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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

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a production of iHeartRadio.

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Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to

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a history talk about a Gilded Age

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property, and there was part about

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how back in the nineteenth century, guests

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would have approached this cottage, which

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was of course really a mansion on

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this winding road that would give little

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glimpses of the estate through the trees,

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and I thought, you know who. I've been meaning

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to do an episode of the podcast

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about that British

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garden designer who worked on all those

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famous estates that our old coworker

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Christopher told me about that guy

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that had a really funny name. I

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could not remember the guy's name beyond

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the fact that it struck me as funny in that moment,

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to be I was not in England, I was in Massachusetts.

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But there were parallels to the

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way this property was being described in what

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this guy's garden designs were like. So

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when I got home, I googled

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the following British

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garden designer with a funny name. This

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seemed very straightforward to me,

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Google did not come back with

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Lancelot Capability Brown, which

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is who I had been thinking of. Instead,

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Google thought that British

1:30

garden designer with a funny name must

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mean Gertrude Jicyl, and

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I got totally sidetracked on Gertrude

1:38

Jicyl. And that's today's episode. So maybe

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we'll come back to Capability Brown someday,

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not today though today. Gertrude Jicel

1:44

Gertrude Time. Gertrude

1:46

Jicel was born on November twenty ninth,

1:49

eighteen forty three. She was

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the fifth of seven children born to Edward

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Joseph Hill Jicel and Julia Hammersley.

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This was a well established upper middle

1:58

class family lived very comfortably

2:01

thanks to an assortment of properties and investments

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and inheritances. Gertrude's

2:06

father was a captain in the British infantry

2:08

unit known as the Grenadier Guards, but

2:10

he retired early because of his health.

2:13

This family is a great example of how

2:16

upper middle class could

2:19

mean having a lot of money,

2:22

So much money you didn't have to work and things

2:24

were fine. Yeah, and you had a hall

2:26

staff in a very big house. When

2:29

Gertrude was born the family lived in London,

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they regularly visited the green park

2:34

next to Buckingham Palace. She

2:36

later said that her earliest clearest

2:38

memories of London were of the grass

2:41

and the flowers, including

2:43

the dandelions, which she really

2:45

loved, but which her nurse told her

2:48

were nasty things. I have feelings

2:50

you can talk about behind the scenes. Let's

2:52

do it. In eighteen forty eight, when

2:54

Gertrude was five, the family moved

2:56

to an estate called Bramley House in Surrey,

2:59

and the children did a lot of rambling

3:02

and exploring the countryside. Because

3:04

Gertrude's only sister was seven years

3:06

older than she was, her closest companions

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were her brothers, too older

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and too younger, and she was particularly

3:13

close to her younger brother, Herbert. She

3:16

later wrote quote, it was therefore natural

3:18

that I should be more of a boy than a girl in

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my ideas and activities, delighting

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to go up trees and to play cricket and

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take wasps nests after dark, and

3:27

do dreadful deeds with gunpowder, and all

3:30

the boy sort of things. She

3:32

was independent and high spirited, and

3:34

her father called her his little oddity.

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As an adult, she would simultaneously

3:39

defy and follow conventions about

3:41

things like gender and propriety,

3:43

like climbing up ladders while

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wearing a billowing dress as a male

3:48

gardener down below held it steady with

3:50

his back to her. The children

3:52

were educated at home with governesses

3:54

from Germany and France, and then

3:56

the boys eventually went off to boarding schools.

4:00

Gertrude also spent a little time

4:02

at a boarding school for girls that was opened

4:04

in the area, but her parents withdrew

4:06

her from that school pretty quickly

4:09

for reasons that aren't really documented. They

4:11

framed her brief time at this school

4:14

as a failed experiment. I'm

4:16

wildly curious. Once

4:20

all of her brothers were away at school, Gertrude

4:23

spent a lot of time left to her own devices.

4:26

Her parents were also both musicians,

4:28

and her father had a particular interest in

4:30

science. Gertrude helped him

4:32

in his workshop, tinkering and building things,

4:35

and she learned pretty much anything the workers

4:37

around her home and the rest of Bramley would

4:39

teach her, including thatching, wall

4:41

building, and how to shoe a horse.

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The family also hosted a lot of famous

4:46

and influential guests, including Michael

4:48

Faraday and Felix Mendelssohn.

4:51

Growing up in a house full of mostly boys

4:54

and wandering in the woods and tinkering

4:56

in a workshop sounds like it might

4:58

have been a really boisterous existence.

5:01

But Gertrude really hated noise.

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One day when she was young, she came down to breakfast

5:06

without her boots because she had

5:09

thrown them at nightingales that were singing

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outside of her window and keeping her awake. She

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didn't like loud dogs or loud

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children. A nephew later

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described her as having a nervous response

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to noise that was outside her control.

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She also liked her solitude. She

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claimed the garden shed as a personal

5:29

refuge, and she would scatter cinders onto

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the path as she went out to it because

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her father, who also apparently could

5:35

not abide noise, hated the

5:37

sound and feel of walking on them. This

5:40

shifted a little as she got older, though she

5:42

still detested noise and avoided

5:44

children and liked her solitude.

5:47

But as an adult she also had lots

5:49

of friends and took great care in maintaining

5:51

those relationships. A couple

5:53

of years into living at Bramley, Gertrude

5:55

had an almost mystical experience

5:58

looking out a stretch of yellow presses.

