Garden Hermits

The engraving at the top of this article is by Thomas Wright and was published in his book Universal Architecture in 1755. While the skull and crossbones over the door does look a bit sinister, this hermit's cell is more appealing than many of the hermitages which were erected in English landscape gardens during the second half on the 18th century.

Like most elements of the Romantic Movement, the fashion for garden hermitages was rooted in literature, especially the conclusion of John Milton's poem Il Penseroso:
"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heav'n doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live"

I didn't understand why Il Penseroso was so influential on gardens until I read its companion poem L'Allegro. Both poems were written in the early 1630's and Milton intended for them to be read together. L'Allegro is about the sensual pleasures of country life, especially for the privileged who could also enjoy evenings in town; it is like a portrait of the 18th century gentry, even though it was written a century earlier.

Il Penseroso is about the pleasures of a thoughtful life. It is difficult for me to think of melancholy as a pleasure, but I totally understand the somber pleasures of beautiful church services:
"There let the pealing organ blow
To the full voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes."

Though Milton's poems, I can see that garden hermitages were not entirely frivolous; they were an attempt to balance the sensual pleasures of an arcadian dream with Christianity's exaltation of the contemplative life.

I began this article by stating that while the skull and crossbones over the door of the hermitage in Wright's engraving is a bit sinister, the building is more appealing than many of the hermitages which were erected in landscape gardens. The hermitage in Hagley park seems to have been quite typical. Joseph Heeley visited Hagley in 1775 and described the hermitage as "being well adapted to the scenery about it, being rudely formed with clumps of wood, and jagged old roots, jambed together, and its interstaces simply filled with moss: the floor is neatly paved with small pebbles, and a matted couch goes around it." As in many garden hermitages, the concluding lines of Milton's Il Penseroso"were inscribed on the walls of this room.