the manuscripts of john evelyn's 'elysium britannicum

The Garden History Society

The Manuscripts of John Evelyn's 'Elysium Britannicum'Author(s): Frances HarrisSource: Garden History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Winter, 1997), pp. 131-137Published by: The Garden History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587184 .

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FRANCES HARRIS

THE MANUSCRIPTS OF JOHN EVELYN'S 'ELYSIUM

BRITANNICUM'

John Evelyn's great unfinished compendium of horticultural lore and practice, the 'Elysium Britannicum', has been called 'the most important unpublished document in English garden history'.1 Although first heralded in I658, by far the greater part of it remains not only unpublished, but little known in detail.2 There are good reasons for this: the manuscript has been in a poor state of preservation and relatively inaccessible, and is very much a working draft which presents as many difficulties to a modem editor as it once did to its author.

Plans to publish a transcript of the main text do now appear to be well advanced,3 but in the meantime John Evelyn's archive, of which it is a part, has been acquired by the British Library and is for the first time being systematically arranged and catalogued.4 In the course of this work, it has become clear that one cannot accurately refer to the 'Elysium Britannicum' as a single document; the manuscripts relating to it in fact fall into four distinct groups, deriving from different stages in its compilation. Pending the proposed publication of the main text and a full catalogue of the whole Evelyn archive, it might be useful to garden historians to have an interim description of all of these manuscripts, how they relate to each other and what they reveal of the successive stages of Evelyn's work.

Evelyn's first mention in print of his intention to compile a major work on gardening comes in the dedicatory epistle to his translation of Nicolas de Bonnefons' Le jardinier franfois, published in December I658; although he states there that the design had been conceived 'long since'.5 In I659 a synopsis of the proposed work was circulated amongst Samuel Hartlib's circle and various responses were received, the most significant being those of Henry Oldenburg6 and John Beale. The latter, in a long and important letter, suggested the addition of six or seven chapters, including one on 'the riches, beauty, wonders, plenty, & delight of a Garden festivall', another on the 'transmutation of flowers' and another on 'Mounts, Prospects Precipices and Caves'.7 No copy of Evelyn's first synopsis appears to survive, but 'to avoyde the infinite copying of some of my curious friends',8 he had another printed, this time with Beale's suggested additions incorporated, some of them almost verbatim. There is a copy of this amongst the papers extracted from Evelyn's archive by the nineteenth-century collector William Upcott.9 It is also that published in

The British Library, Department of Manuscripts, Great Russell Street, London WCIB 3DG



GARDEN HISTORY 25:2

successive nineteenth-century editions of the diary and correspondence, and thus it has become the most accessible and familiar version.10

It shows a work divided into three books; the first, in twelve chapters, covers such basic matters as the definition of a garden, the elements, the seasons, soil, compost and generation; the second, in twenty-one chapters, deals with the content of a garden: the layout, plants, ornaments and features, and specialized areas such as the orchard, physic garden and vineyard. The last chapter is in the form of a 'Kalendarium Hortense', a month-by-month account of the gardener's duties. The third book, in eight chapters, turns to related intellectual and cultural matters such as the gardener's laboratory, decorative floral arts, a horticultural library, hortulan entertainments, and a description of famous gardens ancient and modem. Early in I660 Evelyn circulated this synopsis more widely, to a group of Oxford experts" and to Sir Thomas Browne amongst others. Although the work itself was evidently well advanced at this stage, it does not seem to have reached the form in which we now have it. In his long covering letter to Browne, which has become the best known description of the project, Evelyn explained:

though I have drawne it in rude sheets, almost every chapter rudely, yet I cannot say to have finished anything tollerably, farther than chapter xi. lib 2, and those which are so compleated are yet so written that I can at pleasure inserte whatsoever shall come to hand to obelize [sic], correct, improve, and adorne it.12

Immediately after this Evelyn produced yet another version of the synopsis, this time inserting (as Book II, chapter I8) a new section on 'stupendious and wonderful plants' which he had mentioned in his letter to Browne. There is a copy of this version of the synopsis bound as a table of contents into the front of the main Elysium manuscript. It shows the work still in three books, but the second now has twenty-four chapters and the third ten.