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As an adult, she described feeling

6:03

the same sensations while wandering

6:05

in a primrose wood, smelling the fragrance

6:08

of the flowers and feeling the warm

6:10

spring air. Quote when

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I see and feel and hear all this

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for a moment, I am seven years old again,

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and wandering in the fragrant wood, hand

6:19

in hand with the dear God who made

6:21

it, who made the child's mind

6:23

to open wide and receive the enduring

6:26

happiness of the gracious gift. So

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as by direct divine teaching,

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the impression of the simple sweetness

6:33

of the primrose wood sank

6:35

deep into the childish heart and

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laid, as it were, a foundation stone

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of immutable belief that a father

6:43

in heaven who could make all this, could

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make even better if he would when

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the time should come that his children should be

6:49

gathered about him. So it's

6:52

pretty obvious that Gertrude was really

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interested in flowers and gardens and

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nature as a child. She also

6:58

had a fondness for science and music and

7:01

art. In eighteen sixty one, at

7:03

the age of eighteen, she enrolled at the National

7:05

School of Art in the South Kensington district

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of London. One of her classmates

7:10

was Susan Mery Mackenzie, who became a lifelong

7:13

friend. Today this is

7:15

the Royal College of Art and it had been founded

7:17

in eighteen thirty seven as the Government

7:19

School of Design, and its courses

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included a focus on both art and

7:23

design. After enrolling

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at the school, Jiegeles spent her time between

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studying art in London and enjoying

7:30

the countryside in Surrey, and

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in both places she was always really active

7:35

and really busy. She also

7:37

started traveling, including a trip to the

7:39

Mediterranean with Charles and and Mary

7:41

Newton in eighteen sixty three. Charles

7:44

was an archaeologist and keeper of Greek

7:46

and Roman antiquities at the British Museum,

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and Mary was an artist. Gertrude

7:51

and Mary's friendship was sadly cut short

7:53

when Mary died of measles in eighteen sixty

7:55

six at the age of thirty three. During

7:59

this trip, Ortrude really fell in

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love with the gardens and plant life around

8:03

the Mediterranean, and she started collecting

8:05

samples to send back home and try to grow

8:07

there. Of course, this is a

8:10

fairly common practice at this point, even

8:12

though it could be destructive to the ecosystems

8:14

that the plants were being taken from, and

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it's something that Jicyle continued to do as

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botanists and horticulturists became

8:21

more vocally critical of the practice in

8:23

later decades. Yeah, obviously,

8:26

some of these plants also can be

8:28

in damative Yeah, in

8:31

other places they're introduced to. In

8:33

eighteen sixty five, Jekle was exhibiting her

8:35

artwork at places like the Royal Academy

8:38

and the Society of Female Artists.

8:40

This artwork has not been the subject

8:43

of as much study as her gardens,

8:45

though, because a lot of it was in family

8:48

collections and largely out of the

8:50

public eye until the nineteen nineties

8:52

or later. Like, I read

8:54

a biography of her that was written prior

8:56

to this that was like, well, we don't know

8:58

what any of her art looks like, and

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then I found scans of a lot of

9:04

it. A lot of her

9:06

study of art included copying

9:09

other artists' master works, and she was

9:11

reportedly a very good copyist. Some

9:14

of her copies still exist and are

9:16

in the collection of the Godalming

9:18

Museum. There were also

9:20

times when her instructors used her

9:22

artwork as a reference or as an example

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for other students. Art critic

9:27

and polymath John Ruskin described

9:29

her painting Yahoo driving Furiously

9:31

as quote very wonderful and interesting

9:34

and for a while that was all anybody had

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to go on. Did not know

9:38

what it looked like, but now you can see a picture

9:41

of it online. Jicel was always

9:43

very fond of cats, and there is a painting

9:46

of her cat Thomas as the character

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of Puss and Boots in the collection of

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the Godalming Museum as well. Some

9:53

of her work is also in the collection of

9:55

the Surrey History Center. Jicyle

9:58

finished her painting of Tom as the Cat in

10:00

eighteen sixty five, and that same

10:03

year her sister Caroline known as Carrie,

10:05

got married. The departure

10:07

of her only sister from the household meant

10:09

that Gertrude was expected to take up a bigger

10:12

share of the domestic work, and

10:14

this seems to have been really hard

10:16

for her. The Jeagles were a close

10:18

knit family, but Gertrude also

10:20

had interests of her own. She was

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more interested in studying art than trying

10:24

to run a household, and her sister's

10:27

marriage also emphasized that the expectation

10:29

was for Gertrude, who was aged twenty

10:32

two at this point to marry as well.

10:35

She seems to have spent more of her time in London

10:37

after her sister's marriage, perhaps

10:39

to try to get away from those expectations.

10:42

In eighteen sixty eight, the Jakle family moved

10:45

from Bramley House in Surrey to Wargrave

10:48

Hill in Berkshire. This

10:50

was a property that had been passed down through the

10:52

family and it had become vacant after

10:54

the death of a tenant. Even

10:56

though Gertrude had not been living at

10:58

Bramley House full time, she was

11:01

really sad to leave it. She

11:03

had fallen in love with the landscape of Surrey

11:05

and she just wasn't as fond

11:08

of Berkshire. However,

11:10

this move did give her a new creative

11:12

outlet. She was tasked with redecorating

11:15

the house, with her parents seeing it

11:17

as a way to encourage her creative side,

11:20

and this involved everything from sourcing furniture

11:23

and decorative objects to designing

11:25

draperies and wall coverings for the house

11:27

herself. We'll get in some more

11:29

on that after a sponsor break.

