ANNE HATHAWAY'S LAVENDER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2756, 9 January 1907, Page 71

ANNE HATHAWAY'S LAVENDER.

—The Story of a Bunch of Twigs. —

The author of , "The Garden That I Love" has a pleasant article in this month's National Review: —

"Apropos of lavender, of which Lamia is particularly fond, I have a little story to tell which I will set down here," hesays, "since the telling of *it to some of our garden visitors has' seemed to interest them.

"Several years ago I was at Stratford-on-Avon, then stiff more or less left -to its primitive quiet and unpretentiousness ; the house in which Shakespeare is l'eputed to have been born, looking then much more credibly such than what this age calls ' improvements' have made it look. Vet nio'-o surjendered to the k'ndl" nursing of Time and untouched by the tidying,

— Smartening-up Tu&tes —

of to-day was Anne Hat ha way's cottage at Shotover, which exercised over me a peculiar spell, drawing me back to it afternoon after afternoon. I suppose I was influenced by the feeling that the young Shakespeare had been xn its garden many a time and oft, by moonlight, in starlight, at all hours of the day and night, and equally so in the inglenook of its cottage hearth.

''The wrinkled old dame who then lived there believed herself to be, and probably was, a collateral descendant of Anne Hathaway ; and she got so accustomed to my daily visits that we became close friends, and used to sit together, with her nut-brown hand in mine, and let our talk ramble backward in a dear, ignordht, semiimaginative sort of way ; and once we had tea together, which pleased her vastly and me no less. She seemed to feel regret when I told her I was leaving Stratford on the morrow ; so, before we parted, she led me into the cottage garden, as rustic as herself, plucked a Targe bunch of lavender twigs, and, as she .gave ihem to me, said — If you plant out these in May They will grow both night and day.

'Sure enough, May it was ; but, though I was leaving Stratford, I was not going home for some days yet. So I kept the lavender twigs moist in my sponge-bag ; and from these, for the kindly old lady's rhyming saw came true, is descended all the lavender that Lamia loves so. I had the honour — for, as you may suppose, such indeed I deemed it — of giving some cuttings of it to Tennyson for his garden at Aldworth ; and, later on, I gave of it to the most gifted actress of our time, who has appeared in every leading female part of humour, maiestv, and playfulness in

Shakespeare's dramas, to the delectation of ns all.

"Do you wonder if we alway6 call our lavender ' Ann Hathaway's lavender? ' It is now nearly in fu!l bloom ; and I noticed to-day the white butteiflies flitting over and among it, almo«t as thick as fireflies among the ripening corn of a Tuscan podere."