Evelyn continued to work on the project intensively for several more years, though much interrupted by Royal Society and other commissions.13 In fact he extracted the whole of the 'Kalendarium Hortense' for inclusion in his treatise on forestry, Sylva, the first publication officially sponsored by the Royal Society. Sylva was a compilation not dissimilar to the 'Elysium' and its popularity and influence must have encouraged him. Yet by I668 he was admitting privately that it might be beyond his resources to treat the subject of horticulture so comprehensively, though he felt that he was 'engag'd too far to retreate with honour'. In fact the project was now so widely known that its imminent publication was referred to in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.14

In I670 work again came to a standstill when Evelyn was commissioned by the king to write the official history of the Dutch war. Once this uncongenial task had been officially discontinued in 1674 he returned to the 'Elysium', collecting and collating fresh material and occasionally quarrying it for short publications. But with his advancing years the sheer quantity of material he had amassed became increasingly daunting to him. To John Beale he admitted in I679:

When again I consider into what an ocean I am plunged, how much I have written and collected for above these twenty years upon this fruitful and inexhaustible subject ... not yet fully digested to my mind, and what insuperable pains it will require to insert the (daily increasing) particulars into what I have already in some measure prepared, and which must

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ELYSIUM BRITANNICUM 133

of necessity be done by my own hand, I am almost out of hope, that I shall ever have strength and leisure to bring it to maturity.15

Despite further prompting from the Royal Society in 1684 to finish his great work, 'a book very much desired',16 the last of Evelyn's publications derived from the 'Elysium' was to be Acetaria: a Discourse of Sallets, published in I699 when he was almost eighty. It was prefaced by one final version of the synopsis, now headed 'The Plan of a Royal Garden: Describing, and Shewing the Amplitude, and Extent of that part of Georgicks, which belongs to Horticulture', and including a new chapter in the third book on 'garden burial'. Evelyn then went on to explain why he never had been able, and now never would be able, to bring the project to completion:

... this is that which abortives the perfection of the most glorious and useful undertakings; the unsatiable coveting to exhaust all that should or can be said upon every head ... There ought to be as many hands, and subsidiaries to such a design (and those masters too) as there are distinct parts of the whole ... that those who have the means and courage, may (tho' they do not undertake the whole) finish a part at least, and in time unite their labours into one intire, compleat, and consummate work indeed. 7

What remains now of all this activity? In the first place there is the main manuscript, MS 45 in the random sequence of numeration placed on the individual components of the archive while it was on deposit at Christ Church. This clearly began as the autograph fair copy which Evelyn intended, in the optimistic early years of the project, to send to the press; it even includes the double-page opening of beautifully drawn garden implements from which the engraver was to work. And it must date from the early i66os, since it represents a stage further than the manuscript described to Browne in January I660 and predates the extraction of the 'Kalendarium Hortense' in I663. However, many later insertions have been added, both as interlineations and marginal notes and on separate slips, and the crucial point to note is that less than half of this manuscript as it originally existed now survives. We know from the page references added by Evelyn to the copy of the printed synopsis which he placed at the beginning as a table of contents, that this text originally ran to at least 9oo pages, possibly to more than I,000. But of these, pages 25-36 of Book I, on soil and compost, and everything after page 342, that is from Book II, chapter I8, 'On stupendious plants', onwards, is now missing; this includes the whole of Book III.

The losses from Books I and II are probably to be accounted for by their removal for piecemeal publication; as a rule the manuscripts which Evelyn actually sent to press are not preserved in his archive. The missing pages of Book I may be connected with his Philosophical Discourse of Earth, delivered to the Royal Society in 1675 and published the following year.18 Much of Book II, chapter I9, on 'Olitary and Esculant Plants' and 'Sallets' was published in Acetaria. The section of chapter 20 on wine- making is probably to be identified with the 'Directions concerning Making and Ordering of Wines', which Evelyn added to The English Vineyard Vindicated, published on behalf of John Rose in i666;19 and of course the 'Kalendarium Hortense', which formed the last chapter of Book II, was published in 1664 as an appendix to Sylva.