11:41

We said earlier that Gertrude Jeekles's

11:43

family was comfortable and well

11:45

respected comfortable

11:48

means pretty rich, though, This

11:50

meant that there were a lot of prominent

11:52

visitors to their home at Wargrave Hill,

11:55

people who took notice of the work that she

11:57

had done on its interior design.

12:00

Soon other people were asking

12:03

her for her help and redecorating their

12:05

own homes. This included

12:07

Hugh Grovener, first Duke of Westminster,

12:09

who asked Jekyll to decorate Eton

12:12

Hall, which had been newly rebuilt

12:14

under architect Alfred Waterhouse. The

12:16

Duke wrote to her that quote, I don't see

12:19

how without your advice it can ever

12:21

be satisfactorily accomplished. This

12:24

was paid work, which meant that it had

12:26

to be handled delicately. It

12:29

was not considered appropriate for a woman

12:31

of Jicyll's economic class to work

12:33

or to present herself as having a profession,

12:36

and she got around this by describing herself

12:39

as an amateur, which also meant that she

12:41

was paid much less than a man of comparable

12:43

ability would have been paid. It

12:45

also helped that much of this work was done for

12:47

friends and acquaintances who heard about her

12:49

work by word of mouth or just by

12:52

visiting one of the homes she had decorated. Other

12:55

clients for her interior decoration and

12:57

design work included Queen Victoria's

12:59

daughter, Princess Louise, and artists

13:01

Frederick Layton and Hercules Brabazon.

13:04

Brabazon was another of Jekle's lifelong

13:07

friends, and through the eighteen sixties

13:09

and seventies she made connections to a

13:11

lot of other British artists and

13:13

artisans. This included William

13:16

Morris, who she visited for the first time in eighteen

13:18

sixty nine. Morris

13:20

was a social reformer, a poet, an

13:22

artist, and a designer whose work included

13:25

textiles and wallpapers. Morris

13:27

was a key figure in the Arts and crafts

13:29

movement in Britain. This was

13:31

an esthetic and reform movement that developed

13:34

in response to the Industrial Revolution and

13:36

a perception that mechanization and industrialization

13:39

had led to a proliferation of unattractive

13:42

and badly made goods. The

13:44

Arts and crafts movement focused on making things

13:46

by hand and doing it well. Many

13:49

in the movement also advocated for the idea

13:52

of the unity of the arts, that there really

13:54

was no distinction between fine art

13:56

and decorative art. It all required

13:59

skill and care, hair and craftsmanship,

14:01

and all of it brought beauty into the world.

14:04

Yeah, there's a big focus on creating should

14:06

be joyful and it all matters.

14:09

Uh. That choked me up to say.

14:13

Gertrude Jiegel had a lot of connections

14:15

to the arts and crafts movement, and these ideas

14:18

had a big influence on her work.

14:21

She incorporated a lot of handcrafted

14:23

pieces into her interior designs,

14:25

and she learned to make a lot

14:27

of different things herself. She

14:29

had a particular focus on painting and

14:31

embroidery, but she also learned skills

14:33

like metalwork, wood carving, gilding,

14:37

inlaying, and embossing, and she

14:39

practiced all of this in a workshop she set

14:41

up for herself at home. She was

14:43

just continually learning how to

14:45

do new things and then finding

14:48

ways to incorporate any new skill

14:50

that she learned into her other creative

14:52

work. She also made an ongoing

14:54

study of the world around her and how

14:57

people were using decorative objects

14:59

and archetecl ure and design. Some

15:02

of this was actually difficult because

15:04

of her eyesight. She had myopia,

15:07

so nearby objects were clear, but

15:09

objects farther away were blurry, and

15:11

she wore heavy eyeglasses with steel

15:13

rims to correct her vision as much as

15:16

possible. Even though

15:18

her close up vision was clearer, doing

15:20

fine detail work caused her a lot of

15:22

eye stream, and the changes

15:24

in her vision were also progressive, so this

15:26

was something that she was often very worried

15:29

about. In addition to all her

15:31

study and design work, Jicyle continued

15:33

to travel, including a trip through France,

15:36

Italy and Algiers that lasted for

15:38

more than five months. She

15:40

set out in September of eighteen seventy

15:42

two when she was twenty nine. And

15:44

Algiers she was once again struck

15:47

by the plant life, particularly these

15:49

large architectural plants that were used

15:51

as focal points in some of the gardens.

15:54

She continued to make things as

15:56

she traveled, particularly during the

15:58

coldest part of the winter months, when

16:00

she and her companions were spending more

16:02

of their time indoors, and she painted

16:05

and sketched the people and places she

16:07

saw. Jigel had always

16:09

been interested in plants and gardening,

16:12

and she started to focus more on that after

16:14

returning from this trip. At

16:16

some point she had started redesigning

16:18

the gardens around Wargrave Manor. She

16:21

was also working with the plants that she had gathered,

16:23

both from her trips to other countries and

16:26

from the countryside around where she lived,

16:28

propagating them, breeding them, and working

16:31

to develop improved cultivars.

