whole, a higher social 
j)osition, and are more respected by their neighbours, 
because, in general, they remain long enough in one 
place to be thoroughly known. But I hardly know 
one instance, from the Tweed to Eatherland, where a 
gardener is an in-door servant. And in most of the 
places of any note that have come under my observa¬ 
tion, not only are there good commodious dwelling- 
houses, but they are generally so placed, as to be 
near to the garden, and yet so out of the way of the 
principal walks, that if there should be a family, the 
gardener’s employer may hardly ever see a child of 
the gardener’s, without going on purpose to see them. 
Is there any valid reason, why, in numbers of cases. 