Book III probably became separated from the rest at this time, but the reasons for its total loss can only be conjectured, since no part of it was ever published. It is tempting to suspect Upcott of removing it, but since, as we shall see, he preserved the other papers relating to the 'Elysium' which he extracted fom the archive, it is unlikely that he would have failed to keep such an important addition to them. On the evidence



GARDEN HISTORY 25:2

of successive versions of the synopsis, it was Book III which underwent the most changes, the order of the chapters being substantially altered and several new ones added. The present state of some of the subsiduary manuscripts (described below), which have been badly damaged by damp, suggests the possibility that Book III, already in a fragmentary state, suffered even more and was discarded for this reason. But probably we shall never know.

All is not lost, however. It is likely that much of the content of one of the longest chapters of Book III, that on 'The Gardiners Elaboratory, and of distilling, and extracting of Waters, Spirits, Essences, Salts, Resuscitation of Plants, with other rare Experiments, and an account of their Vertues', was derived from another of Evelyn's projects of the early i66os. In Paris in I65I he had attended the chemistry lectures of Nicolas Le Fevre, and when these were published in I660, he undertook a translation of them, the first portion of which survives in his archive as MS 6I. Le Fevre's work included detailed instructions for carrying out particular processes, many of them involving plants. It is at this point that the manuscript of Evelyn's translation becomes fragmentary. As he was also working intensively on the 'Elysium' at the time, it seems likely that he decided to incorporate this matter into it. It is suggestive that the few pages of experiments on vegetable matter which do survive in MS 6i include a sketch plan and elevation of a garden laboratory and its equipment which almost certainly represents that in Evelyn's garden at Sayes Court.20

In the course of his reading and correspondence, as we have seen, Evelyn was constantly discovering more items of information to add to the 'Elysium'. Some he inserted into the manuscript itself as marginalia or on separate slips or leaves, connected to the main text by a variety of symbols of which the simplest is an asterisk. Others he noted down in the order he came upon them, using a miscellaneous collection of scrap paper which included the address leaves of letters written to himself and his father-in- law, Sir Richard Browne, in the I64os and i65os. Some of these notes are no more than brief jottings from published works; others take the form of extended passages or lists running to a page or more. Also included are a number of original letters of advice or information, including several from John Beale21 and one long report from the Earl of Sandwich written while he was ambassador in Spain.22 There are occasional cross- references to Evelyn's other commonplace books, for example to 'an Engine or water- worke', in 'my Booke of Receipts Mechanical: paragraph 68',23 and there is a list of 'Bookes which [have] bin consulted for this worke'.24

Evelyn went systematically through all these leaves, annotating each with abbreviated marginal notes of subject matter or the book and chapter number, in arabic numerals, to which they belonged in the main manuscript (e.g. '2-6' for Book II, chapter 6). Over 150 of these leaves, paginated rather erratically by Evelyn himself, make up what is now the second 'volume' of the 'Elysium' manuscript. This is numbered MS 38 in the Christ Church sequence, and has been misleadingly lettered on the spine (probably in the nineteenth century), 'Miscellaneous MSS. relating to Sylva &c'.

At the beginning of MS 45 is the key which links these two volumes: a list of the books and chapters of the 'Elysium', each with a sequence of page numbers after it, headed 'A Table leading to the notes in the loose sheetes, to be inserted into the Elysium Britannicum'. The page numbers refer to those added by Evelyn to MS 38. And Evelyn adds the additional reminder to himself or perhaps to some amanuensis

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ELYSIUM BRITANNICUM

or future editor, 'Note, that in the loose papers to which those figures referr: the first stands for the book, the second for the Chapter: as 2-8 in the margent: that is the 2d book: chap 8. viz Transplants, & so of the rest'. A few numbered pages are missing from MS 38 and several of these are to be found in Upcott's collection: evidence that the volume must have been bound in its present form at some time after his connection with the archive. The present binding matches that of MS 45, but both are in a very worn state and MS 38 is also badly affected by damp.