16:33

In eighteen seventy five, Jigell visited

16:35

Irish gardener and journalist William

16:37

Robinson at his office. Robinson

16:40

had published books on gardening, including

16:43

Alpine Flowers for Gardens and The

16:45

Wild Garden. He had also

16:47

established a weekly journal called The

16:50

Garden four years before. At

16:52

this point, Gertrude was interested in

16:54

gardening and garden design, and she wanted

16:56

to learn more. Her visit with

16:59

Robinson marked the start of a friendship that

17:01

would turn into a professional relationship

17:03

six years later, when Jeekles started

17:05

contributing articles of her own to

17:07

The Garden. In eighteen seventy

17:10

six, Gertrude's father, Edward died,

17:13

Her mother, Julia, decided to return

17:15

to Surrey, although not to Bramley

17:17

House. For one, it wasn't available,

17:19

but even if it had been, the family

17:21

was a lot smaller now. In addition

17:23

to their father's death, Gertrude's three

17:26

other siblings had all gotten married and moved

17:28

into homes of their own. Julia

17:30

decided to have a new house built to her

17:32

specifications, and she commissioned

17:35

architect John James Stevenson. While

17:37

the house was being built, the family lived

17:39

in a house in Bramley Village. Their

17:42

new home, known as Munstead House, was

17:44

in Munstead Heath, and Gertrude

17:47

designed the gardens. She had

17:49

already started to think of gardens

17:51

as works of art, and now

17:53

she works toward applying everything

17:55

she had learned about art and design

17:58

so far in her life to her designs

18:00

for the gardens. This was

18:03

something that developed over the course of Jekyll's

18:05

career as a landscape designer and architect.

18:07

She really learned by doing observing

18:10

the plants and keeping careful notes on how

18:12

they grew and what they did. Year after year.

18:15

She incorporated color theory into her

18:17

designs, including the colors of flowers

18:19

and of their foliage. The colors

18:22

of her gardens typically moved from cool

18:24

to warm and back again, and they were

18:26

intentionally planted to change with the seasons,

18:29

with the plant's life cycles being a part

18:31

of how the garden looked and grew. So,

18:33

for example, if a flowering plant typically

18:35

withered and died back after it bloomed,

18:38

she might plant it alongside ferns

18:40

that would conceal those fading stems,

18:43

or she might plan for potted plants to

18:45

fill in the spaces left by plants that died

18:47

back later in the season. One

18:50

of the garden elements that Jingle became

18:52

really known for was her herbaceous

18:55

borders. These are long stretches

18:57

of beds that ran along things like walls

19:00

or paths, typically not much

19:02

wider than the gardener's arms reach,

19:05

to make things easier to maintain. She

19:08

of course did not invent the idea

19:10

of herbaceous borders. People

19:12

had been planting things alongside walls

19:14

and paths for as long as they had been gardening.

19:17

But she did put a lot of thought

19:19

into the use of color and texture

19:22

in these borders and the sizes

19:24

and shapes of the plants. It wasn't

19:26

just about the flowers looking pretty. She

19:29

used color, space, and texture

19:31

to create a sense of perspective and

19:33

distance, the way a painter can use

19:35

light and color and shadow to

19:38

create a sense of depth and dimension

19:40

in a painting. Sometimes she used

19:42

a lot of different flowering plants

19:45

to get the effect she was looking for here, so,

19:47

especially when it came to very large

19:49

gardens with a lot of borders, this

19:52

was something that required a whole team of gardeners

19:54

to maintain. Within a few

19:56

years, Jekyl was applying this philosophy

19:59

of gardening to property of her own. She

20:02

purchased about six hectares that's

20:04

almost fifteen acres of Munstead

20:06

Wood across the street from her mother's home.

20:08

She made that purchase in eighteen eighty two. She

20:11

knew that when her mother died, her brother Herbert

20:14

would be the one inheriting the house, and

20:16

since he had recently gotten married, he

20:18

would be moving in with his family. Gertrude

20:21

was not married. There's really no record

20:23

of her ever having a romantic relationship

20:26

with anyone, at least not in material

20:28

that's publicly available, so

20:30

she needed to plan for a house of her

20:32

own. She didn't get started

20:34

on the house right away, though, She gardened

20:36

in Munstead Wood, planning around a space

20:39

where a house would eventually go. By

20:41

this point, Jkyl was publishing articles

20:43

about gardening in William Robinson's

20:46

journal, The Garden and in other publications.

20:49

As the changes in her eyesight continued

20:51

to progress, she also became an avid

20:53

photographer, taking pictures of

20:55

the plants end of her gardens. She

20:58

used these as illustrations for her work.

21:01

She developed these pictures herself in her

21:03

own dark room, and it's estimated that

21:05

between eighteen eighty five and eighteen eighty

21:07

eight she took at least nine hundred

21:09

photographs intended for publication.

21:12

That doesn't sound like many when

21:14

we how have phones that have

21:16

cameras on them and we can take nine

21:18

hundred pictures of a cat in a day. These

21:22

were like film pictures that

21:24

were developed and

21:27

prepared. In eighteen

21:29

eighty nine, Jikell meant architect Edwin

21:31

Lutians, who, at the age of twenty, was

21:34

just starting his career. They

21:36

meant for the first time when Jicel was having

21:38

tea with a neighbor, Henry Mangles.

21:40

Jikkel and Lutiens became friends

21:42

and collaborators for years. There

21:45

was both a partnership and a mentoring

21:47

relationship, with the much younger Lutians

21:49

referring to Jicyl as ant bumps,

21:52

and Jikyl connecting him to potential

21:54

clients for his architecture work. In

21:57

eighteen ninety one, at the age of forty eight,

21:59

Jikel went to an eye doctor because she was

22:01

concerned about the changes in her eyesight

22:03

and she was also having a lot of headaches. The

22:06

doctor advised her to give up

22:09

things like painting and embroidery

22:11

that required close up detail

22:13

work. She did continue

22:15

to do all of these things for the rest of her

22:17

life, and she was an avid reader,

22:20

but she had to limit her time

22:22

with this kind of close up focused

22:24

work. She instead became increasingly

22:27

dedicated to gardening rather than to

22:29

other arts and crafts, and her

22:32

words quote, when I was young, I was hoping

22:34

to be a painter, but to my lifelong regret,

22:36

I was obliged to abandon all hope

22:38

of this on account of my extreme

22:41

and always progressive myopia.

22:44

We're going to talk about more about her gardening

22:46

and her collaborations with architect Edwin

22:48

Lutiens after a sponsor break.

23:00

Gertrude Jeekle's first home at

23:02

Munstead Wood was known as the Hut

23:04

and it was designed by Edwin Ludiens

23:07

in eighteen ninety four. This

23:09

was a single story home with whitewashed

23:11

walls and an oak beam roof covered

23:14

in simple tile, and she seems to have genuinely

23:16

loved it. At the same time,

23:18

though, this was always meant to be a temporary

23:21

home, and when her mother died the

23:23

next year, getting into a bigger

23:25

house became more urgent. The

23:28

construction site for this bigger

23:30

house, which she called Munstead Wood,

23:32

was inside of the hut, just basically right

23:34

next to it, and she was fascinated by the whole

23:37

building process. This Tudor

23:39

inspired home was finished in eighteen

23:41

ninety seven, and the house and everything

23:44

in it were inspired by the principles of

23:46

the arts and crafts movement. It

23:48

was made from local stone and timbers

23:50

and built by local crafts people, and she

23:52

meant for it to look as though it had grown

23:55

from the gardens, and it was built

23:57

to suit her needs and interests. There

23:59

were seven bedrooms, including her room,

24:02

guest rooms and bedrooms for her staff,

24:04

as well as a dark room, a workshop, a

24:06

writing room, and a flower shop meaning

24:08

a workshop for flowers. By

24:11

the time Munsteadwood was finished, Jikyle

24:13

had become widely recognized for

24:15

her work in gardening and horticulture.

24:18

In eighteen ninety seven, she was awarded the

24:20

Victoria Medal of Honor by the Royal

24:22

Horticultural Society. This was Britain's

24:25

highest horticultural award and

24:27

she was the first woman to be so honored.

24:30

In eighteen ninety nine, she published her first

24:32

book, Wood and Garden Notes,

24:34

and thoughts practical and critical of

24:36

a working amateur. About

24:38

a third of this book was expanded from a

24:40

column called Notes from Garden and Woodland

24:43

that Jicele had published in The Guardian over

24:45

the previous few years. Most of

24:47

the photographs were ones that she took herself

24:50

in her own gardens. The

24:52

book was based on her own experiences

24:55

at Munsteadwood and it was full

24:57

of practical advice for gardeners.

25:00

The first twelve chapters are arranged

25:02

by the months of the year, covering flowers

25:05

that bloom during those months, as well

25:07

as garden tasks that need to be

25:10

handled by the season. After

25:12

the month by month chapters are ones for

25:14

things like large and small gardens,

25:16

beginning and learning, colors,

25:19

scents, weeds, and other more

25:21

general topics. There's a chapter

25:23

titled the Worship of False Gods

25:26

and she discusses how the popularity

25:29

of gardening had led to a big focus

25:31

on what she calls florists flowers,

25:34

that is, the kinds of flowers that have

25:36

their own societies and shows,

25:39

like tulips, dahlia's and chrysanthemums.

25:42

But quote I do most strongly

25:45

urge that beauty of the highest

25:47

class should be the aim and not

25:49

anything of the nature of fashion

25:51

or fancy, and that every effort

25:54

should be made towards the raising, rather

25:56

than lowering of the standard of taste.

26:00

Jigell wrote this book in the midst of

26:02

a huge division in the world of British

26:04

gardening, sometimes described

26:06

as hard or soft, or the

26:08

formal school versus the free school,

26:11

broadly speaking, on the free school

26:13

side was William Robinson, who Jicel

26:15

wrote for, who thought that gardens should be

26:17

wild and that the plants should be the

26:19

focus. And on the formal side

26:22

were John's Setting and Reginald Blomfield,

26:24

who thought that a garden is an extension

26:26

of the house and should follow the principles

26:28

of architecture and rules of design that

26:31

a house should follow, with the garden

26:33

itself more formal and tightly defined.

26:36

Again, broadly speaking, the free

26:38

school had a focus on flowering plants,

26:40

while the formal school emphasized features

26:43

like topiaries and neatly trimmed hedges.