The systematic collection which makes up MS 38 probably dates from the late I66os and I67os. But the process of accumulation was a lifelong one and Evelyn changed his system of annotation several times. In the spidery hand of extreme old age he has made further additions to the prefatory matter of MS 45 concerning these later notes: 'There is a packett of other loose papers markd [symbol in the form of a pentacle in a circle] which are also referrd to these Chapters ... Note that the Chapters are in all XLVII which serve for direction to which these common places & Collections refer'. This refers to the continuous sequence of Roman numerals up to XLVII which he later added to the table of contents in MS 45, in addition to the three earlier arabic sequences for each book. And there is the further note, 'For more lose papers upon the subiect se Rolls of loose notes & paper with these marks [symbols of a double circle, flower, pentacle in a circle]'.

At least some of this latter material still survives, though in a poor state of preservation, amongst the bundles of loose leaves and scraps in one of the several boxes of unnumbered miscellaneous material in the archive. All are marked with the pentacle, flower or double-circle symbols; some are also annotated with the chapter numbers in Roman numerals, while others are simply headed 'Hortus', 'HE', or 's'. The key to these abbreviations is to be found in a sheet, once included in these bundles but later extracted by Upcott.25 It is headed: 'In this Bundle or Roll ... is Containd the Excerpts & Collections, casualy gatherd out of several authors &c and intended to have been transcribed into Adversaria as applicable to several subjects, especially those here mention'd'. The list of abbreviations which follows includes 's', referring to Sylva (for which Evelyn continued to collect material for successive enlarged editions until the end of his life) and 'H. E', identifying insertions 'in what I begun & Intended about Gardning & Horticulture under the title of Elysium or Paradise-Imperfect'.

The last of the manuscript collections relating to the 'Elysium Britannicum' is British Library Add. MS I5950, fols 144-74: a group of thirty leaves extracted apparently at random by Upcott from the two groups just described, and acquired by the British Museum when his collections were sold at auction in I846. It includes what must originally have been a wrapper to one bundle, annotated by Evelyn, 'Materia substrata for Hortus & Elys', together with some of the missing leaves from MS 38 (identifiable from Evelyn's pagination and from the arabic book and chapter numbers in the margins), and some leaves from the bundle marked with the circled pentacle symbol. Amongst this material are a description and measurement of pall- malls in Paris, sent by Sir Richard Browne in I66o for insertion in Chapter xvIII (fol. 146); a recipe 'To make the perfect oyl called Balsamina', for insertion in Chapter xxxvII on the gardener's laboratory (fol. 148); 'A Note of Garden-Tooles' dated I8 Nov. I670, for insertion in Chapter xIII (fol. I58); and two designs for parterres for inclusion in Chapter xvII (fols I73-74).26

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GARDEN HISTORY 25:2

The important point to emerge from this complexity of surviving manuscripts is that although Book III of the original text as written in the i66os is apparently lost beyond recovery, the collections of additional material assembled by Evelyn contain many items intended for insertion in it. Together with other evidence, such as the summary description of ancient and modem gardens included in his letter to Sir Thomas Browne of 28 January I660, and the possibility that he drew on Le Fevre's work for another chapter, they enable us to reconstruct a significant amount, not just of the contents of the missing third book, but of what Evelyn's vast design would have been like if he had been able to complete it.

REFERENCES

I. Douglas D. C. Chambers, 'Elysium Britannicum not printed neere ready &c': the Elysium Britannicum in the Correspondence of John Evelyn', in Elysium Britannicum and I7th Century European Gardening, ed. J. Wolsche- Bulmahn and T. O'Malley (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, forthcoming); I am grateful to Professor Chambers for allowing me to see a copy of his paper in advance of publication.

2. The contents of the main manuscript are summarized in Sandra Raphael, 'John Evelyn's Elysium Britannicum', The Garden: Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, November I977, pp. 455-6I. The Dumbarton Oaks collection cited in the preceding note will also add greatly to our knowledge of it.

3. By Dr John Ingram, Department of Special Collections, Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, who has generously deposited a copy of his transcript at the British Library.

4. For a summary account, see T. Hofmann, J. Winterkom, F. Harris and H. Kelliher, 'John Evelyn's Archive at the British Library', The Book Collector, 44 (I995), pp. I47-209.

5. The Miscellaneous Writings of John Evelyn, ed. William Upcott (I825), pp. 97-98; Geoffrey Keynes, John Evelyn: a Study in Bibliophily (Oxford, 1968), pp. 46-47; see also Michael Hunter, 'John Evelyn in the i65os: a Virtuoso in Quest of a Role', in Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 94.