26:46

Jigel was really somewhere in between

26:48

these two schools. She definitely

26:50

thought the house and the garden should

26:52

work together, and this was really a big

26:54

part of what drove her ongoing

26:57

collaborations with Edwin Lutien's

27:00

her gardens, though, often had very carefully

27:02

planned elements that had a very

27:05

free or almost wild look

27:07

about them, like imagine the English

27:09

country garden that just seems to have

27:11

a profusion of all kinds of different flowering

27:14

plants. But this was in a

27:16

structure of more formally

27:19

defined paths and features.

27:22

These approaches to gardening were

27:24

hotly debated through the eighteen nineties,

27:27

and Jicyl wrote in eighteen ninety six quote

27:29

within the last few years, just

27:31

such another war of controversy has raged

27:34

between the exponents of formal and

27:36

the free styles of gardening. And again

27:38

it is to be regretted that it has taken a

27:40

somewhat bitter and personal tone.

27:43

The formal army has hurled javelins,

27:45

poisoned with the damning epithet vulgar.

27:48

The free has responded with asseguyes

27:51

imbued with an equally irritating ignorant

27:54

Both are right and both are wrong.

27:57

Throughout all of this, Gertrude Jekyl

27:59

was busy over the

28:01

course of her career as a landscape architect

28:04

and garden designer. She designed or consulted

28:06

on at least four hundred gardens

28:09

about one hundred of them as collaborations

28:11

with Edward Lutien's. Their work

28:13

together was hugely influential

28:16

within the arts and crafts movement and

28:18

in setting trends of what English

28:21

houses and gardens were supposed

28:23

to look like. She was writing books

28:25

and articles, including a gardening

28:28

book for children in nineteen oh two,

28:30

which she did in spite of her general

28:32

dislike of how loud they were. In

28:35

nineteen oh four she also published a

28:37

book called Old West Surrey,

28:39

documenting what life had been like in that part

28:41

of England in the second half of the nineteenth

28:44

century. She was also

28:46

a really avid observer of life

28:48

and a collector of ordinary

28:50

objects related to country life.

28:53

She donated a lot of this collection

28:55

to the Surrey Archaeological Society

28:57

in nineteen oh seven. Nineteen

29:00

oh four, Jikyl did her work almost

29:02

entirely by correspondents. She

29:05

made her last visit to London that year, and

29:07

after that she rarely left home. She

29:10

would write letters with sketches and thorough

29:12

descriptions of the plan, using vellum

29:14

overlays to add her notations to architectural

29:17

plans and other designs.

29:19

In the early twentieth century, Jekle established

29:22

a commercial Plant Nursery at Munsteadwood

29:25

to make sure that she always had

29:27

the plants she would need for a client's designs,

29:30

and to discourage the gardeners who

29:32

would actually be building and maintaining

29:34

those gardens from making substitutions.

29:37

She ran this nursery until nineteen thirty

29:40

two, and she continued working on

29:42

her own breeds of plants during that whole

29:44

time. She was also part

29:46

of the movement for women's suffrage. She

29:49

was elected Vice president of the Godalming

29:51

branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage

29:53

Societies in nineteen oh nine. One

29:56

of her surviving works of embroidery is

29:58

a banner that she made for the society.

30:01

World War One marked a shift in Jeekle's

30:04

life and work. A lot of her writing

30:06

about gardening was meant to be practical

30:09

and accessible to anybody who had a little

30:11

patch of green space to grow things in,

30:13

and some of her design commissions were

30:16

for spaces as small as

30:18

individual window boxes, But

30:20

a lot of her commissions were for the types of

30:23

estates that had a whole gardening

30:25

staff. This included her

30:27

own home at munstead Wood,

30:29

which had a staff of at least

30:31

ten gardeners. The exact

30:34

number is not really clearly documented.

30:36

It also seems like she had some

30:38

critics who just intentionally

30:40

inflated their estimates of how many

30:43

gardeners she was employing

30:45

to make it seem like the things she was

30:47

advocating were totally out of reach. During

30:50

World War One and later the Great Depression,

30:53

people had less money and other

30:55

priorities than paying for garden

30:57

labor. In the wake of a bunch of

30:59

social and economic changes, a lot

31:01

of Britain's stately mansions

31:03

and country estates were also no

31:06

longer occupied or no longer

31:08

employing a giant paid staff.

31:11

Jikle worried that she might have to give up

31:14

munstead Wood, but she got a donation

31:16

from the Garden Club of America that helped

31:18

her keep going. She also started

31:21

keeping chickens during the war, which continued

31:23

after it was over. She planted

31:25

more food crops at munstead Wood, and

31:27

she wrote about how other people might do the

31:29

same in their kitchen gardens. She

31:32

also organized collections of sphagnum

31:34

moss, which was used as a surgical dressing

31:36

because of its antimicrobial and absorptive

31:39

properties. Flowers from

31:41

Jicyl's nursery were sent to the continent

31:43

to be used at burial sites for Allied

31:45

soldiers after the end

31:48

of the war. In nineteen twenty, Edward

31:50

Lytiens convinced Gertrude Jekyl to

31:52

sit for a portrait, something she was

31:54

really reluctant to do. She

31:56

had never really been fond of her body

31:58

or her appearance, to the point that she called

32:00

herself unpaintable. She

32:03

also had so much to do during the day,

32:05

and she just refused to lose any

32:07

daylight hours sitting for a

32:09

portrait, so William Nicholson

32:12

painted her by lamplight in the evenings.

32:15

Nicholson spent some of his time during

32:17

the day painting a still life of her well

32:19

worn men's balmeral boots,

32:22

which she wore for gardening. One

32:24

source that Tracy used in this episode said

32:26

she had acquired these boots all the way back

32:28

in eighteen eighty three, and they

32:30

were definitely well worn. She

32:32

said in a nineteen hundred letter quote,

32:35

no carpenter likes a new plane. No

32:37

house painter likes a new brush. It

32:39

is the same with clothes. The familiar

32:41

ease can only come of use and better

32:43

acquaintance. I suppose no horse

32:46

likes a new collar. I am quite sure

32:48

I do not like new boots. The

32:51

painting of the boots is in the collection of the Tate

32:53

Museum today, and the boots themselves are

32:55

in the collection of the Guildford Museum. The

32:57

portrait is on display in the National port Gallery

33:00

in London. By the time

33:02

this portrait was painted, Jicyl was in

33:04

her late seventies and was spending

33:07

one day each week resting in

33:09

bed. On the advice of a doctor, she

33:11

chose Sunday as her day of rest.

33:14

Her other days were tightly scheduled

33:16

to allow her to both work and recover

33:19

from working. But she was

33:21

generally opposed to various

33:23

labor saving devices that were introduced

33:25

in the early twentieth century that might

33:27

have made her work in the gardens a little less

33:30

tiring. She was

33:32

set in her ways in this aspect.

33:34

She did, however, get a radio

33:37

the year she turned eighty. Jkyl

33:40

was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's

33:42

Viitch Gold Medal in nineteen twenty nine

33:45

for quote persons of any nationality

33:47

who have made an outstanding contribution to

33:50

the advancement and improvement of the science

33:52

and practice of horticulture. In

33:54

nineteen thirty, at the age of eighty six, she

33:57

wrote forty articles for Gardening

33:59

Illustrated, even though she said

34:01

she couldn't see her own handwriting anymore.

34:04

By this point, she was no longer able

34:06

to create huge garden plans, but

34:08

she still took commissions for flower boarders.

34:11

Her doctor ordered rest and perfect

34:14

quiet during her off hours to allow

34:16

herself to continue working. In

34:19

the last summer of her life, Jekles started

34:21

using a wheelchair, which was given to

34:23

her by Edwin Lutiens, and she really

34:25

loved the mobility that she had reclaimed with

34:27

it. Gertrude's brother, Herbert,

34:30

died on September twenty ninth, nineteen thirty

34:32

two. She had been the closest to him

34:34

of her siblings, and they had by this

34:36

point been neighbors for decades.

34:39

It seems like she approached the deaths

34:41

of other family members in a fairly

34:43

stoic way, but Herbert's loss

34:46

was particularly hard. Gertrude

34:48

died a few months later, on December

34:51

eighth, nineteen thirty two, at the age of eighty

34:53

nine. She died in the arms

34:55

of her maid, Florence Hayter, who had

34:57

worked with her since nineteen oh six. Her

35:00

last words were reportedly peace,

35:02

perfect peace in Jesus Christ. Gertrude

35:06

Jiceyl was buried at Buzbridge Church

35:08

near Gadalming. Edwin Lutiens

35:10

designed her grave marker and a family

35:13

monument. The family monument

35:15

describes her and her brother Herbert as quote

35:18

longtime dwellers in their homes at Munstead,

35:20

who passed their rest in the autumn of nineteen

35:22

thirty two. Their joy

35:25

was the work in their hands. Their memorial

35:27

is the beauty which lives after them. Herbert's

35:30

widow, Agnes, was buried with them after she

35:32

died in nineteen thirty seven, and the memorial

35:34

also reads quote also of Agnes

35:37

Jgel, whose spirit ever dwelt in loving

35:39

kindness. Gertrude's individual

35:42

gravestone, also designed by Lutiens,

35:44

reads artist, gardener, craftswoman.

35:47

Jigel remembered four household staff

35:50

members and her will, including Florence

35:52

Hayter, and left the rest of her estate

35:54

to Agnes. The family

35:56

sold most of the estate to raise

35:59

money for the Red Cross relief effort

36:01

during World War II. Many

36:03

of Jekyll's papers and garden designs

36:06

were bought by landscape architect Beatrix

36:08

farrand Farand and her mother

36:10

had visited Jekyl from the United States

36:13

during her lifetime, and Farrand was deeply

36:15

inspired by Jekyll's work. After

36:18

Faran's death, these materials were

36:20

left to the University of California at

36:22

Berkeley. Many of Jekyll's

36:24

notebooks are in the collection of the

36:26

Gottalmy Museum, which also has

36:29

copies of a lot of these materials that

36:31

are in the collection at UC Berkeley. During

36:34

her lifetime, Jekyl published fourteen

36:36

books along with well over one thousand articles.

36:39

She produced six volumes of photo notebooks

36:42

containing roughly two thy one hundred

36:44

images, many intended for use

36:46

in her own publications, and they're

36:48

arranged chronologically, beginning in eighteen

36:50

eighty six and ending in nineteen fourteen

36:53

with Britain's declaration of war on Germany.