6. British Library Add. MS I5948, fols 71-74: Paris, 13 September-25 October 1659; cf. Evelyn MS 38, fol. 75, for a further letter from Oldenburg. See also Chambers, 'Elysium Britannicum ...'.

7. Sheffield University Library, Hartlib Papers (UMI Electronic edn, 1995), 67/22/IA: Beale to Evelyn, 30 September I659 (copy).

8. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. G. Keynes (1931), VI, p. 300: Evelyn to Browne, 28 January [I659/60] (misdated I657/58 by Keynes; the correct date is in the copy in Evelyn's letterbook, Evelyn MS 39a).

9. BL Add. MS 15950, fol. I43. Io. E.g., Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and

Writings of John Evelyn, ed. W. Bray (London, 1819), II, pp. 90-9I; and Diary and Correspondence

of John Evelyn, ed. W. Bray (London, I859; hereafter cited as Bray), II, pp. 394-95.

11. Their reply of 20 January 1659[/60], is inserted in the front of Evelyn MS 45; it is quoted in Peter H. Goodchild, "No Phantasticall Utopia, but a Reall Place": John Evelyn, John Beale and Backbury Hill, Herefordshire', Garden History, 19:2 (1991), pp. 105-06, but misdated 20 January I65[8/]59.

12. Browne, Works, vi, pp. 301-02: 28 January [I659/60]. I3. He asked Dr Wilkins that he should not be

expected to accept too many Royal Society commissions until he had finished the 'Elysium' and asked for the Society's help; Bray, III, pp. 130-3I: 17 February I660/6i (misdated i659/ 60).

I4. Evelyn MS 39a: Evelyn to Thomas Lloyd, I6 October I668; Margaret Denny, 'The Early Program of the Royal Society and John Evelyn', Modem Language Quarterly, I (I940), pp. 490-9I.

I5. Bray, II, p. 392: Evelyn to Beale, II July I679.

I6. Denny, 'The Early Progam .. .', p. 49I. I7. The latest edition of this is Acetaria. a

Discourse of Sallets, ed. Christopher Driver (Totnes, 1996), p. 8.

i8. Keynes, Evelyn, pp. 208-09. I9. Keynes, Evelyn, pp. I80-81. 20. Evelyn MS 61; Le Fevre's work was

published as Traicte de la Chymie in Paris, I660; see also F. Sherwood Taylor, 'The Chemical Studies of John Evelyn', Annals of Science, viii (1952), pp. 285, 290-92.

21. Letters from John Beale to Evelyn between 1662 and 1670 are inserted in Evelyn MS 38 as fols 66-74", 79, 126, I33-35.

22. Evelyn MS 38, fols 99-II4, is a long report, much faded by damp, in Sandwich's hand. Dated Madrid, I2 June I668, it is in response to Evelyn's request of 13 December I667 and was acknowledged by him on 21 August 1668 (see Bray, III, pp. 201, 205).

23. Evelyn MS 38, fol. 6; cf. Evelyn MS 44: 'A Booke of Promiscuous Notes & Observations concerning Husbandry, Building &c', which includes notes about, and an illustration of an engine for raising water.

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ELYSIUM BRITANNICUM

24. Evelyn MS 38, fol. I51. 25. BL Add. MS I5950, fol. 80. 26. Some stray items extracted by Upcott are

preserved elsewhere. See Royal Institute of British Architects, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection C-F (Farborough, I972), p. II3, under 'Evelyn', for a plan of a parterre inscribed by Upcott, 'Sketched by John Evelyn of Wotton for "Elysium Britannicum" .. .' (I am grateful to Prudence

Leith-Ross for this reference). Item 157 in Catalogue No. 41 (I996), of Sophie Dupre of Calne, Wilts., an excerpt in Evelyn's hand concerning the golden apples of the garden of the Hesperides, perhaps originally came from this source; the garden of the Hesperides is mentioned in his catalogue of gardens ancient and modem in his letter to Sir Thomas Browne of 28 January i660.

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the manuscripts of john evelyn's 'elysium britannicum

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