36:56

She developed at least thirty strains

36:58

of plants, and she sent sea eds to various

37:00

botanical gardens with the hope that they would

37:02

be preserved. Many of her

37:05

strains no longer survive. Some

37:07

that do include a Columbine known

37:09

as Munstead White Munstead Lavender,

37:12

a love in a miss known as Miss Jicyle,

37:14

and Gertrude Jicylvinca minor. There's

37:17

also an Old World rose named for

37:19

her, but it's named in her honor, not

37:21

one of her breeds. Yeah. I think

37:23

one of the sources that I read said that six

37:26

of her strains still survived out of roughly

37:28

thirty or so that she created. Jicyl

37:31

designed more than four hundred gardens

37:33

during her career. As we've said, most of

37:35

these are in the UK, but some

37:37

are in other parts of Europe. There

37:40

are thirty two gardens associated with

37:42

her on England's National Heritage

37:44

List today, and a few of them

37:47

either were maintained with her

37:49

design or are being restored

37:51

to her design. These include

37:53

the gardens at Munstead, Linda's

37:55

Farn Castle, Hestercombe, and

37:58

the Old manor House at Upton Gray.

38:01

There is one remaining garden

38:03

in the United States of the three that she designed,

38:06

and that's at the Old Glebe House Museum

38:08

in Woodbury, Connecticut, which commissioned

38:10

the garden from her in nineteen twenty six.

38:13

You can't get there from here on

38:15

the train, but I have this on

38:17

my list of like a sometime

38:20

future Connecticut field trip. In

38:22

twenty seventeen, Jekyl was honored

38:24

with a Google Doodle for her one hundred and seventy

38:27

fourth birthday. Just last

38:29

year, in twenty twenty three, the UK National

38:31

Trust acquired Munstead Wood, which

38:33

is currently undergoing restoration. We'll

38:36

end with a couple of quotes from her work that I

38:39

just found very dear. Quote

38:41

the first purpose of a garden is to

38:43

be a place of quiet beauty, such

38:46

as will give delight to the eye and repose

38:48

and refreshment to the mind. That

38:50

was from a Gardener's Testament, which she

38:52

wrote toward the end of her life. The

38:55

other is from Wood and Garden

38:57

quote the size of a garden has very

38:59

little to do with its merit. It is merely

39:01

an accident relating to the circumstances

39:03

of the owner. It is the size of

39:06

his heart and brain and goodwill that

39:08

will make his garden either delightful or

39:10

dull, as the case may be, and

39:12

either leave it at the usual monotonous

39:15

dead level, or raise it in whatever

39:17

degree may be, towards that of a

39:19

work of fine art.

39:23

As Gertrude Jekyl. She's a delight.

39:25

I'm quite fond of her. Yeah,

39:28

do you have a listener? Mail? Also, I

39:31

do you have a listener? Mail listener mail about

39:33

Humphrey Davy. This

39:36

email is from Larry, and Larry

39:38

wrote to say, I thoroughly enjoyed

39:40

your podcast and have learned some interesting things.

39:43

I'm about an episode behind in real time,

39:45

but appreciate your podcast and my rotation.

39:47

As a young man in the early nineteen eighties,

39:50

I worked in the coal mines to put

39:52

myself through mechanical engineering

39:54

at the University of Missouri Ralan now

39:56

Missouri S and T. It

39:58

appears that Davy won out in the long

40:01

run. We used safety

40:03

lamps to supplement the electronic

40:05

methane monitor of the day, which

40:07

would false alarm occasionally, and

40:10

we're mounted on the machinery, being too

40:12

heavy to carry. The safety

40:14

lamps in use were proudly tagged

40:16

with a coined brass label stating

40:19

Davy Safety Lamp. To miners

40:21

of the day, the visual feedback of the flame

40:24

was much more comforting than an electronic

40:26

black box. The safety

40:29

lamp readily detected two

40:31

of the three damps terms

40:33

still use today. Firedamp, as

40:35

you pointed out in the pod, is methane, which

40:37

caused the flame to grow and become more blue.

40:41

Black damp is poor oxygen

40:43

content in the atmosphere, causing a shorter,

40:45

more yellow flame or in extreme

40:47

cases, an extinguished flame.

40:50

The third ist white damp, which could be detected

40:52

by an experienced miner using the lamp

40:54

and the symptoms of exposure. Often

40:56

the lowest effective technology is most

40:59

helpful. Here's my obligatory pet

41:01

photo. Here is Cole. He turns

41:04

one this week. Cole

41:08

is a very very like.

41:11

I see a lot of people posting

41:13

pictures of black cats with

41:15

the note that they are avoid This

41:18

is a dog void of just

41:21

inky, solid black coat on

41:24

this dog within the first picture

41:26

a very happy, long tongue panting

41:28

expression. Second picture

41:32

just sacked out next to the door. Love

41:34

it, I love

41:36

it. So thank you so much Larry for this.

41:39

Larry ended upy saying today is writing out a thunderstorm

41:41

with a tornado warning. So thank you so much Larry

41:44

for sending this, for

41:46

thanking us for our hard work. If

41:49

you'd like to send us a note, where at History Podcasts

41:51

at iHeartRadio dot com and

41:53

you can subscribe to the show on

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the iHeartRadio app or wherever you

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For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

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